When he examined that old document stored in his memory, some of the things that she had said stood out with almost cruel clarity, words that after her death took on an unexpected meaning. Yes: between that peaceful afternoon when they had walked hand in hand and the grotesque interview with Molinari Bordenave had entered the picture. Something frightful had suddenly made its appearance.
15
Then, without having headed there consciously, Martín found himself outside Chichín’s place, and as he entered he heard Barragán the Madman, who as usual was drinking cane brandy and preaching the while, saying: Times of blood and fire are coming, my boys, waving his right index finger threateningly and prophetically at the older youngsters who were making fun of him, incapable of taking anything seriously except Perón or the Sunday soccer match with Ferrocarril Oeste. At that moment Martín’s mind was occupied by the thought that Alejandra had paled when they had met, although it was also possible that this was merely the impression he had had, since it was not easy to establish that fact unequivocally inasmuch as she had been sitting in the shadow beneath the hood of the convertible; a fact that was enormously important, of course, inasmuch as it would indicate that she and Bordenave had not simply met by accident but had deliberately planned to do so, but how and when, for the love of heaven, how and when? Times of vengeance, my boys, and making gestures as though he were writing in the air with his right hand, in huge letters, Barragán added: It is written, whereupon the bunch of older boys laughed fit to kill, and Martín reflected that even if Alejandra had in fact paled this was not a fact whose meaning was unequivocal, since it might well have been a sign of the embarrassment she had felt at Martín’s discovering her in the company of an individual for whom her contempt had been obvious. And furthermore, how could the two of them have expressly planned to meet if she didn’t even know where Bordenave lived? Even in his most feverish imaginings it seemed inconceivable to Martín that she would have looked up his address or his telephone number in the phone book and called him. Times of blood and fire, for this accursed city, this new Babylon must be purified by fire, inasmuch as we are all sinners although there still remained the possibility, of course, that they had met in the bar of the Plaza, a bar that Alejandra obviously frequented or had at one time frequented, as was revealed by the fact that she had led him directly there on the day of that meeting with Bordenave, so that perhaps she had gone into the bar (but what for, in heaven’s name, what for?) and on meeting Bordenave there the two of them might perhaps have struck up a conversation, most probably with Bordenave making the first overtures since it was evident that he was a skirt-chaser and a man of the world. Yes, laugh, you bunch of ne’er-do-wells, but I tell you we must go through blood and fire, and even though all of them laughed, and Barragán himself seemed to join in the laughter at his expense, being the good-natured sort he was, his eyes nonetheless took on a more feverish gleam as they lighted on Martín, a prophetic gleam perhaps, despite the fact that the eyes thus illuminated were those of a modest neighborhood prophet, and a dull-witted one in his cups at that (but, as Bruno might have reflected, what do we know of the instruments that fate elects in order to subtly further its dark designs? And perhaps, given the ambiguous and perverse ways in which it customarily proceeds, was it not possible that it might transmit its cunning messages through the intermediary of beings rarely taken seriously, such as madmen and children?), and as though it were another person speaking, not the one who was joking about with the kids in the bar, Barragán added: But not you, my boy, not you, because you must save us all, and everybody suddenly stopped talking and a silence surrounded the madman’s unexpected words, though immediately thereafter the kids returned to the attack and asked: Hey, madman, tell us what number’s going to win tomorrow, but Barragán, shaking his head, drinking his cane brandy, answered: All right, go ahead and laugh, but you’ll see that what I’m telling you is true, you’ll see it with your very own eyes, because this whorish city must be punished and Someone must come, for the world can’t go on this way, whereupon Martín, impressed, staring at him intently, suddenly saw a connection between his words and Alejandra’s concerning premonitory dreams and purification by fire.
“They’ve taken Christ away from us and what have they given us in return? Cars, airplanes, electric refrigerators. But you, Chichín, just to take you for an example, are you any happier now that you have an electric refrigerator than you were when Acuña with the gimpy leg came to deliver you blocks of ice? Let’s suppose—and it’s only a supposition—that tomorrow you, Loiácono, could go to the Moon”—a phrase that was greeted with roars of laughter—“listen, you idiots, I’m just supposing, I tell you—anyway, so what, would that make you any happier than you are now?”
“What kind of happiness you talking about, preacher, when I ain’t ever been happy in my whole fuckin’ life?” Loiácono answered in a surly tone of voice.
