Frau und Schauspieler

An essay ("Woman and Actor") by this Swiss writer.  You can read the original as part of this collection.

My dear sir, I am writing to you now because yesterday I happened to be in the city theater and saw you as Prince Max in Hofgunst.  Just so you know in advance, I am a woman of thirty, somewhat past that age, in fact, does this interest you?  You are young and handsome, cut a dashing figure, and must have women falling all over each other to get to you.  By the way, please do not count me among those falling women; and yet I must admit that I like you and feel obliged to tell you why.  This letter is already getting a bit long, don't you think?

When I saw you yesterday on the stage, it immediately occurred to me how innocent you were; that is to say, you certainly possess a great deal of child-like qualities.  And on the stage last night you so comported yourself that I thought I should write to you.  I am doing so right now; but will I actually mail this letter?  Forgive me, I'm sure: you should be proud that you engender doubt.  Perhaps I will not mail these words to you, then you would know nothing and have no reason whatsoever to succumb to unseemly laughter.  Do you ever succumb to that?  Understand that I suspect you have a beautiful, fresh, and pure heart, but perhaps you are still too young to know how important that is.  When you answer me, tell me where you spend your free time.  Or tell me in person, come to me tomorrow afternoon at six; I will be expecting you. 

Most people place the entirety of their ambition in the ignoble impossibility of committing a foolishness.  They do not care for the propriety of behavior, although it seems like they do.  They only respect convention when it may be subjected to some kind of danger.  For dangers are educational, and one becomes conventionless without the proper urge to retain these customs and be educated about important things in some lively manner.  Timidity often seems to be our real convention – what lethargic thoughtlessness!  Are you still listening to me, listening to me sincerely?  Or are you one of those regrettably numerous people who think that everything a bit shameful or stressful is necessarily boring?  Spit upon this letter and tear it into pieces if it bores you.  But tell me the truth: it does excite you, it does interest you, it is not boring.                

My God, how handsome you are, my dear sir!  And so young, hardly twenty if that old.  I found you a bit stiff last night and your fine voice a bit precious.  Will you forgive me for speaking this way?  I am ten years older than you, and it does me so much good to be able to talk to a person young enough for me to feel ten years older than he is.  You have something in your manners that makes you seem even younger than one would reasonably guess; this is the aforementioned preciousness.  Please do not rush to divest yourself of such a comportment, I implore you: I like it and, I would add, it would be a shame for this theater piece of natural unnaturalness.  Children are like this.  Am I offending you?  I am so open, am I not?  Yet you do not know how much joy attends the conceit whispering in my ear: he admits it, he loves it.  How the officer's uniform, the tight boots, the coat, the collar, the pants so suited you!  I was simply enthralled.  And what princely manners you displayed, what energy in your movements!  And how you spoke: you were so superfluously heroic that I almost had to feel a bit embarrassed for you, for myself, for everything.  So loudly and importantly did you hold forth in the salon of your castle or your father's castle!  How your big eyes sometimes rolled here and there as if you wanted to eat up a member of the audience, and how close, how very close you were!  One time my arm flinched and, against my will, I wanted to stick out my hand to touch you where you stood.  I see you before me, so big and so loud.             

If you come to my place tomorrow will you also appear upon my stage with such gravity?  You should know that in my room everything is very quiet and simple; I have never received an officer at my place and there has never been a scene.  How will you behave?  But your entire, high-placed, beanstalk-like being appeals to me; for me it is new, fresh, good, noble, and pure.  I would like to get to know it because I feel that within it lies something innocent and unbroken.  Show it to me the way it is; I sensed it in advance and I believe that I love it. 

There is no arrogance in your so seemingly arrogant being.  You are incapable of anything deceitful; you are too young and I am too experienced to be wrong about you.  And now I no longer have any doubts that I will mail you this letter, but let me just say a few more things.  You are coming to see me; this we agree upon.  Wipe your boots off before coming up the stairs and entering the house; I will be standing by the window watching your actions.  How I so look forward to being so dumb and doing all this.  You see how much I'm looking forward to this.  Perhaps you are scurrilous and will punish me for provoking in you an interest in me.  If you are such a person, come and have your fun, punish me, I fully deserve it. 

