“That the difference between a man and a woman is obvious,” she replied, sarcastically emphasizing the word.
“Everyone agrees that there are certain appreciable differences between a woman and a man,” I explained calmly.
“That’s not what we’re talking about, and you know it!” Norma’s mentor replied in icy fury.
“That? What exactly do you mean by ‘that’?”
“I mean sex, as you know very well,” she replied cuttingly. Her tone was like a very sharp, disinfected knife.
“Do you think sex is something of very little importance?” I asked her.
I was beginning to be in a good mood, and furthermore the two of them were helping to make the time go faster as I watched and waited. The only thing that was still bothering me was the vague feeling that I had seen this professor before, though I couldn’t remember precisely where.
“It’s not the most important thing certainly! Were talking about something else, about spiritual values. And the differences that you men insist on seeing between activities suitable for a man and those suitable for a woman are typical of a backward society.”
“Ah, I understand now,” I commented with a show of perfect serenity. “For you women the difference between the uterus and the phallus is a carryover from the Dark Ages. It will disappear one day, along with gas lighting and illiteracy.”
Norma’s mentor blushed: what I had said not only made her indignant but embarrassed her as well, not because the words uterus and phallus had been uttered (being scientific terms, they would no more disturb her than the words neutrino or chain reaction), but by virtue of the same mechanism whereby Professor Einstein would feel embarrassed if one were to ask him how his bowels were working.
“Those are mere words,” she declared. “What is fact is that there are all sorts of activities in which women are competing with men today. And that’s what absolutely unhinges you men. Take, for instance, the delegation of women that has just arrived here from the United States. Among them are three directors of heavy industry.”
Norma, that very feminine creature, shot a glance at me, her eyes gleaming triumphantly. Resentment is a very powerful force. In some way or other these female monsters from America avenged her for her servility in bed. The development of the metallurgical industry in the U.S. more or less blotted out the shame of the cries she gave at the moment of climax, the frenzy of her unconditional surrender. A humiliating position was compensated for by Yankee petrochemistry.
It was true: now that I was obliged to leaf through the daily papers, I remembered having seen a story about the arrival of this group from the U.S.
“There are also women who box,” I remarked. “If such a monstrosity appeals to you, well then …”
“Is it monstrous, in your opinion, if a woman becomes a member of the board of directors of a major industry?”
Again I was obliged to look past the athletic shoulders of Señorita González Iturrat in order to keep an eye on a suspect passerby. This perfectly explainable bit of behavior on my part made that eminent harpy more furious still.
“And does it also seem monstrous to you that a genius such as Madame Curie distinguished herself in the realm of science?” she went on, her little eyes narrowing insidiously.
It was inevitable that Madame Curie’s name should come up.
“A genius is someone who discovers similarities between seemingly contradictory facts,” I explained calmly and didactically. “Relations between facts that to all appearances are totally unrelated. Someone who brings to light similarity amid diversity, reality beneath appearances. Someone who discovers that the stone that falls and the Moon that does not fall obey one and the same law.”
Norma’s menetor followed my argument with a sarcastic gleam in her little eyes, like a schoolteacher listening to a youngster who consistently tells whoppers.
“And is what Madame Curie discovered of trifling importance?”
“Madame Curie, señorita, did not discover the law of the evolution of species. She went out with a rifle to hunt tigers, and happened to meet up with a dinosaur. If we were to use this as a criterion, the first sailor who spied Cape Horn would also be a genius.”
“You can say what you will, but Madame Curie’s discovery revolutionized science.”
“If you go out to hunt tigers and met up with a centaur, you will also revolutionize zoology. But this is not the sort of revolution brought about by geniuses.”
“In your opinion, is science a preserve closed to women?”
“No, did I ever claim that it was? In point of fact, chemistry is pretty much like cooking.”
“And what about philosophy? I am certain you would forbid girls entry to the faculty of philosophy and letters.”
