Franky Amundsen intervened once again.
— Watch out! he warned without hiding his alarm. The Bear from Lapland is timid, but when he gets mad, stay out of his way.
Thrilled at having this new adversary, Samuel wagged his finger at Señor Johansen.
— This man, he said, labours under the unfortunate misconception that he has the right to talk about things he does not understand, never has, and never will.
Pereda turned to Franky.
— Hmm, he said. The Lion of Judah is showing his claws.
— But the Bear is no slouch, Franky replied. Quiet! The Bear’s speaking.
Adopting a dignified air, Señor Johansen looked at Samuel Tesler with great humanity.
— I may not be a man of learning, he declared, but I do have something that you don’t: experience in life.
— Good for the Bear! exclaimed Franky. The Bear speaks like an open book.
A deceptively indulgent smile stole across Samuel’s face.
— Let’s see, he said, facing his rival. How old are you, anyway?
— Fifty-seven, answered Señor Johansen cautiously.
— Well, declared the philosopher. I’m forty centuries old.
His declaration was greeted with astonishment. No one, even in his most optimistic reckoning, had imagined such incredible longevity.
— You’re crazy! protested Señor Johansen, stupefied.
— Either the Lion is lying, observed Franky, or he’s as old as pissing against the wall.
Samuel Tesler raised his arm in a gesture entreating calm.
— I mean, he said as though pregnant with secrets, that my experience has been accumulated over the course of forty centuries, through numerous reincarnations.
— A madman! Señor Johansen insisted.
— Moreover, added Samuel, you will recall that intelligence is a metaphysical gift. One is born intelligent just as one is born blond.
His eyes turned to examine the chubby figure of Señor Johansen.
— Now then, he expounded magisterially, do me the favour of palpating the gentleman’s cranium. Hard as a rock!
— That’s enough insults! shouted Señor Johansen.
— Forty centuries of humanity, concluded Tesler, and a hundred philosophical doctrines could pass over that cranium without leaving the slightest trace.
Señor Johansen teetered on the edge of defeat.
— It’s outrageous, he choked, almost voiceless.
Pereda turned to Franky Amundsen.
— The Bear’s on the ropes! he cried. The Bear is completely groggy!
Franky lowered his red head.
— The Lion’s too nimble, he murmured. Nobody would take him for forty centuries old!
It was true: Señor Johansen was defeated. With more disdain than bitterness, he turned his back on the group to leave, just as the phegmatic Mister Chisholm approached from across the room. Their respective right hands met and clicked with mechanical urbanity. From their hushed conversation, only the odd word was audible: “obstreperous colonials” from Mister Chisholm; “beyond belief” from Señor Johansen, still stammering and looking askance at the metaphysical sector.
Meanwhile, night was falling and darkness was enveloping the parlour. Adam Buenosayres looked at a bit of sky through the window opening onto the garden. Perhaps the terrestrial melancholy of the autumn evening seeped momentarily into his soul, for he felt forthwith a crazy urge to make a clean escape into the enormous, silent spaces of the wide-open sky, hard and cold as a gem. But the lights of the chandelier suddenly switched on, and Adam turned his gaze back to the tertulia where the actors, under the new lighting, were becoming more boisterous. A gust of hilarity was just hitting the ladies’ group. Señora Johansen was laughing noisily, her spongy flesh shaking beneath her clothes like a water-filled balloon. Señora Amundsen laughed a sonorous counterpoint, and even Señora Ruiz discreetly joined in, her hatchet face managing a half-smile. Lucio Negri was now among the denizens of the divan, sitting beside Solveig with the most distracted air imaginable. Adam thought he’d seen Lucio’s hand furtively draw away from Solveig’s just as the lights came on. But he wasn’t sure, maybe it was an optical illusion. Did it matter any more? No. Really? Weaver of smoke! At the far end of the sky-blue divan, not much was new; the astrologer Schultz was speaking to the engineer, Ethel, and Ruty, all of them apparently spellbound.
Adam’s observations were interrupted by a chorus of laughter in his own sector. Franky Amundsen, haughty as a self-important nurse, was approaching solemnly, rolling the cart of drinks before him.
— Let us drink, now that we have peace, Franky invited, stopping the drink cart with a truly maternal solicitude.
Not waiting to have their arms twisted, Del Solar, Pereda, Buenosayres, and the pipsqueak Bernini all accepted a glass and a benediction from Franky. But Samuel Tesler had retreated into sullen silence after the battle and now refused Franky’s generosity.
— Come on, now! cried Franky. Let’s go ashore and hit the bottle! Blood of the whale, have a little humanity! Even Plato, if memory serves, used to drink like a sailor after he’d demonstrated the squaring of the circle.
As he served Señor Johansen and Mister Chisholm, still whispering together in private, Franky exhorted them:
— Pax, gentlemen! Pax vobiscum.
There followed a general flexing of elbows. Even Samuel Tesler, having given in to Franky’s eloquence, raised a glass more out of courtesy than any other motive.
Then Franky suddenly turned to Del Solar.
— I’ve got an idea! he cried, pointing at Buenosayres and Samuel Tesler. These comrades have to come with us tonight.
— Where? asked Adam.
— Shhh! Franky silenced him. A creoley-toughguyee-whorey-suburbyfuneral adventure, as comrade Schultz would say.26
But Del Solar was frowning.
— It’s dangerous, he declared. We’re gonna be hangin’ out with the kind of heavies you don’t mess with.
— Will the taita Flores be there? Pereda wanted to know.
— For sure, Del Solar answered, giving him a significant look.
— Hmm, growled Pereda. If Flores is going to be there, we’ll have to think this over carefully.
This brief exchange between the two criollista leaders charged the atmosphere with a sense of mystery, of lurking danger. Unfortunately, Franky Amundsen couldn’t leave well enough alone.
— One hell of night it’s gonna be, he anounced. By the beard of the Prophet! We’ll get down and dirty on the outskirts of town and up to our balls in criollismo. Are we or are we not talking about a journey to hell? Yes? So that’s why the poet and the philosopher’ve gotta come along, or I know bugger all about the classics.
— Okay, it’s fine by me if they want to come, muttered Del Solar, looking dubiously at Tesler and Buenosayres. But they’ll have to keep their heads up and their mouths shut. Otherwise, I can’t answer for the consequences.
A look of irritation mixed with pity suffused the face of the philosopher from Villa Crespo. He was not unaware of the harm suffered by the current generation due to a doctrine of heretical principles and dubious ends. Concocted in the impure crucible of some irresponsible coterie, it had taken off in a manner unprecedented in the history of our national metaphyics, fully justifying the cries of alarm being heard on all sides. Criollismo was the name of this obscure heterodoxy, and whether it was inspired by Old Nick himself, we’ll only know on Judgment Day toward nightfall. Upon dissecting that body of doctrine with the zealous scalpel of inflexible orthodoxy, one quickly came to realize that it was all about taking certain shady characters from suburban Buenos Aires, whose deeds were memorialized in police files, and raising them to the level of Olympian gods. Now, our philosopher belonged to a race which, although in the course of its frequent migrations it had burned incense at the altar of quite a few foreign divinities, could still boast of having maintained intact the gold of its own tradition. So it was no surprise that that attempt at barbarous idolatry caused Samuel Tesler to cloud over from head to foot.27