Roberto Arlt - The Mad Toy

‘Let’s go to the terrace first,’ Enrique said. ‘The cornices are full of light bulbs.’

We found a door in the corridor that led to the second-floor terrace. We went out. The water was splashing on the tiles on the patio, and next to a tall tarred wall, a bright flash of lightning revealed a little wooden shack, its door half open.

From time to time the sudden clarity of a lightning flash would show us a distant uneven violet sky filled with bell towers and roofs. In its sinister way the tall tarred wall, looking like something out of a prison, cut strips out of the horizon.

We went into the shed. Lucio turned his lantern on again.

There were bags of sawdust piled up in the corners of the little room, and rags, and brushes and new brooms. The centre of the room was occupied by a large wicker basket.

‘What have we here?’ Lucio lifted the lid.

‘Light bulbs.’

‘Let’s have a look.’

We moved, covetous, into the wheel of light that the lantern projected. In the sawdust lay the crystalline spheres of filament light bulbs.

‘They’re not blown?’

‘No, they’d have thrown them away,’ but in order to be sure I examined the setting of the filaments. They were intact.

We were robbing avidly in silence, filling our pockets, and when that didn’t seem enough for us we grabbed a cloth bag which we also filled with bulbs. To stop them clinking, Lucio put sawdust into the gaps.

There was an enormous protuberance in Irzubeta’s trousers round his stomach, he had so many light bulbs hidden there.

‘Look at Enrique, he’s pregnant.’

The remark made us laugh.

We withdrew prudently. The crystal pears tinkled like little bells sounding in the distance.

When we stopped in front of the library, Enrique extended an invitation:

‘We should go in and look for books.’

‘And what are we going to use to open the door?’

‘I saw an iron bar in the shed.’

‘You know what we should do? We’ll pack up the light bulbs and because Lucio’s house is the closest he can take them there.’

The rascal muttered:

‘Shit! I’m not going alone… I don’t want to end up in the clink.’

Behold the sinful outlines of a rascal! His collar button had come undone and his green tie was halfway down his torn shirtfront. Add to this a hat with the brim facing backwards, his face dirty and pale, his cuffs folded down over his gloves, and there you have the impudent image of this cheery masturbator attempting to reinvent himself as a house-breaker.

Enrique, who had finished organising his light bulbs, went off to find the iron bar.

Lucio grumbled:

‘Enrique’s a clever guy, right? Sending me out as bait all by myself.’

‘Don’t make stuff up. It’s only three blocks from here to your house. You can get there and back in five minutes.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘I know what you don’t like… it’s no news that you’re too easily excited.’

‘And what if I do run into a cop?’

‘You beat it; what are your legs for?’

Shaking himself like a wet dog, Enrique came in, holding the iron bar.

‘What now?’

‘Give it to me, you’ll see.’

I wrapped the end of the iron bar in a handkerchief, then stuck it into the crack under the door, and then saw that instead of pushing towards the floor I should push in the other direction.

The door creaked and I stopped.

‘Push a bit harder,’ breathed Enrique.

I pushed harder and the alarming creaking noise sounded again.

‘Let me do it.’

Enrique’s push was so energetic that the simple creaking noise broke into a dry crack.

Enrique stopped and we all froze… stupefied.

‘What a brute!’ Lucio protested.

We could hear our terrified breathing. Lucio involuntarily turned the lantern off and this, added to the initial fear, returned us to our initial watchful state, without daring to move, our hands stretched out and trembling.

Eyes bored into the darkness; they seemed to be listening, gathering all the insignificant sounds that roamed the space. A sharp hyperaesthesia seemed to expand our hearing too, and we stood like statues, our lips parted, waiting.

‘What shall we do?’ Lucio murmured.

The fear broke.

I don’t know what inspiration made me say to Lucio:

‘Take the revolver and go and watch the stairs, down below. We’ll get to work.’

‘And who’ll wrap up the light bulbs?’

‘So now you care about the bulbs? Go on, don’t worry about them.’

And the charming rake disappeared after throwing the revolver into the air and catching it with the air of a cinematic apache.

Enrique cautiously opened the door to the library.

The atmosphere became filled with the smell of old paper, and by the light of the lantern we saw a spider running away over the waxed floor.

Tall bookcases varnished red reached the ceiling, and the conic wheel of light moved over the dark bookcases, showing shelves laden with books.

Majestic glass display cases added a severe solemnity to the sombreness, and past the glass, on spines of books bound in leather, paper and cloth, there shone out arabesque endpapers and gilded catalogue marks.

Irzubeta went up to the glass.

The reflected light illuminated him obliquely and his sunken-cheeked profile was like a bas relief, with his eyes immobile and his black hair harmoniously surrounding his head and losing itself in the hollow of the tendons of his neck.

When he turned his eyes back to me, he said with a smile:

‘You know, there’s some good books here.’

‘Yeah, and easy to sell.’

‘How long have we been here?’

‘About half an hour.’

I sat down at the corner of a desk a few steps away from the door, in the middle of the library, and Enrique imitated me. We were tired. The silence of the dark hall penetrated into our spirits, opening them up to great spaces of memory and uncertainty.

‘Say, why did you break up with Eleonora?’

‘I dunno. Do you remember? She gave me flowers.’

‘And?’

‘And then she wrote me some letters. It was weird. When two people fall in love it’s like they can guess each other’s thoughts. One Sunday afternoon she went out to walk round the block. I don’t know why I did it, but I went out too, only in the opposite direction and when we met each other, without looking at me she held out her arm and handed me a letter. She was wearing a tea-rose dress, and I remember that there were a lot of birds singing in the greenery.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Simple things. To wait… You get it? To wait until we were older.’

‘Modest.’

‘And so serious, Enrique, che ! If you only knew. I was there, leaning against the iron fence. It was getting dark. She stopped talking… sometimes she looked at me in such a way… and I felt like crying… and we didn’t say anything… What could we say?’

‘That’s life,’ Enrique said. ‘Let’s go and look at the books. What about Lucio, eh? Sometimes he really pisses me off. What a goon!’

‘Where are the keys?’

‘They must be in the drawer.’

We rummaged through the desk, and we found them in a box of pens.

A lock squealed and then we started to investigate.

As we took each book out we leafed through it, and Enrique, who knew something about prices, would say, ‘Not worth anything’ or ‘Worth something.’

‘ The Mountains of Gold .’

‘It’s out of print. You’ll get ten pesos for it anywhere.’

‘ The Evolution of Matter by Le Bon. It’s got photographs.’

‘I’ll keep that for myself,’ Enrique said.

‘Rouquette. Organic and Inorganic Chemistry .’