Roberto Arlt - The Mad Toy

His mouth twisted in a smile.

‘I… I’ve made some changes.’

‘So things are going well for you… you’ve moved on a lot… But I haven’t had your luck, I’m a paperboy… I sell paper.’

‘Oh, you sell paper for any firm in particular?’

‘Yes, a guy called Monti, who lives in Flores.’

‘Do you earn a lot?’

‘Not a lot, no, but enough to live on.’

‘So you’ve changed your way of doing things?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m also working.’

‘So you do work!’

‘Yes, I work, can you guess what I do?’

‘No, I don’t know.’

‘I’m a cop, an investigator.’

‘You… an investigator? You!’

‘Yes, what’s so weird about that?’

‘No, nothing. So, you’re an investigator?’

‘Why does it seem so strange?’

‘No… no reason… you always had your little ways… ever since you were a kid…’

‘ Ranún … but think about it, che , Silvio, you always have to make yourself over again; that’s life, the struggle for life that Darwin talks about…’

‘Oh, you’re smart now! Does it pay the bills?’

‘I know what I’m talking about, che , it’s the sort of thing anarchists say; anyway, so you’ve changed, you’re working, things are going okay for you.’

‘Can’t complain, like the man says. I sell paper.’

‘So you have changed?’

‘That’s what it looks like.’

‘Good. Waiter! Bring me another half… sorry, two more halves, I meant to say, sorry, che. ’

‘And what’s this work like, as an investigator?’

‘Don’t ask me, che , Silvio; professional secrets, you get me? But anyway, now we’re talking about the old days, do you remember Enrique?’

‘Enrique Irzubeta?’

‘Yes.’

‘I only know about him that after we broke up, you remember…?’

‘How couldn’t I remember!’

‘After we broke up I know that Grenuillet managed to get the family evicted and they went to live in Villa del Parque, but I haven’t seen Enrique since.’

‘Right. Enrique went to work in a car factory in Azul. Do you know where he is now?’

‘In Azul, right?’

‘No, he’s not in Azul; he’s in prison.’

‘In prison?’

‘Sure as I’m sitting here, he’s in prison…’

‘What did he do?’

‘Nothing, che, the struggle for life … the struggle for life, it’s a term I picked up from a Spanish baker who liked to make explosives. Do you make explosives? Don’t get all het up; you used to be keen on dynamite…’

Annoyed by his wheedling questions I looked him straight in the eye.

‘Are you going to take me down to the station?’

‘No, man, why? Can’t you take a joke?’

‘It’s like you’re trying to get something out of me.’

‘Wow… you’re a weirdo, you are. Didn’t you change, you said?’

‘Right, anyway, you were telling me about Enrique.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it: between you and me, it was really glorious, an impressive stunt. Anyway, I can’t remember if it was in the Chevrolet dealership or the Buick one that Enrique was working, where he’d been taken into the owner’s confidence… He was always the king of getting under people’s wings. He was working in the office, I don’t know how, but he stole a cheque and filled it in for 5,953 pesos. That’s how things are! The morning he was going to cash it the owner of the dealership gave him 2,100 pesos to pay into the same bank. So this crazy guy puts the money in his pocket, goes to the garage, takes a car, goes calmly up to the bank and hands over the cheque. Now comes the really crazy bit: the bank cashed the cheque.’

‘They cashed it!’

‘That’s right, it’s amazing how good a forger he was. Well, he’d always had a knack for it. Do you remember when he did the Nicaraguan flag?’

‘Yes, he was good even when he was a kid… But carry on.’

‘Anyway, they paid him… But now think how nervous he was: he goes off in the car, two blocks away from the market he goes straight over a crossroads and ploughs right into a sulky-cart… and he was lucky, the shaft of the cart just broke his arm, a little further to the left and he’d have been spiked through the breast. He fainted. They took him to a hospital, and the owner of the dealership heard about the accident and came running. The man asked for Enrique’s clothes, because there’d have to be either the money or a deposit slip in his pockets… imagine how surprised the guy was… Instead of the deposit slip he finds 8,053 pesos. As soon as Enrique showed signs of life, the guy asked him where these thousands of pesos came from, and Enrique didn’t know what to say; then off they go to the bank and everything comes out there.’

‘Wow.’

‘It’s incredible. I read all about it in The Citizen , one of the papers they publish over there.’

‘And now he’s in prison?’

‘In the dark, as he used to say… But guess how long his sentence actually is. He’s a minor, and his family knows people with influence.’

‘It’s strange: I can see Enrique having a great future.’

‘Yes. They didn’t call him The Faker for nothing.’

We fell silent. I remembered Enrique. In my mind I was back there with him, in the shack with the puppets. A sunbeam illuminated his thin, proud, adolescent profile.

In a hoarse voice, Lucio continued:

‘The struggle for life, che , some people change and some fall by the wayside; that’s life… But I’d better be off, my shift’s about to start… If you want to meet up, here’s my address.’ And he gave me a card.

When, after an extended goodbye, I found myself a long way away, alone in the brightly lit streets, I could still hear his hoarse voice ringing in my ears:

‘The struggle for life, che … some people change and some fall by the wayside… That’s life!’

Now I could approach the tradesmen with the air of an expert salesman, and with the certainty that my time of frustration was now over, because I had now ‘made a sale’; I quickly had a modest clientele made up of stallholders from the fair, pharmacists with whom I could talk about picric acid and suchlike, booksellers and two or three grocers, who were the least profitable and most given to haggling.

In order not to waste too much of my time I divided the areas of Caballito, Flores, Vélez Sarsfield and Villa Crespo into zones which I covered systematically once a week.

I got up extremely early and went to the predetermined area with large strides. From those days I remember a huge bright sky over horizons of small whitewashed houses, factories with red walls and, at the edges of the zones, greenery, cypresses and fruit trees round the white domes of the cemetery.

Of those flat suburban streets, miserable and dirty, sunstruck, with rubbish bins at the gates, with fat women, dirty and with their hair uncombed, chatting in doorways and every now and then calling out to their children and their dogs under the arch of the clearest, cleanest sky, I retain a cool, tall and beautiful memory.

My eyes avidly drank in the infinite, ecstatic serenity in that blue space.

Burning flames of hope and illusion wrapped my spirit and the happy inspiration towards honesty that sprouted within me was so great that I was unable to put it into words.

And the more captivated I was by the dome of the heavens, the more vile were the places where I did business. I remember…

Those suburban grocers’ shops, those butchers!

In the darkness a ray of sun lit up the red-black carcasses hanging from hooks and ropes near the tin-topped counters. The floor was covered with sawdust and there was a smell of lard in the air; whole black colonies of flies boiled on pieces of yellow fat, and the impassive butcher would saw at bones or tenderise chops with the back of his knife… and outside… outside was the morning sky, calm and exquisite, dropping from its blueness the infinite sweetness of spring.