The Seven Madmen 1732 Studios

Spanish · Part One

El odio

The Hatred

95 sentences · 65 notes

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  1. 1

    His life was bleeding out.

    Suhissu · determiner, singulardeterminer of vida
    vidalifevida · noun, feminine, singularsubject of desangraba
    seitselfél · pronoun, accusative, reflexivereflexive particle of desangraba
    desangrabawas bleeding outdesangrar · verb, imperfect, indicative, third-person, singularmain verb of the sentence

  2. All his decompressed sorrow stretched out toward the horizon he glimpsed through the cables and the trolleys of the streetcars, and suddenly he had the sensation that he was walking on his anguish turned into a carpet.

  3. Just as horses that, gored open by a bull, become tangled in their own entrails, each step he took left his lungs without blood.

  4. He breathed slowly and despaired of ever arriving.

  5. Where to?

  6. He didn't even know.

  7. 2

    On Piedras Street he sat down on the threshold of an empty house.

  8. He stayed for several minutes, then set off walking quickly, and the sweat ran down his face as on days of excessive heat.

  9. 3

    Thus he reached the corner of Cerrito and Lavalle.

  10. 4

    On putting a hand in his pocket he found he had a fistful of banknotes, and so he went into the Japanese bar.

  11. Coachmen and pimps clustered in a ring around the tables.

  12. A black man in a wing collar and black espadrilles was pulling the parasites out of his armpit, and three Polish "polacos", with thick gold rings on their fingers, talked in their gibberish of brothels and procuresses.

  13. In another corner several taxi drivers were playing cards.

  14. The black man delousing himself looked around, as if asking with his eyes for the onlookers to endorse his operation, but no one paid him any attention.

  15. 5

    Erdosain ordered coffee, rested his forehead on his hand, and sat staring at the marble.

  16. 6

    —Where to get the six hundred pesos?

  17. 7

    Then he thought of Gregorio Barsut, his wife's cousin.

  18. 8

    Ergueta's attitude no longer worried him.

  19. Before his eyes there materialized the taciturn figure of the other man, of Gregorio Barsut, with his shaved head, his bony bird-of-prey nose, his greenish eyes, and his ears pointed like a wolf's.

  20. His presence made his hands tremble, leaving his mouth dry.

  21. 9

    He would ask him for money again that night.

  22. Surely by half past nine he would be at his house as usual.

  23. And he saw him again in his mind.

  24. Piling up a conversation full of vague pretexts for visiting him, torrents of words that left Erdosain stupefied, who with parched mouth and trembling hands did not dare to throw him out of his house.

  25. 10

    And Gregorio Barsut must have been aware of the revulsion Erdosain felt toward him, because more than once he said to him:

  26. 11

    —It seems my conversation annoys you, doesn't it?—which was no obstacle to his coming to the house with tiresome frequency.

  27. 12

    Erdosain hurried to deny it, and tried, to all appearances, to take an interest in the other man's chatter, who would talk for hours on end, without rhyme or reason, always spying on the southeast corner of the room.

  28. What was he aiming at with that behavior?

  29. Erdosain in turn consoled himself for such unpleasant moments by thinking that the other man lived hounded by envy and certain atrocious sufferings that had no reason to exist.

  30. 13

    One night Gregorio said, in the presence of Erdosain's wife—who rarely attended those conversations, since she stayed in another room, closing the door so as not to hear the voices:

  31. 14

    —How remarkable it would be if I went mad and shot you all dead, then killed myself!

  32. His slanting eyes were fixed on the southeast corner of the room, and he smiled, showing his pointed teeth, as if the words he had just spoken were no more than a joke.

  33. But Elsa, looking at him very gravely, said to him:

  34. 15

    —Let this be the last time you speak this way in my house.

  35. If not, you'll never set foot in here again.

  36. Gregorio tried to apologize.

  37. But she left, and for the rest of the night did not show herself again.

  38. 16

    The two men went on chatting, the other man paler now, his narrow forehead loaded with tumultuous twitchings, passing his broad hand now and then over his brush of bronze-colored hair.

  39. 17

    Erdosain could not explain to himself the hatred he had taken toward Barsut.

  40. He supposed him coarse, but that was contradicted by certain dreams of Gregorio's, in which a vague, strange, delicate nature was laid bare, moved by the most inexplicable feelings.

  41. 18

    At other times his coarseness, whether apparent or real, turned repugnant, and in front of Erdosain—who suppressed his indignation, blurring on his lips a pale grimace—Barsut piled up nameless obscenities, for the sole pleasure of outraging the other man's sensibility.

  42. 19

    It was an invisible duel, hateful, with no immediate end, so irritating that Erdosain, after Barsut left, would swear to himself not to receive him the next day.

  43. A few hours before nightfall Erdosain was already thinking about him.

  44. 20

    Many times the other man would arrive, and before sitting down he would begin to talk.

  45. 21

    —You know?... I had a strange dream last night.

  46. 22

    And with his eyes fixed on the southeast corner of the room, unsmiling, with an almost pained expression on his dirty face, a three-day beard, Barsut would monologue slowly, recounting his terrors as a man of twenty-seven, the worry that the wink of a one-eyed fish had lodged in his mind, and—linking the one-eyed fish to the prying gaze of an old procuress who wanted him to marry her daughter, a girl given to spiritism—he steered the conversation toward such absurdity that suddenly Erdosain, forgetting his rancor, would ask himself whether the other man might not be mad.

