At two o’clock in the morning, the haut monde of the world takes itself home; it would appear, however, that for our haut monde, the haut monde way to do things is diametrically opposed to that of the haut monde of the rest of the monde.
The haut monde in this country does not even consider turning up at a dance until at least two in the morning.
We shall wait, then, until the appointed hour; let us meanwhile go to the Club del Progreso and see what is happening there.
Many men and women; the latter attired mostly—as is their custom—in tacky, vulgar gowns, with no taste, no elegance, nor any affluence; old rags they have thrown on for the occasion, or new rags they have picked up ten to the dozen.
The men, unmasked but disguised nevertheless, go as Don Juan.
J’en ai été et je m’y connais.
Young and old, single and married, ill-favored and good-looking alike, there is not one in a hundred who would not exclaim ab imo pectore contemplating himself in the looking glass:
“Something tells me tonight is the night I am going to make up for lost time.”
Of course the fact of the matter is that there is more chance of seeing a cow jump over the moon than getting lucky at a masquerade.
Not a bloody chance!
Grace? Spirit? Sparks? Mischief?
Not for love or money. Not a bit of it.
Let us agree, for the sake of argument, to set aside the list of idiocies with which a masker makes her debut on approaching you, lines like: “Recognize me, che?” “How’s your mother?” “Where did you leave your wife?” “Shameless!” “You scoundrel!” etc., etc.
Allow me, here, to point out that I have seen this scene played out more than once at the Club.
In the immediate vicinity of the orchestra (and take note, as this is the most strategic point, the part of this human pond in which the most fishing is done), they spend the sleepless night like wallflowers on the prowl, without so much as a slap from the hand of God to say: “Take that, you miserable wretches!” and in exchange for dislocating their jaws, Miguel Cané, Lucio V. López, Manuel Láinez, Roque Sáenz Peña, and others of their lot—rascals and imbeciles one and all—mill about the salons, find themselves chased, assaulted, and fought over by the blessed maskers like flies on a pot of jam.
Tell me with whom thou goest…. No comment.
If we were to place ourselves in the doorway between ballrooms and bothered to cast our eyes about, we would find very curious objects of study lurking. But for this we need two things: time, which I possess, and patience, which I do not.
Yet how could one resist the temptation to cite an instance of vice by peeking under the shirts of a few of the Club’s heartiest members?
The one who, for instance, if he were not one of the most talented, would certainly be the most unbearably conceited ass on the planet.
His impeccably tailored suits have not one wrinkle or stain, he is perfectly attired from head to toe (not forgetting hand), spends far more than necessary in order to be what is known as a “well-dressed man,” and yet he most definitely is not.
For that he needs what cannot be bought at the hatmaker’s or the cobbler’s; that which the French express in three untranslatable words: comme il faut, nature’s supreme gift that cannot be acquired: the higher the ape climbs, the more he shows his tail, and all that.
Admire this gentleman’s jacket in the tailor’s shop-front window and you would exclaim:
“Beautiful, well-cut, fine material!”
But then you see it on the client, and the trousers clash wildly with the jacket, which does not measure up, does not match, is loud, and makes him look like a Sunday market stallholder who sets up shop by the cathedral when one o’clock mass lets out.
This fine sir orders his shirts from Longueville or Charvet and, naturally, he receives shirts such as those only Longueville and Charvet can make.
Do you think, by chance, that the expense does anything for him?
You are wrong; on a hanger in the wardrobe, a doomed white tie or a set of sparkling stone cuff links wait to dress up their owner at three o’clock, when he goes to plead a case, and turn Charvet’s oeuvre into a cheap two-franc rag.
In short, one could say his sense of style was hanging by a thread, but never that he wore his threads with style.
I said he was intelligent and I shall repeat it, a most fostered intelligence, but that does not prevent his having lasted, long feu, which, plainly put, means that the plan backfired.
Dizzied by his scholastic achievements, celebrated, pampered, deified as a student first, he then came as a wee lawyer to think that the republic was the university or the bar; the world was his oyster, and without first testing the waters he dove in, headfirst.
What had to happen, naturally, happened: he hit his head on the bottom with such force that ever since, poor man, he has been a bit soft there.
You see, in order to be a good lawyer, dear doctor, all one needs is a knowledge of the law and a wealth of honor, qualities that to be sure I find in you; but to be a public figure, that is another kettle of fish. That unavoidably requires what Adolfo Alsina had, what Aristóbulo del Valle has: brains, brawn, and brass.*
You did not do a degree in politics because you lack the last two of these attributes, thanks to something even fools have, something quite trivial but also substantial, the garnish for the main course: common sense, in which you are most pitifully lacking.
Otherwise you would never have tried, and certainly not with such bad timing, to be a dandy and a governor and a president and a Don Juan—a role to which you are ill-suited—instead of a serious, circumspect man, distinguished lawyer, or illustrious member of the Supreme Court, which is the prize you would never have taken your eyes from had you understood what you had to gain and realized on which side your bread was buttered.
Don’t get too big for your boots.
You could have been one of America’s leading legal models, but now, because you changed your tune, because you wanted to gallop through the fandangos of life instead of sticking to the slow, reposed rhythm, you dance more in time with the likes of bad blood such as your own; you have cracked your head on the pillar of public opinion and, like a poorly positioned rocket that bounces off Recoba Vieja Arch on Independence Day, you too have now bounced out of court completely.
Beg pardon; let’s move on to a new subject.
Tall, thick-necked and of apoplectic constitution, displaying a risible air of quixotic self-importance in the salons, this next man is one of the association’s most outstanding members.
His strut, which by the way is not in time to the lyre, in spite of an entirely sui generis hip-sway and a certain lilting cadence, has always reminded me of the trot of those heavy, slow-moving, old Chilean nags, the ones who wind up able to do nothing but stand about.
My word! Why does he walk in this fashion? I often asked myself, until one day, seriously intrigued, I asked one of my lady friends, a graduate in rumorology.
“You who are all-knowing,” I said, “do you know why So-and-so walks the way he walks?”
“Oh, it is most amusing,” said she, breathlessly.
“Why? Because So-and-so dates from the days of patent-leather boots with colored morocco-leather legs, when men used their feet to seduce the girls; because So-and-so’s feet have always been huge and most unattractive, because to make them smaller and conceal his bunions, they say he used to bind them before stuffing them into a pair of boots so tight that to this day the poor man has not managed to rid himself of the plethora of calluses, corns, and ingrown toenails that sprouted in his younger days; because he’s over sixty; because there’s not much spring left in his step; and because, in spite of it all, he still throws his weight around like someone who can kick up a storm and, naturally, he tries to stave off the decrepitude of old age, now beginning to creep up on him.
“Voilà. That’s why So-and-so walks the way he walks.”
“You are a fount of knowledge,” I said to my friend, “a darling bijou of a woman.”
We all have our flaws; this man’s flaw lies in considering himself the ideal Club president of all time.
Speaking to an assembly; giving his admirable little address recounting the state of the association, announcing that we shall proceed to the election of members to the steering committee, failing as the judge to settle all scores in the case of ties; settling in at one of the dining-room tables to enjoy tinned oyster soup (the latest word in chic supreme, so he says, to come from culinary chemistry), regardless of the fact that Savarin himself would not have invented such a brew, even in jest; formally making his appearance dressed all in white, with pomp and circumstance, casting looks of sovereign protection hither and yon like a monarch holding court; approaching a high-class woman and strolling through the salons with her so that everyone notices and admires him; making a show of his good taste, of which I can of course, by way of example, offer you the blessed balcony lights, etc., etc.; shining, in a word, showing off, standing out as a man of the world and a gentleman of fine taste, that is where it gets him; that is his weak point.
I would wager—and I would win—that if he were offered the choice between the presidency of the republic and that of the Club, he would not hesitate to choose the latter.
To each his own and meno male, as the Italians say, because when all is said and done, his own does not do anyone any harm.
This man is, on the other hand, dignified, honorable, gentlemanly, if not very open-handed, so to speak; he is one of those perfectly harmless beings one cannot but love and be charmed by.
He roams the salons, back and forth, to-ing and fro-ing like a squirrel, with a masker on either arm and perhaps two more bringing up the rear, the National Theater’s most popular actor.
He is what I shall term, if you allow me, a youthful oldie.
Old because the eighteen hundred and some-odd years our calendar has reached leave over sixty-five from his birth to the present.
Youthful because in spite of the years, nothing about him has aged: not his personality, nor his ideas, nor his habits, nor his heart—always susceptible to feminine charms—nor even his skin, still fresh and taut like that of a maiden in her fifteenth spring.
But what about his beard?
Hold on; I foresaw that objection and victoriously refute it.
It is the blasé man’s instrument of flirtation.
It is just like those plump, dark women who drink vinegar to become pale and look languorous and interesting.
Otherwise, why would he not shave?
Without being handsome—far from it—he is a fortunate man, which can be explained thus: lively, audacious, generous, and discreet, he possesses all the requisite characteristics needed to hit it off with the daughters of Eve.
I said discreet and I shall stick to it, though it is a paradox.
If you have had any contact with him, be it solely at the Club, or on the street, more than once you’ll have formed part of a little chorus from within which our man takes the floor and holds forth about his amorous campaigns, chronicling his gallant affairs.
Buenos Aires during Rosas’s time, Montevideo and Buceo during Oribes’s time; that, he opines, was the greatest stage for his heroic feats.*
It was there that farfallone amoroso spent notte e giorno d’intorno ai giardini, delle belle turbando il reposo, etc.*
It was there that each and every woman, ugly and beautiful, married and single, dropped like flies, felled by the formidable size of his razorsharp sword.
It was there that the mysteries of love were uncovered, as it were.
All this he recounts and repeats to those he wants to hear it; he tells it again and again, savoring the sweet memories of his golden years with indescribable delight.
But I’ll wager you have never caught him with his guard down.
I’ll wager you have never heard him—not even spurred on by his passion for improvisation—say anything rash, make an allusion, give any indication that might cause you to believe that he was talking of this or that lass, or her over there.
He recounts the miracle but never names the saint, and that is precisely what is known in Cervantes’s language as discretion, or I’m a Dutchman.
Yes, but if he is your friend, I hear you cry, tell him not to boast, not to carry on so; before he prattles on he ought see to whom he speaks and, what is more, be a bit cleverer, a bit more sensible about certain things that would be better left unsaid and not broadcast to the four winds accompanied by trumpets, whistles, and horns, else he might find his flesh lashed by the whip of ridicule.
D’accord, mais que voulez-vous?
Not all old dogs can learn new tricks.
An old man with a limp dies lame, and that is all there is to it.
Nevertheless, I am sure you will agree that the whole business makes not the tiniest bit of difference and that these minor shortcomings brought on by vanity are quite excusable, given all the talents that make up a through-and-through gentleman in both style and substance.
After having knocked about willy-nilly, eating life’s bitter bread (or, as Señor Frías used to call it, the nasty, bland roast of exile), this man—notable for his noble sentiments, the steadfast integrity of his character, his extraordinary talent and even more extraordinary ugliness—shipped his belongings off to Buenos Aires.
During the years of blithe memory in which the short- and narrow-sightedness of myopic patriotism kept us trapped between Arroyo del Medio and El Salado,* he played his swaggering role as billboard bagattelliere, efficiently contributing to the indecent, farcical show that came to ruin that thin-flanked political specimen known as the Republic of Argentina.
With sharp and biting pen, this quarrelsome diarist and troublemaker stood fast in the thick of public life, hitting out right and left at all those who sang from the party hymnbook.
A mediocre writer of romantic prose and verse, he would leave his literary offerings—violet-scented like Pinaud soaps—on the steps of Mount Parnassus, which of course never stopped him from devoting his leisure time to forbidden pleasures and trying his luck, from time to time, with Cupid, a specialty for which he came to gain a tremendous reputation.
Did he deserve it? Was he truly a charmed individual whose moves were so smooth that he could, as they say, sink two shots simultaneously?
Personally, I am not convinced by the toot of his horn, having seen him play only once in his life and—God forgive me!—finding the euphonic effects of his flute to be something of a fluke.
But I have on good faith that the public more or less agreed and that the well-known, aforementioned feats of our new Lovelace were nothing more than canards invented by a rogue and repeated by a fool that spread like wildfire and that no one took the least trouble to verify at the source until in the end they were swallowed whole by the public, like a letter by the letter box.
