If at that moment—Bruno thought—Martín had had the same perspicacity that he had now, he would have been able to see or would at least have suspected that something extremely disturbing was on the point of exploding in Alejandra’s mind. And these signs could have told him that her love, or her affection, or whatever sentiment it was that she felt for him, was about to come to an end: catastrophically.
“We all have to work,” Alejandra had said at the time. “Work gives man dignity. I’ve made up my mind to go to work too.”
Despite the irony in her voice, these words made Martín happy, for he had always thought that any sort of concrete occupation would surely be good for her. And the look on Martín’s face caused Alejandra to comment: “I see that that piece of news makes you happy,” with an expression that had the same irony as before underlying it, though on top of it a few signs of tenderness appeared to be struggling to manifest themselves; just as in a field devastated by calamities (he thought later), amid the swollen, stinking bodies of dead animals, amid corpses ripped open and torn to pieces by vultures, a blade of grass or two struggles to grow despite everything, sucking up tiny invisible traces of water that by some miracle still exist far below the surface of the wasteland.
“But you shouldn’t be that happy,” she added.
And as Martín looked at her, she explained.
“I’m going to work with Wanda.”
Whereupon his happiness vanished—Martín told Bruno—like crystal clear water running off into a sewer, where one knows that it will be mingled with loathsome detritus. Because Wanda belonged to that area of her life, that milieu that Alejandra appeared to have come from when he first met her (although it would be more exact to say “when she searched him out”), an area that she had kept away from in those weeks of relative serenity; although it would also be more exact to say that he believed that she had kept away from it, because now, dizzily, he remembered that in recent days Alejandra had begun drinking again, and that her disappearances and sudden absences were becoming not only more and more frequent but more and more inexplicable. But just as it is difficult even to imagine a crime on a bright, clear day, so it was not easy for him to imagine that she might have returned to that region in the midst of their unclouded relationship. Hence he remarked stupidly (an adverb he added to his story much later): “Women’s dresses? Design women’s dresses? You?” to which she replied by asking if he did not understand the pleasure one can get from earning money by doing something that one has nothing but contempt for. A phrase that at the time seemed to him one of Alejandra’s typical clever rejoinders, but one that after her death he was to have other reasons to remember as its hideous overtones echoed in his mind.
“And what’s more, it’s like a boomerang, don’t you see? The more I despise those painted parrots, the more I despise myself. Don’t you see that I benefit no matter how you look at it?”
Phrases that kept him from sleeping that night as he analyzed them, until fatigue finally pushed him gently but firmly toward what Bruno called the provisory outskirts of death, premonitory regions wherein we work out our apprenticeship for the great sleep, awkward little stammerings of the dark ultimate adventure, confused rough drafts of the enigmatic final text, with the inferno of nightmares as transitional passages. Hence the next day we are and are not the same, for weighing over our heads are the night’s abominable secret experiences. And for that very reason we possess something of that quality of those brought back from death to life and of ghosts (Bruno used to say). Heaven only knows what perverse metamorphosis of Wanda’s soul pursued Martín during that night; in any event the next morning he felt for a long time that something heavy but indefinable was stirring in dark regions of his being, until he realized that what was moving about so confusedly deep within him was the image of Wanda. Worse still, he realized this at the very moment that he was entering that imposing waiting room, when it was impossible for him to turn back, if only out of timidity, and when the absurdity of what he was doing finally dawned on him; as in that story by Chekhov or Averchenko (he thought) in which a poor devil finally gets in to see the manager of a bank and declares that he wants to open an account by making a deposit of twenty rubles. What sort of madness was all this? And he was just on the point of summoning up all his courage and stealing out of the waiting room when he heard a Spanish flunky in a fancy doorman’s outfit call out “Señor Castillo.” In a sarcastic tone of voice, of course (he thought). Because nobody feels as much disdain for poor devils as poor devils in uniform. Very dignified men waiting in the huge leather armchairs, with shoes polished till they gleamed like mirrors, vests with the bottom button unbuttoned, and briefcases stuffed full of Decisive Papers, looked at him with puzzled, ironic expressions (he thought) as he walked toward the big door to the inner offices, as in another stratum of his consciousness he repeated “twenty rubles” to himself in bitter self-mockery, thinking of his shabby shoes with holes in the soles and his stained suit: highly respectable men, all of them, with gold watches on their wrists precisely marking off a time also made of gold, full of Important Financial Deals; a time that stood in sharp contrast to the great useless spaces of his own life, in which his one occupation was thinking on a park bench; crumbs of ragged time that stood in sharp contrast to that golden time as his miserable room in La Boca contrasted with the formidable IMPRA building. And at the very moment that he entered the holy of holies he thought “I have a fever,” as he always did in moments of intense anxiety. At the same instant he caught sight of the man sitting behind the gigantic desk in his huge armchair, a corpulent man whose hulking proportions seemed made to order for that enormous building. And with a sort of mad nervous energy Martín repeated to himself: “I’ve come, sir, to deposit twenty rubles.”
