Adopting a ceremonious demeanour, the astrologer turned to me:
— Allow me to introduce to you Don Abel Sánchez de Aja Berija y Baraja, man of means, pioneer, self-taught man, and other boastful titles in the same vein, which he is wont to recite at bars, should someone stand him a drink (otherwise, he does not indulge).61
— Drop the Berija y Baraja bit! shouted Don Abel, surprised and indignant.
— This man, continued Schultz, displays a lyrical virtue rare in our time. He has been devoting himself to the difficult mission of providing chambers for his fellow citizens. To that noble end, he has erected in Buenos Aires thirty apartment buildings, with twenty suites apiece, wherein his fellow citizens may enjoy a veritably paradisal existence, if only they pay an exorbitant rent. The dawn of his vocation, though obscure, is nonetheless honourable, for it stems from Don Abel Sánchez’s past practice in the traditional conventillos where — as recorded in the archives of the Justice of the Peace — he performed a great many altruistic deeds, such as throwing out orphans, widows, and the destitute who fell behind in their ludicrous monthly rent.
Don Abel stomped one foot on the ground:
— Enough of the irony, already, he grumbled. I am a man who…
But Schultz ignored him:
— It should be acknowledged, he added, that the twentieth-century winds of change did not catch him unawares. No sooner had he breathed in the novisecular breeze than he demolished his tenements and set about speculating in cement.
— Enough chit-chat! Don Abel interrupted again. I demand that you tell me whether you two are the new architects or not.
— What if we are? Schultz responded.
— Then, he shouted, why are you standing there like a couple of oafs? This building needs to be finished right now. I’ve already kicked nine architects off this job.
— Why? I intervened.
Don Abel’s sour face flushed with fresh anger:
— They wanted to put only twenty apartments in ten storeys! he exclaimed. I told them forty. Thank God, we can still put things right: the plans have to be corrected.
— Listen, Schultz rejoined. Do you want to put up a building fit for men or for rats? Have you forgotten the human body, too, has its dignity?
— I was educated by priests, Don Abel hypocritically refuted. And they taught me to humiliate the body.
— The human body! Schultz went on. The residence of the immortal spirit! The dwelling, albeit transient, of divine Psyche!
Don Abel inflated his thorax, and I saw something stir in his eyes, a fanatical gleam that gave me a glimpse of the true physiognomy of his demon.
— Did I say otherwise? he retorted heatedly. In all my apartment buildings, didn’t I sacrifice the bedrooms, the dining room, the living room, and the office so as give more space and luxury to that temple of bodily dignity known as the Bathroom? Haven’t I seen half the city fall into ecstacy at the sight of my built-in bathtubs, my aerodynamic bidets, my fashionable toilets? Did I not have full-size mirrors placed in front of my bathtubs so my tenants could admire every last detail of their intimate operations?
— Yeah, sure, Schultz admitted. And I hope the city shows its gratitude and honours you with an equestrian statue: Don Abel Sánchez de Aja Berija y Baraja mounted on a gigantic bidet cast in bronze.
— I told you to drop the Berija y Baraja! Don Abel protested again.
— I have no intention of filching your glory, Schultz growled. But don’t try and deny you’ve stolen from people their portion of air and their ray of sunshine.
— In exchange, I gave them a garbage incinerator and central heating.
— Which barely works, muttered Schultz. And besides, what about the children? Can children live in that cement cage?
The autodidact’s mouth fell open and stayed open for good while, as if he’d been left speechless.
— Children? he exclaimed at last. But, sir, do you think we’re still in the Middle Ages? Children!
He turned his gaze from me to Schultz, seemingly turning over an idea that didn’t quite fit into his skull. Next, he looked at the unfinished building: the autodidact’s face reflected the oblivion to which he was already consigning us, then deep attention, then calculation, and finally indignation.
— What are those fools up to there? he bellowed threateningly toward the heights. Those servants’ quarters should be narrower!
Furious, he tore off up the stairs. He again ran from floor to floor and hopped from scaffolding to scaffolding, brandishing his fist in the face of phantasmal workers and vociferating among the bars of his cage.
We didn’t climb the hill; nor did we visit any other building of the many that were going up there. Cutting to the left, we entered a barrio very disagreeable to the sense of sight. Full of anthropomorphic constructions, the zone was swarming with people who had been brutally twisted into numerical forms. Someone had wrenched those human bodies so violently that even today I seem to feel back pains just thinking about the hominids shaped as the number 3. And I say “swarming” with human numbers, because they really were filing in and out of the anthropomorphic premises like ants, a double line of them packing the most absurd materials on their backs. In spite of my repeated questions, Schultz told me nothing about this barrio. The buildings were starting to thin out, when we were stopped by a very high wall of vegetation. It rose before us like a living fence woven of thorny branches, privets, and creepers. We picked our way through the vegetal rampart, and when we came out on the other side, my eyes beheld the saddest garden they’d ever seen.
Deformed trees stood there with trunks of gold-coloured metal, leaves of yellow brass, and flowers of chocolate paper. The same tackiness could be observed throughout the garden: in the shrubs and grass, in the wasps and butterflies fluttering listlessly among the dead calyxes, and even in the gigantic mushrooms, which took flight like a child’s balloon at the mere brush of one’s foot. The place was thick with wingèd figures of Mercury and revolving effigies of Fortune cast in wax or soap, according to the norms of the most outrageous kitsch. Nevertheless, my curiosity was soon attracted by a big villa hulking in the middle of the garden, whose sorry, peeling frontispiece matched the rest of the buildings in the Plutobarrio. The astrologer had me walk around the outside of the mansion, and I saw that each of the four facades was in a different style. The northern facade was Egyptian, the southern Greek, the eastern medieval, and the western Renaissance.
— The architect who designed this mess, I told Schultz, had his head in one godawful muddle.
But the astrologer put his index finger to his lips and ordered me to keep my ears peeled. Listening closely, I noticed that from inside the palace, as though filtering through its cracks, came the sound of music played on exotic instruments; its slow monotony reminded me of the Oriental strains in the Café Izmir, or of certain Hebraic laments I’d heard at night on Gurruchaga Street. And given the mansion’s apparent state of long abandon, fear stirred within me at the thought that it was haunted only by such music. At this point Schultz took me by the arm:
— Let’s go in, he said, pointing to the Greek facade.
We passed between two columns to a monumental door, which my guide unceremoniously pushed open, causing it to creak harshly. A new wave of fear would have held me back, had Schultz not given me a violent shove to the shoulder and propelled me, tumbling and staggering, inside the house. When I regained my balance, I found myself in an enormous hall and in the middle of a circle formed by couples dancing like automatons to the aforementioned music; wordless and expressionless, they danced beneath immense chandeliers in whose crystal teardrops, chipped and dirty, the light guttered and died before it reached the floor. The phantasmagorical dancers, ladies and gentlemen alike, wore rigorously formal attire: men’s tailcoats alternated with the uniforms of military officers and diplomats; the tulle of young ladies, with the satin of matrons. But all of their apparel and adornments, shamefully rumpled and tattered, ravaged by moths, were crying out their antiquity and ruin. As I observed this, I was struck by the disquieting suspicion that those poseurs had been there dancing nonstop for the past half century.62 I looked around for Schultz and found him behind me.