Martín, deathly pale and about to faint, was passing his hand across his forehead, which was covered with an icy sweat.
“No, no,” he answered.
“Well, as I was saying, if the foundations of the home, which are the very cornerstone of the society in which we live, are undermined, if you destroy the sacrosanct concept of marriage, what is left, I ask you? Chaos. What ideals, what examples can be held up to young people growing up today? All these are things that can’t be played around with, young man. And I’ll tell you something else, something that I rarely tell anybody but that I feel it my duty to tell you. I am referring to the problem of prostitution.”
But at that instant the intercom buzzed, and as Molinari testily spoke into it and asked What? What?, Martín went on searching with his magnifying glass, reeling, more and more lost in that repellent fog and saying Wanda, Wanda to himself, repeating to himself those cynical words of Alejandra’s about the necessity of working, and that phrase about her contempt for painted parrots and her consequent contempt for herself; so that, he said to himself, as though summing up his investigations, Wanda was one of the elements of that enigma, and Molinari was another, and what others might there be? And then he went over previous episodes in his mind again and found nothing that stood out, since all there had been was that meeting with that individual named Bordenave, a person unknown to Alejandra and moreover someone she had taken an instant dislike to, with the result that her mood had suddenly changed and she had become sullen and gloomy. Meanwhile he saw that the stern expression that Molinari had presented to the intercom was now beginning to transform itself into the affable expression that he had decided to present to him, Martín. With his eyes fixed on him, Señor Molinari seemed to be searching for the lost thread of what he had been saying, and then finally he went on:
“Ah yes, prostitution. Just consider for a moment what a paradox it represents. If I tell you that prostitution is necessary, I know perfectly well that you, at this moment, are going to be inclined to reject that conclusion, isn’t that so? I am convinced, however, that once you have analyzed the problems carefully, you will be obliged to agree with me. Imagine what the world would in fact be like if it were not for this safety valve. Right now, and without going any farther afield, right here in our own country, a mistaken idea of what true morality is (and I’ll tell you straight out that I’m a Catholic) led the Argentine clergy to press for the prohibition of prostitution. And so prostitution was made illegal in the year …”
He hesitated for a moment and looked over at Señor Pérez Moretti, who was listening to him attentively.
“It was in ’35, as I remember,” Señor Pérez Moretti said.
“Right. And what happened as a result? What happened was that clandestine prostitution made its appearance. As was only logical. And to make matters worse, clandestine prostitution is more dangerous because there are no health inspections. And besides that it is expensive; it is out of the reach of the pocketbook of a worker or a salaried employee. Because there is not only the money one has to pay the woman; there is also the money one has to spend to get a room somewhere. The result: Buenos Aires is undergoing a process of demoralization whose consequences we cannot predict.”
Tilting his head to one side and addressing Señor Pérez Moretti, Molinari commented:
“As a matter of fact, at the last meeting of the Rotary Club I spoke about this very problem, which has come to be one of the serious vices of this city and perhaps of the entire country.”
And addressing Martín again, he went on:
“It’s like a boiler with all the valves closed in which the pressure is mounting. For that is what organized, legal prostitution is: a safety valve. Either there are women of easy virtue controlled by the State, or we end up with the situation we have now. Either we have good, solid, controlled prostitution or sooner or later society will run the extremely grave risk of seeing its basic institutions collapse. I am of the opinion that this dilemma is inescapable and I am one of those who think that the solution does not lie in behaving as the ostrich does in the face of danger, namely burying its head. I wonder if a nice girl from a decent family can have any peace of mind today, and above all if her parents can rest easy. I won’t even mention the coarse and dirty things that the girl can’t help hearing on the streets in the mouths of vulgar young lads or men who have no natural outlet for their instincts. I am leaving all this out of consideration, however unpleasant it may be. But what about the other danger? The danger that in the relationships between young people, between engaged couples, or even a boy and a girl who are simply good friends, things will go too far? What the devil, a boy’s naturally hot-blooded; he’s got instincts after all! You’ll pardon me, I hope, for putting the matter so crudely, but there’s no other way to look squarely at this problem. And to make things worse, this boy is constantly overexcited because of the lack of a form of prostitution within his means, because of films I pray God to rid us of, because of pornographic publications. In a word, what else can we expect? Moreover, young people no longer have the restraints that in other times were imposed on them by a home possessed of solid principles. Because to tell the truth, here in this country we’re just Catholics from the skin out. But as for real Catholics, honest-to-goodness Catholics, believe me, they number probably no more than five percent, and I think that’s a generous estimate at that. And the rest? Without that moral restraint, with parents who are more concerned about their personal affairs than they are about keeping an eye on what ought to be a real sanctuary … What’s the matter?”
