The Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

Author:Roberto Arlt [Roberto Arlt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781780941738
Publisher: Hesperus Press Ltd.
Published: 2013-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

The first person to enter the bookshop in the morning was Don Gaetano. I followed him. Everything was as we had left it. The atmosphere was filled with damp, and in the back, on a line of leather-bound spines, a patch of sun came in through the skylight.

I went to the kitchen. The coal had gone out, it was lying in a pool of water that had formed when Stinking God washed the plates.

That was the last day I worked there.

Chapter 3

The Mad Toy

After doing the washing up, closing the doors and opening the shutters, I went back to bed, because it was cold.

On the wall, the sun slantingly reddened the bricks.

My mother was sewing in another room and my sister was preparing her lessons. I got ready to read. On a chair next to the bedstead were the following works:

Virgin and Mother by Luis de Val, Bahía’s Electrical Engineering and Nietzsche’s Antichrist. Virgin and Mother, four volumes of 1,800 pages each, had been lent to me by a neighbour who took in ironing.

When I was sitting comfortably, I looked at Virgin and Mother with little enthusiasm. It was clear that I wasn’t in the mood for some gruesome doorstop, and so I decided to take up Electrical Engineering and set to studying the theory of rotating magnetic fields.

I read slowly and with satisfaction. I thought, once I had interiorised the complex explanation of multiphase currents:

‘It is a sign of universal intelligence to be able to appreciate all kinds of beauty,’ and the names of Ferranti and Siemens-Halske21 sounded harmoniously in my ears.

I thought:

‘One day I too will be able to say in front of a conference full of engineers, “Yes, sirs… the electromagnetic currents the sun generates can be used and condensed.” How stupid, they need to be condensed first, and then used! Damn, how can you condense the sun’s electromagnetic currents?’

I knew, because of various scientific announcements that appeared in the papers, that Tesla,22 the wizard of electricity, had come up with the idea of a ray condenser.

And I dreamt like this until it grew dark, when I heard the voice of Rebeca Naidath, a friend of my mother’s, in the other room:

‘Hello! How are you, Frau Drodman? How’s my little girl?’

I lifted my head from my book in order to listen.

Señora Rebeca was of the Jewish faith. Her soul was petty because her body was small. She walked like a seal and examined everything like an eagle… I hated her because of certain bad things she’d done to me.

‘Is Silvio there? I need to talk to him.’ I was in the next room in a flash.

‘Hello! How are you, Frau, what’s up?’

‘Do you know about mechanics?’

‘Of course… well, I know something. Didn’t you show her the letter from Ricaldoni, mama?’

And it was true, Ricaldoni had congratulated me on some ridiculous mechanical contraptions I had thought up in my leisure hours.

Señora Rebeca said:

‘Yes, I saw it. Here you go.’ And she held out a newspaper and pointed to an advert with her dirt-haloed finger.

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