Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

The station guard walked past Erdosain a second time. He realised he was arousing the man’s suspicions, so he got up and set off for the Astrologer’s house. It was a moonless night. Streetlamps shone among the leafy branches at the street-corners. The sounds of a piano drifted out from one of the houses, and as he walked on, Erdosain could sense his heart shrivelling still further, oppressed once more by a sense of anguish at this glimpse of happiness behind the walls of houses cooled by the shade, each with its car drawn up outside the garage.

The Astrologer was about to go to bed when he heard footsteps on the gravel path to the house. Since the dog did not bark, he opened the shutter a little way. In the yellow oblong of light that shone out on to the tops of the pomegranate trees he could see Erdosain coming his way, the light shining directly on his face.

“That’s strange!” the Astrologer thought. “I hadn’t noticed until now that the kid wears a straw boater! What can he want?” Then after making sure he had his revolver in his waistband (an instinctive gesture with him) he unlocked the door. Erdosain stepped in.

“I was afraid you were in bed.”

“Come on in.”

Erdosain went into the study. The map of the United States was still there, with black flags stuck in the regions the Ku-Klux-Klan dominated. The Astrologer must have been working on a horoscope because there was a compass box open on the table. A breeze from the garden stirred the papers, and Erdosain waited while the other man put some of them away in the cabinet, then he sat down with his back to the window.

He sat and stared at the Astrologer’s broad, flat face, his twisted nose plunging down from the tumultuous forehead, the cauliflower ears, the barrel chest stuffed inside the faded black jacket, the copper chain dangling across his waistcoat, the steel ring with its purple stone on a gnarled, weather-beaten hand. Without his hat, the Astrologer’s hair was short, thick and curly. He had stretched out his legs and was leaning the full weight of his body on the arms of the chair. His unpolished boots completed the image he gave of a peasant from the mountains, or a gold prospector. “Surely this is what prospectors in Patagonia look like?” Erdosain thought, gazing absent-mindedly at the map of the United States and going over what he had heard the Astrologer say that afternoon as he pointed out the different states to the Thug.

“The Ku-Klux-Klan is powerful in Texas, Ohio, Indianapolis, Oklahoma, Oregon …”

“Well then, my friend … what …?”

“Ah, that’s right! I came to see you …”

“I was just about to go to bed. I’ve been working on a horoscope for some idiot …”

“If I’m disturbing you, I’ll leave.”

“No, stay. Have you been in a fight? What’s the matter?”

“Lots of things. Tell me, if you could … Don’t be taken aback by my question … but if, to get your secret society started, if to raise the 20,000 pesos you need … if to raise the money you had to kill someone, would you do it?”

The Astrologer sat upright in the chair, his body jerked into a right angle by his astonishment … Although the thoughts Erdosain was voicing made him lift his head in surprise, it still seemed to weigh mightily on his shoulders. He rubbed his hands and searched Erdosain’s face.

“Why on earth are you asking me a question like that?”

“I’ve found the guy with the 20,000 pesos. We could kidnap him, and if he refuses to sign the cheque for us, we could torture him.”

The Astrologer frowned deeply. He was even more perplexed as he heard the details of the proposal, and began to twist the ring on his right hand. The purple stone reflected time and again in the bronze watch-chain. Although he had his face down, his eyes peered up at Erdosain’s face from beneath the line of his brows. In this position, his misshapen nose seemed like a buttress overhanging the chin sunk into the black cloth of his bow tie.

“You’ll have to explain it all to me, I haven’t understood a word so far.” He had straightened up again, his face looking as though it could withstand a hail of blows. “It’s simple but brilliant. Tonight, my wife left me to go and live with another man. So he …”

“Who is he …?”

“Barsut, my wife’s cousin … Gregorio Barsut … he came to see me and confessed it was he who betrayed me to the Sugar Company.”

“Ah … so he was the one who betrayed you?”

“Yes, and to top it all …”

“What reason did he have?”

“How should I know! To humiliate me … anyway, he’s pretty crazy. He’s someone who’s out of control. He’s got 20,000 pesos. His father died in an asylum. That’s where he’s going to end up. He inherited the 20,000 from an aunt on his father’s side.”

The Astrologer bowed his head on his hand. He was more lost than ever. The idea intrigued him, but he was not sure he understood. He insisted:

“Tell me everything, bit by bit.”

Erdosain began again from the beginning. He told the story as we already know it. He had lost his earlier nervousness at revealing his proposal to the Astrologer, and spoke slowly and carefully.

By now he was bent right forward on the edge of his seat, elbows on knees, his hands cupping his cheeks as he stared down at the floor. The yellow skin stretched taut across his wide cheekbones made him look like a consumptive. A stream of depravity poured endlessly from his throat, as though he were flatly reciting a lesson cast on his mind like a die. Covering his mouth with his fingers, the Astrologer sat listening to him dumbfounded. He had imagined many things, but not all this.

Erdosain spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully in order not to make any mistake, as he spilled out the list of all his fears, his humiliations, memories, sorrows, all his sleepless nights and bitter quarrels. One of the many things he said was:

“It might seem crazy to you that although I came here to propose we kill someone, I see myself as innocent — but I’m talking about when I was twenty and still very much a kid. Have you any idea what kind of sadness it is that leads a person to spend their nights in some ghastly bar, whiling away the time in futile conversations and drinking cheap rum? Do you know what it’s like to be in a brothel when all of a sudden you find it impossible to control yourself and not break down in tears? You’re staring at me in amazement — perhaps you thought of me as a bit odd, but you had no idea that all the strangeness was born of the anguish I carry deep inside. I’m even amazed at the precision I can describe all this with. Who am I? Where am I headed? I’ve no idea. And yet I sense you are just like me, and that’s why I came here to suggest we kill Barsut. We can use the money to set up the secret group, and that way we’ll rock the foundations of this society.”

The Astrologer butted in:

“Why have you always been like this?”

“That’s what I don’t know. Why do you want to set up your organisation? Why does the Melancholy Thug go on exploiting women and polishing his own boots when he already has a fortune? Why did Ergueta ditch the million-airess and marry a whore? Do you think I put up with the slap Barsut gave me, or what the Captain did, just like that? On the face of it, I am a coward, Ergueta is a madman, the Thug a miser, you a man obsessed. On the face of it, that’s what we are, but deep down inside, somewhere beneath our own awareness and conscious thoughts, there’s another life that’s far more powerful and vaster … so that if we put up with everything it’s because we believe that by hanging on, by doing so we’ll finally get at the truth … I mean, the truth about ourselves.”