The Principal raises his hand as if to bless Di Fiore.
— You said it, sir! he exclaims. You said it!
— So, protests Inverni, shouldn’t our country keep up with the benefits of progress?
— Useless needs! shrieks the Principal. Flimflams of foreign capital! Just look at what the English are up to now, trying to get us to wear their Oxford trousers!
Adam Buenosayres urgently elbows Quiroga:
— Look out! he warns him under his breath. Perfidious Albion is about to make an appearance.
— What have Oxford trousers got to do with anything?
With a half smile, the Principal spells out his concerns:
— It’s a scheme for selling more wool, he asserts. They design them ridiculously wide, so it takes twice as much material to make them, and long enough so they get worn out rubbing against the ground. And that’s not all! They’ve also introduced…
Here he gets flustered and glances out the corner of his eye at the didactic virgins.
— … short underwear, he says at last, cautiously.
— What for? asks Di Fiore.
— You’ll see. Short underwear has the effect of putting one’s knees in direct contact with the wool of the trousers. And so, within a single year, the body’s sudoriferous secretions destroy the fabric, which otherwise would easily last three years.
— A diabolical plan, growls Adam Buenosayres, as Quiroga tries to stifle a laugh.
And looking at the Principal as though eliciting a confidence, he says:
— I imagine you wear long underwear.
— Naturally! confesses the Principal. I’m not going to fatten the bank accounts of the English!
Quiroga’s laughter explodes with intense hilarity:
— But, Sir! he exclaims. Nobody wears long underwear anymore!
The Principal gives him a look full of vinegar and bile.
— Sir! he upbraids him. This is no joking matter.
Half joking and half sincere, plaintive and pathetic, Di Fiore begins to extol the virtues of long underwear:
— Our glorious forefathers wore it. And the garment gave them a truly patriarchal sense of security and decorum. It’s worn by old politicians even today, those who stay in power forever and never get around to kicking the bucket. And they’re right, because I’m telling you now, the secret of longevity is in long underwear.
The scholar’s words return the tertulia to its true atmosphere.
— A luminous theory, laughs Adam Buenosayres, looking affectionately at Di Fiore, lean, intelligent, down in the mouth.
— Hmm! objects the Principal. The problem with Argentines, gentlemen, is that they turn everything into a joke. And the solution to our problems, gentlemen, requires great seriousness.
— They’ll get serious one day! Di Fiore warns in a menacing tone.
Inverni looks at him for a moment, with lowered eyelids and a half smile:
— When? he asks.
— When the hour of truth arrives.
— And how do you know that hour will come?
— Sir, answers Di Fiore, I believe in la Grande Argentina.6
CIRCE-FERNÁNDEZ: “On the way, you will first come upon the Sirens, who fascinate all men who cross their path. Woe to the reckless one who approaches them and hears their voices! Never will he see his wife again; nor will his little ones throng round him at any joyful homecoming. Seated in a smiling meadow, the Sirens bewitch mortal men with the sweet harmony of their song. But beside them, human bones and rotten cadavers are piled up, drying out in the sun. Give them a wide berth, and use soft wax to stop the ears of your companions, so that none may hear them! But if you wish to hear them — if you wish to listen to those melodious voices without risk — have them bind you to the sailing ship: have them lash you to the mast, feet and hands.”
Through the voice of Fernández speaks Circe, she who knows many drugs. That admonitory voice, resounding in the classroom, makes the children’s eyes brighten with a sense of foreboding. Standing side by side with Fernández, Terzián is waiting, all ready to act out a hair-raising version of Ulysses. Balmaceda, Fratino, and MacLeish, the three illustrious voices of the year, will read the part of the Sirens; though still silent, their bearing already hints at menace.
In the watery afternoon light that rubs out lines, kills colours, and seems to devour even the slightest sound, thirty boys under the spell of ancient words now leave their jail and clamber over a honey-coloured beach, beneath a torrential sun that makes Circe’s palace glitter in the distance. The musical coast is festooned by a double line of foam. Beside the saltwater, the ship of grand adventures still lies upon the sand. The sparkling sea, bellowing like a young bull, licks the keel and the naked heels of the sailors. As Circe speaks, Adam Buenosayres, from his corner, studies the constellation of rapt eyes. Ramos, golden-headed, holds his breath as though afraid that his creative urge might disrupt the harmonious flight of the rhapsody. Forgetting his cardboard wings, Nossardi is now gliding in other skies. And even Bustos has been enraptured, his penknife in one hand and a half-tortured pencil in the other.
But Ulysses holds forth in his mariner’s voice:
ULYSSES-TERZIÁN: “My companions tie me to the mast, then resume their places on the ship’s benches and once again ply the foaming water with their oars. The vessel moves rapidly. Now we are close to shore, no doubt our voices can be heard from there. And now the Sirens notice the ship’s approach and begin to intone their sonorous chant.”
Ulysses stops talking, and immediately Balmaceda, Fratino, and MacLeish burst out in chorus:
THE SIRENS: “Oh, famous Ulysses, glory of the Achaians! Draw near, stop the boat and hear our song! No mariner has ever passed in his black ship without listening to the sweet tones flowing from our mouths. Rather, he who listens to us returns to his land wiser than before. For we know all the travails that Greeks and Trojans alike have suffered in Ilium; nothing happens in the vast universe outside our awareness.”
Ah, the ship! Watch out! The oars rise and dip in the accelerated rhythm of flight. The oarsmen’s torsos glisten in the sun. And thirty boys, aboard the ship of Ulysses, watch the hero as he struggles to free himself, at once prisoner of a mast and of a song. The boat flies over the salty meadows. The threat of the music has been left behind. Now it is time to untie Ulysses! Let wax no longer cover his prudent ears!
But Adam Buenosayres has deserted the ship and leapt to the beach. Amid carrion stinking in the sun and under a cloud of sticky bluebottle flies, he has seen the face of the Sirens and inhaled the breath from their horrible mouths. To hear the music, without falling into the snare of the one who proffers it! How? Most certainly, a ship and a mast are required.
Within the classroom and without, the foggy afternoon light gnaws at everything in a sort of universal dissolution. But thirty children row with Ulysses in the direction of the Blessèd Isles.
And Adam Buenosayres, lost in his corner, evokes an enigmatic figure of Woman in whose right hand a little ship fills its sails.
Chapter 3
— One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
The twelve bell-strokes were twelve little owls:
Someone opened the cage of the steeple, and off they flew.1
Midnight: solitude, emptiness. Alone, I alone on the skin of the world, spinning as it flees, fleeing as it spins, “an old top without children.”2 Why without children? At that time I was playing around with logic, not noticing that dissimilar objects are always harmoniously related: splendor ordinis. Last night I tried to explain it at Ciro’s place — quite sloshed. That other image, too: “The Earth is an antelope in flight.” Or this one: “World, a stone buzzing in the seven colours.” Cosmic terror, ever since my childhood: a little boy clinging to his motionless horse and sobbing in anguish beneath the southern stars. The cold mechanism of time, cone of shadow, cone of light, night and day, solstice and equinox: the sun tells us fabulous lies, and the earth dons and doffs her splendours like a prostitute; “Hail, drunken bluebottle!”3 And in the end only a stone fleeing as it spins, spinning as it flees in an infinite space… no, indefinite space. Because the notion of infinity applies only to… Enough, my soul, enough!