This was not the case with Norma Pugliese, naturally. But even in her case I committed errors that I ought not to have made.
Señor Américo Pugliese is a long-standing member of the Socialist Party, and he brought up his daughter in conformity with the principles that Juan B. Justofn1 insisted upon from the beginning: Truth, Science, Collectivism, the Fight against Nicotine, Anti-Alcoholism. A very decent person who detested Perón and was greatly respected by his adversaries as a holder of political office. As can readily be imagined, his espousal of such causes made me all the more eager to sleep with his daughter.
She was engaged to an ensign in the Navy, a fact perfectly compatible with the antimilitarist mentality of Señor Pugliese by virtue of that psychological mechanism which causes antimilitarists to be great admirers of sailors: the latter are not all that crude and brutish, they have traveled, and all in all they are very much like civilians. Even though this latter defect is scarcely a reason to sing their praises, for as I explained to Norma (who was furious), praising a Navy man because he does not appear to be one is like boasting of the merits of a submarine that has trouble submerging.
By setting forth arguments of this sort I sapped the bases of the Navy and was eventually able to lure Norma into my bed, all of which merely demonstrates that the road to bed can pass by way of the most unexpected institutions, and that the sole arguments of any importance to a woman are those that lead her to assume a horizontal position. The precise opposite of what happens, in short, in the case of the man, and the reason why it is difficult to get a man and a woman in the same geometrical position by virtue of a faultless logical argument: one must have recourse to paralogisms or to petting and pawing.
Once I had arrived at horizontality with Norma, it took me some time to educate her, to get her used to a New Conception of the World, to convert her from Juan B. Justo to the Marquis de Sade. It was not at all easy. It was necessary to begin with language itself, in view of the fact that as a devotee of science and an avid reader of works such as Ideal Marriage, she was in the habit of using expressions as unsuitable for sessions in bed as “the law of chromatic refractions” is to describe a twilight. Using this prime truth as a basis (and the truth was sacred to her), I gradually led her, step by step, to accept even the worst perversions. So many years of patient labor by deputies, municipal councilors, and Socialist lecturers reduced to nothing in the space of just a few weeks; so many neighborhood libraries, so many cooperatives, so many admirable free public institutions gone for naught, since Norma ended up actively engaging in such depravities. How can one be expected to have any faith in collectivism after that!
Yes, fine, let us have a good laugh at Norma Pugliese’s expense, as I so often did in moments when I felt superior to her. One fact is certain. I began to be assailed by doubts and had the sudden feeling that she was one of the enemy’s subtle spies. Moreover, this was only to be expected, since only a stupid or vulgar enemy resorts to using obviously suspect individuals as spies. Wasn’t the very fact that Norma was so naive, so candid, so vehemently opposed to any sort of falsehood or mystification the most telling argument for being extremely wary of her?
I began to be extremely concerned when I analyzed our relations in detail.
I thought I had Norma Pugliese nicely pigeonholed, and in view of her upbringing in accordance with the principles of Socialism and Sarmiento,fn2 it did not seem to me that it would be difficult to get to know her very well. A grave error. I was surprised more than once by some totally unexpected reaction on her part. Then too, in the end her utter depravity was irreconcilable with the wholesome, decent education that her father had given her. But if logic plays so little part in a man’s life, what can we expect of a woman?
I therefore spent a sleepless night recalling and analyzing each and every one of her reactions toward me. And though I found many reasons for alarm, I also found a reason to be pleased with myself: the fact that I had become aware of the dangers of her company in time.
13
It occurs to me that on reading the story of Norma Pugliese some of you may think me a bastard. I shall tell you straight away that you are absolutely correct. I consider myself a bastard and haven’t the slightest respect for myself. I am a person who has probed his conscience, and how can anyone who has really explored all the hidden nooks and crannies of his conscience still respect himself?
I at least consider myself to be honest, for I do not deceive myself as to my true nature nor do I attempt to deceive others. You may perhaps ask me how it happens then that I have deceived, without ever feeling the slightest scruples, so many unfortunate wretches and so many women who have crossed my path. The fact is that there are many different degrees of deception, my dear sirs. And deceptions of this sort are mere trifles, of no importance whatsoever. Just as one cannot call a general who orders a retreat as a preliminary to a definite advance a coward. Mine are—and were—tactical, circumstantial, transitory deceptions aimed at furthering a basic truth, a pitiless investigation. I am an investigator of Evil, and how can Evil be investigated without plunging into filth up to one’s neck? You will tell me that I seem to have taken keen pleasure in so doing, rather than feeling the indignation or the repugnance that a true investigator would feel on finding himself confronted with such an unpleasant duty. This is quite true also, and I proudly admit it. See how honorable I am? At no time have I said that I am a good person; I have said that I am an investigator of Evil, and that is something altogether different. I have admitted, moreover, that I am a bastard. What more do you want from me? A remarkable bastard, certainly. And proud of not belonging to that class of pharisees who are as base as I am, yet pretend to be respectable individuals, pillars of society, perfect gentlemen, eminent citizens whose funerals are attended by hordes of people and whose life stories then appear in serious newpapers. No, if my name is ever mentioned in such publications, it will doubtless be on the crime page. But I think I have already explained what I think of the serious press and the crime page, so I am far from feeling ashamed of myself.