Be that as it may, it so happens that a deer-like fear took hold of the populace, to such a degree that any woman he laid eyeglasses upon was a goner, and even the most outgoing of husbands trembled with fear and found himself gasping for breath when his wife showed disrespect by saying good day to such a dangerous, dapper Dan.
A brilliant, shining star, he appeared on the horizon with the fall of tyranny, crossed the heavens during the segregation of Buenos Aires, and went down with the sun on the Day of the Pavón.*
Today he rests comfortably on his laurels and vegetates within the chrysalis of private life, as he should: we now live in an age in which widows, lost souls, and dimwits, even in good stead, are furtive figures who frighten no one but a fool.
He should be content with his status as a figure worthy of respect, a lawyer who ill knows the law yet defends myriad cases, a subscriber to every daily published in Buenos Aires and a die-hard regular at the Club del Progreso where, since you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, come rain or shine, at eleven o’clock he turns up to play his infallible hand of bezique with some other member of the few remaining, until supper (or rather, until the steak and fried potatoes are served, as they are every night, between one and two in the morning).
The strict uniformity of this life program is broken only thrice per year: May, July, and Carnival.
Et pour preuve: there you have him, reclining to the bitter end on one of the sofas in the portrait room.
Come closer if you like; you shall hear a killing exchange, the scandalous heavy fire of poppycock and sesquipedalia verba, which he fires off at close range, struggling to offend the sensitive sensibilities of the masker lending him an ear.
You might ask what for, if he is all talk, as they say.
Well, he was born in a foreign land, though his parents are citizens of this one.
Having shown himself brilliantly primed since childhood, with an amazingly well-developed … physique, his teachers advised his father to give him over to the arms.
Ció é:
Not to those dangerous, barbaric apparatuses that stab, pierce, and prick, but to those fertile tools of progress whose mouths spew forth only jets of cold water: they made a sapeur pompier of him, and, for the glory of this noble and hazardous profession, from within his bronze helmet he gave it all he could.
While his intrepid companions fought face-to-face against the elements, liable to drop dead from smoke inhalation, be roasted like steaks on a barbecue, or at the very least get crushed by a section of wall collapsing upon their heads, he, undaunted in his turn, remained fixed unshakably in his place of honor and peril: he mounted guard in the barracks.
His lucky star, in the never-ending vicissitudes of existence, cast him to the Argentine beaches the way adverse fate propels a pilgrim or the way a gardener uproots a cork tree; the noble spirit of his life was thus forever sterilized, his career shattered, his grandiose future truncated.
He put away his useless fire hose and took up a hammer instead. The earth does not tremble here, houses are not made of wood, there was no flowing water at that time, and the only pumps folks worried about were those used to bring up water from the well to sate the sheep’s thirst.
So, he held auctions from nine to four and dishonored women twenty-four hours a day.
In case you do not recognize him, his physical description follows:
Tall, with small, pretty feet, really quite bandy-legged, upright posture, skin as soft and pale as vanilla custard, angular face, his hair is light brown, eyes are small, and his expression midway between picaresque and cretinous; considerable nose and, actually, about his mouth I can tell you nothing as it is ever hermetically covered by a pair of enormous moustachios that were fitting for a fireman, but poorly suited to a dandy, and would be absolutely perfect on the face of a florid French fencing master. The French stuck them on for the stage; a bit of glue on the ends and away you go!
At first glance, he is not a handsome man nor anything approaching that, but a certain colorful flair in his ties and a certain musical zamacueca dance step in his stride make him, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the most stylish young man on our social scene.
As an auctioneer, mediocre; just another judicial miser.
As a champion of erotic exploits, oh! You cannot beat him on that count!
There is no person or thing capable, when the flame of sensuality flickers in his flesh, of holding back the white-hot volcano of his venereal appetites.
He has forced padlocks and damsels, scaled balconies, broken windows, jumped from rooftops, hung from cornices, climbed down chimneys, conquered even stones—like in the mind of the poet they have opened themselves to him, entreating him to tread upon them—and now is the time to be bewitched, to smother him in kisses, when he talks of his affairs with that God-given Andalusian wit: how, upon being interrupted, par example, at the crucial moment by some inopportune husband, he managed, crouching between the bed and the curtains to spend many long hours biding his time, waiting for a propitious snore, and another, and another, allowing him to beat a hasty retreat, muffling the sound of his steps so as not to sacrifice his sweetheart.
Oh, if the walls had ears; better yet, if they were phonographs, God help us!
Woe betide you, and me, and nearly every Tom, Dick, and Harry around!
Woe betide our reputations and our names!
Forget Buckingham, forget Don Juan, forget Faublas and Richelieu!
This man is a succès fou!
But, of course! Out of fear, the husbands befriend him.
Continuez si cela vous fait plaisir.
As for me, I am afraid I must leave you. I see that a woman in a black domino is waving at me and, well, noblesse oblige.
“Is it me you are calling?”
“Yes.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Tell me where your friend Juan is.”
“At the dance.”
“Yes, but where at the dance?”
“Here, give me your hand and I’ll show you,” I said, like the nice old candy man, opening a vest pocket.
“You rude man!” my interlocutor hissed between clenched teeth. “I warn you,” she said vehemently, quickly, “that I am not of a mind for jokes. I must speak to your friend and I want you to help me find him.”
“V’appoggiate al braccio mio.”
We to-ed and fro-ed from pillar to post; the three dance halls, the galleries, and even the men’s toilette and the second-floor apartment, which the masker upon my arm searched without so much as a moment’s hesitation or any scruples whatsoever; but alas, it was deserted at the time.
“One of two things: either you are a formidable woman, or you have a very keen interest in finding Juan indeed,” I said to myself, feeling my curiosity pricked.
After wasting three quarters of an hour uselessly wandering about, I finally succeeded in making out the object of our inquiry, chatting merrily with a group of musketeers, his face aflame, eyes shining, wearing an expression of titillation; in short, he looked like a man experiencing something out of the ordinary, indescribable.
“Ecce homo,” I said to my companion, pointing toward the group.
“Oh, I’ve torn my dress!” she cried almost simultaneously, bending down abruptly, as if she had just stepped on her tail.
“Take me to the toilette, quickly.”
“But what about Juan?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll speak to him afterward.”
Ten minutes went by, then twenty, then thirty, and still my masker did not reemerge.
Does this lass think I’m a toy she can play with? I asked myself and, quite piqued at being stood up so, I was within a hair’s breadth of claiming revenge, standing her up in turn, when in one of my to-ings and fro-ings I saw her rush into the aforementioned toilette by the outer-gallery door.
As I had believed her already inside, this unsuspected truc was a just motive for shock and suspicion.
What can this mean? I wondered.
She goes in, asks me to wait for her, and now it turns out that she slips in once more, through the back door, rather than come out.
Am I being taken for a fool, unwittingly playing the joker in some scheming plot? Is something fishy going on here?
And what on earth has Juan to do with all this?
Moments later, she emerged, finally.
“Did I keep you waiting long?”
“Three quarters of an hour, as you well know.”
Poor dear!” she cried. “I beg a thousand pardons and, since you have been so good, sacrifice yourself entirely by now taking me back to your friend.”
“All for the greater glory of God! As you beg rather than command, I shall consent. You appear rather more pleasant now and, judging by the change in your tone of voice and accent, it seems that the root of the ill humor afflicting you earlier must have disappeared.”
Indeed, a remarkable change had come over her manner, air, words… even the harsh grating falsetto voice seemed to me less screeching now.
Approaching my friend, who was still in the throes of animated conversation with the aforementioned group of musketeers, I tapped him on the shoulder and said:
“This masker has been after some Juan fellow for over two hours now.”
My friend turned around, gaped at her, cut short his discourse and, with the gauche air of a man who is up the creek, quickly offered her his arm, and stammered:
“At your service, my little masker.”
Why did my friend’s reaction to my companion’s arrival seem to have the same effect as that of the police arriving unheralded at a den of iniquity?
Having delivered the cloaked bundle to its destination, my deed was done, my role had come to an end; I slipped, therefore, backstage, which is to say I went for a smoke, and damned if I hadn’t forgotten the whole business when, round about five in the morning, Juan stopped before me with a masker on either arm: one black domino and one white one.
The most placid of smiles played upon his lips; he had evidently recovered his habitual sangfroid.
“We are pondering a foolhardy escapade,” he said, “and want you to kick up your heels, too. So let the four of us go and dine at the Café de París.”
“The Café de París? Why not the cafeteria round the way?”
“For the simple reason, my dear fellow, that the cafeteria has no private rooms.”
“Do you mean, then, that you are proposing nothing short of a partie caree?
“With all the cachet de la chose, though I must warn you that these lovely maskers accept on the express condition that they remain absolutely incognito.”
“Bah! Leave it out! I’d rather go home to bed; I’m not in the mood for games.”
“What a gentleman! What finesse! Your friend is a paragon of chivalry!” the white domino said to Juan sarcastically.
Either I’m a loon, I thought, or that is not the first time I’ve heard that voice, and I’ve heard it this very night.
Something akin to a glimmer of cruelty crossed my cerebral regions.
Resolved to put an end to my doubts, weighing up pros and cons, I brusquely changed my mind and exclaimed:
“I love a wildcat who speaks her mind.
“Your candor is seductive, masker.
“The Café de París, did you say? So be it: the Café de París it is!”
And I graciously offered her my arm.
To say that the plan came off as intended, that the events that followed were what the management promised, would be a boldfaced lie.
I ask you, dear readers, to be the judges.
Once in situ I said to myself: let us see what this is all about and who these people are. So in order to determine the lay of the land, while Juan stood beside the table looking over the plats du jour, I made myself comfortable on the couch, grabbed my lady by the waist, sat her upon my lap, put my arms round her neck, and without so much as a by-your-leave, attempted to impart an amorous kiss beneath her ear.
“Well, I never! You shameless man! You swine! What do you take us for, French tarts?” my mysterious maiden barked, jumping up furiously and hurling abuse at me from ten feet away.
“Ché, ché, take it easy,” Juan said to me, intervening in his turn.
“Don’t be so barefaced that they can see you coming.
“Treat them with respect; you don’t want to scare them off.”
What had I done to provoke such outrage?
The most natural thing in the world.
Nothing that was not perfectly correct: I complied with the rigorous rules of etiquette, being the well-educated man that I am.
Enough. Now we know what game to play, and that is what interests me for now, I thought.
If they spook for so little, they must be real rookies.
To anyone with a mildly knowing eye, indeed, they were virtually shouting out that this was the first time they had been beneath a chandelier, in the presence of truffle-stuffed partridge or strawberries with champagne.
Undoubtedly, these were two country girls, clean and prudish, that is to say decent, which does not mean that for all their cleanliness, prudishness, and decency they could meet Father Phlegm’s scruples if they tried.
In any case, with that flop of a prelude and two cagnes forming the cast, the whole farce was sure to go to the devil.
And it did: the whole ordeal was un four, a failure, a fiasco.
The women ate little, drank less, and spoke of a whole host of insubstantial topics without ever unmasking themselves, while poor Juan struggled desperately to be interesting and to amuse me, and I sat there like a fool and cursed the whole damn party.
Voila tout.
The effects of just one bad night, for me, are visually equivalent to balling up a wet linen shirt and leaving it to dry; all the wrinkles and creases become most patently apparent and are accentuated in deep, sinuous furrows that run whimsically from side to side, merrily somersaulting or playfully joining up at my eyes like so many capricious little crow’s feet.
The abominable toll of time! The only refuge, in said case, open to us forty-year-olds is the refreshing coup de fer, and in order to iron out one’s folds there is nothing like sleep.
As it was, I was attempting to rejuvenate myself, which is to say I was sleeping, when I heard the voice and gait of Juan, who had walked in and was making himself at home, opening my window shutters and exclaiming:
“Shameless! It is three o’clock in the afternoon and you’re still in bed!”
“If you can think of nothing more gracious to do,” I grumbled, “than come here and try my patience after a sleepless night, you can go to the devil!
“Stop badgering me and let me sleep…. But do make yourself at home. I’m not setting the dogs on you and, while I settle my account with the pillow, you have there before you, should you so desire, something amusing with which to edify and entertain yourself,” I added, indicating an open book on my night table.
“Paul de Kock, The Cuckold? Ha! Did the devil have nothing better to do?
“Be aware, Señor Sleepyhead, that when I take the trouble to open a book, it is to learn something useful and not to waste my time miserably, reading idiotic, indecent rubbish.”
“Don’t be foolish, my dear Juan; Paul de Kock is a great man, a subtle wit, and a connoisseur of the human heart.
