The Mad Toy Read Online Free PDF

window, so that he could get the price of certain objects, and if there was no one in the office then I would quickly open a display case and fill my pockets with boxes of pencils, artistic inkstands; once we were able to snaffle money out of a cashbox that had no alarm, and another time, in a gunshop, we got a box with a dozen penknives made of gold-plated steel with mother of pearl handles.
    When we went through a day without being able to get our hands on anything we were crestfallen, sad at our incompetence , disappointed about our future.
    Then we would go around in a bad mood until something came along to cheer us up.
    However, when business was on the up and coins were replaced by delectable peso bills, we would wait for a rainy afternoon and go out for a ride in a hired car with a driver. How delicious then to be driven through curtains of rain along the city streets! We would lie back on the soft cushions, light a cigarette, leaving the busy people behind us in the rain, and imagine that we lived in Paris, or foggy London town. We would dream in silence, a smile balanced on our condescending lips.
    Later, in a high-class cake shop, we would drink chocolate with vanilla, and go home sated on the afternoon train, our energies doubled by the satisfaction our blowout had given our voluptuous bodies, by the dynamism in everything around us that shouted with its iron voices in our ears:
    Forwards, forwards!
    Said I to Enrique one fine day:
    ‘We need to form a secret society, a real society, for smart kids.’
    ‘The difficulty is that there aren’t that many of us around,’ Enrique argued.
    ‘Yes, you’re right; but there can’t be none of them.’
    A few weeks after saying this, Enrique’s efforts turned up a certain Lucio who joined our group; he was a fool, short in stature and livid from too much masturbation, with a face that was so shameless that it made anyone who saw it want to laugh.
    He lived under the protection of some pious old women who cared little or nothing for him. This nincompoop had onefavourite occupation, which was telling people the most ordinary things as if they were immense secrets. This he did by looking all around him and moving his arms like certain film actors did when they played petty suburban crooks.
    ‘This nutcase won’t be any use to us,’ I said to Enrique; but as he brought a newcomer’s enthusiasm to the recently formed brotherhood, his keen decisiveness, together with his bizarre arm movements, gave us hope.
     
    It was impossible for us to do without a meeting-point, and we called it, at Lucio’s suggestion, unanimously accepted,
The Club of the Midnight Gentlemen
.
    The club held its meetings round the back of Enrique’s house, in a narrow room of dusty wood with large spider-webs hanging from the roof beams, facing a filthy-walled and decrepit latrine. There were lots of broken and faded puppets in the corners, the legacy of a failed puppeteer who had been a friend of the Irzubetas, as well as boxes filled with horrifically mutilated lead soldiers, rank bundles of dirty clothes and boxes overflowing with old newspapers and magazines.
    The door to the hovel opened onto a dark patio covered in cracked bricks, which became muddy on rainy days.
    ‘Nobody here,
che?
’
    Enrique closed the shabby casement through the broken panes of which were visible huge roiling tin clouds.
    ‘They’re inside, chatting.’
    We made ourselves as comfortable as possible. Lucio offered us Egyptian cigarettes, a formidable novelty for us, and smoothly lit a match on the sole of his shoe. Then he said:
    ‘We are going to read the Minutes.’
    So that there would be nothing lacking in this aforementioned club, there was a Book of Minutes where all the associates’ projects were entered, and there was also a stamp,a rectangular stamp that Enrique had made out of a cork and which displayed the emotive spectacle of a heart pierced by three daggers.
    The Minutes were kept by each of us in