77, p.3
77, page 3
I advised him to take the matter seriously. Report it to the super, I told him. Ramón had to know who was burning hair and was involved in witchcraft. That’s what I told him. Because I thought that by becoming an informer Del Solar would alleviate Ramón’s suspicions that he was a guerrilla. A guerrilla, I imagined Ramón would think, wouldn’t resort to swearing just because someone had stuck a toad on his doorknob. A guerrilla, in those days, surely had other things to worry about.
The next morning at dawn, when I returned home from one of my nighttime excursions, as I got out of the elevator I saw light coming from the apartment next door. The door was ajar. I approached cautiously. And peeked in. Chairs flipped over, shards of ceramic vases, a broken lamp, scattered clothing, records, and papers strewn everywhere. A poster of the Biennial of the Di Tella comic book had been torn off one wall. I felt a chill in the air. And it was because the double door to the balcony was open.
I had palpitations. I shut myself back up in my apartment. I wondered who to call, to notify. Ramón was the least likely person to go to for help. I poured myself a shot of whiskey. I needed more to control my tremors.
I went to bed with my clothes on. And in the morning, when I awoke with cramps, I tried to convince myself that what I had seen next door was a nightmare. I barely had time for a shower, a shave, a coffee, and then off to class. I needed to hurry. I didn’t want to find out if what had happened was for real.
When I opened my apartment door, I found a toad hanging from the outside doorknob. Now the smell of burnt hair was suffocating.
4 Lutz seemed surprised by my story. He sat up straight, making the chair creak, and fixed those watery eyes on me. Though as I said, his eyes didn’t focus on mine, but rather higher up, toward my forehead. He folded his hands over his belly, lacing the fingers. Until then I hadn’t noticed his hands: small, chubby, and white. For a few, interminable seconds, which would have lasted an eternity if I hadn’t spoken, he remained in that position. An Albino Buddha.
What, I asked.
What, he repeated.
I’ve told you, I said.
Calm down, said Lutz.
I don’t want to be my neighbor’s toady, I said.
Lutz let the joke pass. Emotionless, his eyes on my forehead, his hands with their interlaced fingers. He had all the time in the world. He made it clear that he had explored abysses before, and mine was mere foolishness. After a long pause, he purred:
You’re really fucked. Pay attention. And be discreet. Because not everyone has the sensitivity to understand the Great Mysteries, I’m telling you. And it wouldn’t be smart for you to go around blabbing it either, not these days.
According to Lutz, both reincarnations and curses from beyond the grave figured among the Great Mysteries. Secrets are my thing, Gómez, he said. And for your information, not just anyone can plunge into these black depths and pop right on back to the farm as cool as a cucumber to drink mates. The influence of those powers extends to our own days. Not to mention our nights. Watch yourself. You have to take precautions. Especially if you’re damaged.
I’m not damaged, I muttered.
You don’t have to be a psychic to see it. When a guy goes around like you, with a low astral body, his energy in the gutter, he’s in danger.
I didn’t need Lutz to tell me that. The street, the city, the country, without a doubt, were not safe places. But it wasn’t wise to shut myself in, either. They could kick your door down in the wee hours. Until the end of that fall, the most terrible thing for me had been loneliness. Sometimes I blamed myself for my neutrality toward what was going on around me, a neutrality that seemed too much like indifference and egotism: how could suffering over the lack of love not be a frivolity while terror bled from every crevice of ordinary events. For many, perhaps the majority of people, it was business as usual. If a military raid shook the night with explosions, gunshots, shrieks, and babies’ screams, the neighborhood soothed its conscience by thinking there must have been a reason. And tomorrow would be another day. But even when I was neutral, I never quite got used to terror. Night after night, as though escaping without knowing from what, I would leave my apartment and hit the streets.
Lutz had his theory for what was happening. And the explanation was the Great Damage.
