— Could he be a foreigner? Adam Buenosayres hazarded.
The hypothesis was accepted by most of them, so Schultz uselessly repeated his questions in a few modern languages. Then he tried in disastrous Latin, then again in even worse Greek. At Schultz’s last words, the magus raised his head.
— He’s understood! exclaimed Schultz. He’s going to talk to us!
The adventurers of Saavedra were all ears. And then the bonfire man, his gaze fixed upon them, said in tranquil voice:
— You sons of whores.
Great was the surprise of all upon hearing such familiar language.
— That’s gotta be pure Sanskrit! exclaimed Franky, delighted.
Surprise was quickly succeeded by the most violent fit of hilarity yet recorded on that memorable night. Abashed and piqued, the astrologer threatened to take the pot and put it like a hat on the detestable imposter. His truly pathetic indignation kindled the others’ laughter until they were howling. But the bonfire man, riled by the astrologer’s aggressive demeanour and the hoots of the rest, lurched to his feet, grabbed the pot by the handle, and menacingly made for the explorers. They all took off running, the demonic mastiffs hard on their heels.
After resting to catch their breath, the adventurers set forth once again, giving vent to their glee at the expense of Schultz and his black magic. The astrologer suffered the slings and arrows of mockery in silence. His magnanimous heart pitied the ignorance of those men who knew not the horror of certain occult forces and who, swinging between the poles of Good and Evil, were as helpless as children when it came to manifestations of the demonic. But as the jeering got more outrageous, Schultz’s charity degenerated into an irascible will to take revenge on the jokers.
— You scoff, he intoned mirthlessly. But you haven’t even an inkling of the invisible horde lurking in the dark. Perverse eyes are watching us, as I speak. Hmm, it’s the witching hour.
— The dark powers exist, Samuel affirmed in a voice from the tomb.
The astrologer Schultz noticed that everyone was quiet now, and he deliberately prolonged the moment of silence.
— They’re invisible forms, he added. But if we focus our will even slightly, they’ll become visible. Look closely into the shadows, and you’ll see it’s burgeoning with monstrous silhouettes.
The pipsqueak Bernini forced a nervous little laugh, trying to break the spell. But his laugh found no echo in the group. Instead, their wary eyes darted left and right, seeking in the night what they dared not find.
— Yes, said Adam Buenosayres. The devil is quick to answer any call. Nothing to it! All you need to do is invoke him in thought, and there he is!
— Hmm, Del Solar spluttered. The outskirts of Buenos Aires have a long tradition of witchcraft. Apparitions of both the Pig and the Widow are commonplace.50
At that point, Buenosayres had the bright idea of telling the ghost story he’d heard as a child from his grandfather Sebastián. It’s wintertime, one midnight in August. Grampa is sleeping the sleep of the just, out there in his cabin lost among hills and dales, when suddenly he wakes up to the sound of someone or something knocking at the window. Must be the wind, he thinks. He half sits up in his cot and listens. Now the noise is at the cabin door — an insistent tapping as though huge wings were beating at the door. Grampa lights his lamp and cries out: Who’s there? No answer, the wings just keep on beating. So he gets out of bed, takes the bar from the door, and opens it. Outside he finds a flock of enormous turkeys. Spreading their tails, they push past him and barge into the cabin. Now, Grandfather Sebastián has never seen such huge turkeys and he begins to suspect witchcraft, especially when the turkeys, making an infernal racket, crowd round and push him against the wall. So he grabs the bar and starts battering the turkeys with it. Far from backing off, they seem to revel in each blow. His hair standing on end, Grampa runs over and pulls out a silver-plated knife hidden under the head of the bed. He makes the sign of the cross by putting the blade over the sheath and shoves it at the beasts. What banshees! They all back away, screeching like old crones after a flogging. Grampa sees them pile out through the door and flee across the fields into the night like souls rounded up by the devil.
Gradually, as Adam’s tale unfolded, the group had tightened around the storyteller as they walked. Even Schultz, regretting he’d embarked them on such a dire demonology, was walking cheek by jowl with his comrades, anxiously peering into the shadows in spite of himself. Such was the state of the group’s morale when Buenosayres finished his yarn. Next, as if one ghost story weren’t enough, Samuel Tesler began to recount a gloomy tale of love and hate. It had taken place in his native land, Besarabia, vaguely remembered from childhood. It was about a woman and a man. She was as adorable as she was disdainful. He was a victim of unrequited love that had turned into implacable rancour. The two of them lived in the same house, separated by a wall. For no apparent reason, the young woman started showing symptoms of a rare disease. Every midnight her fever would come to a crisis, at the very same moment when, on the other side of the wall, three hammer blows were heard. Day after day, at the stroke of midnight, the hammer pounded three times on the wall, and the young woman’s condition worsened. For a month the young woman went on wasting away. Then, at the final blow of the hammer, she gave up the ghost. Several days later, the love-stricken man mysteriously disappeared. The police entered his room. On the wall separating his room from hers, the shape of a woman had been drawn in pencil. A nail had been driven deep into the figure’s heart. The hammer lay on the floor.
Samuel’s story, told in that place and at such an hour, was the last straw. The group had just come to the top of a hill. What happened there was as fast as it was inexplicable. Luis Pereda suddenly tripped over something massive. He went tumbling down the slope without so much as a shout. The others ran to help him, but before they got to the bottom where he lay, he got up and took to his heels at full speed.
— The Devil! he screamed. The Devil!
The explorers looked back to where Pereda had fallen. They could make out a dark bulk arising from the ground and raising two horns like those of an ox. Simultaneously, the silence of the night was broken by a long “mooooo.”51 The entire group, panic-stricken, took off after the fleeing Pereda, with Schultz in the lead, the very vanguard of terror. An accelerated fugue dragged them all indiscriminately across merciless terrain. As they fled, the night semed to unleash all its secret fury against them. Behind them, invisible arms reached out, straining to seize them in clawlike fingers. The napes of their necks prickled under the icy breath of the pursuers. Heathen war whoops, bestial panting, and burlesque snickers filled their ears. They bounded along, afraid that at any moment they might step on some repulsive shape slithering over the ground.
How long did that giddy career last? They never knew. Later, they only remembered suddenly topping a rise in the ground and seeing two or three street lamps emerge in the near distance.
— Lights! they shouted. Lights!
And they ran as fast as they could down the slope.
They had arrived.
Chapter 2. HERE LIES JUAN ROBLES, MUD-STOMPER
Adam Buenosayres, the astrologer Schultz, and Samuel Tesler were tarrying, deep in thought, in the chamber where the deceased lay in state. As men who have plumbed the ancient mystery of death, all three contemplated the mortal remains of the man who had been Juan Robles (a fine specimen of a criollo, if ever there was one). According to the neighbours, he’d kicked the bucket after fifty-nine years in an existence both happy and laborious. He’d whiled away his time on earth drifting from pulpería to pulpería, from siesta to siesta, watching his famous mares stomp mud for brick-making.1 And just now Juan Robles was looking quite ceremonious, stuffed into his wedding suit and stretched out full length in his black coffin with bronze handles.