On Heroes and Tombs

  And I did so, slowly and painfully.

  Little by little my effort was rewarded: the swamp gradually disappeared beneath my feet and hands and soon a sort of strange silence, a sensation of being closed in but at the same time safe, made me realize that I had finally entered the great cavern. And I fell into a deep sleep.

  23

  When I came to my senses again, my whole body was utterly exhausted, as though in my dreams I had performed colossal labors.

  I was lying on the floor, unable to make out where I was. Feeling as though my head weighed a ton, I looked at the floor round about me and tried to remember: I supposed that, as sometimes happened, I had come back to my room drunk and fallen into a stupor. A feeble early morning light was filtering into the room from somewhere. I tried to lift my head up and then slowly and clumsily inspected the space round about me.

  I almost leapt to my feet despite my exhaustion: the Blind Woman!

  I dizzily recalled the incidents: Iglesias, the man who looked like Pierre Fresnay, the little square in Belgrano, the secret passageway. Sitting halfway up and making superhuman efforts to get to my feet, I reviewed the situation at a fantastic speed and tried to think of some way out of it. I finally managed to stand up.

  The Blind Woman was still frozen in the same hieratic pose as when I had first seen her on raising the beam of my flashlight in the dark. Had I suffered from a mere fleeting illusion? Had my nightmare begun when I fell into a faint?

  In the dim light of dawn I tried to make a rapid mental inventory of everything around me. It was an ordinary room with a bed, a table (a work table?), a few chairs, a sofa, a combination radio-phonograph. I noted that there were no paintings or photographs, which bore out my conviction that the people who lived there were blind. The door that was letting the dawn light in almost certainly led to a room at street level, which might be the dressmaker’s shop that I had thought of when making my previous calculations. There was another door off to one side that might lead to a bathroom. I looked behind me: yes, the little low door was there. I almost wished it wasn’t, for that absurdly small entry terrified me.

  This entire visual inspection of the room had taken only a few seconds.

  The Blind Woman before me remained utterly silent.

  Two things contributed to my growing anxiety: the fact, first of all, as I now remembered with terrifying clarity, that she had been waiting for me just inside the little closed door through which I had entered: and secondly, her incredible, enigmatic, menacing immobility.

  I pondered what I could possibly do and what I should say, what words would seem the least ridiculous and the most believable.

  “Excuse me,” I stammered, “I came in intending to rob the place, and fainted when I saw you …”

  I realized as I spoke how absurd these words were. They might perhaps have sounded convincing to a normal person living in a normal house, but how could I have expected the Blind Woman to be taken in by such nonsense? A blind woman who had obviously been WAITING FOR ME.

  A sarcastic expression seemed to cross her face. Then she disappeared through the open door.

  She closed it behind her and I heard the key turn in the lock.

  I was in the dark now. Feeling my way along, in desperation, I rushed to the door and turned the handle, to no avail. Then, groping my way along the walls, I reached the other door, the one on the right, but that too was of no avail, for as was only to be expected, it too was locked.

  I stood there leaning against the wall, overcome with dismay and fear and uncertainty. Thoughts rushed chaotically through my mind:

  I had fallen into an inescapable trap.

  The Blind Woman had gone in search of the Others: they would now decide my fate.

  The Blind Woman had been waiting for me: therefore they knew that I had arrived. How long exactly had they known?

  They had known since the day before: an electric eye permitted them to keep watch at a distance on any sort of activity at the door with the padlock on it.

  They had known ever since Iglesias had acquired the supernatural powers of the Lodge, and consequently ever since he had managed to read my mind and discover my secret designs.

  They had known immediately: I suddenly became aware of an enormous crack in the vast edifice I had constructed, since through an inexplicable oversight (oversight?) on my part, I had not remembered that when Iglesias was let out of the hospital, he had been taken to a pension that a Spanish male nurse had recommended to him, telling him that they would take good care of him there.

  At this very moment that the light dawned on me, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty, at once awful and grotesque, that the very times when I had congratulated myself on my cleverness most fatuously were the times when I was being kept under the closest surveillance by the Sect—and through the intermediary of that ridiculous figure, Señora Etchepareborda, at that!

  I was struck then by how ludicrous a stage setting all those cheap bibelots, those little mottoes in rustic frames, those fake photographs of the Etcheparebordas had been! I was ashamed to think that they hadn’t even thought it worth the trouble to invent something more subtle in order to pull the wool over my eyes. Or perhaps, besides pulling the wool over my eyes, they had also incidentally wanted to wound my pride, to fool me in such a way that later I myself would be struck by the irony of it all.

  24

  I don’t know how many hours I remained trapped there in the dark, a prey to my uncertainties and apprehensions. The worst of it was that I began to have the feeling that I was suffocating, a natural reaction inasmuch as that accursed room had no other ventilation except the tiny bit of air coming through various cracks; I could feel a very feeble current of air coming in from around the door leading to the room in the front at least. Would this be enough however to renew the oxygen in the room where I was? It didn’t seem like it, for I felt more and more as though I were suffocating, though the thought did occur to me that there might be psychological reasons for this.

  But what if the Sect intended to bury me alive in that locked room?

