— There, he said, begins the first turn of the Helicoid.
We were already on our way there, when the man in blue, heading back to his post, shouted after us in a stentorian voice:
— Death to obscurantism!
His final imprecations were drowned by the farting motor.
V
Those of my readers who have some knowledge of infernal excursions will be expecting here an invocation to the Muses or some other flourish of poetic rapture as has traditionally been the fashion in these situations. Well, such readers are just going have to do without, because right from the get-go at the gates of Cacodelphia, Schultz clipped the wings of any possible lyrical whimsy I might have indulged in. Just imagine, reader, you’re at the very threshold of Tartarus, shaking with dread at the mere thought of the visions which before long will unfurl before your eyes; and your brain (if perchance you have one) is busily meditating on the pious theme — what else — of mortal destiny. Next, imagine your infernal leader or guide suddenly offers you a pair of rubber boots like the ones hunters use in marshes, and he opens a big red umbrella right in your face. Reader, my friend, if at such a moment you are up to saluting the Nine Sisters with even a laconic “good day,” it’s because you deserve to live among the blessèd in Calidelphia, where I hope to see you later, if the spirits watching over this story are as favourable to me as they are now.
We had reached the crack in the wall. There, Schultz groped around and found two pairs of boots and the umbrella I just mentioned, whose presence in that place caused me a twinge of hilarity. Nonetheless, I imagined those accessories were there for a reason, and so, imitating the astrologer, I put on the boots that had fallen to me.
— Let’s have the rest of the gear, I asked him wearing boots up to my crotch.
— What are you missing? Schultz asked.
— A double-barrelled shotgun.
The astrologer opened his monumental umbrella.
— This isn’t a joke, he scolded, then ventured through the cleft.
I followed him through the entire thickness of the wall. At the end of the passageway I paused before the vision of what must have been the first barrio of Cacodelphia. At first I could see only a lustrous grey sky, a dense shower falling from it. But then, through the rain, I could make out a shantytown, a random scatter of shapeless shacks with battered zinc roofs. They were built right in the mud out of kerosene drums, bottomed-out barrels, and shells of old cars. A loud-mouthed multitude squelched around the muddy little streets: men and women, dressed in city clothes and covered in mud up to their eyeballs, plopped a foot down here, pulled the other out there, fell down, and got up again with no sign of distress.
— A symphony of mud, I commented, turning to the astrologer.
— Petits bourgeois, Schultz explained. Little folks with puny vices, petty in their meanness. They have neither a speck of virtue nor any grandeur in evil that would earn them a harsher but more honourable place in hell.
— You’ve got them mucking about like beasts.
— They’re in their element.
Without another word, the astrologer strode into the mud, and I found myself obliged to follow his route. Beneath the big red umbrella, we got ourselves into the midst of the sloshing, groaning multitude. Seen up close, the inhabitants of that quarter displayed a tendency to the porcine form, though without completely losing their human aspect (little pig-like eyes, boar-like snouts, flabby double chins, and obese bodies bursting out of torn, mud-encrusted garments of cashmere and silk). But they all had an air of insolent pride, ill-suited to their grotesque figures and their miry exertions. Seeing that none of them noticed us, I asked Schultz:
— Can’t they see us? Or do our boots and umbrella make us invisible in this circle?
— Those people, he answered, look only at themselves. They’re incapable of seeing the otherness of others, as required by the laws of charity.
His answer smacked of a pat phrase and I was about to demand an explanation, but was dissuaded by the sight of the shacks among which we wended our way. There, fat women in outrageous housecoats stood at windows combing streams of mud out of their manes, while others hung clothes out to dry on eternally dripping clotheslines. In tiny yards crammed with abandoned tires and old sardine cans, men of solemn bearing used kitchen knives to scrape the caked muck from their shoes and hats. Most astonishing of all were the shouts, coarse music, and strident conversations filling the shacks. Only when I noticed the antennas on the rooftops did I discover the origin of the tumult: radio sets. Yes, one in every house: honking-big valve radios, at full volume, crooning soppy tangos, screeching old fox-trots, blaring radio-dramas, cawing out City Council meetings, repeating lessons in cooking, hygiene, or calisthenics.
— This place is hell! I exclaimed, covering my ears.
— Naturally, said Schultz. But don’t wander off track; keep to your left. The further we get away from the axis, the longer it will take to go round this turn of the spiral, and I wouldn’t want us to stay in this quagmire forever.
I headed left, cursing the rain, the voracious mire sucking at my boots and the scoundrel who’d got me into this pigsty. Suddenly, someone called out to me from a nearby window:
— Neighbour! Hey, neighbour!
— Campanelli! I exclaimed, recognizing the chubby man beckoning me with friendly gestures.
The astrologer drew back the umbrella and furrowed his brow.
— Who is it? he asked.
— An old enemy. Schultz, you old devil, you couldn’t have put him in a better place. Can I talk to him?
— Three minutes only, conceded Schultz.
We went up to the window. Inside, I could see broken sticks of furniture and wallpaper peeling away in swaths amid the damp gloom. Campanelli, resting on his elbows at the windowsill, was putting on, for my benefit, an air of timidity and compunction that was truly laughable. In front of an enormous telephonic radio set, his adipose wife was doing exercises in her bathing suit, under the guidance of a callous radio announcer. Miss Campanelli, daughter, was sitting on the floor before a toy piano with twelve keys, obstinately repeating the first three bars of the “Waltz Over the Waves.”25
— Well? said I, calmly sizing up the man in the window.
— I don’t know if you remember me, stammered Campanelli. I lived in apartment X, just above you.
— Yes, yes. All is forgiven.
— What have you forgiven me?
— Those minor irritations, I ventured almost tenderly.
Campanelli smiled bitterly.
— You don’t understand, he murmured. You don’t know everything. Do you dare suggest that my conduct expressed merely a naive brutality?
— I wouldn’t go that far.
— Much further, my dear sir, much further than that! said Campanelli, getting wound up. But one thing at a time. What was your first revelation regarding my person and my family?
I looked at him long and hard, surprised by the turn the conversation was taking.
— Look, said I. At that time I was, and still am, what’s known as a “man of letters”: a contemplative type, a spinner of fables, a chaser of subtle metaphysical notions. I don’t know if I make myself understood.
— Go on, please continue.
— Silence, for me, was something absolutely necessary. Is it my fault my nerves aren’t made of brass? And you people, in the apartment above…