Read Online The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt - Free Book Online

since you weren't making enough to support her ... "
    Gripping the revolver butt in his pocket hard, Erdosain looked at the Captain. Then, involuntarily, he smiled thinking how he had nothing to fear, since he could kill him.
    "I hardly think what I said is all that funny."
    "No, no, I was smiling over a weird thought I just had ... . So she told you that kind of thing?"
    "Yes, and she also told me about how you were a genius, and in a bad way—"
    "We've talked about your inventions—"
    "Yes ... about your project to make metallized flowers."
    "So why are you leaving, then?"
    "I'm tired, Remo."
    Erdosain felt fury scrunching his mouth into nasty words. He would have liked to insult her, but remembering the stranger could smash his face in, he held back his abuse and answered:
    "You were always tired. At home, you were tired ... here ... there ... up in the mountains ... remember?"
    Unsure how to answer him, Elsa looked at the floor.
    "Tired ... how come you're so tired? All of you women are tired, and I don't see why ... but anyway you're tired ... You, Captain, aren't you tired, too?"
    The stranger looked at him for some time.
    "When you say tired, how do you mean?"
    "From boredom, from unhappiness. Haven't you noticed that these seem to be the times of tribulation that the Bible speaks of? That's what a friend of mine says, a guy who married a lame whore. The lame woman is the Whore of whom the Scriptures tell us—"
    "I never knew that was so."
    "Ah, well, I did. It may seem odd for me to be talking about suffering under these circumstances, but that's how it goes ... men are in such a bad way that they need someone to humiliate them."
    "I see nothing of the sort."
    "Of course not, considering how much you make ... How much do you make? Fifteen hundred?"
    "Somewhere around there."
    "Making that much it's only logical ... "
    "What's only logical?"
    "That you shouldn't feel like a slave."
    The Captain was glowering at Erdosain.
    "Germán, don't pay him any mind," Elsa cut in. "Remo's always going on about unhappiness."
    "Is that so?"
    "Yes ... but her, she believes in happiness. In the feeling of 'perpetual bliss' that would descend on her life if she could spend her days going to parties."
    "I detest unhappiness."
    "Well, sure, since you don't believe in unhappiness ... the horrible thing gnawing away inside of us, inner unhappiness ... a soul-deep thing that worms deep into our bones like syphilis ... "
    They fell silent. The Captain, obviously bored, looked at his nails, buffed to a shine.
    Elsa looked out fixedly from behind the rhombus pattern veil, at the gaunt face of the husband she had once loved so much, while Erdosain wondered why he should be one huge vacuum on the inside, a vacuum in which his consciousness dissolved, finding no words that might howl out his pain to eternity.
    The Captain looked up suddenly.
    "And how do you plan to metal-coat your flowers?"
    "Simple ... Take a rose, for example, and dip it in a solution of silver nitrate dissolved in alcohol. Then you put the flower under a light that reduces the nitrate to metallic silver, which leaves the rose covered with a fine metal film, a good conductor of current. Then it's treated by the usual coppering process, galvanoplastic plating technique ... and, of course, at the end of it you have your rose turned into a copper rose. It would be really useful in a lot of ways."
    "The idea is original."
    "Didn't I tell you how clever Remo is, Germán?"
    "He sure is."
    "Yes, maybe I'm talented in certain regards, but I don't have life ... enthusiasm ... something like some extraordinary dream ... a great lie always struggling toward reality ... but anyway, changing the subject again, do you two expect to be happy?"
    "Yes."
    Once more silence came over them. In the light of the yellow lamp their three faces looked like three wax masks. Erdosain saw that in a few brief moments it would all be over and digging down into his grief, he asked the Captain:
    "Why did