But you are young, isn't that the opposite of scurrilous?  How clearly I see your eyes before me, and I have to tell you something: I do not think of you as very clever, but as very right, very exact, which can be more than clever.  Am I barking up the wrong tree?  Do you belong to the sophisticated and refined?  If this is so, then in the future I shall sit alone and abandoned in my living room because I do not understand people any more.  I shall stand by the window and open the door for you; you will not need to ring for long.  And then you'll see me, so soon now.  Actually, I wish – no, I do not want to say that much.  Are you still reading?  I should alert you in advance to the fact that I am rather pretty so that you will make somewhat of an effort and wear your finest and best-brushed attire.  What would you like to drink?  You will tell me without any embarrassment; I have wine in the cellar, my maid will go fetch it.  But perhaps it would be best if we first drink a cup of tea, what do you think?  We will be alone: my husband always works at the store at this time, but do not comprehend this as an invitation to be disrespectful; on the contrary, this should make you shy.  This is how I want to see you, shy and beautiful; otherwise I'll chase down the postman tasked with bringing these lines to you, yell at him, call him a robber and a murderer, commit enormities, and end up in jail.  How I long to see you, to have you near me!  I speak thus because I so insist on having a good opinion of you.  And if, after all that's been said, you still come to me, then you will be courageous, and the hour and a half that we spend together will be nice.  And then it would be of no use to tremble as I am doing now, because inviting you to my place will have been no daredevil act on my part.  You are so slender that I would recognize you even if you were standing down on the street before the garden doors.

What are you doing at this very moment?  What do you think, should I stop writing now?  If I stepped before you and imitated you as Prince Max standing there, you would surely laugh. 

I adjure you, bow deeply before me when you look at me and be stiff and behave yourself normally; permit yourself no free movements.  I warn you and I will thank you for having obeyed me like no one in your life has ever thanked you.

Bely, "Воспоминание"

A work ("Recollection") by this Russian man of letters.  You can read the original here.

December snowdrifts cloak our streets,
And you and your words I recall; 
Amidst the snowy silver's fall,  
Your shoulders shake like shameful sheets.

In whitest lace of prim Marseilles,
The doorman's gaze you did divert;
In sunken sofas like squatting birds, 
Admiring suitors marked your way. 

The butler brings us spice-strewn tea;
The piano wails in someone's arms;
But you just chanced to look at me,
In melancholy and alarm.  

And gently all of you arose,
As inspiration and day's dreams;
Against my yearnings all this seems
Ineffable, and sadness grows.  

Between us a pure bond was made  
To Haydn's sweetest melodies; 
But then your husband touched your knees,
As hallway drafts his whiskers grazed.

To my poor soul alone there howls,
As I this snowy scene reface, 
The recollection of those hours, 
And how they passed without a trace.

Le Corbeau

The place is a small, lonely French village by the name of Saint-Robin; the time is the interbellum period when some wrongly believed that the worst of Europe had already come and gone.  Our inhabitants seem weary and suspicious, but not in the way so commonly incident to villagers who have spied on each other for generations.  For some reason they do not know their neighbors as well as one would expect.  For some reason a thin glaze of malevolence coats every conversation, every glance, every perfunctory exchange in those cramped, entry-belled shops where village rumors invariably begin.  Typical village gossip may compel those unable to handle endless scrutiny to withdraw or seek out more indifferent pastures, but Saint-Robin is not typical.  Something is rotten in this provincial state and the maggots are spreading through every patch of soil.  Indeed, you will rarely have encountered a village so ready to destroy itself as the setting of this classic film.

