A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  Each gang blamed the other for unleashing the war. The s accused the s of having cajoled a group of its plastic girls into their den by the use of conceptual maps. Once there, they were given goods that had earlier passed through the dealers’ sweaty balls. The s didn’t deny it. They had been responding to provocation: the s had bribed the avaricious owner of the skate store where the s bought their uniform Gore T-shirts and managed to persuade him to stop stocking the gigantic sizes that almost came down to their knees. The s looked ridiculous in tailored T-shirts that didn’t even cover their stomachs: a distinguishing feature of the Psychedelic Lolitos. No one was frightened by their death’s head logos when they were printed on stretch cotton. The s looked like out-of-work actors. Their most fanatical devotees accused them of selling out to the seduction of appearance.

  The inhabitants of Villa Miserias suffered the effects of these confrontations. The price of the laced drugs went up to absorb the increasing costs of arming the combatants with knives, nun-chaku, and brass knuckles. Expeditions to avenge insults spiraled. There were no-go areas. The rival groups searched any unwary person who passed through their zone; if someone was wearing the symbol of the enemy gang, they were forced to buy merchandise then and there.

  Both gangs made forays into other related activities, such as robbery and extortion. The Lolitos stole imported aftershave lotions from apartments; to impress the girls, they borrowed—without permission—the flashiest cars. Either from carelessness or as a sophisticated form of torture, they would leave tapes of their sickly-sweet romantic ballads in the stereos.

  The s, in contrast, developed a telephone extortion network. They would ring repeatedly, at inconvenient hours, and list the names and occupations of the members of the family. In exchange for doing nothing, they asked for pornography to satisfy their onanism. The victims were supposed to leave packages of magazines, movies, erotic photonovelas, papayas—perfect for masturbation—or analgesic sprays to be used in the practice known as the deadhand.

  There were also psychological terror tactics. One morning Villa Miserias awoke to a gruesome scene in the Plaza del Orden: blond-haired heads with well-defined features, impaled on posts, surrounded by a wash of red stains and severed limbs. They were the remains of a well-known brand of plastic doll and represented the violent dismemberment of the s. The latter responded to this aggression by destroying the ’s games consoles, tearing up their collectable comics, and leaving them scattered around the green areas. There were warnings to the owners about what would happen next. Confused, hunched under the weight of the gazes trapped in the crossfire, the Black Paunches collected up these messages.

  The naked violence exasperated the residents. It wasn’t the same as knowing awful things happened in other places where the victims were always far away. The horror was no longer abstract and now it was very close to them all. The routine nature of the violence periodically mobilized those affected into action. When some wealthy member of the community suffered the effects, it was considered more serious than if it happened to the habitual poor wretches. Inflammatory meetings were organized, demanding the resignation of the board, the cleaning up of the Black Paunches, increased security and harsher punishments, the creation of neighborhood groups to oversee the implementation of these demands…The criminal gangs would turn down the heat for a short time. In reality, the excesses that triggered the fury of the moneyed classes didn’t suit them either, but it wasn’t easy to ask their scorpions not to sting frogs if doing so went against their instincts. The situation would stabilize until the next rocky patch merited a fresh outbreak of the same drama, but with different protagonists.

  Joel Taimado felt under pressure to intervene, but the juggling act required was beyond him: in essence, a community with high levels of addiction was asking him to combat the people who were supplying the very thing they didn’t want to live without. Even he realized that the demand would be satisfied one way or another. It was a matter of taming the bronco not canceling the rodeo. The provisional solution consisted of a few, very public crackdowns, almost with the agreement of the gangs themselves, as a necessary sacrifice to keep the wheels rolling. This triumph was attributed to a careful intelligence operation. For a couple of nights, people slept more soundly, until the organizational chart of the stricken villains was reconfigured. Taimado was aware that he was just putting temporary caps on molars destroyed by caries. In consultation with Selon Perdumes, they opted for the best of non-solutions: the time had come to talk to Mauricio Maso.

  Taimado waited until Maso returned from his night shift. He found him sitting on his mattress between the containers, sucking out pieces of glass from his arms and putting alcohol on his wounds. In his own particular way, Taimado asked Maso to return to his old occupation. In exchange for a cut of the profits, he would turn a blind eye. What’s more, since the workers had just been moved to Building B, they could offer him a shared room that would be a haven from the dry winds.

  “Sorry my friend, other bastards are taking care of that now,” murmured Maso without letting his attention stray from his surgical task.

  “Uh-huh. The thing is that the boss is pushing harder and harder for us to do nothing and we’re going to end up with sweet FA again.”

  “The solution’s obvious, you son of a fucking bitch. Give me back what you stole and I’ll get started with that.”

  Hearing this demand, Taimado held out the envelope he’d been given in anticipation of just such an eventuality.

  “Right. I’m already on the case,” said Maso before spitting a gob of blood mixed with alcohol onto Taimado’s shoes.

  Maso began announcing his return through his appearance. He started washing again, his hair was combed and he had new iguana skin boots. When his old regulars timidly approached him once again with requests, he openly shunned them, sending out a veiled message that something was going to happen.

  To clear up any doubts in the communal mind, Juana Mecha repeated to anyone interested: “The speckled cock’s about to stretch its wings.” Maso was waiting for Taimado to raise the checkered flag.

