Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

In the telling, Márgara chortled playfully. The neighbour ladies laughed somewhat louder, and chorus was invaded by sympathetic hilarity.

— That Don Juan!

— One heck of a criollo !

— No way! Joking around like that on his deathbed — what a rascal!

— Isn’t that Juan all over!

The chorus got more excited. There was more laughing and talking — ah, good old Juan! Still giggling, Márgara turned to her three necrophile aunts and saw their faces of stone. They hadn’t laughed. With a violent start, Márgara woke up to reality and took to moaning and groaning more pathetically than ever. Doña Tecla, phlegmatic, began again to rub her temples with her handkerchief; the ladies in Red and Blue moved away from the bed; and the chorus lurking in the shadows fell abruptly silent. The lowing trailed off little by little as Márgara entered a deepening torpor, her Gorgonian head swaying back and forth like a pendulum until, with a final roll, it came to rest on the pillows. There was a vast silence, pierced only by the loud tick-tock of the alarm clock on the bedside table. All the figures were motionless; a drizzle of something like ash or tedium seemed to blur the contours of the tableau. Then all of a sudden a belligerent clamour broke out in the other room; the two neighbour ladies exchanged a look of intelligence.

— The kids, muttered the one in Red.

— The little devils! assented the one in Blue.

The women made for the door with maternal haste. Flinging it open, they irrupted into a tumultuous theatre of war.

The room was in total disarray. Furniture and knick-knacks from the other rooms had been stored in here, scattered and stacked any which way. The only stick of furniture still in its usual position was a double bed pushed up against a wall. Four chubby babies, bundled up to the neck, had been laid across it, and they were sleeping blissfully. The neighbour ladies’ maternal gaze did not rest long on the idyllic bed, however. Their eyes quickly swerved to the middle of the room where Pancho and Manuel, two of God’s little angels, were pummelling each other with pillows. The champions shrieked in triumph at each blow given, and shouted an imprecation at every blow received. Absorbed in the fight, they didn’t notice that their arena of single combat had been invaded by mothers. But when the two women advanced menacingly toward them, floor shaking under their massive legs, the heroes, visibly discomfited, dropped their feathery weapons and beat a hasty retreat. Blindly, Pancho ran straight into the arms of the Neighbour Lady in Red, and two ringing slaps, one on each cheek, were the epilogue to his epic story.

— Go outside with your father! the one in Red shouted at him, pointing with her thick index finger toward the door to the patio.

At the same time, with greater skill or better fortune, Manuel had escaped into the labyrinth of piled-up stuff. Safely entrenched between a folding metal cot and a large trunk, he peered out at the woman in Blue.

— Come out of there, bandit! she cried, brandishing a slipper.

“Sure, one of these days,” Manuel thought to himself, eyeing the slipper with an eloquent expression.

The Neighbour Lady in Blue was about to storm the trenches, when one of the babies started crying at the top of its lungs.

— Poor little angel! she exclaimed and flew instead to the bed. She took the caterwauling babe into her arms and planted a gargantuan kiss on each cheek.

— They woke you up, didn’t they, sweetheart. There, there. It was that bandit, that scoundrel Manuel!

But the sweetheart, in no mood for chitchat, just turned up the volume on his wailing. In response, the woman in Blue deftly unbuttoned her blouse, laid bare a breast brimming over in plenitude, and executed the most ancient gesture in the world as she offered it to the squalling mouth. The baby clamped fiercely onto the purple nipple, let go for a moment to gaze at his mother with a beatific smile, then tucked in again, his little eyes half closing. Ensconced in his famous trench, the bandit Manuel saw the storm was blowing over.

Pancho, his cheeks burning and brow furrowed, had gone outside to ruminate over the humiliation of the two smacks he’d so insultingly received in front of his rival. His imagination was brewing up ominous plans of revenge that might adequately chastise the intolerable abuse of maternal privilege. This time, he thought, she’d gone too far. Truth was, Pancho was vacillating between two equally seductive projects: either run away from home, or poison himself with a box of matches. The first design tempted with its promise of adventures beyond even Salgari’s 4wildest dreams. The second plan, however, was irresistibly fascinating for its wealth of dramatic effects. With bitter delight he savoured in advance the remorse that would weigh on his family when he, Pancho Ramírez, was no longer in this tempest-tossed world of slaps-in-the-face and was lying in state in his little white coffin. His primary school classmates would come to the funeral, maybe carrying the flag and everything. By this point in his reverie, the two smacks and the recent dishonour were forgotten, and Pancho fell into a weepy tenderness inspired instead by his own premature death. Thus musing, Pancho headed for the group of men outside drinking mate . He gingerly went up to his father, nervous that he might have to explain why he was out here among the men.

Fortunately, Don José Ramírez was holding forth just then, and when Don José was talking (which was all the time), the sky could come tumbling down around him and he wouldn’t miss a beat. The men of the neighbourhood were sitting beneath the autumnal grapevine, conversing alongside the rectangle of light projected onto the patio tiles from the chapel of rest. Through withered leaves of the vine, a few stars twinkled. Don José, quite the gentleman in his straw chair, was sitting opposite Zanetti, the bilious bill collector. To the right of Don José was the antique profile of Reynoso, who sat with a tin kettle and a mate gourd at his bunion’d feet. Indifferent to the tertulia, the Young Neighbour listened distractedly and fidgeted interminably with his little hat — the kind toffs wear, Pancho thought, as he tried to remember where he’d seen that guy before.

— Just imagine, said Don José in a jocular tone, warming to the story he was in midst of telling. There they all are at the table — the two guys from Corrientes, my brother Goyo, and the Brazilian — dealing cards to beat the band, totally wrapped up in a cut-throat game of truco . And under the same roof, right beside Goyo, the corpse of the “little angel” is layin’ there among his four candles and already smellin’ bad, poor little guy…

— Hmm, hmm, growled Zanetti, making a slurping noise with the bombilla .

— In the other shack, Don José went on, there’s a few couples dancing away to the accordion. And the guy with the squeeze box, the gals, the ranch hands, they’re all pissed to the gills.

— Absolute barbarity! the collector muttered between his teeth, as he handed the mate back to Reynoso.

The old man took it pensively, adjusted the bombilla in the gourd, then refilled it.

— That’s what they used to believe, he argued without looking at Zanetti. A kid dies? A little angel is on his way to heaven! Cause for celebration.

— Superstition, grumbled Zanetti. Lack of culture.

— Maybe, murmured old man Reynoso, slowly sucking at the bombilla.

Don José, getting visibly impatient, raised his hand.

— Well, now comes the good part, he announced jovially. Like I was saying, the guys were playing hard. The Brazilian, he was losing a fortune, and fuming every time Goyo took a trick. Because Goyo was a real card sharp — he needed an ace, he got one, even if he had to pull it out of his sleeve. Maybe the Brazilian started to suspect something fishy, I don’t know. But anyways, all of sudden he pulls out a huge revolver and points it at Goyo: Eu meto bala en vocé! , I’ll put a bullet in you! Holy jumpin’. Goyo, he’s unarmed, so guess what he does. He grabs the “little angel” by the feet and starts little-angeling the Brazilian with several good whacks.