The Seven Madmen Read Free

does not die.
    Because at times he longed for humiliation, like those saints who would kiss the sores of lepers, not from compassion but to be yet more unworthy of God's love, since they would revolt Him by their repulsive deeds.
    But these images faded, and all that was left in his mind was the "desire to know the meaning of life," and he would tell himself:
    "No, I am no lackey ... no, I am not ... " and he would have liked to ask his wife to take pity on him, to feel grief and pity for his horrible, vile thoughts. But remembering how she had made so many sacrifices for him filled him with blind fury, and at such times he would have liked to kill her.
    And he knew all too well that some day she would turn to another man and that was yet more fuel added to everything that went to make up his anguish.
    So when he stole the first twenty pesos, he was surprised how easily he could "do it," since before he got started he had thought he would have to overcome any number of scruples which he was no longer in a condition to feel. Then he reflected:
    "It's just a matter of working up one's will and doing it, simple as that."
    And "it" made life a little easier, with "it" he had money that felt alien, since it was acquired through no effort of his own. And the amazing thing for Erdosain was not the thievery itself, but that his face should show no sign of his crime. He was forced to steal because his monthly pay was so meager. Eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty pesos, since it depended on how much he collected; he was paid a commission per hundred pesos of bills he collected.
    So, some days he carried four to five thousand pesos on his undernourished person and made do with a stinking, fake leather billfold, inside of which happiness piled up in the form of paper money, checks, money orders, and vouchers.
    His wife nagged about the way she was always deprived of this or that; he would hear out her reproaches in silence and later, alone, he would wonder:
    "What can I do?"
    When he got the idea, when that idea started to grow, how he might steal from his bosses, he felt like an inventor yelling eureka. Steal? But how come he had only thought of it now?
    And Erdosain was amazed by his own oversight, even accusing himself of lacking drive, since in those days (three months before the events of this story), he was painfully deprived of all kinds of necessary things, although vast sums of money streamed through his hands every day.
    And what made his thievery so easy was the lax way the Sugar Company kept its books.
    Terror in the Street
    His life was most certainly strange, because sometimes hope welled up inside him and drove him out into the street.
    Then he would get on a bus and ride to some ritzy neighborhood like Palermo or Belgrano. He would wander, lost in thought, down quiet avenues, saying to himself:
    "Some young creature will spot me, a tall, pale, high-strung young girl, driving aimlessly around in her Rolls-Royce. Suddenly she spots me and knows I will be the one love of her life, and those eyes, that withered foolish suitors, will come to rest on me and will fill with sudden tears."
    The dream pried loose from its framework of nonsense and slid slowly down into the shade of the tall facades and the green plantain trees that cast their shadows in triangular shapes on the white tiling below.
    "She will be a millionairess, but I will tell her, 'Senorita, I cannot touch you. Even should you offer yourself to me, I would not take you.' She will look at me in surprise, then I will say, 'It's no use, do you understand? It's no use, I am married.' But she will pay Elsa a fortune to divorce me, and then we will marry and sail off to Brazil on her yacht."
    And the bare simplicity of his dream took on rich nuances at the word "Brazil," which, hot and fervid, summoned up a pink and white coast, jutting and jettying out at points into the tender blue sea. Now his lady had lost her tragic air and was—under the white silk of her