“Do sit down,” the man said to him, pointing to one of the armchairs as he went on signing Documents being presented to him by a platinum blonde exuding a sensuality that did its share to overwhelm him even more, because (he supposed) she would be capable of stripping herself naked in front of him as though he were simply an artifact, an object with neither a consciousness nor senses; or as great favorites undress before their slaves. “Wanda,” he thought then: Wanda drinking dry martinis, flirting with men, with him even, laughing her frivolous, sensual laugh, moistening her lips with her tongue, eating bonbons the way his mother did. At the same time he caught sight of a little chromed mast on the huge desk, flying a miniature Argentine flag; a leather desk cover; an enormous autographed portrait of Perón signed “To Señor Molinari”; various framed Diplomas; a photograph in a leather frame turned toward Señor Molinari; a plastic thermos bottle; and Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” in gothic script, framed on one of the walls. Endless numbers of clerks and functionaries kept parading in and out with papers, and the platinum blonde secretary as well; she had gone out and then come back in to show Molinari other Papers as he spoke to her in a low voice, without the slightest trace of familiarity however, so that no one, least of all the Employees of the Establishment, would possibly suspect that she was sleeping with the Boss.
And then turning to Martín, he said:
“So you’re a friend of Drucha’s.”
And seeing the youngster’s baffled look, he laughed and commented, as though it were terribly funny: “Ah, yes, of course, of course,” as Martín, dumbfounded, rent with jealousy, said to himself Alejandra, Alejandrucha, Drucha, despite which, or precisely because of which, he took inventory of that tall, corpulent man, dressed in a dark cashmere suit with light-colored stripes, a blue tie with little red polka dots and a pearl stickpin, a silk shirt with gold cufflinks, a silk handkerchief peeking out of the top pocket of his suitcoat, and a Rotary pin in his lapel. A man gone nearly bald, but with what little hair he had left carefully brushed and combed. A man who smelled of cologne and who appeared to have shaved a tenth of a second before Martín had entered his office. And in terror Martín heard him say as he leaned back in his chair, prepared to entertain Mart
ín’s Important Proposition:
“What can I do for you?”
A curious desire to mortify himself, to humiliate himself, to confess to the world once and for all his frightful insignificance and his stupid naiveté (so Molinari called Alejandra Drucha, did he?), almost impelled Martín to say: “I’ve come to deposit twenty rubles.” He managed to repress this curious impulse, and with enormous difficulty, as in a nightmare, he explained that he was out of work and that perhaps … just possibly … he had thought … he had imagined that there might be some sort of job for him at IMPRA. And as he spoke Señor Molinari’s frown grew deeper and deeper, until nothing remained of his initial professional smile as he asked him where he had last worked.
“In the López Print Works.”
“In what capacity?”
“Proofreader.”
“How many hours a day?”
