Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

“Well, señor Erdosain,” the Captain said, standing up, “we’ll be going now.”

“Ah, you’re leaving … you’re leaving already?” Elsa held out a gloved hand.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes … I’m going … you must see that …”

“Yes … I see.”

“It was impossible, Remo.”

“Yes, of course, impossible … of course …”

The Captain circled the table and picked up Elsa’s suitcase, the very same one she had brought here on her wedding day. “Goodbye, señor Erdosain.”

“At your service, Captain … but just one thing … you’re leaving … you, Elsa, you’re leaving me?”

“Yes, we’re going.”

“If you don’t mind, I must sit down. Give me a moment, Captain, just a moment.” The interloper bit back an impatient retort. He felt a brutal urge to bark at the husband: “Stand to attention, you idiot!” but restrained himself for Elsa’s sake.

Suddenly Erdosain rose from the chair. He walked slowly over to a corner of the room. Then he whirled round to face the Captain and said very clearly, in a voice which betrayed his repressed desire to keep from screaming:

“Have you any idea why I don’t shoot you down like a dog?”

The two of them stared at each other in alarm.

“It’s because I can’t do it in cold blood.”

By now Erdosain was pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back. They watched him and waited.

Finally the husband, with a faint lopsided grin, went on in the same soft voice as before, trailing off as if forcing himself not to burst into tears: “Yes, I was too cold … I am too cold.”

He gazed around him unseeing, but with the same strange, hallucinated smile on his lips. “Listen to me … you might not understand any of this, but I’ve found the explanation.”

His eyes glittered fiercely, and his voice was hoarse from the effort of getting the words out. “You see … I’ve been so abused in my life … so damaged.”

He fell silent, hunched in a corner of the room. On his face he still had the strange smile of a man living a perilous dream. In a fit of annoyance, Elsa was chewing the tip of her handkerchief. The Captain was standing on guard.

Suddenly, Erdosain took the revolver from his pocket and flung it into the far corner. The Browning sent flakes of whitewash flying from the wall, then crashed to the floor.

“Useless piece of rubbish!” he muttered. Then, with one hand in his jacket pocket and pressing his forehead against the wall, he went on slowly: “Yes … I’ve been so abused … humiliated. Believe me, Captain. Don’t be in such a rush to leave. I’ll tell you the story. It was my father who began the twisted task of humiliating me. When I was ten and had done something wrong, he would say to me: ‘tomorrow I’m going to thrash you’. That’s what he always said: ‘tomorrow’. What d’you think of that? Tomorrow … so that night I would sleep awfully, like a sick dog, waking at midnight and staring fearfully at the window to see if it was already day, but when I saw the moon clipping the transom I would force my eyes shut, and tell myself: ‘there’s a long time to go yet.’ Then when the cocks started crowing, I would wake up again. The moon had disappeared, but the panes let in a blue glow, so I would pull the covers over my head so as not to see it, even though I knew it was there … even though I knew no force on earth could get rid of it. Then after I had finally managed to get back to sleep, I would feel a hand on the pillow shaking me. It was my father, who would growl: ‘Come on … it’s time.’ And while I slowly got dressed, I could hear him placing the chair out in the yard. By the time I got there, he would be standing stiffly behind it, like a soldier. ‘Get a move on,’ he shouted at me again, and like a zombie I’d head straight for him; I wanted to say something, but his ferocious glare made it impossible. He would push me down on to my knees until my chest was flat against the seat of the chair, with my head caught between his knees. Then he began to whip me savagely. As soon as he let me go, I’d run to my room in tears. A tremendous sense of shame drove my soul down into the darkness. Because that darkness exists, whether you believe in it or not.”

Elsa was staring at her husband in amazement. The Captain stood with his arms folded, aloof. Erdosain was still smiling inanely. He went on:

“I knew that most of the kids at school did not get beaten by their fathers. Whenever they mentioned their homes I found myself paralysed by such a dreadful anxiety that if we were in class and the teacher asked me a question, I would stare at him so stupidly, without the faintest idea of what he had said, that one day he bawled at me: ‘What’s the matter with you, Erdosain? Are you an idiot or something?’ The whole class burst out laughing, and from that day on they all called me ‘Erdosain the idiot’. So, still further crushed, still more abused, I kept silent for fear of provoking another beating from my father, and simply smiled at all those who were insulting me … a feeble smile. Can you imagine, Captain? You’re being insulted, and you respond with a feeble smile, as if they were doing you a favour.”

The intruder frowned. “Later on … if you’ll excuse me, Captain … later on I was often called ‘the idiot’. Whenever that happened, I could suddenly feel inside me that my soul was shrivelling up, and the feeling that my own soul was slinking away to hide within my flesh destroyed any courage I might have left. I felt I was sinking further and further, but while I searched in the eyes of the person insulting me, instead of knocking him down with a blow, I was thinking: ‘does this person realise just how much he is humiliating me?’ At that, I would crawl away, because I understood that these people were only completing something my father had begun.”

“So now,” the Captain interjected, “it’s me who’s pushing you down?”

“No, it’s not you. Of course by now I’ve suffered so much that any courage I have left is hidden away deep inside me. I look at myself and ask: ‘Just when will my courage burst out?’ That’s what I’m waiting for. One day something monstrous will explode in me, and I’ll be a different man. And then, if you’re still alive, I’ll come in search of you, and I’ll spit in your face.”

The interloper measured him calmly.

“But it won’t be from hatred, simply to test out my courage, which will seem like a brand-new creation to me … And now you may go.”

The interloper hesitated a moment. Erdosain was staring at him with huge wild eyes. The Captain picked up the suitcase and left the room.

Elsa paused nervously in front of her husband.

“Well, I’m going, Remo … it had to end this way.”

“But … you … you …?”

“What would you have me do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then? Don’t get upset, please. I’ve left you your clean clothes. You need to change your collar. You always embarrass me that way.”

“But you, Elsa … you? What about our plans?”

“Illusions, Remo … splendid mirages.”

“Yes, splendid mirages … but where did you learn such a fine phrase? Splendid mirages.”

“I don’t know.”

“So our life together is finished for ever?”

“What do you expect? And yet at the start, I was kind to you. It was only later I began to hate you … but why weren’t you the same?”

“Ah yes … the same … the same.”

Suffering weighed down on him like a day of great heat in the tropics. His eyelids felt heavy. All he wanted to do was sleep. The meaning of words sank into his brain as slowly as a stone thrown into a thick swamp. And when the word reached the bottom of his soul, obscure powers stirred up his anguish even more. For a moment, quivering green strands of suffering floated deep inside his chest. Elsa went on, her voice softened by inner resignation: