The Seven Madmen 1732 Studios

Spanish · Part One

La bofetada

The Slap

275 sentences · 106 notes

Tap a sentence to open its words. The mark beside it plays it.

  1. 1

    Suddenly someone stopped in front of the street door.

    DeSuddenlyde · prepositionheads the phrase de pronto, modifies detuvo

    «De pronto» is a fixed phrase meaning 'suddenly, all at once.'

    prontosuddenlypronto · adverbpart of the phrase De
    alguiensomeonealguien · pronoun, singularsubject of detuvo
    sethemselvesél · pronoun, accusative, reflexivereflexive particle of detuvo (detenerse)
    detuvostoppeddetener · verb, past, indicative, third-person, singularmain verb of the sentence
    frentein frontfrente · adverbheads the phrase frente a, preposition marking puerta
    aofa · prepositionpart of the phrase frente
    latheel · determiner, feminine, singulardeterminer of puerta
    puertadoorpuerta · noun, feminine, singularoblique complement of detuvo
    deofde · prepositionpreposition marking calle
    callestreetcalle · noun, feminine, singularmodifies puerta

  2. Erdosain understood that it was him and leapt out of bed.

  3. As usual Barsut was knocking, trying not to make noise.

  4. 2

    His voice gone hoarse, Erdosain shouted at him:

  5. 3

    "Come in — what are you doing that you don't come in?"

  6. Throwing his weight back onto his heels, Barsut came in.

  7. 4

    "I'm coming now," Remo shouted at him while the other went into the dining room.

  8. 5

    And when he came in, Barsut had already sat down, crossing his legs, turning, as usual, his back to the door and his profile toward the southeast corner of the room.

  9. 6

    "What are you doing?"

  10. 7

    "How's it going?"

  11. 8

    He rested his elbow on the edge of the table, for he was propping his cheek on his chin, and the light cast a copper redness over the white fleshiness of his hand.

  12. Beneath his eyebrows, drawn out toward his temples, his green eyes softened their hard glassiness into a questioning warmth.

  13. 9

    And Erdosain made out his face as if through a mist of lights flickering overhead — the receding forehead with the temples sloping toward the pointed ears, the bony beak of a bird of prey, the flat chin built to take tremendous blows, and the neat knot of the black tie rising from the starched collar.

  14. 10

    His tone of voice clumsy, the other asked:

  15. 11

    "And Elsa?"

  16. 12

    Erdosain recovered the lucidity of his mind.

  17. 13

    "She went out."

  18. 14

    "Ah..."

  19. 15

    They fell silent, and Erdosain sat staring at the right angle the gray sleeve of the jacket made against the white edge of the table, and at the cheek the lamp lit with a copper red as far as the bridge of the nose, while the other half of the face remained, from the hairline to the dimple of the chin, in a darkness where the dark circle under his eye hollowed out a basket of shadow.

  20. Barsut slowly swung one leg crossed over the other.

  21. 16

    "Ah!" Erdosain heard, and he asked: "What are you saying?"

  22. 17

    The thing was that Erdosain had heard that "ah", uttered a few seconds earlier, only just now.

  23. 18

    "Did Elsa go out?..."

  24. 19

    Barsut straightened his head, his eyebrows lifted to let more light into his eyelids, and with his lips slightly parted, he breathed out:

  25. 20

    "She's gone?"

  26. 21

    Erdosain knit his brow, examined the other man's shoes out of the corner of his eye, and half closing his lids, spying on Barsut's anguish with that gaze filtered through his lashes, slowly let fall:

  27. 22

    "Yes... she... went off... with... a... man..."

  28. 23

    And winking his left eyelid like Ergueta the pharmacist, he bowed his head.

  29. Beneath the bronzed line of his eyebrows, his pupils waited fiercely.

  30. 24

    Erdosain went on:

  31. 25

    "You see?"

  32. There's the revolver.

  33. I could have killed them and yet I didn't do it.

  34. What a curious animal man is, isn't he?

  35. 26

    "And you let your wife be carried off right under your nose?"

  36. 27

    In Erdosain the old hatred, exasperated by the recent humiliation, was now turning into a cause for cruel joy, and with his voice trembling in his throat, his mouth dry with rancor, he exclaimed:

  37. 28

    "What's it to you?"

  38. 29

    An enormous slap sent him reeling in the chair.

