Why did it have to be like this? Why couldn’t it have turned out differently, if, in the end, it would have made no difference to the universal scheme of things? Why did I have to be the object of your fierce persecution, Poverty, demanding and vexatious goddess — or, rather, witch — that you are? Why me? For some mysterious reason you noticed me back in Pringles, when I was a kid; maybe you were drawn to my pretty eyes, which you afflicted with myopia, adding physical to economic misery, making me neurotic as well as a pariah. Our close association dates back to those early days. My little house, echoing with scarcity, was yours as well. That was where I got to know you, listening to my parents’ endless arguments over money, in which I discovered language and a model for life. And if I went out, you accompanied me, you took me by the hand and pointed out the boxes of colored pencils that my school friends had, their rustling pads of tracing paper, the ice creams they ate, the Mexican magazines they bought. . Where did they get the money? Why didn’t I have any? You never told me.
The truly remarkable thing is that when I left town you came with me, as if you couldn’t bear my absence. My mother resigned herself to the separation, but not you. You came to Buenos Aires; you clung to me and settled in my lodgings, and all my ploys for eluding your relentless company failed. If I went to work, you accompanied me on the bus; if I lost my job, you stayed at home watching me read one sad volume after another. When I got married, you were the only wedding present I could offer my wife. You were the only fairy who bent over my children’s cradles. You were the sinister Christmas tree, my psychic roulette, the confidante to whom I poured out the all-too-obvious contents of my heart. Tossing and turning in bed, tortured by insomnia, I hatched all manner of escape plans, shriveling my brain. You always let me choose my course of action freely, but at the last minute you’d come along too. It was like one of those obsessive cartoons: I could cross oceans and continents, and believe that I’d escaped from your persecution, for a while at least. . but then I’d find you in my room, calm as could be, busy with some mean little scheme. It was automatic. I ended up becoming the most sedentary of men. And the metaphoric forms of flight — new jobs, resolutions, self-hypnosis — were, predictably, even less effective: when the literal doesn’t work, metaphors are worse than useless.
Enough! I’ve done my time. Not even a murderer gets a forty-six-year sentence, and I’ve never broken the law; on the contrary, I’m so well meaning and inoffensive, I sometimes feel I’m a saint. Can’t you leave me in peace? Don’t I deserve a break, at least? I know it’s my fault, but it still seems unfair. I want to be left alone, to fend for myself, if I’m still up to it; I want to be subject to the laws of chance, like other men, and know that there’s a possibility, however slim, that luck might smile on me. I’m fed up with your relentless presence, Poverty. Your homeopathy has made me sick; I wish I could have you eradicated. . If there was any chance you might listen, I’d threaten to kill myself, but that wouldn’t be any use either. .
At this point in my soliloquy, the figure of Poverty appeared before me: gaunt, stiff, ragged, and — in her way — magnificent. My words must have had some effect, because her falsely submissive air had been replaced by a look of genuine fury: eyes aflame, fists clenched, lips opening and closing violently.
“Fool! Featherbrain! Moron! All these years I’ve kept quiet, putting up with your complaints, your immature whining, your maladjustment, your ingratitude for all the gifts I’ve showered on you since you were born, but I can’t stand it anymore! Now you’re going to listen to me, though it probably won’t do you any good, because some people never learn.
“Who told you that my company was a disadvantage? The fact that you believed it just because that’s what everyone says goes to show how incurably frivolous you are. And that’s exactly the vice that I’ve been striving to save you from, with a perseverance that I now see was wasted. After all this time, do I have to spell out what I’ve done for you? I don’t know where to start, because I gave you everything you have. And more than that: I gave you the framework to accommodate it all. I gave you the energy you’d never have been able to muster by yourself. Without me you’d have given up almost straightaway, devoid of ideas and the brainpower to come up with them. I put variation and color into what would have been a monotonous routine. I gave you the joy of always being able to hope for better times. If you’d possessed something, what would you have hoped for? (Except the loss of it, knowing you.) As it was, you were always expecting things to improve. Fearful and timid as you are, and always would have been, however much you’d had, you would have lived in constant fear of thieves and swindlers, who would always have been too clever for you. I gave you a reason to go on living, the only one you had. Do you think you’d have written a word if I hadn’t been there all the time, peeking over your shoulder at your notebooks? Why else would you have written anything? And if you had, it would have been worse than what you’ve produced. Much worse! But I have to explain that too, don’t I?
“Even with your limited intelligence, you must have noticed that the rich are different. And this is why: the rich man substitutes money for the making of things. Instead of buying wood and making a table, he buys a table ready-made. There’s a progression: if he’s not so rich, he buys the table and paints it himself; if he’s richer, he buys it painted. If he’s not rich at all, he doesn’t even buy the wood; he goes to the forest and cuts down a tree, et cetera. Poverty (yours truly) provides a certain amount of process. The rich man gets everything ready-made, including goods and services. Which means that he loses reality, because reality is a process. Worse stilclass="underline" the availability of ready-made things waiting to be used comes to seem natural, and he begins to expect it in the world of thought as well. That’s why the rich use ready-made ideas, copied opinions, tastes invented by others. They delegate the process. Even where their feelings are concerned, which is what makes them so stereotypical and superficiaclass="underline" the caricatures by which they’re generally represented are actually far too complex and flattering. Would you have wanted to be like that? Do you have any idea what you’re saying? Without me, your books would have lacked the one modest virtue that no one can deny them: realism. I gave you that, and you have the nerve to hold it against me!
“And how! With your first thought in the morning, you revile me; with your last thought when you go to bed as well. And in between it’s nothing but protests, complaints, and whining. I’m aware that with the advance of technology and consumerism, the world is adopting the system of the rich, which will be generalized eventually. That must be what makes you feel marginal and old-fashioned, as if I were a burden holding you back in a past of pre-industrial labor. Maybe that’s why you resent me, but it’s the source of all your originality, and given your maladaptation, without originality, you’re nothing.
“Anyhow, I’m not going to go on justifying your existence. I’m sick of being your bête noire; I’m fed up with your insults and rudeness. I can’t stand you anymore. I’m moving out! If that’s what you really wanted, you’ve got it: you won’t see me again. I’m going to Arturito Carrera’s place, where I know I’ll get the appreciation I deserve.”