“Beneath the film of frivolity, under the light veneer, the trivial narration, and the vulgar dialogue, there is ever a seal of truth in his productions that betrays a deep thinker.
“His works—superficial and at times even indecent in style, as you say—are always perfectly serious and moral in substance.
“So please refrain from slander and be kind enough to speak more respectfully of such an élite spirit who is one of the first of our times to portray local customs.”
“Who, regardless of his spirit, is naught but an abominable, second-rate artist.
“But let’s forget about Paul de Kock, his cuckold, and every other cuckold on the planet for the time being.
“I did not come here to fight some literary battle tooth and nail, but to have the pleasure of telling you that, frankly, last night you behaved like an utter cretin and that you were had most deplorably by our maskers1 and that, after one more blow like this, your reputation as a clever man will bite the dust.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? Because you did not discover their identities, because you were a slow-witted oaf!”
“Hold on a minute: the one in black2 was your wife.”
“Well, well. Not bad, old man! I’ll give you a bit of credit for that. And the other?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seek and ye shall find.”
“I seek but do not find; I repeat, I don’t know who she was.”
“Cat got your tongue?”
“The chicks can have it too, if you like.”
“Who else could it have been, you miserable creature, but her inseparable bosom buddy, her dearest and only friend.”
“That forty-year-old thing I often see her with in the street?”
“The one and only.”
“And how would you expect me to discover her identity, never having exchanged a single word with her in all my life?”
“What? Have you never seen her at our house?”
“Never. Don’t forget that I abhor strangers and before coming to call on you, as I have oft informed you, I question your doorman as to who is and is not already visiting chez toi.
“Oh, the old spinsters horrify me, that race of skirted harridans, and I shan’t deny that your wife’s inseparable, bosom buddy, as you call her, instinctively strikes me as unpleasant and distasteful, like a kick in the stomach.
“So don’t be shocked by the fact that I never stop in when I know she is visiting.”
“That’s just like you! Unpleasant and distasteful, without knowing a single thing about her.
“A most excellent creature she is, an angel of a woman and, what is more, an exceedingly convenient attaché for me; my factotum, a second me.
“If the little one falls ill?
“She doesn’t move from his bedside; she sits up with him on bad nights and takes all the trouble and puts up with it all.3
“If I go out in the day on business or at night … well, just because?
“She is my representative, staying in like a loyal patriot, or worse, like my wife’s lapdog, keeping her company. She watched her grow up and her affection for her is as maternal in emotion as it is canine in adhesion, and it would, I am certain, keep anyone from touching her, even with a gloved hand.4
“I assure you that on more than one occasion I have been tempted, in payment for her eminent services, not only to declare her heroically distinguished and meritorious, but to give her a necklace bearing the inscription: Cave canem!
“This woman, this saint, nothing less than an angel, is the very being whom you compare to a kick in the stomach.
“I hope you now see how unjust you are …”
“Hush up, will you, in the name of God, hush up! If you carry on I will surely shed a bucket of tears in repentance!”
“Laugh if you like. As for me, I have nothing but sincere esteem and deep appreciation for Señorita Concepción.”5
“Because she looks after madame and the baby, or because she keeps guard while you go off to play hooky?”
“Both.”
“I like your impudence.
“At least you are frank about it.
“So, this is what it has come to, after a year and a half of marriage?
“His excellency allows himself to take this path, but deigns to cover his tracks for appearance sake, like an operetta god?
“You’re out on the town at night but make sure your wife is not home alone in your absence?
“Not bad, sir, not bad; others do worse; they take the middle road and whoever comes along behind them …
“Oh! Dear Juan, what a moral leap we’ve taken, what an immense distance now separates us from that time when your entire life revolved around your wife and your one and only desire was to live with her year-round at Los Tres Médanos.
“Bah! Why should it surprise me?
“It had to happen, of course; all you’re doing is yielding to the unfailing laws of human nature.
“Do you know what Madame de la Sablière replied to one of her relations who flung her fickleness in her face, saying that at least animals only love once a year?
“‘Precisely,’ the good woman exclaimed, ‘because they are animals.’
“And Madame de la Sablière was a very practical woman.
“All good things come to an end, you know. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse …
“Your love for your wife, that fire you thought would never be extinguished, is now flickering low, if it has not been extinguished already.
“Sick of the pure pleasures to be found at home, you search out the impurities of an adventuresome life; bored with partridge you now waste your hunger on cheap birds.
“Take care, poor Juan, take care so as not to fulfill the third part of the saying, don’t be the one to break the fragile cup of your happiness with your own clumsy hand!
“There, you’ve let it out now; the moment has struck, the real issue’s arisen at last!
“That is the problem with methodical men, walking around with their heads in the clouds, bouncing like balls from one wall to the next.
“Utopian fools who, by dint of wanting everything to be black or white, staring at the sun or closing their eyes, end up blind, never realizing the world is lead-gray.
“Man marries or doesn’t, fine; but if he does, he must understand that it is like a shackle or, better yet, like a rawhide horse harness that never splits, even at the cinch.”
“Those are absurd, ridiculous, enormous exaggerations in the most extreme cases.
“It’s fine that man marries and together with his wife traverses the path of life, but really! Up to a certain point!
“Man is like a horse: from time to time he needs to take to the fields, twitch his tail, frolic, and roll around in the mud, if there’s no sand around.”
“If man is like a horse, then of course woman must be like a mare, who switches her tail, frolics, and rolls around as well.
“What would you say if your wife used your logic?”
“Stop right there! Man is man and woman is woman; she dons skirts and he wears the trousers.”
“Oh, how we men, made in the image and likeness of our Lord, mete out justice in this vale of tears!”
“Yes, siree! That’s right! Even from a juridical point of view, even considering all the kind attentions, the respect, the deferences, anything you think a woman might deserve, why damn it! One cannot be eternally hanging on her apron strings like an organ-grinder’s monkey.
“That would be an offense to human dignity.
“Educated men behave in another fashion, they proceed with tact, with a certain delicacy, they know how to respect certain things, how to deprive themselves of certain things; otherwise they are not gentlemen but boors.
“In short, my dear friend, he who loves his woman well should have many—or at least two—as long as he keeps up appearances, of course, which is what society demands and what I shall comply with; unless some inopportune soul surprises me in flagranti delicto and, tapping me from behind, presents my lawful wife, ex abrupto, before me.
“Got it, Fabio?”
“Well, that inopportune soul could hardly have imagined that a married man, a serious, discreet man such as you claim to be, would speak of such things in a ballroom.”
“What’s wrong with that?
“I was among friends and one cannot always control the loose tongue one derives from satisfied self-love, particularly after downing a dozen glasses of champagne.
“Imagine! While you and María6 were looking for me at the Club, I had sneaked off like a fox7 with a ravishing little lady who has been driving me wild and who I’ve had my eye on for over two months now.
“It’s quite a story, an eventful affair, full of spice and delicious adventures that I couldn’t resist the pleasure of recounting.
“So there I was, just getting to the sauciest part of my tale, when the two of you dropped like a bomb and left me utterly dumbfounded.
“You see, it was quite an episode.”
“No, what I see, my dear Juan, is that you stuck your neck out, that your conduct is reproachable, that you neglect the duties that you yourself imposed, that it might land you in some exceedingly hot water, and that you are indubitably heading for trouble.”
“What the hell do you mean, neglect duties?
“Why? Because I enjoy myself? Am I not young? Am I not rich? Where is the harm, then?”
“In your wife, in your son.”
“What have my wife and my son got to do with it?
“My wife, poor thing, is a saint and I love her dearly; leave her in peace.
“And you have no cause to bring my little boy into this; I adore him; I love him to pieces; he has everything he could wish for and always will as long as I am alive.
“So it seems to me that I fulfill my duties as a father honorably and that even the most exacting soul would find no fault in my conduct.”
“Of course; with clothes to wear, a roof to sleep under, and food on the table, you’re already in heaven.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo!”*
“You are becoming tedious and irritating with your preaching ways,” Juan said, getting up.
“I shan’t stand for any more of it, I’m leaving, you’ve driven me away.”
“And what you have driven away from me is sleep, with your stories and your bragging.
“You easily might have carried on somewhere else and chosen another confidant for your roguish behavior, another audience before whom to perform your devil-in-disguise act, another illustrious victim of the formidable solo you’ve so gallantly lavished upon me.”
“Speaking of disguises: Do you want to accompany me to a society masquerade tonight, taking place behind closed doors, in a private home? Just get a mask off one of my amigos and you’ll be right as rain …”
“Deliver me, oh Lord, from such nonsense!
“What I want is to sleep.”
“Well! You try to do your bit for the country, and look! Goodbye, you useless old fool!”
“Goodbye, lady-killer, womanizer, Don Juan.”
“Juan,” I cried a moment later, raising my voice.
“What?”
“Come here; listen, don’t go yet.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know when you are going to marry me off. Have you finally found me a woman, as-tu mon affaire? Or is that no longer your cup of tea? Has your enthusiasm waned?”
“Go to hell!” my friend shouted from the staircase.
Then I milled it over and over, thinking either I’m a fool or this is what’s happened: Juan goes to the dance with his wife and that old bag, damn and blast her.
Juan takes off at an appointed time, to go make mischief, but not before his wife makes off with identical plans.
So the old dame stands watch and, alarmed at seeing neither hide nor hair of Juan and fearful of giving the game away, goes on maneuvers, bumps into me and sets me on the trail, uses me like a butterboy and thereby makes me an unconscious accomplice to this wicked scheming.
It turns out to be a false alarm; the double indignity is consummated in blessed peace and tranquillity, the husband returns to the dance and the immaculate, chaste wife to her husband’s arm.
The proof?
Oh, the proof is quite compelling; if that were not the case, the old woman wouldn’t have changed from her white domino into a black one that matched Juan’s wife’s gown. Nor would she have had me scouring the place like steel wool, in search of her man.
Once we found him, she would not have pretended to ruin her frock in order to slip into the toilette and, certainly, Juan’s wife would not have slipped in through the back door, crouching down like a miner on his way down the pit, in an attempt to pull the wool over my eyes!
Where was she coming from?
Verdict: my friend Juan is a …
I fell asleep.
Taniete.”
“Acher servuss.”
“Ah! Sapristi! Je veux en avoir le coeur net.”*
“Really? You don’t say, man; what’s not to understand? Well, don’t fret if you don’t understand as I wasn’t speaking to you but to another.”
“Yessir.” (Looking around for that other.)
“Come here and listen to me; I don’t want to be obliged, as I normally am, to repeat myself a hundred times.”
“Righty-o.”
“Are you a trustworthy man, Taniete?”
“My papers is in order; they’s papers what prove my honerbilty.
“I got one from the vilge priest what I served for sev’n year as a servant, and sometimes as sexton when the opertunety rose. I got one from the mayor, what the whole of city hall can undorse …”
And then, staring at me, fixedly:
“Sides, you oughtta know already, being as how I’s always here to serve you,” my illustrious Taniete added, with a gesture that conveyed the following notion: You can go and jump in the lake.
“Well, that, particularly the last one, would be an indispensable testimony to your irrefutable integrity.
“But I’m not asking if you’re an upstanding citizen just as I ask not if you are a thief.
“What I want to know is if you feel able to take a hand in a certain delicate matter, to hunt around, to follow a trail, keep your eyes peeled, see, comprehend, in short, to stop being yourself for once in your life and—and this is what matters most—not to talk about the whole matter with a single, solitary soul.
“Are you game?”
“If it’s pol’ticks, I ain’t gettin’ ’volved; no gov’mint intrigues.”
“Why is that?”
“Lord above! ’Cause they might beat the bejesus outta me, like they did another guy I knows from back home what got himself a job as a off’cer of t’law.”
“Oh, isn’t it marvelous! Your fellow countryman also decided to come good! And who, may I ask, asked your friend to plunge into Argentine public affairs, being himself Galician?”
“Zackly! That’s what I said!”
“Alright, don’t get over-excited, keep calm, hey? It’s nothing to do with revolutions, overthrowing the government, or even public disorder.
“The matter, Mr. Don Juan, concerns skirts: women.
“Can I count you in?”
“Ah! Yup, you can count me in, yessir!” Taniete exclaimed, winking at me with a picaresque smile.
“I’m a expert on that; Father Lestemoño trained me good on that. Lord mercy, that sure was one goddamned priest! If he’d a stayed in our town any longer, he’d a stole all the parish girls there was from me!”
“Your priest, I see, was quite cunning; but that is not what concerns me.
