On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sabato
They talked shop for quite a while, in a jargon that at times seemed to have crossbred with that of psychoanalysis, so that they appeared to be as ecstatic about a logarithmic spiral by Max Bill as about the ano-buccal sadism of a friend who had just gone into analysis.
And then, in the midst of my reconstruction of events, the light dawned. It was surely my obsession alone that had led me to think that I had seen Capurro before, in Valparaíso or Tucumán. It was just that all those people looked alike, and it was very hard to see the differences between them, especially if one saw them from a distance or in the dark or, as in my case, in moments of violent emotion.
Having thus reassured myself about Capurro, I found the rest of my stay more pleasant: I went to a movie, stopped by at a suburban bar, and finally went back to my hotel. And the next day when the Air France plane took off from Carrasco I began to breathe more easily.
I arrived at Orly in the middle of a depressing heat wave (it was the month of August). I was panting and sweating. One of the functionaries who examined my passport, one of those Frenchmen who gesticulate with that exuberance that they find typical of Latin Americans, said to me, with a mixture of sarcasm and condescension:
“But you Argentines must be used to weather lots hotter than this, right?”
Everyone knows that the French are a very logical people and the reasoning process of that Descartes in the Bureau of Customs was unassailable: Marseilles was in the south and it’s hot there; Buenos Aires is much farther south and therefore the heat there must be infernal. All of which merely proves the sort of absurdities that logic leads to: a well-reasoned argument can do away with the South Pole.
I reassured him (and flattered him) by confirming the correctness of his opinions on the subject. I told him that in Buenos Aires our usual attire was loincloths, and that when we had to get dressed up we suffered if the weather was at all hot, whereupon he cheerfully stamped my passport, handed it back to me with a smile, and said: ”Allez-y. Go get civilized!”
I didn’t have any definite plans on arriving in Paris, but it seemed prudent to do two things: first off, to contact F.’s friends, just in case I began to run out of money; and secondly, to cover my trail, as usual, by hanging out with my friends (?) in Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter: that collection of Catalans, Italians, Polish and Rumanian Jews who constitute the School of Paris.
I found myself lodging in a rooming house on the Rue du Sommerand, where I had lived before the war. But Madame Pinard no longer ran the place. Another fat woman had taken over in the concierge’s lodge, to keep an eye on the comings and goings of students, unsuccessful artists, and pimps who constituted not only the population of the rooming house but also the endless subject of Gossip and inexhaustible material for the concierge’s Philosophy of Life.
I rented a tiny room on the fourth floor, and then went out to hunt up my acquaintances.
I stopped by the Dôme first, and didn’t see a soul I knew. I was told that everyone had immigrated to other cafés. I also found out where Domínguez was and dropped round at his studio, which was now in the Grand Chaumière, to see him.
But it is evidently my fate to be able to do nothing that does not eventually lead me to the Forbidden Realm; in fact it would seem that an infallible flair inevitably takes me in that direction. “This,” Domínguez said to me, showing me a canvas, “is the portrait of a blind model.” He laughed. He had always had a penchant for certain perversities.
I was so taken aback I was obliged to sit down.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’ve turned deathly pale.”
He brought me some cognac.
“I’ve got stomach trouble,” I explained.
I left, vowing to myself never to go back to Domínguez’s studio. But the next day I realized that that was the worst thing I could possibly do, as the following series of probable events demonstrated:
Domínguez would be surprised at my disappearance.
He would search his memory for some fact that might explain it. He would recall only one such thing: my having nearly fainted when he had shown me the portrait of the blind woman.
This fact would stand out so clearly in his mind that he would end up saying something about it, to the blind woman in particular. This was well within the realm of possibility. Frighteningly so, since Domínguez’s comments would have the following consequences:
The blind woman would ask questions as to who I was.
My first and last names, my background and so on would come to light.
This information would immediately be passed on to the Sect.
The rest was as plain as day: my life would be in danger once again and I would be forced to flee Paris, perhaps to Africa or Greenland.
My readers can well imagine what decision I came to, the only one that would occur to any intelligent person: there was just one way of keeping up appearances and that was to go back to Domínguez’s studio as though nothing had happened and risk the possibility of meeting the blind woman in person.
After a long and expensive journey, I had again come face to face with my Destiny.
26
How astonishingly lucid I am in these moments preceding my death!
I am hastily noting down points that I would like to analyze, if they leave me enough time to do so:
Blind lepers.
The Clichy affair, espionage in the bookstore.
The tunnel between the crypt of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and Père Lachaise cemetery, Jean-Pierre, be very careful.