  39. Later he remembered that Barsut's arm drew back and came forward, kneading his flesh.

  40. He covered his face with both hands, tried to escape that bulk that kept advancing on him like an unleashed force of nature.

  41. His head struck dully against the wall and he fell.

  42. 30

    When he came to, Barsut was kneeling at his side.

  43. He noticed his collar had come undone and threads of water were running down to his throat.

  44. From the nasal septum a flickering pain climbed up the bone, and at every moment it seemed to him he was about to sneeze.

  45. His gums were bleeding slowly, and beneath the swelling of his lips the surface of his teeth showed.

  46. 31

    Erdosain got up with effort and dropped onto a chair; Barsut was so pale that two flames seemed to escape from his eyes.

  47. From the cheekbones to the ears, bundles of muscle traced two trembling arcs.

  48. Erdosain had the sensation of swaying in an endless dream, but he understood when the other took him by the arm, saying:

  49. 32

    "Look, spit in my face if you want, but let me talk."

  50. I have to tell you everything.

  51. 33

    Sit down... like that, there." Erdosain had risen without realizing it. "Hear me out, do me the favor.

  52. You see, don't you?

  53. I could beat you to death with my fists... my hand just got away from me... I swear... if you want I'll beg your forgiveness on my knees.

  54. What do you want, I'm like this.

  55. Look... ah... ah... if people only knew.

  56. 34

    Erdosain spat blood.

  57. A band of heat gripped his forehead, entering at the temples and going on to stab as far as the nape of his neck.

  58. His back stooped so far that he left his head resting on the edge of the table.

  59. Barsut, seeing him like that, asked him:

  60. 35

    "Do you want to wash your face?"

  61. It'll do you good.

  62. Wait a moment, don't go out." And he ran toward the kitchen, from which he came back with the basin full of water. "Wash up.

  63. That'll do you good.

  64. Do you want me to rub you down?

  65. Look, forgive me, it was an impulse.

  66. And you, too — why did you wink an eye as if mocking me?

  67. Wash up, do me the favor.

  68. 36

    Erdosain, in silence, stood up and plunged his face several times into the basin.

  69. When his breath ran short he would lift his face from the surface of the water.

  70. Then he sat down and the air dried the dampness from his hair, beside his temples.

  71. How tired he was!

  72. Ah, if only Elsa could see him!

  73. How she would pity him!

  74. He closed his eyes.

  75. Barsut drew the chair up beside him and said:

  76. 37

    "I have to tell you everything."

  77. If I didn't, I'd feel like a scoundrel.

  78. You see, I'm speaking to you calmly.

  79. Look, if you don't believe it, put your hand on my heart.

  80. I'm being sincere with you.

  81. Well, I... I... I reported you to the Sugar Company... I was the one who sent the anonymous letter.

  82. 38

    Erdosain did not even lift his head.

  83. One or the other — what did it matter!

  84. 39

    Barsut looked at him: he was waiting for who knows what words, and said:

  85. 40

    "Why don't you say anything?"

  86. Yes, I reported you.

  87. Do you realize?

  88. I reported you.

  89. I wanted to get you thrown in jail, to keep Elsa for myself, to humiliate her.

  90. You can't imagine the nights I've spent thinking they'd lock you up!

  91. You had nowhere to get the money from, and they were bound to report you.

  92. But why don't you say anything?

  93. 41

    Erdosain lifted his eyelids.

  94. Barsut was there, yes, it was him, and he was saying all those things.

  95. From the cheekbones to the ears, beneath the skin, the play of the muscles trembled imperceptibly.

  96. 42

    Barsut lowered his eyes, propped his elbows on his knees as if he were sitting before a hearth, and in a slow voice insisted:

  97. 43

    "I have to tell you everything."

  98. To whom but you could I tell all these things that make the heart ache?

  99. They say, and it's true, that the heart doesn't ache, but believe it, at times I say to myself:

  100. 44

    what's the point of living?

  101. Where does life go if I'm like this?

  102. Do you realize?

  103. You have to see all I've brooded over thinking about these things.

  104. Look, I shouldn't even be telling them to you.

  105. How is it that you do a dirty thing to a person, then go up to them and tell them your most intimate secrets, and feel no remorse?