  I suddenly remembered one of the stories that I had turned up in the course of my long investigation. In the days when old man Echagüe was still alive, the family had a housemaid in their mansion on the Calle Guido who was being exploited by a blind pimp who sent her out hustling in the Parque Retiro. In the year 1935 a hot-tempered young Spaniard was taken on by the Echagües as a concierge. He fell in love with the girl and finally got her away from the pimp. The girl lived in terror for months, until little by little, as the concierge patiently explained to her, she understood that the punishments that the blind man who had been exploiting her threatened to inflict on her were purely theoretical. Two years went by. On January 1, 1937, the Echagüe family left for their estancia, where it was their habit to spend the winter months. Everyone had already gone, except the housemaid and the concierge, who lived on one of the upstairs floors; but old Juan, who was acting as the head servant, believing that the couple had already left with the family, shut off the electricity and then left himself, locking the big downstairs door behind him. But as it happened, at the very moment that Juan turned off the electricity the concierge and his wife were on their way downstairs in the elevator. When the Echagüe family came back three months later, they found in the elevator the skeletons of the concierge and the housemaid, with whom the family had made arrangements to stay in the house in Buenos Aires while the rest of the household was off in the country on vacation.

  At the time I first heard this story from Echagüe, I hadn’t the least idea as yet that I would one day be beginning this investigation of the blind. Years later, on reviewing all the information having to do in one way or another with the Sect, I remembered the blind pimp and was suddenly convinced that the elevator episode, due apparently to sheer chance, was in reality a deliberate plot mounted by the Sect. But how could this ever be proven? I spoke with Echagüe and informed him of my suspicions. He looked at me
in stupefaction, and, it seemed to me, with a certain sarcastic gleam in his little slanty eyes. He nonetheless admitted that there was a possibility that what I suspected was true.

  “And how do you think we could prove anything?” he asked me.

  “Do you know where Juan lives?”

  “I can find out through González. It seems to me he’s kept in touch with him.”

  “All right. And don’t forget what I’ve told you: that man played an important part in what happened. He knew that the other two were upstairs. And what was more: he waited for the moment that they started the elevator from upstairs, and when he calculated that they were between two floors (everything had been carefully planned in advance, watch in hand, and trial runs made beforehand), he turned off the electricity, or gave a shout or gestured to the other one who doubtless already had his hand on the switch.”

  “The other one? What other one?”

  “How should I know? Some other member of the gang perhaps, not necessarily one of your servants. Though it might even have been that González.”

  “So you think Juan was a member of a gang, a gang connected with or run by the blind?”

  “I don’t have the slightest doubt of it. Make a few inquiries about him and you’ll see.”

  He looked at me again with scarcely concealed irony, but said nothing more except that he was going to look into the whole thing.

  A little while later I telephoned him and asked him if he’d turned up anything. He told me he’d like to see me, and we met in a bar. When I walked in, the expression on his face was not the same one as before: there was utter amazement in his eyes now.

  “What about that famous Juan?” I asked.

  “González had kept in touch with him, it turned out. I explained to him that I wanted to see Juan. His answer struck me as being a bit fishy: he said he hadn’t seen Juan for a long time, but would try to contact him at the place where he was living, though he thought Juan was about to move. He asked me if I wanted to talk to him about something important or urgent. I had the impression that he was nervous or anxious when he asked me that. I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the moment, but realized it afterward, when I went over the whole scene in my mind. I didn’t go about things as I should have, because I said straight out that I had always wanted to know the precise circumstances in which the incident with the elevator had happened and that perhaps Juan might be able to tell me more than I’d already found out about the accident. González listened to me with an impassive face—how can I describe it?—a poker face, more or less. That is to say, it struck me that his face was too impassive. This too didn’t occur to me until later. Unfortunately. Because if I’d thought of it at the moment, I’d have taken him off into some corner, grabbed him by the lapels, and with two or three well-aimed punches I’d have gotten the whole story out of him. Anyway, there’s no point in telling you how it all ended.”

  “How did it end?”

  Echagüe stirred the remains of the coffee in his cup and replied:

  “It didn’t have an end, because I never set eyes on González again. He disappeared from the confectioner’s shop where he worked. Of course, if you’re interested in pursuing the matter, we can ask the police to step in and try to locate the pair of them.”

  “Don’t give it another thought. That was all I wanted to know. I can imagine the rest.”