“There is a masquerade tonight at the Club del Progreso.”
“I’m sure there is, yessir, I ain’t sayin’ there ain’t.”
“Shut up. Stop interrupting and listen:
“I want you, from midnight onward, to be on the corner of Calle Perú and Calle Victoria, waiting in a tilbury that I shall rent and you shall drive.
“You will wait there until I come talk to you.
“You will probably have to follow a masked woman, who will be either alone or accompanied, on foot or in a carriage, I don’t know.
“At any rate, you follow her, keeping half a block away, more or less, so as not to raise suspicions; don’t lose her from your sights, pay close attention to where she goes, see which door she goes in once she arrives at her destination, wait until she comes back out, and then … well, that’s it; you come home and tomorrow you recount all the details of your foray to me.
“Did you get all that?”
“Yup, I got it, yessir.”
“Good, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut: not a peep out of you.
“Donchu worry; I ain’t gon’ peep.”
At midnight, as master and servant we were in our respective combat positions: I in the Club and Taniete positioned for ambush in his old rust bucket. Just slightly later Juan made his entrance, flanked by his two cronies, who, rather than wearing black and white, were tonight both in brown dominos.
I had not been mistaken; my calculations were quite mathematical.
At 2:30, the witching hour, the ideal time for hanky-panky, one of the brown ladies—slithering like a snake amongst the human grass there present—cleared a path to the gallery and, protected by the general hubbub, the remue-ménage, slipped upstairs and from the stairs out onto the street, though not without being seen by me, since I didn’t let her out of my sight. Quick as a wink, I slipped out after her, keeping close to the wall.
She reached the corner and turned down Calle Perú, southbound.
I then approached Taniete, filled him in, explained, pointed, repeated what I had explained so as to force him onto the trail, and jauntily strolled back to the Club.
Did I say jauntily? I tell a lie; not so jauntily, but rather thus: I felt a slight sting—not without the veritable qualities of a pang—in the furthest recesses of my conscience. It was like one of those wee little sounds that grate on one’s nerves, contort one’s features and one’s nervous system to such a point of excitement that it becomes fury.
If you would like an example, just follow this formula: scrape a sharp penknife down a pane of glass.
The whole matter, frankly, was distressing me appreciably.
I was uneasy, anxious, feverish …
You see, I didn’t have the deck stacked in my favor with respect to the rules of good conduct.
It was not, to be sure, banal curiosity that spurred me on, nay, nor any mean motive that moved me to act, nor any crudely malevolent instinct, no.
My soul drank from a far purer fountain, my behavior was inspired by loftier sentiments.
I saw unfolding before me the intrigue of an indecent farce in which the name, honor, and peace of a beloved friend were at play. Shrugging my shoulders, turning my back, and washing my hands of the whole affair would have been enough to make it impossible for me to look at myself in the mirror.
For heaven’s sake! That is what my grandfather used to say. But I’m not a Jesuit nor do I agree with their principles.
After all, this was a woman we were talking about, one had to supervise her actions, check up on her, follow her footsteps from the shadows, spy on her treacherously; let’s get it out in the open; and the spy (a repulsive vocation if ever there was one) was a man who passed for respectable.
One question still unanswered.
So, how did it go?”
“It went perfeckly.”
“Ho, ho! Let’s see: tell me all about your campaign. What did the masked woman do?”
“The masked woman,” Taniete began, with all the phlegmatic dimwittedness of a Galician, “well, what she done was walk to the market square. Then, once she got there, she got in a cab that a-went down Calle Perú, alla way to the corner of Cochabamba; at Cochabamba it turned and a-went down to Santiago del Estero and then at Santiago del Estero it turned and a-went down to Cangallo and at Cangallo it turned and a-went down to Florida and a-went down Florida to Rivadavia.”
“What? Did she not alight at any point?”
“Yessir, she did alit. She alit right there and a-went back to the party.”
(Idiot!) “And is that all you saw?”
“Well, what did you speck me to see, being as how it was nighttime and all?”
“A fine mess! Yes, indeed.
“Do you mean to say that they have taken us for a ride, so to speak, that we are still completely in the dark, as blissfully ignorant as we were before?
“Well, a hearty congratulations, Señor Don Juan; now be off with you; you are excused.”
“Have patience,” I told myself abruptly, stepping back and rolling my eyes heavenward. Two out of three. You’ve got a swain, lady, and I aim to get my own back.”
“Oh! I jus’ about fergot to tell you somethin’,” Taniete cried suddenly, retracing his steps.
“What?”
“Well, afore it got to Belgrano, the cairge stopped and picked somebody up.”
“Male or female?”
“Man.”
“And you were keeping that juicy tidbit for yourself? Well, you certainly did keep your eyes peeled!
“Where did he alight?”
“He done alit on Cangallo and headed down ta Retiro.”
“And did you not follow him?”
“Me? I stayed in the cairge.”
“Why on earth did you do that, if the carriage was returning to the Club?”
“That’s true, I ain’t denyin’ it. But you done told me, ‘Taniete, follow the masked lady,’ and that’s what I done.”
“Well, then, quite simply, you are guilty of the blunder of the century.
“We could have discovered the man’s identity or, at the very least, where he was headed so we could discover it later; but now, thanks to your imbecility, we remain ignorant.”
“If that’s the problem, ain’t no problem.”
“And why not?”
“’Cause I ’ready know who he is.”
“What do you mean, you know who he is?”
“Well, see, when the cairge stopped and the man alit, he was stood there a minute, talkin’ to the lady inside.”
“And?”
“And it were Señor Don Pepe.”
“Señor Don Pepe! Are you quite sure?”
“’Course I am. He said, ‘Night, Taniete,’ and I said, ‘Night to you, Don Pepe.’ ”
“We’re done for now! Just when I thought you were doing so well! Really! Fantastic, superb, marvelous.
“Why didn’t you just offer him a seat and explain the whole business from start to finish?
“It would have been easier.
“Do you know what you’d need, to be able to play a part in this type of affair?
“Why almost nothing: not to have seen the light of day in Galicia, that is, not to have been born a complete ass in the shape of a man. With that and a few other things which I shall omit out of futility, you could have been a dignified rival of Monsieur Lecocq, top dog, the crème de la crème, the sharpest cop in town, the quickest wit ever born …
“Get out of here!”
For the love of God! Why not the cook, if we’ve fallen for clerks and third-rate hired hands?
It’s the same old story, the age-old line, all an act …
“Ah! women, women!”
By luck or chance one offers, one fine day, to lend them a hand, to do them a good turn that nine times out of ten they do not deserve.
Fed up with languishing in the land of innocence, sick of being ingénues, of the privations and the abstinence required by the rules of the game for that role, their pretty little heads become filled with the idea of making their debut as leading ladies and playing at being married on society’s stage.
Then some poor devil appears on the scene, strolling along aimlessly and unsuspecting, like dust in the wind, an out-of-work actor who possesses real honor, talent, generosity, and wealth and who would make a perfect counterpart.
A trap is set for him, he becomes ensnared, enters into negotiations and, once the foundations have been laid, the contract is signed through trickery and intervention on the part of the aforementioned lovely ladies who have become corrispondenti teatrali, veritable mercanti in human flesh as Señor Giacchino called them.
Of course, two opposing genres then arise, to suit the taste and vocation of the actress: serious theater, whose stage is limited to the four walls of the house and whose plot is confined to a man known as husband and some youngsters known as sons and daughters; and the whole colossal farce outside the house, whose stage is the world and whose intrigue unfolds amidst thousands of others.
In the former, the protagonist maternal; in the latter, mundane.
The aura about the first is saintly; it cannot be captured without a spark from the holy fire of virtue.
The crown that digs into the second’s forehead is a cardboard tiara that can be bought for five cents in some sleazy, old bazaar.
But even chapel music has its flat notes and, besides, it must keep to the times in which we live.
The rotten repertoire, the café-concert, the chansonnette in F-sharp, suits modern tastes far better.
“Classicism can go to the devil, then!” our farce actress cries, “long live frivolity and trivia.”
She proclaims herself the grande dame, grande coquette, and grande… she plays dirty tricks and hits where it hurts, she knows how to get ahead, her adoring fans carry her on their shoulders and, bathed in the cologne of adulation, she attains the heights of artistic glory.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
Even the brightest sun in the big, blue sky is clouded over in the sunset, like the dregs in a bottle of sherry.
Our heroine, too, turns to sludge, she comes unstuck, crumples, ages, her popularity wanes, triumph turns to tragedy, and she winds up begging work in theaters in the slums, playing the maid.
And who is the victim in all this?
The management?
Lady Luck, the egregia e gentilissima signora combinazione, cares as much about the season’s takings as she does about the sultan.
The audience?
No, not them either; they have been served up a scandal and greedily gobbled down every scrap.
The farce actress? Hah! Out of the question; she made her choices in life.
The other one, then?
Yes, it is him and only him, the miserable predestined man, the bagattelliere, the actor who gives it his all and gets nothing in return except for the laurels and other leaves that shine on his forehead after the recital.
Ah! Women, women!
They have heaven within their homes yet pursue the inferno out-of-doors.
They live in palaces yet debauch themselves in the first tenement house they come across.
They stuff themselves silly on ambrosia and cure their bellyaches eating pig meat.
Ah! Women, women! Wicked creatures!
And the worst thing is that it is unquestionable, blinding, obvious, clear as day, glaring.
What is to be done?
Tell it to the devil!
Above all, let sleeping dogs lie; let us swallow the bitter pill without protest and, if it suits us, walk in their shoes for a day, and if not, show them who is boss!
As long as Taniete’s oafish footprints don’t frighten off the fox!
At any rate, we shall see.
Doit-on le dire? As spiritual author of this now-identified farce, that, dear readers, is what I ask you.
That is the question, the great mystery, the tortuous conundrum.
With a snap of my fingers I rid myself of this problem and answer decidedly and resolutely: yes and no; cela depend.
Naturally, he who thinks—like Aristotle—that friendship is a soul with two bodies or believes—like Voltaire—that it is a marriage of two souls must admit that a married soul cannot remain indifferent to the miseries afflicting its companion.
That is why man often meddles in matters that, on appearance, should be of no concern to him but, in reality, constitute the most pressing of duties for a well-placed heart.
The quid is in how exactly to go about it.
In the first place, it must be done well.
When it comes to resolving the issue, one must tread very lightly, proceed by the letter of the law, avail oneself of endless legally founded reasons, a body of evidence—so to speak—of the sort that barristers deem foolproof and that reaches, if possible, above and beyond women, to appeal to that arbitrator who, though completely cast aside nowadays, was very popular, as you know, in the courts of yore.
The jury, respectable institution though it may be, is as befitting in these cases as a fish out of water.
Try to think like a judge and use your conscience to say to a husband:
“Vous savez? You are one.”
“Proof, I want proof,” he will reply immediately, in the sweet and mellifluous tones of someone asking for your money or your life.
“I know,” you will exclaim haughtily, with satisfied air, ab alto toro, placing your hand solemnly and melodramatically on your heart, and you will land yourself in hot water indeed.
You will see how, regardless of your good intentions and suchlike, you will be removed from the premises, kicked out as if from a dance, and then kicked—in a certain part of your person—and called swine, villain, and slanderer to boot.
You see, of all of life’s pits, there is none steeper or more difficult to climb out of than that of admitting to having been tricked by a woman.
Why?
Because a woman is not like a chicken that two friends share, carefree.
We members of the stronger sex will not stand for nonsense of that sort.
We understand that the chattels belong to us, are for our exclusive use, end of story.
Emboldened by the right that we know to be on our side, backed by the perception of our personal attractions, a perception that never fails, we all—even the crippled, hunchbacked and one-eyed—insist until the day we die:
That is nonsense! Me? There’s not a woman on this earth who could deceive me. Though one should add, if only as an aside, that as soon as the poor devil lets his guard down even slightly, there right under his nose, in front of his face, the aforementioned woman is having it on.
And then go and shake the dreamer from his reverie, notify him of the joint ownership, the common usufruct, push him from a hundred feet up, and, of course, the impact on landing will make him jump up wild with rage and howling to the high heavens, like a little boy who’s been pushed over and fallen flat on his face while playing chase.
Forget it; to avoid a difficult situation, don’t swim in deep water without a float, insure that you have it all down on paper so you can prove the truc, and if the man collapses, it is not one’s fault but the fault of the pulley, which suddenly gave way and dropped him backstage.
And what of the offspring?
That is yet another matter of vital importance.
