On Heroes and Tombs
When Alejandra came back from phoning, Martín told her there was no coffee, and she suggested they go to the Moscow to have a drink.
But it was closed. They knocked and waited but no one came to the door.
They asked at the newspaper stand on the corner.
“What, you didn’t know?”
Vanya had been locked up in the insane asylum at Vieytes.
It seemed symbolic: that bar was the first one in which he had been happy with Alejandra. At the most depressing moments in his relationship with her the memory of that evening always came back to Martín’s mind, the peace he had felt as he sat there next to the window, watching night descend on the roofs of Buenos Aires. Never had he felt that far away from the city, from tumult and fury, lack of understanding and cruelty; never had he felt so far removed from his mother’s filth, the obsession with money, the atmosphere of shady deals, cynicism, and the resentment of all against all. There in that tiny but powerful refuge, beneath the gaze of that man given over to alcohol and drugs, at once a failure and a generous man, it had seemed as though the vulgar reality of the world outside had vanished. The thought occurred to him later that perhaps it was inevitable that beings as sensitive as Vanya ended up addicted to alcohol or drugs. And those clumsy frescoes on the walls, those crude images of Vanya’s far-off homeland also touched him. How moving all that was, precisely because it was so awkwardly done and so naive! It was not pretentious painting done by a bad artist who is convinced he has talent, but undoubtedly scenes executed by a painter who was as heavy a drinker and as great a failure as Vanya himself; as unhappy and as permanently exiled from his homeland as he; condemned to live here, in a country that for both of them was absurd and the very end of the world; until the day they died. And those images, even as awkwardly painted as they were, nonetheless served in some way to remind them of their far-off homeland, just as stage scenery, even though it may be made of paper, even though it may be crude and primitive, somehow contributes to making a drama or a tragedy real to us.
The man at the newspaper stand shook his head.
“He was a good man,” he said.
And this verb in the past tense suddenly made the sinister meaning of the walls of the madhouse a grim reality.
They walked back to the Paseo Colón.
“In the end that filthy bitch got what she was after,” Alejandra commented.
She had suddenly become very depressed and suggested going to La Boca.
When they reached the intersection of Pedro de Mendoza and Almirante Brown they went to the bar on the corner.
A fat, sweaty black was walking off a Brazilian freighter named Recife.
“Louis Armstrong,” Alejandra remarked, pointing with her sandwich.
Afterwards they went walking along the docks. After strolling along for a fair distance, they sat down in an unsheltered spot along the edge of the wharfs, looking out at the signal lights.
“There are days of the week that are astrologically bad,” Alejandra remarked.
Martín looked at her.
“Which day is bad for you?” he asked.
“Tuesday.”
“And which color?”
“Black.”
“Mine’s violet.”
“Violet?” Alejandra asked in a rather surprised tone of voice.
“I read that in Maribel.”
“I see that you choose worthwhile reading material for yourself.”
“It’s one of my mother’s favorite magazines, one of the great sources of her culture,” Martín said. “It’s her Critique of Pure Reason.”
Alejandra shook her head.
“For astrology, there’s nothing that can beat Damas y Damitas. It’s terrific …”
They watched the ships going in and out. One with a gleaming white hull, long and slender, like a great seabird, was gliding over the Riachuelo, being towed toward the mouth of the river. The drawbridge slowly lifted and the ship passed through, sounding its siren repeatedly. And the contrast between the sleekness and elegance of the ship’s lines, its silent slipping through the water, and the powerful, hooting tugboats was striking.
Doña Anita Segunda, Alejandra said, pointing to the name of the tugboat in front.
These names used to delight them and they would have contests and set up prizes for the one who discovered the prettiest: Garibaldi Tercero, La Nueva Teresina. Doña Anita Segunda wasn’t bad, but Martín was no longer thinking of contests; he was thinking, rather, of how all that belonged to a time that was gone forever now.
The tugboat hooted, giving off a column of twisting black smoke. The cables were as taut as bowstrings.
