Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

They were walking along past garden walls, and in the gentle evening air the pimp’s words left Erdosain gasping with shock. He realised he was brushing up against a life totally different from his own. He asked:

“How did you get started?”

“It was when I was young. I was twenty-three and a maths professor. That’s what I am,” Haffner explained proudly, “a mathematics professor. I was making my living teaching, when one night in a brothel on Rincon I met a young French girl I liked a lot. That was ten years ago. Just around that time I had inherited 5,000 pesos from a relative. I liked Lucienne, and asked her to come and live with me. She had a pimp, a huge brute of a fellow known as the Marsellais, who she saw occasionally. I don’t know whether it was my sweet talk or my looks, but the fact is she fell in love with me, and one stormy night I sneaked her out of the whorehouse. Talk about a drama! First we went to the hills in Cordoba, then to the seaside at Mar del Plata, and when we’d spent the whole 5,000, I told her: ‘Well, that’s the end of the idyll. It’s all over.’ But she said: ‘No, sweetheart, you and I will never part.’”

By now the two men were walking under leafy arches, intertwined branches and apses of greenery.

“And I was jealous. Can you imagine what it’s like to be jealous of a woman who sleeps with everyone? Or how you feel at the first lunch she pays for with money from a sugar daddy? To eat with the wrong fork while the waiter looks at you both, realising what’s going on? Or the pleasure of going out into the street with her on your arm while the cops size you up? Or knowing that this woman, who sleeps with so many men, likes you, and only you? It’s a great feeling, I can tell you, when you’re with a streetwalker. And she’s the one who sees to it that you get another girl to use, she’s the one who brings her home, saying ‘we’re going to be sisters-in-law,’ she’s the one who breaks the new filly in so that she only turns tricks for you — and the more embarrassed and ashamed you are, the greater pleasure she gets from undermining your scruples, from bringing you down to her level, until suddenly … when you least suspect it, you’re up to your neck in filth … and that’s when the game really starts. And you have to take advantage while she’s stuck on you, because one fine day she’ll go crazy and fall for some other guy, and then in the same blind way she followed you, she’ll rush off again to the sacrifice. You might say: why does a woman need a man? But I tell you straight off: no brothel owner will deal with a woman. They always want to do business with her pimp. And the pimp’s the one who gives her peace of mind so that she can get on with her life. The cops don’t bother her. If she’s arrested, he gets her out; if she falls ill, he takes her to a clinic to be looked after; he keeps her out of trouble and does a thousand other unbelievable things just for her. Look, any woman who tries to work on her own in the business ends up either being assaulted, robbed or caught up in some other nasty affair. But a girl who’s protected by a man can work in peace, she’s no problems, nobody tries any funny stuff, everyone respects her. And since — for whatever reasons — she chose the life she’s leading, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t use her money to buy all the happiness she craves.

“Of course, all this is new to you, but you’ll get used to the idea. And if you don’t agree, just explain how one ‘pimp’ can have as many as seven women. When that wop Repollo was in full swing, he had eleven girls working for him. And Julio the Dago had eight. Nearly all the Frenchies have three women. And not only do they all know each other, but they even live together, and compete to see who can give their man the most, because it’s an honour for them to be the favourite of someone who with a single glance can protect them from the toughest raid. And besides, the poor creatures are so crazy that you never know whether to feel sorry for them or to split their heads open with a blackjack.”

Erdosain felt overwhelmed by the other man’s incredible contempt for women. He remembered how once the Astrologer had told him: “the Melancholy Thug is the kind of guy who when he sees a woman, the first thing he thinks is: ‘on the street, this filly would bring in five, ten or twenty pesos’. And nothing else.”

Erdosain began to feel repelled by him. To change the conversation, he said: “OK, but tell me … d’you think the Astrologer’s scheme will work?”

“No.”

“Does he know that?”

“Yes.”

“So why do you go along with him?”

“I only go along with him up to a certain point, and then simply because I’m so bored with everything. Life has no meaning, so why not follow whichever way the wind blows?”

“So life has no meaning for you?”

“Absolutely none. We’re born, we live, we die, but that doesn’t stop the stars spinning round or ants getting on with their work.”

“And you’re really bored?”

“So-so. I’ve planned out my life like an industrialist. Every day I go to bed at midnight and get up at nine in the morning. I do exercises for an hour, take a bath, read the newspapers, have lunch, sleep a siesta. Then at six I drink a cocktail and visit the barber. I dine at eight, then go out to a café, and two years from now when I’ve made 200,000 pesos, I’ll retire from the game and live for the rest of my life on my income.”

“What’s your role in the Astrologer’s secret society meant to be then?”

“If he finds the money, I’ll help him find the girls and set up the brothel.”

“But what d’you really think of the Astrologer deep down?”

“That he’s a lunatic who may or may not succeed.”

“But his ideas …”

“Some of them are confused, others seem clear, but frankly I don’t know what he’s really aiming at. Sometimes it’s like listening to a reactionary, at others he sounds like a Red, and to tell you the truth I don’t think even he knows what he wants.”

“And if he does succeed?”

“Then God only knows what could happen! Oh, by the way, was it you who thought up the idea of cultivating Asiatic cholera bacillae?”

“Yes … it would be a fantastic weapon against an army. Imagine releasing one batch in each army barracks. Thirty or forty men could destroy the army at a stroke and pave the way for the proletarian masses to make the revolution …”

“The Astrologer thinks very highly of you. He’s always talked of you as someone who’s going to go a long way.”

Erdosain grinned with pleasure.

“Yes, we have to think of some way to destroy this society. But returning to what we were saying before: what I can’t grasp is your position with regard to the rest of us …”

Haffner turned quickly towards Erdosain, looked him up and down as though surprised at his manner of speaking, then said with a mocking grin:

“I’m not in any position, as you call it. You have to understand that helping the Astrologer is no skin off my nose. Beyond that, to me all his theories are so much hot air. He’s simply a friend who’s going to set up a business that’s legally accepted. That’s all. It’s the same to me whether he puts the money he makes from that business into a secret society or into a convent. So as you can see, any part I play in the famous society will be a completely disinterested one.”

“But does it seem logical to you to base a revolutionary society on the exploitation of women through vice?”

The Thug curled his lip. Then, shooting Erdosain a sideways glance, he replied:

“You’re talking nonsense. Our present-day society is based on the exploitation of men, women and children. If you want to see what capitalist exploitation is really like, go take a look at the steelworks in Avellaneda, the meat-packing plants, the glassworks, or the match or tobacco factories.” He snickered unpleasantly as he said this. “Those of us who run girls have one or two of them; but industrialists control a whole mass of human beings. What would be the best name for them? And who is more heartless, a brothel owner or the shareholders of a large company? To look no further, didn’t they expect you to be honest on a wage of 100 pesos while you were carting around 10,000 in your wallet?”