If the husband is incapable, or the wife, or both, which really comes down to one and the same thing; if there is a question as to procreation; if the family tree has not borne fruit, then the issue is enormously simplified.
In that case, other people’s interests are not harmed, the children’s silver is not stolen, nor does anyone but the patient husband come into play; he who, having been affronted and hurt, might well make a mountain of a molehill, throw the baby out with the bathwater as it were, should he so desire, and his wife too, because, after all, if he does so, he does naught but dispose of a dirty rag, a moth-eaten cloth.
And since making a fool see the light of day is a real man’s job, I shall tell him; if he already knows, then because he knows; and if he does not know, then because everyone else knows and because I must defy that saying, invented by some husband who was taken for a fool and whom the neighbors drove mad by teasing every bloody day of the week, miming horns coming out of his head and making other rude gestures.
However, when there are legitimate and genuine offspring, with no deceit or contrefaçon, as in the present case in which the Los Tres Médanos monopoly—more than the manufacturer’s seal—assures the provenance of the goods, then the going gets tough. Oh! Then the façenda si fa seria, one finds the rug pulled out from under one’s feet and must endeavor not to fall flat on one’s face.
On the one hand, there is one’s friend—the daddy—whose fence is being jumped every time a traitor slips in through the back door without the ninny hearing a thing, despite the noise the intruder always makes, even if he takes off his shoes and tiptoes through; after all he is not a ghost, he does not float.
On the other hand, there are the children—the kiddies—that race of dunces who issued from the wedding and, without doing a thing, cost an arm and a leg; mother tends to—ahem—affairs, but they take the cake.
And a good thing, too! They did not pick their mother, I hear you—or society, which amounts to the same thing—bray like ninnies.
This is true, both society and the horses are right; but let’s proceed.
Friendship forces one to grab the former, shake him by the arm, and say:
Don’t be an idiot! Look!
And then one’s head, pleading with one’s sentiments for a lucky break, hoping against hope, checking the heart’s noble reflexes, cries out in turn:
No, you mustn’t bite off more than you can chew, nor repeat libelous slander; you mustn’t drag their names through mud that was not of their making, nor condemn them to bear that cross as well as a sign on their foreheads and an insult on their lips.
It’s bad enough if the drama unfolds after the curtains have been drawn and the obscene script has been kept behind the scenes and in the theater dressing rooms.
Worse still if the scandalous news is printed in black and white and doing the rounds of the city’s plazas and cafés.
In that case, the children’s share price takes a nosedive.
Honestly, why attempt to patch things up with warm towels and bandages, if the whole kit and caboodle is notorious and in the public domain?
Indeed, there is no point trying to catch rain in a sieve.
None whatsoever, but let us take heed, notwithstanding, of the fact that from time immemorial, there have been those who hold a low opinion of the public domain and of notoriety.
Many believe that the former is a fool and the latter a liar, a run-of-the-mill play-actor or small-time musician who is ever off-key, just one more member of the band.
They add that one must not believe ninety-nine of every hundred tales told; the world is full of cynics; no one can fool them. To believe something they have to see it with their own eyes, rummage around, and stick their snouts in, if they really want to.
Amongst these common folk, who buy it all in good faith, the above-mentioned stock can still be sold off, though perhaps at rock-bottom prices.
It is the only chance the wretched stockholders have to free themselves from humiliating bankruptcy. To take away that supreme option—a sort of drowning man’s last gasp of air—would be like twisting the knife in a victim’s gut, giving him that last coup de grâce, in short, playing the hangman, a profession that, I confess, holds no special allure for me.
But, why does the husband shuffle around like a blind man tapping a cane and, in his frenzied tap, batter the cheap leather of his own reputation?
Why, who on earth wanders about showing warts and all, claiming to be an upstanding patriot, a knavish slave to his wife’s wily ways, when in fact he’s the first to get caught up in foreign affairs, to be put on the spot, to tempt fate and kick against the pricks.
When a man has a wife and children, and even just a mere inkling of common sense, and his wife sneaks off and plays dirty in the heat of the moment, this is the procedure to follow, with slight variations according to one’s strategy:
First, one must knuckle down and gag oneself. Then tie a sanitized cord between the bedrooms, thus placing the sinner in quarantine and thereby freeing oneself from all contact with her and from the consequent pestilent contagion.
This, let it be understood, with no tears, no shouting, nor any scenes, after having had a nice little chat with the infidel, during which the foundations of the modus vivendi are laid.
No externally visible changes.
Señor and Señora live together under the same roof, eat at the same table, and carry on baring their teeth amorously at each other in the presence of servants and strangers.
The only paltry novelty introduced is that they no longer sleep in the same bed, which, when it comes right down to it, is but a trifling detail.
The status quo is maintained long enough to avoid stirring up public malevolence, that is, until a plausible pretext utterly unrelated to the grande affaire is struck upon, whence the wife is hurled straight to hell, or oneself might go in her stead, ad lib and depending upon which better suits the situation.
And the accomplice?
Ah! The accomplice, that oh-so-crucial character, merits a separate paragraph.
If he is a simple man, an unknown, any old fellow, neither friend nor relation nor obligé, then his conduct is perfectly correct.
He goes about his business however he sees fit, God willing; he is within his rights and even the most puritan could not comment upon his conduct. In a word, he is clean as a new pin.
If, on the other hand, one has opened the door to him and shaken his hand; if he is bound by the ties of friendship, gratitude, or blood, which impose duties and not idiocies, then the whole shebang is turned inside out, the roles are reversed entirely, and that gentleman becomes an ate-your-bun, a sort of ragamuffin looking for trouble, cherchant midi à quatorze heures, to whom one gives a piece of one’s mind if not another thing or two.
One kicks him or shoots him, just because, because he is insolent enough to hold opinions different from one’s own about politics or music, or because, on passing, he glanced sideways, or coughed loudly, or stepped on one’s foot, or nearly trod upon one’s bunion.
That’s it, right?
It’s all very easy and very sensible and very perfect, if applied offhandedly, in anima vili; but actions speak louder than words, and I was on pins and needles.
What if his temper gets the best of him, what if the man gets feisty and kicks up a great fuss, which is both probable and practical?
Well, on to the state of play and proceedings, considering:
1. That dirty laundry should not be aired in public.
2. That sleeping with young men is perilous.
3. That elbowing a fool only stuns him.
4. And finally, that as far as dice are concerned, the safest bet is not to throw them at all; and since the best music is played after the curtain falls and when the audience is threatening to become rowdy and smash one’s head in, my conclusion is the following:
The husband shall not be summoned into the action; he is absolved from the instance.
The plaintiff shall appear when necessary …
All of which means that I must stick with the hand I was dealt; you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
Sum total: I will not give the game away to Juan, not even if I am hung.
For his sake, for his son’s, or for mine?
Friendship, charity, or self-love?
You decide.
Señora:
I am not a man to mince my words, as you well know, and if you do not know, please deign to accept it as truth.
Forward or backward, I have always followed the straight and narrow, avoiding superfluous steps and turns.
I abhor the curve, ill-fated implantation of some prehistoric flâneur and cause of many outrages, for the simple reason that the devil finds work for idle hands to do.
The idiosyncrasy of a twisted mind, the result of my upbringing?
There must be something of the latter: my father taught me, long ago, to draw a laughing man and a crying man, using only straight lines, at obtuse or acute angles, depending on whether it was comedy or tragedy, and manufacturing these miniature men, my favorite pastime as a young lad, has probably managed—over the course of time—to alter the profile of my moral physiognomy.
With this salutary warning-cum-preface out of the way, I proceed to the crux of the matter:
Señora: You are, quite simply, a trollop, with all that that term connotes.
I say that because I know, and if your husband knew he would say the same, surely taking advantage of the occasion to slip in a much less flattering word and perhaps even some other instrument with a sharper, more cutting edge.
What do you expect? It is a question of temperament.
Juan is an excellent young man, but like all of us, he has his faults.
Juan has always been quite naïve, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, nor does he understand jokes and tricks, especially those as, ahem, dirty as the ones you play.
Confess, my good lady, because in this case you’ve got no one to stand up for you.
What good Christian soul would be amused to find his lawfully wedded wife getting dirty in a dung heap and raising a fist full of muck to smear in his mustachios like an ill-trained cat?
Sleights of hand will black your eyes, particularly when they degenerate into tricks as rude as yours; wipe that look off your face.
Oh, very rude indeed, señora, and in the worst possible taste.
Tell me, otherwise, how we can explain the fact that, having a young, attractive, good, honorable, intelligent, rich husband, in short a first-class husband, the wife—in order to really excel herself—parades around like Lady Godiva in broad daylight, gets involved with a common skinflint loafer and goes off at an ungodly hour to soak up the stench and filth of the slums and catch pneumonia and shake her bones on the cobblestones, in the company of this idiot who is poorer than a church-mouse?
Luckily, señora, the steps which have led you astray are ones that your husband neither sees nor hears; the blessed man, like all God’s creatures and cuckolds, only stops wandering about in a dream once in a blue moon, without ever even remotely suspecting this, your most brazen of deceptions.
I say luckily because he is a friend of mine and I do not like to see him covered in filth; as a soap-user, myself, I therefore shall proceed, s’il vous plait to wash the muck from his person before he awakes, and to this end ask you to lend a dainty hand, to act as croupier in this deal, to hold the washbasin and the candle, as it were, and to stop holding other things during said undertaking.
So:
Sit down at a table, take up pen and paper, and write:
“My darling beau:”
Your friend, Don Pepito, he of the claire de lune, is ugly as sin: ergo, you must call him beau.
In illo tempore, when I was but a young chap, Duval’s girls—Leonor, Elena, Carlota, Antonietta, in fact all of the Gauthiers—used to call yours truly that, too; it’s like clockwork, never fails, and I presume that, belonging to the same tribe, it will be the same with you.
We shall put, therefore, “my darling beau.”
“The most dreadful misfortune now threatens us.
“An evil man …”
Put evil, señora, do not put anything more; I shan’t resent evil.
“Evil man, has discovered our secret.
“Do not write or attempt to see me again, if you do not want to lose me forever.
“From now on you must forget about your poor, little …”
And this is the bit that matches up with the beau line:
You are a brunette, but I would bet, and I would not lose, that your lover calls you “Blondie.”
Oh, I can see it now!
Not bad, eh?
Laconic, concise, no digressions, no inopportune hysteria.
Bitter pills are best swallowed quickly.
When one goes to have a tooth pulled, one prays to God that the dentist pulls it, crack! quick as a whip.
I too want to wrench from you, in one go, this nail that out of sheer recklessness you have allowed to pierce your body.
Now then, if it seems an uphill battle and you do not feel sufficiently strong to undergo the operation, even with the help of a bit of chloroform, then you are perfectly within your rights to refuse and I, for my part, shall not insist; but I give you due warning, so as to avoid disagreeable reproaches, that said refusal would oblige me to go to your husband with the gossip so that he, who cares about you above all else in the world, might adopt the measures befitting the gravity of the situation or send you packing or declare you insane and lock you up in the asylum or declare you something else altogether and send you to boot camp or force you to change neighborhoods or whatsoever he should like to do.
As far as I am concerned, my role as bird dog is now formally concluded; I shall go home and wash my hands of the whole affair like King Herod, come what may. So much the worse for you. If that is how you want it, you shall carry the blame.
So choose, then, between what I have said and what you write.
If it is to be the latter and you pay me as much heed as one does the sound of rain falling, then I give you my word of honor that, in less than forty-eight hours, Juan will hear from me what sort of woman you are.
If the former, then hurry up and give me that little piece of paper without dillydallying, in a sealed envelope addressed to me, within another unsealed envelope.
The aim of this precaution is to insure that you do not try to make me bring your lover the letter that I fear you might—no offense intended.
Permit me to reiterate that I am honored to be, señora, your most obliged, humble servant.
I put down my pen, took off my glasses, put on my hat and gloves, slipped between glove and hand the document I had just written and with whose tone you are already familiar, and decided to pay a visit to Juan, whom I found in a sybaritic posture, sipping coffee, smoking a cigarette, and reading El Mosquito, while María stood leaning over her husband’s shoulder, looking at the pictures and indulgently scratching her husband’s head.
The baby sitting on the table—gooing and gaaing and sucking his fingers for want of something more fertile to suck—rounded off this tender, moving tableau of domestic bliss.
What a picture, for an amateur!
What a lure, for anyone thinking of soliciting the post!
What misery, veiled by the shadows of a lying, rotten outside world.