Our hero is also our villain, one Doctor Rémy Germain (a particularly weary Pierre Fresnay).  In the last six weeks he has saved three pregnant women, but not their offspring.  This oddity has not escaped the notice of the villagers, who only know Germain as a stranger, a gynecologist who moved here from Grenoble three years earlier.  A handsome fellow in his mid-forties, our doctor is lean, unsporty, and moustached in a way that would be impossible within the current popular image of movie heroes.  Nowadays Germain would be at best a recluse of unusual habits; at worst, he would be a psychopath.  But in the context of Le Corbeau's filming, he is a typical European bourgeois – even labeled at one point as such – with a bourgeois's attendant mores.  A revelatory outburst towards the end of our film complicates our image of Germain, whose confession has the acrimony of truth, yet he cannot be considered a man of high virtue.  He carries on with the rather pretty and rather married Laura Vorzet (Micheline Francey), whose husband may be three times her age.  He also gets involved, more briefly and passionately, with the sister of the owner of his pension, a young woman by the name of Denise Saillens (Ginette Leclerc).  Denise may or may not be a nymphomaniac, but she certainly wishes that impression upon every man she encounters, and we first see her painting her nails in bed in the lustful sloth of someone inured to regular sensuality.  Her subsequent examination, consisting on her part mostly of sighs and pouts, concludes with Doctor Germain's assurance that she's in pristine health, and that she "doesn't need a doctor – at least not me."  Other characters hover: Marie, a nurse at Germain's hospital who considers her sister Laura to be a whore; Dr. Vorzet himself (Pierre Larquey), the hospital's chief medical administrator and an eloquent font of smug comments; the head of the hospital, Delorme (Antoine Balpêtré), a drunk burdened by an unhappy marriage; the sub-prefect (Pierre Bertin), who cannot understand why anyone would think of him as corrupt; and Rolande, age "fourteen-and-a-half," a precocious, bespectacled lass whose nosiness is not mitigated by her part-time work at the post office.  And the post office will be of prime importance because of an anonymous writer of poison-pen letters known only as the Corbeau.

A French Corbeau is an English raven (or crow, as many languages do not distinguish in everyday speech between the two large black corvids), and much like Poe's bird of ill omen our Corbeau seems to know the sins on everyone's conscience.  Germain and Laura are labeled adulterous, but Germain is also a vicious murderer of fetuses; Delorme and his bursar Bonnevie both receive unfortunate information about one another that transforms the initially toady Bonnevie into a man of fearsome poise; the sub-prefect is told that both he and his town are debauched, and the only retort he can muster to a bunch of card-playing cronies is a reminder that he "cleared [his] name last year"; and in the film's most predictable segment, a terminally ill man is informed by the Corbeau of his remaining time on this earth – a terminally ill man who, at the beginning of our film, receives an unusual gift from his mother.  Laura (who would still be colorless and dull even if Le Corbeau weren't filmed in black-and-white) hovers in Germain's vicinity without actually convincing us or him that she is a real human being.  Her cypher of a personality only renders Germain's interest in Denise, who seems complex and nuanced, all the more justifiable.  Even more damning is Laura's coupling with Vorzet, a man of infinite adages and composure, precisely the type of fellow who would not bother with a high-strung twit unless he had something up his diabolical sleeve.  One quote contains all we need to know about Dr. Michel Vorzet:

There's nothing more absurd than a convention of doctors, especially psychiatrists.  Thankfully no one was listening to the speakers .... They need a bunch of patients to listen to the speakers ....  These conventions are for provincial doctors to cheat on their wives with Parisian women.  Since I'm too old for that, I came home.

That Laura is visibly shocked by what provincial doctors and Parisian women purportedly do when left to their own devices provides further evidence that she is merely an apparition, a blonde ghost who haunts Germain, who is clearly haunted by something else as well.  So when Vorzet asks his wife's lover whether he is a believer, he observes that Germain has "the self-assurance of an atheist" (which is something akin to having the "mirth of a murderer").  When the same question is asked of Vorzet, he replies that he has his doubts, but "takes out insurance" because "it costs so little," and the rest we will leave to the curious viewer.