Martín remembered what Alejandra had said, and flushing, he confessed that he had had no fixed working hours, that he had taken proofs home with him to correct. At this moment Señor Molinari’s frown grew even deeper as he listened to a message over the intercom.
“And why did you lose that job?”
Martín explained that in the printing business there are times when there is a great deal of work and other times when there is less, and that in the latter case free-lance proofreaders are let go.
The secretary came in again and said something in Molinari’s ear. He nodded, the secretary went out again, and he listened once more to a message over the intercom, something about a representative in Córdoba this time, to which his only reply was: “We’ll see next week.” He jotted something down in a notebook, and then, turning back to Martín, he said:
“So when work picks up they’ll no doubt take you on again.”
Martín’s face turned red again, as the thought crossed his mind that this man was altogether too shrewd and his last question intended to make him confess to the truth, a truth that naturally was fatal:
“No, Señor Molinari, I don’t believe so.”
“And why is that?” he asked, drumming on the desk top with his fingertips.
“I think, sir, that I had too many things on my mind and …”
Molinari eyed him in silence, with a cold, penetrating look. Lowering his eyes, Martín found himself saying, without consciously intending to do so: “I need work, sir, I’m having a hard time of it, I’m desperate for money,” and when he raised his eyes, it seemed to him that he noted an ironic gleam in Molinari’s.
“Well, I’m terribly sorry, Señor del Castillo, but I can’t help you. In the first place our work here is very different from the sort you did at the print works. But there’s another very important reason as well: you’re a friend of Alejandra’s and this creates a very delicate problem for me here in the organization. We prefer to have a more impersonal relationship with our employees. I don’t know if you follow me.”
“Yes, sir, I understand perfectly,” Martín said, rising to his feet.
Perhaps Molinari noted something in Martín’s attitude that displeased him.
“Nonetheless, when you’re older … How old are you? Twenty?”
“Nineteen, sir.”
“When you’re older you’ll see that I’m right. And you’re even going to thank me for not taking you on. I’d be doing you no service, you see, if I were to give you a job simply because we have a mutual friend, especially if within a short time, as is not at all difficult to foresee, we’d be having difficulties.”
He examined a Document that had been brought in to him, made a few observations in a low voice, and then went on:
“That would have unfortunate consequences for you, for our organization, and even for Alejandra …. I have the impression, moreover, that you’re too proud to accept a job that’s offered you merely because we have a mutual friend, isn’t that so? Because if I were to make a place here for you merely to do Alejandra a favor you wouldn’t accept my taking you on, isn’t that true?”
“That’s true, sir.”
“I thought as much. And we’d all come out losers in the end: you, the Company, mutual friends, everybody. My motto is never to mix sentiments with figures.”
At that moment a man with Papers came in, but he looked at Martín as though he were at a loss as to what to do with him sitting there. Martín again rose to his feet, but Molinari, taking the papers and starting to examine them without looking up, told him to stay because he hadn’t finished what he had to say to him. And as Molinari went through the memorandum or whatever it was, Martín, terribly nervous and humiliated and bewildered, tried to figure the whole thing out: why Molinari was keeping him there, why he was wasting his time with a nobody like him. And to top it all off, the office Mechanism suddenly seemed to go berserk: calls on one or another of the four telephones, conversations over the intercom, the platinum blonde popping in and out, the signing of Papers. When Molinari was informed over the intercom that Señor Wilson wanted to know what had been decided about the Central Bank matter, Martín thought surely he loomed no larger in this entire picture than an insect. Then, on being asked a question by the secretary, Molinari, with unexpected vehemence, almost shouted:
“Let him wait!”
And just as she was about to go out the door, he added:
“And I don’t want anybody bothering me till I call. Have you got that straight?”
There was a sudden silence: everyone appeared to have vanished, the telephone stopped ringing, and Señor Molinari, nervous and ill-humored, sat there thoughtfully for a moment, drumming on his desktop with his fingertips. And then, eyeing Martín intently, he asked:
“Where exactly did you meet Alejandra?”