One would have thought that the earth ended at their doorstep.
He for her, she for him, and both of them for the little whippersnapper.
An idyll, a little corner of heaven on earth, like turkey stuffed with truffles …
From the front, that is.
Turn the corner and go in through the back door; total déconfiture.
The honeycomb is a dead stalk; paradise, a wasteland of burning rubbish; and the truffles, trash.
All a question of perspective.
Two things I have never been able to pull off well: a toast and a visit.
Every time I have very unfortunately committed the gaffe, the bévue, of raising my glass or opening my mouth, it has been to spew forth utter nonsense or to play the role of … toilette paper.
The typical “a truly solemn occasion … truly… truly… truly, solemn; yes, ladies and gentlemen.”
But let us not get ahead of ourselves nor fall into the trap, as they say; ipso facto, I shall not grant you the right to deem me more of a fool than I already am.
Recall, if you will, instances from your own lives, think about it a moment and you shall see that you are forced to agree with me: there is no intellectual exertion greater than giving a discours while drinking champagne.
Either the subject of your speech adheres to the ceremony—in which case you say what has been said or what others will say and thereby fall fatefully into platitude—or you search out something singular to say and come off the rails like some greenhorn and lay yourself open to plebian questions such as:
So what? What is he on about? What in heaven’s name has that got to do with anything?
It is difficult indeed not to wind up burning the toast.
Another little game at which I have always been quite inept: societal talents, or what they call playing the role of the salon bachelor, as the rude women say, as if they were talking about a piece of furniture or a decoration, a chimney or a pair of spittoons.
You can infer from my opening remarks that I am about to tell you the sorry tale.
It was back in ’63.
Doña Pepa, after having spent many a year in Villa de Luján—though that fact bears no relation whatsoever to the story—went to visit my mother who had been a fellow pupil and a friend since time immemorial.
Naturally, she spoke of me, of how grown up I must be, a little man by now, gracious me, I was nineteen and a bit, of how industrious I must be, and, finally, she said she could not wait to lay eyes on the little lad and give him a kiss.
This was followed, as a final judgment on my days, by a solemn promise to send me over the next day, in order that Doña Pepa should be able to take in the ameliorations that my person had undergone with her very own eyes, thereby appreciating fully my now-improved physique.
I protested, to no avail, against my tyrannical mother’s promise, alleging that I was not one to go calling, that Doña Pepa, Don Pepe and their string of daughters meant nothing to me … no use, courage had to be plucked up and, at 8:00 that evening, after putting on my Sunday best (a suit purchased in the Temperley clothier’s on Calle Merced, to be precise), I had to walk over to where—God willing!—I should have had the moral fortitude to refuse to go!
About halfway there, I suddenly chanced upon one of Dad’s old friends; I stepped aside, as was my duty, to let him pass and, on greeting him, I felt one of my feet slip and nearly lost my balance.
I regained it, thanks to the solid foundation I’m equipped with, and calmly carried on my way, assuming that the incident was finished with no further eventualities.
Finally, I arrived.
I knocked once, just once, like a servant, and upon hearing “come in” from the parlor, I entered.
In all, Doña Pepa, three of her daughters, and three young chaps who had come to call were there present.
Kidskin boots with Louis XV heels, low-cut necklines, teeny little gloves for great big hands, and every other imaginable high-life flourish of the times: it was a tour de force of finery unlike anything seen nowadays.
Upon entering, I tripped over the threshold.
I nearly fell flat on my face, bruising myself on the back of a chair.
Charming entrance, I thought. Embarrassed beyond belief, with my mouth dry as a bone and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, I stammered to Doña Pepa:
“Se … Señora, I am Sss-Soo … So-and-so, the …”
“Oh! Little So-and-so, you’ve grown so tall! How was I to recognize you if you’ve gone and become a man!
“Did you hurt yourself, little So-and-so?”
“No, Señora, I’m fine, don’t be si-silly!” (this, while seeing every star in the sky before me; I had just banged my bunion).
“Well, come in from the hallway, young fellow, and take a seat.
“These are my daughters.”
“Señoritas, I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you, señor.”
“Look, Pepe,” she continued, addressing her other half, who had just then walked in, tall, old, rancid, and wrinklier than a ram. “Do you recognize this young man?”
“Upon my soul, I do not,” answered Don Pepe, after pushing back his glasses and looking me over from head to toe.
“It’s little So-and-so, what’s-her-name’s son.”
“Well, I’ll be! He looks just like his mother!” the old fool exclaimed, after being informed that, indeed, I was my mother’s son.
“I didn’t recognize the little gentleman but, with the looks in that family, I could have guessed.”
Hardly a moment had passed when suddenly I noticed a horrid smell.
The first thing that sprung to mind was that it must be Don Pepe who was sitting on my left, since old people tend to be a bit boorish and somewhat shameless.
But as great gusts of the stench insisted on assaulting my pituitary membranes as well as those of my neighbors, whose expressions could be seen to be practicing certain muscular gymnastics that can have only one interpretation, I said to myself:
No, I smell a rat; the persistency points to a body … of evidence.
And the band played on.
Imagine, if you will, however, the performance that an idiot of my age was to give; like some shapeless ball of dough, neither seeds nor meal, man nor boy, a novice, quick-tempered and ill-mannered, particularly when it came to exchanging words with women.
Who amongst us has not undergone that unbearable period of human awkwardness?
Saying yes sir, no ma’am, I don’t know, I’m sure you’re right; wadding up one’s gloves; crossing one’s legs; not knowing where to put one’s hands; sitting as still as a flea-ridden dog and truly sweating like a pig. Those are the performances that appear on the playbill during the season when one’s voice changes, when one goes from cheeping chick to crowing cock; that is, between the ages of 15 and 20, the abominable years, a sort of fools’ bridge, a squaring of the hypotenuse in the mathematics of life.
In addition to the maté that was continuously circulating thanks to a ragged-looking mulatta, when the clock struck ten, the aforementioned servant entered bearing a tray on which sat a bakery cake and cups of hot chocolate.
With the lofty aim of reversing the impression I must have made during introductions, now displaying fine manners, it struck me that I should offer the hot chocolate around to the ladies.
I got up, took a cup, and presented it to Doña Pepa, just at the precise moment when the blessed woman decided to drop her handkerchief. Quick as a whip I bent down to retrieve it, whereupon my hand movement edged the spoon resting beside the cup and saucer over just enough to hit the cup, knocking it down in a rain of chocolate that fell over the poor woman and left her utterly soiled.
A black storm cloud passed before my eyes.
Damn and blast it! If there had been a hole around, even if a Galician had dug it, I would have jumped in as fast as you like.
“How clumsy!” snapped Doña Pepa, choked with rage. “Look! Just look how he’s ruined my new dress!”
“That fool doesn’t know which way is up,” said one of the visitors, piano piano.
“Poor kid!” added a second.
“What a clod!” chimed the third.
The girls, in their turn, insisted on leaving me unconditionally mortified with their winks, their whispering, and their stifled giggles.
I was on the verge of committing a crime, when the esteemed, the illustrious Don Pepe put an end to my torment with the following eloquent words, addressed to his daughters:
“Come, come: that is quite enough tomfoolery. What happened to this young gentleman is not so ridiculous as to merit your chattering on so.”
A moment of religious silence followed this energetic elocution.
With spirits calmed and the personal chocolate incident nearly forgotten, conversation picked up once more, and Don Pepe undertook to engage me in talk of, amongst other things, books and authors.
Elated at the prospect of finally being able to embark upon a topic that I could talk at length about and prove, once more, that one cannot judge a book by its cover, I launched headfirst into the sujet.
“Have you read Renan’s La vie de Jésus?” (the book of the day) I asked him.
“God forbid!” he replied, crossing himself. “Me? Read such improper sacrilege! Why, whatever next?”
“But, señor …”
“Forget it, don’t come to me with this rubbish they write these days when any lying dog can go and become a supposed man of letters.
“Heresy,” he added for good measure, with a look of profound disgust. “La vie de Jésus, or nonsense and foolishness like Les Misérables or somesuch, by that old fraud, that charlatan, that frog.” (Don Pepe was Spanish.)
“Speak to me about the writers of yore, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Cervantes, yes, now they had talent!”
Of course I replied that, indeed, he was right. That Don Quixote, in particular, made me as happy as a king in his castle; that I considered it a masterpiece, a magnum opus, number one. I carried on in this vein, talking about the hidalgo’s adventures and becoming more and more enthused by my own words until, completely monté, I said:
“You probably won’t recall, but there is a certain dialogue between the two squires which alone contains more philosophy than Aristotle, Kant, and Descartes put together …”
And, getting up, staring at the bookshelf:
“I’ll show you,” I said, “as I can see a copy of that monument to human intelligence from here, holding place of honor in your library.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Don Pepe, jumping up after me.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all.”
“But …”
“No buts about it, you shall see, you shall see,” I replied, grabbing hold of Quixote before Don Pepe could stop me.
Noting that the book positively would not budge from the ranks of its companions, I yanked hard, and suddenly the panel that formed it gave way (the library had been a cheap decoy). Bam! I fell back, hitting and noisily knocking over the table and lamp with the posterior part of my person, and the panel then lay in a pile par terre.
The depths of darkness surrounded us.
This was Troy.
Don Pepe was squawking.
Doña Pepa was shouting.
The girls were shrieking.
The three lads, not a peep.
Why?
Start swimming …
This is it, I said to myself, inching toward the door in total darkness, not without first tripping over a few chairs, three skirts, and as many coattails.
The fresh night air had never been more welcome!
With my tail between my legs, abhorring the outrages I had committed in playing so ridiculous a role, I finally arrived home.
I sat down immediately to take off my brand-new boots, which had left my feet like fresh-pressed olives, when, blast it! I pulled off the right one and nearly fell over.
That’s the last time! I cried.
This is all I need; to have been the baby, the laughingstock of the party!
In a paroxysm of rage, I cursed Doña Pepa, Don Pepe, their daughters, the chocolate-bearing mulatta, Cervantes, my father’s old friend, the filthy dogs who foul the path and even Don Caytano Cazón, who was the chief of police and did not beat them to death.
If they catch me again at another one of those, I burst forth, let them… brand me.
I started off on the wrong foot, as you see, carried on in the same vein, and am now even worse than before.
I repeat: I have never been able to dance to that beat, never quite managed to come off as I would wish.
How many times, in my eagerness to appear polished and my desire to prove that I could speak Castilian Spanish correctly if the opportunity arose, did I not only pronounce caballero, cuadrilla, brillante with trilling palatal double l’s but then also—accustomed to speaking like a normal Argentine whose tongue, no doubt, sought revenge for the cruel torment I was imposing on it—overcompensated by letting loose a llo for a yo or aller for ayer, which turned my cheeks as red as a frieze during Rosas’s reign.
This is entirely factual, upon my word of honor.
One day, in a circle of ladies, instead of saying that my grandfather had ended up senile, I said he had ended up pe … well, you figure it out.
And that is not all.
Once, in Paris, we were having dessert after a meal with people of the meilleur monde and they had just served, by the name of Montreuil peaches, something as insipid as the coming-out ball of a German débutante.
Naturally, patriot that I am, it struck me as the opportune moment to deliver a eulogy to Argentine bush peaches.
I spoke of their monstrous size, their sun-kissed color, their fragrance, and their exquisite taste.
Little by little, I was overcome by my feverish love of the land and by too many glasses of Chateau Yquem, and I ended up affirming in the solemn tones of a man who tells no lies that the wild hills produce peaches amongst us the way they do acorns in Europe, that they stretch for leagues over the islands of Paraná River, and that each tree bears so much fruit that one steps on the peaches as if they were cobblestones.
All well and good, up to this point, correct and commendable from the patriotic stance.
But you see, being not quite shrewd enough to improvise in a foreign tongue (it was my first trip abroad), I Frenchified the Spanish verb pisar—to step—to a T, making a foray into Molière’s tongue with the present indicative, preceded by the indefinite personal pronoun on, and thereby saying that one pisses (rather than paces) upon them, calm as you please. Brr! Simply recalling the occasion makes me shudder.
Needless to say, it raised quite a storm.
And keep in mind that when things have not gone poorly (all things are relative) and by sheer luck I have managed to make a stab at it (even the dimmest of sheep sometimes break out of the pen), it has been others and not myself who have found me to be like a bull in a china shop every time I have teetered on the edge of so-called decent society, that class of people who demand of their patrons a certain tenue, a sort of fold-down chair preposterously uncomfortable for a finicky fan of the Voltaires, who likes to smoke a pipe and spend all day in a robe and slippers.
