by Carlos Labbé
We, we, and we, they answer in the cell. They are hungry, they are thirsty; but now their hunger and thirst for justice has grown.
Names?
They learn to make a single noise with their bodies.
Then the beatings stop; and, instead, they force them to eat bread and water, wine and meat, beer and vegetables, whiskey and caviar so they’ll confess that they set off the bomb, that they robbed the bank, and that they killed Stupendous Spouse. At last, they eat, they drink.
Names?
Finally the Heelheads identify them: they are named Skimpy, Speck, and Bones. Is that noted in the court record? Are they written about like this in public? And do they thus go out into a world that from here onward has name, space, and time?
VI
Scabrous is leaving the 76th floor of a hotel that is also a ministry, embassy, food court, and train station.
She reaches out a hand to him—it’s the only part of their bodies that retains a sense of touch—to enjoy free access to that lightness of spirit for the last time, now that the negotiations have been finalized: tomorrow they will sign the form that will bring about the privatization of everything disruptive, including their spirits and certain sensations that cannot be described.
In that moment, they look out the hallway window and see how in that last hour of the afternoon, the sun drops pristinely over a ravine.
What a beautiful place, she says.
Yes, he says.
We will even get that light to share.
But let’s not deceive ourselves, continues Scabrous Spouse, as the doors to the elevator open and they disappear in the direction of subterranean 34: it’s beautiful because we can look at it from a distance. We would never ever set foot in place like that. Imagine the hunger and the thirst of the vermin slithering around out there.
In that exact instant, the bodies of Skinbun, Stinko, and Bone-howl awaken; they are lying at the bottom of the ravine. They heard the conversation; all through the night and early morning they drag themselves in the direction of the government palace façade.
What is it that gleams, darkly, in their eyes?
VI
In front of the government palace, for centuries, there has been a lawn with the softest and greenest grasses ever trod on. It’s called Petitioner’s Square. And for centuries it has been the place where the Shoulderheads and the Heelheads stock their munitions, catapults, tanks, drones, and clubs. The Kneeheads, even, play tag there.
Dawn breaks on that historic day.
Eight groups of eight hundred have gathered together to make their lips vibrate synchronistically in front of the government palace. Nobody has ever been able to enter Petitioner’s Square without a uniform, but that morning, the hum of their lips grows so great that its expansive wave sends the fences flying, the patrols scatter, and the satellite cannons implode forever.
The eight groups of eight hundred begin to advance through their own clamor.
The first column shouts that, in the name of Bonebunny, Stinker, and Tombkat, they would not allow the privatization of everything disruptive. That everything belongs to everyone.
But when Bonebunny, Stinker, and Tombkat drag themselves into Petitioner’s Square, nobody knows who they are.
Better that way, they say. And they surrender.
And yet, the ninth group of nine hundred, the rearguard that is entering the government palace recognizes them. Someone decides to detonate all the bombs.
Something explodes; it isn’t their bodies. Now the lawn is hard clay, pollen, shrapnel, pieces of palace.
Who will the Elbowheads imprison for this unjust attack?
VI
Flank, Bringsomething, and Unjudge the Wise don’t even groan anymore, trapped as they are in the high-security prison.
The Heelheads, who toss the international chef’s latest experiment through the little window once a week, spread the rumor that there is nothing in that subterranean cell but a statue, a bust, and an equestrian figure.
Until one night, the Ghost of Justice pays them a visit in their cell.
It comes in the form of an about-to-burst drainpipe and the sound it makes through the wall tells them the following tale: The train arrives to the village. A little boy and a little girl—brother and sister—are sitting together, and out the window they note the details of the station as the train comes to a stop. Look, says the little boy, we are in Damas. Silly! the little girl replies, can’t you see we are in Varones?
The next day, the warden, Accountant Carola, explains to the public that the prisoners made their escape when the drainage system collapsed.
Why, then, does the story spread among the Heelheads that, on that night, they heard a peal of laughter so powerful it shook the high-security prison to its foundation?
VII
Second letter from the underground
(Delivered by six whirlwinds and signed by a paw print that signifies “theothers”)
You speak of justice. You act in the interest of justice for every man and every woman. Your deity is just, justice is your deity.
But it is unjust that justice be of more importance than the other needs of those who stand beside you. It is unjust that justice be of more importance than the need of the other person who stands first so others can stand too. It is unjust that justice is a paradox and not a concrete fact: justice does not exist and Justice does not exist, but we cannot not have it.
How can you ever truly come to smell yourself, hear yourself, see yourself, touch yourself except with mirrors—which have an owner—if not through the bodies of those who stand beside you?
VIII
Injustice happens, it happens.
Only thus can the new government of Scabrous Spouse explain to the remaining four why the valley now is farm and the hill is fort; the sea, port; the desert, saltpeter; the grassland, highway; the glacier, reservoir; the forest, lumber; the river, runoff; the lake, shipping, and the city, bank.
The rest of the eight hundred are now theothers, too worn out from the hammer, the spade, the scythe, and the keyboard to ask again why, who is responsible for all the injustice.
