Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

“No, I don’t remember.”

“Well, you should. What will the Lord say when he hears that? How will I vouch for your soul to the angel of the new church? He’ll say to me: ‘What has become of my beloved son, my pious Alfon?’ And what will I say to him? That you’re a craven swine. That you have forgotten the times when you led an angelic existence, and that now you spend the whole day in a corner breaking wind like a mule.”

Mortally offended, Bromberg objected:

“I do not break wind.”

“Yes, you do, and noisily too … but that doesn’t matter … the angel of the new church knows your spirit burns with true devotion, and that you are the sworn enemy of the King of Babylon, the Pope of darkness. That is why you have been chosen to be a friend of he who following the Lord’s command will establish the new church on this earth.”

The rain fell softly on the leaves of the fig trees; all the acrid, soft darkness released a damp smell of vegetation into the heaving shadows. Bromberg prophesied gravely:

“And the Pope, the Pope himself will run barefoot into the street in horror, and everyone will flee from him, while along the roads arches will be garlanded with flowers to honour the Holy Lamb as he passes by.”

“That is how it will be,” the Astrologer agreed. “And heaven will open to reveal all the repentant sinners and the golden gates of the new Jerusalem. God’s charity is so boundless, my beloved Alfon, that no man may come into direct contact with it without first falling to the ground, their bones turned to mush.”

“That’s why I want to share my view of the Apocalypse with mankind, then head for the mountains to do penance and pray for them all.”

“That’s right, Alfon, but go to bed now, because I have to think, and it’s time for the winged man to come to whisper in my ear. You have to sleep too, because otherwise you won’t be strong enough to strangle the criminal in the morning …”

“— and the King of Babylon.”

“That’s right.”

The Man Who Saw the Midwife slowly moved away from the steps. The Astrologer went back into the house, climbed a staircase that rose from one side of the hallway, and found himself in a long, narrow room with bare rafters beneath the tiles of the sloping roof.

There were no pictures on the flaking walls. Barsut’s trunks were in one corner, while under a round bull’s eye window stood a red-painted wooden bed. A black bedspread clashed with the white sheets. The Astrologer sat on the edge of the bed deep in thought. His coat fell open, revealing his naked, hairy chest. He stroked his drooping moustache with open fingers, then sat staring with a frown at one of the trunks.

He wanted to project his thought on to something new outside himself that would break up the rhythm of his feelings and help him rediscover the presence of mind he had prided himself on before the plan to murder Barsut had complicated things.

“Twenty thousand pesos” — he thought — “twenty thousand pesos to set up the brothels and our training camp … our camp …”

But he still could not think clearly. Ideas slipped away from him like shadows; in his permanently divided state, his thoughts spooled out, making it impossible to concentrate. Then all of a sudden the Astrologer slapped himself on the forehead and jubilantly went into the adjoining loft and dragged out a loosely fastened old trunk, which gave off a thick cloud of dust.

Unconcerned about getting this all over his coatsleeves, he opened the box. Inside was a jumble of lead soldiers, wooden dolls, a heap of clowns, toy generals, princesses and strange fat monsters with chipped lips and frog’s mouths.

He took out a piece of rope and tied it to two nails across one of the corners of the room. Then he fished several puppets out of the box and threw them on to the bed. He tied a piece of string round the neck of each of them; he was so absorbed in his work he did not even notice that as the rain fell harder and harder, the wind was blowing it in through the half-open window.

He was enjoying himself. He finished tying the strings round the puppets’ necks, then cut them into different lengths, went over to the corner, and hung the dolls from the rope. When he had finished, he stood back to stare at his creation. The five hanged dolls threw hooded, quivering shadows on to the pink wall. The highest was a harlequin who had lost his trousers but still had his black-and-white checked jacket. The next was an idol with chocolate-coloured skin and scarlet lips, whose watermelon head was level with the harlequin’s feet; the third was a clockwork pierrot, with a bronze disc on his stomach and a monkey’s face; the fourth was a blue cardboard sailor; fifth and last came a black puppet which had lost his nose and showed a plaster wound in the white expanse of his stiff cravated neck. The Astrologer stood back to consider his work. His back was to the lamp, and his huge dark shadow rose to the ceiling. He shouted out loud:

“You, harlequin, are Erdosain; you, big fellah, are the Gold Prospector; you, clown, are the Thug; and you, black man, are Alfon. Everyone agreed?”

His speech over, he pulled Barsut’s trunk away from the wall, set it in front of the puppets and sat looking at them. Then a silent dialogue began, with the Astrologer asking the questions and receiving the replies inside him whenever he looked directly at one of the figures.

This helped make his thoughts crystal-clear. He needed to express his ideas in this staccato telegraphic form, without interruption, as if everything about him had to keep up with the emotional turmoil he felt deep inside.

These were his thoughts:

“Important: set up poison gas factories. Get the chemicals. For the cells, not cars, but trucks. Solid tyres. Training camp in mountains, nonsense. Or no. Yes. No. Also, factory on banks of River Parana. Cars with nickel steel armour plating. Poison gases important. Revolution breaks out in Chaco and in mountains. Kill brothel owners. Gang of murderers in aeroplane. Everything possible. Radio-telegraph for each cell. Changeable code and wavelength. Electric current from flow of water. Swedish turbines. Erdosain is right. Life is limitless. Who am I? Lab for bubonic bacillae and contagious typhus. Set up academy comparative studies French and Russian revolutions. Also school revolutionary propaganda. Cinema important element. Note: see film-maker. Get Erdosain to study it. Film-maker devoted to revolutionary propaganda. That’s it.”

The rhythm of his thoughts slowed down. He said to himself:

“How to instil in everyone’s mind the same revolutionary fervour I feel? Yes, yes! What lie or truth to use? How quickly time rushes by! And how sad! Because it’s true; there’s so much sadness in me, they would all be amazed if they knew. And it’s me who has to keep the whole thing going.”

He curled up on the sofa. He was cold. The veins at his temples throbbed.

“Time slipping away. Yes. Yes. And all of them as heavy as sacks of potatoes. Not one who wants to fly. How can I convince those donkeys they have to fly? True life is different; different from anything they have ever dreamt of. The soul like an ocean crashing inside seventy kilos of flesh. That same flesh that wants to fly. Everything within us yearning to reach the clouds, to make castles in the sky a reality … but how to do it? There’s always that ‘how’, and me … me here, suffering for them, loving them as if I had given birth to them, because I do love those men … I love them all. They’re here on this earth for no particular reason, but they could be so different. And yet I love them. I’m sure of it now. I love all humanity. I love them as if they were all attached to my heart by a fine thread. And they suck out my blood, my life, and in spite of it all there’s so much life left in me that I’d like there to be millions more of them so I could love them even more, and offer them my life. Yes, offer it them like a cigarette. Now I understand Christ. How he must have loved humanity! And yet, I am ugly. My huge fat face is ugly. I should be beautiful like a god. But I have a cauliflower ear, and a bony boxer’s nose. But what does that matter? I’m a man and that’s enough. And I need to conquer. That’s all there is to it. I wouldn’t give up a single one of my thoughts for the love of the most beautiful woman.”