— Señor Lombardi!
But when he heard me, the man gave a start and took off running toward the building.
— He’s the boss of the sawmill, I told Schultz.
— Ah! he rejoined. Is he not the gentleman who used to pass by the San Bernardo church? The one who would raise his hat and pretend to scratch his neck so as not to let on he was saluting?
— The very one.
Without another word, the astrologer and I took off after the fugitive, giving chase until we caught up to him just as he was entering the engine room. Then, giving up flight, Lombardi turned a panic-stricken face toward us:
— Shhh! he ordered us. They’re over there! They’re planning to blow up the sawmill.
— Who? Schultz asked him.
— The one-armed man and the stoker! shouted Lombardi. The boiler is about to explode, and they keep on shovelling and pouring the coal into her! Just look at the needle on the pressure gauge! The motor’s screeching and the gears are grinding! They want to blow up the sawmill! The one-armed man is the ringleader!
I looked around and noted the same state of abandon and the same cold silence as out in the yard. The motor was literally dissolving, eaten by rust. Old cobwebs covered the regulator, the flywheel, and the arm of the piston. Lacking both glass and needle, the pressure gauge eloquently summed up the state of disrepair. But Lombardi continued to shout his alarm. All of a sudden, as though expecting an explosion, he covered his ears with his hands and started running again. We pursued him through dismantled workshops until he reached his dusty desk and plopped down on a chair.
— What do you want now? he muttered, finding himself hemmed in between his filing cabinet and his cashbox.
I turned to Schultz:
— It’s Don Francisco Lombardi, honour and decorum of industrial Villa Crespo.
— Ah! commented Schultz. Isn’t he the gentlemen who used to confess every Saturday, took communion every Sunday, and went back to the sawmill every Monday greedier than ever?
Lombardi reminded him acidly:
— Don’t forget that every Sunday at Mass I threw three pesos into the collection bag.
But he quickly recovered his attitude of alarm and, looking around uneasily, asked us:
— The one-armed man hasn’t followed you, has he?
— Look, I assured him, there isn’t a soul in the whole sawmill. Who is the one-armed man?
— A vengeful type! whimpered Lombardi. His arm got cut off on my circular saw, and he demanded the insurance he was entitled to. I denied it, declaring before the authorities that the man had got himself mutilated because he was notoriously drunk at the time.
Lombardi was suddenly silent, no doubt having seen the expression on our faces.
— Oh! he exclaimed a moment later, don’t look at me like that! I know very well nine hundred pesos wasn’t a lot to pay for a man’s arm! Now I’d give him the whole sawmill. I’ve offered it to him countless times. But the one-armed man won’t accept!
He was silent again for a moment and then voiced his worries:
— Tell me, he asked in a shaky voice. Are you sure the old man hasn’t slipped in behind you?
— What old man? I inquired.
— The stoker. I threw him out of the sawmill when he could no longer lift a shovel. Forty-six years at the boiler had consumed his eyes, dried out his body, and had his nostrils constantly dripping yellow mucous into his mustache. But can he ever handle a shovel now! He’s the right-hand man of old One-Arm! You look at me again with hard eyes? Listen, you’re in for a big disappointment if you think I’m a bourgeois scared out of his wits. It isn’t the catastrophe itself that’s wrecking my nerves. It’s the way they’ve got me worrying and waiting for an explosion they just won’t stop crowing about! And I’ll tell you something else: what’s really giving me sleepless nights is a disturbing idea… hmm!
He stopped talking for a moment and looked at us with perplexed eyes. So I ventured to suggest:
— It can’t be easy to put into words.
— It’s an not an idea easy to grasp! Lombardi rejoined aggressively. Never mind, just listen: up in the rafters of the sawmill, I have a hiding place the stoker and the one-armed man don’t know about. There, where my only company is a grey mouse and two resident spiders, I’ve been able to have a good long think. And I’ve come to the conclusion there is such a thing as immanent justice.
— Good! Schultz interrupted, as though encouraging him.
But Lombardi looked at him with severity.
— Your approval means nothing to me, he said. Are you surprised to hear me talk like this? I went to school, too. Or do you take me for an ass loaded with money? Hmm! Anyway, I haven’t said anything special yet. Now comes the hard part. I already mentioned a troublesome idea that’s been keeping me awake nights, ever since I started thinking, up in the rafters, about what I did to the one-armed man, the stoker, and all those people now rising up against me. Oh, don’t think I’m talking about ordinary claims, like eight-hour days or minimum wages. Trifles! At bottom, do you know what I did to those poor devils? I robbed them of their human time! Do you understand?
He fixed us with an inquistive gaze and shook his head, visibly skepticaclass="underline"
— You don’t get it at all! he groused. When I say I robbed them of their human time, I mean their time for singing, laughing, contemplating, and knowing. And that’s where the great theological mischief comes into play! Because by robbing them of all that, I’ve robbed them perhaps of that special moment, the unique opportunity even the lowliest man has a right to: the chance to look in peace and quiet at a flower or a skyscape, hear without anxiety his children laugh and his wife sing, and so discover that life is hard but beautiful, God-given by a good God…
At these last words, the solitary of the sawmill let his brow fall to the table. He wept face down for a moment; then his sobs faded into absolute silence; and the silence was at last broken again by laboured snores in 2/4 time. Lombardi was now sleeping.
Schultz and I crept away from the desk on tiptoe, went out to the sawmill yard, and contemplated again the desolation there. Then we continued on our journey, still beneath the aureate luminosity, which by then seemed less like light and more like the incandescent ash of dead and cremated gold. We had to pass through more factories, foundries, spinning mills, and washing plants. Among their ruins wandered frantic men who hid when they spied us, as well as meek figures lost in thought who paid us no attention. By and by, we came to a kind of hill covered with the unfinished buildings of an urban housing development under construction. There were scaffoldings and heavy machinery; bricks and bags of cement were stacked here and there. And yet we didn’t see any architects or building contractors or construction workers, and it all gave me the impression of things stillborn. The first building was a mere skeleton of reinforced concrete: an enormous cage, an outline of ten floors and twenty apartments.
— In this cement cage, Schultz told me, lives quite a nasty old bird from Saavedra. I’m surprised he hasn’t sung yet.
He looked up at the top of the building, and I did likewise. Just then, we heard commands being shouted up there, the rebukes and threats of an angry man. Then we saw him come tearing down the concrete stairway linking the various storeys. At each floor he paused to bawl insults at invisible workers, his voice ragged and shrill, his fist raised. When he got to the ground floor, he rushed up to us, pouring sweat, and asked:
— Are you the new architects?
He was a big man who looked like a cross between a greyhound and a walrus, sour-faced, his skin tone excremental. His clothes were incredibly slovenly, and he stank like a porter at the spring equinox, house-moving day.