One day he went to see the building—a small tenement—on the income from which he was living. The house was a loathsome plague-spot in which some fifteen wretched families lodged. How was it that it had never before occurred to him to look this house up, he wondered, disgusted with himself. And why had his agent never reported such conditions? Then he remembered that he had visited the property in person several times before his second trip to Europe; save that then all this poverty and squalor seemed to him a natural, even an excellent, thing! Was it not just this sort of surroundings which pricked the ambition of these laboring people, spurred them to work their way up to the comfort they had learned through hard experience to appreciate? Was not this very misery the first rung on the ladder of progress in this blessed country of opportunity, where "no one need be poor unless he chooses to be"? Monsalvat thought with shame of his earlier adherence to "economic liberalism," a toothless theory, surely invented by the rich that they might continue to exploit the poor! How much he would have given now never to have written those fine articles of his! He went away resolved to mortgage the tenement, and put the money into improvements which would make the building sanitary at least.
The people of his old world, his men friends especially, made fun of his new views. He had not been talking much of his recent mental struggles; but his aloofness, coupled with a few articles of his giving voice to the protest within him, annoyed not a few of the distinguished persons who had been wont to applaud him. Something had gone wrong inside this man; and society commented on the change without forbearance. Some said he was crazy, others thought there was something off with his liver or his spleen. More than one of his old admirers looked at him with a kind of fear. What was he going to do next? Perhaps break with all established institutions.
Monsalvat, however, was nobody's enemy. Feelings of revolt could not live long in his heart, but became transformed, soon after birth, into a nameless anguish, a physical and moral uneasiness. He hated only himself. His rebellion was a rebellion only against his own selfish years.
What was it he wanted now? What was he looking for? What road was he going to choose? He did not know. Around him he felt a great emptiness that was ever growing greater. Wherever he went a sense of infinite loneliness accompanied him. He spent hours pondering the future. Meanwhile he had grown strangely sensitive emotionally; and it seemed as though the moment had come when his outward life, as well, must undergo its transformation.
One night idle curiosity led him to a cabaret. He knew little of this form of diversion. The "show" entertained him; the tangos and the orchestra stirred his emotions. This place of amusement seemed to be a note of color in the bleak immensity of Buenos Aires. On the other hand, he felt more alone than ever before. In all that dancing, in all that music, he found, he scarcely knew why, the same sadness which was in his soul. At times when the mandola wailed in a crescendo from the depth of some vulgar popular tune—fraught with all the coarseness and abjections of the tenements of the city—he seemed to hear in it a cry of loneliness, despair, and bitterness rising from the dregs of life itself.
It was on that night that his eyes first met Nacha's. They looked at one another with surprise, and with a shade of embarrassment, as though they knew one another. The girl lost her composure, lowered her eyes, twisted her fingers nervously. For two hours Monsalvat lingered in the cabaret, persisting in this flirtation. He did not understand why he had never liked loose women; indeed, it all seemed to him rather absurd—though the girl did have pretty eyes! Perhaps she was not what she seemed! Perhaps she might some day love him, chance permitting. Perhaps his loneliness would be more bearable if a woman like her were there to sympathize with him. When she left the cabaret, he followed in a taxi. With her companion, she went into a house. Monsalvat concluded that she lived there. He got out of the taxi, and loitered about in the middle of the dark street. She came out on the balcony for a moment, casting two or three rapid glances in his direction.
A few nights later Monsalvat returned to the cabaret. He did not find her there. His loneliness again became unbearably acute, and his restlessness intolerable. It seemed to him more than ever imperative that he find some purpose in life again, some clear comprehension of his mission and destiny.
A few days later the scene in the cabaret occurred.