Chapter 22
KANDINSKY LIKES TO WALK in the downtown area, known as the Enclave. He enjoys the motley collection of street vendors and the pervasive aroma of skewers of anticuchos and chola sandwiches being sold on street corners; the decaying façades of buildings; retirees and the country's old heroes sitting on benches in the plaza, reading newspapers; and the massive cathedral, its steps now the protectorate of beggars. Years ago, during one of the fleeting bursts of economic prosperity that have marked the history of Rio Fugitivo, the Civic Committee worriedly watched how new construction was popping up at will all over the city. These buildings altered the urban landscape, and while they did give Rio Fugitivo a more modern, progressive face, it was not worth losing its image as a traditional city, a quiet refuge. Colonial churches and nineteenth-century mansions were being destroyed; the quiet enchantment of old, of that which stood as testimony to the passing of time and by its mere presence battled the empire of what is ephemeral, was being lost. Could the downtown not be an enclave of tradition in the midst of so much modernity? The Civic Committee mobilized its forces to try to prevent any new construction in the old quarter. They were successful, but the battle continues. Today the new city is laying siege to and suffocating the old, flanking it on all sides, waiting for a single mistake in order to achieve victory once and for all. The Enclave is sufficient proof that what is old in and of itself is not enough to bear witness to history and grandeur. Buildings dating from the late nineteenth century—the National Telegraph Company, the local railway headquarters—and from the mid-twentieth century—the Departmental Theater—stand empty and are dying a slow death. Other buildings persist in defiance, like the mansion that today houses the Palace Hotel and the one that was once the headquarters of Tiempos Modernos and is now the computer institute where Kandinsky studied.
Kandinsky would like all of Rio Fugitivo to be like the Enclave—a place frozen in time, its back to the hypermarket that the planet has become. There are many others who think like him, even in the same empire. He has not forgotten the Seattle protests in November 1999; they made him realize that he is not alone, that there is generalized discontent with the new world order. If young people in more prosperous countries are capable of erupting as they did in Seattle, it is possible that an even more devastating explosion could occur in a region as poor and with as many contrasts as Latin America. Rio Fugitivo should become the Seattle of Bolivia and the whole continent. The work of Kandinsky and a few other activists is designed to ensure that the winds of discontent will be felt.
The first thing you need to begin a revolution, Kandinsky thought, his hands behind his head, is to recruit people. He was lying in his sleeping bag while Phiber, having gone to bed late, was snoring. Kandinsky's fingers ached and were still moving as if he were typing on the keyboard, a habit he had picked up over the past few weeks. What words was he writing in the air? What software code was he improvising in front of an invisible monitor? In the early morning a cold draft still permeated the room, but the first rays of sunlight were peeking in through the curtains. Outside the window, the red neon light on the sidewalk across the street was starting to lose some of its brightness. The city was waking up; the streets were filling with the screeching of buses and the high-pitched voices of newspaper vendors.
Kandinsky had not been able to fall asleep. It happened sometimes, when his head continued to spin. He couldn't stop thinking, couldn't disconnect. Thought thinks and drags you along with it, to fertile or not-so-fertile lands. The important thing was to unite thought with desire, intuition, feelings. When the rational and irrational were in tune, sparks flew.
Sometimes he imagined himself with Laura, who had ignored him ever since their encounter in the bathroom. Who did she think she was?
The first thing he had to do was leave Phiber's house. With all the money they had earned, he could get an apartment. It was absurd to have a well-stocked bank account and sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag each night. Phiber said they shouldn't call attention to themselves with a lot of sudden purchases, that the police would become suspicious. The office they had set up was enough. "There's no rush."
But there is, Kandinsky thought. He had decided to claim his part of the money and move that very week. The revolution couldn't wait. He needed to find partners and followers like himself, discontented with the way things were and willing to do something about it. He pictured an army of young people taking back the proposals for Utopia and social change from previous generations, shaking off their apathy, and unleashing their fury against a government bought by multinational corporations, against the new world order. Discontent was in the air, and it was simply a matter of harnessing it. It wouldn't be easy, but as a mural on one of the walls at San Ignacio said, nothing is impossible for those who are capable.
Kandinsky yawned. Perhaps sleep was finally on its way. He realized that this would be a different revolution. There would be the usual street demonstrations, emotional speeches from a balcony in the main plaza, but at least some of it would be carried out from a distance, by means of computers. It might not even be necessary to meet his comrades-in-arms in person.
Geometric figures floated on the screen saver, eyes that seemed to be spying on him.
Just as he suspected, Phiber did not take the news of his leaving well. In the afternoon, on their way home from an Internet cafe, shouting and recriminations occurred as they crossed Suicide Bridge. Phiber said he felt used: Kandinsky had taken advantage of his hospitality in order to earri his trust and then leave.
Kandinsky remained silent. "Maybe you're right," he said at last. He did not feel like arguing. He would accept all accusations in order to accelerate the breakup.