“No I wouldn’t, why should I? They don’t do any harm to anyone. What’s more, they can catch themselves a man there and get married.”
“And what about philosophy?”
“Let them study it if that’s their heart’s desire. It’s not going to do them any harm. Nor any good either, for that matter. It won’t do anything to them. And besides, there’s no danger of their becoming philosophers.”
“That’s because this absurd society doesn’t offer them the same possibilities as men!” Señorita González Iturrat shouted.
“How can that be? We’ve just agreed that nothing prevents them from enrolling in the faculty of philosophy. In fact, I’m told that this section of the university is full of women. Nothing is keeping them from engaging in philosophical pursuits. They have never been forbidden to think, either at home or outside the home. How can anyone forbid thinking? And all that philosophy requires is a head and the desire to think. This is true today, it was true in the time of the Greeks, and it will still be true in the thirtieth century. It’s entirely possible that a society might keep a woman from publishing a philosophical work: by making fun of her, by boycotting the book, or something like that. But forbid her to think? How can any society put obstacles in the way of the idea of the Platonic universe inside a woman’s head?”
“If everybody were like you, the world would never have made any progress,” Señorita González Iturrat exploded.
“And what makes you think that it has made progress?”
She smiled scornfully.
“According to you, naturally, getting to New York in twenty hours isn’t progress.”
“I don’t see the advantage of being able to get to New York in a big hurry. The more time it takes the better. And besides, I thought you were referring to spiritual progress.”
“To progress of every sort, sir. It was not simply by chance that I spoke of the airplane: it is the symbol of progress in general. Including moral values. I hope you’re not going to try to tell me that mankind’s morals today are not superior to those of societies in the days when slavery was practiced.”
“Ah, so you would prefer to see a society where there are wage slaves.”
“It’s easy to be cynical. But any person who is fair-minded will concede that the world today is acquainted with moral values that were unknown in antiquity.”
“Yes, I see what you mean. Landru, the modern Bluebeard, traveling by rail is superior to Diogenes traveling by trireme.”
“You’re deliberately choosing ridiculous examples, but the evidence is there before you.”
“A camp commander at Buchenwald is superior to the commander of a slave ship. It is better to kill human beings with napalm bombs than with bows and arrows. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima is more humane than the battle of Poitiers. It is a sign of progress to torture with an electric prod rather than with rats, the way the Chinese did.”
“Those are mere sophisms, all of them, because they are isolated facts. Mankind will do away with these atrocities too one day. And in the end ignorance will necessarily give way, all along the line, to science and knowledge.”
“The religious spirit is stronger today than in the nineteenth century,” I remarked with calm per
verseness.
“Obscurantism of every sort will eventually give way. But the march of progress necessarily involves minor retreats and detours. A moment ago you mentioned the theory of evolution: this is a good example of what science can accomplish in the fight against every sort of religious myth.”
“I can’t see that this theory has destroyed much of anything. Haven’t we just agreed that the religious spirit today is on the rise again?”
“For other reasons. But the theory of evolution definitely did away with many patent falsehoods, the one concerning the Creation in six days, for instance.”
“Señorita: if God is omnipotent, is it any trouble at all for him to create the world in six days and leave a few skeletons of giant sloths scattered about here and there so as to test men’s faith—or their stupidity?”
“Oh, come now! Don’t tell me you’re asking me to take such a sophism seriously! Besides, a moment ago you were singing the praises of the genius who discovered the theory of evolution and now you’re poking fun at it.”
“I’m not poking fun at it. I’m simply saying that it doesn’t prove the nonexistence of God, nor does it refute the Creation of the world in six days.”
“If it were up to you, there wouldn’t even be schools. If I’m not mistaken, you’re in favor of illiteracy.”
“In 1933 Germany was one of the most literate nations in the world. If people didn’t know how to read, they at least wouldn’t be turned into idiots day after day by newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, even if they were illiterate, other marvels of progress would still exist: radio, television. It would be necessary to pierce children’s eardrums and pluck their eyes out. But this would naturally be a more difficult program to carry out.”