I adore dressing down and painting the town red; a kind-hearted soul, whether male or female, a bottle of anisette, six decks of cards to play bezique, and, of course, my pipe.
There are no two ways about it, just as there is no denying that in my friend’s home, in accordance with my honorable past (affirmed by the dire straits of the present), I was utterly unbearable.
I did not miss a single trick, not a one.
Outwardly, the air of a bewildered fool.
Inwardly, the gesticulations of a toad who, feigning ignorance and absent-mindedness, actually has all five senses on the alert—the hypocrite—and is taking aim at flies, awaiting the exact moment when they cross his line of vision so as to flick his tongue out and gobble them up without so much as batting an eye.
My aim, of course, was to quarter the bomb in the thick of enemy lines without having my artillery discovered; this was what spurred me on.
I would pull moves as slick as pool players like Esteban Risso and Cruz Martín, ricocheting balls and sinking shots without so much as skimming the side of the table.
Obviously, the ideal scenario would have involved getting the husband out of the way; he was just an obstacle, like one of those fat men at the theater who stuff themselves into the neighboring stall and obstruct one’s view, forcing one to suck one’s breath in for the duration of the show.
But how?
My excellent friend was charm personified. It was uncanny; he refused to leave my side for even a moment.
All in vain did I call upon the multitudinous excuses elaborated for just this purpose; nothing doing.
I reminded him that he had promised to lend me a book, not in view of any unfeigned intention of reading it, as it was a tome of recorded travels, penned by a young compatriot—God forbid!—but simply so that he would go off to his den to fetch it.
To no avail: the book lay on the mantelpiece not two steps from where we stood.
I asked for a cigar, and presto!
He reached into his pocket and produced one he declared of capital quality.
Fiasco after fiasco.
Decidedly, my friend Juan, in his dogged determination to give me a royal welcome, as old women say, was turning into quite a thorn in my side, his presence not only making me uncomfortable but trying my patience and cramping my style to boot, hindering my artistic movement and thereby impeding the performance of the show, which was, after all, being put on for his benefit.
My circumstances called to mind those of a ripiego, an understudy, the rabble that roam Italian theater squares; alto primo tenore, primo basso, or primo rostro, mangy rats from the stage box, the souffre-douleur that theater companies treat like slaves, putting a monthly cento lire in their pockets for their toil, after taking off their cut, which runs 30 to 40 percent.
What is left over is enough, as you can imagine, not only to stay alive, but also to allow one to live in … utter destitution.
If a divo or a diva falls ill, or pretends to (being the jewel in the house crown, like grandma’s lapdog), do you think they cancel? Not on your life; the show must go on: police regulations, on the one hand, and the impresario’s insatiable saccoccia on the other. Cancellation is terminally prohibited.
What to do?
They suddenly remember the illustrious ripiego, like devotees of Santa Barbara, and quick as a flash, send off the avisatore with instructions to find him and bring him back, dead or alive.
Said avisatore is always an excessively practical man; he knows all the cast’s hideaways inside and out and therefore has his course set out prior even to embarking on the task.
He raises himself immediately to the heights, which is to say he bounds up, six at a time, the forty-odd steps that take him into the clouds … of coal dust, where our Apollo, giovine di belle speranze ma privo di mezzi,* lives as the unfortunate suitor of one of the muses—the prima donna Eurterpe who, out of sheer wickedness, refuses ever to give in.
In Helicon, neither dead nor alive.
The weaknesses of the flesh have opened a hole in his mythological existence, rushing him, like a condemned soul, from heaven to hell, or to the ground floor trattoria, which is one and the same, and where one eats for 80 cents a head.
There, sometime between the minestrone and the dessert, like Banquo’s ghost, the fateful avisatore appears suddenly beside the table, to lightheartedly reel off the following heresy:
“Il baritono d’obbligo sta male; lei deve cantare quest’oggi” (demanding he sing something utterly impossible; let us say, now that we have already mentioned Banquo, Macbeth).
“Come quest’oggi?”
“Ordine dell’impresa.”
“Ma, per Baco, ma se il Macbetto,” our man cries in desperation, “Non lo faccio da che lo cantai nella fiera di… Cremona (or since hell froze over) o son dieci anni!”
“Questo a me non mi riguarda: órdine dell’impresa.”
“Ma, che maniere son queste con un primario artista? Non sono un burattino! Così, come un colpo di cannone, senza una prova d’orchestra, né menno di pianoforte?”
“E già, credete chi vi si paga la quindicina (the touchstone; the magic word) per andare á spasso e vivere d’entrate?”*
And that’s it. There is no way out and there is no God.
The poor man has to buckle down and suffer through the ordeal, just one of the tricks of the trade …
A serious shot of courage and a two-ounce castor-oil purgative, that acts as a filter or some type of still and that he hopes will clear his voice, and then they carry on with the rest of the program, and the rest—I do not need to tell you—is an exceedingly eloquent manifestation of genteel love and respect, fanatical, a vero chiasso in which the loveliest thing the enthusiastic audience shouts is fuori, salame, porco, cane della madonna!
Like my colleague the baritone, I, too, found myself between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I was obliged to andare in scena, to tread the boards without having practiced my lines, without knowing my role and—what is a thousand times worse, given the type of show it was—with the audience within spitting distance, thus open to the peril of having him peep up my sleeve, see what tricks I was up to, and floor me with one punch.
Oh, to the devil with it! I finally concluded.
Caesar had the Rubicon, Napoleon the Arcole Bridge, and the Urquiza squadron had Martín García Island …*
Who was to say that I, too, could not get across what I needed to, right before Juan’s very eyes?
Especially since the midwife cried: It’s a boy!
And putting my thoughts into action, I stood up, headed for the slattern in question with the pretext of bidding her good night and, in a flash, slipped the pill into the hollow of her hand, carefully relaying the following susurration from the tip of my tongue:
“Take this, read it, and rip it up.”
Juan n’y vit que du feu.*
The other day, at eight in the morning, with the envelope still moist, Madame Juan served me the menu I had ordered, adding a homemade hors d’oeuvre that, being overly peppered and salted, left me not a little vexed.
Here are the ingredients:
“Between the despicable woman who neglects her duties and the wretched man who threatens to denounce her, one is more vile than the other: you tell me which.”
“Boom, the bombshell; take that!” I exclaimed; it seems that my little friend was very upset.
And the worst thing is that she could well be right, I then thought, because after all, between the despicable woman and the wretched man and so forth, one must be worse than the other, just as the señora claimed.
The question is, which of the two takes the cake; and since I am the one to award the prize judging by the story, I shall try to do so, after studying the case and knowing full well the proceedings.
I would like to begin by conceding for the sake of argument, señora, that when you were taken out of school you were innocent as a babe in the woods and pure as country wine.
That you remained so until you became ripe and were plucked by Juan from the maternal tree, whither you hung from a bough over your garden fence, provoking the neighbor boys’ looks and whetting their appetites.
That when you decided to flee the protective wing of your mother, in order to take on other affairs and to travel the path of holy matrimony, you did it for the pleasure of being in the company of your husband rather than for the first-class ticket he bought you on trains and steamers or for the most expensive hotels, in which you held court and sat like a Russian princess thanks to others’ efforts.
But allow me to exempt you even further.
I admit that you were hideously deceived by the reports you were given with respect to your companion’s personal comportment and that, though believing you had embarked on this journey with a perfect gentleman, in fact you were faced with a perfect scoundrel.
That at the first station the train pulled into, said personage began to show his true colors, leaving you alone in the carriage while he went off to the bar to toss back a few drinks.
That with other ladies there present, he then proceeded to light up a black-tobacco cigarette that smelled like hell itself, stinking out all concerned and provoking an official complaint to the train guard and, as a direct result of said complaint, an argument broke out and descended—thanks to your man—into a fight, in which he shouted that no one told him what to do, that he would smoke whatever he damn well pleased because he had paid his money and it was as good as anyone else’s.
It is implicitly understood that for the duration of this utterly obnoxious outburst, you knew not where to look and, what is more, prayed in vain to be swallowed up by the earth and disappear entirely.
That this prelude was more than enough and that given the chance you would have been only too pleased, then and there, to pack your bags and bolt like a stallion, especially when in Act II—set in the restaurant of a popular hotel—your husband, the protagonist of this farce, set to eating his fish with a knife, banging his glass on the table in order to get the waiter’s attention, and shouting abuse at him for not having served what his discerning palate desired.
That in Act III, which took place in one of the bedrooms of your house, you caught him in flagranti in the throes of erotic pillow talk with the servant-woman.
That as befit the situation, you lost your temper and berated him for so barbarous an obscenity, to which his only reply was to snatch the fireplace tongs, brandishing them like executive powers, and crash them down over your person, leaving you with the most incontrovertible proof of his everlasting conjugal love.
So you see, I flatter him no more and even suppose him to be the non plus ultra in terms of male caddishness.
Do you think, perchance, that if your husband scuttles around in the gutter that it gives you the right to roll around in the filth, too?
That his being a degenerate, a gambler, a drunkard, and a libertine would grant you the authorization to smoke cigars, wear a knife in your garter belt, and walk the streets?
What about morality?
Ah, but you decidedly fall into the deepest confusion, jumbling everything our blessed Church teaches and orders us to obey, according to Father Astete’s catechism,* a book I can only presume you have glanced through at one time or another, if only to memorize it, parrot-fashion.
Recall if you will that our Lord does not come running to comfort us when we violate the blessed sacraments, and that Police General Regulation 6, known as the “Commandment of God’s Law,” prohibits the rupture of the matrimonial contract under the harshest of punishments: the rest of one’s days in Purgatory Penitentiary or a life condemned to making flagstones in the pits of hell.
I should, in addition, remind you that the nature or class of the forbearing person, as laid out by the principles governing this matter, cannot—by any means—be invoked by the accused as a justification or excuse nor even as an attenuating circumstance of her crime, and that the full penalty of the law is applied, regardless of who the victim is or what he is worth.
So don’t come to me, señora, with any poppycock about it being no crime to steal from a thief.
That might be how they do things in Spain, but not in this Godfearing country in which whosoever takes something from someone else against his will is always deemed not only to have done ill but, ipso facto, to have committed a mortal sin and who must therefore have it out with the devil.
Do you know what you have done by getting married?
You have transferred the use of your person, you have signed a rental agreement; that is exactly what you have done, as if you were a dwelling; it is a contract in which you cannot be occupied by any objects aside from those your tenant chooses.
Juan has taken you in order to inhabit you, and as Juan possesses his fortune one can only suppose that he does not want to share you with anyone else, especially when the intruder is not even paying rent and is, moreover, actually cheating him out of it like a swine.
In a word, you are not your own but another’s chattel, and having usufructed yourself clandestinely by a third party you fall—under the precepts of the aforementioned Astete Code—into mortal sin, committing the offence of robbery; and therefore you are naught but a thieving sinner who deserves no pardon from our Lord.
And finally I do not wish to allow you or myself to carry on slandering Juan, saying that he has taken to the bottle, that he loves olives, that he has a loose hand with women, and other degenerate notions, even if those are not unfounded, utterly gratuitous suppositions.
Every seigneur must be granted his honneur.
There is no cause to speak of humiliating acts or degrading vices; Juan is not the type. So let us get right down to the crux of the matter.
What could he throw at you?
I warn you of course that I, for my part, know nothing.
But let us admit for a moment that as a son of Adam, it runs in the family, and he will often be of a mind to close the book of matrimonial duties and decree his time off and his holiday periods.
Where is the harm in that? How can it wound you?
Do you fear, perhaps, that your husband might forget you or love you less?
Nonsense, señora! Men’s hearts are very large: there is comfortably room for many of you within them, simultaneously.
Our Lord Father and Mother Nature, in their infinite knowledge, have made it so. Why, look no further than cocks and other quadrupeds for proof of what I say.
I once met a man, verbi gratia, who used to spend his nights at his mistress’s house, and yet, one fine day, to save his father-in-law from a fraudulent bankruptcy, he gave his entire fortune to his wife.
To his lover his time, to his wife his money; and since time is money, it made no difference which; and since love is measured according to the benefits it brings, then by giving to both of them he loved both of them in equal measure.
Nothing could be clearer.
Women are not the only ones who want everything that catches their eye: man, too, experiences his whims.
Having endless roba fina at hand, as the Italians say, we often put on any old fondaccio, whatever rag is at hand, without that implying in the slightest that we prefer the latter.