Clouzot is known first and foremost for this film, which is a shame since Le Corbeau is its superior in almost every way.  Les Diaboliques is certainly terrifying upon an initial viewing; yet its melodrama remains superficial because unadulterated evil is hollow but not profound (Vera Clouzot's character being a bit too lame and weak-willed to generate any empathy, much like her counterpart in the 1996 remake).  Our Corbeau, on the other hand, claims the agenda of a genuine flagellum dei, even if the lashes strike everyone in their path.  One expression he uses has garnered particular attention, "J'ai l'œil américain," a reference to Native Americans and their folk-tale prowess for seeing as sharply as an eagle or hawk – or, for that matter, a raven.  That the film was released in 1943 with a protagonist called Germain should tell all you need to know about its reception; that it succeeded despite, not owing to, its obvious political commentary of denouncers and denouncees is a tribute to Clouzot's craftsmanship and insistence.  And his most vivid creation is Denise.  Denise harbors a secret about herself that can be detected, in a way, by observing her brother.  Her character also hovers around Germain, but unlike Laura, does not grow annoying and directionless like some unwanted pigeon.  No, Denise is entrusted with the film's best line when Germain forbids her from uttering his Christian name ("I said that name one whole night.  You can let me use it now"), as if to atone for her calling him "Joseph" (again, a nasty topical allusion for a doctor) after her first "examination."  The best scene, however, remains the public accusation of one character at the mass funeral of another, a scene which appears to be shot from the point-of-view of the person six feet under.  Or something or someone lower still.

Dynamics of Faith

In the act of faith every nerve of man's body, every striving of man's soul, every function of man's spirit participates.  But body, soul, spirit, are not three parts of man.  They are dimensions of man's being, always within each other; for man is a unity and not composed of parts.  Faith, therefore, is not a matter of the mind in isolation, or of the soul in contrast to mind and body, or of the body (in the sense of animal faith), but is the centered movement of the whole personality toward something of ultimate meaning and significance.  Ultimate concern is passionate concern; it is a matter of infinite passion.

                                                                                                                           – Paul Tillich

It seems like cheating for a student of theology to read more popular works on the subject, works that hold an inevitable appeal to the common reader – until, of course, that student realizes that no book in world history has held more appeal than the Christian Bible.  The pundits of contemporary nihilism or relativism or oneupmanship have proclaimed with no small smugness that theology, as a critical field of inquiry, is on its way out.  Why would anyone bother with this type of stuff anymore, they scoff, and we are reminded that medical science often attributes religious visions to phenomena "only found now in very primitive cultures."  Religion was the shroud that kept the world in darkness; science is the light that has made everything clear as day – so clear, in fact, that sending an unmanned spacecraft to a neighboring planet in a universe of billions of planets is considered a technological breakthrough.  If something about such complacency perturbs you, you may enjoy the pithy brilliance of this famous book.

Since Tillich is not a mystery writer, we can come straight to the point: Faith is the meaning of life.  Or, at least, it is what we perceive the meaning of our particular life to be.  Restricted by his desire to be epigrammatic, Tillich concerns us with what we have to come to call our ultimate concern, that is to say, the conclusion we make actively or passively about why we keep ourselves alive in the first place.  An alcoholic may declare – and openly demonstrate – that the bottom of the next bottle is his only aim; yet his true goal may be far more profound, even when attended by the usual psychological poppycock.  Despite his addiction or weakness, the alcoholic has faith in the machinery that fills his body and mind with intoxicants.  These intoxicants may make him forget or make him remember; they may ease physical or emotional pain; they may render him more palatable to others or others to himself.  Whatever the case, he is convinced every morning that he rises without taking his own life, that his actions and motivations correspond to a system that runs the entirety of his existence.  His faith is embodied in that system the same way that the entirety of a Christian is embodied in his faith in the Cross.  That both remain abiding symbols for what they represent does not diminish the impact of faith in either of those two lives.  The only question we need to ask is what on earth or beyond the faith of an alcoholic might entail.  As it were, the answer is as simple as the idolatry that has pervaded the majority of our culture: Faith in things not of ultimate concern.   

