— We must go up the stairs in silence, he said. Complete silence.
— Silent as the grave, Samuel gravely promised.
The stairwell was absolutely dark, and they had to feel their way up. Samuel went first; Adam, behind him, held his lower back to steady him. They were scarcely halfway up when Samuel, judging himself the very effigy of stealth, guffawed his satisfaction:
— How’s that, he asked in a thundering voice. Am I doing okay?
— Shhh! came Adam’s response from the shadows.
The last step brought them into the vestibule, which gave onto the rooms of each of the travellers. Adam entered Samuel’s room, Samuel trailing like a ghost, and switched on a dim little lamp. The philosopher then performed the following gestures: he blinked for an instant in the light like a dazzled owl, and let his sad eyes roam around the room, pausing on the books, the mournful blackboard, the disorderly table of his labours.
— What’s the use! he moaned at last, kicking over a column of greasy volumes.
Next, without the slighest preamble, he flew to the bed and sank into the heap of blankets, dressed just as he was, shoes and all. But Adam Buenosayres wouldn’t allow it. Dragging him out of bed, he stood Samuel up and removed his clothes and shoes, a difficult manoeuvre to which Samuel lent himself with much dignity. Adam got him into the famous kimono and only then let him go to bed.
— I’m thirsty, murmured the philosopher.14
Adam handed him a pitcher of water, which Samuel gulped down avidly, feverishly. Then he fell back upon the pillows. Seeing him now in a restful posture, Adam closed the window, drew the grimy curtain, turned out the light, and made to leave the room. At the doorway, Adam paused to listen: the philosopher was laughing softly, apparently stirring under the covers. Then he gave a long sigh:
— Noumena! he muttered, already between two worlds.15
Adam closed the door.
Philadelphia shall raise her domes and steeples beneath a sky beaming like the face of a child. As the rose among flowers, the goldfinch among birds, gold among metals, thus will reign Philadelphia, city of brothers, among the cities of this world. A pacific and joyous multitude will throng her streets: the blind man’s eyes will open to the light, the naysayer affirm what he formerly denied, the exile set foot on his native land, and the damned at last be free. In Philadelphia the bus conductors will offer a hand to women, help the elderly, stroke the cheeks of children. Men will not push and shove one another, nor leave the elevator door open, nor steal one another’s bottles of milk, nor turn up the radio full blast. The policemen will say, “Good day, sir! How do you do, sir?” And there will be neither detectives, nor moneylenders, nor pimps, nor prostitutes, nor bankers, nor slaughtermen. For Philadelphia will be the city of brothers, and will know the ways of heaven and earth, like the pink-throated doves that one day will nest in her tall towers, in her graceful minarets.
BOOK FIVE
Chapter 1
“Bringing him to such a sorry pass.” “That used to bring him to so sorry a pass.” “That to a pass so sorry…”
Adam Buenosayres awakes with that shred of sentence still hounding him like an imbecilic gadfly, as it has done all through his sleep. When his eyes open, he sees the figure of Irma by his side, her industrious hands coming and going over the breakfast tray.
— What time is it? he asks, infinitely discouraged.
— Ten-thirty, answers Irma.
“That to a pass so sorry…”
— Is it raining?
— Drizzling.
“And he’d told Irma her eyes were like two mornings together, or maybe even…” Enough! He sits up with a sudden urgency. His disoriented eyes pass over the empty room. Irma’s slipped away already? So much the better.
The first idea to become clear in his mind brings a taste of bile: at a given hour on that new day, he recalls, a series of ineluctable actions will have to be performed; his face will have to take its place within a fixed constellation of faces; and his voice will belong to a chorus of voices awaiting his own to rise in turn. Reflecting on this, he becomes aware that he can’t do it today, for in his will there is not a speck of life.
Mouth dry and bitter: yes, of course, last night’s binge. With the greatest economy of gestures, Adam Buenosayres sends a hand over to the tray, pours black coffee into the everyday mug, and slurps it down. Delicious. Then he puts on his old bathrobe, goes to the window, peers out. A foggy light, the same that fills his room, presses down upon the city, dampens rooftops, makes streets slick, and blurs horizons. It gives the impression of pulverized volcanic dust floating in the air and falling softly on everything. Adam studies the skeletal branches of the paradise trees, now leafless, though still clinging with greedy fingernails to the golden clumps of seed. Imagination. On a clothesline, across the street, hang two wet sheets and some grey underwear, whipping in the wind. And the wind also stirs the rich metallurgy of autumn among the dead leaves, carrying away heaps of gold and bronze. Yes, another metaphor! In the street, men and beasts challenge the fog and are soundlessly devoured by it, for, both inside and out, silence has spread like a tapestry. Good!
