Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— It’s those long days lying abed brings on the constipation, she finally declared. Doctor Aguilera always told me so.

— At any rate, my bowels didn’t move for two weeks, explained Señora Johansen in a piteous voice.

But Señora Ruiz frowned.

— Impossible! she objected. No one can go two weeks without a bowel movement.

— Two whole weeks, not a day less, Señora Johansen insisted stubbornly.

— Strange, mused Señora Ruiz. I’ll have to ask Doctor Aguilera about that.

— And how did you feel? asked Señora Amundsen. Any cold sweats, cramps, nausea?

— It was like I had a big lump of lead in my stomach, asserted Señora Johansen, quivering at the mere recollection.

Señora Ruiz’s wizened face brightened with a sudden enthusiasm. Stupid old women! What did they know about nausea and chills? She evoked her nine operations like so many glorious days of battle. She could as easily stretch out on the operating table as lie down for an afternoon nap on her lemon-yellow sofa.

— Trifles, she said dismissively, neither proud nor modest.

Then she leaned toward the other two and asked in a low voice:

— Do you know what a faecal bolus is?

Señoras Johansen and Amundsen waited in suspense.

— So you don’t know? insisted Señora Ruiz, already savouring her triumph. It’s faecal matter that accumulates and hardens into a ball in the intestine.

— Goodness gracious! exclaimed Señora Amundsen.

“Silly old bags!” thought Señora Ruiz. They had never known the anxious pleasure of putting one’s faecal matter in a nickel flask and one’s urine in a clear bottle and taking it all to Doctor Aguilera; nor could they imagine the frisson when Doctor Aguilera sniffed and prodded those ignoble materials, then dignified them with flattering scientific names.

— Massages, purges, enemas — nothing touches it! she went on. The bolus won’t budge, and every day it gets bigger and bigger.

— Can it be possible? murmured Señora Johansen in alarm.

— I ought to know! Señor Ruiz rejoined. Doctor Aguilera took one out of me the size of an ostrich egg.

— I can’t believe it, said Señora Amundsen.

— If you doubt my word, just go to Doctor Aguilera’s office. He still has it there in a glass jar.

Certainty on the one hand, astonishment on the other. Looking in wonder at the rickety figure of Señora Ruiz, Señora Johansen struggled to understand how that stick of a body could produce so wondrous a faecal bolus. Señora Amundsen, on the other hand, sad as sad can be, meditated on how cruelly fate brings plagues raining down upon man, the poor human being who must live out a few wretched days in this world of misery. Señora Ruiz, for her part, was digesting her victory, congratulating herself for the lesson in modesty she’d just given that pair of old fools. She felt exultation rising up irrepressibly from within as she recalled the nine surgical epics starring herself in the lead role — her, all alone! Swathed in gowns of lilac, white and pink, she’d been at the centre of a phalanx of illustrious doctors revolving around her like planets. And foremost among them was Doctor Aguilera, resplendent as an Olympian god.

Marta Ruiz’s skirt had worked its way up a little too high. She gave it a quick tug, clamped it between bony knees, and turned back to the Amundsen sisters, who were listening attentively.

— A darling blouse, she mused, entirely hand-sewn, in lawn. Imagine a jabot made of tiny pleats festooned with genuine lace. It has a high collar with a tie of the same material, and long sleeves with cuffs that end in flounces done with the same pleats and lace as the jabot . It’s just divine!

— What dress would you wear it with? asked Haydée Amundsen with interest.

— I’m thinking about my tailored suit, Marta said hesitantly. Although I wouldn’t mind wearing it with a garnet skirt.

Haydée scowled in disapproval.

— Why garnet?

— Red and white, replied Marta, are the colours that go best with a dark complexion. I’ve tried blues and greens. A disaster, my dear!

But Haydée disagreed. She detested red, even though her fair skin handled it quite well. But she could die for pale blue or navy blue or even dark violet, three colours that enhanced her white complexion and her flaming bronze hair.

— For the fall season, she said, I think I’ll go for the blue silk outfit we saw the other day at Ibrahim the Turk’s store.

— Have you picked out the style? asked Marta.

— Hmm, what do you think about the deux pièces , with a silk print écharpe around the neck?

Marta reflected for a moment.

— Not bad, she decided. But in that case I’d recommend the jambon sleeves.

— How’s that?

— My dear, answered Marta. They’d give your shoulders a little more width, because they are a little narrow.

Haydée bit her lips. The comment had hit the mark.

And Solveig Amundsen? Wearing silks and satins, or a clinging gold lamé dress, she would descend the triumphal steps by the light of great chandeliers or candelabras, passing before the admiring eyes of plenipotentiaries. Heron or peacock feathers on her forehead of bronze: her plumage fluttering in the subtle breeze of praise, and in that breeze alone! Marten furs or astrakhans draped over her shoulders as she stood beside sleighs drawn by horses, their hooves stamping the hard snow. Or autumnal plaids, as she walks through an English garden, her two greyhounds sniffing the yellow leaves, the dead beetles. Or printed fabrics and brightly coloured kerchiefs at the seaside. Or perhaps…

Lucio Negri could not understand the closed-mindedness, the obtuse intelligence, the stone-age mentality of those who refused to recognize the ascendent direction of Progress, a reality so obvious that only eyes blinded by outmoded obscurantism could fail to see it. How could one not cry out in admiration and laugh with joy at the marvels of the contemporary world, so full of novel surprises and so fertile in inventions, through which man, surpassing himself, now dominated the dark forces of Nature and reduced them unconditionally to his service? And what about Science, which through the effort of patient workers was cracking, one by one, the secrets of the universe we inhabit?

Señor Johansen, though silent, heartily applauded such convincing avowals. And his fatherly heart could not help picking out this wise young doctor as the ideal husband urgently needed by Ruty, in view of her twenty-eight years and a vocation to matrimony that was threatening to get out of control. Why not? Chance encounters tended to produce such miracles, and these society gatherings were organized for such praiseworthy ends… But wait a minute! The Jew was talking now.

For his part, Samuel Tesler not only recognized technical progress, but he didn’t mind admitting that certain mechanical inventions (aviation, electric refrigeration, radiotelephony) produced an instant erection in his virile member — a phenomenon, he went on to say, that left no doubt as to his enthusiasm for the cult of machinery. But when he considered that this whole conquest had come at the cost of the most formidable spiritual regression of all time, he, Samuel Tesler, trusted in the sanction of his bladder and pissed buckets on Progress and every single one of its miracles.

With a fervor not entirely unrelated to his second whisky, Adam Buenosayres approved of Tesler’s words and seconded his concluding urinary judgment. Under the influence of the heat in his entrails, a vigorous instinct to fight was awakening within him.

— What cannot be denied, he said, is that the history of man has followed and continues to follow a progressive…