Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

As he stared at the photograph, Erdosain felt sure he would never feel any desire for Hipólita, and this certainty made him so happy he began to imagine how wonderful it would be to caress this odd creature under her chin, or to hear the sand crunching beneath her sandals. He muttered:

“How beautiful she looks! She must have a sensitive soul!”

How different she was in reality!

By now, the train was passing through Villa Luro. The electric lights shone sadly among the coal heaps and the gasometers shrouded in mist. Great black holes opened in the side of engine roundhouses, and the sight of red and green lights suspended here and there in the distance only made the train whistles sound even more plaintive.

How different the Cripple was in reality! Yet Erdosain rcmembered saying to Ergueta:

“How beautiful she is! … She must have a sensitive soul!”

“Yes, that’s right. Everything about her is delightful. I like adventure. Imagine the faces of all those who doubted my communist credentials! I’ve dropped a money-bags, a virgin, to marry a prostitute. But Hipólita’s soul is what really marks her out. She also loves adventure and noble hearts. Together we can do great things, because the times are at hand …”

Erdosain took up the pharmacist’s phrase:

“So you think the time is at hand? …”

“Yes, dreadful things are bound to happen. Don’t you remember you once told me even President Roosevelt was full of praise for the Bible?”

“Yes, but that was a long time ago.”

Erdosain said that because in fact he could not recall ever having said anything of the sort to Ergueta, who now insisted: “I’ve been reading the Bible a lot in the country …”

“Which doesn’t stop you living as recklessly as ever.”

“That’s not the point,” Ergueta cut in sharply. Irritated, Erdosain stared at him, but the pharmacist merely smiled a childish smile and as the barman placed another mug of beer in front of him, went on:

“Just listen to these mysterious words I found in the Bible: ‘And I shall save the Cripple, I will lead the lost sheep back into the fold and raise their names up to be praised in every country of confusion.’”

At this, an extraordinary silence fell over the bar. All that could be seen were bowed heads or little groups staring at the antics of flies on the sticky grime of the table-tops. One thief was showing a colleague a jewelled ring; their two heads bent together to examine the stones.

A ray of sunlight shone in through the half-open glass door, slicing the smoky blue atmosphere in two like a bar of sulphur.

Ergueta said again: “and I shall save the Cripple, and will lead the lost sheep back” emphasising with a malicious wink the words as he finished, “and raise their names up to be praised in every country of confusion.”

“But Hipólita isn’t a cripple …”

“No, but she is the lost sheep and I am the swindler, the ‘son of perdition’. I’ve gone from brothel to brothel, from anguish to anguish in search of love. I thought I was looking for physical love, but after I read the holy book I saw that what my heart was yearning for was divine love. See? The heart follows its own secret path. You get big ideas, you think you know what you want, and yet you can’t get it … you don’t know why … it’s a mystery … Then one day, out of the blue, the truth appears. And as you know, I’ve lived the life of a ‘son of perdition’; that’s been my life. Before he died coughing up blood in Cosquin, my father wrote me a terrible letter full of recriminations. And he didn’t sign it with his name, but put: ‘Your father, the Cursed one’. What d’you make of that?” At this, Ergueta’s nervous wink lifted both eyebrows so alarmingly that Erdosain asked himself:

“What if he’s mad?”

Then the two of them left the bar. Cars glided down Corrientes gleaming in the sun, a crowd of people passed by on their way to work, and the yellow shop awnings gave all the women’s faces a colourful tinge. They went into the Ambos Mundos café. Groups of shady-looking characters sat round the tables, playing cards or dice. Others were playing billiards. Ergueta took a good look round, then spat and said out loud:

“A load of pimps. They should all be strung up without even bothering to see who they are.”

No-one took the insult personally.

Despite himself, Erdosain found he could not forget some of Ergueta’s earlier words: “I was looking for divine love.” In those days, Ergueta was leading a sensual, frenzied life. He spent all day and night in gambling dens and whorehouses, dancing, getting drunk, picking terrible fights with crooks and pimps. A blind impulse drove him to commit the most appalling deeds.

One night Ergueta was in Flores Square, opposite the Niers cafeteria. He was with Delavene the drunk, who had qualified as a lawyer a month earlier, and lots of other rowdies from the Flores Club. They were jostling and abusing all the passers-by. Spotting a Spanish immigrant coming up to them, Ergueta undid his fly and as the man reached level, sent a stream of urine over him. The Spaniard thought better than to argue, and walked off cursing. So then the pharmacist challenged Delavene, who was always boasting of his exploits:

“OK … I bet you won’t piss on the first person to come by.”

“You’re on.”

Everyone guffawed, because they knew Delavene the Basque was a wild animal. Soon, a man turned the corner in front of them, and Delavene started to urinate. The stranger tried to move out of the way, but the Basque almost fell on top of him, and succeeded in soaking him.

Then something terrible happened.

Without a word, the victim came to a halt. The gang of men was laughing and whistling, when all of a sudden he pulled out a gun, a shot rang out, and Delavene fell to his knees clutching his stomach. The Basque had a slow and horrible death. Before he died, he nobly admitted he had been the one to blame, and afterwards whenever Ergueta got drunk and Delavene’s name was mentioned, he would kneel down and trace a cross with his tongue in the dust.

Erdosain asked him:

“Do you remember the Basque?”

As he rolled a cigarette, the pharmacist gave him a long, hard look, then said:

“Yes, he had a noble heart … he was one in a million. Some day I’m going to pay for him,” but then, switching his thoughts back to a more recent concern, he went on: “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I was wondering if it was right for a sterile, ill, dissolute man like me to marry a virgin …”

“Does Hipólita know?”

“Yes, she knows everything. And besides, if the woman is a virgin, the man should be too. He should be virgin of body and soul. That’s how things will be some day. Can you imagine a handsome, strong and virgin male like that?”

“That’s how it should be,” Erdosain murmured.

The pharmacist glanced at his watch.

“D’you have something to do?”

“Yes, I need to go home to see Hipólita soon.”

“That really surprised me,” Erdosain told the author of this story later on — the Ergueta family had a luxury mansion, and the mentality of the people who crept around like snails in it was completely conservative and conventional. Erdosain asked him:

“What d’you mean? You took her home?”

“You can’t imagine all the tales I had to invent! She didn’t want to go … or rather, she accepted the idea, but insisted on hiding nothing …”

“She didn’t!”

“She did: I only managed to get her to change her mind at the very last moment. I told mamma I had snatched her from her relatives just as they were boarding a ship for Europe … a real cock and bull story!”

“What about your mother?”