Pulling himself out of contemplation and the wild play of images, Adam goes over to his table, fills a broad-bowled pipe with tobacco, and lights up. Fleecy smoke rises to the ceiling: “Glory to the Great Manitou, for he has given humans the delight of oppavoc!” Then he goes back to the bed and gets horizontaclass="underline" “Better it is to be seated than standing, recumbent than seated, dead than recumbent.” Cheery maxim!
Restored to his pleasant immobility (and immobility is a virtue of God, the unmoved mover), Adam Buenosayres recalls the episodes of the night before and his conduct in each of them. Evoking such a strange multiplicity of gestures, he is amazed. How many postures did he adopt, how many forms did his witching soul assume in the space of a single night! And among so many disguises, the true face of his soul… No! Adam resists giving in so soon to the pain of ideas: the light filling his room is too cozy, and the silence brought by the rain too beautiful. Light and silence, in pleasant brotherhood, made possible for him by an inchoate beatitude. Having denied intellect and will, he is left only with the play of memory. When the present no longer suggests anything to us and the future is colourless before our eyes, it is good to turn to the past; yes, to where it is so easy to reconstitute the beautiful, submerged islands of jubilance! A series of dead Adams rise up now from their tombs and say: Do you remember? The pipe, smoked on a nearly empty stomach, produces euphoria, twin of silence and light (“that’s why the dry leaf is sacred”). And the Adams gesticulate, there in the background, saying: Do you remember?
… And time was when the days began with your mother’s song:
Four white doves,
four blue ones,
four little red ones,
death gives to me.1
You passed through your days and nights as through a series of black and white rooms. The wolf-coloured pony was devilishly skittish; he would use a hitching post to tear off his bit and halter, then open the gate with his muzzle. And Casiano, the Pampa Indian, who with consummate skill could kill a partridge with a blow of the whip!2
Or the commotion of mad bells waking you at dawn: the pilgrimages of Maipú! It would still be early morning, but already the house was buzzing in anticipation of the fiesta. The men looked rather stiff in their Sunday clothes. The young aunts, in great excitement, unfurled bright fabrics, shook bottles of scent, whispered among themselves or suddenly blazed up in laughter. Cursing in sonorous Basque phrases, Uncle Francisco struggled with a recalcitrant boot. Later, Grandfather Sebastián would enter the church, plunge his gigantic hand wholly into the font, and pull it out dripping wet. You touched his gnarled fingers and, on your knees, you crossed yourself. Afterwards, the men took you to Olariaga’s general store. Outside, several handsome horses were tethered in a row along an immense hitchrack. Inside, by the counter, men exchanged loud greetings and detonated peals of laughter amid odours of Tarragona wine, saddles, medicines. All of a sudden, the student minstrel group, in the Spanish tradition, came in strumming guitars and plucking violins. Decked out in spangled suits, short pants, white socks, and feathered hats, they were escorted by a horde of boisterous kids. Your gaze, however, wouldn’t linger there, but on the three or four motionless figures who, glass in hand, stood smiling behind the group, apart from the fray. Like Grandfather Sebastián, those countrymen might have come from the time of Rosas, judging by their fleece-white beards and leathery faces more wrinkled than ancient paper. They still wore the black chiripá, colt-leather boots and obsolete spurs on their heels. In childish astonishment, you stared at them as though into the very face of adventure, for you associated them with the famous cattle-drives down Chubut way, with those legendary crossings among sand dunes and storms, with the epic exploits of the old cowboys, whose praises you’d heard sung so many times in smoke-filled kitchens by strangers who came and went, inexplicably, like the wind.3 Later, at noon, the roasts of meat, laid out over hot coals, were smoking beneath a rain of spiced brine. And then the dance got underway under the open sky, until the southern night fell upon musicians and dancers.