I have a confession to make to you, Gómez. In my youth I was part of the Nationalist Alliance. I got into brawls. In order to pay for my philosophy classes, I would pick up a few pesos through contraband. Since the cops were after me, too, I had to split to Rosario for a while. When the gorillas took power, I was hiding in a brothel by the Paraná River. It was a romantic time in my life. When the military defeated him, remember, Perón took off on a Paraguayan gunboat bound for Asunción. In Rosario rumor had it that the Leader would disembark at the port and fight to reclaim his government. The night the gunboat was due to sail past Rosario, the people were supposed to spill out on the banks. Alerted by the expectation that the gunboat would leave the Río de la Plata, the military moved the General to a Paraguayan seaplane. That night in Rosario, you could hear the murmur of the crowd, the quiet footsteps down to the Paraná to greet the gunboat that would never weigh anchor at that port. Imagine, Gómez, the lowered voices and the sound of those cautious footsteps in the night. I returned to the capital and formed part of the Peronist resistance. I planted guns out of sheer idealism. I wanted the Justicialist Revolution. If I stole weapons it was because the revolution seemed Peronist. I joined up with El Gordo Cooke. That’s how I woke up. A Lenin, that Gordo. But the General, no matter how much he yakked about Mao, was tipping the scale to the right. It took me a while to wise up. Till I had the revelation. Why do you think Perón was part of a brotherhood with the name of Brother Pablo? Come on, Gómez, tell me why Brother Pablo authorized sects. It wasn’t only for the pleasure of screwing the candle-suckers. Why did the planes that bombed the Plaza in ’55 have the motto “Christ Conquers” on their fuselage. Why did Evita’s body disappear. Why are images of the tyrant and the woman with the whip forbidden. The General of the Nation, now with no glory and no nation, is nothing but a small-time local boss from the Pampas, enjoying the dead calm of a banana republic. He has no shortage of bit players or coal miner mutts sniffing around between his legs. The man doesn’t seem too depressed by his exile: he still has that slicked-back hair and the Gardel smile. He wears white guayaberas and white shoes, too. A spiritualist dancer, former performer of vidalitas who wanders around the tropical cabarets wiggling to the beat of the cha-cha-cha, picks up the General. Later, the General and his concubine settle down in a mansion in Madrid. Meanwhile, back home, we “shirtless ones” take up guns and shoot the shit out of one another. The General glimpses the possibility of returning and staking his claim. To prevent the boys from riddling one another with bullets and for some wise guys to establish a Peronist regime without Perón, the General sends the dancer as a messenger of unity. A former police corporal with pretensions of becoming a tango singer, a guy who’s also into the Zodiac, comes on to the broad. Imagine that trio, Gómez: the military officer and promoter of sects, the ever-watchful astrologer, and the spiritualist stripper. Together the cop and the concubine manage to fill the General’s skull with their esoteric blather. The cop becomes his majordomo, but everyone who visits the General nicknames him “the Sorcerer.” The Major Arcana advise you to conspire, the Sorcerer tells him. In Madrid, Ava Gardner lives in the mansion next door. It drives the diva crazy to see the General step out onto his balcony every morning, throw open his arms, and rehearse speeches to imaginary throngs. You can hear the sound of the sprinklers. But to the General, that irrigational ssh-ssh sounds like the clamor of the Justicialist Party masses. It seems the Old Man (because now the General plays the Wise Elder and allows himself to be called the Old Man) wants revenge. He’ll teach them a lesson that’ll explode in their ears, he threatens. The bomb-throwing youths come to see him: back home the military forces that organized the coup, the magnates, and the bankers are ruining the economy; workers and students have spontaneous protests, throw Molotov cocktails, go on strike, and join the guerrilla movement. The kids are confused: they think Brother Pablo is Fidel. And the Old Man takes advantage of their confusion, goading them to keep up the shooting. He will return to his country. The Old Man will return. The military calls for elections. The Old Man wins by fraud. Now everyone wants to get into his good graces. And he, like Vizcacha, that sly old varmint in Martín Fierro, does business with all of them. He promises to be the great peacemaker who will unite the Argentineans. The Old Man enjoys hearing people talk about his glorious return. And he also enjoys trying on his general’s uniform again, riding his trusty horse, having his photo taken for posterity, dying like a Roman soldier. Nothing modest about his desire. The Old Man returns. The masses mobilize to greet him. A human tide rushes in to welcome his homecoming. A huge celebration. Flags, drums, smoke from choripanes cooking and rug rats on their parents’ shoulders. But before the plane can land, the left and right wings of the movement fight over the president’s box at Ezeiza Airport. A battle erupts. Right-wing snipers hide in the trees. The guerrillas fire back from below. The protesters stand in the middle of the crossfire. The