“I always have the feeling that one of these days some tugboat is going to have a hernia come popping out,” Alejandra remarked.
He thought disconsolately that all this, all of it, would now disappear from his life. Like that ship: departing silently but inexorably, heading for far-off unknown ports.
“What are you thinking about, Martín?”
“Things.”
“Tell me.”
“Just things, vague things I can’t put into words.”
“Don’t be mean. Tell me.”
“The times when we had contests. The times when we made plans to leave this city and go off somewhere.”
“Yes,” she nodded.
All of a sudden Martín informed her that he had managed to get hold of some ampoules that caused an immediate fatal cardiac arrest.
“You don’t say,” Alejandra commented, with no signs of any great interest.
He showed them to her. Then he said gloomily:
“Do you remember how we once talked of killing ourselves together?”
“Yes.”
Martín looked at her and then put the ampoules back into his pocket.
It was already dark and Alejandra said they could go back now.
“Are you going downtown?” Martín asked, thinking sorrowfully that everything was almost over now.
“No, I’m going back to my place.”
“Would you like me to see you home?”
He affected an indifferent tone, but it was an anxious question.
“All right, if you want to,” she replied hesitantly.
When they arrived in front of the house, Martín felt he couldn’t possibly say goodbye to her there, and begged her to let him come upstairs with her.
Again she hesitated but finally said yes.
And once in the Mirador, Martín seemed to collapse, as though all the world’s misfortunes had fallen on his shoulders. He threw himself on the bed and wept.
Alejandra sat down beside him.
“It’s better, Martín, it’s better for you. I know what I’m talking about. We mustn’t see each other any more.”
Between sobs, he told her that in that case he was going to kill himself with the ampoules that he’d shown her.
She sat there thoughtfully, not knowing what to do.
Little by little Martín calmed down and then what ought not to have happened happened, and after it was all over he heard her say:
“I saw you again because you promised we wouldn’t go this far. In a certain sense, Martín, you’ve committed a sort of …”
But she did not finish the sentence.
“A sort of what?” Martín asked fearfully.
“Never mind, it’s over and done with now.”
She got up and began to get dressed.
They left the Mirador and Alejandra announced that she wanted to go have a drink somewhere. Her tone of voice was harsh and gloomy.
She walked along distractedly, concentrating on some obsessive, secret thought.
She had her first drink in one of the cheap bistros down at the port and then, as always when that vague restlessness, that sort of blankness of mind that made Martín so anxious began to take possession of her, she refused to remain very long in any one bar and it was necessary to leave and find another.
She was nervous and on edge, as tho
ugh she had to catch a train and must keep close track of the time, drumming her fingers on the table, not listening to what he said to her or answering “Hmmm, what?” not taking in a single word.
Finally she went into a cheap bar in the windows of which were photographs of half-naked women and singers appearing in the floor show. The lighting inside the place was reddish. The proprietress was talking in German with a sailor who was drinking something in a very tall red glass. One could glimpse sailors and ships’ officers sitting at the little tables with whores from the Parque Retiro. A woman of about fifty, with platinum blonde hair and her face plastered with garish makeup, came out onto the stage then. Her enormous breasts seemed about to burst beneath her satin dress like two overinflated balloons. Her wrists, her fingers, and her neck were loaded down with fake jewels that glittered in the reddish light of the stage. Her voice was raucous and vulgar, and hoarse from drinking.
Alejandra stared at her, fascinated.
“What’s come over you?” Martín asked anxiously.
But she didn’t answer, her eyes still riveted on the fat woman.
“Alejandra,” he said again, touching her arm insistently. “Alejandra.”
She finally looked at him.
“What’s so fascinating?”
“She’s such a wreck. She can’t sing and she can’t be much good in bed any more either, except to satisfy certain fantasies. Who would want to take on a monster like that?”
Her eyes turned back to the singer again and she murmured, as though talking to herself:
“What I wouldn’t give to be like her!”
