Someone on the other side had just turned the door handle. The eleven characters in the vestibule suddenly stopped talking and fixed their eyes on the closed door. Doña Venus herself, snoozing atop her stool, opened her right eye to take a look:
— See what a girl is Jova! she whined without enthusiasm. Look what a girl!
The door, however, did not open. The men in the vestibule relaxed their vigilance. But first they heard tinkling laughter in the room behind the door, a warm trill as old as the world.
— Will that woman never come out? protested the philosopher Tesler, grimacing like an obscene gargoyle.
Franky gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
— Calm down, beast! he said. You’ll get your ration of meat.
The vestibule was narrow; the eleven characters (as well as Doña Venus and her lapdog Lulu, curled up beside her) filled it completely. They sat in the following order. On the left, against the blood-coloured wall, several contradictory figures sat on a bench directly facing the anteroom whose door handle had just turned: the Syrian Merchant, the Galician Conductor, the Italian Gasfitter, and the Mature Gentleman. At the back, against a wrought-iron-and-glass partition separating the vestibule from the patio, were seated Luis Pereda, the pipsqueak Bernini, Franky Amundsen, and the philosopher Tesler, all of whom were able to keep an eye on two doors. One of these led to the room adjoining the anteroom; to one side of this door sat Doña Venus, sleeping with one eye ajar. The other was the frosted-glass inner door that allowed ingress from the street, once its security chain had been stealthily slid open. Between the glass partition and the bloody wall, a nook opened out; that was where Adam Buenosayres, the astrologer Schultz, and the Taciturn Young Man were sitting in Vienna chairs. Light from an electric bulb smeared the walls, glared off the window panes in the partition, and cruelly illuminated those twelve human faces, revealing them with the brutality of a mug shot. Aside from the expectancy prevailing in the vestibule and the mysteries apparently being celebrated in the hermetic room and anteroom, there were no other signs of life in the rambling old house, as though silence and night were its only tenants.
Among the eleven personages who had glanced at the door, only the Taciturn Young Man was still staring at the door handle, seemingly abstracted from his surroundings. His extravagantly slicked-back hair, his ceremonious necktie, his gleaming patent leather shoes, the razor-sharp crease of his trousers, everything in his attire appeared to conform to a liturgical order. Adam Buenosayres, who had been studying him with interest, whispered these observations into the ear of the astrologer.
— His nuptial suit, Schultz responded in a low voice.
— What? Adam was astonished. Do you really think so?
— If I’m not mistaken, said Schultz, that boy will be the next to pay homage to the beast.
— It’s his turn, Adam admitted. But the bit about the suit is impossible. It would be monstrous.
— Study him closely, replied Schultz, glancing furtively at the Taciturn Young Man. For half an hour now that boy has been an architect.
— An architect?
— That’s right, insisted Schultz bitterly. And do you know what the architect is constructing now? A phantasm.
— An ideal construction?
— Listen carefully, assented Schultz. I haven’t seen the woman who is officiating behind that door; nor has he, in all likelihood. But believe me, when that lad goes in there, he will be wed to a phantasm.
Adam Buenosayres remained silent, and the image of Solveig Amundsen crossed his mind. “Yes, the fragile clay of a subtle architecture, or the raw material of a dream.” Instinctively, his hand went to the Blue-Bound Notebook, but he drew it back right away. “Not now, later! It will be an opulent wake. The poetic death of a phantasm.”
— Possibly, he answered at last, without looking at the astrologer.
— Pure metaphysics, Schultz corrected him severely.
The Mature Gentleman, meanwhile, had been devouring his newspaper. Now he raised a venerable white head, two chubby pink cheeks, and a nose straddled precariously by a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles. He was the only one among the men in the vestibule who looked absolutely natural, at ease, at home — all he was missing to be completely in character were his slippers and robe de chambre.
— Just as I thought! he exclaimed, jabbing a finger at a headline in his newpaper.
Everyone, except the sleeping Doña Venus and the dreaming Taciturn Young Man, turned to stare at the Mature Gentleman.
— The murder of the rancher Martínez? asked Franky.
— Kidnapping and murder, corrected the Mature Gentleman. I was right when I said the Mafia in Rosario was behind it.
— Bad people, opined the Syrian Merchant, smiling with Asian ferocity. His eyes glinted beneath the brim of his pearl-grey Stetson; a stiff collar and a red tie were nearly strangling him around the neck. His get-up was completed by a green Perramus coat1 and shiny colt-leather boots, and the Merchant looked as though he couldn’t be more comfortable inside a torture machine. “His nuptial suit,” Adam Buenosayres thought uneasily.
Very excited now, the Mature Gentleman was playing detective, authoritatively brandishing his newspaper. All those flashy crimes, macabre headlines, photographs of cadavers in supine or lateral position lent a touch of heroic colour, yes, to his drab, insignificant existence.
— Think about it, he explained. The method of the crime is obvious: first the rancher disappears, the investigation yields nothing, the police are disoriented. Then the corpse turns up in a field, shot through the head! It’s as clear as day!
— What are you implying? Franky asked him in a severe tone.
— The Mafia! whispered the Mature Gentleman confidentially. And the police are in the dark!
Franky stared hard at him. Contemplating the Gentleman, Franky was torn by conflicting thoughts. He couldn’t decide whether to go and kiss the old man’s chubby cheeks or thump him one on his shiny pate. But finally he opted for a third plan: he knitted his brow and pulled a sombre face.
— Choose your words carefully! he threatened. Are you sure about what you’re saying?
Amid the general surprise, the Mature Gentleman paled visibly, overcome by a suspicion — could this young fellow be from the Secreta? He struggled for words under Franky’s ruthless stare. About to respond, he was interrupted by a monotonous, ghostly, incredible voice, issuing from a quarter no one would have suspected. How was it possible? For it was beyond doubt that Doña Venus was sleeping, with her two hundred pounds of fat well stacked upon her stool. Her eyelids closed, nothing budged in her mask of wrinkles and flaking rouge, and her head looked like plaster under a light that revelled in displaying her bizarre hair, parted down the middle into two bands, one snow-white and the other as black as the raven’s wing. Doña Venus was indeed sleeping! And yet, she was also saying something in a voice seemingly from another world.