# The Seven Madmen, Terror in the Street

Los siete locos · Roberto Arlt · Part One

Source: https://1732studios.com/books/arlt/el-terror-en-la-calle. Data: https://1732studios.com/books/arlt/el-terror-en-la-calle.json. Audio: https://audio.1732studios.com/arlt/<line id>.m4a.


Sin duda alguna su vida era extraña, porque a veces una esperanza apresurada lo lanzaba a la calle.  
Without any doubt his life was strange, because at times a hasty hope would fling him out into the street.
> Imperfect 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.

Entonces tomaba un ómnibus y bajaba en Palermo o en Belgrano.  
Then he would take a bus and get off in Palermo or in Belgrano.
Recorría pensativamente las silenciosas avenidas, diciéndose: –Me verá una doncella, una niña alta, pálida y concentrada, que por capricho maneje su Rolls–Royce.  
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.
> Subjunctive 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.
Paseará tristemente.  
She will be strolling sadly.
De pronto me mira y comprende que yo seré el único amor de toda la vida, y esa mirada que era un ultraje para todos los desdichados, se posará en mí, cubiertos los ojos de lágrimas.  
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.
> Absolute 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.

El ensueño se desenroscaba sobre esta necedad, mientras lentamente se deslizaba a la sombra de las altas fachadas y de los verdes plátanos, que en los blancos mosaicos descomponían su sombra en triángulos.  
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.
> «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.

–Será millonada, pero yo le diré: «Señorita, no puedo tocarla.  
–She'll be worth millions, but I will tell her: "Miss, I cannot touch you.
> Indirect-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.
Aunque usted quisiera entregárseme, no la tomaría».  
Even if you wished to give yourself to me, I would not take you."
> Past 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.
Ella me mirará sorprendida; entonces yo le diré: «Y todo es inútil, ¿sabe?, es inútil, porque estoy casado».  
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."
Pero ella le ofrecerá una fortuna a Elsa para que se divorcie de mí, y luego nos casaremos, y en su yate nos iremos al Brasil.  
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.
> «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.

Y la simplicidad de este sueno se enriquecía con el nombre de Brasil que, áspero y caliente, proyectaba ante él una costa sonrosada y blanca, cortando con aristas y perpendiculares al mar tiernamente azul.  
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.
> A 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'.
Ahora la doncella había perdido su empaque trágico y era –bajo la seda blanca de su vestido sencillo como el de una colegiala– una criatura sonriente, tímida y atrevida a la vez.  
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.
> Pluperfect 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.

Y Erdosain pensaba:  
And Erdosain was thinking:

–No tendremos nunca contacto sexual.  
–We will never have any sexual contact.
Para hacer más duradero nuestro amor, refrenaremos el deseo, y tampoco la besaré en la boca, sino en la mano.  
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.
> «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.

Y se imaginaba la felicidad que purificaría su vida, si tal imposible aconteciera, pero era más fácil detener la tierra en su marcha que realizar tal absurdo.  
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.
> Contrary-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.
Entonces decíase entristecido de un coraje vago:  
Then, saddened by a vague courage, he would say to himself:
> Enclitic 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».

–Bueno, seré «cafisho».  
–Well, I'll be a pimp.
> «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.
–Y de pronto un horror más terrible que los otros horrores le destornillaba la conciencia.  
–And all at once a horror more terrible than the other horrors would unscrew his conscience.
> «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.
El tenía la sensación de que todas las muescas de su alma sangraban como bajo la mecha de un torno, y paralizado el entendimiento, embotado de angustia, iba a loca ventura en busca de lenocinios.  
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.
> «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.
Entonces supo el terror del fraudulento, el terror luminoso que es como el estallido de un gran día de sol en la convexidad de una salitrera.  
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.
> «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.

Se dejó arrastrar por los impulsos que retuercen al hombre que se siente por primera vez a las puertas de la cárcel, impulsos ciegos que conducen a un desdichado a jugarse la vida en un naipe o en una mujer.  
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.
> «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.
Quizá buscando en el naipe y en la hembra una consolación brutal y triste, quizá buscando en todo lo más vil y hundido cierta certidumbre de pureza que lo salvará definitivamente.  
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.
> Neuter «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.

Y en las calurosas horas de la siesta, bajo el sol amarillo caminó por las aceras de mosaicos calientes en busca de los prostíbulos más inmundos.  
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.
> Preterite 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.

Escogía con preferencia aquellos en cuyos zaguanes veía cáscaras de naranja y regueros de ceniza y los vidrios forrados de bayeta roja o verde, protegidos por mallas de alambre.  
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.
> «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.

Entraba con la muerte en el alma.  
He would go in with death in his soul.
En el patio, bajo el recuadrado cielo azul, había generalmente un solo banco pintado de ocre, y sobre él se dejaba caer extenuado, soportando la glacial mirada de la regenta, mientras esperaba la salida de la pupila, una mujer horrorosa de flaca o de gorda.  
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.
> Brothel 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.

Y la meretriz le gritaba desde la puerta entreabierta del dormitorio, en cuyo interior se escuchaba el ruido de un hombre que se vestía:  
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:
> «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.

–¿Vamos, querido? –y Erdosain entraba al otro dormitorio, zumbándole los oídos y con una niebla girante en las pupilas.  
–Shall we go, dear? –and Erdosain would walk into the other bedroom, his ears ringing and a whirling mist over his eyes.
> Gerund + 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.

Luego se recostaba en el lecho barnizado de color de hígado, encima de las mantas sucias por los botines, que protegían la colcha.  
Then he would lie back on the bed varnished a liver color, on top of the blankets dirtied by boots, which protected the bedspread.

Súbitamente sentía deseos de llorar, de preguntarle a esa horrible morcona qué cosa era el amor, el angélico amor que los coros celestiales cantaban al pie del trono de Dios vivo, pero la angustia le taponaba la laringe mientras que de repugnancia el estómago se le cerraba como un puño.  
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.
> «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.

Y en tanto la prostituta dejaba estar la movediza mano encima de sus ropas.  
And meanwhile the prostitute would leave her restless hand resting on his clothes.
> «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 se decía:  
Erdosain would say to himself:

–¿Qué he hecho de mi vida?  
–What have I made of my life?
> Present 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.

Una rayo de sol sesgaba el cristal de la banderola cubierta de telas de araña, y la meretriz, con la mejilla apoyada en la almohada y una pierna cargada sobre la suya, movía lentamente la mano mientras él entristecido se decía:  
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:
> Possessive 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».

–¿Qué es lo que he hecho de mi vida?  
–What is it that I have made of my life?
> «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.

Súbitamente el remordimiento le entristecía el alma, se acordaba de su esposa que por falta de dinero tenía que lavarse la ropa a pesar de estar enferma, y entonces, asqueado de sí mismo, saltaba del lecho, le entregaba el dinero a la prostituta, y sin haberla usado, huía hacia otro infierno a gastar el dinero que no le pertenecía, a hundirse más en su locura que aullaba a todas horas.  
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.
> «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'.
> «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.
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Source text: public domain (Roberto Arlt, d. 1942). English translation: © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC — original draft, pending editorial review. NOTE: this is a minimal seed excerpt to make the app target runnable; full verified content is authored through the content pipeline.