Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

“Are you sure nothing is wrong?”

Erdosain picked up his hat. He felt a deep disgust at having to say all these useless things. Everything was settled anyway. So what was the point of talking? Yet he made one last effort, and said:

“Believe me … I like you all a lot … just as much as before … don’t worry … I’m not angry … I’ve got lots more ideas … we can set up a dog’s hair salon and sell pets dyed green, blue, yellow and purple … as you can see, I’m not short of ideas … you’ll get out of this horrible misery one day … I’ll make sure of that … as you can see, I have more than enough ideas.”

Luciana looked at him with pity in her eyes. She said:

“I’ll come with you.”

The two of them went out to the street.

The fog blocked off the road beyond sad patches of light around the oil streetlamps. Suddenly, Luciana grasped Erdosain’s arm and whispered to him:

“I care for you so much, I really do.”

Erdosain shot her an ironic glance. All his anguish had turned to cruelty. He said: “I know.” She went on: “I love you so much that just to please you I’ve studied how a blast furnace and a Bessemer converter work. D’you want me to explain what the joists are for, or how the cooling process is carried out?”

Erdosain stared at her coldly. He was thinking: “There’s something wrong with this woman.”

She went on:

“I always think of you. D’you want me to explain how to analyse different types of steel, or how to smelt copper? Or the gold-washing process; or what muffles are in furnaces?”

Erdosain gritted his teeth. He stumbled along the street thinking only that man’s existence is absurd, and an inexplicable anger rose in him again, directed against this sweet girl who was clutching his arm and saying:

“D’you remember that time you told me your ideal was to be in charge of a blast furnace? The thought drove me crazy. Why don’t you say anything? So I began to study metallurgy. Shall I tell you the difference between an irregular carbon distribution and a molecularly perfect one? Why don’t you say anything, dear?”

A train rushed by in the distance, the cotton wool of the fog turned to pitch blackness a few feet from the streetlamps, and Erdosain would have liked to speak, to tell Luciana of all his misfortunes, but still his obscure, angry resentment kept him tense and silent at her side, as she went on:

“What’s the matter? Are you angry with us? But it’s you we’ll have to thank for our fortune.” Erdosain looked her up and down. He grasped her arm roughly and growled:

“I’m not interested in you.” Then he turned on his heel, and before she had time to react, strode off quickly into the fog.

He knew he had gratuitously insulted her, but this only gave him such a cruel sense of satisfaction that he muttered under his breath:

“I hope they all croak and leave me in peace.”

At two the next morning, Erdosain was still struggling through walls of wind in the downtown streets, searching for a brothel.

A dull buzzing rang in his ears, but still a frantic instinct drove him on through the shadows that the tall house-fronts cast on the pavement. He was filled with an overpowering sadness. He wandered on aimlessly.

Like a sleepwalker he went on, staring glassy-eyed at the nickel arrows of the badges on policemen’s helmets as they glinted in street-corner lights, the scrolls of brightness from the neon lamps … an extraordinary impulse kept him striding on. He had come all the way from the Plaza de Mayo, and now was heading up Cangallo past the Plaza Once.

He was filled with a dreadful sadness. His mind was stuck endlessly on the same point. He said over and over to himself:

“It’s useless. I’m a murderer.” Yet whenever he glimpsed the red or yellow light over the porch of a brothel, he stopped, hesitated for a moment, bathed in the coloured mist, then said to himself: “It must be another one,” and went on his way again.

A car passed silently by him and disappeared at speed. Erdosain thought of the happiness he would never enjoy, of his lost youth; and his shadow first stretched out across the pavement, then grew shorter, disappeared under his footsteps, and reappeared dancing at his back or flickering across a shiny sewer grating … but his anguish was getting heavier by the minute, like a tidal wave sapping the strength from his limbs. In spite of this, Erdosain imagined that by a stroke of providence he had finally found the brothel he was searching for.

The madam opened the door to the bedroom, and he flung himself down fully dressed on the bed. In one corner water was boiling on a small paraffin burner … all of a sudden the half-naked girl came in … and stopping short in an astonishment that only the two of them understood, the prostitute exclaimed:

“Ah, so it’s you … it’s you … you came at last!”

And Erdosain replied:

“Yes, it’s me. If you only knew how I’ve searched for you!”

But since it was impossible for this to happen, Erdosain’s sorrow bounced back like a lead ball off a rubber wall. And he also knew that as the days went by his wish to have an unknown whore take pity on him would become as useless as that lead ball for piercing a hole in the armour of life. He said to himself once more:

“Ah, so it’s you … it’s you … you came at last, my sad love! …” but it was all pointless, he would never find that woman; and so once more a fierce energy born of desperation filled his muscles, spread through his seventy kilos, gave him a fresh impetus to plunge on through the shadows, while within the block of his chest, an immense sadness tore his heartbeats to shreds.

To his surprise he found himself outside the front door of his rooming-house. He decided to go in. His heart was pounding wildly.

He crossed the corridor to his room on tiptoe, and opened the door carefully. He felt his way over to the corner where the sofa was, and slowly curled up on it, trying hard not to make any noise. Later on, he could not explain why he had done this. Then he stretched out on the sofa and lay with his hands cupped behind his head. It was even darker in his soul than in the darkness around him, which would turn into a wall-papered box if he lit the lamp. He tried to think of something outside himself, but it was impossible. This created a childish fear in him; he strained his ears, listening for some sound, but in vain, so he closed his eyes. His heart was pounding loudly, pushing the mass of blood round his body; the hairs on his back stood on end as if cold water was pouring down it. With his eyelids clamped shut and his body rigid, he waited for something to happen. Then he realised that if he stayed like that he would cry out with fear, so he drew up his feet until he was sitting cross-legged like a buddha, and sat in the darkness. He felt torn to pieces, but could not call out to anyone, or even cry. But he could not stay squatting like that all night.

He lit a cigarette and was frozen with shock.

The Cripple was standing at the edge of the screen, staring at him with her poisonous cold gaze. Her hair hung down to the tips of her ears in two smooth bands, and her lips were pursed. She seemed anxious to help him, but Erdosain was frightened. At last he mumbled:

“You!”

The match was burning his fingers … then an impulse stronger than his shyness drove him to get up. He went over to her in the darkness and said:

“You? Why weren’t you asleep?”

He sensed she was stretching out her arm, then felt her fingers cupping his chin. Hipólita said gravely: “And why can’t you sleep?”

“You’re stroking me?”

“Why can’t you sleep?”

“You’re touching me? How cold your hand is! Why is it so cold?”