— Musta bin a nutcase! Papucio grumbles from his corner.
But golden-headed Ramos smiles with pointed irony.
— Wasn’t Archimedes the guy who jumped up out of the bathtub? he asks.
— Archimedes was the one, Adam confirms. The orator Fratino is slandering Pythagoras, who was a very serious gentleman.
— Sir, declaims an unmoved Fratino. I committed a lapsus… how do you say?
— I’d say a lapsus memoriae, laughs Adam.
— That’s it, a lapsus memoriae.
From his corner, Papucio eyes Fratino malevolently.
— If you didn’t yap so much, he says, you wouldn’t make so many dumb mistakes.
— One can have a temporary lapse of memory, can’t one? protests Fratino.
— Go on back to the farm and drink chicken milk!
Papucio’s advice causes a wave of hilarity throughout the class, except for Cueto, off in his own world, and the clown Bustos, who is tatooing an anchor on his wrist; both boys are deep in meditation. The actor Terzián, moreover, is miming a pensive and dignified Pythagoras, the index finger of one hand on his temple, the other stroking his hypothetical philosopher’s beard. All to the delight of Fatso Atadell, who encourages him with his vast, full-moon smile. Meanwhile, the hilarity has calmed down. When silence has been restored, Papucio can still be heard whinging in his corner.
— The flowerpots still bothering you? inquires Adam.
— No, grouses Papucio. I was thinking about that theorem. What’s it good for?
Adam Buenosayres looks at him benevolently.
— Once upon a time, he says, a great mathematician had to sleep in a bed so short that, no matter how he tried, the poor fellow couldn’t stretch out to his full length. Either his feet hung over one end, or his head over the other. Well, he got out of bed quite perturbed, turned on the light, measured the bed, found a pencil, and started writing out all kinds of formulas. Until finally he remembered Pythagoras’s theorem and found the solution.
— How? Falcone, very intrigued, wanted to know.
— He lay down along the line of the hypotenuse — in other words, diagonally.
Amid the unanimous classroom laughter, Papucio scolds one last time:
— Wouldn’t do me no good, he says. I sleep on the floor.
— Seriously, though, Adam continues, man cannot ask that all things be useful in a grossly utilitarian fashion. How have we defined man?
— An intellectual creature, says Ramos.
— That’s right. Man, as an intelligent being, takes pleasure in knowing. And that pleasure in intelligence — isn’t that in itself useful?
— True! exclaims Falcone, astounded perhaps by an insight into himself.
But Adam Buenosayres notices that most of the boys are not following him. And so, changing his tone of voice, he adds:
— That’s why I always tell my pupil Atadell… Heavens!
Suddenly the target of everyone’s gaze, fat Atadell exhibits his mandibles in motion, his eternal, ruminating placidity, his smile lodged somewhere beyond good and evil.
— Up to the front! Adam tells him. Empty those pockets!
Not without effort, fat Atadell gets up from his desk, walks between two rows of curious onlookers, and lumbers up to the teacher’s desk. Once there, splendidly good-natured, he plunges his left hand into a fathomless pocket. From the cave comes a host of objects that form a line on the desk: two small half-eaten chocolate bars, a handful of currants, six obviously sticky dates, nine not-very-clean mints, a shapeless packet of Japanese-style nougat, two pods of carob beans, half a cake wrapped in tissue paper, a string of rock-hard doughnuts, four walnuts, and eight almonds. The felicitous birthing of the pocket’s progeny elicits jubilant exclamations. Expectations are high when Atadell plumbs his other pocket with his magic fingers. But, alas! The other pocket disappoints such legitimate hopes, for its contents amount only to six beat-up marbles, six feet of twine, and the very rusty trigger from a revolver. The fat boy’s two cornucopias now emptied, Adam Buenosayres sends him off with a benevolent gesture, then turns to the class.
— Work on your notebooks now, he orders.
While the pupils write in silence, Adam leans on the windowsill. Leaning out toward the street, he lets his eyes wander. The pregnancy of the air resolves now into a very fine drizzle which, veil-like, shrouds the suburb and softens its harsh contours. Below, by a doorway, an old man sits smoking his pipe. Beside him, a pensive woman forgets her mate, and her mind drifts off toward drowsy distances. A road sweeper, in the middle of the street, gathers dead leaves, puts them into his wheelbarrow, and goes off with his pile of silver and copper tones, furtive image of autumn. Dripping sheets hang straight down in empty patios. In one patio, over there, a magnolia rises like a sombre ghost. In another, a lemon tree staggers under the weight of its fruit. Further away the poplars are nodding in the Plaza Irlanda. In the distance, unanimous in their elevation, the two steeples of Our Lady of Buenos Aires point to the highroads of heaven for the benefit of the suburb. Gazing at them, Adam evokes the interior of the basilica, its altar in the form of a shrine, and the image of a woman enthroned in the heights, with the Child in one arm and a ship in the other.4 How good it would be to find himself in that deserted space now, beneath the light filtered and exalted by the stained-glass windows! And to meditate there on the secret of that enigmatic Woman, on the vocation of the Child, on the odyssey of the Ship! He notes, however, that his meditation is returning him to a clime that is off-limits for him this afternoon. He leaves the window and looks at the desks: all heads are bent over notebooks. All except Nossardi’s. With eyes on his miniature airplane, he is lost perhaps in a daydream of conquered heights. Bellerophon!5
— Isn’t our floating debt already too big? shrills the Principal, angrily setting his coffee cup aside.
— In my opinion, Señor Inverni rejoins, the national reserve is so formidable, it’s no problem to mortgage it somewhat. That is, of course, as long as it’s done for the benefit of public works and social projects, which we owe to future generations. (Bravo! Very good! Señor Inverni seems to hear frenetic applause from an invisible crowd.)
In front of the Principal’s angry face, Inverni takes a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. He is a teacher lean of flesh, and he has the pimply complexion, that colour of venereal disease frequently found in men of advanced ideas. But the Principal’s menacing brow is still furrowed.
— Ha! he laughs bitterly. Hand the country over to foreign interests!
The scene unfolds in the Principal’s office, around a table circumscribed by eight teacherly figures drinking their afternoon-recess coffee. Beside the window, the women teachers huddle in a hermetic group, their faces turned toward a waning light — the dry, withered faces of virgins dedicated to the goddess Pedagogy.
— It’s not just that our resources are in foreign hands, growls Di Fiore. The worst of it is that foreigners are carrying out a veritable program of corruption.
— How is that? asks Inverni.
— The Argentine, by nature, was and must be a sober man, as our country folk were and still are. And so were, and are, the immigrants responsible for the existence of the majority of us. But what’s happened? Foreigners have induced us into a cult of sensuality and hedonism, inventing a thousand needs we didn’t have before. And — of course! — it’s all so they can sell us the geegaws they produce industrially, and so redeem the gold they pay us for our raw materials. In plain language, that’s what I call eating with both hands!