“At a friend’s house,” Martín lied, turning beet red because he never told lies, but realizing that he would cover himself with ridicule if he told the truth.
Molinari appeared to be scrutinizing him very intently:
“Are you a close friend of hers?”
“I don’t know … what I mean to say is …”
Molinari raised his right hand, as though there were no need for Martín to go into further detail. After a moment, still observing Martín attentively, he went on:
“You young people today think men of my generation are reactionaries. The fact is, however, and I know this will surprise you, I was a Socialist in my heyday.”
At that moment an Important Man peeked in through the side door.
“Come in, come in,” Molinari said to him.
The man came over to Molinari, put an arm around his shoulders, and murmured something in his ear, as Molinari nodded his head.
“All right, all right,” he commented, “that’s fine, let them do as they like.”
And then, with what seemed to Martín to be a secretly mocking smile, he added, pointing to him with a little wave of his hand:
“This young man here is a friend of Alejandra’s.”
The unknown man, his arm still draped across the back of Molinari’s chair, smiled at Martín dubiously, and acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod.
“You’ve come at just the right moment, Héctor,” Molinari said. “You are aware, naturally, of how concerned I am about the problem of Argentine young people.”
The unknown man looked at Martín.
“I was just saying to him that young people always think that the older generation isn’t worth anything, that the way it goes about things is all wrong, that we’re all a bunch of reactionaries, and so on and so forth.”
The unknown man smiled benevolently, and Martín had the impression that he looked upon him as a representative of the New Generation. And the thought also crossed his mind that the Struggle between Generations was such an uneven battle that his feeling that this entire situation was absurd was suddenly even more overwhelming, though he would have thought such a thing impossible at that point: the two of them, behind that imposing desk, with the entire IMPRA corporation, the autographed photo of Perón, the Mast wi
th the Flag, the Rotary Club International, and the twelve-story building to back them up; and confronting them there he was, with his threadbare suit and his belly that had been empty for two whole days now. More or less like the Zulus defending themselves against the imperial British Army with nothing but arrows and painted leather shields, he thought.
“As I was telling you, I was a Socialist, even an anarchist in fact, in my day too”—and at that both he and the man who had just come in smiled broadly, as though remembering something amusing—“and my friend Pérez Moretti here wouldn’t let me lie to you on that score, because the two of us have been through a lot together. What’s more, you mustn’t get the idea we’re ashamed of our past. I happen to be one of those who think it’s not a bad thing for young people to have pure ideals like that in their salad days; there’s plenty of time for them to lose such illusions later on. Later on life proves to you that man is not made for such utopian societies. In all this world there are not even two men who are alike: one is ambitious, the other an idler; one is active, the other indolent; one wants to make his way up in the world, like my friend Pérez Moretti or myself, and the other couldn’t care less if he spends his whole life as a miserable second-rater. In a word, why go on? Man is by nature unequal, and it is useless to try to found societies in which everyone is equal. Moreover, just think what a vast injustice that would be: why should a hard worker get as much as a loafer? And why should a genius, an Edison, a Henry Ford, be treated in the same way as an unfortunate wretch born to mop up the floor of this room? Doesn’t it seem to you that that would be an enormous injustice? And how, in the name of justice, precisely in the name of justice, can a reign of injustices be instituted? This is one of this world’s many paradoxes, and I’ve always been of the opinion that it ought to be spelled out in big capital letters and dealt with at length. I confess that I myself have often been tempted to write something along those lines,” he said, looking at Pérez Moretti as though taking him as his witness. And as Martín noted how the latter stood there nodding his head in agreement, he asked himself: Why in the world is this man wasting all this time with me?, and arrived at the conclusion that there must be some vitally important connection between Molinari and Alejandra, something that for some mysterious reason meant a lot to this man; and the very idea that there could be important ties of any sort between Molinari and Alejandra tormented him more and more as the interview went on, for the length of the interview was no doubt a measure of the importance of those ties. And then he began to wonder again about Alejandra’s reasons for sending him to Molinari, and without knowing why exactly, he