The Seven Madmen (6 page)

"So then, your society will be very big on obedience?"

"That and industrialism. We need gold if we want to seize men's minds. So just as there was mysticism in religion and then again with chivalry and knights-errant, what we need is industrial mysticism. Make man see how beautiful it is to head a great foundry, as beautiful as it used to be to discover a continent. My political man, my student, my right hand in the movement will be someone who sets out to win happiness through industry. He will be a revolutionary equipped to speak on fabric processing as well as the demagnetization of steel. That's why I was so impressed when I met Erdosain. He thought along these exact same lines. You remember how often we talked about how many ideas we shared. The creation of a proud, beautiful, inexorable man who will harness the multitudes and show them a future based on science. How else can we have a social revolution? The leader of today must be a man who knows everything. We will create this prince of wisdom. The society will undertake the fabrication and dissemination of his myth. A Ford or an Edison has a thousand more chances to touch off a revolution than a politician. Do you think future dictatorships will be the military type? No, sir, the military man is nothing compared to an industrialist. The most he can be is the industrialist's tool. That's all. Future dictators will be kings of petroleum, steel, wheat. Through our society, we will set the scene for all this. We will familiarize people with our theories. For that purpose, there has to be a thorough study of propaganda techniques. We need to use students, both male and female. Science must be made to seem glamorous, must be made accessible to everybody
...
"

"I'm going now," said Erdosain.

He was going to say good-bye to Haffner when the man said:

"Wait a minute, listen."

The Astrologer and the pimp went out for a moment, then came back in, and as he said his good-byes at the door of the house, Erdosain looked back and saw that giant man with his arms raised in farewell.

The Opinions of the Melancholy Ruffian

And once they were around the corner from the house, Erdosain said:

"You know I have no way to thank you for the huge favor you just did me? Why did you give me the money?"

The man, who swaggered a little in the shoulders as he walked, turned to him and replied tartly:

"I don't know. You just caught me in the right mood is all. It's not like I had to do it every day
...
but coming at me like that
...
anyway, look, I'll make it back in a week easy."

A question popped out spontaneously. "How come, if you already have a fortune, you keep pimping?"

Haffner turned on him, looking feisty, then said: "Look here, pimping isn't a game any fool can play. You know? So why should I leave three women at loose ends when they can bring in two thousand pesos a month? Would you just let them go? No. So?"

"And you don't love them? None of them especially appeals to you?"

As soon as it was out of his mouth, Erdosain saw what an asinine question he had asked. The pimp looked at him a second, then answered:

"Now listen to this. If tomorrow some doctor came and told me: that Basque woman of yours will be dead in a week on or off the job, then I'd let that woman, who's brought me in some thirty thousand pesos over four years, work six days more and die the seventh."

The pimp was hoarse now. There was some rabid, bitter streak running through his words, a bitter streak Erdosain would later recognize in that whole breed of operators and bored sharpers.

"Pity, huh?" he went on. "Listen, it's idiotic to pity a woman who sells herself. No woman could be harder, more bitter than the one who goes into the streets. Don't be surprised, because I know them. The only way to keep them in line is with the back of your hand. Like ninety percent of all people, you see the pimp as the exploiter and the prostitute as the victim. But tell me: what would a woman do with the money she brings in? What novelists don't mention is that a woman like that without a man goes running all over looking for a man to cheat her, smash her down every so often, and take all the money she makes, because that's what a mutt she is. They say woman is equal to man. What garbage. Woman is inferior to man. Take your wild savage tribe. She does the cooking, the work, everything, but the male goes off to hunt or fight. Same for modern life. The man, apart from making money, does nothing. And believe me, if you don't take a hooker's money she'll think very little of you. It's true, as soon as she starts to grow fond of you the first thing she wants is for you to hit on her
...
She goes into ecstasy when you ask her, 'Ma chérie, could you loan me one hundred pesos?' Then she feels things are okay between you. At last the filthy money she makes is good for something if it makes her man happy. Naturally, novelists leave that part of it out. And people think we're monsters or some exotic creatures, that whole image they get from the pulps. But come live in our world, get to know it, and you'll see it's just like the middle class or aristocracy. The kept woman looks down on the showgirl, the showgirl looks down on the streetwalker, the streetwalker looks down on the woman in a brothel and, the funny thing is, just as the brothel girl almost always finds a man to take her for all she's worth, the showgirl finds some little rich kid, or even some crumbbum doctor to exploit her. The psychology of the hooker? You have it in a nutshell in something one told me through her tears when a friend of mine gave her the heave-ho: '
Encore
avec mon cul je peux soutenir un homme
.' That's the part people don't know and novelists don't tell them. A French proverb says it all: '
Gueuse seule ne peut pas mener son cul
.
'
"

