Pancho, his cheeks burning and brow furrowed, had gone outside to ruminate over the humiliation of the two smacks he’d so insultingly received in front of his rival. His imagination was brewing up ominous plans of revenge that might adequately chastise the intolerable abuse of maternal privilege. This time, he thought, she’d gone too far. Truth was, Pancho was vacillating between two equally seductive projects: either run away from home, or poison himself with a box of matches. The first design tempted with its promise of adventures beyond even Salgari’s4 wildest dreams. The second plan, however, was irresistibly fascinating for its wealth of dramatic effects. With bitter delight he savoured in advance the remorse that would weigh on his family when he, Pancho Ramírez, was no longer in this tempest-tossed world of slaps-in-the-face and was lying in state in his little white coffin. His primary school classmates would come to the funeral, maybe carrying the flag and everything. By this point in his reverie, the two smacks and the recent dishonour were forgotten, and Pancho fell into a weepy tenderness inspired instead by his own premature death. Thus musing, Pancho headed for the group of men outside drinking mate. He gingerly went up to his father, nervous that he might have to explain why he was out here among the men.
Fortunately, Don José Ramírez was holding forth just then, and when Don José was talking (which was all the time), the sky could come tumbling down around him and he wouldn’t miss a beat. The men of the neighbourhood were sitting beneath the autumnal grapevine, conversing alongside the rectangle of light projected onto the patio tiles from the chapel of rest. Through withered leaves of the vine, a few stars twinkled. Don José, quite the gentleman in his straw chair, was sitting opposite Zanetti, the bilious bill collector. To the right of Don José was the antique profile of Reynoso, who sat with a tin kettle and a mate gourd at his bunion’d feet. Indifferent to the tertulia, the Young Neighbour listened distractedly and fidgeted interminably with his little hat — the kind toffs wear, Pancho thought, as he tried to remember where he’d seen that guy before.
— Just imagine, said Don José in a jocular tone, warming to the story he was in midst of telling. There they all are at the table — the two guys from Corrientes, my brother Goyo, and the Brazilian — dealing cards to beat the band, totally wrapped up in a cut-throat game of truco. And under the same roof, right beside Goyo, the corpse of the “little angel” is layin’ there among his four candles and already smellin’ bad, poor little guy…
— Hmm, hmm, growled Zanetti, making a slurping noise with the bombilla.
— In the other shack, Don José went on, there’s a few couples dancing away to the accordion. And the guy with the squeeze box, the gals, the ranch hands, they’re all pissed to the gills.
— Absolute barbarity! the collector muttered between his teeth, as he handed the mate back to Reynoso.
The old man took it pensively, adjusted the bombilla in the gourd, then refilled it.
— That’s what they used to believe, he argued without looking at Zanetti. A kid dies? A little angel is on his way to heaven! Cause for celebration.
— Superstition, grumbled Zanetti. Lack of culture.
— Maybe, murmured old man Reynoso, slowly sucking at the bombilla.
Don José, getting visibly impatient, raised his hand.
— Well, now comes the good part, he announced jovially. Like I was saying, the guys were playing hard. The Brazilian, he was losing a fortune, and fuming every time Goyo took a trick. Because Goyo was a real card sharp — he needed an ace, he got one, even if he had to pull it out of his sleeve. Maybe the Brazilian started to suspect something fishy, I don’t know. But anyways, all of sudden he pulls out a huge revolver and points it at Goyo: Eu meto bala en vocé!, I’ll put a bullet in you! Holy jumpin’. Goyo, he’s unarmed, so guess what he does. He grabs the “little angel” by the feet and starts little-angeling the Brazilian with several good whacks.
— Goodness! commented Reynoso, hiding a smile behind his tobacco-stained mustache.
— You think I’m making this up? Don José asked him, laughing already.
— No, no, said Reynoso. So, whose kid was the “little angel”?
— I’m getting to that. Hearing all the hubbub, an old crone comes hobbling in, grabs the “little angel” from Goyo, and — pff, pff, pff, pff! — blows out the four candles. “Any more horse-play,” the old coot scolds, “and the wake’s over.”
Choking with laughter, Don José leaned back to rest his shiny bald head against the wall, and remained there for a while facing the sky. Then, still laughing, he looked around at the others and saw two serious faces. Zanetti, bitter as ever, and a pensive Reynoso were both facing the door of the chapel. Don José caught the sorrowful significance of their look, and his hilarity dried up immediately. Putting on a solemn face, he lowered his brow as though weighed down by gloomy thoughts. Still fingering his derby, the Young Neighbour glanced now and again at the street door, clearly anxious to leave. Pancho hadn’t taken his eyes off him for a minute, and now he finally recognized him. He was the dude who flirted with the dark-haired girl from the warehouse; more than once Pancho had shouted at him: “Leave that bone alone, doggie!” The mystery solved, Pancho snuggled up against his father’s chair and yawned deep and long. All in all, a wake wasn’t near as much fun as the boys made it out to be.
The collector Zanetti was getting ready to speak. In his infinite resentment, Zanetti had come to divide Humanity (with a capital “H”) into two irreconcilable camps. On one side of the battle line stood he, Antonio Zanetti, with his endlessly aching feet and the rancour he’d accumulated trying to collect abstract sums of money from certain people as slippery as eels. On the other side was the World (with a capital “W”). And a sinister conspiracy organized against Zanetti, it was: a clew of travesties, iniquities, and aberrations that Zanetti promised to fix if only he were allowed to be president for twenty-four hours. Men and women, beasts, and inanimate objects all had it in for the collector. He was certain, for example, that when he was going home at night with his feet in a sorry state, the cobblestones intentionally stood on end with the express purpose of exacerbating his martyrdom. But once he was home and his tortured feet were soaking in a basin of warm water, the collector Zanetti let himself taste glory as he dreamed up elaborate fantasies of revenge against Society, World, and cobblestones. He’d show them who Zanetti was! And no, he didn’t lack for courage! During the Semana Trágica of 1919,5 the collector Zanetti, well hidden in the chicken coop out back, had fired all six bullets from his revolver into the air. Ever since that memorable occasion, his self-image had been contradictory: the collector both admired and feared himself.
Fortunately, Zanetti’s current cogitations had nothing aggressive about them. Right now his mind was ploughing richer earth. At first, he was revolted by the imbecilic Don José’s brutish story; it illustrated once again all the ignorance, obscurantism, and superstition the collector insistently opposed with one of his lapidary dictums: “More schools, fewer priests.” Next, and quite understandably, the storyteller’s obstreperous hilarity had just about made his blood boil and rush to his head, for all thoughtless laughter grated on his ears like a slap across the face of Humanity itself. And the collector Zanetti, in a voice from the beyond, was wont to ask those cachinnating barbarians: Does Humanity have the right to laugh? Finally, the collector’s philosophical soul ascended to the plane of generalizations: he thought about the wake, indeed about all wakes, and about the routine of men “whose feet are still fettered and pinned by absurd prejudice.” This last phrase wasn’t actually his own; he’d got it from La Brecha,6 a morning paper he read religiously, not only during his daily foot-soak, but also — more discreetly — during the concluding operation of his digestive tract. In short, it was no wonder that by this time Zanetti was trembling like a generous fruit tree beneath its embarrassment of riches.