Spanish · Part One

El terror en la calle

Terror in the Street

37 sentences · 30 notes

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1
Without any doubt his life was strange, because at times a hasty hope would fling him out into the street.
SinWithoutsin · prepositionmodifies era
dudadoubtduda · noun, feminine, singularpart of the phrase Sin
algunaanyalguno · determiner, feminine, singularmodifies duda
suhissu · determiner, singulardeterminer of vida
vidalifevida · noun, feminine, singularsubject of extraña
erawasser · auxiliary verb, imperfect, indicative, third-person, singularcopula linking to extraña
extrañastrangeextraño · adjective, feminine, singularpredicate complement of era
porquebecauseporque · subordinating conjunctionintroduces the clause of lanzaba
aata · prepositionmodifies lanzaba
vecestimesvez · noun, feminine, pluralpart of the phrase a
unaauno · determiner, feminine, singulardeterminer of esperanza
esperanzahopeesperanza · noun, feminine, singularsubject of lanzaba
apresuradahastyapresurado · adjective, feminine, singularmodifies esperanza
lohimél · pronoun, accusative, masculine, singulardirect object of lanzaba
lanzabawould flinglanzar · verb, imperfect, indicative, third-person, singularadverbial clause on era
aintoa · prepositionpreposition marking calle
latheel · determiner, feminine, singulardeterminer of calle
callestreetcalle · noun, feminine, singularoblique complement of lanzaba
GrammarImperfect for habit and backdrop «era» and «lanzaba» are imperfect forms of «ser» and «lanzar». The imperfect paints a continuous state ('his life was strange') and a repeated, habitual action ('would fling him', 'used to fling him') rather than a single completed event.
2
Then he would take a bus and get off in Palermo or in Belgrano.
He would walk thoughtfully along the silent avenues, telling himself: –A maiden will see me, a tall girl, pale and intent, who out of whim drives her own Rolls–Royce.
GrammarSubjunctive for the hypothetical «maneje» is the present subjunctive of «manejar» (to drive). After a relative clause describing someone imagined rather than real — a girl «que por capricho maneje su Rolls-Royce» — Spanish uses the subjunctive: 'who would drive', 'such as might drive'. The mood marks her as a figment, not a known person.
She will be strolling sadly.
All at once she looks at me and understands that I will be the one love of her whole life, and that gaze, which was an insult to every wretched soul, will come to rest on me, her eyes brimming with tears.
GrammarAbsolute participle clause «cubiertos los ojos de lágrimas» is an absolute construction: a past participle («cubiertos», covered) agreeing with its own noun («los ojos»), with no conjugated verb. It works like a tacked-on 'her eyes covered / brimming with tears', compressing a full clause into a vivid phrase.
3
The reverie uncoiled over this foolishness while he slid slowly along in the shade of the tall facades and the green plane trees, which on the white floor tiles broke their shadow into triangles.
Word«desenroscarse» — to uncoil «desenroscarse» means to unscrew, unwind, or uncoil — the reverse of «enroscarse» (to coil up, like a snake or a screw). Arlt has the daydream literally 'uncoil itself' over the absurd idea, a serpentine image of a fantasy unspooling.
4
–She'll be worth millions, but I will tell her: "Miss, I cannot touch you.
GrammarIndirect-object «le» «le» is the indirect-object pronoun ('to her / to him'): «le diré» = 'I will say to her'. Spanish routinely attaches this pronoun even when the full person is also named, doubling the indirect object.
Even if you wished to give yourself to me, I would not take you."
GrammarPast subjunctive + conditional «quisiera» is the past (imperfect) subjunctive of «querer», and «tomaría» the conditional of «tomar». The pair builds an unreal hypothesis: «aunque quisiera... no la tomaría» = 'even if you were to wish..., I would not take you' — supposing something contrary to fact.
She will look at me, surprised; then I will tell her: "And it's all useless, you see, it's useless, because I am married."
But she will offer Elsa a fortune so that she divorces me, and then we will marry, and in her yacht we will go off to Brazil.
Grammar«para que» + subjunctive «para que» (so that, in order that) always triggers the subjunctive: «para que se divorcie» = 'so that she may divorce'. «divorciarse» is also pronominal here — the reflexive «se» marks divorcing as something one does to/for oneself.
5
And the simplicity of this dream was enriched by the name of Brazil, which, harsh and hot, cast before him a pink and white coast, cutting with edges and perpendiculars into the tenderly blue sea.
WordA source typo for «sueño» The word here should be «sueño» (dream); the public-domain source we transcribe from drops the tilde and prints «sueno». We reproduce the source exactly, but read it as «sueño» — 'dream'.