I detest the universal comedy of noble sentiments. A system of conventions that also manifests itself, of course, in language: the supreme falsifier of Truth with a capital T. Conventions whereby the expression “little old man” is inevitably preceded by the epithet “poor,” as though all of us didn’t know that a scoundrel who grows old does not cease to be a scoundrel thereby; on the contrary his sentiments become all the more vicious due to the selfishness and the resentments that have cropped up or grown worse with age. A monstrous auto-da-fé ought to be made of all these apocryphal expressions that have been invented by popular sentimentality, hallowed by the hypocrites who govern society, and defended by the schools and the police: “venerable senior citizens” (the majority of whom deserve only to be spit on), “distinguished patronesses” (almost all of whom are motivated by vanity and the basest sort of selfishness), et cetera. Not to mention the “pitiful little blind men” who are the object of this Report. And I must say that if these pitiful little blind men fear me it is precisely because I am a bastard, because they know that I am one of them, a merciless individual who is not going to allow himself to be taken in by stupid prattle and vulgar commonplaces. How could they fear one of those miserable wretches who help them cross the street with tearful solicitude straight out of a Walt Disney film, complete with little birdies and Christmas ribbons in technicolor?
If all the bastards that exist on this planet were lined up, what a formidable army they would constitute, and what unexpected specimens! From little kiddies in white communion costumes (“the perfect innocence of childhood”) to upright municipal employees who nonetheless steal paper and pencils from the office to take home with them. Ministers, governors, doctors, and lawyers, almost without exception, the already mentioned poor little old men (in enormous numbers), the also already mentioned distinguished patronesses who now direct aid societies for lepers and cardiac cases (after having had a good gallop in a g
reat many different beds and having thus made a concrete contribution to the ever-increasing number of heart ailments), directors of large companies, young girls of delicate mien with gazelle eyes (but quite capable of plucking clean any fool who believes in feminine romanticism or in the weakness and helplessness of womankind), city inspectors, colonial civil servants, ambassadors loaded with decorations, et cetera, et cetera. BASTARDS, FORWARD MARCH! Good lord, what an army! Advance, you sons of bitches! No halting along the way, no whining, now that what I have in store for you awaits you!
BASTARDS! TO THE RIGHT!
A marvelous, edifying spectacle.
On arriving at the stable, each one of the troops will be fed on his own filth, converted into real (not metaphorical) excrement, with no sort of special considerations or favors to be expected. None of that business of allowing the pampered son of His Excellency the Minister to eat a crust of dry bread instead of his own turds. No sir: one does things as they ought to be done, or they are not worth doing at all. Let him eat his shit. Better yet: Let him eat all his shit. He would prefer, naturally, to be allowed to eat only a symbolic quantity. But no symbols: each one must eat his own filth, down to the last mouthful, no more and no less. That is only fair, you see: one cannot treat a poor wretch who has merely looked forward with great joy to the death of his parents so as to inherit a little dough in the same fashion as one deals with Minneapolis Anabaptists who expect to go to heaven even though they exploit blacks in Guatemala. No sir! JUSTICE AND MORE JUSTICE: To each one the shit that belongs to him, or nothing. There’s no use counting on me for any special deals.
And let it be noted that my position is not unassailable but also disinterested, since in conformity with my own status as a perfect bastard, to which I have readily admitted, I myself would be in the ranks of this coprophagous army. The one thing I claim in my favor is the fact that I haven’t tried to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes.
And this makes me think of the need to invent beforehand some system that will allow the filth produced by respectable persons to be detected and precisely measured so that each individual may be apportioned the exact quantity that he deserves. A sort of filthometer with a gauge to indicate the quantity of shit produced by Señor X in his life up to the time of this Last Judgment, the quantity to be deducted on account of his sincerity or his good intentions, and the net quantity that he must swallow once the necessary calculations have been made.
And after the exact measure has been established for each individual, the immense army must march off toward its stables, where each one of the troops will consume his own rightful share of filth. An infinite operation, as can be readily seen (and this is the real joke of the whole thing), because on defecating, by virtue of the principle of the conservation of excrement, each one will expel the same quantity that he has ingested. A quantity that will once more be placed in front of each bastard’s snout, thanks to a collective 180-degree turn on command, and will once again have to be ingested.
And so on, ad infinitum.