  106. I myself have said to myself many times: Why do I feel no remorse?

  107. What kind of life is this if we do something monstrous and feel nothing?

  108. Do you understand this?

  109. According to what we studied in school, a crime ends up driving the criminal mad — and how is it that in reality you commit a crime and stay perfectly calm?

  110. 45

    Erdosain kept his gaze fixed on Barsut; now the image of that man was settling into the depths of his consciousness.

  111. The forces of his life bound that pale relief in a mesh so intense that the imprint forming in those instants would never again be erased.

  112. 46

    "Look," Barsut went on, "I knew you held a grudge against me, that if you'd been able to kill me you would have, and that gladdened and saddened me at once."

  113. How many nights I lay down thinking of a way to kidnap you!

  114. It even occurred to me to send you a bomb by mail, or a viper in a cardboard box.

  115. Or to pay a driver to run you down in the street.

  116. I would close my eyes and the hours slipped by as I thought about the two of you.

  117. Do you think I loved her?

  118. Erdosain noticed later that in that night's conversation Barsut avoided calling Elsa by her name.

  119. No, I never loved her.

  120. 47

    But I would have liked to humiliate her, you know?

  121. Humiliate her just because: to see you ruined so that she'd beg me on her knees to help you.

  122. Do you realize?

  123. I never loved her.

  124. If I reported you it was for that, to humiliate her, who was always so proud with me.

  125. And when you told me you'd defrauded the Sugar Company, a savage joy churned my insides.

  126. And you hadn't finished speaking when I said to myself: well, now we'll see where her pride ends.

  127. 48

    Erdosain let the question slip out:

  128. 49

    "But did you love her?..."

  129. 50

    "No, I never loved her."

  130. If you knew how much she's made me suffer!

  131. Me, love her, who never gave me her hand?

  132. Every time she looked at me it seemed to me she was spitting in my face.

  133. Ah, you were the husband, but you never knew her!

  134. What do you know about what kind of woman she is!

  135. Look, she could watch you die and not make a single gesture of pity.

  136. Do you realize?

  137. I remember.

  138. When the Astraldi firm went bust and you two were left out in the street, if she had asked me for everything I had, I would have given it to her.

  139. I would have given her my whole fortune just to have her say "thank you" to me.

  140. Nothing more than thank you.

  141. To have her say that word to me I would have left myself with nothing.

  142. One day when I struck up a conversation she answered me: Remo is man enough to earn for the two of us.

  143. Ah, you don't know her!

  144. She'd be capable of watching you die without making a gesture.

  145. And I would think.

  146. How many things, my God, run through a man's head!

  147. I'd throw myself on a bed and start imagining things... you had murdered a man... you had to be saved, and so she would come to ask me to help you, and I, without saying a word about my sacrifices, would run from one place to another.

  148. What a woman, Remo!

  149. What a woman!

  150. I remember when she would sew.

  151. I would have stayed at her side, you know, holding the sewing for her, and I knew she wasn't happy with you.

  152. I could see it in her face, in her weariness, in her smile.

  153. 51

    Erdosain recalled the words Elsa had spoken an hour before:

  154. 52

    "It doesn't matter... I'm happy."

  155. Do you realize your surprise, Remo?

  156. You're all alone at night, you're alone... Suddenly, click... the door opens... and it's me... me, who has come.

  157. 53

    Barsut went on:

  158. 54

    "And of course, I kept asking myself what it was that made her endure life at your side, beside a man like you..."

  159. 55

    "And I came on foot, alone, through the dark streets, looking for you, but you don't see me, you're alone, your head..."

  160. 56

    Erdosain felt the ideas whirling on the surface of his brain like a whirlpool of water.

  161. The giant cone sank its spiral down to the root of his limbs.

  162. A whirlwind whose gentle touch drew from his soul a pained, new tenderness.

  163. How good Elsa's words were, what an extraordinary substance!

  164. 57

    "I always loved you."

  165. I love you now too... never — why did you never speak like this before tonight?

  166. I feel I'm going to love you all my life, that the other man beside you is the shadow of a man.

  167. 58

    Erdosain now had the certainty that these words saved his soul forever, while Barsut piled up an envious anguish:

  168. 59

    "And I would have wanted to ask her what it was she found at your side, to split your chest open in front of her and prove to her until she was sick of it that you were a madman, a scoundrel, a coward..."