lefties who fall prisoner to the right are tortured at the airport hotel. The Slaughterhouse. The Old Man can’t ignore the fact that his second-in-command, the Sorcerer, is writing an essay called The Cow, an esoteric continuation of Esteban Echeverría’s The Slaughterhouse. Evita’s remains are brought home and transferred to the country house in Olivos. Neither can the Old Man fail to notice the Sorcerer’s juggling as he beds the vidalita singer on top of Eva’s coffin. That way the slut can absorb the magnetism of the deceased. I’ll tell you something else: Daniel is the esoteric name that the Sorcerer hides behind. The signs turn into facts, my dear friend. The young people don’t give up their guns. A labor leader, the Old Man’s right-hand man, is rubbed out. The blood splatters on the Old Man. Now he wants to discipline the young people. He puts the Sorcerer in charge of everything. The Sorcerer recruits shooters and torturers from the Ministry of Social Welfare. He appoints his Lady Wife, the stripper, vice-president. The little lambs grow uneasy. In Plaza de Mayo, they ask him: What’s going on, General? Why is the people’s government full of gorillas? The Old Man reprimands them from the balcony. All he wants now is to die in peace with that glorious music—the roar of the people shouting his name—in his ears. What’s going on, General? Why is the people’s government full of gorillas? The kids pick up their posters. They’ve slipped through his fingers, and now they’re slipping away from the plaza. They leave an enormous void. The oligarchy and the military rub their hands: they’re preparing for a great barbecue. The fascist trade unions go after the left-wing youth. Political enemies are burned to a crisp in syndical ovens. The Sorcerer’s thugs toss the stiffs’ bodies onto the road. The Old Man is beset by age and illness. At last he kicks the bucket. His Lady Wife assumes the presidency. An outpouring of public grief. Even the cops and military officers who watch over the coffin are sniveling. Crows flutter above the holy innocents crying in the streets. The blackest crow is the economist with his court of Chicago-educated swindlers. They’re prepared to hock the country with declarations of famine. The scene is set for the danse macabre. The church prelates call for divine punishment in their prayers. And the exorcism is the crucifixion of an entire nation. Signs, Gómez. Pay attention to the signs. The Great Damage is nothing new. It’s part of the thunderbolts that announce the catastrophic changes coming to this planet. The Age of Aquarius, my ass. What’s happening now is that the Great Damage is showing signs of its arrival. The Evil One has awakened from his siesta. The Great Damage is here. And it’ll be here for a long time. Let’s hold on tight because you don’t fuck with mysterious forces. Those Christ Conquers people know it. That’s why they’re bugging everyone again. The guys in uniform, at the Service of the Evil One, are attacking power. The Great Damage is showing signs. For those candle-suckers in power, young people are the Antichrist incarnate. The military is the Holy Inquisition. Torture, for them, is an exorcism. Read what the military junta has to say in this afternoon’s La Razón: “A terrorist is not only someone with a revolver or a gun, but anyone who spreads ideas against Western, Christian civilization.” The Great Damage includes these people and those people, and it includes all of us. You and I, Gómez, even if we’re not directly involved, we’re not on the sidelines, either. And once the Evil One’s work has deployed all its terrible power, it will affect generations of our countrymen. Armageddon, hah! Compared to what’s coming, it’s peanuts. Don’t ask me for more, Gómez. In these times knowledge is dangerous. And talking is even more dangerous. I’d better stop now. Let’s get to what brings you here.
Lutz breathed heavily. He was staring right at me, apparently waiting for me to speak. But I remained silent. After a pause, he leaned backward, dug around in the desk drawer, and pulled out the pendulum. He lifted it, swinging it before my eyes.
Lutz nailed that gaze of his to my forehead:
Don’t say anything, he said before I could react. Anyone can see the anxiety in your face. You’ve come to consult me because you’re going through a rough patch. You feel like your nerves are shot. Sometimes you’re tempted to give up on everything. Purgatory. You feel like you’re the victim of a conspiracy. Sometimes you have the feeling everybody is plotting against you. It might be a fellow teacher a school, a colleague. It might be a friend. A neighbor. No doubt you’ve also thought about a girl who hates you for some reason. Female hatred is always frightful. That’s why it’s so profitable for the witches in the neighborhood: they never lack customers who want to fuck up some unwitting sucker who thought he was a Don Juan. It’s a fact these days that damage can strike from any direction. The other guy is suspicious. And we are too, for others. We’re all suspicious characters. But this business of yours, Gómez, with your vibrations. Your thing is out of the ordinary. I can tell from the vibrations. Your damage is inscrutable. And it’s just beginning. I can’t save you, either. Warn you, at best. How can I promise you anything these days. If you want some advice, get the hell out of here. Don’t give it another thought. Beat it. You’ve still got time.