27
Persecution mania. Those realists again, those famous individuals who believe in “the proper sense of proportion.” When my adversaries have finally burned me to death, then and only then will they be convinced: as though it were necessary to measure the diameter of the sun with a ruler in order to believe what astrophysicists assert.
These documents will testify to the truth.
Posthumous vanity? Perhaps: vanity is such a fantastic thing, so far from being “realistic” that it even leads us to worry about what others will think of us after we’re dead and buried.
Could this be a sort of proof of the immortality of the soul?
28
Really, what a bunch of bastards! In order to believe you, they must see you burned to death.
29
So I went back to Domínguez’s studio. Now that I had made up my mind to do so, a sort of tremendous anxiety drove me there. The moment I arrived, I asked him to tell me more about the blind woman. But Domínguez was drunk and began to heap abuse on me, as was his wont when he drank too much and lost control. A fierce, enormous hulk with his shoulders hunched over, he turned into a terrifying monster when under the influence of alcohol.
The next day I found him calmly painting away with his usual bovine air.
I asked him about the blind woman again and told him I would like very much to watch her without her knowing that I was doing so. I was thus resuming my investigation, long before I had expected to however, even though a distance of fifteen thousand kilometers is more or less the equivalent of a couple of years’ time. This at least was the idiotic thought that came to me at the moment. I need not add that I said nothing to Domínguez about these secret thoughts of mine, and used simple curiosity, morbid curiosity, as my pretext for asking to observe the blind woman without being seen myself.
He told me I could post myself up above and look and listen to my heart’s content. I suppose that my readers are familiar with the way painters’ studios are laid out: they are usually one big room with a high ceiling, in the lower part of which the artist has his easel, cupboards for his painting equipment, a divan for the model, chairs and tables to sit at or eat at, and so on; and to one side, about six feet above the floor, a loft with a bed to sleep in. This loft was to be my observatory: it could not have been better suited for the task that I had set myself if it had been made to order.
Excited by the prospect before me, I chatted with Domínguez about o
A shiver ran down my spine and my skin crawled the moment I saw the woman standing there in the doorway. I never have been able to see a blind person appear without feeling that icy shiver.
She was of medium height, and rather slender, but there was something about the way she moved that was reminiscent of a cat in heat. She made her way over to the couch without help and disrobed. She had a soft, attractive body, but it was above all her feline movements that made her seductive.
As Domínguez painted she poured out a stream of bitter invective against her husband. I did not find this of any particular interest till it suddenly dawned on me that her husband was blind too. The sort of weak spot I had always been looking for! Seen from a distance, an enemy nation always appears to be a solid, compact block with no cracks or fissures, giving us the impression that we will never be able to penetrate it. But inside it are hatreds, resentments, desires for revenge: if this were not so espionage would be very nearly impossible and collaboration in occupied countries scarcely feasible.
I naturally did not fling myself into this fissure with great rejoicing. It was first necessary to determine:
a) Whether this woman was really unaware of my existence and of my presence;
b) Whether she really detested her husband (this could be mere bait to catch spies);
c) Whether her husband was really blind too.
The wild rush of thoughts that the revelation of the woman’s hatred for her spouse unleashed in my head was mingled with the excitement of my senses brought on by the scene that followed. Perverse and sadistic as he was, Domínguez did countless filthy things to the woman, taking advantage of her blindness, rousing her to such a point that she went groping all about with her hands trying to find him. Domínguez motioned to me to come join the two of them, but as it was imperative that I profit from this precious opportunity, I was not about to throw it away in return for mere sexual satisfaction. The game went on but soon degenerated into a somber and almost terrifying sexual battle between a man and a woman possessed who screamed, bit, and scratched.
No, I had no doubt now that the woman was sincere, a fact that was of importance to my future investigation. And although I know that a woman is capable of lying coldly even in the most passionate moments, I was nonetheless inclined to believe that what she had said about her blind husband was true. But I would have to verify this.
When the two of them finally calmed down, the studio had been turned upside down (for they had not only shouted and howled: Domínguez had also gotten the blind woman so excited with his teasing taunts and filthy suggestions that she had chased him all around the studio, stumbling over all the furniture). They remained silent for a long time and then she got dressed again and said: “See you tomorrow,” like an office girl leaving work at the end of the day. Domínguez didn’t even answer; he simply lay there bare naked on the divan, practically falling asleep. Feeling a bit ridiculous, I stayed up there in my observatory for a while and then finally decided to come down.