  169. I swear I say these words without anger.

  170. 60

    "I believe it," Erdosain replied.

  171. 61

    "Right now, looking at you, I ask myself: with what eyes does a woman look at a man?"

  172. That's what we'll never know.

  173. Don't you think?

  174. To me you were a wretch, the kind you knock out of your way with a backhand.

  175. But to her, who were you?

  176. That's the dark point.

  177. Did you ever know it?

  178. Tell me frankly: did you know in your heart what man you were to your wife?

  179. What was it she saw in you to suffer so much at your side, and to put up with you the way she did?

  180. 62

    How gravely Barsut talked!

  181. His hoarse questions demanded an answer.

  182. 63

    Erdosain felt him there beside him not as a man, but precisely as a double, a specter with a bony nose and bronze hair who had suddenly become a piece of his own conscience, since, just as his conscience did in other circumstances, this man was now putting the same questions to him.

  183. Yes, it was likely that to live in peace it would be necessary to exterminate him, and the "idea" revealed itself coldly within him.

  184. 64

    "Like a sword entering a block of cotton," Erdosain would say later.

  185. 65

    Barsut did not remotely imagine that in that instant Remo had just condemned him to death.

  186. Explaining to me later the circumstances of that conception, Erdosain said to me:

  187. 66

    "Have you ever seen a general on a battlefield?...

  188. But to make my idea more accessible to you I'll tell you, as an inventor: you search for a certain time for the solution to a problem.

  189. You know, you are certain that the key, the secret, is within you, but you cannot grasp it, so covered is the secret in layers of mystery.

  190. And one day, at the most unexpected moment, suddenly the plan, the complete vision of the machine, appears before your eyes, dazzling you with its easy exactness.

  191. It's something marvelous!

  192. Picture a general on a battlefield... all is lost, and suddenly, clear, precise, a solution appears to him that he had never dreamed of conceiving, and that, nevertheless, he had right there, within reach of his hand, inside himself.

  193. I, in that instant, knew I had to have Barsut killed, and he, across from me, heaping up useless words, did not imagine that I, with my swollen mouth, my aching nose, was holding back a stupendous joy, a dazzlement like the one you feel when what you've discovered is as inexorable as a mathematical law.

  194. Perhaps there also exists a mathematics of the spirit whose terrible laws are not as inviolable as those governing the combinations of numbers and lines.

  195. Because it's curious.

  196. That slap, which still made my gum bleed, like the die of a hydraulic press stamped into my conscience the definitive lines of a plan of death.

  197. Do you see?

  198. A plan is three general lines, three admissible straight lines, nothing more.

  199. And in a tumult, my elation piled up over that cold relief whose three terse lines held this: to kidnap Barsut, to have him killed, and with his money to found the secret society as the Astrologer wished.

  200. Do you see?

  201. The plan of the crime arose spontaneously in me, while the other man spoke sadly of our two condemned souls.

  202. The plan appeared in me as if it had been stamped onto an iron plate at thousands of pounds of pressure.

  203. 67

    "Ah! How can I explain it to you?

  204. Suddenly I forgot everything, held by an icy contemplation, full of delight, something like the dawn that a habitual night-owl discovers, which relieves him of his weariness in the morning that follows a night full of toil.

  205. Do you see?

  206. To have Barsut murdered by a man who urgently needed money to carry out a brilliant idea.

  207. And this new dawn pulsing in me was so perfectly defined that many times, later, I have asked myself what secret the soul of a man comes to hold when, one after another, new horizons are shown to him, peeling away sensations that are an astonishment even to himself for their apparently illogical origin."

  208. 68

    In the course of this story I have forgotten to say that when Erdosain grew excited, he would circle around the axis-"idea" with a flood of words.

  209. He needed to exhaust every possibility of expression, possessed by that slow frenzy which, through his sentences, gave him the awareness of being an extraordinary man and not a wretch.

  210. That he was telling the truth, I had no doubt.

  211. What often baffled me was the question I asked myself: where did that man draw the energy to endure his own spectacle for so long?

  212. He did nothing but examine himself, analyze what was happening inside him, as if the sum of details could give him the certainty that he was alive.

  213. I insist.

  214. A dead man who had the power to converse would talk no more than he did, to convince himself that he was not, to all appearances, dead.

  215. 69

    Bersut, unaware of all that had just taken place in the other man, went on:

  216. 70

    "Ah! you didn't know her.. you never knew her."

