The Seven Madmen (33 page)

And there he was! Erdosain, Augusto Remo Erdosain, ex-thief, ex-accountant, got up. The top half of his body in its fine black jacket was reflected in the glass tabletop and his four right-hand fingers were thrust into his pocket, while in his left hand he held some papers. Standing, he looked with icy eyes into the impassive faces of the Ambassadors. A terrible pallor held him in its grip, deliciously cold feeling. Heroes from every age lived on within him. Ulysses, Demetrius, Hannibal, Loyola, Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini all flashed before his eyes like great wheels of fire, and were gone to the place where the solitary earth curved away, lost in a dusk not belonging to this world.

His words fell in quick chunks, solid as steel. And, seized by the splendor of the moment, he regarded his own image in an imaginary mirror, haughty and swelled with lofty emotions.

He set the conditions.

He had them hand over entire national navies, thousands of cannons, and great quantities of rifles. Then hundreds of men would be handpicked from each people, set on an island and the rest of humanity wiped out. The Ray would blow up cities, make soil barren, turn peoples and woodlands to dust. Forever gone and lost would be all trace of science, art, and beauty. An elite of cynics, bandits who had grown jaded about civilization, total skeptics, would seize power, with him at the helm. And since man can only be happy with some metaphysical lie to give him hope, they would support the clergy, and a new Inquisition would go after any heresy that might imperil the official dogma or the uniformity of belief that would be the absolute basis of human happiness, and man, restored to an earlier stage of society, would devote himself, as in the days of the pharaohs, to farming work. Grand metaphysical lies would bring man back to the joy that too much knowledge had withered away to nothing within his heart. His words came out in brief, dry chunks, like steel cubes falling together. And he said to the Ambassadors:

"Our city, the City of the Kings, will be wrought of white marble and set beside the sea. It will be seven leagues across, with rosy copper domes, lakes and woodlands. There we'll lodge false saints, swindlers, godfathers, fake magic men, apocryphal goddesses. Science will be nothing but magic. Doctors will make their rounds dressed like angels, and when the population goes up too fast, they'll be punished for their misdeeds with flying dragons, all lit up, that will seed the city from the air with Asian cholera.

"Man will live in the age of miracles, and will be a millionaire in faith. At night we'll beam up onto the clouds, with powerful projectors, the 'Entry of the Good Man Into Heaven.' Get the picture? Suddenly, from above the mountains there's a green and purple flare, and the clouds show a garden where the white airs drift like snowflakes. An angel with rosy wings approaches through heavenly fields, comes to the gate of Paradise, and with open arms welcomes in 'The Good Man,' a country fellow with a battered hat, a long beard, and a walking stick. Do you see it, my hustlers, pros, cynics, the best in your fields? See? The angel with rose-colored wings welcomes in the man who has suffered and sweated on earth. You see what a terrific idea, what an easy but stunning miracle? And the multitudes will fall on their knees and worship God, and only for us will heaven not exist, we sad bandits who hold the power, the science, and the useless truth."

He trembled as he spoke.

"We shall be as gods. We will give to men stupendous miracles, fine beauties, and divine lies, we will bestow upon them the certainty of a future so extraordinary that all the promises of priests will pale beside the reality of our apocryphal prodigies. And then, they will be happy. Do you see, imbeciles?"

Someone shoved him into the wall. Erdosain stopped short, startled, convulsively gripped the money in his pocket, and in excitement and as fiercely happy as a little tiger set loose in a brick forest, spit on the façade of a dress shop, saying,

"City, you will be ours."

The Major was following him.

The Wink

In Temperley the Astrologer was waiting for him. A kindly smile lit up his face. Erdosain nearly ran over to him, but the other man, taking hold of his arms, stopped him short and looked a minute into his eyes, then, speaking to him for the first time in familiar form, said:

"Are you happy?"

Erdosain blushed. At that instant a double mystery was revealed to his consciousness. The man was not lying, and he felt so much his friend that now he would have liked to converse indefinitely, tell him everything there was to tell of his unhappy life, and he only managed to say:

"Yes, I'm very happy."

