‘Careful, lad, it cothtth money,’ and turning back to his work he’d lower his head, the mouse-coloured cap pulled down over his ears, rummage in a box with his fingers all dirty from glue and, filling his mouth with nails, would carry on with his hammer, tap… tap… tap…
These books, which I would devour in their numerous ‘batches’, were stories of José María, the Lightning Bolt of Andalusia, or of the adventures of Don Jaime the Bearded and other rogues, more or less authentic and picturesque, as could be seen from the prints that showed them as follows:
Horsemen on stupendously saddled colts, with extra-black side burns on their ruddy faces, their bullfighter’s ponytail covered by an extremely shiny cordobés hat, and a blunderbuss mounted in the saddletree. They would usually be offering, with a magnanimous gesture, a yellow bag of money to a widow standing at the foot of a little green hill with a babe in her arms.
Back then I dreamt of being a bandit and of strangling libidinous senior magistrates; I would right wrongs and protect widows, and I would be loved by exceptional maidens.
I needed a comrade for my youthful adventures, and this comrade was Enrique Irzubeta.
Enrique was a layabout who was always known by the edifying nickname of ‘The Faker’.
His story shows how one can establish a reputation; and how fame, once won, can nurture all those who wish to study the laudable art of leading the ignorant up the garden path.
Enrique was fourteen when he cheated the owner of a sweet factory, which is clear proof that the gods had decided what the destiny of our friend Enrique would be. But because the gods are crafty at heart, I am not surprised, as I write my memoirs, to discover that Enrique is now being put up in one of those hotels that the State provides for hooligans and rascals.
The truth is this:
A certain factory owner, in order to stimulate the sale of his products, announced a competition, with prizes for those who could put together a complete set of the flags of South America which he had had printed on the underside of each sweet wrapper.
The difficulty lay in finding the wrapper with the flag of Nicaragua, given its extreme scarcity.
These absurd contests, as you know, excite young boys, who, under the banner of a common interest, add up every day the results of their searches and the development of their patient investigations.
And so Enrique promised his neighbourhood friends, the carpenter’s apprentices and the dairyman’s sons, that he would fake the Nicaraguan flag if someone brought him a copy.
The lads were doubtful… they vacillated, knowing Irzubeta’s reputation, even though Enrique magnanimously offered as hostage two volumes of the History of France, written by M. Guizot, so that his probity would not be called into question.
And so the bargain was struck on the pavement in a cul-de-sac, with green-painted streetlights on the street corners, with few houses and tall brick walls. The blue curve of the sky sat atop the distant brushwood-topped walls, and the street was made all the more sad by the monotonous murmur of endless sawing and the cows mooing in the dairy.
Later I found out that Enrique, using Indian ink and blood, had reproduced the Nicaraguan flag so convincingly that it was impossible to tell the original from the copy.
A few days later Irzubeta showed off a brand new airgun that he later sold to a second-hand clothes dealer in Reconquista Street. This happened while brave Bonnot and valiant Valet were terrorising Paris.1
I had already read the forty-odd volumes that the Viscount of Ponson du Terrail had written about Mother Fipart’s adopted son, the admirable Rocambole, and I aspired to become a bandit in the high style.
Well, one summer day, in the sordid neighbourhood grocery shop, I met Irzubeta.
The hot siesta hour weighed on the streets, and there was I, sitting on a cask of yerba,2 chatting to Hipólito, who took advantage of his father’s being asleep to make bamboo-framework aeroplanes. Hipólito wanted to be a pilot, ‘but first he had to solve the problem of natural stability’. At other times he was preoccupied with perpetual motion and would ask me about the possible implications of his musing.
Hipólito, with his elbows on a lard-stained newspaper, between the cheese counter and the red levers on the till, listened to my suggestions with the utmost attention:
‘A clock mechanism is no use for the propeller. Give it a tiny little electric motor and put the dry batteries in the fuselage.’
‘You mean like in submarines…’
‘Submarines? What submarines? The only danger is that the current could burn out the motor, but the plane’ll go much more smoothly and you’ll have a while before the batteries die.’
‘Che, couldn’t we make the motor work via a wireless telegraph? You’ll have to see how that might work. It’d be great, wouldn’t it?’
At this moment Enrique came in.
‘Che, Hipólito, my mum says do you want to give me half a kilo of sugar on tick.’
‘I can’t, che; the old man says that until you sort out your bill…’
Enrique frowned slightly.
‘I’m surprised to hear it, Hipólito.’
Hipólito added, conciliatory:
‘If it was down to me, you know… but it’s the old man, che.’ And he pointed at me, happy to be able to change the subject, and said to Enrique:
‘Che, don’t you know Silvio? He made the cannon.’
Irzubeta’s face lit up respectfully.
‘Oh, was that you? Well done. The guy who mucks out the dairy said it fired like a Krupp…’
While he was talking, I observed him.
He was tall and skinny. Over his rounded forehead, stippled with freckles, lustrous black hair waved in a lordly fashion. His eyes were the colour of tobacco, slightly slanted, and he wore a brown suit that had been fitted to his figure by hands unskilled in the couturier’s art.
He leant on the edge of the counter, balancing his chin on the palm of his hand. He seemed to be reflecting on something.
The adventure of my cannon was a resonant one, and pleasant to remember.
I bought an iron tube and several pounds of lead from some workers at the electricity company. With these elements I fabricated what I called a culverin or ‘bombard’. The manufacture went as follows:
Into a hexagonal wooden mould, lined on the inside with mud, I inserted the iron tube. The space between the two interior faces was filled with molten lead. After breaking the covering, I smoothed the underside with a thick file, and then used tin hoops to fix the cannon onto a carriage made out of the thickest planks from a box that had been used to store kerosene.
My culverin was a handsome object. It could be loaded with projectiles two inches in diameter, the charge for which I placed in powder-filled rough cotton bags.
As I stroked my little monster, I thought:
‘This cannon can kill, this cannon can destroy.’ And the conviction that I had created a danger both mortal and obedient filled me with a mad joy.
The neighbourhood kids examined it with admiration; it showed them my intellectual superiority, which from that moment prevailed whenever we went on expeditions to steal fruit or else discover buried treasure in the abandoned territories beyond the Maldonado, the stream that divided us from the parish of San José de Flores.
The day we fired the cannon was legendary. It was in the middle of a clump of Jerusalem thorn, itself in the middle of an enormous patch of waste ground in Avellaneda Street, before you got to San Eduardo, that we made the experiment. A circle of kids stood round me while I, my imagination much excited, loaded the mouth of the culverin. Then, in order to test its ballistic capacities, we aimed it at the zinc tank that was fixed to the wall of a nearby carpenter’s and provided it with water.