It is quite like the habitué of the Paris café—where, in the worst-case scenario, one eats passably—who in some cheap, rank market-restaurant wolfs down a rancid stew in one go.
Like the patron of Colón Theater who, sick and tired of the Borghis and the Scalchis, grabs 25 pesos and throws them into the street just to savor the pleasure of getting his own back on Pappenheim and Company.
Could it be that you are terrified of being made a fool of, and in an attempt to evade ridicule you go to such pains?
Since when have women been contaminated by men’s blights?
You end up with a man who is not a lost cause but simply a bit of a wily character, and suddenly it’s all complaints and woe-is-me’s.
Poor thing, poor thing! Left and right; she’s an angel! And he’s such a scoundrel … and she’s a saint! And then you’re all canonized and elevated to celestial heights.
Meanwhile, if bad luck befalls a man—which does chance to occur once in a blue moon—and he ends up with a bit of a free spirit, then there are not enough bugles in the world to broadcast his sorrows to the public.
Good, decent, and honest, he is nevertheless a so-and-so.
Why?
Simply because his wife has her head screwed on the wrong way round and has pulled the wool over his eyes.
And then to claim that we—the bearded gender—have engineered this arrangement, have assembled this apparatus, tuned the instruments, and opened the dance!
Well, hasn’t our money ended up in good hands!
We were deemed master builders before we had even learned to hold a spoon.
Before buying the foundations of that tower of rubble known as the social edifice, we should have started by learning the trade, studying the lay of the land, breaking in the oxen, discovering the true colors of woman, seeing if there was any substance there—if it was worth the effort and worth putting our faith in God rather than turning tail and running the other way—before blithely handing over what anyone in his right mind is most parsimonious with: his good name and his reputation.
That way we would have stopped asking for the impossible, stopped trying to perform miracles and, convinced that the donna é mòbile as tenors say, rather than giving her the keys to the cash box, we would have placed them in our pockets and done up—as a final precaution—the top button of our jackets.
Yes, indeedy; it’s all our fault.
It was quite a blunder, but we made our bed and we shall lie in it.
Now things are as they are and there is naught to be done about it.
A man’s honor can be reduced to the following: not stealing and not shooting anybody in the back; the rest is all nonsense and dust in the wind.
Woman’s honor is another issue entirely.
Verdict:
In order for you to have any grounds for what you say, you would have had to have started off by not wandering off the set, not playing hooky from the nuptial bed—the only school authorized by the government—where, under its rule and domination, you were bound to fulfill your natural duties fully and not to take to the woods, procuring immoral, private lessons from that night-school flunky, Master Smart Aleck, who has done nothing but steal your money.
Frankly, my dear lady, you would need remarkable aplomb to attempt to defend yourself, given what is on your record!
But, you will be wondering, how are things at home?
If I were not a God-fearing soul, if I were trying to do anything but rectify the situation that you have made such a mess of and avoid—out of the goodness of my heart—any type of future quarrel between you, your husband, and your son, then why on earth, I ask you, would I get mixed up in this tangled web as well, acting as a prompter and feeding you your lines?
I would not; that is clear as the light of day because, in short, personally I do not give a hoot about your affairs.
It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to prove my gallantry to you without having to have it out with the police commissioner.
The very most you could possibly reproach me for is that, turning a blind eye, I would become a sort of … how can I put this? … like some sort of accoucheur, some male midwife, one who consented to ugly behavior, a sort of mudguard, which would inevitably result in a fall in my moral standing. But this prick of conscience is nothing compared to the charming prospect of being punched—or not far off it—which is the fate human gratitude reserves for all those who meddle in business that is not their own.
Much more practical from my personal point of view, much more in line with my character as a 40-year-old bachelor—which means, in essence, a sentimental scrooge—would be the option of adjusting my glasses, looking closely, frowning, and then carrying on regardless:
1. Because certain issues do not merit being stirred up.
2. Because one should never reach out to catch a falling knife or a falling friend.
But such thoughts never crossed my mind; quite the contrary, in fact. You’re caught up in the affair and know better than anyone the part I have played in this farce; you know I have not butted in and that I have even, with heroic abnegation, staked and lost many hours of peace and quiet, at the very least, in exchange for getting burned, losing sleep, and suffering bouts of indigestion that could have wrought disastrous consequences on my health.
If you should deign to acknowledge the full magnanimity, the generosity of my conduct, then reflect upon the fact that I am a selfish old man, solely dedicated to entertaining my person, gathering the vastest quantities possible of life’s pleasures, for which an absolutely vital prerequisite is spiritual tranquillity and perfect balance in one’s bodily functions.
How does the informer and—to boot—wretch, as you so kindly called me, quickly become an excellent subject quite capable of climbing on deck and taking hold of the rudder in one fell swoop, when he needs to make one who has gone astray regain her course?
Let us see if you like my analogy.
Let us say that you are the lost sheep, your husband the shepherd, your son the lamb, and I the sheepdog who keeps order and prevents the livestock from becoming too fat and idle and, to keep you from being stolen, bites the quadroon attempting to make off with you.
Should you think that comparing you to an ovine creature is taking things too far and that the story in question is better suited to the society pages of some dismal rural tabloid, referring to a peasant from the country, I shan’t argue; I beg forgiveness and move on to the domain of science.
You are, verbi gratia, a nose with a great pimple on its tip.
I, the surgeon’s hand that will prune the sickening outgrowth.
Of course one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs; the operation will be painful; the pustule must be pierced, squeezed, drained of its viscous humor until the root is discovered, and then the infected area must be bathed in alcohol.
The patient, clearly, kicks the doctor-cum-executioner; but the suffering passes, the evil is rooted out, the healing begins, and the curses are exchanged for a chorus of praise:
“No one has an eye like Señor So-and-so’s,” they exclaim, “he hits the nail on the head every time; it is a miracle the way he cures folk,” and so forth.
By the end they put more faith in him than in God.
And so it shall be with you.
Today you hurl a stream of abuse at me because you still feel the heat of the iron; tomorrow, when your ire has passed, you shall see how you praise me to the high heavens and kneel before me to ask my blessing.
You must be the first to sing my praises, you must convince yourself that I am your best friend, and if your condition could be exhibited without offending public decency and decorum, there would be nothing remarkable about coming out with an advertisement for me along these lines:
“Ravaged by a life-threatening fever, I was lucky enough to fall into the hands of Dr. So-and-so who, convinced that in excess even nectar is poison, immediately applied a caustic that at first made me howl in pain, but then healed me effortlessly.
“I am therefore pleased to do my duty by making public in this advertisement my deepest appreciation to this benefactor of bereaved humanity, even more so because, in his infinite kindness, he refused to charge even a penny for his toils.”
Enough calculations.
If you think your deceit has had any effect whatsoever upon me you could not be more mistaken.
This light canter through the streets of common sense has put its poison in my heels.
Decidedly, nothing consumes one quite like reflection: it is the pepsina nostra, the ostrich’s mouthful of moral indigestion.
One final push, one more step, I thought then, pacing up and down my room, and I shall be able to crawl into bed and sleep like a baby, with a clear conscience in the knowledge that I have carried out God’s will.
At that precise moment I was within reach of the servant-bell.
Shortly thereafter, Taniete walked in.
“Go to Señor Don Pepe’s,” I ordered him, “and request that he stop by before going to the office, as I need to see him urgently.”
Our man did not dally; half an hour later:
“Please be so kind as to take a seat and read the contents of this letter that I have been asked to deliver to you in person,” I said, staring at him fixedly.
First he turned bright red, then a deathly pallor overcame him and he feigned ignorance, stuttering:
“I don’t understand what all this means …”
“Then I shall tell you,” I replied. “This, friend, means that you are a first-class cad …”
“Sir!” he exclaimed, standing up in an attempt to put on airs. “I shall not stand for this!”
“Calm down,” I replied phlegmatically, taking him by the arm and pushing him back into the chair. “Do not attempt to play-act; it is unbecoming.
“Keep in mind that I am older than you, which means that it would be quite difficult for you to fool me, and take into account that I must be quite determined to have granted you the honor of receiving you in my home in order to settle the score with you.
“So I advise you not to trouble me any more than strictly necessary and to remain calm and collected, as becomes a well brought-up young man.
“When a man,” I continued, “starts off as a little scamp learning about life on the streets, touting theater tickets by night, and scavenging cigarette butts at the entrance, and fighting other boys over marbles and coppers by day, while his poor, sick mother languishes in bed suffering;
“When another man, feeling sorry for the miserable old woman and pitying the hard luck that has befallen the poor lad, reaches into his pocket for the former and attends to the education of the latter, makes somebody of him, calls him to his side and gives him a position of trust in his own home, allowing him to come and go as he pleases;
“When this 20-year-old lad, who is at a time when contact with men and the morbid milieu they mix in has not yet had the chance to pervert his heart, behaves like a barbarian, going so far as to make a common prostitute of his boss’s wife;
“When all of this occurs, methinks, I have every reason, and then some, to say that the rascal I am describing has all the makings of a perfect knave.
“This is your story, I believe, and that is what I meant a moment ago when I used an adjective that was not to your liking and that, nevertheless, illustrated precisely the behavior in question.
“In fact, it describes you down to a T.
“But what I happen to think of you is by-the-by, incidental, without my having stopped to consider you as a person, since neither your spiritual betterment nor your reform concern me in the slightest or even enter my head, since I do not aim to act as your penitentiary but rather as the safety cord used by acrobats like you to carry off the final leap on the program.
“So I shall give you the lowdown and get right to the heart of the matter.
“Your girlfriend got wise to you. She wants nothing more to do with you, as she explains categorically in the missive I have had the satisfaction of handing over to you.
“As far as that goes, there is no alternative and I advise you to abandon even the remotest glimmer of hope.
“Someone who would not, on the other hand, mind meeting up with you for ten minutes if he knew the great service for which he is indebted to you both is Juan. But as I am not entirely sure whether or not you two would see eye to eye and, as my home-owning character imposes certain urbane duties upon me, I will be courteous enough to consult you on your tastes first.
“Pay attention; I’ll be brief.”
My interlocutor, staring fixedly at the drawings of a Smyrne, facial muscles twitching, livid, wild-eyed, looked crushed, utterly aplati.
In any other situation he would have moved me to pity; in this case he inspired only rage and scorn.
So I carried on, impervious, in this vein:
“If it pains you to renounce your beloved, if it is serious and the flames of passion burn intensely within your soul, then you hold the answer in your hand: don’t give her up, but pull your socks up and be prepared for the consequences.
“I shall immediately close and lock the door, call your boss, open it back up again, enter with him, and sure as my name’s So-and-so, I’ll recount the whole sorry tale chapter and verse, handing him a revolver as I speak, and maybe even another to you just so you don’t try to claim you were shot like a defenseless dog.
“If, on the contrary, you do not go the heroic route, if you couldn’t give a bean about the woman or if, although she might mean something, your impressionable and nervous character rejects violent emotions and you opt for the happy-go-lucky, merrymaking route, we can also come to an agreement. You can’t accuse me of not being accommodating.
“I have foreseen the event and brought along this case, containing one thousand francs in cash, 20-franc denominations, this passport in your name—ordering the national authorities and begging the foreign ones to place no obstacle in the way of your transit—and, finally, this appointment for your distinguished self to occupy the demanding post of Argentine consul in… Monaco.
“Go, my young friend, go and join the ranks of those who, with a few honorable exceptions, nobly and worthily represent the republic abroad.
“I recommend roulette in Monte Carlo.
“It’s a capital little game.
“Go wild, lose the shirt off your back, have all the affairs you like, get put behind bars, or shoot yourself.
“That way we’ll be well looked-after and you will have quite effectively contributed to the rising returns on our stock, laying the foundation for our swelling national credit by putting it up through the roof, all to the great honor of the country and glory of the government that runs it.
“Here is the key,” I said, showing him my right hand.
“Here, the money and the documents,” I added, indicating the left.
“Now choose, once and for all; I haven’t got time to waste.”
Sganarelle:
J’aime mieux consentir à tout que de me faire assommer.*
MOLIERE
Overcome by strong emotions, or pretending to be:
“I swear, señor,” young Pepe exclaimed, standing up, “you will never see hide or hair of this miserable wretch again …”
He tried to go skipping off, but not so fast that I couldn’t catch up to him and stick the package between his shirt and vest, shouting:
“Eh! Là-bas! Don’t forget your documents!”
To be continued.