  47. Elsa, indifferent to it all, sewed in the adjoining room, while a deep uneasiness held Erdosain frozen.

  48. 23

    This one felt a vibration of impatience, his fingers knocking together at the knuckles, and the effort made to hide this trembling wore him out.

  49. If he uttered any word he did so with extraordinary difficulty, as if his lips were stiffened by a coat of glue.

  50. 24

    Resting an elbow on the table and straightening the knee of his trousers, Barsut would sometimes complain that no one loved him, looking long at Erdosain as he said this.

  51. At other times he would mock his own forebodings and a ghost he said he saw in a corner of the privy of the boarding house where he lived, a ghost that was a gigantic woman with a broom in her hands and thin arms and a harpy's stare.

  52. On some occasions he admitted that if he was not ill he would end up being so.

  53. 25

    Erdosain, feigning concern for his health, would ask him about the symptoms, advising him rest and bed, and since he kept insisting on this.

  54. Barsut, malevolently, once retorted to him:

  55. 26

    —Does my presence bother you that much?

  56. 27

    Other times Barsut would arrive sinisterly cheerful, with the joviality of a sullen drunk who has set fire to an oil depot, and sprawling in the dining room, clapping Erdosain on the back with bothersome insistence, he would ask him:

  57. 28

    —How's it going? How are you? How's it going?

  58. 29

    Barsut's eyes would sparkle, and Erdosain remained there sad, shrunken, asking himself what it was that cowed him in the presence of that man, who always stayed seated on the edge of his chair, obstinately spying on the corner of the dining room.

  59. 30

    And they avoided looking each other in the eyes.

  60. 31

    There was between them an undefined, murky situation.

  61. One of those situations that two men who despise each other tolerate for reasons beyond their own wills.

  62. 32

    Erdosain hated Barsut, but with a gray, treacherous rancor, made of bad daydreams and worse possibilities.

  63. And what made this hatred more intense was the lack of motives.

  64. 33

    Sometimes he gave himself over to weaving the images of some atrocious vengeance, and, brow furrowed, he pieced disasters together.

  65. But the next day, when Barsut knocked at the street door.

  66. Erdosain would shudder like an adulteress at her husband's arrival, and once he even got so far as to grow angry with Elsa, because she was slow to open the door for Barsut, adding by way of a comment meant to hide his cowardice from her:

  67. 34

    —He's going to think we don't want to receive him.

  68. For that it's better to tell him not to come anymore.

  69. 35

    The concrete motive was missing, and that underground rancor spread within him like a cancer.

  70. Erdosain found in every gesture of Barsut's reasons to work himself into a fury and to wish atrocious deaths upon him.

  71. And Barsut, as if he sensed the other man's feelings, seemed to perform the most repugnant vulgarities on purpose.

  72. 36

    Thus, Erdosain never forgot this incident:

  73. 37

    It was one evening when they had gone to have a vermouth.

  74. To go with the drink, the waiter brought a little dish of potato salad, with mustard.

  75. Barsut jabbed the toothpick into a piece of potato with such avidity that he overturned the salad onto the marble, blackened by the rubbing of hands and the ash of cigarettes.

  76. Erdosain watched him, irritated.

  77. Then Barsut, mocking, picked them up piece by piece, and on reaching the last one he wiped up with it the mustard spilled on the marble, carrying it afterward to his mouth with an ironic smile.

  78. 38

    —You could lick the marble—remarked Erdosain, disgusted.

  79. 39

    Barsut gave him a strange, almost provocative look.

  80. Then he bent his head and his tongue wiped the marble.

  81. 40

    —Are you happy now?

  82. 41

    Erdosain turned pale.

  83. 42

    —Have you gone mad?

  84. 43

    —What? Are you going to get yourself worked up?

  85. 44

    And suddenly Barsut, laughing, amiable, that sort of frenzy that had darkened him all afternoon now dissolved, stood up saying trivial things.

  86. 45

    Erdosain never again forgot that incident: the shaved head, bronze-colored, bent over the marble, and a tongue clinging to the sliminess of the yellow stone.

  87. 46

    And many times he imagined that Barsut remembered him through the days with the hatred one takes toward the people to whom one has confided too much.

  88. But he could not control himself, because the moment he reached Erdosain's house he poured buckets of misfortunes into the latter's ears, even though he knew that Erdosain delighted in them.

  89. 47

    And the thing is that Remo drew out his confidences, and drew them out with a fleeting but spontaneous compassion, so that Barsut felt his rancor toward the other man fade away whenever the latter advised him in earnest.

  90. But his hatred uncoiled furiously whenever a quick, furtive glance from Erdosain revealed to him that in the latter pity was fading and a malignant relish was appearing at the spectacle of his partly ruined life—for even though he had money enough to live modestly off his rent, he suffered the terror of going mad, as had happened with his father and his brothers.

  91. 48

    Suddenly Erdosain raised his head.

  92. The black man in the wing collar had finished delousing himself, and now the three "macrós" were splitting wads of money under the greedy gaze of the drivers who, from the other table, watched sidelong out of the corner of the eye.

  93. The black man looked as if, under the influence of the money, he were about to sneeze, so pitifully did he gaze at the pimps.

  94. 49

    Erdosain rose to his feet and paid.

  95. Then he went out saying to himself: —If Gregorio fails me I'll ask the Astrologer.

The particulars

The text
Los siete locos, Roberto Arlt. Part One.
Translation
Public-domain Spanish (Arlt, d. 1942). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Reading aloud
Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
Words
Every word of the text, by letter.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.