“Despite your sophisms, light will always prevail over darkness, and good over evil. Evil is ignorance.”
“Thus far, señorita, evil has always prevailed over good.”
“Another sophism. Whatever made you dream up such an absurd notion?”
“I haven’t dreamed up anything, señorita: history itself proves my point. Open any history textbook you care to, Onckens for example, to any page you like and you’ll find nothing but wars, beheadings, conspiracies, tortures, coups d’état, inquisitions. And besides, if good always prevails what’s the point in preaching it? If man were not inclined to do evil by his very nature, why is he expressly forbidden to do evil, why is evil anathematized, and so on? Just look how even the most highly developed religions preach good, yet at the same time hand down commandments against adultery, murder, theft, and so on that must be obeyed. People must be commanded not to commit adultery, not to kill, not to steal. And the power of evil is so great and so perverse that it is even used as an argument in favor of good: if we do not do such and such a thing we are threatened with Hell.”
“Well, according to you then, it’s necessary to preach evil,” Señorita González Iturrat shouted.
“I didn’t say that, señorita. You’ve gotten all worked up and aren’t even listening to what I’m saying. There’s no need to preach evil: it turns up soon enough all by itself.”
“What in the world are you trying to prove?”
“Don’t get upset, señorita. You’re the one, don’t forget, who’s defending the superiority of good, and yet I note that you’d gladly hack me to bits. All I wanted to say is that spiritual progress doesn’t exist. And we would have to take a closer look at your famous material progress as well.”
An ironic grimace twisted the lady educator’s moustache out of shape.
“Ah, now you’re going to prove to me that life is harder for contemporary man than for a Roman.”
“That depends. I don’t believe, for instance, that a poor devil who works eight hours a day in an electrically controlled foundry is happier than a Greek shepherd. In the U.S., that paradise of mechanization, two-thirds of the population is neurotic.”
“I’d like to know if you would really prefer to travel by horse-drawn coach rather than by train.”
“Of course I would. Travel by coach was a wonderful experience, and far more restful. And it was better still when people went about from place to place on horseback: they got out in the fresh air and enjoyed the sun and had all the time in the world to contemplate the landscape. The apostles of the machine promised us that each day would bring man more leisure time. The truth of the matter, however, is that man has less and less time to call his own each day, and is growing madder and madder. Even war was beautiful once upon a time; it was something amusing and manly, and a fine spectacle in the bargain, what with all those fancy bright-colored uniforms. It even promoted good health. Take our war of independence and our civil wars for instance: if a man wasn’t run through with a lance or beheaded he might well live to be a hundred, like my great-great-grandfather Olmos. Quite understandable: all that outdoor life, lots of exercise, great long gallops on horseback! When a youngster was frail, they sent him off to war to make him stronger.”
Señorita González Iturrat got up from the table in a rage. Turning to her disciple, she said:
“I’m leaving, Normita. You of course can do as you like.”
And she marched off.
With blazing eyes, Norma got up too. And as she walked off, she said:
“You’re a boor and a hopeless cynic!”
I folded my newspaper and settled down to continue watching number 57, with an unobstructed view now that the considerable bulk of Norma’s mentor was no longer blocking it.
That night, as I was sitting on the toilet, in the condition that lies somewhere between pathological physiology and metaphysics, trying to move my bowels and at the same time meditating on the overall meaning of life, as is frequently my habit in this one place in the entire house conducive to philosophy, I finally hit upon the reason behind that lapse of memory that had troubled me so at the beginning of our encounter in the café: no, I had never laid eyes on Señorita González Iturrat before, but she bore an almost perfect resemblance to the disagreeable, rabid creature who throws suffragette leaflets from a balloon in Kind Hearts and Coronets.