Until one day Skinnybond, Comfortcat, and Saint Bonekiss arrive to the waiting room of the new government skyscraper, dressed in suits and shinning shoes. Skinnybond shows his device to Scabrous Spouse, Comfortcat waves her rag, while Saintbonkiss begins his prayer so the President can complete it.
We are here to bring an end to injustice, they say in unison.
The President applauds, rises, shakes their hands to welcome them to the government. Because nobody knows them, he says to his secretary, Accountant Carola.
What will her demand be when she finds them out, and what the response of Skinnybond, Comfortcat, and Saint Bonekiss when they enter the subterranean room to discover that from inside a glass coffin the body of Stupendous Spouse, a stuffed animal without paws or maw, is the one in charge of everything?
VIII
And yet, Ms. Cat, Don Skinny, and Mr. Saintbone do not attend the feasts at the skyscraper palace. Nor do they go on international tours; they limit themselves to making reforms, while in cabinet meetings Scabrous Spouse defends them against accusations of being technocrats, populists, lobbyists, fasters, to explain once more to the young ministers—who spend time in the government before obtaining lifelong economic posts—what the miracle by which Ms., Don, and Mr. have governed for thirty years consists of: television, telephones, internet, free sports for everyone; subsidies for basic services; the organization of festivals, parties, and dances. Of employment, education, housing, and nutrition policies, not a thing.
Then comes the famine.
The famine was not anticipated.
The progeny and their vermin take to the streets, camp in the squares, and burn the fields. The other eight hundred, the other eight hundred thousand, the other nine hundred, the other thousand thousands—already old, already fat inside—let themselves die of starvation.
At an emergency g
overnment meeting, Accountant Carola opens her eyes at last and finds Stinkat, Skinnybunny, and Bonehound standing before her. She thinks they are smiling, but realizes it’s just a sneer, a silent growl. Accountant Carola recalls all she has lost to years of popping pills: a ravine, the sea, three creatures of the night. So she and Scabrous take advantage of the foggy night to embark on a permanent diplomatic mission to the great beyond.
As that last sun rises, a bedraggled mass of millions stands before the ruins of smoking mirrors that once were skyscraper, palace, garden, forest. They cry out for a piece of bread and a drink of water.
The burning sun rises.
Out of the ruins emerges a ridge that is a hill, a hill that is a volcano. And a cat, a rabbit, and a dog emerge from the crater; with the help of millions of other paws and hoofs we push a glass coffin, gilded and on wheels, down the last liturgical ramp. We make ourselves legion: never again will we let some salivating thing turn into ration, into reason, into nauseating money. We crowd together, carefully we open the coffin and, justly, we eat.
The choreography needs a silence. He, the boy, stole twelve chainsaws from the logging company before he was caught. He, the singer, felt the electric shock from her, the other, the bassist, and the other bassist’s instruments in his throat, in his perineum, in the nape of his neck, and in his gums every night.
He, making his escape, began to write names on a stone, for he knew the wind would erase them. One of the names was the name of The Band. I am he. She, the other, the bassist, and the other bassist had to choose a stormy night.
For every erasure that my eyelids carry out on the screen, a series of words that I do not write on the blank glass is regained: pëllü, silence, electricity. That was the order in which the old mother taught him, the boy, to speak.
Only a strong wind can touch everything at once.
He, the boy, threw himself into the other’s arms. She, from her hospital bed, smiled at the three of them, exhausted. He came over and, instead of kissing the newborn on the forehead, planted a kiss on each of his eyes. What name are you thinking of for the baby, she answered, the other answered, he answered.
He, the singer, discovered the figure of his twin outside his cell window was climbing a hill, entering the boarding house, crossing another threshold, arriving to the room she had rented in the apartment as an adolescent. He, making his escape, wrote names in the sand of an immense and stormy beach.
I, on the other hand, no longer remember what is sound and what noise, what is nasality, and what those mouths are that vibrate above me.
He, the singer, on the farewell tour asked that the penultimate song always be followed by a pause. Each of them would dedicate it to whomever they wanted, pëllí, silence, memory, chainsaw, and so every night the guitar paused, the keyboards stopped, the basses ceased thrumming, the cymbals and drums were left untouched, trading places, superimposing.
He, unlike me, heard in each of those silences the deafening roar of the chainsaw cutting down his tree and all the other unreachable trees simultaneously.
I am he and I can touch him, the boy, again, but only with my eyelids.
6.
CORRECTION
The choreography needs a silence. Though the enormity of the great stone could be framed within the camera lenses of the tourists, who started taking pictures as soon as they stepped off the bus, the other found it hard to look at. The warm air and the midday sun made him not think twice about abandoning the line and the flashing cameras and the marveling exclamations and disappearing along a gravel path that meandered upward between craggy boulders and golden grasses. On his device, at full volume, he listened to The Band Project album that featured multiple drummers, but couldn’t rid himself of the memory of his mother sighing into the phone, when he told her he’d joined the Anti-Empire.
