Shantytown

by Cesar Aira

  Ecstasy enveloped him from within. He needed that, and much more besides. His old problems had intensified and were building to a crisis. His nemesis, the judge who had sworn to destroy him, was hot on his heels, accumulating evidence, and no doubt preparing her final attack. But he would be a step ahead . . . thanks to that pair of teenagers, the not-so-innocent pawns in his Machiavellian plan.

  At the age of fifty, ravaged by failure, by the slow, corrosive contamination of crime, by divorce and fatigue, just when there seemed to be nothing left for him . . . Cabezas had discovered that he still had time; and in the time that he had left, whether it was long or short, he could do a lot. But not a lot of anything. That was precisely what was ending or had already come to an end: the free, open possibility of anything. There was one path left, and only one: evil. That was the way to renewal and action. He had discovered that he wasn’t too old for that. When every other avenue was closed to him, when it was all definitively finished . . . a path opened up in the opposite direction, the dark path of evil, like a second life. And once he had set forth on it, no hope or ambition could be too great, because he really could do evil on a vast, inordinate, epoch-making scale, like a superhuman monster.

  It was a consequence of age, not of some psychological tendency or inclination. Age and the experience that had built up over the years of his life. He had toyed momentarily with the other alternative: love. But he soon came to the conclusion that it was impossible. Love, in any of its forms, required the involvement of another person, and it was becoming clear to him that he had left all the others behind. This was something that he had to do on his own.

  He ascended to untrodden heights, to the summit of the cosmos, abode of the great forces that move all things, beyond the realm of life. Who said he was just a corrupt policeman? And what if he was? Even confined to the meanest of forms, even if he was nothing more than a stray bundle of policeman’s atoms, he could still channel the supreme powers of evil and create a new universe, a new city for himself, the hidden city, of which he would be king and god.

  The heavens were bursting, their lights spinning crazily, the divine gas igniting in icy flames as the black throats let out their roars, which were echoed by a groan of exaltation exploding from the lips of Ignacio Cabezas.

  IX

  Maxi went on leading this disjointed parade for a long time; there seemed to be no end to his meandering, and yet, at the same time, it was speeding up. Finally the chapter of rummaging came to a close, and the scavengers whom Maxi was helping turned homeward. Once they crossed Directorio, the whole family climbed up onto the cart, and their human draught horse started trotting through the dim labyrinth of the projects, following the little streets that led toward the shantytown. As he passed under the streetlamps at the corners, the stalkers glimpsed his sweaty form. His mouth was open — he must have been panting — and he was so intent on his task that he didn’t look back once. Which was just as well because with the frequent flashes of lightning the girls — who were half a block behind with nowhere to hide — were clearly visible in silhouette. They in turn were so worried about being noticed by Maxi that they never thought to look around, so they didn’t see the car that was coming up behind them in first gear, stopping at every corner. The street was otherwise empty, and when the lightning relented the darkness thickened. A massive wind had risen, blowing in all directions, chaotically. The plants in the little gardens were thrashing about madly, throwing off leaves and buds like a frenzied gambler tossing dice.

  Suddenly, in a paroxysm of thunder and lightning, the rain came crashing down. Thousand of gallons of water fell at once, in black swells heaved about by the wind, which collided with resounding wallops. Jessica and Vanessa were horrified to see the cart ahead of them accelerating suddenly. It was getting away, leaving them there, exposed to the elements, with nowhere to shelter . . . or so they thought. Headlights suddenly lit them up, and they heard a roaring, distinct from the noise of the storm, approaching till it almost touched them: it was the furious acceleration of a car, and then the squeal of brakes. Jessica jumped aside so as not to be struck by the door swinging open.

  “Get in!” shouted an urgent voice from inside.

  The two girls screamed like banshees, and their shrill notes spiraled up among the torrents inextricably, although they were screaming for different reasons: Jessica because the storm, although it hadn’t come as a surprise, had made her quite hysterical; Vanessa because, in the greenish light from the dashboard dials, she had recognized the bestial face craning forward to look up at them. It was the hideous man who had stopped her in the street, the stalker from her worst nightmares. It was so unexpected, and at the same time so horrifyingly opportune, that her whole being was seized by a spasm of terror, and she saw him as a bloodthirsty stegosaurus hoisting his rocky neck from a lake of oil, on the night of the end of the world. The escalation of her cries was answered by more crackling flashes in the sky and Jessica’s continued shrieking, which made Vanessa scream more loudly still because she thought her friend had recognized him too. And their notes at the very top of the scale were accompanied by the policeman’s hoarse bass, shouting angrily:

  “Get in, you stupid bitches! Get in, for fuck’s sake, or I’ll blow you away!” As if he really would, he began to fumble at his chest, near his armpit, but the nervous tension in the air had flustered him as well, and he fell forward onto the passenger seat. When he lifted his face again, a moment later, it was even more horrible and distorted than before. And when he pulled his hand from underneath his body, and reached out toward the girls, almost touching them, it wasn’t a gun he was holding but a small crystal flask, streaming with rain, from which the lightning struck scarlet sparks.

  “GET IN!!”