The pendulum swung back and forth. I had palpitations; my hands were clammy and cold. I wondered what I could ask him. A tremor rattled the place. Now the pendulum went wild. I had the impression that two trains were passing one another in the subway tunnels. But the tremor, accompanied by a deafening roar, drowned out the subway noise. An earthquake, I thought. Now I was overheated. My heart beating out of control. The planet was cracking open. I felt a galloping in my chest. I saw reality tilted, askew.
Get the hell out, I repeated.
Your low astral body, Lutz said.
I was about to say something, but Lutz beat me to it:
I ought to split, too, he said. Any minute now I’ll be killed. I’m on two lists. Right wingers and lefties all consult me. A Montonero’s sister and a general’s wife. It’s not like I have a crystal ball, they come to me from both sides. When I least expect it, I’ll get caught in a roundup and take a bullet for vagrancy.
Lutz gave me a wink.
That’ll be five pesos, Gómez, he said. I’m giving you a discount, considering the damage, which is considerable.
It was late. The shops in the strip mall were closing. I went up to the street, into the night. It had cooled off. Traffic was backed up on Esmeralda. I walked amid exhaust fumes and horns honking. I could detect the sound of a siren getting closer and closer. Two green Falcons advanced and braked among the buses and cars. The thugs inside had their weapons out. They banged on the buses with the butts of their rifles.
After the Falcons left, the engines and honking sounded muffled. I walked down toward Lavalle, mixing in with the crowd. In the doorway of Discos Broadway were some taxiboys. I chose the straightest-looking one. The kid took me to a by-the-hour hotel on 9 de Julio.
Then I went on toward Constitución. I ate a pizza at Tren Mixto, and after a bottle of red wine I had enough courage to prowl around the platforms of Constitución Station and pick up another kid. I was with four that night.
Dawn was breaking when I returned to my building. I looked to both sides. I inserted the key. I entered. The elevator produced a slow, ominous rattling. I opened the gate, pressed the button, and slid the gate shut. The elevator went up as slowly as it had gone down. It stopped. Agitated, I held my breath. I was frightened.
The door of the apartment next to mine was now closed. As was my own.
No one was waiting for me. No one had come for me.
Stiff with cold, I felt sticky, dirty. I could smell the combined perfumes and odors of the four kids on my body. I lit the water heater; I stripped. I turned on the shower. The tiles fogged up. I couldn’t see the soap for the steam.
5 Even though it was May, that morning of my fifty-sixth year it seemed like summer, the professor recalls. Some storm clouds and a sticky heat hovered over the city. The sky was a mouse-gray canvas. A perfect time for passions to condense and for horniness to boil over. Animal urges were in the air. And let’s not even talk about those co-ed classrooms. It was hard for me to hide my predilection for male youths over eager young ladies. The odor—because it’s an odor, not a perfume—of those boys and girls, enveloped in a whiff of hair, sweat, breath smelling of gum and cigarettes. A classroom’s like a cage, I thought. When I walked into the classroom, the first one I noticed was Esteban. Later, during the class, it was a struggle for me to stop staring at him. I tried to get back to our discussion of Sarmiento. But Esteban distracted me.
Just by reading his quizzes you could see, expressed in his nervous handwriting and clear ideas, the solidity of his views. A blond lock of hair always dangled over his forehead, a lock that he constantly tossed back with a shake of his head. He shuffled his moccasins as he walked. He wore a rictus of superiority. The kid was trying to demonstrate that he was miles ahead of the rest. If something annoyed him, he would explode in a burst of rage, a sort of wildness. Those qualities explained why Paloma, who looked like a David Hamilton model, was his girlfriend. Paloma’s expression said: I’m here, but not altogether. It said that to everyone. Except Esteban. Because Paloma couldn’t keep her eyes off him.
