At the sound of that voice, the lapdog Lulu woke up and lifted her head, her little eyes dripping rheum.
— It was a ranch-hand, Doña Venus mumbled in the manner of a medium. One of the hired hands at Los Horcones. The owner had fired him. Yes, yes. It was a revenge killing.
Everyone was left speechless by the verdict Doña Venus had pronounced from her stool like the oracle of Delphi from her ritual tripod. But the Mature Gentleman was not long in taking up the gauntlet.
— False hypothesis, he shot back. An old story.
Then he added, waving his newspaper at her:
— Have you read this?
He was answered by a euphonious snore; Doña Venus had sunk back into the depths of lethargy. Lulu followed her example, curling up on her cushion upholstered in ticking.
The Mature Gentleman then turned to Franky.
— And what do you think, sir? he queried, both wary and friendly (could the young fellow be from the Secreta?). Myself, I think the Mafia…
— Hmm! growled Franky in a reserved tone, feeling under his left armpit for an imaginary revolver.
That was when the Galician Conductor spoke up. A dour man wearing an oilskin cap, a leather jacket, and a red scarf, he was obviously fed up to the teeth.
— Those Italian mobsters, he groused. Cowardly murderers, that’s what they are!
— Bad people, repeated the Syrian Merchant.
The Galician Conductor looked askance at the Italian Gasfitter, who sat beside him listening placidly, wearing a blue overall with the monogram CPG stitched in red.2
— It’s that Mussolini’s fault, the Conductor cursed. He kicked them out of Italy, and now we’ve got them here! Just look what dictators can do.
Smiling and timid at the same time, the Gasfitter scratched his head.
— If they were mafiosos he did good, he argued, gesturing profusely. Seems like the dummy isn’t Mussolini, if you ask me.
— He should have kept them! shot back the Conductor, sour as vinegar.
— Seems like the dummy is the government that let them in, concluded the Italian Gasfitter. If you ask me.
The Galician Conductor had a formidable harangue on the tip of his tongue against dictators, the Mafia in Rosario, and the whole world. His bushy eyebrows were arching as he prepared for debate. Just then the famous door handle turned again. Twenty-two startled eyes took note. The Taciturn Young Man instinctively straightened his tie. And then the door opened — ah, only one leaf of the double door, and slowly! — while Doña Venus, without raising her eyelids, was mechanically singing her pitch:
— See what a girl is Jova!
A woman stood outlined in the doorframe. (Step right up, gentlemen! Come see the ancient monster!). Her nakedness had the violence of an insult, scarcely veiled by a maroon negligee enveloping her like a swath of bloody spume. Beneath her mop of hair (blond, brunette, red, who could say?) her lustreless face was a powdered block defined by two violet stains for eyes and a lipstick smile aimed at everyone and no one. Her body secreted a cloying odour of scented wood or rubber, mixed with smells of antiseptic soap and kerosene that wafted through the open doorway into the room.
The eleven characters stopped talking. One by one, she examined them all and none, she smiled at everybody and nobody, as she slowly pulled up her long indigo stockings. She smiled and spoke to everyone, the beast of a thousand forms and none.
— How ’bout it, boys? How ’bout it?
Doña Venus swayed atop her stool.
— You won’t find another girl like Jova, she purred between sighs.
— How ’bout it, boys? invited Jova.
Samuel Tesler was about to pounce on her like a lion, but Franky held him back.
— Settle down, he told him. Your number hasn’t come up yet.
Jova laughed. A hot and neutral laugh. Then she insisted, her eyes motioning toward the room partially visible behind her.
— So? How ’bout it, boys?
A deep unease settled among the eleven men in the vestibule. The Galician Conductor had a bleak expression on his face, the Syrian Merchant a cruel gleam in his eye. The Gasfitter hung his head like a recently beaten animal. The Mature Gentleman, indifferent, had gone back to his newspaper. Adam and Schultz, Pereda and Bernini, Samuel and Franky, conversed or pretended to, anxious to elude the circular gaze of Jova. In the midst of the ambient tension, the Taciturn Young Man got to his feet and walked stiltedly like a mechanical doll toward Jova. Still smiling at everyone and no one, Jova wrapped a bare arm around his neck and softly pulled him into the room. Behind them, the door began discreetly to close. But before disappearing completely, Jova turned her laughing head to look back at everybody and nobody, to smile for each man and no man — nothingness tricked out as Iris, the shadow of a mystery!
– “May woman be a passing season in your life,” declared Schultz sententiously in Adam’s ear. (The astrologer’s voice was thick and his head swimming but, as he noted with pride, the excitement in his coarse flesh and bones was not affecting the decorum of his astral body.)
— Amen! groaned Adam Buenosayres. (And he had told Irma her eyes were like two mornings together; maybe he’d even kissed her. Then he’d seemed to lose this world, only to recover it later, but colder, sadder, as though his soul in its descent had lost the gift of sight, the illuminating grace of things.)
Meanwhile, with the eclipse of Jova, the men in the vestibule were behaving normally again, except for the Syrian Merchant, apparently absorbed in some dream of sun-bronzed women. But a hard silence had been left in the room that no one dared interrupt. The only sounds were the occasional glug-glug of draining water inside the hermetic chamber, or minute insects tapping against the glass lamp, or Doña Venus’s breathing in her beatific sleep. That’s how matters stood, when out of the blue Samuel Tesler started hooting with laughter, shaking his expressive face back and forth:
– “How ’bout it, boys,” he laughed. Cripes, as old Ciro would say! This lenocinium is abstract.3 Compared to this joint, Pythagoras’s theorem is an orgy.
The Gasfitter, who was trying to light an uncooperative half-cigar, stopped in mid-gesture, indifferent to the match burning between thumb and index finger. The Mature Gentleman lowered his newspaper. The Galician Conductor raised his eyebrows. The Merchant, jolted out of his ecstasy, clapped two tiger’s eyes on the philosopher. Then Franky Amundsen looked benevolently around at the men in the vestibule, pleading their indulgence.
— A great mind! he said, caressing Samuel’s back as though trying to calm down a vexed animal. But he’s the unfortunate victim of alcohol, ataxia of the motor functions, and a case of the clap his grandparents picked up back in the time of the Pharoahs.
— Too bad! commiserated the Mature Gentleman. And so young!
— Young? protested Franky. He’s two thousand years old, if he’s a day!
He turned toward the philosopher and took his head in his heads with the intention of kissing him on the forehead, but pushed him away immediately, as if startled.
— Brrr! he exclaimed. He’s uglier than ever!
Truth be told, Samuel’s laughing face was a spectacle in itself. Looking at it, Adam Buenosayres was put in mind of those demons that in cathedrals smirk gleefully beneath the stone heel of a saint. But the philosopher’s laughter was short-lived. Unexpectedly, Samuel adopted a grave demeanour, stood up, and brought his index finger to his lips.
— Shhh! he said, pointing at the closed door. Silence!
He staggered over to the door. But Adam and Franky smartly caught up with him and practically dragged him back to his seat.