“Okay, okay, I’m just supposing, I tell you. But I’m asking you: would you be any happier if you could go to the Moon?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Loiácono answered bitterly.
But Barragán the Madman went on with his preaching, turning a deaf ear to Loiácono’s answer since his question had been merely a rhetorical one.
“That’s the reason why I tell you, boys, that the place to look for happiness is right in your own heart. But to do that Christ had to come again. We’ve forgotten him, we’ve forgotten his teachings, we’ve forgotten that he suffered martyrdom for our sins, for our salvation. We’re a bunch of miserable wretches and bastards. And if he comes again, we may not even be able to recognize him and maybe we’d make mock of him.”
“How much you want to bet you’re Christ yourself and here we are making fun of you like fuck-all,” Díaz commented.
They all laughed fit to kill at Díaz’s joke, but Barragán, shaking his head with the kindly smile of a drunk, went on, sounding more and more thick-tongued:
“We’re all sad” (at that a number of them protested, saying hey look, not me, preacher, and so on). “We’re a sad bunch, all of us. Let’s not fool ourselves. And why are we all sad? Because our hearts are unsatisfied, because we know we’re miserable bastards. Because we’re unjust, we’re thieves, because our souls are full of hate. And we all keep running and running. And what for, I ask you? And where to? We’re all struggling to save up a little pile of dough for ourselves, but what for? Aren’t we all going to die, every last one of us? And what do we want to live for if we don’t believe in God?”
“Hey, knock it off, that’s enough of a sermon,” Loiácono said. “You’re a great one to talk, madman. Lots of God, lots of Christ, and lots of running off from here”—he pointed to his mouth—“but you make your old lady work like a dog to support you while you’re hanging around in here making fancy speeches.”
Mad Barragán looked him up and down with a kindly gaze. He took a swallow of his cane brandy and asked:
“And who told you I’m not a real swine?”
He pointed to his little glass of cane brandy and said in a sorrowful voice:
“I’m a souse and a madman, boys. They call me Barragán the Madman. I drink like a fish, I spend my days just bumming around and thinking, while my old lady slaves away from sunup to sundown. But what can I do? That’s the way I was born to live and the way I’ll die. I’m a bastard and I don’t deny it. But that isn’t what I’m trying to tell you, boys. Don’t they say that little kids and madmen tell the truth? Well, I’m a madman, and lots of times, I swear by this cross I’m wearing, I don’t even know why I keep talking.”
They all laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh. But I tell you that Christ came to me one night and told me: ‘Madman, the world must be purged by blood and fire, something tremendous has to happen, the fire will fall on all men alike, and I say unto you that not a stone will be left standing.’ That’s what Christ himself told me.”
All the boys doubled over with laughter except Loiácono.
br />
“All right, boys, go to it, laugh to your heart’s content. Laugh and we’ll see what happens. There’s only one of you here that knows what I’m saying.”
The laughter died away and a sudden silence followed these last words. But immediately thereafter they all went back to kidding around and arguing about who was going to win the Sunday soccer match.
But Martín looked intently at the Madman as he again remembered Alejandra’s words having to do with fire.
16
Alejandra didn’t show up. But Wanda dropped by with a message from her: she wouldn’t be able to see him that week.
“Much work,” she added, contemplating her cigarette lighter that played a tune.
“Much work,” Martín repeated, as the image of Bordenave insidiously came to his mind.
Wanda stood there lighting the lighter and extinguishing it several times.
“She’ll call you.”
“All right.”
An enormous weight kept him from rising to his feet after Wanda had left, but finally he managed to get up and telephone Bruno. He was shy and reserved over the phone, and didn’t tell Bruno he would like to see him, but Bruno nonetheless ended the conversation by urging him to come over.
He sat down in one corner and Bruno tried to distract him by talking about anything and everything under the sun.