I asked Domínguez if it was true that the woman’s husband was blind, if he had ever seen him. I also asked him if she really detested the man as much as she seemed to.
Domínguez’s only reply was to explain to me that one of the tortures that that woman had thought up was to take her lovers to the room where she lived with the blind man and allow them to possess her in front of him. As I couldn’t believe that such a thing was possible, he explained that indeed it was, for the man was not only blind but paralyzed, and was thus forced to witness from his wheelchair the scenes she staged to torment him.
“But how can that be?” I persisted. “Can’t he at least move his wheelchair around? Doesn’t he chase them around the room?”
Yawning like a rhinoceros, Domínguez shook his head. No: the blind man was completely paralyzed; all he could do was move a couple of the fingers of his right hand and moan. When the scene before him was about to reach its climax, the blind man, in a fit of insane fury, would succeed in moving his fingers a little and giving a few thick-tongued moans.
Why did she hate him so? Domínguez did not know.
30
But let us go back to the model. Even today I still shudder when I recall the brief liaison I had with that blind woman, for I have never been closer to the edge of the abyss than at that moment. How stupid and how lacking in foresight I still was! To think that I took myself to be as cunning as a lynx, that I believed I never took a single step without having previously examined every inch of the terrain, that I regarded myself as someone whose powers of reason were exceptional and well-nigh infallible. Alas for me, poor simpleton that I was!
It was not difficult for me to come to be on intimate terms with the blind woman (exactly the way an idiot would say “It was not difficult for me to become the victim of a confidence game”). I met her the next day at Domínguez’s studio, we left together, we talked about the weather, about Argentina, about Domínguez. She did not know, of course, that I had watched the two of them from my observation post up in the loft the day before.
“He’s a great guy,” she said to me. “I love him like a brother.”
To me this was proof of two things: first of all, that she had been unaware of my presence up in the loft; and secondly, that she was a liar. This conclusion put me on my guard: when she made other confessions in the future, everything she said would have to be examined and the truth carefully sifted from the lies. A certain period of time, whose duration was brief but whose importance was considerable, was to go by before I realized or suspected that the first conclusion I had arrived at was highly questionable at best. Had she been intuitively aware that I was up there in the loft, thanks to that sixth sense which tells a blind person that there is someone else present in the room? Had Domínguez let her in on the secret out of complicity with her? I shall return to this subject. For the moment allow me to go on with my description of the facts as they occurred.
I judge myself as pitilessly as I judge the rest of humanity. Even today I ask myself whether it was merely my obsession regarding the Sect that led me to have that affair with Louise. I ask myself, for example, if I would ever have been able to go to bed with a blind woman who was hideous-looking. Now that would have been an investigation conducted in the true scientific spirit! Like that of those astronomers who spend long winter nights stretched out on wooden benches, shivering with cold beneath the domes of the observatory as they note the positions of the stars, for they would fall asleep if they were comfortable and the object that they are pursuing is not sleep but truth. Whereas I on the other hand, an imperfect and lustful creature, allowed myself to become involved in situations in which danger awaited me at every moment and I neglected the great transcendent objectives that I had set myself for so many long years.
It is impossible for me, however, to decide to what point my activities were motivated by a genuine spirit of investigation and to what point by sick self-indulgence. Because I also tell myself that this self-indulgence was equally useful as a means of penetrating the mystery of the Sect. For if the Sect in fact rules the world by virtue of the forces of darkness, if I was to study the limits, the boundaries, the scope and range of these forces, what better means could there be than plunging into the horrors of the flesh and the spirit? I am not stating a fact that I am absolutely certain of at this moment, I am merely thinking things over in my mi
It would serve no useful purpose to describe in detail the loathsome congress that I had with the blind woman, inasmuch as such details would add nothing of importance to the Report that I wish to leave behind for future researchers. A Report that I wish to bear the same relationship to this sort of detailed description that a sociological geography of Central Africa bears to the description of an act of cannibalism. I shall merely say that even if I were to live five thousand years, it would be impossible for me to forget, to my dying day, those summer afternoon siestas with that nameless female as multiple as an octopus, as slow and minute in her movements as a slug, as flexible and perverse as a giant viper, as electric and hypnotic as a female cat in the night. As meanwhile in his paralytic’s wheelchair, the other, impotent and pathetic, moved two fingers of his right hand and with his toad’s tongue muttered heaven knows what blasphemies, what dark (and useless) threats. Until the moment when that vampire, having sucked all my blood, abandoned me, reduced to the state of an amorphous, repulsive mollusk.