Now the maiden had lost her tragic stiffness and was –beneath the white silk of her dress, plain as a schoolgirl's– a smiling creature, shy and bold at once.
GrammarPluperfect tense «había perdido» is the pluperfect (imperfect of «haber» + past participle): 'had lost'. It marks an action completed before another past moment — here, before the 'now' of the daydream in which she has already become softer.
6
And Erdosain was thinking:
7
–We will never have any sexual contact.
To make our love last longer, we will rein in desire, and I will not even kiss her on the mouth, but on the hand.
Grammar«no ... sino» — not X but Y «sino» (not to be confused with «si no», 'if not') corrects a preceding negative: «no... en la boca, sino en la mano» = 'not on the mouth, but on the hand'. Use «sino» after a negation to introduce the right alternative.
8
And he imagined the happiness that would purify his life, if such an impossibility were to come to pass, but it was easier to halt the earth in its course than to bring about such an absurdity.
GrammarContrary-to-fact conditional «aconteciera» is the past subjunctive of «acontecer» (to happen), paired with the conditional «purificaría». «si» + past subjunctive + conditional builds an unreal 'if' clause: 'if it were to happen..., it would purify' — explicitly something that cannot occur.
Then, saddened by a vague courage, he would say to himself:
GrammarEnclitic pronoun: «decíase» «decíase» is «se decía» ('he said to himself') with the reflexive pronoun attached to the end of the verb. This enclitic word order is literary and old-fashioned; everyday speech places the pronoun before the verb, «se decía».
9
–Well, I'll be a pimp.
Word«cafisho» — lunfardo for pimp «cafisho» (also «cafishio», «cafiolo») is Buenos Aires «lunfardo» — the slang of the port and the tango — for a pimp who lives off a prostitute. Arlt's own quotation marks flag it as low street argot, the very degradation Erdosain is contemplating.
–And all at once a horror more terrible than the other horrors would unscrew his conscience.
Word«destornillar» — to unscrew «destornillar» literally means to unscrew (un- + «tornillo», screw). Applied to «la conciencia», the verb makes the conscience a thing being twisted loose — one of Arlt's mechanical, industrial metaphors for psychic anguish.
He had the sensation that all the notches of his soul were bleeding as if under the bit of a lathe, and, his understanding paralyzed, dulled with anguish, he went off at wild random in search of brothels.
Word«torno» and «mecha» — the lathe «torno» is a lathe (or drill) and «mecha» its bit/drill point. Erdosain, an inventor and would-be engineer, imagines his soul machined and bored — the factory floor invading the body, a signature Arlt image.
Then he knew the terror of the fraudster, the luminous terror that is like the burst of a great sunlit day over the convexity of a saltpetre works.
Grammar«supo» — preterite of «saber» «supo» is the preterite of «saber», and in the preterite «saber» shifts meaning from 'to know' to 'to find out, to come to know': «entonces supo el terror» = 'then he came to know / first felt the terror'. The single completed event, not the ongoing state.
10
He let himself be dragged along by the impulses that wrench at the man who feels himself for the first time at the gates of prison, blind impulses that drive a wretch to gamble his life on a playing card or on a woman.
Grammar«dejarse» + infinitive — to let oneself be «dejarse» plus an infinitive means 'to let oneself be (done to)': «se dejó arrastrar» = 'he let himself be dragged'. The reflexive «se» turns the subject into the one who allows the action upon himself — passive in sense, active in grammar.
Perhaps seeking in the card and in the female a brutal, sad consolation, perhaps seeking in everything most vile and sunken a certain certainty of purity that would save him for good.
GrammarNeuter «lo» + adjective «lo» before an adjective makes an abstract noun out of a quality: «lo más vil y hundido» = 'what is most vile and sunken', 'the vilest and most abased'. This neuter «lo» (not the masculine article) is how Spanish names a quality in the abstract.
11
And in the sweltering hours of the siesta, under the yellow sun, he walked along sidewalks of hot tiles in search of the filthiest brothels.
GrammarPreterite for the completed walk «caminó» is the preterite of «caminar». After paragraphs of habitual imperfects ('he would walk', 'he used to take a bus'), the narration drops into the preterite for a specific, completed action — a particular afternoon's walk — sharpening the focus from habit to scene.
12
He chose by preference those in whose entryways he saw orange peels and trails of ash, and the panes lined with red or green baize, protected by wire mesh.
Word«zaguán» — the entry hall A «zaguán» is the covered entryway or vestibule between the street door and the inner courtyard of a traditional house — a recurring threshold space in Buenos Aires fiction. Here its litter of orange peel and ash signals the squalor Erdosain seeks out.