Erdosain looked at him stupefied. Haffner went right on:

"Who looks after her like the pimp? Who takes care of her when she's sick or gets busted? What do people know about that? If some Saturday morning you heard a woman say to her 'marlu,' 'Mon chéri, I made fifty pesos more this week than last,' you'd take up pimping, see? Because that woman tells you 'I made fifty more' just in the same tone an honest woman uses to tell her husband: 'Dear, by not buying a new dress and doing the laundry at home, I saved thirty pesos this month.' Believe me, friend, woman, honest or not, is an animal crazed with the idea of self-sacrifice. She's just made that way. Why do you think the Church fathers thought so little of women? Because most of them had sown a lot of wild oats and saw first-hand what a little animal she is. And the hooker is even worse. She's like a child, you have to point everything out to her. 'You can walk past this place, only keep away from that corner, don't say hi to that "operator." Don't go getting into a fight with that woman.' You have to tell her everything."

They walked along under the garden walls, and in the mellow dusk the pimp's words opened Erdosain up to gaping astonishment. He grasped he stood next to a life considerably unlike his own. Then he asked him:

"And how did you get into pimping?"

"It was when I was young. I was twenty-three and on the university faculty in math. I'm a professor, see," Haffner added proudly. "A math professor. I was living on my salary when one night in a whorehouse on Rincón Street I met this French girl that I liked. All this was about ten years ago. Just around then I came into about five thousand pesos when a relative died. I liked Lucienne, and I asked if she'd come live with me. She had a pimp, the Marseillais, a giant brute I saw now and then
...
I don't know if it was my smooth talking or good looks, but anyway she fell in love with me and one stormy night I came and got her out of her house. It was straight out of a novel. We went to Córdoba in the mountains, then to Mar del Plata, and when we'd gone through the five thousand pesos, I told her: 'Well, that was our fling. It's all over now.' Then she told me, 'No, darling, we'll never again be apart.' "

Now they were strolling under clusters of greenery, intertwining branches, and clumps of stalks.

"I was jealous. Do you know what it's like to be jealous of a woman who sleeps with everyone? And do you know what it is when she pays for the first lunch with money from some john? Can you picture the joy of sitting there eating away with the waiter looking at you and knowing what the deal is with you? And the joy of walking out with her hanging from your arm and all the johns trying to get a look at you? And seeing that she prefers you, you alone, after she's been to bed with so many men? That's a sweet sensation, pal, once you get to make a career of it. And she's the one who recruits a second woman for your stable, brings her home and tells her 'We'll be sisters-in-law,' she's the one who keeps the new girl in hand and makes her turn everything over to you, and the more shy and squeamish you are, the more she likes to wreck your conscience, pulling you down to her level, and suddenly—when it's the last thing on your mind you find you're up to your ears in slime—and then there's no way back out. And while you have the woman going you have to work her hard, because one day she'll dump you, go crazy over another guy, and in the same blind way she took to you, she'll give everything up for him. You'll ask me, what does a woman need to have a man for? But I'll tell you: nobody's going to deal direct with a woman he wants for his whorehouse. He wants to go through her 'marlu.' The pimp takes care of business so the woman can get on with it in peace. Johns don't harass her. If she's busted, he bails her out, if she's sick, he gets her to the doctor and gets her fixed up, and he generally keeps her out of trouble and all kinds of really useful stuff. Look, if a woman goes it alone she's just asking for a beating or some kind of con or anyway something will happen to her. But if a woman has a man, she just does what she does, and nobody's about to mess with her and they all have to respect her. And since it was her decision to earn it that way, it follows she should be free to spend her money on something that will give her the security she needs.