12
That night, as I weighed and reviewed the events of the day, as was my habit, I was suddenly alarmed: why had Norma brought Señorita González Iturrat to the café to meet me? The discussion concerning the existence of evil that the two of them had forced me to engage in couldn’t be a mere coincidence either. On sober reflection, I concluded that this lady professor possessed all the characteristic traits of an associate member of the Library for the Blind. And I immediately began to be suspicious of Norma Pugliese herself then, for I had originally become interested in her mainly because her father was a Socialist who volunteered two hours of his time each day to transcribing books into Braille.
I frequently create a mistaken impression of myself and my habits, and it is more than likely that readers of this Report will find certain dalliances on my part surprising. The truth is that despite my determination to be systematic, I am capable of acts that are entirely unexpected, and therefore dangerous, given the sort of activity in which I am engaged. And my most egregious errors have been due to women. I shall try to explain why this is the case, because it is not as utterly mad as it might appear to be at first glance: I have always regarded women as a suburb of the world of the blind, and therefore my dealings with them are neither as absurd nor as pointless as a mere superficial observer might imagine. That is not what I am reproaching myself for at the moment; what I blame myself for, rather, is the almost inconceivable failure to take precautions to which I am altogether too prone, as in the case of Norma Pugliese; a perfectly logical fact from the point of view of fate, since fate blinds those whom it seeks to destroy, while from my own point of view it is one that ranges from absurd to unpardonable. But this is because my periods of brilliant lucidity are followed by periods during which my acts seem to be commanded and carried out by some other person, and I suddenly find myself in extremely perilous situations beyond my control, as
might happen to a solitary navigator in dangerous waters who, overcome by fatigue, grows drowsy and dozes off for a few moments from time to time.
It is not easy. I would like to see any of my critics in a situation such as mine, surrounded by countless clever and malevolent enemies, amid an invisible network of spies and observers, and being obliged to keep close watch, day and night, on each and every one of the persons round about him and on each and every event that occurs in his immediate vicinity. I wager that that critic of my behavior would thereupon become far less self-important and sure of himself and would understand that errors of this sort are not only possible, but virtually inevitable.
During the entire period that preceded my meeting Celestino Iglesias, for instance, there was a terrible confusion in my mind; during such periods it is as if the darkness were literally swallowing me up by way of alcohol and women: for that is how one enters the labyrinths of Hell, or rather, the universe of the Blind. So that it was not that I forgot my great objective during these dark periods, but rather that my lucid, systematic, scientific search was succeeded by a sudden chaotic interval, in which there predominated what naive observers would call mere coincidences, but which in reality represented the workings of blind chance. And in the midst of this disorder, with my head swimming and all my senses dulled, drunk and miserable, I suddenly found myself stammering: “It doesn’t matter. In any event this is the universe that I must explore,” and I abandoned myself to the heady, mad pleasure of vertigo, that sensual pleasure that heroes in combat experience at the most dangerous moments, when the promptings of reason avail us nothing and our will moves in the turbid domain of the blood and instincts. And then I would abruptly awaken from these long dark periods, and as license follows asceticism, so my mania for organization took the place of chaos, a mania that comes over me not despite my tendency toward chaotic disorder, but precisely because of it. My brain then begins to work at top speed, and with a rapidity and a clarity that are simply astonishing. I make clearcut, precise decisions, everything is as luminous and brilliantly evident as a theorem; not a single one of my actions is prompted by my instincts alone, for at such times I scrutinize them closely and have perfect control over them. But strangely enough, the steps that I resolve to take, or the people I meet during this period of heightened consciousness, soon lead me, yet again, to a period in which I lose all control. I meet the wife, let us say, of the president of the Board of Patrons of the Choir of the Sightless; I am well aware of the valuable information that I can procure through her, I go to work on her, and finally, for purely scientific purposes, I take her to bed; but it immediately turns out that the woman makes me sick to my stomach, she is oversexed or perverted, and all my plans come to nothing or are postponed or are seriously endangered.