Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— Where is it all going to end? he burst out at last, a single gesture of his hand taking in the vestibule, the building, perhaps the world.

A macabre chortle escaped his lips.

— Human dignity! he lamented. How nauseating!

— There are two forms of prostitution, Bernini intervened. Legal and clandestine. Here we have…

— Go to the Devil! cried Samuel Tesler. They’re just two scientific names for the same ignominy!

Schultz leaned over to a Buenosayres lost in thought.

— The Jew is showing his true colours, he whispered. Now we’re in for some moral whining. 7

— Mea culpa , groaned a laconic Buenosayres.

But Bernini was warming to his theme.

— It may be ignominious, he said, but it’s a necessary ignominy. I’d like to know what would become of us without this ignominy!

The talking head of Doña Venus spun around to face the conversationalists.

— That’s mother of all questions, she croaked mechanically.

— Hmm, Adam observed. Is there such a thing as a necessary ignominy?

The pipsqueak Bernini stared at him in amazement. Then, in a truly overwhelming display of statistics, he spoke of the phalanx of foreign men who had brought with them not only their useful labour, but also their dangerous soledad , their solitude, and their soltería , their bachelorhood (and here Bernini underlined the common etymology of the Spanish words soledad and soltería ). 8He painted the bleakest view of the dangers facing society due to that mob of single expatriate men. As the peroration of the impassioned sociologist unfolded, the abominable spectres of adultery, rape, and child molestation went filing by in martial order. But then he evoked those “safety valves” that certain retrograde minds had just now dismissed as ignominious; he sang the praises of those humble institutions, such as the very one in which they now found themselves, which anonymously fulfilled a mission as indispensable as it was secret. Instantly, the abominable figures of adultery, rape, and child molestation fled with their tails between their legs, and society under siege could breathe easy again.

One might have expected thunderous applause to greet the discourse of the sociologist Bernini. But it did not turn out that way. Adam Buenosayres condemned it from beginning to end. Samuel, the philosopher, unexpectedly relapsed into Dionysian mode and celebrated the end of the speech with a gush of laughter that elicited loud imitations in the vestibule. However, the talking head hadn’t yet given her verdict:

— That dwarf does have the gift of the gab, Doña Venus pronounced mellifluously. Given half a chance, he’d talk his way past the hangman.

The oracle’s words provoked a new round of hilarity, which the pipsqueak Bernini faced down with dignity. He decided to play his best card and go for broke: he spoke of untutored youths, of the aberrations in adolescents due to inadequate sex education; he spoke of the youthful Argentine Republic and of the sacred virility of her sons. Just when everyone saw a pall being cast over the august horizon of the homeland, Bernini let the sun shine once again by pulling out his famous “safety valves.” It must be owned that, when he mentioned them for the second time, the pipsqueak unleashed a hurricane of laughter so violent that it wrinkled the brow of Doña Venus and knocked the Gasfitter out of his ecstasy.

A matter of such vast ramifications could not, of course, leave Franky Amundsen indifferent. Once the laughter had calmed down, Franky very gravely enquired of the scholars surrounding him if Schultz’s neocriollo angels (the same ones who had brought us the legion of single men just mentioned by Bernini) had likewise guided to our shores the legion of adorable Jovas, Fannys, and Suzettes who one fine day had blithely set out on the Road to Buenos Aires. At Franky’s words, many eyes flashed with hostility. In vain did Doña Venus wake up to swear that Jova had no equal in this world. In vain did Schultz deplore the inglorious role that certain perverse imaginations attributed to his angels. For nothing could prevent Adam, Pereda, and Bernini from recalling the name of that perfidious Frenchman, Albert Londres, who with his equally perfidious slander had tried to besmirch Argentine honour. 9

— Those caftens are all from Marseilles! thundered Pereda, swearing he’d seen loads of them in brothels, with their bowler hats, Mediterranean mustaches, and heavy gold chains.

— They’re Pollacks! cried Bernini just as vigorously.

— Romanians! Adam affirmed categorically.

The question still hadn’t been resolved when the pythoness of the vestibule stirred again on her stool, a sure sign she was about to deliver a great revelation. Given her indisputable authority on the subject, everyone listened with keen interest.

— They come in all kinds, like at the five-and-dime store, Doña Venus whispered at last.

Having delivered her final verdict, she promptly woke up and slid over to the main door to let out the Syrian Merchant who, fleeing, was as despondent as a beat-up fighting cock. The Italian Gasfitter, without waiting to be invited, walked dreamily over and let himself into the room just vacated by the Merchant. Doña Venus approved his move with a slight nod and went back to her stool.

The Gasfitter’s departure allowed our men in the vestibule to bask in an intimacy that gave greater freedom to their words and movements. Few sounds penetrated that silent space — the neighbourhood rooster multiplying his shrieks, as if maddened by the sense of dawn’s approach; a grocer’s cart rattling lazily down the street to the rhythmic clip-clop of horseshoes. It was the hour when nocturnal souls, overcome by remorse, grow swollen with generous intentions and pledge their word of honour to the future. In this atmosphere favourable to all redemptions, Adam Buenosayres launched the final theme: of course this ignominy wasn’t necessary, and it was only the total lack of colonizing spirit that was responsible for the concentration of three million people on the banks of the Río de la Plata, while fertile plains and sylvan valleys were left unpopulated. And so? Was all lost, then? No! Adam Buenosayres gathered up all those “men in solitude” 10mentioned by Bernini; he joined them in Christian matrimony with vigorous women; he said unto them, “Multiply and fill the earth”; he scattered them like seed from north to south, from east to west. And then, before the wonderstruck gaze of his listeners, a race of shepherds and ploughmen, innumerable as the sands of the sea, covered the Argentine pampas all the way down to Cape Horn. They built amazing cities, peopled the sea with ships and the sky with aircraft, sang epics as yet unheard, and thought up superb metaphysical systems.

The vision sent the characters of the vestibule into ecstasy. The philosopher Tesler averred that a grand pastoral freshness was washing over him. Faithful to himself, Schultz proposed a few ethnic combinations (Spanish men with Tartar women, Englishwomen with Chinese men, Italian men with Esquimo women) which would bring about the lineage destined, so he affirmed, to find its quintessence in the Neocriollo . Pereda gravely endorsed the vision, and even the pipsqueak Bernini, beneath his tough scientific shell, was almost-sort-of moved by it. Alas! Among those zealous settlers, only Franky Amundsen maintained a reserved and almost hostile attitude! When the others called him on this, he retreated into a silence full of reticence, but eventually agreed in principle to the general idea of settlement. After more supplications and hesitations, Franky ended up insinuating that he would join the legion of men and women convoked by Adam Buenosayres. Nevertheless, given that he was not a reckless lyrical type, but a man of action with his feet firmly on the ground, Franky Amundsen imposed a condition without which he reckoned they wouldn’t get anywhere.