The Seven Madmen (19 page)

"You're on the right track
...
you're bound for glory."

"Yeah, now, what do you want out of me?"

"Like I said. Sign over a check for seventeen thousand pesos. You'll have three thousand left over. Take it and go to hell, for all we care. The rest we will pay back in monthly installments out of what the brothels and goldworks bring in."

"And do I get out of here?"

"Soon as we cash the check."

"How do I know you're being straight with me?"

"Some things you just take on faith
...
. Only if it's proof you want, let me tell you this: if you won't sign the check, I'll have you tortured by the Man Who Saw the Midwife and when you do sign, I'll kill you
...
."

Barsut raised his dull, gray eyes, and now his face, three days unshaven, looked out through a coppery mist. Kill him! It had no impact. Right then it meant nothing to him. Life meant so little to him, anyway
...
. He had long been expecting some disaster; here it was, and instead of the icy fingers of terror, he felt full of a vast, burned-out numbness that didn't much care anymore whatever might happen to him. The Astrologer went on:

"But I don't want to have to do that
...
.
What I'd like is to ask for your personal help—have you get involved in our projects. Believe me, we're living through terrible times. Anyone who can find the great lie the herd needs will be King of the World. Men live lives of anxiety
...
. Catholicism doesn't work for anybody anymore
...
. Buddhism's no good for people like us who believe in satisfying our desires
...
. Maybe we'll tell them stuff about Lucifer and the Morning and Evening Star. You can supply the poetry we need to get into our dreams, and we'll appeal to the young— Oh! This is going to be very big
...
very big indeed
...
."

The Astrologer dropped wearily onto a box. He was exhausted. He wiped his sweaty forehead with a worker's checked hankie, and all three sat silently for a moment.

Suddenly, Barsut said:

"Yes, you're right, it is big. Let me go and I'll sign your check."

He had thought that everything the Astrologer told him was a lie, and that had almost proved his undoing.

The Astrologer got up, still wary.

"Sorry, I'll let you go after we cash the check. This is Wednesday. Tomorrow at noon you can get the run of the house, but you can't leave the grounds for two months still." He put that part in because he could see the man still didn't believe in his projects. "You won't need anything this afternoon?"

"No."

"Okay then, be seeing you."

"But are you leaving? Stay here—"

"No, I'm tired. I need some sleep. Tonight I'll come back and we can talk a little more. You want some cigarettes?"

"Yeah, good."

They left the stables.

Barsut lay back on his bed of dry grass and, lighting up, blew some smoke puffs that went swooping in curlicues through a slanting sunbeam, splendid steel blue spirals. Now he was alone, his thoughts got sorted out, and he even told himself:

"Why not help the guy? His scheme to set up a training camp sounds interesting, and now I can see why that jerk Erdosain thinks so much of him. Maybe I'm coming out of this a loser
...
maybe I'm doing myself a favor
...
but things end up one way or another." And he half closed his eyes to reflect on the future.

The Astrologer, with his hat pulled over his eyes, turned to Erdosain and said:

"Barsut thinks he's got us fooled. Tomorrow, after we cash the check, we'll have to execute him—"

"You mean you'll have to execute him—"

"Okay by me
...
only what do we do with him? If he gets free he'll turn us in first thing. And he thinks we're crazy! Well, we would be to let him live."

They stood beside the house. Jagged, chocolate brown clouds scudded quickly across the sky above them.

"So who'll murder him?"

"The Man Who Saw the Midwife."

"You know, it's rough to die with summer just coming in
...
."

"Well, that's how it goes
...
"

"And the check?"

"You cash it."

"You don't worry I'll cut out on you?"

"Not for the moment, no."

"How come?"

"Because I don't. You're the one who needs the society to get going because you don't know what to do with yourself. That's how come you're in it with me
...
not knowing what to do with yourself, being out of whack."

"Maybe so. What time do we meet tomorrow?"