Phiber stopped and looked him in the eyes, imploringly. "Please, one more year. I just need another year."
"I've made up my mind," Kandinsky said, his tone unchanged.
He never thought to tell Phiber about his plans and invite him to participate. Phiber was made of a different metal.
Phiber did not say another word the whole way back. When they reached the house, he told Kandinsky that he couldn't come in; Phiber would bring all of his belongings to the door.
"We have to divide the money," Kandinsky said.
"Don't even think about it. As I see it, you're leaving the partnership. The money will be there, waiting for you, when you decide to come back."
Kandinsky would not accept the bait. He knew it would be easy to obtain as much money as he had with Phiber, or more.
He turned around and left, listening to Phiber's insults. The only thing he regretted was not having been able to say goodbye to Laura.
Kandinsky slept in a small square a block from his parents' house and San Ignacio. In the mornings, sitting on a bench across the street, he would watch the activity at San Ignacio, long pauses of quiet during classes punctuated by brief bursts of euphoria during breaks. He also watched what went on at his house. His dad got up early to work on the patio; nothing had changed. His brother had grown and become a stocky young man. His mom left early, probably to look after someone's baby or clean houses.
At times he wanted to play the role of the prodigal son, to show up at the door, tell his parents that he was back, and be swept up in their embrace. It had been a prank that had gone on too long, and he wanted to help them, be with them in their old age. But he knew that returning was impossible. Once a path had been chosen, any path, the only choice was to continue down it, even when returning home. Objects and people moved as much as you did; they did not stand still for anyone.
During that time Kandinsky went to Portal to Reality, an Internet café in the Bohemia district. He was waited on by a young woman with a metallic right arm. From afar, Kandinsky watched her delicately hold a glass, flip through the pages of her agenda, type on the keyboard. The arm was controlled by her brain, learned to move intuitively, recognized the shape and texture of objects and adapted to them. The young woman had a round, dull face and flat chest, b
ut Kandinsky was drawn to her, or perhaps to the relationship she had with her arm. It was the kind of relationship he would have liked to have with his computer—intuitive: to program codes without needing a keyboard. He asked her out, but she turned him down. Maybe she's shy, he thought. He would have to try again.
The café was frequented by youths with bulging wallets and a knack for underestimating everyone else. It was easy for Kandinsky to bet with them in online war games—Lineage, taking place in feudal Japan, was in vogue—and fill his pockets. Soon he would go back to hacking a few personal accounts and would transfer the money to an account he created for himself. Once the money had been withdrawn, he would close the account and disappear. He would rent a little apartment on the outskirts of the city, on the way to the hilltop where the Ciudadela, or Government Citadel, was, and he would buy a computer, an IBM clone.
Everything was now ready for him to put his plan into action.
Kandinsky spent hours in Playground with the intention of recruiting people. There was an anarchist neighborhood where avatars who were discontent with the politics of Playground met in the plaza and cafés. Kandinsky suspected that their dissatisfaction corresponded to dissatisfaction on the part of their creators in the real world. Of course, that was not always the case. Sometimes an anarchist avatar belonged to a docile yuppie and that of a revolutionary was controlled by someone who worked for the presidency. But he had to start somewhere.
Then it occurred to him that it was better not to mix the two worlds, at least not initially. Why not recruit those avatars for an insurrection against the government of Playground? The virtual world would be an opportunity to carry out a test before moving on to the real world.
In a plaza made up of orange and purple pixels, next to a fountain spouting yellow water, Kandinsky's avatar, which he called BoVe in honor of the French farmer who attacked a McDonald's as an anti-globalization protest, recruited two avatars, one androgynous and the other a digital being with the head of a unicorn and the body of a tiger. (Digital beings combine the head of a mythical animal or a famous person with the body of another animal or person: a gargoyle with Ronaldo's body, a hydra with Britney Spears's body. The creator of digital beings was a graphic designer who had disappeared mysteriously; because of the proliferation of pirated digital beings, his sister patented his invention and looked for the most probable applications. One of these had been to sell the possibility of their use to the corporation in charge of Playground.)
One night the avatars painted revolutionary slogans in various places in Playground where ads for Sony, Nokia, Benetton, Coca-Cola, and Nike were prominent. In all the attacks they left the signature of the Restoration, the name Kandinsky had given to the group: a capital R with the @ sign instead of the letter a. Chased by the police, they escaped down the streets of the anarchist neighborhood and managed to hide in a professor's home. One of the avatars was caught as he jumped over a fence and fell into the yard next door; security forces took him to the Tower, the infamous building where the avatars that were most disruptive to the regime were held.
Radio Freedom, one of the few clandestine media that the government of Playground had not yet managed to silence, spread the news of the attack. Gossip and rumors magnified the Restoration's attack, and so began the legend of BoVe in Playground.
