Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Meanwhile, night was falling and darkness was enveloping the parlour. Adam Buenosayres looked at a bit of sky through the window opening onto the garden. Perhaps the terrestrial melancholy of the autumn evening seeped momentarily into his soul, for he felt forthwith a crazy urge to make a clean escape into the enormous, silent spaces of the wide-open sky, hard and cold as a gem. But the lights of the chandelier suddenly switched on, and Adam turned his gaze back to the tertulia where the actors, under the new lighting, were becoming more boisterous. A gust of hilarity was just hitting the ladies’ group. Señora Johansen was laughing noisily, her spongy flesh shaking beneath her clothes like a water-filled balloon. Señora Amundsen laughed a sonorous counterpoint, and even Señora Ruiz discreetly joined in, her hatchet face managing a half-smile. Lucio Negri was now among the denizens of the divan, sitting beside Solveig with the most distracted air imaginable. Adam thought he’d seen Lucio’s hand furtively draw away from Solveig’s just as the lights came on. But he wasn’t sure, maybe it was an optical illusion. Did it matter any more? No. Really? Weaver of smoke! At the far end of the sky-blue divan, not much was new; the astrologer Schultz was speaking to the engineer, Ethel, and Ruty, all of them apparently spellbound.

Adam’s observations were interrupted by a chorus of laughter in his own sector. Franky Amundsen, haughty as a self-important nurse, was approaching solemnly, rolling the cart of drinks before him.

— Let us drink, now that we have peace, Franky invited, stopping the drink cart with a truly maternal solicitude.

Not waiting to have their arms twisted, Del Solar, Pereda, Buenosayres, and the pipsqueak Bernini all accepted a glass and a benediction from Franky. But Samuel Tesler had retreated into sullen silence after the battle and now refused Franky’s generosity.

— Come on, now! cried Franky. Let’s go ashore and hit the bottle! Blood of the whale, have a little humanity! Even Plato, if memory serves, used to drink like a sailor after he’d demonstrated the squaring of the circle.

As he served Señor Johansen and Mister Chisholm, still whispering together in private, Franky exhorted them:

— Pax , gentlemen! Pax vobiscum .

There followed a general flexing of elbows. Even Samuel Tesler, having given in to Franky’s eloquence, raised a glass more out of courtesy than any other motive.

Then Franky suddenly turned to Del Solar.

— I’ve got an idea! he cried, pointing at Buenosayres and Samuel Tesler. These comrades have to come with us tonight.

— Where? asked Adam.

— Shhh! Franky silenced him. A creoley-toughguyee-whorey-suburbyfuneral adventure, as comrade Schultz would say. 26

But Del Solar was frowning.

— It’s dangerous, he declared. We’re gonna be hangin’ out with the kind of heavies you don’t mess with.

— Will the taita Flores be there? Pereda wanted to know.

— For sure, Del Solar answered, giving him a significant look.

— Hmm, growled Pereda. If Flores is going to be there, we’ll have to think this over carefully.

This brief exchange between the two criollista leaders charged the atmosphere with a sense of mystery, of lurking danger. Unfortunately, Franky Amundsen couldn’t leave well enough alone.

— One hell of night it’s gonna be, he anounced. By the beard of the Prophet! We’ll get down and dirty on the outskirts of town and up to our balls in criollismo . Are we or are we not talking about a journey to hell? Yes? So that’s why the poet and the philosopher’ve gotta come along, or I know bugger all about the classics.

— Okay, it’s fine by me if they want to come, muttered Del Solar, looking dubiously at Tesler and Buenosayres. But they’ll have to keep their heads up and their mouths shut. Otherwise, I can’t answer for the consequences.

A look of irritation mixed with pity suffused the face of the philosopher from Villa Crespo. He was not unaware of the harm suffered by the current generation due to a doctrine of heretical principles and dubious ends. Concocted in the impure crucible of some irresponsible coterie, it had taken off in a manner unprecedented in the history of our national metaphyics, fully justifying the cries of alarm being heard on all sides. Criollismo was the name of this obscure heterodoxy, and whether it was inspired by Old Nick himself, we’ll only know on Judgment Day toward nightfall. Upon dissecting that body of doctrine with the zealous scalpel of inflexible orthodoxy, one quickly came to realize that it was all about taking certain shady characters from suburban Buenos Aires, whose deeds were memorialized in police files, and raising them to the level of Olympian gods. Now, our philosopher belonged to a race which, although in the course of its frequent migrations it had burned incense at the altar of quite a few foreign divinities, could still boast of having maintained intact the gold of its own tradition. So it was no surprise that that attempt at barbarous idolatry caused Samuel Tesler to cloud over from head to foot. 27

— The lengths bad literature can go to! he said. To the point of turning a couple of harmless thugs into national heroes!

— Harmless, the taita Flores? protested Del Solar, scandalized.

— Sure, just a kid! Pereda laughed loudly. Only twenty-two charges on his police record!

The philosopher looked at him sarcastically.

— Probably a pathetic chicken-thief, he said. I’ve got a mind to come with you tonight just to have it out with this joker Flores, slap him around a bit.

Uncontrollable laughter erupted. Franky Amundsen, perplexed, went up to the philosopher and felt his biceps.

— This is what I call a man! he declared solemnly.

But Samuel Tesler pushed him away, drunk with aggression.

— I’ve had it up to here with criollista nonsense, he said. It started with singing the praises of that gaucho 28who bummed around out there on the pampa — or so you people say, though it cuts no ice with me — out there where nowadays Italian farmers are sweating in their fields. And now you’re picking on those poor sods in the suburbs, mixing them up in a sorry literature of tough guys and dance-hall Romeos!

As the philosopher talked on, Del Solar was turning every colour imaginable. Images of his forebears went filing by in his memory, heroes wearing the tunic of liberation armies or the chiripá of feudal ranchers. Men with tough beards and tender hearts, out there on the native pampas among proud horses. At the same time, Señor Johansen and Mister Chisholm joined the group, attracted by Samuel Tesler’s violent words.

— Devout remembrance of things native, stammered Del Solar, deathly pale, is all we criollos have left, ever since the wave of foreigners invaded the country. And now the same foreigners are making a mockery of our sorrow! It’s enough to make you weep with rage!

— Bravo! applauded Franky. This calls for a guitar!

— I’m serious! Del Solar warned him acridly. It’s true the influx of foreigners put us on the road to progress. On the other hand, it has destroyed our traditions. We’ve been tempted and corrupted!

— Absolutely right! the pipsqueak Bernini corroborated, pawing the ground like a steed anxious to enter the fray.

But Adam Buenosayres intervened unexpectedly:

— I’d say it happened the other way around.

— What do you mean? asked Del Solar.

— That our country is the one that tempts and corrupts, and the foreigner is the one who has been tempted and corrupted.

The utterance of this unheard-of doctrine produced a shock wave throughout the sector.

— That’s preposterous! protested Bernini.