14
I still had two more days to wait. During this time I received one of those chain letters that normally one immediately tosses into the wastebasket. In my case the letter made me even more nervous and anxious, since my experience had demonstrated to me that nothing, and I mean
NOTHING
could be overlooked in a plot as fantastic as the one that I was involved in. So I read it through carefully, trying to find some possible relationship between the remote happenings having to do with lawyers and generals mentioned in the letter and my investigation of the blind. It said: “This chain letter comes from Venezuela. It was written by Señor Baldomero Mendoza and must go around the world. Make twenty-four copies of it and send them on to your friends, but do not send them for any reason to relatives, however distant. Even though you are not superstitious the facts will demonstrate how effective this letter is. For example, Señor Ezequiel Goiticoa made the copies, sent them to his friends, and in nine days’ time received 150,000 bolívares. A man named Barquilla took this chain letter as a joke: his house burned down, several members of his family died in the fire, and as a consequence he went mad. In 1904 General Joaquín Díaz received a severe wound that made an invalid of him. Later on he came across this chain letter and ordered his secretary to make copies of it and send them out. He was soon cured of his infirmity and his health is excellent now. An office clerk at Garette made copies of the letter but forgot to send them out; nine days later he had a run-in with his superiors and lost his job; he made some more copies and sent them out, got his job back, and was even given back pay. Alfonso Mejía Reyes, an attorney in Mexico City, received a copy of this chain letter, and carelessly lost it; in nine days’ time a cornice fell on his head and he died a tragic death. Delgado, an engineer, broke the chain and shortly thereafter it was discovered that he had been embezzling company funds. Do not break this chain for any reason. Make the copies and send them on. December, 1954.”
15
And then one day I spied a blind man slowly feeling his way along the Calle Paso, from Rivadavia to Bartolomé Mitre. My heart began to pound.
My instinct told me that this tall, blond man had something to do with the Iglesias problem, since he was not making his way along with that indifference with which a person proceeds along a street when his objective still lies far in the distance.
He did not halt in front of number 57, but instead went very slowly past the entrance, seemingly using his white cane to reconnoiter a sector in which decisive operations are later to take place. I concluded that he was some sort of advance scout and from that instant on I was doubly on the alert.
Nonetheless nothing else happened that day to attract my attention. A few minutes before 9 P.M. I went up to the seventh floor, but as far as I could tell nothing out of the ordinary had happened there either: delivery men, grocery boys, door-to-door salesmen, the usual lot, in a word, were the only ones who had come up there.
I couldn’t sleep that night: I kept tossing and turning in bed. I got up before it was light and hurried to the Calle Paso, fearing that some important visitor might go up to the apartment once the street door down below was unlocked.
But nobody who seemed suspect to me went in and I noticed no sign of any interest all that day. Could the appearance of that tall blond blind man be a mere coincidence?
I have already remarked that I believe that very few things happen by pure chance, particularly if they have to do with blind men. And hence that very same night, when what I might call my day watch was over, I decided to go upstairs to the pension and subject Señora Etchepareborda to close interrogation.
In my anxiety I had descended to the basest sort of flattery. I detest fat women, and the owner of the pension was vastly overweight; wearing a dress that would have fit a normal-sized woman, with her double chin and her enormous dead white bosom showing, she reminded me of a giant, quivering custard: but a custard with intestines.
I complimented her on her complexion and told her no one would ever guess she was forty-five. I also studied the little sitting room where she lived; every table, every occasional piece, every horizontal surface in general was hidden beneath a macramé doily. A sort of horror vacui made it impossible for her to leave any empty space uncovered or unfilled: porcelain pierrots, bronze elephants, glass swans, chromed Don Quixotes, and a large, nearly life-size Bambi. On a piano that she hadn’t touched, she explained, since the death of her late husband, were two large macramé runners: one draped over the keyboard and another over the top. On this latter, amid a number of gauchos and peasant girls in homespun shawls, was a portrait photograph of Señor Etchepareborda, in three-quarter profile, his serious gaze fixed on an enormous bronze elephant: he appeared to be presiding over this collection of monstrosities.
I said complimentary things about the hideous chromed frame around the photo, and as she contemplated the portrait with a sad, dreamy look in her eyes, she explained that he had died two year
s before, shortly after his forty-eighth birthday, in the prime of life, just as he was on the point, she told me, of seeing his fond hopes of a pension at half-salary realized.
“He was second in charge of domestic shipments at Los Gobelinos.”
Doing my best to conceal my inner rage and impatience at the fact that thus far in our conversation it had been impossible for me to begin my interrogation, I commented:
“An important house, I must say.”
“It certainly is,” she agreed smugly.
“A position of trust,” I added.
“I should say so,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to make unfair comparisons with others, but it’s quite true that the company had complete confidence in my late spouse.”
“He did his name honor,” I commented.
“Quite true, Señor Vidal.”
The Probity of Basques, British Phlegm, the French Spirit of Moderation in All Things: myths that like all myths are powerless in the face of mere facts. What does it matter that in the end these myths do not account for men on the take like the minister Etcheverry, energumens like the pirate Morgan, or freaks of nature like Rabelais? I resigned myself to contemplating the photos in a family album that the fat woman began showing me. In one of them the spouses were together on vacation at Mar del Plata in the year 1948, wading in the ocean.