13
He would go in with death in his soul.
In the courtyard, under the framed square of blue sky, there was usually a single bench painted ochre, and onto it he would let himself drop, exhausted, enduring the icy stare of the madam, while he waited for the prostitute to come out, a woman hideous from thinness or from fatness.
WordBrothel words: «regenta» and «pupila» In the world of the «prostíbulo», the «regenta» is the woman who runs the house (the madam), and a «pupila» is one of the prostitutes lodged in it. Both are euphemistic period terms; «pupila» literally means 'ward, pupil', dressing the trade in the language of guardianship.
14
And the harlot would shout to him from the half-open door of the bedroom, inside which one could hear the sound of a man getting dressed:
Word«meretriz» — a literary word for prostitute «meretriz» is a high, Latinate word for a prostitute, from Latin «meretrix». Arlt sets it against the street slang elsewhere in the passage («cafisho», «morcona»), the formal register clashing with the squalid scene.
15
–Shall we go, dear? –and Erdosain would walk into the other bedroom, his ears ringing and a whirling mist over his eyes.
GrammarGerund + dative of the body part «zumbándole los oídos» = 'his ears ringing for him'. Spanish uses an indirect-object pronoun («le») where English uses a possessive: the body part takes the definite article «los oídos», and «le» marks whose ears they are.
16
Then he would lie back on the bed varnished a liver color, on top of the blankets dirtied by boots, which protected the bedspread.
17
Suddenly he would feel an urge to weep, to ask that horrible fat slut what love was, the angelic love that the celestial choirs sang at the foot of the throne of the living God, but anguish would plug his larynx while from revulsion his stomach clenched on him like a fist.
Word«morcona» — a crude insult «morcona» is a coarse, contemptuous term for a fat, slovenly woman, built from «morcón» (a thick blood sausage). It is deliberately ugly, the street's vocabulary erupting into the same breath as «el angélico amor» — Arlt's collision of the sacred and the sordid.
18
And meanwhile the prostitute would leave her restless hand resting on his clothes.
Word«en tanto» — meanwhile «en tanto» (here short for «en tanto que») means 'meanwhile, while': it links two simultaneous actions. «dejaba estar» literally 'let be' — she let her hand stay, left it resting — an idiomatic 'leave (something) be'.
Erdosain would say to himself:
19
–What have I made of my life?
GrammarPresent perfect: «he hecho» «he hecho» is the present perfect ('I have done/made'), «haber» in the present + the participle «hecho» (irregular, from «hacer»). It views a past act with present relevance: 'what have I made of my life' — the reckoning landing now.
20
A ray of sun cut aslant the glass of the transom covered with cobwebs, and the harlot, her cheek resting on the pillow and one leg laid over his, moved her hand slowly while he, saddened, said to himself:
GrammarPossessive pronoun «la suya» «la suya» is the possessive pronoun 'his/hers/its (one)', standing in for «su pierna»: «una pierna cargada sobre la suya» = 'one leg laid over his (leg)'. It agrees in gender and number with the noun it replaces — feminine singular, matching «pierna».
21
–What is it that I have made of my life?
Grammar«lo que» — what / that which «lo que» means 'what' in the sense of 'that which': «¿qué es lo que he hecho?» = 'what is it that I have done?'. The cleft phrasing is heavier and more anguished than the bare «¿qué he hecho?» of two lines earlier — the same question pressed harder.
22
Suddenly remorse would sadden his soul; he would remember his wife, who for lack of money had to wash her own clothes despite being ill, and then, sickened by himself, he would leap from the bed, hand the money to the prostitute, and, without having used her, flee toward another hell to spend the money that did not belong to him, to sink deeper into his madness that howled at every hour.
Grammar«acordarse de» — to remember «acordarse de» is the pronominal verb for 'to remember', always taking «de» before its object: «se acordaba de su esposa» = 'he remembered his wife'. Don't confuse it with non-reflexive «acordar» ('to agree (on)'); the «se» and the «de» are what make it 'remember'.
Grammar«sin» + perfect infinitive «sin haberla usado» = 'without having used her'. «sin» + the perfect infinitive («haber» + participle) expresses an action that did not happen before another: he flees 'without having used' her. The pronoun «la» attaches to «haber», marking the woman as object.

The particulars

The text: Los siete locos, Roberto Arlt. Part One.
Reading aloud: Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
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