Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

Erdosain could feel rage twisting his mouth in curses. He would have insulted her, but the thought that the Captain could easily thrash him kept him in check. He simply said:

“You’ve always been tired. You were tired at your parents’ house … and here … even in the mountains … d’you remember?”

Nonplussed, Elsa merely nodded.

“Tired … what have you got to be tired about? … All women seem to be tired … I’ve no idea why, but they’re tired … What about you, Captain, aren’t you tired too?”

The interloper looked him up and down.

“What exactly do you mean by tiredness?”

“Boredom, anguish … have you noticed we seem to be in the times of tribulation the Bible speaks of? That’s what a friend of mine who’s married a cripple calls it. The cripple is the harlot of the Gospels …”

“I’ve never given it any thought.”

“I have, though. You may think it’s odd for me to talk of suffering in these circumstances … but that’s the way things are … men are so sad they need to be humiliated by someone.”

“I can’t see that.”

“Of course, with what you earn … What do you earn, by the way? Five hundred?”

“Something like that.”

“Of course, earning that much it’s logical …”

“What’s logical?”

“That you don’t feel trapped.”

The Captain’s hard eyes settled on Erdosain.

“Don’t listen to him, Germán,” Elsa interrupted. “Remo is always going on about anguish like that.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes … whereas she believes in being happy, the kind of ‘eternal happiness’ she would feel if she could spend the whole time enjoying herself …”

“I hate being unhappy.”

“Of course, because you don’t believe in unhappiness … the dreadful unhappiness that’s inside us, deep down … the unhappiness of the soul which eats at our bones like syphilis.” They fell silent. Visibly bored, the Captain was examining his carefully polished nails.

Elsa stared through her veil at the gaunt face of a husband she had once loved so deeply, while Erdosain himself was trying to puzzle out why there was such a huge void inside him, a void that engulfed his consciousness, leaving him incapable of finding the words to howl out the eternal suffering he felt.

All at once the Captain looked up.

“How do you intend to make your metal flowers?”

“It’s easy … you take a rose, for example, and plunge it into a silver nitrate solution dissolved in alcohol. Then you expose the flower to light, which transforms the nitrate to a metal, so that the rose is now covered with a thin film of silver which acts as a conductor. Then you apply the ordinary galvano-plastic method of copperplating to it … and there you have it, the flower is now a copper rose. The process could be applied in lots of ways.”

“It’s an original idea.”

“Didn’t I tell you, Germán, that Remo is talented?”

“I can see that.”

“Yes, I may be talented, but what I lack is life … enthusiasm … some kind of overwhelming dream … a great illusion that would drive me on to accomplish it … anyway, to change the subject, do you two hope to be happy?”

“Yes.”

They fell silent again. Their three faces were like wax masks in the yellow light from the bulb. Erdosain realised that in a few short minutes everything would be over. Gnawing at his despair, he asked the Captain:

“Why did you come here?”

The other man hesitated, then said:

“I wanted to meet you.”

“Did you think it would be fun?”

The Captain flushed. “No … I swear to you, I didn’t.”

“What then?”

“I was curious. Your wife has told me a lot about you over the past few weeks. Besides, I never thought I’d be in a situation like this … when it comes down to it, I’ve no idea why I came.”

“You see? There are things we can’t explain. I for example have been trying to explain to myself why I don’t shoot you dead since I’ve got a revolver here in my pocket.”

Elsa looked up at Erdosain, who was standing at the head of the table … The Captain asked:

“What’s holding you back?”

“The truth is, I don’t know … or perhaps … yes, I’m sure this is the reason. I think each of us has a line of fate in their heart. It’s like being able to divine things thanks to some mysterious instinct. I feel everything that’s happening to me now is already marked on that line of fate … as if I had seen it all before … but I don’t know where …”

“What’s that?”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s as if you’re not the one who’s caused this … no … like I say, I had a strange feeling it was bound to happen.” “I don’t understand you.” “But I understand myself. It’s like this. All of a sudden you get the feeling that certain things are destined to happen in your life … so that it can change and renew itself.”

“And you …?”

“So you think your life will …?”

Ignoring the question, Erdosain interrupted the Captain:

“What I mean is, none of this surprises me. If you told me to go and buy you a pack of cigarettes — by the way, do you have one?”

“Help yourself … what then?”

“I don’t know. My life has been pretty chaotic lately … I’ve been paralysed by this feeling of anguish. And you can see how calmly I’m talking to you.”

“Yes, Remo was always expecting something extraordinary to happen.”

“So were you.”

“What — you too, Elsa?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s wrong, isn’t he, Elsa?”

“D’you think so?”

“Tell the truth, you’re also looking for something extraordinary to take you out of all this, aren’t you?” “I don’t know.” “You see, Captain? That’s how our life together always was. The two of us sitting in silence at this table here …”

“Be quiet!”

“What for? We’d be sitting here, and we’d understand without saying a word that we were two people with no hope, linked by an unequal love. And when we went to bed …”

“Remo!”

“Señor Erdosain!”

“Don’t pretend to be prudish … don’t you two go to bed together?”

“If you talk like that, there’s nothing more to say.”

“OK, so then afterwards we’d both feel the same: is that all there is to the pleasures of life and love? … and again, without saying a word, we’d realise we both felt the same … but, to change the subject, are you thinking of staying here in the city?”

“We’ll be going to Spain for a while.” His words triggered an icy vision of a journey in Erdosain’s mind. He could see Elsa leaning on a handrail beneath a row of glassy portholes, gazing at the blue line of the horizon. The sun glinted off the yellow foremasts and the black winch arms. It was late afternoon, but the two of them stood at the white rails in the lee of the cabins, their minds intent on distant climes. The iodine wind ruffled the waves as Elsa stared down at her shadow flickering on the shifting lattices of the water.

From time to time she turned her pallid face to her companion, and it seemed they both could hear a voice of reproach rising from the depths of the ocean.

And Erdosain imagined the voice was saying: “What have you done to the poor boy?” (“Because even at my age, I was like a boy” — Remo told me later on — “D’you see, a man who lets his wife be stolen from under his nose … he must be pitiful … he’s like a little boy, d’you see?”)

Erdosain jerked out of his hallucination. His next question rose from deep inside him, against his will.

“Will you write?”

“What for?”

“Yes, of course, what for?” Erdosain repeated, closing his eyes. Now more than ever he felt he was at the bottom of a pit deeper than anyone could imagine.