concluded that she had done so in order to “prove something,” at a time when their relationship was entering a dark period. He therefore began to review once more all the episodes, both important ones and trivial ones, surrounding the name “Molinari” in his memory, as a detective searches with his magnifying glass for any trace or sign, however insignificant it might appear to be at first glance, that could possibly lead to the truth. But his brain got all confused, for Molinari’s voice, as he went on expatiating upon his General Conception of the World, was superimposed upon this anxious search for enlightenment. “The passing of the years, life, which is hard and pitiless, little by little convince one that such ideals, however noble they may be, because there is no question that they are extremely noble ideals, are not made for men such as they really are. They are ideals conjured up by dreamers, by poets, I am tempted to say. They are surpassingly beautiful, hence very conducive to the writing of books, to the delivering of speeches on the barricades, yet utterly impossible to put into practice. I’d like to see a Kropotkin or a Malatesta managing a corporation like this one and struggling day after day with the regulations imposed by the Central Bank (and at this point he laughed, with Señor Pérez Moretti joining in with a hearty laugh of his own) and having to engage in a thousand and one maneuvers to keep the labor unions or Perón, or both of them together, from tripping a person up. Or taking things from another point of view, it’s all very well for a boy or a girl to have those ideals of unselfishness, or social justice and theoretical societies. But then you get married, you want to regularize your situation in the eyes of society, you must settle down and make a home, the natural aspiration of anyone with a decent background, and this brings about the gradual abandonment of these chimeras, if you follow me. It’s very easy to uphold the anarchist doctrine when you’re young and being supported by your parents. But it’s another thing altogether to have to confront life, to find yourself obliged to support the household you’ve established, especially when children and other obligations that go with family life come along: clothes, school, textbooks, illnesses. Social theories are all well and good, but when it’s necessary to bring home the bacon, as the vulgar saying goes, it’s necessary then, my young friend, to bow to reality and realize that the world isn’t made for idle dreamers, for Malatestas or Kropotkins. And please note that I’m talking only about anarchist theoreticians, because they at least don’t preach the dictatorship of the proletariat the way the Communists do. Can you imagine anything as horrendous as a dictatorial government? Take Russia, for example. Millions of slaves laboring under the knout. Freedom, my friend, is sacred, it is one of the great values that we must preserve, at whatever cost. Freedom for all: freedom for the worker, to seek work wherever he chooses, and freedom for the employer, to give work to anyone he pleases. The law of supply and demand and the free play of the social mechanism. Take your own case: you come here, of your own free will, and offer me your labor; for x reasons it doesn’t suit me and I don’t accept it. But you are a free man and can leave here and offer your services to the company across the street. Just think how invaluable all that is: you, a humble young man, and I, the president of a great corporation, are nonetheless on an equal footing as we act in accordance with this law of supply and demand; those in favor of a controlled economy can say what they please, but this is the supreme law of any well-organized society and each time that this man (he pointed to the autographed photo of Perón), each time that this man interferes with the workings of free enterprise it only does us harm, and in the final analysis it harms the country. And that’s why my motto, as my friend Pérez Moretti knows very well, is: neither dictatorships nor social utopias. And I won’t say a word about the other problems, the ones we might call problems of an ethical and moral nature, inasmuch as man does not live by bread alone. I am talking about the need of the society in which we live for order, for a moral hierarchy, without which, believe me, everything collapses. Would you like it, for instance, if someone were to question your mother’s decency? Please understand: that is a hypothetical case that I permit myself to put before you as an example. I note that you yourself frowned just now; that does you honor, for it reveals in and of itself precisely how sacred the concept of the mother is for you, as it is for me. Well then, how to reconcile this concept with a society in which free love exists, in which no one is responsible for the children swarming all over the place, in which marriage has been thrown overboard as a mere bourgeois institution? I don’t know if you understand what I mean. If the foundations of the home are undermined … Is something wrong?”