The Astrologer stood still a moment in the train station. Now he had gone back to addressing him in the formal form.

"You know? Many of us bear a superman within us. The superman is the will exerted to its utmost, beyond all moral norms, and carrying out the most terrible acts, a sort of ingenuous joy, almost—what you might call the innocent sport of cruelty."

"Yes, the point where you stop feeling fear or anguish, it's as if you were walking on clouds."

"Sure, the ideal would be to awaken in many men this cheerful, naive ferocity. It's our task to launch the era of the Innocent Monster. Everything will be done, no doubt of that. You just need to have enough time and guts, when they catch on to how spirituality has them bogged down in the cesspool of this civilization, they'll change before they go under for the last time. It's just that man hasn't seen how diseased he is with cowardice and Christianity."

"But weren't you going to Christianize humanity?"

"Oh, no, just the dregs
...
but if that plan doesn't work we'll try just the opposite approach. We haven't set up any principles so far, and the best thing would be just to use all sorts of different ones. Like a pharmacy, we'll have perfect lies for all purposes—set to dispense for the most amazing diseases of heart and soul."

"You know, you really are crazy, I have to agree with what Barsut told you yesterday."

"What we call madness is just new thoughts people aren't used to. Look, if that guy over there were to tell you everything he had on his mind, you'd have him put away. Of course, there should only be a few like us
...
the big thing is for our actions to bring us vitality and energy. Yonder lies salvation."

"And Barsut?"

"He doesn't even have an inkling what he's in for."

"And how will we eliminate him?"

"Bromberg will strangle him
...
I don't know, it's not my affair."

Under the sun, avoiding the puddles, they walked back to the house. And Erdosain was thinking:

"And the City of the Kings, us, will be of white marble and placed along the sea
...
and we shall be as gods."

And looking at him with his eyes aglow, he said to his companion: "Did you know one day we shall be as gods."

"That's what these idiots can't grasp. They've killed the gods. But a day shall come when they'll be running down the roads in the sun shouting 'We love God, we need God!' What pathetic slobs! I can't see how they ever managed to kill God. But we'll bring them back to life. We'll invent some fine gods—supercivilized—and then life will be something to see!"

"And if it all falls through?"

"It doesn't matter
...
there'll be another
...
there'll be another to fill my shoes. It must happen that way. The only thing we should want is for the idea to take root in people's imaginations—the day when it's in many souls is the day fine things will happen."

Erdosain was astonished at his serenity.

He was no longer afraid, and again he remembered the hall with the Ambassadors, and his malevolent eyes looked around, unsettling the elderly diplomats with their bald heads and leaden faces and hard, shifty eyes, and then, unable to contain himself, he exclaimed:

"So we wring one guy's neck, what the fuck, big deal."

The other looked at him with surprise.

"Are you jumpy or do you get mad for no reason, like an elephant?"

"No, it bothers me to be stuck with all these obsolete scruples."

"That's you young people all right," replied the Astrologer. "Like a cat that can't decide whether to come in the door."

"Should I be there at the execution?"

"Do you want to be?"

"I really want to."

But as they left the villa, his stomach gave a sick lurch and he felt in his throat a spasm as if he were about to vomit. He could hardly keep his footing. He saw shapes through a blur of milky fog. His arms hung from the joints like bronze limbs. He walked with no perception of distance; the air seemed vitreous, the ground rippled beneath him, at moments the trees seemed to zigzag before his eyes. He felt tired breathing, his tongue was dry, he could not wet his dry lips and burning throat, and only embarrassment kept him from falling. When he got his eyes half-open, he was going down the stable steps with Bromberg.

The Man Who Saw the Midwife walked along in a trance, his hair a wild mess. His belt was not threaded through the beltloops and a bit of white shirt like a handkerchief stuck out of his zipper. He covered his mouth with a fist and kept yawning cavernously. But his sleepy, faraway gaze did not fit with his tough-guy stance. He had fine eyes, grave and incoherent as those of huge animals, gazing out from between thick lashes that threw shadows on the circles under his eyes in a rounded, dainty face. Erdosain looked at him, but the man seemed unaware, lost to the world inside his magnificent incoherence. Then he gazed toward the Astrologer with his fine fool's eyes, got a nod from him, and opened the lock, then all three went into the stables.