"Um
...
nine at the station. I bring you the check and say, Do you have the right identification?"

"Yes."

"Nothing to worry about, then. Ah! One thing. I suggest you don't say much in the meeting, be cool, even cold."

"They're all coming?"

"Yes."

"The Gold Seeker, too?"

"Yes."

Shoving back the twigs that whipped into their faces, they walked out to the summerhouse. It was a round structure with diamond-latticed wood where a honeysuckle twined its green stems and masses of white and purple blossoms.

The Farce

The entire round table got to its feet when they came in, but Erdosain stopped short in surprise when he saw one of its members was an army officer in a major's uniform.

The Gold Seeker, Haffner, some stranger, and the Major were there. The first two sat with their elbows on the table. Haffner was going over some papers and the Gold Seeker was studying a map. A stone paperweight held down the map. The Ruffian shook hands with Erdosain and they sat together, Erdosain eyeing the Major, terribly curious as to what he was doing there. Really the Astrologer was a master of surprise moves.

Still, the stranger didn't much appeal to him.

He was quite a tall fellow, pale, with eyes black as coal. There was something repellent about him, and it was his lower lip, curled in a perpetual sneer, together with his long hook nose with three furrows right at the bridge. A silky mustache brushed his rosy lips and he scarcely deigned to look at Erdosain, and as soon as they were introduced he flopped into a hammock, where he lay back against the headrest, with his sword between his legs and one lock of hair clinging to his flat forehead.

And for a few minutes they all sat there silently, eyeing one another uneasily. The Astrologer, sitting by the summerhouse entrance, lit a cigarette without taking his eyes off the "heads." That was what they were called at a later meeting. Suddenly, he looked right at the other five men around the table and said:

"I see no point in us going over what we all know and have agreed on in private
...
, that is, to start a secret organization funded by business schemes, moral or immoral. We're all set on that, right? How do you men feel (I have a fondness for geometry) about the term 'cells' for the subunits of our setup?"

"That's what they call them in Russia," said the Major. "People in one cell never meet the members of another."

"What—won't the heads know each other?"

"No, no, the people who never meet are the rank and file, not the heads."

The Gold Seeker cut in:

"That way nothing will get done. What ties the members of different cells together?"

"But we six are the real organization."

"No, sir
...
I am the real organization," objected the Astrologer. "But, seriously, we're all the organization
...
except for certain areas because of my position."

The Major cut in:

"I think this is a moot point, since, from what I've been given to understand, there'll be a standardized hierarchy. At each promotion, the cell member will come under a new head. There'll be as many promotions possible as there are heads of cells."

"So how many cells are there right now?"

"Four. I'll be in charge of everything," the Astrologer went on. "You, Erdosain, Head of Industry; the Gold Seeker"—a young man at the corner of the table nodded—"you'll run Training Camps and Mines; the Major will work on infiltrating the army, and Haffner will be Head of Brothels."

Haffner got up and burst out:

"Just a minute, I'll be head of nothing. For me, this is just another business deal. All I'm doing for you is setting up a cost analysis, and that's it, period. If my being here bothers you, I'll go."

"No, stay," the Astrologer urged him.

The Melancholy Ruffian sat down again and went back to scribbling on his papers. Erdosain admired his open rudeness.

But, beyond a doubt, the focus of attention and curiosity was the Major; his uniform was so impressive and his being there so very odd.

The Gold Seeker turned to him:

"How's that? You think you can infiltrate our setup into the army?"

Everyone sat bolt upright in his chair. That was the big surprise of the meeting, the thing the Astrologer had been waiting to spring on them. Undeniably, the man was a born leader. The bad part of it was that he always played his cards so close to his chest. But Erdosain felt flattered to be in on things with him. Now they were all sitting up in their seats to listen to the Major. The Major looked carefully at the Astrologer, then said:

"Gentlemen, I speak to you of weighty matters. If they were not grave, I would never have come among you. Here is what is happening: our army is seething with dissatisfied officers. No point in my giving you the whole how and why of it, which wouldn't interest you, anyway. The notion of 'absolute rule' and recent military actions, I refer to Chile and Spain, have got many of my fellow officers wondering if this country might not be ripe for dictatorship, too."

