Estados de conciencia

This circle of silence and darkness broke the continuity of his thoughts, so that, in the decline of his reasoning, Erdosain could not connect his home—called a house—with an institution designated by the name of prison.

He thought telegraphically, dropping prepositions, which is unnerving.

If he went on working at the Sugar Company it was not to steal more sums of money, but because he was waiting for an extraordinary event—immensely extraordinary—that would give his life an unexpected turn and save him from the catastrophe he saw drawing near his door.

This atmosphere of dream and unease that made him move through the days like a sleepwalker, Erdosain called "the zone of anguish".

Erdosain imagined that this zone existed above the level of the cities, two meters up, and he pictured it graphically in the form of those regions of salt flats or deserts that on maps are shown by ovals of dots, as dense as the roe of a herring.

This zone of anguish was the consequence of the suffering of men.

"What am I doing with my life?" he would say to himself then, wanting perhaps to clarify with this question the origins of the anxiety that made him crave an existence in which tomorrow would not be the continuation of today with its measure of time, but something different and always unexpected, as in the unfolding of North American films, where yesterday's beggar is today's chief of a secret society, and the adventuress typist a multimillionaire incognito.

This need for marvels, which had no possible satisfaction—since he was a failed inventor and a criminal on the edge of prison—left him, in the broodings that followed, a raging acidity and teeth as sensitive as after chewing a lemon.

In these circumstances he pieced together follies.

This nightmare having faded, Erdosain said to himself, horrified at himself:

"But what a soul, what a soul is this that I have?"—And since his imagination still held the driving force the nightmare had stamped on it, he went on: "I must have been born to be a lackey, one of those perfumed and vile lackeys whom rich prostitutes have fasten the clasps of their brassiere, while the lover smokes a cigar reclining on the sofa."

And again his thoughts rebounded into a kitchen set in the cellars of a most luxurious mansion.

And he would say to himself again:

"Yes, I am a lackey."

Other times he saw himself coming out of the bedroom of an old, devout spinster, carrying with unction a heavy chamber pot, but at that moment a priest, a regular of the house, would come upon him and, smiling, unperturbed, would say to him:

"How are we doing with our religious duties, Ernesto?"—And he, Ernesto, Ambrosio or José, would grimly live the life of an obscene, hypocritical servant.

A tremor of madness shook him when he thought of this.

He knew—ah, how well he knew it!—that he was gratuitously offending, soiling his soul.

For at moments his craving was for humiliation, like that of the saints who kissed the sores of the filthy; not out of compassion, but to be more unworthy of the mercy of God, who would feel disgusted to see them seek heaven with such repugnant proofs.

"No, I am not a lackey... truly I am not..."—and he would have liked to go and ask his wife to take pity on him, to have mercy on his thoughts so horrible and base.

And he well knew that someday she would give herself to another, and that was one more element added to the other factors that composed his anguish.

Hence, when he embezzled the first twenty pesos, he was amazed at the ease with which one could do "that", perhaps because before stealing he believed he would have to overcome a series of scruples that in his present conditions of life he could not know.

"It is a matter of having the will and doing it, nothing more."

And "that" eased life; with "that" he had money that gave him strange sensations because it cost him nothing to earn it.

Eighty, one hundred, one hundred and twenty pesos, for this amount depended on the sums collected, since his salary was made up of a commission on every hundred collected.

Thus there were days when he carried four to five thousand pesos, while he, poorly fed, had to bear the stench of a fake-leather briefcase inside which happiness piled up in the form of banknotes, checks, money orders, and bearer drafts.