Critics may stop after a few short pages with the retort: How is everything we believe in construed as faith?  But again, they will not have understood the crux of the argument.  Belief is not faith because belief can be expressed by an act of the will and, as it were, expressed in detail in language that need not be symbolic.  Faith for Tillich is what moves us to move; in a way the dynamics of faith is a pleonasm.  You may have faith in money because you perceive money to be the means by which you can acquire what you really want; you may also have faith in money because it, unlike faith or language, appears to enjoy universal acceptance.  You may also construct a world in which you could never be disappointed with anything except the world itself, since you take no risks so as to endure no potential for suffering or regret.  Tillich suggests, however, that it is impossible to separate man from faith if man is seen as having any direction or willpower at all.  Whatever activities a man may pursue, he is bound by intractable faith.  The difference again between one man and another resides in the difference between their ultimate concerns.  For a Protestant like Tillich, the subject of his concern is the subject of all concern:

Religiously speaking, God transcends his own name.  That is why the use of his name easily becomes an abuse or a blasphemy.  Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has a symbolic meaning.  It points beyond itself while participating in that to which it points.  In no other way can faith express itself adequately.  The language of faith is the language of symbols.  If faith were what we have shown that it is not, such an assertion could not be made.  But faith, understood as the state of being ultimately concerned, has no language other than symbols.

There are other approaches: that of skepticism, broadly rooted in scientific advancement or simply in doubt that anything could be greater than a human mind; and that of Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism, all of which at least promote an ultimate concern that is not irreconcilable with the ultimate concern that gnaws at Tillich.  True enough, Islam and Judaism will organize their efforts to provide guidance and sacrament, while Catholicism builds an impregnable and infallible city of God.  Their sense of the beyond, of man's ultimate meaning nevertheless cannot possibly be as shallow or "demonically self-destructive" as that of materialists, atheists, so-called secular humanists (secretly unbrave agnostics) or those who choose the concrete world as their realm of faith – but I think that much we already know.   

Nineteen years have passed since I first read Tillich, but he should be absorbed again and again for the same reason that a painting can be admired at numerous shades of day from numerous angles over the course of a life.  It may seem amazing that I can enjoy this masterpiece, whose basic tenet Tillich implicitly refutes, at the same time that Tillich's cogent bricklaying builds something more than a house and something less than a palace.  This is, of course, a tribute to the genius of both men.  The courage that is promoted at length in another work will surface as the lesser of the two attributes of man, and as well it should.  We are alive and happily so, but the shroud looms.  And as we grow older, we become less capable of staving off the doubts that afflict the skeptic, the heretic, the indifferent layabout.  Not that, mind you, any of this is really a sustained or ultimate concern.   

Texto en una libreta (part 3)

The conclusion to a work ("Text from a notebook") by this Argentine man of letters.  You can read the original as part of this collection.

Clothing comprised another difficult part of their lives.  Their pants would wear out, their skirts, their petticoats.  Their jackets and blouses wore out less, but after a certain amount of time they had to be changed, even for security reasons.  Tailing one of them one morning I learned more about their customs and the relationship they maintained with the surface.  It was as follows: they would descend one by one in the designated station on the designated day and at the designated time.  Someone would come from the surface with a change of clothes (I would later confirm that this was a complete service, clean underwear each time, and a suit or dress ironed every so often), and the two of them would get on the same car of the next train.  There they could talk, the package would pass from one to the other, and at the next station they would change clothes – this was the most grueling part – in the filthiest of lavatories.  One station later the same agent was waiting for them on the platform; they would travel together until the next station, and the agent would return to the surface with the package of used clothes.

Having convinced myself that I knew almost all the possibilities on this terrain, I discovered by sheer coincidence that, in addition to the periodic exchanges of clothes, there was also a warehouse.  Here they precariously stored garments and items in case of an emergency, perhaps so as to cover the basic needs of the novices when they arrived.  I could not calculate the number of novices but it must have been extensive.  A friend introduced me on the street to an old man who worked a bookseller in the arcades of the Cabildo.  I was walking around looking for an old edition of Sur; to my surprise and perhaps due to my admission of the inevitable, the bookseller made me go down to the Peru station and twist around to the left of the platform where I found a very busy passageway with little air of the subterranean.  Here was their storehouse full of motley stacks of books and magazines.  I didn't find Sur; instead there was a little door, left ajar, which gave onto the neighboring room.  I caught sight of someone's back, crowned with that snow-white nuque that all of them had; at his feet I made out a pile of overcoats, a few handkerchiefs, and a red scarf.  The bookseller thought that I was a retailer or a concessionary like he was; I did not disabuse him of this belief and bought Trilce off him in a fine edition.  Yet in this matter of the clothes I came to know horrible things.  How they had some money left over and sought to spend it (I believe it is much the same in more civilized prisons), placating inoffensive whims with a violence that shook me.  Then I followed a blond lad.  Every time I saw him, he was in the same brown suit.  The only thing he changed was his tie: he entered the lavatories two or three times a day to do so.  One time around noon he went down at Lima to buy a tie at the kiosk by the platform.  He spent a long time there making up his mind.  This was his great escapade, his Saturday night party.  In his jacket pockets I saw the bulges of other ties and felt something that was no less than horror.