  This entire story was coming back to me now. And because of my habitual tendency to imagine terrible things, I could see every last detail in my mind’s eye. First of all, the concierge’s mild surprise when the elevator stops between floors. He presses the button to start it up again, several times; he opens and closes the folding door inside the elevator. Then he shouts downstairs to Juan to close the door down there in case he’s opened it. Nobody answers. He shouts louder (he knows that Juan is there downstairs, waiting till everybody has left) and nobody answers. He shouts some more, louder and louder, and finally he begins to be alarmed. Time goes by, he and his wife look at each other, wondering what has happened. Then he begins shouting again, and then she shouts, and then both of them together. They wait a while longer, trying to guess what is going on downstairs. “He’s gone to the toilet, he’s outside chatting with Dombrowski (the Polish concierge from the house next door), he’s gone to check the whole house to see that nothing’s been left behind,” they tell each other. Fifteen minutes go by and they start shouting again: there is no answer. They shout for five or ten minutes: still no answer. They wait a while longer, more and more upset now, looking at each other with greater and greater anxiety and fear. Neither of them wants to come right out and tell the other how desperate the situation appears to be, but they are both beginning to suspect that everyone is gone and that the electricity has been shut off. Then they begin to shout again, in turn and together: as loudly as they can at first, then screaming in terror, and finally howling like maddened animals cornered by wild beasts. These howls go on for hours, little by little growing weaker; their voices are hoarse now, the physical efforts they have made and their terror have left them exhausted: they are moaning now, their voices growing fainter and fainter; they weep and pound on the walls, more and more feebly. From this point on one can imagine different variations: there may have been a period of absolute stupor, in which both simply huddle together there in the dark, silent and stunned. Then they may have started talking to each other, exchanging ideas and sharing slight hopes: Juan will surely be back, he’s just gone to the corner bar to have a little nip; he’s forgotten something in the house and will come back to get it; when he pushes the button for the elevator to go upstairs, he discovers they’re trapped in it; they greet him in tears and tell him: “Oh, Juan, if you only knew what a scare we’ve had.” And then the three of them, discussing what a nightmare the whole thing was, leave the house together and laugh at some silly little thing that happens in the street because they’re so happy. But Juan doesn’t come back, nor has he gone off to the bar on the corner, nor has he been whiling away the time with the Polish concierge next door; the one thing that is certain is that hour after hour is going by and nothing at all is happening in that silent, deserted mansion. Meanwhile they have gotten a bit of their strength back and the shouts begin again, and then the screams, followed by the howls, and finally, one supposes, moans that grow more and more feeble. It is probable that by this time they are lying exhausted on the floor of the elevator and thinking how impossible it is for such an appalling thing to happen: this is a quite typical reaction of human beings when something terrible happens. They say to themselves: “This can’t be, this simply can’t be!” But terror slowly creeps over them again, and it is probable that a new series of shouts and howls then begins. But to what avail? Juan is at this moment on his way to the estancia, since he is going there with his employers: the train has left at 10 P.M. Their shouts are useless, yet people always have a certain absurd confidence that shouts and screams will change things, as is evident from any number of catastrophes. And so with their last remaining strength they begin shouting and screaming again, and again their howls of terror die away to moans as before. This, naturally, cannot go on: a moment comes in which all hope is abandoned and then, though this may seem grotesque, they think of eating. But why eat? To prolong the torture? Lying on the floor, there in the dark in that tiny cubicle, hearing each other, touching each other, the two of them ponder the same awful thought: what will they eat when their hunger becomes unbearable? Time passes and they also think of their death, which is bound to occur in a few days. What will it be like? What is it like to die of hunger? They think of things that have happened in the past; memories of happy times come to mind. She now finds that period when she worked the Parque Retiro as a whore was a good time in her life: there was sun, the young sailors or army recruits were sometimes kind and affectionate; all those little things in life, in short, which always seem so wonderful when death is close at hand, even though they have been sordid. He is probably remembering things from
his childhood, at the mouth of a river in Galicia; he is doubtless recalling the songs and dances of his village. Again the same thought occurs to him or to her or to both of them: “But this just can’t be!” Things like this just don’t happen. How could this happen? It is probable that this thought brings on a new series of shouts, but they are less energetic and of shorter duration than those of the previous series. Then again there come to mind thoughts and memories, of Galicia and the happy days of prostitution. But why go on with this minutely detailed description? Any person with the least little bit of imagination is capable of reconstructing what happens next: growing hunger, mutual suspicions, quarrels, recriminations having to do with various things that happened in the past. Perhaps the concierge wants to eat the housemaid and in order to have a clear conscience about it he begins to reproach her for having allowed herself to become a whore. Isn’t she ashamed of herself? Didn’t she realize that that was a filthy thing to do? Et cetera.

  Then (after a day or two of hunger pangs) he thinks that even without killing her outright, he could at least eat some part of her body; he might just pull off a couple of her fingers and eat them, or an ear. Anyone who wishes to reconstruct this episode should not forget that these two human beings must also tend to their intimate needs there in the elevator as well, so that everything becomes more and more filthy, more and more sordid and abominable. But above all there is the couple’s increasing hunger and thirst. Their thirst can be quenched by catching their own urine in their hands and then drinking it; there have been factual accounts of such a thing. But what about their hunger? Factual accounts also demonstrate that no one eats his own limbs if there is another human being with him. One has only to recall Dante’s Count Ugolino, imprisoned in a dungeon with his own sons. In a word, it is probable—what am I saying?—it is certain that at the end of four days, or perhaps even less, of being trapped together in that stinking cubicle, with their resentment of each other growing more and more violent, the stronger one will eat the weaker. In this particular case, the concierge eats the housemaid, perhaps only bits and pieces of her in the beginning, starting with her fingers, and then, after hitting her over the head or knocking her senseless against the walls of the elevator, he devours all the rest of her.