Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— Yes, the brass instruments!

— Now you are in the very midst of the orchestra, said the engineer. You can see the musicians’ faces, the seesaw of the bows, the gleaming brass. And the music is rising, growing stronger, making the room tremble. Do you hear it?

Her nostrils flaring and her face lit up, the sleeping beauty listened to the crescendo of Tannhäuser . The tertulia guests scarcely breathed, so amazed were they. A cold sweat bathed Señora Ruiz’s face. But the engineer calmed the sleeping creature’s agitation by passing his hand a few times over her forehead. When he judged that she was sleeping placidly once again, he told her:

— You are sad. A deep sorrow is engulfing you.

Marta’s face contracted into a pout of sorrow.

— You are weeping, suggested the engineer. Weep!

And Marta began to cry with such gusto that the observers, human after all, felt knots of anguish rise in their throats. Fortunately, Valdez restored the sleeper’s serenity by telling her:

— Your sadness has passed. Now you are feeling great happiness. You feel a desire to laugh completely flooding you.

— Yes, agreed Marta. A great happiness.

— Laugh! ordered the engineer.

A thin little laugh came out of Marta.

— Louder! the hypnotist ordered again.

Marta laughed so uproariously that everyone at the tertulia, in spite of themselves, started to shake with hilarity. Franky Amundsen went so far as to swear he’d seen Mister Chisholm busting a gut — an absurd claim nobody believed, of course. What was beyond discussion was the engineer Valdez’s success. Closing his eyes to the buzz of admiration, he concentrated in preparation for his master stroke.

— You are all no doubt aware, he said to those watching, that people are reluctant to let themselves fall backwards, even when they know someone is there to catch them.

The spectators nodded their agreement.

— Well, then. Watch carefully!

Turning to the sleeping girl, he ordered her:

— Let yourself fall back!

Without a moment’s pause, Marta tipped backward like a felled tree. Señora Ruiz shrieked. Everyone else stood up in unison like so many spring-loaded marionettes. Easy, now, it’s okay! The honourable engineer caught the slumbering creature in his arms and set her back down on the sky-blue divan. Franky and his crew broke into applause, but the others shushed them into silence. The session was over. It was time for Marta to awake.

— Listen, Marta, ordered the engineer. I’m going to start counting. When I get to number five, you will wake up, but in a completely calm state.

A tomb-like silence fell as Valdez counted out loud:

— One, two, three, four, FIVE!

Great God! Instead of coming around, Marta started to squeal and thrash about on the sky-blue divan. The general consternation was indescribable. Without so much as a cry of anguish, Señora Ruiz fell into a dead faint upon the generous bosom of Señora Johansen. An instinctive movement — how adorable! — took Solveig into the arms of Lucio Negri. All faces had turned waxen.

— What’s happened? What’s going on? shouted the men, some rushing to the mother, some to the daughter.

— It’s the “errant influences,” yelled Samuel Tesler. I told you so!

Without letting go of Marta, the engineer turned to the tertulia.

— Don’t get upset, he ordered. There’s some interference.

He manipulated the comatose girl as she went on kicking and screeching. At his side, Franky Amundsen too leaned over Marta, apparently following the operation with great interest.

— Have you checked her carburetor? he asked at last, looking at Valdez with a studious air.

Franky’s question provoked a rumble of indignant protests. But now the hypnotist was regaining control over Marta.

— Are you calm now? he asked her.

— Yes.

— I’m going to clap three times. At the sound of the third clap, you will wake up. And you’ll be happy, all right? Very happy.

At the engineer’s third handclap, his prisoner at last awoke, smiling as if she hadn’t a care in the world. What a sigh of collective relief passed through the tertulia, now that Marta had left the gloomy realm of the night! Brows shed their furrows, colour flushed back into pale cheeks. Señora Ruiz recovered from her fainting spell, thanks to Lucio Negri’s potent science, or more likely to the three fingers of no-less-potent whisky that Franky, the blackguard, poured down her throat, heedless of Doctor Aguilera’s existence in this world. And the joy with which mother and daughter embraced is beyond the powers of verbal expression. Valdez wiped the sweat from his bald pate and took a few deep breaths — fatigued, yes, but loaded with laurels.

— A magnificent subject, he declared, still panting and pointing toward Marta Ruiz, whose post-hypnotic exultation was evident.

Everyone was feeling fine, and even better when Franky the Magnanimous set about distributing the first fruits of a bottle whose virginity he authenticated in the most exalted terms. And jubilation overflowed when Ruty Johansen, the northern Valkyrie, sat down vehemently at the piano and tore into the first bars of the “Blue Danube.”

— Let’s dance! shouted Marta Ruiz, all aflame.

— Find a partner! Everyone find a partner!

Then something beautiful happened: stray souls divined one another and embraced under Ruty’s spell. The first to enter the whirlwind was Schultz, that disquieting astrologer. His hand on Ethel Amundsen’s waist (slender as an Indian reed!), he made her spin in precise astronomical circles. Señor Johansen and spouse, joining spherical bellies and short arms, began to turn with the grace of two bears on an ice floe. Next came Valdez and Marta Ruiz, her eyes still pregnant with the darkness of the abyss, the engineer modest and unpretentious as ever. They were followed by Samuel Tesler, clinging to the jovial Haydée Amundsen like a storm-tossed sailor to his mast. Then came Lucio and Solveig (Daphnis and Cloë!), a pair of tremulous doves. Franky, Pereda, Del Solar, and Bernini, in a single wobbly bundle of humanity, were trying out the “four-let’s-dance,” the neo-dance Schultz had learned from a certain funnel-shaped Spirit during a conjunction of Venus and Saturn. But who was that glacial, frowning gentleman with Señora Amundsen, the one who danced with the stately rigidity of a strongbox? Why, it was Mister Chisholm, the administrative manager of the world plus its environs! Ruty Johansen was working the ivories, tickling mermaid crystals and Tritonesque seashells out of the “Blue Danube.” And everybody was whirling together in happy abandon. Except for two motionless souls: Adam Buenosayres and Señora Ruiz.

Adam Buenosayres, immobile in the centre of the circle and the dance, could not tear his gaze from Solveig and Lucio. The pair were lost in each other, following the rhythm of the music and of their hearts. All too sensitive to the nascent spell bringing those two creatures together, Adam Buenosayres was sinking into desolate jealousy. But watch out! She, too, might some day feel the weight of her autumn, and find herself alone and immobile like a thirst far from water. Then Adam and Solveig would meet again: it would be an afternoon the colour of dead leaves. Where? Didn’t matter. And Solveig would understand the kind of love she’d disdained to read about in the Blue-Bound Notebook; her remorse would speak through a gaze extending like a bridge toward him. Too late! Glorious and sad (his literary genius by now known to the world), Adam Buenosayres would be beyond human passion (moribund, perhaps? No, tone it down a bit!). Nevertheless, between today’s not-to-be and tomorrow’s sweet might-have-been, they would be irremediably beset by ineffable sorrow. And then she would be overcome by tears, while Adam’s eyes would be as dry and hard as stones… Ah, how sweet those images of consolation!