Señor Pérez Moretti and Señor Molinari hurried over to Martín.
“It’s nothing, sir. It’s nothing,” he said, pulling himself together. “I beg your pardon, but it’s best that I leave …”
He got up to go, but seemed to stagger. He was deathly pale and drenched with sweat.
“No, young man—wait and I’ll have somebody bring you some coffee,” Señor Molinari said.
“No, Señor Molinari. I’m all right now, thank you very much. The air outside will make me feel even better. Goodbye, and many thanks.”
Molinari and Señor Pérez Moretti held him by the arm and accompanied him to the door. The moment he was out of their sight he ran with all the strength he could muster. When he reached the street he looked around for a café, but did not see one close by. Unable to hold back a moment longer, he rushed over to an empty space between two cars and vomited.
3
As he waited in the Criterion, looking at photographs of Queen Elizabeth on one wall and engravings of naked women on the other, as though the Empire and Pornography (he thought) could honorably coexist, just as decent families and brothels coexist (and not despite this latter fact but rather precisely because of it), his thoughts returned to Alejandra, as he wondered how and with whom she had happened to discover this Victorian bar.
At the counter, beneath the petty-bourgeois smile of the queen (“there has never been a royal family who are such nonentities,” Alejandra said immediately), British company managers and upper level executives were downing their gin or their whisky and laughing at each other’s jokes. The pearl of the Crown, he thought, at almost the same moment he spied her coming in the door. She ordered a Gilbey’s, and after listening to Martín’s story she commented:
“Molinari is a respectable man, a Pillar of the Nation. In other words: a perfect pig, a first-class son of a bitch.”
She called the waiter over as she said:
“By the way, you’ve asked me about Bruno lots of times. I’ll introduce you to him now.”
4
They went into La Helvética. It was a dark place, with its high wooden counter and its old boiseries. Clouded distorting mirrors enlarged and murkily repeated the mystery and the melancholy of this corner of Buenos Aires left over from another era.
A very fair-haired man with blue eyes and incredibly thick glasses rose to his feet. He had a sensual, pensive air about him and appeared t
o be about forty-five. Martín noticed that he was looking at him with a kindly expression, and thought, blushing: She’s told him about me.
They talked together for a few moments, but Alejandra’s mind was obviously elsewhere, and finally she got up, said goodbye to them, and left. Martín found himself sitting alone across the table from Bruno, feeling as ill at ease as though he were about to present himself for an oral examination and depressed by Alejandra’s sudden disappearance, as inexplicable as ever. And suddenly he realized that Bruno was asking him a question, the beginning of which he had not heard. He was embarrassed and was about to ask him to repeat it when, fortunately, a redheaded man with freckles, an aquiline nose, and piercing eyes glinting from behind glasses arrived. He had a fleeting, nervous smile. Everything about him was intimidating and from time to time his manner had such a sarcastic abrasiveness about it that it would have prevented Martín, had he been alone with him, from so much as opening his mouth, even if the place caught on fire. Moreover, the man had a way of staring directly into a person’s eyes, thus affording the timid no escape whatsoever. As he talked with Bruno, leaning toward him across the little table, he kept glancing furtively out of the corner of his eye, like someone who is a victim, or has been a victim in the past, of police persecution.
He laid a book down on the little table.
“I’ve just read the article by Pereira about it,” Bruno remarked with a smile, referring to the book.
Méndez assumed one of his most successful diabolical expressions. His red hair seemed to give off sparks, like those featherdusters charged with static electricity in classroom physics demonstrations. His eyes lit up with a sarcastic gleam.
“Ha! He starts in by attacking even the title. Imagine: Latin America: One Country!”
“Exactly. His thesis is that it was a whole made up of nationalities oppressed by Spain.”