They sat gaping in astonishment. This was a real surprise.

The Gold Seeker replied:

"But do you think the Argentine army
...
I mean
...
the officer corps, will accept our ideas?"

"They most certainly will
...
so long as you can show them an organized program. I can tell you right now there are more officers than you think fed up with democratic theories, including legislative representation. Don't interrupt, sir. Ninety percent of this country's elected officials are less educated than a first lieutenant in our army. A politician accused of having a hand in a governor's murder put it very aptly: 'Running the country is no big deal—no trickier than running a big ranch.' He hit it on the head, as far as this continent's concerned."

The Astrologer wrung his hands in visible delight.

The Major went on, the focus of all eyes:

"The Army represents an elite grouping within an inferior society, since we're the country's real strength. And yet, we're at the beck and call of the government
...
and who's the government?
...
the legislative and executive branches—that is, men chosen by some half-baked political party—and look at the people they pick! You know as well as I that to land a seat you have to go the whole route of double-dealings, starting out as a ward politico, smoke-filled rooms, wheeling and dealing with shady characters, trade-offs, buy-offs, till your whole life is nothing but lawlessness and lying. I don't know if it's that way in countries more civilized than ours, but it's sure that way here.

In our two houses of congress we have accused loan sharks and murderers, people on the take from foreign companies, and people so grossly ignorant that legislative representation here is the biggest farce that could possibly disgrace a nation. The whole presidential race is funded by American corporations in return for promises to make it easy for them to come in and exploit our national resources. I'm not overstating it when I say that what party politics in our country really boils down to is a contest to see who can sell out the country and get the best price for it."
{8}

They all sat there gaping at the Major. Through the diamond latticework and blossoms the clear morning sky was showing, but nobody bothered to look at it. Erdosain told me later that none of them had come there that Wednesday expecting anything half so interesting to happen. The major wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and went on:

"I'm glad to see you take an interest in this. There are many young officers who share my views. Even some of the younger generals would back us up
...
. The best plan, and don't be shocked at what I'm telling you here, is to make it look like a totally Communist plot. The thing of it is, there's no real Communism here, unless you want to count some bunch of sorehead carpenters who sit around pseudosociologizing and being rude on principle. I want to make my meaning very clear. Every secret plot is a cancer on the host society. Its hidden workings disrupt the whole system. So now, as the people who run the cells, we'll make sure they look like a Bolshevik scheme." It was the first time anyone had used that word there, and everyone had to check out the others' reactions to it.

"That façade will make it attractive to crackpots and that will swell the ranks. So then well have a fictitious revolutionary organization. In particular, we'll stage terrorist attacks. A halfway successful attack can stir up echos in all the dark, twisted minds out there. If we stage a fresh series of attacks a year later, this time with antisocial calls to action, leaflets urging workers to set up 'soviets,'
...
You know what well have accomplished? Something very clever and utterly simple. Well have the country all roiled up in a prerevolutionary state.

"When I say 'a prerevolutionary state' I mean a widespread kind of agitation that isn't yet really out in the open, everybody feels the change, they're all worked up, newspapers keep things stirred up, and the cops do their bit by arresting innocent people and giving them such a hard time they come out of it as revolutionaries; people wake up in the morning eager for some fresh outbreak of violence, hoping it'll be worse than the last and not let them down; people will get all worked up over police brutality to somebody else, some hothead is sure to run out and shoot a policeman, then labor gets all lathered up, calling strikes right and left, and all this loose talk of revolution and Bolsheviks keeps everyone wild with fear and hope. So then after all these bombs go off all over the city and people have read all these wild leaflets and the prerevolutionary state is just right, that's when we step in, the military
...
."