Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen

The red tiles angled down so that the house eaves sheltered the attic skylights and small windows; through the dainty foliage of chestnut trees, above pomegranate trees starred with their scarlet asterisks, a zinc weathervane swung its twisted tail at the mercy of the winds. The subtleties of the garden, laid out like a grove, unfolded all around Erdosain. In the still evening air, with the sun lending a mother-of-pearl sheen to everything, the rose bushes gave off such a strong and penetrating scent that it seemed the whole garden was tinged with a red shimmer as cool as a mountain stream.

Erdosain thought:

“Even if I had a silver boat with golden sails and ivory oars and the ocean shone with seven colours, and a millionairess was blowing me kisses from the moon, I would still be as sad as I am now … But what am I saying? I could live better here than in the city. Here at least I could have a laboratory.”

A leaky tap dripped into a barrel. A dog lay dozing at the front of a summerhouse — and when Erdosain stopped to call out from the foot of the steps, the giant figure of the Astrologer soon appeared in the doorway, dressed in a yellow smock and with his hat tilted forward over his brow so that his broad flat face was in shadow. A few stray curls hung down the sides of his face, and his nose, broken in the middle, was squashed to the left in an extraordinary fashion. A pair of round, darting black eyes shone from beneath bushy eyebrows, and this, together with the harsh lines scouring his rough cheeks, made it look as if the Astrologer’s face was sculpted in lead. How heavy that head must have been!

“Oh, it’s you, is it? Come in. You can meet the Melancholy Thug.”

They crossed a dark and dank hallway and went into a study decorated with a faded green flowered wallpaper.

Cobwebs dangling from the high ceiling, and the studded grille covering the narrow window gave the room a frankly sinister look. In one corner, the metalwork of an old-fashioned wardrobe refracted the bluish atmosphere into dark and light shadows. A man dressed in grey was sitting in a threadbare green velvet armchair. A shock of dark hair hung down his forehead; he was wearing tan spats. As he approached this stranger, the Astrologer’s smock billowed out.

“Erdosain, let me introduce you to Arturo Haffner.”

On another occasion, the swindler would have enjoyed a long talk with the man whom in private the Astrologer called The Melancholy Thug, and who now, after shaking hands with Erdosain, crossed his legs in the armchair and leaned his blue-tinged cheek on three fingers with manicured nails. Erdosain took stock of his almost perfectly round, relaxed face, where only the mocking, evasive gleam deep in his eyes and the habit of raising one eyebrow when listening betrayed that he was a man of action. Between the jacket and the silk shirt the Thug was wearing, Erdosain caught a glimpse of a black revolver butt. Faces don’t give much of a clue to people, really.

Then the Thug turned back to look at a map of the United States of America, which the Astrologer was striding towards, pointer in hand. He stopped in front of it, his yellow arm blocking out the blue Caribbean Sea. He announced:

“In Chicago alone, the Ku-Klux-Klan had 150,000 members … In Missouri, 100,000. It’s said that in Arkansas there are more than 200 ‘caverns’. In Little Rock, the Invisible Empire claims that every single Protestant preacher is a member of the brotherhood. In the state of Texas, it enjoys absolute control in the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Beaumont. In Binghamton, the birthplace of Smith the Great Dragon of the Order, there were 75,000, while in Oklahoma the Klan forced the legislature to pass a bill suspending Governor Walton for attacking them, with the result that until a short while ago the state was practically run by the Klan.”

The Astrologer’s yellow smock looked like a Buddhist monk’s robe.

He went on:

“Do you know they burnt a lot of people alive?”

“Yes,” the Thug said, “I read the cables.”

Erdosain considered the Melancholy Thug again. The Astrologer had given him the nickname because once many years earlier the pimp had tried to kill himself. It remained a mysterious episode. From one day to the next, Haffner, who had been living off prostitutes for a long while, suddenly fired a shot into his chest, close to the heart. His life was saved only due to the fact that this organ contracted at the precise moment the bullet whizzed by. After that, naturally enough, he went on with his life as before, perhaps enjoying an even greater reputation in the eyes of his rapacious comrades, none of whom could explain his strange gesture. The Astrologer went on:

“The Ku-Klux-Klan collected millions …”

The Thug stirred and protested:

“Yes, and the Dragon … some dragon he is! And the Dragon is being tried for embezzlement …” The Astrologer pretended he had not heard: “What is to prevent there being a secret society as powerful as the Klan here in Argentina? I’m telling you honestly — I don’t know if our society would be bolshevik or fascist. Sometimes I think the best thing would be to concoct such an unholy mixture that not even God could untangle it. I’m being completely frank with you now. For the moment, what I’m aiming for is a huge undefined mass which could accommodate every possible human aspiration. My plan is to target young bolsheviks, students and intelligent proletarians. We will also welcome all those who have some grandiose scheme for reshaping the universe, all those clerks who dream of becoming millionaires, all the failed inventors — don’t take that personally, Erdosain — all those who have lost their job, whatever it might have been, those who are being taken to court and have no idea where to turn …”

Erdosain remembered the mission he had come on, and broke in: “I need to talk to you …”

“Just a moment … I’ll be with you right away,” said the Astrologer, and then he went on: “The strength of our society won’t depend so much on what its members donate as on the earnings from the brothel each cell will run. And when I talk of a secret society, I don’t mean the traditional kind, but a super-modern one, in which each member or associate has a stake and earns a profit — that’s the only way to get them to identify more and more closely with its aims, although these will only really be known to a few. That’s the commercial side of things. The brothels will guarantee enough income to support the growing number of ventures the society undertakes. We’ll set up a revolutionary training camp in the mountains. The new recruits will undergo instruction in anarchist tactics, revolutionary propaganda, military engineering, industrial relations, so that the day they leave the colony they can set up a branch of the society anywhere … D’you follow me? The secret society will have its own academy, the Academy for Revolutionaries.”

The clock on the wall struck five. Erdosain felt he had no time to lose, and blurted out: “I’m sorry to interrupt you. I’ve come on important business. Do you have 600 pesos?”

The Astrologer put down his pointer and folded his arms:

“What’s got into you?”

“If I don’t repay the Sugar Company 600 pesos by tomorrow, I’ll go to gaol.”

Intrigued, the two men stared at Erdosain. He must really be in a bad way to be begging like this. Erdosain went on:

“You have to help me. Over the past few months I’ve stolen 600 pesos. Someone sent an anonymous letter betraying me. If I don’t return the money tomorrow I’ll be arrested.”

“How did you steal the money?”

“Bit by bit …”

The Astrologer stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“But how did you do it?”