He talked to Martín about the book that he was reading, one about time, and explained to him the difference between the time of astronomers and human time, meanwhile reflecting that none of all that could be very useful to Martín save as a simple distraction. No abstract consideration, even though it had a bearing on human problems, could ever serve to console a single human being, to alleviate any of the sadnesses and anxieties that might afflict a concrete flesh-and-blood creature, a poor creature with eyes that peer anxiously (toward what or toward whom?), a creature who survives only through hope. Because happily (he thought) man is not made only of desperation but of faith and hope; not only of death but of desire for life; not only of loneliness but of moments of communion and love. For if desperation were to prevail, we would all allow ourselves to die or kill ourselves and this is not at all what happens. Which in Bruno’s opinion only served to prove the minimal importance of reason, since it is not reasonable to nourish hopes in this world in which we live. Our reason, our intelligence are constantly proving to us that this world is frightful; that is why reason is destructive and leads to scepticism, to cynicism, and in the end to annihilation. Fortunately, however, man is almost never a reasonable being, and therefore hope is reborn again and again amid calamities. And this very rebirth of something so absurd, so subtly and profoundly absurd, so baseless, is proof that man is not a rational being. And hence once earthquakes have leveled a vast region of Japan or Chile; once a gigantic flood has wiped out hundreds of thousands of Chinese in the Yangtze basin; once a cruel war, and a senseless one for the immense majority of its victims, such as the Thirty Year’s War, has mutilated and tortured, brought on murder and rape, burned and destroyed women, children, and villages, the survivors, those who have witnessed, in helpless terror, these calamities visited upon them by nature or by men, those very beings who in those moments of desperation thought that they would never want to be alive again and never would, or never could begin their lives anew, those very same men and women (the women especially, because woman is life itself and mother earth, she who never loses a last small shred of hope), those same frail human beings nonetheless begin, like stupid but heroic little ants, to rebuild their little world of every day all over again: a small world, it is true, but for that very reason one that is all the more moving. So that it is not ideas that have saved the world, it is not intellect or reason, but their diametrical opposite: men’s senseless hopes, their stubborn rage to survive, their ardent desire to breathe as long as possible, their petty, stubborn, grotesque heroism from day to day in the face of misfortune. And if anxiety is the experience of Nothingness, a sort of ontological proof of Nothingness, might not hope be the proof of a Hidden Meaning of Existence, something worth fighting for? And since hope is more powerful than anxiety (since it always triumphs over it, otherwise all of us would kill ourselves), might it not be that this Hidden Meaning is truer, so to speak, than the famous Nothingness?
Meanwhile, on a more superficial plane, Bruno said something to Martín that had no apparent connection with these profound reflections, though in reality it was connected to them by irrational but vital links.
“I’ve always thought I’d like to be something like a fireman.”
Martín looked at him in surprise. And Bruno, thinking that perhaps reflections of this sort might be useful to Martín in his unhappy state, made a few further comments, accompanying them, however, with a smile that lessened their pretentiousness.
“Yes, a corporal in a fire brigade perhaps. Because then one would feel that he was devoting his life to something of benefit to the entire community, acting on behalf of others, and what is more, facing danger, risking death in the performance of this mission. And because if one were a corporal I suppose he would feel a responsibility for his little group. In their eyes he would be the law and hope. A little world in which one’s soul would become one with a little collective soul. So that the sorrows of one would be the sorrows of all, and the joys too, and the danger of one the danger of all. Knowing, furthermore, that one can and must trust one’s comrades, that in those extreme situations of life, in those ill-defined and dizzying realms in which death suddenly confronts us in all its fury, they, the comrades, will fight against it, will defend us and suffer and hope for us. And besides that, the petty and modest daily routine of keeping the equipment clean, polishing the bronze fittings, honing the axes, living in a simple way these everyday moments that nonetheless are a prelude to danger and death.”
He took his glasses off and wiped them clean.
“I have often imagined Saint-Exupéry up there in his little plane, fighting a storm in the middle of the Atlantic, heroic and reserved, saying not a word, with his radio operator sitting behind him, united by the silence and by friendship, by the common danger but also by common hope; listening to the roar of the engine, anxiously checking the fuel gauges, looking at each other. Camaraderie in the face of death.”
He put his glasses back on and smiled, with a far-away look in his eyes.
“Well, perhaps one admires most what one is not capable of doing oneself. I don’t know if I’d be capable of going through with so much as the hundredth part of any one of Saint-Exupéry’s exploits. That, of course, is heroism on a grand scale. But I meant that even on a small scale … corporal in a fire brigade … I, on the other hand … what am I? A solitary, contemplative sort, a useless person. I don’t even know if I’ll ever manage to write a novel or a play. And even if I did … I don’t know if any of that can possibly be as valuable as belonging to a platoon and watching over one’s comrades’ sleep and their lives, rifle in hand …. It doesn’t matter that war is the handiwork of bastards, of thieves in the world of finance or petroleum: that platoon, that sleep watched over, that faith between comrades will always be absolute values.”