In the solitude of his apartment—a desk with a computer, a black-and-white television, a stereo, and a mattress on the floor—Kandinsky began to think about his next move. He read in the newspaper that Montenegro's government had granted the contract for the provision of electricity in Rio Fugitivo to GlobaLux, an Italian-American consortium.
Chapter 23
YOU EAT LUNCH at the Black Chamber's cafeteria, much to your disgust. The soups taste like paste—or what you think paste would taste like if you tried it—there are usually grease spots on the cutlery, and the meat is tough, full of intricate labyrinths of nerves. You have told yourself time and again that you will not eat there and just before lunch, almost as if it were a ritual, murmur that you will go home as you used to, to eat with Ruth and Flavia, watch the news on TV for a while, and take a half-hour nap with a handkerchief covering your eyes (the extravagant routine of domestic life). But then you find some excuse to postpone going home at least until that night. And so you send an e-mail to Flavia—perhaps a digital photo or a thirty-second video clip of you clowning around in the hallways of the archives—as insufficient compensation.
You are alone at a table in the farthest corner of the cafeteria, reviewing another coded message that you received this morning, when Baez and Santana approach, plastic lunch trays in hand.
"May we join you?" Baez asks.
You try to detect any mocking or sarcasm in his voice. Upset and worried, you would have liked to say no. You are about to finish deciphering the message, and all indications are that you have been insulted again: criminal, murderer, your hands are stained with blood. Your good manners prevent you from refusing.
You close the file that contains the message. You observe the two of them, one blond, the other dark—opposite sides of the same coin. Black pants, white shirts, and ties. Albert had encouraged individuality and let people dress however they wanted; Ramírez-Graham thinks he is the head of a boarding school and has imposed a strict dress code at work. You could pick them out just by their clothes. Under Albert's reign those with the most talent, like himself, flourished in Rio Fugitivo; Ramírez-Graham's mantra is that one person's victory is everyone's—influenced by his reading of The Three Musketeers, Turing muses—and there is no way for anyone to stand out from the rest.
"The boss is fuming," Baez says, taking a bite of his hamburger.
"No wonder," Santana replies. "The Resistance humiliated the government."
"And Montenegro's looking for someone to blame. Or his government isi same thing. Because at this point, Montenegro is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by his inner circle. His family. His wife. If he dies, they'd probably keep him artificially alive until the end of his term."
"Sure, and we pay for it."
"They think we're magicians."
"We're supposed to intercept all communications in the country."
"And decipher them."
"I always say that maybe the old methods might have better results—go looking for compromising papers in garbage dumps."
"Fucking Resistance. The computers those kids have are more powerful than ours. Maybe we're irrelevant?"
"Maybe the next president will get rid of us just like that. If it's the leader of the coca growers, there's no doubt about it."
"That's why we envy you, Mr. Sáenz."
"Sincere envy."
Their speech is disjointed and loud, their mouths full. They are disturbing your peace. They both rose rapidly thanks to their blatant courting of Ramírez-Graham. Better yet, they didn't even have to rise, they started at the top. Albert wouldn't even have hired them.
"We would've loved to have lived during your time," Baez continues, lowering his voice. His expression seems sincere.
"A golden age," suggests Santana, his tone admiring.
"And we'd like to listen to you." Back to the loud tone, the words spoken emphatically. "Have you tell us what you've seen."
"You're part of history. We're not."
"Unless a miracle happens."
"And we take part in nabbing Kandinsky."
"That son of a bitch."
"They say he's not even twenty years old."
"No one has a clue. He could be anyone."
"He could even be working here."
"He could be our boss."
"He'd kill you if he heard you say that."
"He'd applaud if he heard me. Isn't that his rule? Be paranoid—distrust even ourselves."
"Yeah. I can't even read e-mails from my girlfriend without wondering whether she's sending me secret messages, telling me that she really hates me."
"I can't even read my own notes without wondering if I'm tr
ying to send myself a secret message while doing everything possible not to be deciphered by myself."
There is something pathetic about the exuberance of their speech and gestures. You might be irrelevant, but at least you are a museum piece. They are the worst kind of irrelevant, born at the wrong time for their profession. Both of them see you as the archives, and you, who fought so hard against it and cursed your obsolescence so much, begin to believe that maybe accepting your new state is not so negative after all.
"There's not much to tell," you say. You will not give them the satisfaction. The first thing you have to learn in this profession is to keep a secret, even from your own colleagues.
"Of course there is. Don't be so humble."
"The one who has a story to tell is Albert," you say. "He knows everything about everyone."
"But he can't talk anymore."
"Which isn't a bad end for people like us," you say.
"Well, at least tell us something about him. Was he as smart as they say?"
"Is it true he was a Nazi fugitive? A good friend of Klaus Barbie's?"
"Two Nazis in charge of secret operations when Montenegro was dictator, one in charge of the paramilitary and the other in charge of gathering intelligence."
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