— It’s all true, he announced in a fury. But what’s still needed is gold. Gold!
— Let go of my arm! Adam ordered.
— Gold! Gold! shouted Samuel. It picks the lock of the world!
He laughed perversely and continued:
— And why not? My race knows well the secret of gold. We manufacture it, we adore it. And why not?
The scars of the whip were still bleeding on your skin, and the mud of the Nile was still fresh on your feet. The manna sent from heaven melted in your mouth, and in your throat was the freshness of the prodigious fount. And you were already forgetting, hard-hearted man! Already you had made burnt offerings to the golden beast, and kissed its hooves cast in the metal of your women’s earrings and bracelets! (But the Just Man struggled on the mountain; he held back the arm of his Lord that was about to fall upon your shaven head.)4 And later you were among your brothers in the house of Naphtali, and you went weaving your obscene dance around the golden calves wrought by Jeroboam. (But the Just Man looked up to the ever clear sky, and descended at dawn, heading for Jerusalem.)5 And still later you were seen on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, with your aquiline nose in the air and your ear attentive to the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, psaltery, dulcimer, and the entire musical ensemble. And when the signal sounded, you fell on your face, adoring the golden statue that Nebuchadnezzar had built. (But the three men sang in the fiery furnace: Fires of the Lord, praise the Lord!).6 And later still you were the sordid alchemist, vainly working with mercury, sulphur, and salt. (But Abraham the Jew made authentic gold, and saw in his athanor the fulfilment of the great work: the Green Lion and Lion’s Blood.)7 And nowadays you can be seen working to transmute blood and sweat into gold. And fulfilling the liturgy of gold, and enjoying the beatitudes of gold, and suffering the martyrdom of gold. (But announced is Philadelphia, city of brothers.)8
— That is the great temptation, concluded Tesler. To accumulate that yellow stuff!
— I don’t see how, Adam rejoined. Unless you sell your soul to the devil. And what devil would buy it from you?
The philosopher laughed disdainfully.
— Black magic, he said. Bah! It used to work when man knew himself to be the proprietor of a soul. But now we live in the time of the body.
— So what would be your plan? asked Adam.
— He who rules over bodies will rule over gold, Tesler responded prophetically.
— You’re wandering off topic.
— No, I’m not. I’m short three courses to fulfil my degree in Medicine. Only three! I take the three courses, and I become Doctor Samuel Tesler, clinician and surgeon.
— What’s the connection?
— It’s another key to gold.
Samuel took on an air of cold calculation.
— To be a doctor now, he said, means being able to rule over bodies in the age of the body.
And he added, with glacial brutality:
— The bourgeois slobs who amass gold will be parted from it by only two powers: those who defend it for them, and those who keep their viscera in good working order. That’s why we live in the era of lawyers and doctors.
He laughed cruelly:
— Let’s imagine a financial idol, inaccessible, all-powerful, revered, feared. Along comes Doctor Samuel Tesler, and the idol falls apart. Doctor Tesler makes the idol strip naked, prods and pinches him, sticks a cannula up his anal orifice or a catheter up his urethra, keeps him nervous about the state of putrefaction of his vital organs, plays on his hopes and fears, regulates how much he eats, sleeps, and fornicates. Thus does Doctor Tesler elegantly take control of the broken idol. Is it worth taking the three exams?
— Hmm! grumbled Adam Buenosayres, not convinced by the ease with which Samuel had just knocked down the idol.
— It’s like this, insisted the philosopher. Medicine, too, is an instrument of domination.
And he added with overweening pride:
— Not for nothing has my race abounded in great doctors.
— An imperialist race, Adam insinuated sarcastically.
— And one that conquers the enemy by attacking his weak spot.
— What weak spot?
— The sensuality of his oppressors.
Adam Buenosayres laughed in real amusement:
— For half an hour now, he said, you’ve been inventing dreams of gold and luxury. And all for Haydée Amundsen’s flesh, be it tough or tender!
— Tender! protested Samuel in ecstasy.
Right away he added in a penitential tone:
— I’m the black sheep. Samuel has deserted his tribe.
— Your tribe is no better, Adam rejoined. Your race is disgustingly sensual. You can’t deny it.
The philosopher’s long sigh sounded in the shadows.
— Yes, he admitted, it’s an oriental race. It still has a penchant for luxury. Don’t forget that it has bought and sold all the splendours of the world — precious metals and stones, fabrics, perfumes, slaves, women.
Here he paused, as if about to reveal something confidential.
— I myself, he said at last, despite my Franciscan life and philosophical initiations, can’t break free from the inclination. Of course, it’s an ancestral influence! Sometimes I find myself staring through a shop window, mesmerized by some luxurious trinket.
He interrupted himself again, then finally resolved to confess alclass="underline"
— When the Chinaman at the drycleaner’s gave me that fantastic kimono, oh boy! — that night, after putting it on, I felt my epidermis would never again tolerate any material but silk. Then again, when Levy the hat manufacturer got married, there was French champagne at the reception. I’d never tried it before. And would you believe it? Once I’d tasted it, I knew without a doubt that from then on life would be unbearable without that wonderful wine. And women! I don’t know why, but I study them, measure them, mentally touch them, as if I had to buy and sell them at so much a pound!
He lapsed into an afflicted silence, and Adam Buenosayres patted him on the shoulder consolingly, even though he was still wondering whether the confession was a product of sincerity, drunkenness, or farce, a mode in which the philosopher so often moved.
— I believe you, he said. That’s why I laughed when you were talking about the sensuality of others.
— And doesn’t it exist? protested Samuel, who never admitted defeat and was already rising from his ashes.
— It exists, Adam admitted. We’re in the time of the body, as you were saying. A felicitous turn of phrase.
— Bah! said Samuel modestly. Those flashes of brilliance happen to me to all the time.
— It exists. And the people of your race have been fostering it very cleverly. Just ask the Elders of Zion!9
The philosopher laughed in the dark:
— Haven’t I been telling you?
— Yes, yes, Adam replied. But their own sensuality makes them fall into the snares they set for the sensuality of others. They invent idols for others, and end up adoring them themselves. Gold, for example, ought to be for them simply a means of domination. And they take it for end in itself!
— Who knows? objected the philosopher, touched to the quick.
— That’s why, concluded Adam, even if they attain certain positions, they’ll never achieve the domination they dream about.
— Who knows? Samuel muttered again. Who knows?
Side by side, the two of them embarked on the stretch of Warnes Street running from Vírgenes to Monte Egmont. From there, Adam had a clear view of the San Bernardo steeple, its clock burning in the night like the eye of a cyclops. Behind the steeple he sensed the presence of the stone figure whose broken hand was outstretched in a gesture of benediction. And, as so many times before, the mere evocation of that image caused him to feel a strange unease, a sense that someone was calling him from on high. That curtains of dense shadow were hanging between Adam and the voice that called him.