Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

Then he would sink into the depths of the black house. The black house! Erdosain had a fearful memory of those days; he felt he had lived in a real hell, the ghastly image of which he could not shake off for the rest of his days, even when close to death, hounded by the law. Whenever his thoughts turned back to that time, he became sombrely excited and a dull red gleam shone in his eyes. He was so painfully aroused he would have liked to have leapt right over the stars, to burn himself in a bonfire that would cleanse his present of all that terrible, enduring, inescapable past.

The black house! I can still see it now — the haggard face of that sullen man, first tilting up to stare at the ceiling, then lowering his gaze to meet mine while he added, with a frozen smile: “Go on, tell mankind what the black house is. And tell them I was a murderer. And yet I, a murderer, have loved every kind of beauty, and have fought within myself against all the horrible temptations that welled up hour after hour from deep within me. I have suffered for what I am, and for all the others as well, d’you understand? for all the others as well …”

The kidnapping took place ten days after Elsa had run away. On the fourteenth of August the Astrologer visited Erdosain when he was out, so he came back to find an envelope pushed under his door. It contained a fake notification from the War Ministry giving Captain Belaunde’s supposed address, plus a curious postscript which read as follows:

“I’ll be waiting for you and Barsut every morning between ten and eleven until the twentieth. Knock and come in straightaway. Don’t come alone.”

The Astrologer’s letter gave Erdosain pause for thought. He had completely forgotten Barsut. First he had decided he had to kill him, then that decision had become shrouded in darkness, and the intervening days when he was shut up alone had now come and gone. “I had to kill Barsut.” Perhaps the key to Erdosain’s madness might be found in an explanation of that “had to”. When I asked him about it, he replied: “I had to kill him, otherwise I could not have lived at peace with myself. To kill Barsut was a prerequisite for living, just as breathing fresh air is for others.”

As soon as he received the letter, he headed for Barsut’s place. Barsut lived in a rooming-house full of a fantastic array of people. The owner devoted herself to spiritualism, had a cross-eyed daughter and was implacable about the rent. Any lodger who was so much as twenty-four hours late in paying was sure to come back in the evening and find all his cases and belongings thrown out into the centre of the yard.

It was nightfall when Erdosain arrived. As he came into the room Barsut was in the midst of shaving. Barsut turned pale and paused with the razor on his cheek, then stared Erdosain up and down and exclaimed: “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Anyone else would have been offended,” Erdosain commented to me later. “But I smiled at him ‘in a friendly way’, because I did feel strangely friendly towards him at moments like that, and handed him the notification from the War Ministry. An inexplicable joy made me nervous: I can remember sitting on the edge of his bed for a minute, then leaping up and pacing up and down the room.”

“So she’s in Temperley. And you want us to go and fetch her?”

“Yes, that’s what I want. I want you to go and fetch her.”

Barsut muttered something Erdosain could not understand, then began to rub the muscles on his arms until there was a pink glow to his skin. He picked up the razor to trim the ends of his moustache, turned his head towards Erdosain and said:

“Y’know something? I never thought you’d have the guts to come and visit me.”

Erdosain withstood the striated green gaze — no doubt about it, the man had the face of a tiger — then folded his arms and argued back:

“It’s true, I thought the same, but as you can see, things change …”

“Are you scared to go alone?”

“No, but I’m interested in getting you involved in the affair …” Barsut clenched his teeth. His chin covered in lather, his brow furrowed, he weighed Erdosain up again and eventually said: “Look, I thought I was bad enough, but I reckon that you … you’re worse than I am. But anyway, it’s in God’s hands.”

“Why do you say that: ‘it’s in God’s hands’?”

Barsut stared into the shaving mirror, arms akimbo. The words he then spoke came as no surprise to Erdosain, who listened to them without a flicker of reaction on his face: “Who’s to say that this notification isn’t a fake and you’re not laying a trap to kill me?”

“How strange a man’s soul can be!” Erdosain commented later. “I heard those words, and not a single muscle of my face moved. How had Gregorio guessed at the truth? I’ve no idea. Or did he simply have the same perverse imagination as me?”

Erdosain lit a cigarette and replied no more than: “Do as you like.”

But Barsut, who seemed in a mood to talk, went on: “Why not though? Answer me that: why not? What’s so strange about you wanting to kill me? It’s only logical. I wanted to steal your wife, I informed on you, I beat you up: good God, you’d have to be a saint not to want to kill me.”

“A saint! no, my friend, that I’m not. But I promise you I’m not going to kill you tomorrow. Some day yes, but not tomorrow.”

Barsut burst out laughing.

“You’re really something, Remo, d’you know that? Some day you’ll kill me. How weird can you get? D’you know what really fascinates me? Imagining the look on your face as you do it. Tell me, will you look serious, or will you be laughing?”

The tone of his questions was grave, but not hostile.

“I’ll probably be serious. I don’t know. Probably. Killing someone is no easy matter, after all.”

“And you’re not scared of prison?”

“No, because if I killed you I’d have taken my precautions, and I’d get rid of your body with sulphuric acid.”

“You’re a monster … oh, by the way, my memory is hopeless: did you pay the Sugar Company back?”

“Yes.”

“Who gave you the money?”

“A thug.”

“You don’t have many friends, but they’re loyal all right … so, what time are you coming for me tomorrow?”

“The Captain goes on duty at eight … so after that …”

“Look, I’m still not convinced you’re telling the truth, but if Elsa is there, I’ll give her such a hiding I warn you it’ll take her a good few years to get over it.”

When Erdosain left he headed straight for a telegraph office and sent a cable to the Astrologer.

That night Erdosain could not sleep. He was exhausted. Nor could he concentrate on anything. He tried to explain his state of mind to me in the following terms: 2

“It’s as if the soul were floating half a metre above the body. You feel as if all your muscles have crumbled away, an unending sense of anguish. You close your eyes and it’s as if your body were dissolving into nothingness, then all of a sudden you recall a tiny forgotten detail from somewhere out of the thousands of days you’ve lived. Don’t ever commit a crime — it’s the sadness this memory creates rather than the horror that’s so terrible. You feel you’re cutting your links with society one by one, that you’re plunging into a shadowy world of savagery, that you’ve lost all sense of direction; they say — I said it myself to the Astrologer that it’s due to not being a hardened criminal — but that’s not true. In fact, you want to live like everyone else does, to be decent like everyone else, to have a home, a wife, to look out of your window at the passers-by, and yet there is not a single cell of your body left that isn’t marked with the fatal message contained in those words “I have to kill him”. You can argue I’m simply trying to explain away my hatred. How could I not try to do so? I feel as if I’m living a dream. I even realise I’m talking so much because I need to convince myself I am not dead, not because of what’s happened but because of the state something like this leaves you in. Like skin after a bad burn. It eventually gets better, but have you noticed how it looks? All wrinkled, dry, hard, shiny. That’s how one’s soul becomes. It shines so brightly it can blind you. And its wrinkles horrify you. You know you have a monster inside that can break loose at any moment, and you don’t know which way it will leap.