Martín looked at her in utter stupefaction.
Then his astonishment was followed by a feeling, habitual by now, of sadness and anxious loneliness in the face of the enigma of Alejandra, that enigma that condemned him to remain forever outside. And experience had already amply proved to him that when she reached that point her inexplicable rancor toward him would be unleashed, that burning, sarcastic resentment that he could find no explanation for and that in this last period of their relationship would suddenly come violently to the surface.
So when she turned her eyes toward him again, eyes glassy from alcohol, he knew already that cruel, vindictive words were about to come pouring out of her tense, scornful lips.
She looked at him for a few seconds that seemed an eternity to him, there from the height of her infernal pedestal: she resembled nothing so much as one of those ancient, bloodthirsty Aztec divinities who demand that the hearts torn from the breasts of the sacrificial victims be offered them still hot and palpitating. And then she said to him in a low, vehement voice:
“I don’t want to see you here! Go away this instant and leave me alone!”
Martín tried to calm her, but succeeded only in making her more furious still. Rising to her feet she screamed at him to leave.
He got up from the table like an automaton and started for the door, amid the stares of the sailors and whores.
Once outside, the fresh air began to revive him. He walked to Retiro and finally sat down on one of the benches in the Plaza Británica: the clock in the tower said eleven-thirty.
His head was one vast chaos.
For a moment he tried to hold himself together, but then he broke down completely.
19
Several days went by, and then in desperation Martín dialed the number of the boutique; but when he heard Wanda’s voice on the other end he didn’t have the heart to say anything and hung up. He waited three days and called again. This time it was Alejandra who answered.
“Why are you so surprised?” she said. “We agreed, I seem to recall, we wouldn’t see each other any more.”
A confused conversation ensued, with Martín stammering something more or less incomprehensible, and finally Alejandra promised to be at the bar on Charcas and Esmeralda the following day. But she didn’t show up.
After waiting for more than an hour, Martín decided to go to the shop.
The door of the boutique was ajar, and there in the darkness, in the light of a dim lamp, he saw Bobby, in profile, sitting all alone. There was no one else in the room and Bobby was all hunched over, staring down at the floor, as though deep in thought. Martín stood there not knowing what to do next. It was obvious that neither Wanda nor Alejandra was in the back room, because if they were there would have been the sound of conversation and everything was silent. They were undoubtedly in the little fitting room that Wanda had upstairs in the rear of the apartment, which could be reached by climbing a little stairway; because otherwise Bobby’s presence and the fact that the door of the boutique was open were inexplicable.
But Martín couldn’t bring himself to go in: something about Bobby’s lonely, self-absorbed air kept him from doing so. Perhaps it was just because he was sitting there like that, all hunched over, but he looked older somehow, and on his face was a grave expression that Martín had never seen before. Without quite knowing why, he suddenly felt sorry for that lonely man. For many years he was to remember him that way, and would ponder the question as to whether he had experienced that feeling of pity for him, that ambiguous sense of sadness for him at that very moment or years afterward. And he remembered something that Bruno had said to him: that it is always terrible to see a man who believes himself to be absolutely and unquestionably alone, for there is something tragic about him, something sacred almost, and at the same time something horrible and shameful. For we always wear a mask, Bruno said, a mask that is never the same but changes for each one of the roles that life assigns us: the mask of professor, of lover, of intellectual, of cuckolded husband, of hero, of affectionate brother. But what mask do we put on or what mask do we have left when we are all alone, when we believe that no one, absolutely no one is observing us, keeping tabs on us, listening to us, making demands of us, begging us, threatening us, attacking us? Perhaps the sacred nature of that instant is owed to the fact that man is then face to face with Divinity, or at least face to face with his own implacable conscience. And perhaps no one can forgive having been surprised with his face stripped down to this ultimate and essential nakedness, the most terrible and the most essential of nakednesses, because it reveals the soul in all its helplessness. And since this was all the more terrible and humiliating for a born actor like Bobby, it was logical (Martín thought) that he should awaken more compassion than an ingenuous or simple-hearted person. Hence when Martín finally made up his mind to go in, he silently retraced his steps and this time stamped his heels loudly as he came into the entryway leading to the boutique. And then, with the swiftness of the born actor, Bobby instantly put on for Martín’s benefit the mask of perversity, of feigned candor, and of curiosity (what could be going on between this youngster and Alejandra?). And his cynical smile entirely swept away the inclination Martín had felt to be compassionate toward him.