  Whether spellbound by the ruby flask, which seemed to make the rain more liquid in the space around it, or frightened by that madman’s anger, or because they really had nowhere else to go and were getting soaked, the girls obeyed. They had been warned so often, ever since they could remember, against the temptation of getting into a stranger’s car, there was really no excuse for yielding to it now. But people quite often do exactly what they shouldn’t, automatically ignoring every sensible and reasonable course of action. And the man wasn’t actually a stranger, which is what made it really strange. Unfortunately Vanessa was stuck in the middle, between her friend and the policeman, and this would lead to mutual recriminations later on: Vanessa would say that she had been pushed in by Jessica, who would claim, in all sincerity, that she had simply followed Vanessa’s lead. In any case, once they were in, Cabezas stretched out his arm in front of them and yanked the door shut as he stepped on the accelerator and released the clutch. The car shot away.

  “Do you remember me?”

  Vanessa had lost her voice somewhere in the back of her throat but finally she found it again:

  “Yeah. You’re Cynthia’s dad, right?”

  The familiarity of her tone wasn’t really surprising; she had the manners of a typical convent-school girl.

  In the darkness, Jessica’s face twisted into a grimace of astonishment. She had met Ignacio Cabezas, Cynthia’s father, and this wasn’t him. Vanessa must have been getting mixed up. But when she heard him say, “That’s right,” the first thing she thought was that he must have been the father of a different Cynthia, and since there was a girl at their school with that name, apart from the one who got killed, Jessica guessed that she was this man’s daughter. In any case, it was a relief to learn that there was some connection, and she relaxed a bit, but not for long.

  “Where were you going, in a storm like this?”

  “We were going home,” said Vanessa.

  “Don’t lie! You think I was born yesterday?”

  “I swear!”

  “Save your swearing, little Miss Innocent! You were following your brother.”

  Jessica intervened, not because she wanted to help her friend but because she hated to be left out of a conversation:


  “We wanted to find out what he was doing, how far he goes with the collectors.”

  “And you had to do it tonight? In the rain?”

  “How were we supposed to know it was going to pour?”

  It was a good answer; a moment of silence ensued. The car was plowing through a choppy sea (the streets had flooded), throwing up big curved screens of water on either side. Cabezas drove boldly, taking the corners at top speed, as if he were on a race track.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t you worry; we’ll be waiting for him when he gets there. I know where he’s going, even if you don’t.”

  “You know Maxi?”

  “You two are going to introduce me. I’d like to say a few words to him.”

  That explained it all satisfactorily, so now it was just a matter of waiting for events to unfold. The windshield wipers were shucking masses of water off the glass, without really improving the visibility. Vague and shifting shapes could be glimpsed through the momentarily transparent semicircles, and the beams of the headlights vanished into the raging whirl. That’s why the girls stared with saucer-like eyes when the car, which was still accelerating, came out into an open space of some kind, and they saw a dawn-like radiance ahead, rising up to the clouds. They were dazzled and shaded their eyes with their hands. It was a ring of yellow light, or rather a dome, made of pure illuminated night air, in which millions of moving points created a golden texture with a marvelous depth.

  “What’s that?” they shouted.

  “The shantytown,” said Cabezas.

  “Are they bees?” asked Vanessa.

  “No, you moron!” said Jessica. “They’re raindrops.”

  When their gazes descended from this wonder, they discovered that they were in a very wide, completely flooded avenue (it would never have occurred to them that it was Calle Bonorino, the street on which they lived). It was a rectangular lake, its surface ruffled by gusts of wind and pricked by rain. There was, of course, no longer any difference between street and sidewalk; both were under water. But it looked as though there was no sidewalk on the right anyway, because there were no houses on that side, just a broad parking lot for trucks and a very long wall. And in the middle of that desolate, rainswept space was a motionless figure, which they all noticed at the same time. Although their vision of this person through the windshield sluiced with water was dim and blurry, all three were sure they knew who it was.

  “There he is!” shouted Cabezas, wrenching the steering wheel around with all his strength. “What did I tell you? How’d he get here so quick, the bastard!”

  But as they drove toward him, he looked wrong in the headlights, and even Cabezas had to admit that Maxi couldn’t have beaten them on foot. Vanessa was the first to see who it really was:

  “It’s the Pastor!”

  At the same time, succumbing to a resurgence of hysteria, Jessica yelled:

  “Careful! Don’t run him over!”

  The two cries entered the inspector’s consciousness simultaneously, and their effect was to set him thinking. He also took his foot off the accelerator and stepped on the brake, and since the vehicle wasn’t responding as well as it would have on dry ground, gave the steering wheel a spin. The car pulled up right next to the Pastor, who was drenched to the bone and clearly resigned to it. He was young, chubby, dark-skinned, and had the look of an Indian from the Andean plateau. He was trying to see who was in the car, but couldn’t because of the tinted windows and the dazzling headlights, so in his uncertainty he maintained a politely expectant attitude. He had apparently been waiting for someone, but must have begun to suspect that the person he had arranged to meet was not in the car.

  “So this is the famous Pastor,” said Cabezas. “The one who sells drugs to you lot. No wonder you were scared I’d run him over.”

