The Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt Read Free Book Online Page A

we saw a spider running away over the waxed floor.
    Tall bookcases varnished red reached the ceiling, and the conic wheel of light moved over the dark bookcases, showing shelves laden with books.
    Majestic glass display cases added a severe solemnity to the sombreness, and past the glass, on spines of books bound in leather, paper and cloth, there shone out arabesque endpapers and gilded catalogue marks.
    Irzubeta went up to the glass.
    The reflected light illuminated him obliquely and his sunken-cheeked profile was like a bas relief, with his eyes immobile and his black hair harmoniously surrounding his head and losing itself in the hollow of the tendons of his neck.
    When he turned his eyes back to me, he said with a smile:
    ‘You know, there’s some good books here.’
    ‘Yeah, and easy to sell.’
    ‘How long have we been here?’
    ‘About half an hour.’
    I sat down at the corner of a desk a few steps away from the door, in the middle of the library, and Enrique imitated me. We were tired. The silence of the dark hall penetrated into our spirits, opening them up to great spaces of memory and uncertainty.
    ‘Say, why did you break up with Eleonora?’
    ‘I dunno. Do you remember? She gave me flowers.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And then she wrote me some letters. It was weird. When two people fall in love it’s like they can guess each other’s thoughts. One Sunday afternoon she went out to walk round the block. I don’t know why I did it, but I went out too, only in the opposite direction and when we met each other, without looking at me she held out her arm and handed me a letter. She was wearing a tea-rose dress, and I remember that there were a lot of birds singing in the greenery.’
    ‘What did she say?’
    ‘Simple things. To wait… You get it? To wait until we were older.’
    ‘Modest.’
    ‘And so serious, Enrique,
che
! If you only knew. I was there, leaning against the iron fence. It was getting dark. She stopped talking… sometimes she looked at me in such a way… and I felt like crying… and we didn’t say anything… What could we say?’
    ‘That’s life,’ Enrique said. ‘Let’s go and look at the books. What about Lucio, eh? Sometimes he really pisses me off. What a goon!’
    ‘Where are the keys?’
    ‘They must be in the drawer.’
    We rummaged through the desk, and we found them in a box of pens.
    A lock squealed and then we started to investigate.
    As we took each book out we leafed through it, and Enrique, who knew something about prices, would say, ‘Not worth anything ’ or ‘Worth something.’
    ‘
The Mountains of Gold
.’
    ‘It’s out of print. You’ll get ten pesos for it anywhere.’
    ‘
The Evolution of Matter
by Le Bon. It’s got photographs.’
    ‘I’ll keep that for myself,’ Enrique said.
    ‘Rouquette.
Organic and Inorganic Chemistry
.’
    ‘Put it here with the others.’
    ‘
Infinitesimal Calculus
.’
    ‘That’s higher mathematics. It must be expensive.’
    ‘This one?’
    ‘What’s it called?’
    ‘
Charles Baudelaire: His Life
.’
    ‘Let’s have a look.’
    ‘It looks like a biography. Not worth anything.’
    I opened the book at random.
    ‘It’s poems.’
    ‘What do they say?’
    I read out loud:
    I adore you as much as I adore the vault of night
    Oh, glass of sorrows, taciturn white lady!
    Eleonora, I thought. Eleonora.
    And let us attack, let us
,
    Like a chorus of gypsies faced by a corpse.
11
    ‘
Che
, you know that’s beautiful? I’ll take it home.’
    ‘Look, while I pack up the books, you sort out the light bulbs.’
    ‘What about the light?’
    ‘Bring it here.’
    I went where Enrique pointed. We carried things back and forth in silence, and our gigantic shadows moved across the ceiling and across the floor, distorted by the other shadows that lay in the corners of the room. Accustomed to the danger, no worries affected my movement.
    Enrique sat at the desk sorting out the books and flicking through their pages. I had just