Martín, who always felt ill at ease with strangers, couldn’t even decide what position to sit in, because he was convinced that nothing about him escaped Bobby’s notice and was immediately stored away in the latter’s perverse memory: heaven only knew where and how he would poke fun at the way Martín had looked and the torments he was suffering. Bobby’s theatrical gestures, his deliberate vulgarity, his hypocrisy, his brilliant phrases, all conspired to make Martín feel like an insect beneath the magnifying glass of an ironic, sadistic researcher.
“Did you know that you remind me of a figure straight out of El Greco?” he said to Martín the moment he caught sight of him.
Like all Bobby’s phrases, this one could be interpreted either as a compliment or as a grotesque thumbnail portrait. He was famous for the double-edged compliments he handed out in his columns on the theater, for when one thought twice about them they were sly, venomous criticisms: “He never deigns to employ profound metaphors”; “At no time does he yield to the temptation to stand out from the others”; “He has no fear of squarely confronting the spectator’s boredom.”
Beating a silent retreat to o
ne corner of the room, Martín had sat down on the tall sketching stool as he had on his previous visit, and as though on a battlefield he instinctively hunched over so as to expose the smallest visible surface possible. Luckily, Bobby began talking about Alejandra.
“She’s in the dressing room, with Wanda and the Countess Téleki, née Iturrería, known as Kiki to the vulgar.”
And scrutinizing Martín intently, he asked him:
“Have you known Alejandra long?”
“A few months,” Martín answered, his face turning red.
Bobby drew his chair closer and said in a low voice:
“I don’t mind telling you that I adore the Olmoses. The mere fact that they live in Barracas is sufficient reason to begin with for the haut monde to die laughing and for my cousin Zaza to have a crise de foie and fits of hysterics every time somebody discovers that our family and the Olmoses are distant relations. Because as Zaza said to me the last time, in absolute fury: Can you tell me who, WHO in the world lives in Barracas? And I of course calmed her down by answering that NOBODY lives there, outside of some four hundred thousand drudges and as many dogs, cats, canaries, and chickens. And I added that those people (the Olmos family) would never embarrass us in too spectacular a way, since old Don Pancho lives in a wheelchair, doesn’t see or hear anything outside of Lavalle’s Legion, so it’s very hard to imagine his coming out some fine day to go calling in the Barrio Norte or making statements to the newspapers about Perón; old Escolástica was admittedly crazy, but she’s dead now, thank God; Uncle Bebe, who’s admittedly crazy, lives shut up in his rooms, a so-called recluse whose one interest is his clarinet studies; Aunt Teresa, who was admittedly crazy too, has also died, thank God; and anyway the poor dear spent all her time in church and at funerals, so she never had a moment to spare to come bother anybody in the respectable part of town, and moreover she was especially devoted to Santa Lucía and practically never overstepped the color line, not even to visit a parish priest to see how some other sick priest was getting on or inquire as to the real state of an archbishop’s cancer. So the only two left (I said to Zaza) are Fernando and Alejandra. ‘Two more lunatics!’ my cousin shouted. And Manucho, who was there at the time, shook her head, raised her eyes heavenward, and exclaimed: ‘As they say in Phèdre, O déplorable race!’ But as a matter of fact Zaza is rather a calm person except when it comes to the Olmos family. Because as she sees it the world is the result of the struggle between things that are a Crashing Bore and things that are Real Class.