  “No!” shouted Jessica. “I just didn’t want him to get hurt. I’ve never seen him before.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve seen him around, that’s all. He’s always going to the police station near my place . . . I’ve never bought anything from him!”

  Cabezas’s mind was racing, as if it had taken over from the motor of his car, which had now come to a stop. For him this chance encounter was like winning the lottery. But he was also realizing how much he didn’t know. So his colleagues in the police force were in contact with the Pastor? What a time to find out! They were using the Pastor as an informer, behind his back, but it was really a way of getting into the trade, which was supposed to be his area; tacitly, they’d let him have free rein, just so he could flail around without cracking the secret, and then, when the time was ripe, they would use him as a scapegoat. They were going behind his back . . . and the judge’s back too, because they’d put her on his trail, knowing it wouldn’t lead anywhere.

  But now by the most amazing and fantastic stroke of luck he had come to the place that no one had thought he could reach on his own, where no one wanted him to be: the very center of the action. There must have been a reason why that scarecrow was standing out there in the rain. Maybe the storm was the signal the Bolivians had been waiting for to launch their big operation. Or maybe not. Maybe the signal was something else entirely. But that didn’t matter: by the power of sheer action he could shape the circumstances to fit any format. All he had to do was collect the prize for his triumphant decision to be bad, or to occupy what was left of his life — as a liquid fills a receptacle — with the hyperplastic element of evil.

  He opened the door and got out. His mind was made up. Getting wet was the least of his worries.

  “Praise be to the Lord!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, so he could be heard over the thunder and the crashing of the rain.

  “Praise be, brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  The Pastor stared at Cabezas open-mouthed, and since he was shorter and had to look up, his face was doused with water.

  “Come on, where is he? They’re right behind us!”

  “But who sent you?”

  Of all the plausible replies, Cabezas chose the one that he could back up with something concrete and visible. And, by chance, he hit on just the thing to fool the Pastor:

  “They brought me,” he said, pointing at the car. The Pastor bent down a little, and a flash of lightning revealed two pale faces looking at him. He recognized Vanessa.

  “He’s in duckling, number seventeen,” he said with obvious relief. “But he’s fine . . .”

  Then Cabezas made his big mistake. It was understandable: Comissioner Cuá, the chief at Police Station Seventeen, had a surname that sounded like a duck’s quack. Thinking that the Pastor was referring to his colleague, Cabezas asked ingenuously:

  “So how do we get the gear out of the station?”

  Grasping the enormity of the misunderstanding, the Pastor took a step back and his expression morphed.

  “You’re not the father! You’re a cop!”

  Then it was his turn to make a fatal mistake. He put his hand in his pocket. He wasn’t reaching for anything. It was just a habit. Something he’d picked up from preaching: he’d learnt that the more absurd and unnecessary a gesture, the greater its effect on the audience. Cabezas, who thought the Pastor was reaching for a gun, whipped his out first and fired two shots into the young man’s chest. The Pastor toppled over backward, like a tree-trunk falling into the enormous puddle. Almost as soon as his victim’s head hit the water, Cabezas was back at the wheel of his car, accelerating wildly, ignoring the shrieks of his passengers and the hair-raising hissing of the lightning bolts, and the hammering of the rain on the hood, and the sirens of the police cars arriving at the scene of the crime. For the moment, all he wanted was to get out of there and if he’d been near the ultimate edge, the black rim of the universe, he would have aimed the snout of the car in that direction and driven off.

  X

  The floating corpse was not yet cold when an impressive squad of new-model patrol cars came tearing out
of the narrow part of Bonorino in single file and pulled up on the esplanade, with their sirens blaring in a raucous ostinato and their lights flashing relentlessly. The cars at the rear rushed forward in a final spurt of acceleration while the front-runners were already braking. They ended up forming a large semi-circle all pointing at the body. For a moment nothing moved, except for the lights spinning on the roofs of the cars. The rain went on lashing this urban plateau. It seemed to be running off the great dome of light over the shantytown to swell the black floodwaters converging on the corpse.

  The first thing to move was the door of the car that had ended up in the middle. A moment later, the doors of all the other cars opened too. But no one got out. The doors stayed open, swinging on their hinges in empty space. If the door of the middle car had closed again, perhaps all the others would have followed suit. But it didn’t. A leg emerged. It was the leg of a woman: fat, short, but shapely. A stocking with a pearly sheen, a red leather shoe with a stiletto heel at least six inches high. Legs emerged from all the other cars, one per door, but these were men’s legs, in trousers of regulation blue, with feet encased in impeccably polished boots. All of the feet, like the first to emerge, hesitated for a moment in the air, thrust out almost horizontally, as if to say: “Shall I take the plunge?” In any case, they were drenched already; not just wet, but pummeled and wrung by the rain.

  The little red shoe plunged into the water, followed by the matching shoe, and then, in a single fluid movement (it only took a couple of seconds, and yet it had a certain choreographic grandeur), there was a woman standing beside the car. It was the implacable and widely feared Judge Plaza. The rain renewed its attack on her. Policemen had stepped from each of the cars, all looking respectfully in the same direction as the judge.