The women would buy themselves little kerchiefs and toys, key-rings, everything that fit in both the kiosks and their handbags.  Sometimes they would get off at Lima or Peru and stay staring at the shop windows of the platform, where furniture was displayed, dressers and beds, and they looked for a long time at those dressers and beds with humble and contained desire.  And when they bought the daily paper and Maribel they remained absorbed by the ads for blowout sales, perfumes, figurines, and gloves.  They were also on the verge of forgetting their instructions of indifference and I took off when they saw mothers taking their children for a walk.  I saw two of them a few days apart; they abandoned their seats and went on foot near the children, almost grazing against them.  It would not have surprised me overmuch if they petted on the head or gave them a caramel, things that are not done in the subway of Buenos Aires and probably not in any subway.

***

For a long time I asked myself why the First One had chosen, of all days, one on which a check was being conducted to go down with the other three.  Knowing his methods if still not knowing him personally, I thought it was a mistake to attribute this to boastfulness, a desire to cause a scandal if the differences in the numbers were published.  More in keeping with his reflective wisdom, it was more likely that in those days the attention of the Anglo line staff was diverted, purposely or unwittingly, into running the checks.  In this way, the capture of the train became much more feasible.  Even the return to the surface of the replaced conductor would not entail dangerous consequences.  Only three months after that casual encounter in Lezama Park between the ex-conductor and chief inspector Montesano, and the latter's silent inferences, were they able to piece it all together and bring me closer to the truth.

For this, therefore – I am speaking of almost the present time – they had three trains in their possession and I believed, without any certainty, a position in the coordination booths of Primera Junta.  A suicide eliminated my lingering doubts.  That evening I had been following one of the women.  I saw her enter a phone booth at the José María Moreno station.  The platform was almost empty and I pressed my face into the side partition pretending to be as fatigued as those coming back from work.  This was the first time that I saw one of them in a telephone booth.  I was not surprised by her furtive air, or how scared the girl was, or her moment of hesitation before looking around and entering the booth.  I heard a few things, crying, the sound of a handbag opening, a nose being blown, and then: "But the canary, you'll take care of him, right?  You'll give him birdseed every morning, as well as a piece of vanilla?"  This banality stunned me, because this voice was not a voice transmitting a message based on some kind of code; her tears moistened this voice and suffocated it.  I boarded a train before she was able to notice me and turned all the way around, continuing my check of schedules and changes of clothes.  When we came back to José María Moreno, she hurled herself in front of the train after (they say) crossing herself.  I recognized her by her red shoes and brightly colored bag.  An enormous throng gathered, many of them surrounding the conductor and the guard as they waited for the police.  I saw that both the conductor and the guard were two of them (they were so pale) and thought that what had just happened there would test the solidity of the First One's plans.  For it is one thing to impersonate someone and quite another to resist a police examination.  A week passed without incident, without the slightest consequence from this banal, almost everyday type of suicide.  It was then that I started to be afraid of going down.