Barsut leaped to his feet; he was about to say something. Bromberg took a flying leap and there was the cracking of skull against wood in the stables. The sunlight painted a yellow lozenge in the dust. Muffled grunts came out of the shapeless huddle. Erdosain watched the fight with cruel curiosity, and suddenly Bromberg's pants came undone, as he was bent over Barsut with his huge arms straining, squeezing the man's throat against the floor, and came half off leaving his white rump sticking out bare and his shirt all hiked up. And the muffled grunting stopped. There was a moment of silence, while the murderer, half-naked, motionless, squeezed the dead man's neck harder.

Erdosain just stood there looking.

The Astrologer stood by holding a watch in his hand. They stayed standing like that for two minutes, endless to Erdosain.

Erdosain just stood there looking.

"Okay, that ought to do it."

Awkwardly, his hair plastered across his forehead, Bromberg turned around, and not looking at anyone with his incoherent gaze, he grabbed his pants, red in the face, and did them up hastily.

The murderer had left the stables. Erdosain followed him, and the Astrologer, who came last, turned around to look at the strangled man.

He was flat out on the floor, his face to the ceiling, his jaws distended, and his twisted mouth showing some teeth at one corner and his tongue protruding.

Just then something extraordinary happened, but Erdosain did not see. The Astrologer, pausing at the stables door, turned to the dead man, and then Barsut heaved his shoulders up, stretched his neck and, looking at the Astrologer, winked.
{11}
The Astrologer touched one finger to his hat brim and went out to join Erdosain who, unable to hold it in, exclaimed:

"That's all?"

The Astrologer looked at him mockingly.

"You were expecting something more theatrical?"

"And how will you dispose of him?"

"Dissolve him in nitric acid. I have three jugs full. But, off the subject, anything new on the copper rose?"

"Yes, it came out just fine. The Espilas are overjoyed. Just tonight I saw one of them that was fine."

"All right, let's have lunch—we deserve it by now."

But when they were just entering the dining room, the Astrologer said:

"What—aren't we going to wash our hands?"

Erdosain looked at him in surprise and instinctively raised his hands up to get a good look at them. Then, hurriedly, in silence, they went to the bathroom, and, removing their jackets, ran the water. Erdosain took some soap and, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he scrubbed up. Then he let the water run over his arms and dried them vigorously on the towel. But, before leaving, the Astrologer did a curious thing.

He grabbed the towel and threw it into the bathtub, took a bottle of alcohol, poured it over the towel, then lit a match, and for a minute both their faces were lit up in the dark room by blue flames from the fuel igniting the cloth. Then only a blackish heap of ash was left; the Astrologer turned on the water and it ran down, washing away the ashy residue, and then they both went back to the dining room.

An ironic smile played across Erdosain's face.

"Pontius Pilate, eh?"

"You're right. And unconsciously."

In the shadowy dining room the garden was visible through half-shut blinds. Tall honeysuckle shoots reached the windowsill. Transparent insects buzzed through the air by the lime tree and the white walls made a reflection in the waxed, mellow blond wood of the floor. The tablecloth fringe fell around square table legs. In an Etruscan vase, a bouquet of carnations emitted its spicy fragrance, and the silverware shone against the linen and up into the china; the shadows made curlicue arabesques in the glassy convexity of the wineglasses, or stretched out in triangular bands across the plates. In an oval dish was some lobster spread.

The Astrologer poured wine. They ate in silence. The Astrologer brought in egg drop soup, asparagus swimming in oil, artichoke salad, and then fish. For dessert there was cottage cheese sprinkled with cinnamon, and fruit.

Then they had coffee, and Erdosain gave him the money. The Astrologer counted it out:

"For you, three thousand five hundred. Have some suits made. You're a good-looking fellow and should dress well."

"Thank you
...
but listen
...
I'm dying for some sleep. I'm going to take a nap. Could you wake me at five?"