He stopped humming and sat silently in the precipitous shade of two veins in the rock, removing the water bottle from his backpack. He had climbed without rest until he was face to face with the great stone’s summit. From where he was, there was no trace of the bus or the tourists. He was taking off his shoes when he started to lose his balance, just managing to catch the backpack: the bottle went bouncing down until it was swallowed by the altitude. The other sat down on the hard surface, stretched out his legs, took a deep breath, and began to drift off to sleep. And yet, he repeated to himself, he could no longer feel the shiver the song he was listening to gave him before, the vibrations of the suspended synthesizer, hanging there, waiting for, from one moment to the next, the mentor’s deep voice and the piercing guitar to weave in and out, chasing each other, until finally coming together in the chorus of drums. He couldn’t hear anything. The damp heat and the pain in his back woke him with a start. He looked instinctively for the water bottle, lamenting aloud having lost it. He stared at the huge stone, balanced atop a tiny base, and it made him feel vulnerable. I’m having a nightmare, he thought. He opened the device, blew on the laser, changed the batteries; it played again, but he wasn’t listening. The stone was still there, he couldn’t see it without color and without the possibility of touch, on the brink of weighing more than his body could ever bear, rolling, enduring, and shattering when the tiny pedestal of his body gave way. Everything would break apart, but the monumental rock would remain unfazed: another thousand years of dust, elsewhere now, in another position, another light and another shadow.
He removed his headphones. Of course, he’d put them in wrong that morning: the right in the left ear, the left in the right. Suddenly he heard pebbles scattering, thumps, footsteps. A young man about his own age, tall and dark, appeared before of him. Dressed in worn-out jeans, boots, and no shirt, his bare torso contrasting with the long wavy hair that fell to nape of his neck. The other greeted him, but got no response. He saw that the young man wasn’t carrying a backpack, bag, or water bottle, only a small Bible in one hand, and that he snorted like a horse as he proceeded up the stone path. That was the first time the other saw his vocalist. Then he shut his eyes and fell into a deep sleep, like he hadn’t slept in weeks. The mentor’s baritone faded, then his father’s shouts, the shoves, and the door slamming for the last time. Finally, there was just the stone, alone in all space, solid, immutable until it was shrouded in a kind of fog that also contained a silence in which he didn’t know his name or what language to say it in, whether his mouth was full of a pleasant liquid or if he no longer had mouth or nose or hands or eyes. Hours later, a man with a long gray beard woke him. The sun had gone down and a light rain was starting to fall. They took a shortcut down together, through beer cans and bags of food detritus, flies and fruit peels. The man with the beard told him the tour guides were looking for him. He really preferred the language of the Empire, he confessed, it felt better in his mouth than the anti-imperial hybrid. He talked nonstop: he told the other that he worked for the ex-priests, organizing a festival of ancient choral music; that he was also an ex-believer; that he had come to show the stone to some friends and had caught a vandal in the act of defacing the patrimony—that’s what he called the stone. The other came to the vandal’s defense, asking the man if he hadn’t ever done graffiti. No, no. But the vandal had taken out a pencil and convinced him to write some biblical trivialities at the base of the stone, the man with the beard told him. Some verses no one will ever read, he said, and suggested they hop the tourist fence so he could show him. The other declined, saying he was tired. To tell the truth, his vision clouded over just thinking about getting anywhere near the stone.
The choreography needs three. He, the singer, on tour, tried to ignore the lights in his eyes, the throbbing ache around his waist, and the deafness from all the sound checks, because despite everything he could feel how she, the other, the two bassists, the hired wind sections, the drums and the bongos and the maracas and the gong, all played along with him.
I am he. He, who can no longer be touched without gloves.
She formed a chord with her fingers, let them fall one
by one onto the cymbals, warm, embracing the next chord. The other waited for her on his string. The drums thrashing in his temples, on the other hand, announced that the masses, there, ecstatic, would have to go out into the streets and destroy public property if the President remained shut away on the top floor of her palace, unlistening.
He, the star, heard nothing.
“The thrashing in the trees, boy, is not there to hide you,” protested the old mother when he, chasing the kawellu and the blind chicken, smelled in the thunder the trucks that carried away all the dry wood, and asked her for protection.
He, the singer, every time that the thrashing announced itself, gave a single cough. He would prepare by clearing his throat. He would intone an inaudible bronchial hum, until, with electricity, she and the other played the signal simultaneously.
He, the hills facing the sea in his cell, stared out until he saw whether or not it was the other who came to her apartment so that she would open the door, after spending the day motionless in front of her drum set. And yet, in the blink of an eye, the streetlight on the corner went out, the power cut by the bomb blast, the thrashing that the other prisoners gave him, waiting for his voice. His scream.
I, on the other hand, reduce the brightness of this screen and eliminate the names three by three: my blinking, her fingers tracing the nape of my neck when she stays up late reading the score in bed, her touch on the backs of my ears and her index finger tangled in what’s left of my hair. The screech of the other teaching the boy a succession of keening notes, yes my shining sun, on your string. A chord.
He, the star, wanted to continue the tour because that night they were going to be heard in the language of the masses, and that would give him back a scream that would allow him to remember his true name.