— A magnificent subject, he declared, still panting and pointing toward Marta Ruiz, whose post-hypnotic exultation was evident.
Everyone was feeling fine, and even better when Franky the Magnanimous set about distributing the first fruits of a bottle whose virginity he authenticated in the most exalted terms. And jubilation overflowed when Ruty Johansen, the northern Valkyrie, sat down vehemently at the piano and tore into the first bars of the “Blue Danube.”
— Let’s dance! shouted Marta Ruiz, all aflame.
— Find a partner! Everyone find a partner!
Then something beautiful happened: stray souls divined one another and embraced under Ruty’s spell. The first to enter the whirlwind was Schultz, that disquieting astrologer. His hand on Ethel Amundsen’s waist (slender as an Indian reed!), he made her spin in precise astronomical circles. Señor Johansen and spouse, joining spherical bellies and short arms, began to turn with the grace of two bears on an ice floe. Next came Valdez and Marta Ruiz, her eyes still pregnant with the darkness of the abyss, the engineer modest and unpretentious as ever. They were followed by Samuel Tesler, clinging to the jovial Haydée Amundsen like a storm-tossed sailor to his mast. Then came Lucio and Solveig (Daphnis and Cloë!), a pair of tremulous doves. Franky, Pereda, Del Solar, and Bernini, in a single wobbly bundle of humanity, were trying out the “four-let’s-dance,” the neo-dance Schultz had learned from a certain funnel-shaped Spirit during a conjunction of Venus and Saturn. But who was that glacial, frowning gentleman with Señora Amundsen, the one who danced with the stately rigidity of a strongbox? Why, it was Mister Chisholm, the administrative manager of the world plus its environs! Ruty Johansen was working the ivories, tickling mermaid crystals and Tritonesque seashells out of the “Blue Danube.” And everybody was whirling together in happy abandon. Except for two motionless souls: Adam Buenosayres and Señora Ruiz.
Adam Buenosayres, immobile in the centre of the circle and the dance, could not tear his gaze from Solveig and Lucio. The pair were lost in each other, following the rhythm of the music and of their hearts. All too sensitive to the nascent spell bringing those two creatures together, Adam Buenosayres was sinking into desolate jealousy. But watch out! She, too, might some day feel the weight of her autumn, and find herself alone and immobile like a thirst far from water. Then Adam and Solveig would meet again: it would be an afternoon the colour of dead leaves. Where? Didn’t matter. And Solveig would understand the kind of love she’d disdained to read about in the Blue-Bound Notebook; her remorse would speak through a gaze extending like a bridge toward him. Too late! Glorious and sad (his literary genius by now known to the world), Adam Buenosayres would be beyond human passion (moribund, perhaps? No, tone it down a bit!). Nevertheless, between today’s not-to-be and tomorrow’s sweet might-have-been, they would be irremediably beset by ineffable sorrow. And then she would be overcome by tears, while Adam’s eyes would be as dry and hard as stones… Ah, how sweet those images of consolation!
Meanwhile, the waltz was attaining its peak in splendour. The dancers, in the grip of vertigo, traced absurd trajectories and spun like coloured tops. Bravo! Ruty Johansen’s fingers were playing like the devil. At this point, Adam Buenosayres noticed his Blue-Bound Notebook lying — insulted, belittled! — on the sky-blue divan. And suddenly, his soul began to faint and his mind to stray into dangerous labyrinths of wrath. Orlando Furioso!41 Like the fabulous chivalric knight, Adam too is fleeing into mild dementia. He’s in his underwear, like Sir Lancelot of the Lake, and he’s running down the streets of Villa Crespo pursued by ubiquitous jeers and catcalls. Two endless streams of tears flow from his eyes to his mouth, two bitter rivers from which he drinks day and night. The mob points at him. Kids pelt him with their slingshots. The malevos on street-corners clobber and spit on him. Toothless hags empty chamberpots on his head as he passes. Ferocious females throw old boots and rotten fruit. Adam falls, gets up, keeps on running, falls down again! But on the third day a tremendous fury displaces his passive madness. Now he’s ripping a paradise tree out of the pavement of Gurruchaga Street. From its gigantic trunk he fashions his mace. Hell and damnation! The multitude recoils with frightful howls. Too late now! Adam’s mace is carrying out its mission of total destruction: skulls are cracking like nuts; the wake of the furious lover’s passage is strewn with bodies in twisted postures; black blood flows into the tannery’s sewers, which swallow it with a sinister glug-glug. Now where are all the insolent faces, the malignant eyes, the jeering teeth! The big sleep has descended on all eyelids, everyone seems comatose in Gurruchaga Street! No, not everybody. The survivors have slunk into their hovels, their dark cellars, their zinc kitchens. But Adam’s fury can no longer be reined in. Now he tackles the buildings. Beneath his formidable mace, walls crack and tumble, roofs cave in with a frightful din. A cloud of red dust rises from the ruins and obscures the light. Amid the rubble can be heard muffled moans, death rattles, a tangle of prayers and curses. By noon Adam is feeling hunger pangs. He storms into the corral of Arizmendi the Basque, disembowels his three auburn cows, and wolfs down the steaming entrails. Then he goes back to his task of devastation. Villa Crespo is nought but a pile of rubble! But in the late afternoon, Adam finds himself in front of the Church of San Bernardo. The hero brandishes his mace, as though about to raze the temple with a single blow. Upon raising his wrathful eyes, he sees the Christ with the Broken Hand, and the weapon falls at his feet. Adam backs away, filled with dread. For, in the palm of his lacerated hand, the statue is showing him a heart of stone, and the stone heart is bleeding… Enough!
Enough! cries Adam Buenosayres to himself. A mad weaver of smoke! No need to glance at the salon’s mirror to know his face was contorted and his eyes wild. He took a look around. Did anyone notice his dementia? He could relax; the tertulia was still wheeling to the strains of the “Blue Danube.” The bewitched souls were conjoined in a single rhythmn, a single rapture. And Adam was immobile in the centre of the round, as he was yesterday, as always. Until when?
Suddenly Adam Buenosayres was inspired to do the strangest thing. Whether out of mortal anguish or some liberating impulse, he wafted as though in a dream to the circle of dancers. Approaching Señora Ruiz, he gallantly offered his arm and invited her to dance. Astonishingly, Señora Ruiz accepted, and the two of them executed the first steps of a danse macabre. Hip! Hip! Adam was dancing with a skeleton. Hurrah! His hands clasped a rickety ribcage, and the breath of his funereal partner (a sad smell of catacombs) blew straight onto his face. Fine! Adam spun madly, clinging to a handful of bones. As he turned round and round, his perceptions came in snatches: whirling bright faces, vivid gestures, bits of laughter, shreds of conversation, flouncing skirts, lights that rolled and tumbled, along with bodies, souls, smoking heads. Hurrah! Hurrah! There was fire in the feet of the dancers, and the whole salon danced as if possessed. Bravo! Outside, the city was dancing beneath a million lights. In the immensity of space danced planet Earth.