— I accuse this man, she shrilled. I accuse him of carrying around with him three atomizers filled with as many disinfectant sprays, which he uses to disinfect his hands, mouth, and nose whenever he’s out in public, on the bus, in the café, or at the movies, for fear of microbial fauna and direct or indirect contagion. I accuse him of keeping a minutely detailed Diary of his health, including urine and stool analyses, his red corpuscle count, the exact time of his defecations, and the precise state of his metabolism.
Loud and enthusiastic was the applause the spectators bestowed upon Señora Ruiz. Nonetheless, showing no sign of weakness, Professor Berreta returned to the charge:
— This lady, he said, has the rare virtue of contracting any given disease by merely reading about its symptoms. Her presence has honoured every medical clinic; her venerable skeleton has been laid out on every operating table. With truly satanic pride, she keeps organs cut out of her by agile scalpels in bottles of clearest crystal — her appendix, half her pancreas, and a kidney — all so she can show them off to her relatives, like trophies of so many victories. Furthermore, in her appalling conceit, she boasts of having produced the biggest faecal bolus ever to illustrate the pages of the Journal of Medicine.
Shouts and jeers, applause and whispers celebrated Professor Berreta’s exceedingly grave accusations. Señora Ruiz, who had withstood the punishment quite well, raised her hand to call for attention:
— This man, she declared, is guilty of always having a condom between himself and the noblest claims of nature: never has he patted a child’s head unless wearing rubber gloves, nor been with any woman without previous, careful, and mutual sterilizations. By the ponds of Palermo, he used to check the direction of the breeze, lest it bring unhealthy emanations from their standing water. This Adam, gentlemen, would have disinfected Paradise, tree by tree, and wouldn’t have eaten the fateful apple unless it were served up as boiled apple sauce.
Endless was the public ovation that greeted Señora Ruiz. But the astrologer Schultz signalled to me:
— Let’s go, he ordered. I suppose they’ll keep on shouting at each other ad infinitum.
— Body worshippers, I said. Old Professor Berreta’s disinfectants didn’t do him much good: he got run over by a bus.
— The ones with real responsibility are lower down, Schultz announced ominously.
We left the ring and, bearing always to our left, we continued to traverse what remained of that turn of the spiral. The buildings, now thinning out, were reduced to the barest hovels dug out of the very earth or improvised with assorted odd materials. Notwithstanding his apparent haste, Schultz stopped in front of a shack knocked together from a couple of sheets of zinc. Inside a man and a woman lay sleeping — she in a loud-coloured dressing gown, he in a pair of oversized sunglasses.
— Doctor Scarpi Núñez, announced Schultz. And his consort, Buxom Betty.
Hearing him, she blinked her blue eyelids.
— Shhh! she whispered. Dr Núñez is with a client.
But Doctor Scarpi Núñez opened first his left, then his right eye:
— We academics… he began to splutter in a solemn tone.
— Et cetera, et cetera, Schultz interrupted. We know the story already.
The astrologer turned to me:
— This gentleman with his doctorate, he said pointing at the man, represents not the learned ignorance27 that bore such good fruit in better days, but rather ignorant learning and titled illiteracy. Son of a Ligurian shoemaker who had brought to this country his infinite decency, heart of gold, and a useful trade, this so-and-so might in other climes have come to be almost as good a cobbler as his father. But — alas! — the Ligurian shoemaker suddenly found himself in a city that prided itself on conferring doctorates on its million and a half inhabitants, a city where every single useful trade or virtue of the heart cowered before the pompous affectation of a university degree. So what did he do, the Ligurian shoemaker, with his son and his cobbler’s knife and stirrup? Day and night he hammered away at worn boots in Saavedra, taking bread from his own mouth and sacrificing sleep for daydreams, whilst this lump of coal reluctantly sat exams, pared his nails, wasted nights at the dance halls, and added the Castilian Núñez to his native Italian Scarpi, looking straight to his future and askance at his past. And when at last this wonderboy got his diploma, the Ligurian cobbler thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
Doctor Scarpi Núñez sat up halfway in his hovel and adjusted his eyeglasses with dignity.
— My dear sir, he mumbled, allow me to inform you that I am not ashamed of my origins.
— Dr Núñez has responded! cried Buxom Betty triumphantly.
— Dr Núñez is hiding the truth, Schultz told me. Because as soon as he had set up his law practice, married for money, and taken up a life of luxury inspired by Malthusianism and frivolity, this so-and-so had only one major concern: to hide the Ligurian shoemaker, thrust him into the shadows by means of a hundred stratagems, the mere mention of which would wring tears from a stone. The Ligurian shoemaker finally got the message. At first, not wishing to bring shame upon the glory he’d cobbled together out of a thousand broken boots, he went back to his tiny room in Saavedra, and only by night did he go out and steal up to the so-and-so’s door, where he stroked the lawyer’s bronze nameplate. But later, the solitude in his soul and the chill in his heart inspired an indifference many folks take for madness: today, the Ligurian cobbler lives with a little dog called Beffa,28 whose sole passion is to bark furiously at all the bronze nameplates in the neighbourhood.
At this point Buxom Betty, flushed with anger, grasped Doctor Scarpi Núñez, who was obviously asleep, and gave him a shake, shouting:
— Tell him where to get off, Doc! Don’t let him push you around!
— Quiet, Betty, he sighed. Don’t play up to that dime-store Virgil.
But Schultz paid him no mind and went on talking to me:
— However, if this man is now languishing in a pigpen in Mudtown, it’s not only for his behaviour with the Ligurian shoemaker. Sure, he probably did acquire the skills of pettifoggery, as just as the chimney sweep acquires his, but in his core he remained uncultivated, coarse, grossly crude. Even worse, the pride of his new status made him forget every last vestige of his native virtues. If we were to compare them now, the Ligurian shoemaker would seem a paragon of refinement and sensibility alongside his son.
— This man is delirious, Betty! snored Doctor Scarpi, practically asleep.
— Imagine, continued Schultz, still looking at me. As soon as this so-and-so saw his diploma in a gold frame (in abominable taste, to be sure), he considered himself entitled to pass judgment on each and every instance of human thought and imagination. Just ask him if he didn’t go to concerts, exhibitions, and theatres, there to scandalize connaisseurs with his vulgar opinions and fundamental ignorance. Just ask him if he didn’t exhaust some people’s patience and make others laugh. And when still others enjoined him to stick to his last,29 ask him if he didn’t trot out the dogma of equality and everybody’s right to an opinion, as guaranteed by our Magna Carta. Go ahead and ask him, while he’s there in front of you!
Schultz stopped talking. I turned to the so-and-so, not to ask him a question, but curious to see how he would respond. But Doctor Scarpi Núñez was now roundly snoring, swaddled in his blankets of mud.
— Shhh! Buxom Betty silenced me. Dr Núñez is not available.
We walked away from the pigsty, heading for the exit from Mudtown, which wasn’t far off.