I knew that many things were still not clear to me, even main things, but the fear was stronger than I was.  In those days I hardly went near the subway entrance at Lima, which was my station.  I would smell that hot odor, that Anglo odor that rose to street level, and I would hear the trains pass.  I would enter a café and tell myself I was a fool: how could I refuse, I asked myself, total revelation just a few steps away?  I knew so many things; I could be useful to society by reporting what was happening.  I knew that in the final weeks they already had eight trains and that their number was rapidly increasing.   The novices were still unrecognizable because the discoloration of the skin was very slow and, doubtless, extreme precautions were taken.  The First One's plans did not seem to have any flaws; consequently, it was impossible for me to determine their number.  Mere instinct told me, when being down there and following them still captivated me, that the majority of the trains were already filled with them, that ordinary passengers were finding it increasingly difficult to travel, no matter what the time.  And it wouldn't surprise me if the newspapers called for new lines, more trains, and emergency measures.

***

I saw Montesano.  I told him certain things and hoped he would divine others.  I had the impression that he mistrusted me, that he was following some lead on his own or, rather, that he preferred elegantly washing his hands of something that was drifting far past his own imagination, not to mention that of his superiors.  I understood that it was useless to talk to him again about the matter and that he could accuse me of complicating his life with almost paranoid fantasies.  This was especially my sense when he told me, slapping me on the back: "You're tired, you need to take a trip somewhere."

But the trip I needed to take was on the Anglo.  It surprised me a little that Montesano did not intend to take any measures, at least against the First One and the three others, to cut off this tree at the top, this tree that was plunging its roots deeper and deeper into the asphalt and the earth.  A stuffy smell lingered, the brakes of a train could be heard, and then a handful of people traipsed up the escalator with the bovine air of those who have been traveling on foot, crammed into cars that were always full.  I would have approached, separated them one by one, and explained matters to them.  But it was then that I heard another train coming and I turned around in fear.  When I recognized one of the agents who had been getting on and off with a package of clothes, I went to hide in the café, and for a long time I had no desire to go out again.  I thought that after a couple of glasses of gin my courage would rise and I would go down to assure myself of their exact number.  I believed that now they had all the trains, the administration of many of the stations, and a part of the workshops.  Yesterday I had believed that the saleswoman at the sweets and candy kiosk at Lima could inform me indirectly about the forced rise in her sales.  With an effort hardly greater than the cramp which was plaguing my stomach, I was able to go down to the platform.  I kept repeating to myself that this did not mean I would be getting on a train or mixing in with them.  Two questions and barely anything more and I would be up on the surface again, safe and sound again.  I tossed the money in the turnstile and approached the kiosk.  I was about to buy a Milkybar when I saw that the saleswoman was staring right at me.  She was pretty, but pale, so pale.  In despair I ran towards the stairs and stumbled climbing up.  Now I knew that I could not go down again.  They recognized me; in the end they had come to recognize me.  

***

I spent an hour in a café without making up my mind as to whether I wanted to take that first step down the stairs or stay here among the people going up and down.  All the while I would ignore those looking askance at me without understanding that I still hadn't decided to move in a zone where everyone was moving.  It seemed almost inconceivable that I had completed the analysis of their general methods and was still unable to take the final step that would reveal to me their identities and their purposes.  I refused to accept that fear was seizing my chest.  Perhaps I would decide; perhaps the best thing to do was to lean against the handrail and shout out what I knew about their plan, what I thought I knew about the First One (I would say it, although Montesano would be disgusted were I to ruin his investigation), and, most of all, all the consequences of all of this for the population of Buenos Aires.  Until now I had kept writing in the café, the tranquility of being in a neutral site on the surface filled me with a calm I did not possess when I went down to the kiosk.  I felt that in some way I would go down again, obliged to descend the stairs step by step.  In the meantime the best thing might be to finish my report to send it off to the mayor or the chief of police, with a copy for Montesano, and then pay for my coffee and safely and securely go down there.  Of this I was sure although I didn't know how I would do it, from where I would get the strength to descend step by step now that they recognized me, now that in the end they had come to recognize me.  But it no longer mattered.  Before going down I would have my rough draft ready, and I would tell Mister Mayor or Mister Chief of Police that there was someone walking down there, someone who walked along the platforms and who, when no one realized what was happening, when only I could know and listen in, would lock herself in a poorly lit booth and open her bag.  Then she would cry.  First she would cry a little and then, Mister Mayor, she would say: "But the canary, you'll take care of him, right?  You'll give him birdseed every morning, as well as a piece of vanilla?"