“Ha! That guy’s head is stuffed full of Russian notions. A whole made up of nationalities! What he’s thinking about all along is Kirgizes, Caucasians, Byelorussians.” The country (Martín thought), the country, the home, seeking the cave in the shadows, the home, the warmth of the fire, the tender and brightly lighted refuge amid the darkness, and as Bruno raised his eyes, perhaps in doubt, those eyes that had seen Alejandra as a child, those melancholy, gently ironic eyes, as he saw the figure of Wanda emerge along with the phrase “earn money by doing something that one has nothing but contempt for,” not knowing at that moment, however, what monstrous import this phrase of Alejandra’s would one day come to have, though already it had an import somber enough to fill him with anxiety, as he saw Wanda drinking dry martinis, talking about men, laughing her frivolous, sensual laugh, and that Janos creature, that inexplicable husband of hers and Bruno listened to Méndez thoughtfully, stirring his cup of coffee and then Martín looked at his slender nervous hands and wondered what sort of love this man could have had for Alejandra’s mother, not yet knowing that that love had later been prolonged by being projected onto her very own daughter, so that the same Alejandra whom Martín was thinking about at that moment had also been the object of thoughtful reflections on the part of this man who was now before his eyes, as yet not suspecting that they had that in common, even though (as Bruno himself was to think many times and even hint as much) the Alejandra of his own thoughtful reflections was not the same Alejandra who was now tormenting Martín since (Bruno maintained) we are never the same person for different conversational partners, friends, or lovers; like those complex resonators in physics classes, one or another of whose strings responds to each sound that stimulates them, while the others remain silent, as though self-absorbed, estranged, reserved for a summons that may perhaps some day require their response; a summons that sometimes never comes, in which case those mute strings end their days as though forgotten by the world, alien and solitary, as meanwhile, carried away by his ironic fury, Méndez exclaimed: “Somebody like him, talking about an abstract internationalism! Bravo, Pereira, bravo! He’s discovered Argentina now. For years he lived Russian-style, eating borscht instead of soup, drinking tea instead of maté. Argentina was an exotic island that we were condemned to live on, but our heart was in Moscow, comrades! and he could see Janos again, with that equivocal, anxious look in his eyes (why?), with that exaggerated, obsequious politeness of his, kissing her hands, saying “oui, ma chère” or “comme tu veux, ma chère” to her, and why had that repugnant man come to mind now so insistently, seemingly forever in search of something, seemingly keeping watch and on his guard at every moment, an anxious watch, motivated no doubt by Wanda’s wanton behavior, but then he saw someone greet Bruno and sit down at another table with a group talking together in low voices, as Méndez sarcastically noted the greeting and said: “Those clerical nationalists, those arch-Hispanophiles who have now discovered the United States are busy hatching one of their plots, naturally! They’ve had a scare thrown into them by Peronism, of course, the only defense against Soviet barbarism,” and once again he lost track of what the two of them were saying as he sat there thinking about Janos, until he seemed to hear Bruno saying something about corruption, whereupon Méndez declared: “That’s petty-bourgeois morality,” as Bruno gently shook his head and said: “That’s not what I mean” and Martín was very upset because he couldn’t keep his mind on the discussion, thinking “I’m a terrible egotist,” because he found his thoughts returning again to that dreadful obsequious figure and his attitude, his permanent watchfulness, something doubtless motivated by the presence or the absence of Wanda, but what? and Wanda accepting him with a mixture of condescension and sarcasm, as though the two of them, as though between the two of them, but then Bruno said “because he corrupts everything he touches, because he’s a cynic who believes in nothing, who doesn’t believe in the people or even in Peronism, because he’s a coward and a man without grandeur,” as Méndez shook his head ironically, doubtless thinking “an incurable petty bourgeois,” and as Martín thought how confused everything is, how hard it is to live and understand: as though that equivocal Janos were something like the symbol of the confusion that had taken possession of him, as though the very essence of human beings was ambiguity, Janos with his fawning and his affected politeness toward his wife and yet (and he had taken special note of this, like everything having to do with Alejandra) with that anxious, longing look of someone who fears or hopes for something, in this case something from Wanda, out of jealousy perhaps?, whereupon Alejandra had burst out laughing at him, commenting “What a child you still are!” adding those words that later, after the tragedy, he was to remember with terrifying clarity: “Janos is a sort of sticky monster,” and at that moment Bruno got up from the table to make a phone call, so Martín was left there alone sitting across from Méndez, who scrutinized him with eyes full of curiosity as Martín, thoroughly intimidated, sipped at a glass of water, not daring to say a word.