  217. Look, listen to what I'm going to tell you.

  218. One afternoon I went to see you, I knew you weren't in, I wanted to meet her, just to see her, even if only that.

  219. I arrived sweating; I don't know how many blocks I walked in the sun before I made up my mind.

  220. 71

    "Just like me, in the sun," thought Erdosain.

  221. 72

    "And that's even though you know I wasn't short of money to take a car, and even when I asked for you, she, without moving from the threshold, answered me: 'Excuse me, I won't let you in because my husband isn't home.'"

  222. Do you see what a bitch?

  223. 73

    Erdosain thought:

  224. 74

    "There's still a train to Temperley."

  225. 75

    Barsut went on:

  226. 76

    "And I, seeing you such a poor wretch, said to myself: what can Elsa have seen in this miserable man to fall in love with him?"

  227. 77

    In a most tranquil voice Erdosain asked him:

  228. 78

    "And can you tell from my face that I'm a miserable man?"

  229. 79

    Barsut raised his head, taken aback.

  230. For a moment he held his translucent greenish pupils motionless on the man before him.

  231. The sheet of light that fell over him and Erdosain set a dreamlike distance between them.

  232. And Barsut understood himself to be as much a phantom as the other, for, moving his head painfully, as if all the muscles of his neck had suddenly stiffened, he answered:

  233. 80

    "No — looking at you closely, you seem like a fellow seized by a fixed idea... who knows what."

  234. 81

    Erdosain replied:

  235. 82

    "You're a psychologist."

  236. Naturally, I still don't know what that fixed idea consists of, but it's curious — what never occurred to me was that you would think of taking my wife from me... And the calm with which you say these things...

  237. 83

    "You won't deny that I'm being frank with you..."

  238. 84

    "No..."

  239. 85

    "Besides, I wanted to humiliate her... not to steal her from you — what for?"

  240. When I knew she'd never love me.

  241. 86

    "And how did you guess it?"

  242. 87

    "That's what I don't know."

  243. Because you do certain things that can't be explained.

  244. Because I dealt with you and you dealt with me, the two of us unable to "stand" each other.

  245. I came because by coming I made you suffer and I suffered too.

  246. Every day I told myself: I won't go anymore... I won't go anymore...

  247. But as soon as the hour came, I would get nervous.

  248. It was as if someone were calling me from somewhere, and then I'd dress in a hurry... and come...

  249. Erdosain suddenly had a singular idea, and said:

  250. 88

    "Speaking of this and that... I don't know if you know that this morning they talked to me at the Sugar Company about the anonymous letter."

  251. If I don't account for the money, they put me in jail tomorrow.

  252. The only one to blame — and I think you'll have no objection to admitting it — for this happening is you, so you have to put up the money for me.

  253. Where am I going to get that amount?

  254. 89

    Barsut drew himself up, astonished.

  255. 90

    "But what?"

  256. After I come out cuckolded and beaten, after Elsa leaves and I commit an infamy, I'm the one who has to give you the money?

  257. Are you crazy?

  258. What would I get out of giving you six hundred pesos?...

  259. 91

    "And seven cents..."

  260. 92

    Erdosain stood up.

  261. 93

    "Is that your last word?"

  262. 94

    "But understand — how am I supposed to?..."

  263. 95

    "All right, "sonny"... Patience."

  264. Now do me the favor of leaving, because I want to sleep.

  265. 96

    "Don't you want to go out?"

  266. 97

    "I'm tired."

  267. Leave me be.

  268. 98

    Barsut hesitated.

  269. Then, rising and gripping his hat by one brim, he left the room clumsily.

  270. 99

    Erdosain heard the bang the door made as it closed, brooded with a frown for a moment, searched his pocket for a railway timetable, looked at the schedule, then washed again, and combed his hair before the mirror.

  271. His lip was bruised purple, a red mark edged his nose, and another ringed his temple, beside the hairline.

  272. 100

    He looked around searching for something, saw the fallen revolver, picked it up and went out.

  273. But since he had left the light on, he went back and put out the lamp.

  274. Everything was dark now; like the trace of a light it gleamed before his eyes, and he went out.

  275. For the second time that day he was going to the Astrologer's house.

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.
Data
JSON · Markdown · A guide for agents
Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.