Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— God help us! exlaimed Ruty Johansen, horrified.

— And our musical instruments? Schultz went on, visibly displeased. We need to invent new ones. In Rome I had just about finished a pianosaxophone-drumset that was shaping up quite nicely. 9

— Did you get it to work? asked Ruty.

— No.

— Why not?

— Saturn and Jupiter were messing around up there, muttered Schultz.

The engineer Valdez, bald and pudgy, studious and calm, penetrated Schultz with his cobra-like gaze.

— You go around reinventing everything, he warned. First it’s the language of Argentina, next our national ethnography, and now music. Better watch out! I can just see you with a crescent wrench in your hand, trying to loosen the nuts and bolts of the Solar System.

— The Great Demiurge, Schultz responded, sets us the example, ceaselessly modifying his work.

Ethel Amundsen repeated the punishment to his thigh.

— You know what your problem is? she said. You like to pose as a genius. The demon of originality torments you night and day.

— Me, original? rejoined Schultz with an air of complete astonishment. 10

Ruty laughed out loud.

— That’s right, she said, confronting the astrologer in turn. What about the other night at the Menéndez house, when you ate that bouquet of hydrangeas? 11

A sad smile dawned on Schultz’s face.

— That’s a good one! he grumbled. Four times a day you people eat anything and everything chewable you can find on the terraqueous globe, and then you get upset because I eat a couple of flowers.

— Okay, we’ll let the flowers pass, laughed Ethel. But you can’t tell me it’s normal to go up to greengrocer asleep at his stall and sniff him.

— He sniffed a sleeping greengrocer? asked Ruty, wide-eyed.

— At the Mercado de Abasto, 12three o’clock in the morning, testified Valdez.

Schultz inclined his brow in modesty.

— What’s so unusual about it? he said sweetly. A nose, if put to proper use, can glean interesting odours from a greengrocer’s body. The armpit area, for example, smells of damp earth, mouldy sacks, and sour sweat. The pelvic zone, on the other hand, gives off a scent of weeds and sheepfold, mixed with perceptible emanations of ammonia.

— That’s enough, Schultz! ordered Ethel Amundsen.

— And the feet steaming with slow fermentations…

— Enough! insisted Ethel, wrinkling her nose.

— The olfactory sense is despised nowadays, Schultz concluded. And yet its possibilities are infinite.

Ruty Johansen, a reclining Valkyrie, began to unfurl Wagnerian laughter. At the same time, Ethel Amundsen, suddenly serious, reflected with some bitterness on the intellectual decadence of the sex that claimed to be superior; men were so proud of their one-kilogram brains, but they wasted them on such nonsense as Schultz was spouting. Just you wait! Women were going to get their own back, and it wouldn’t be long before she recuperated the three hundred grams of grey matter that men had so perfidiously caused her to lose since the Stone Age.

Meanwhile, the engineer Valdez was scrutinizing Schultz’s countenance with the sharp eyes of a hypnotist.

— I’d like know, he demanded finally, if the criollo superman you’ve invented will have only five senses.

Curiosity flashed in Ruty’s eyes:

— What? You’ve invented a superman too?

— It’s grotesque, an abomination, asserted Ethel. A laboratory freak.

Schultz looked at her in mild reproach. Then, turning to Valdez, he said:

— First of all, I didn’t invent the Neocriollo. 13The Neocriollo will be produced naturally as a result of the astrological forces governing this country. Secondly, the Neocriollo will be endowed not with the five senses known to us in the West, but the eleven of the Orient.

— Schultz! pleaded Ruty. Tell us about the Neocriollo!

— There’s nothing otherworldly about him. Imagine, Ruty…

— Schultz, I absolutely forbid you! cried Ethel, aghast.

But Ruty Johansen insisted with her demand, and finally the engineer Valdez came up with a compromise solution:

— Let him tell us about the Neocriollo’s eleven senses, nothing more. Can you do that, Schultz?

— It’s nothing, grunted the astrologer, resisting. A kindergarten theorem.

— Don’t get him going! exclaimed Ethel in alarm.

— The Neocriollo! demanded Ruty, imperiously Wagnerian.

As though forced to explain a mere bagatelle, Schultz adopted a resigned attitude.

— All of you will admit, he began, that the Neocriollo is destined to realize the great possibilities of America, and that he must be born under the most favourable astrological conditions.

— Naturally, allowed Valdez with extreme gravity.

— Goes without saying! said Ruty.

— That being the case, continued Schultz, the Neocriollo’s senses will be more or less as follows. His right eye will be ruled by the sun, his left eye by the moon. Which means that through his solar eye, he will tend to see the light directly, while the lunar eye will see by virtue of reflected light. Or, to simplify further: the right eye will make him holy, and the left will make him scientific. The eyes will no longer be confined to their sockets; they will be exteriorized, on the tips of optic nerves some eight inches long and protrude like insect antennae, capable of extending up or down, right or left, depending on the object of vision. Furthermore, each eye, perched on its antenna, will be rotary, capable of turning on itself like a periscope, and will be fitted with an eyelid-diaphragm, ultra-sensitive to variations in the light.

Ruty Johansen was already shaking with stifled laughter.

— As for his ears, Schulz expounded, the right ear will correspond to Saturn and the left to Jupiter. With the right ear the Neocriollo will tune in to the music of the heavens; that is to say, the nine choirs of the angels. The other will listen to earthly music, which won’t be anything like Grieg or Beethoven. His outer ears, of course, will be shaped like two large microphone-funnels that can be oriented in the six spatial directions.

At this point Ruty released some of the laughter pent up in her body.

— He’s the man from Mars! she hooted.

— If you’re going to interrupt, Schultz told her, then I’ll just pack it up, and that’ll be that.

— Oh no, Ruty begged. I want you to tell me about the Neocriollo’s nose.

— It will be a beautiful nose, said the astrologer. Its right nostril will be ruled by Mars and the left one by Venus. Which means that the Neocriollo will breathe destructive furor through one side, and loving or constructive furor through the other. Imagine an enormous nose, with its windows wide open and pulsating, free of hairs and mucous.

— There he goes with the disgusting details, scolded Ethel.

But Schultz paid no attention.

— The Neocriollo’s tongue, he expounded gravely, will be an organ for both taste and expression, and will be under the dominion of Mercury. It will have the shape of a long, flexible ribbon, like the anteater’s tongue, and the Neocriollo will stick it into all kinds of places, avid for flavours. This means his mouth will be merely a small hole, and toothless, since the Neocriollo will no longer feed on gross substances — ah, no! He will subsist on all that is subtle in this world. And now I must describe his skin, the tactile organ. The Neocriollo will have a very large skin area, accommodating a prodigious number of nerve endings; and, logically, since it will be too big for his body, it will fall down around him in wrinkles and folds, like the skin of Merino lambs.

— A regular Beau Brummell! exclaimed Ruty. 14

— I told you so, said Ethel Amundsen, indignant and amused. An abominable freak.