"Of course, it all sounds new to you, but you'll catch on. And if not, tell me this: how do you explain away the pimp who has up to seven women? Old Repollo once had eleven in his stable at his peak. Julio the Galician had eight. Most all Frenchmen have three. And they get to be friends, they live in peace and each tries to bring in more than the others, since it's a big deal to be the favorite of some dude who can make mobsters cool it with a single glance. And, poor things, they're all so crazy you don't know whether to feel sorry for them or sock it to them good."

Erdosain was overwhelmed by the massive contempt the man had for all women. And he remembered another time when the Astrologer told him: "The Melancholy Ruffian is a guy who sees a woman and right away he's thinking
,
'She'd bring in five, ten, twenty pesos on the street.' That's it for him."

Now Erdosain felt revolted by the man. Trying to switch the conversation around, he said:

"Answer me this: Do you believe the Astrologer's plan can work?"

"No."

"Does he know you don't think so?"

"Sure."

"Well then, what are you in it for?"

"I'm in it only more or less, and even that much just from boredom. Life has no meaning, so it's about the same to go off wherever it takes you."

"So for you life has no meaning?"

"Not the least bit. We get born, live, die, without the stars stopping in their tracks or the ants stopping work over it."

"And are you very bored?"

"Average. I have my day compartmentalized like an industrialist. Every day I go to bed at twelve and get up at nine in the morning, do an hour of exercises, take a bath, read the papers, eat lunch, take a nap, at six I have a glass of vermouth, go to the barber, eat dinner at eight, then I go out on the town a bit, and in a couple of years when I'll have gotten two hundred thousand pesos together, then I'll retire and live off dividends and what I've got set up."

"And what's your real part in the Astrologer's group?"

"If the Astrologer can get up the money, I'll help get the women and get the brothels going."

"But what's your deep-down, private opinion of the Astrologer?"

"One of those madmen who just might pull it off, or maybe not."

"But his ideas—"

"Some are a mess, others make sense, and really I don't know what the guy's shooting for. Sometimes it seems like I'm listening to a reactionary, sometimes a leftist and, to tell the truth, I don't think he himself knows what he wants."

"What if he pulls it off?"

"Then God knows what all might happen. Oh, by the way, did you talk to him about growing an Asian cholera bacillus?"

"Yes
...
it would be a terrific weapon to unleash on the army. Just let one culture loose in each barracks. See? Thirty or forty men could destroy the army in one action and then let the proletarian masses make revolution—"

"The Astrologer really admires you a lot. He always talks about you to me like you're somebody who could really have a big success."

Erdosain smiled, flattered:

"Yes, you have to work on some project to sabotage the present system. But about this other thing, what I can't figure out is what your relationship to us is."

Haffner turned around quickly, sized Erdosain up with a cold eye, then, with a smirk, he answered:

"I'm not in any relationship. Understand me good. I have nothing to lose helping the Astrologer. The rest, his theories, for me it's just some talk, see. He's just a friend of mine who wants to get set up in a business, one that even comes under the law, and that's it for me. Now, the money he gets out of it he can use to start a conspiracy or a convent full of nuns, it's nothing to me personally. So, see, my part in this big underground society of his couldn't be more innocent."

"And to you it makes sense that a revolutionary group should live off the exploitation of women?"

The Ruffian glowered. Then, giving Erdosain only a sidelong glance, he explained:

"That's a lot of nonsense. The way the system works now, we exploit men, women, and children all the time. If you want to see real exploitation in this capitalist setup, just go look at the foundries down on Avellaneda, the meat packers, the glassworks, tobacco and match factories." He let out a nasty laugh to go with these remarks. "We, the men who play these games, maybe we have one or two women, but an industrialist has a whole mass of human beings. So what do you call a guy like that? Who's inhuman, someone who has a whorehouse or the stockholders of a company? And, not to get into this business of yours, but didn't they say you should keep honest and pay you a hundred pesos to carry around ten thousand pesos in your billfold?"