  The first step was to weaken the groups from within, stealthily placing explosives to bring about an implosion. Contact was made with the most corruptible elements: a talent scout in a linen suit promised the Lolitos places on the catwalk of a coming fashion contest, a sure springboard to stardom. They went excitedly home to consult the faithful mirror that never lied. Due to their sinuous ethical principles, the s were more difficult to bribe. A handful was persuaded that the group had sold out. The cancerous cells had to die before they contaminated to rest: those who survived could head a new cult. Comparisons with characters from their favorite fantasy sagas were used to convince them. They were commissioned to produce an illustrated book, a compilation of the maxims of their deformed idols called The Wary Warrior’s Manual. The dissident s saw it as a foundational document in the regeneration of the Marginals.

  The coopted members of both gangs provided Taimado with precise information on the structure of their organizations. They were also asked to plant rumors about the quality of the goods, already dangerously poor due to the wars. Each gang accused the other of cutting their wares with fertilizer and powdered gelatin. Stories of blindness and other secondary effects were rife. Consumer confidence plummeted.

  To assure a simultaneous, two-pronged attack, the turncoat Lolitos were asked to organize a megaparty on a specific day: every year the s got together to commemorate the anniversary of the death of a famous guitarist—responsible for uncountable moments of acid-fueled depression—where they spent drugged-out hours listening to his albums under a strict rule of silence. They would gradually fall into a gummy-eyed, drooling trance, before collapsing unconscious. This was the most long-awaited date in the calendar and it was an unmitigated provocation for the Lolitos to play their plastic music on that day.

  Taimado had ensured that unusually large orders were placed separately with two of the chief Lolitos, who, to
cover the cost, borrowed money from their mothers on some school-related pretext. The mothers failed to note the strangeness of this one-off charge during the school holidays. The Lolito suppliers arrived at the party, walking on air from the weightlessness of the powders stashed in their pre-torn jeans.

  When they didn’t find their supposed buyers, they attempted to keep cool, but their edginess slowly began to affect earlier clients. Two girls who had a crush on one of them bought a couple of bags from him, only to later flush them down the toilet. When one Lolito found the other closing a deal, he realized that he’d been set up: his comrade had put in the order just to bring about his ruin. He decided to confront him. They exchanged accusations until one of them lashed out. Biting and hair pulling followed. The struggle reached an impasse: one had an arm around the other’s neck and was twisting his nose with his free hand, while the other had four fingers in his opponent’s groin, squeezing. They were tangled up in a cloud of groans when the Black Paunches burst in on the party and threw a Cuba Libre in their faces to separate them. The Lolitos were kneading their stinging eyes when they were dragged out.

  The Black Paunches gathered the two Lolitos and their mothers in the Chamber of Murmurs. The boys couldn’t speak for sobbing. Their mothers had never before seen those pills, powders, herbs, and strips of liquid-smeared paper, much less in such large—albeit diminished, after Taimado’s guys had taken their cut—quantities. Amid frenzied anxiety, overflowing love, demented cackles, and visions of two-headed mothers, the Black Paunches looked on as the domestic drama unfolded. The mothers came up with the idea that their sons should work to pay back their debt to the community. The following day, they were handed over to Juana Mecha, who gave them each a baggy beige overall, the uniform they would wear during their temporary membership of Villa Miserias’ cleaning squad. They didn’t even try to understand her words of welcome: “First they pamper you and then they don’t like you being soft.” The other Lolitos watched their fallen comrades carrying banana skins between two disgusted fingers: they were thankful not to be in their place. The gang had had its day.

  In the case of the s, the plan for dismantling them by means of ideological discord functioned to perfection. Perdumes had a new mission for Orquídea López that he would use to check if she had what it took for another project, still in its infancy: the editorship of the first local newspaper, The Daily Miserias. For the moment, her task consisted of creating an apocryphal piece of reportage: an invented article, apparently published years before in an influential foreign paper. It would relate a scandal involving the mythical rock musician whose death the Marginals commemorated.

  While onstage, during a massive, mud-soaked concert, the musician had produced a product symbolizing the empty consumerism of his native land. It was a pet rock—eyes dangling on a spring and a red rubber mouth—launched onto the market amid a great deal of hype, but which had achieved little success. After questioning the meaning of its existence, the rot it represented, the harm it would do to innocent children, the star had—to the delight of his devoted fans—annihilated the pet rock with blows from his guitar. From then on, they came to his concerts carrying one of the inert pets. During a particular guitar solo of his hit “When Goth Became Pop,” they would shatter the stones. As a consequence, sales of pet rocks soared into the millions. So far, the story was true, testified to by hundreds of eyewitnesses, videos, and photographs of fans, forcefully castigating the pacific rocks.

  The apocryphal article revealed a secret agreement between the controversial rock musician and the company that had contracted him to express public hatred of its stone pets. The most loyal fans, who went to many of the concerts of what turned out to be his farewell tour, shattered a great number of the stones that—when the star was extinguished with two bottles of barbiturates—were left as a symbol of the social norms that had caged him. The incriminating piece, written under the byline of Stanley Higgins, even claimed that the musician’s family continued to receive royalties for many years. The occult nature of the icon was clearly proven: it was one more product of that corporative machine his songs yearned to destroy. Orquídea printed out the article on newsprint and left it in the sun for hours to obtain a tone corresponding to the supposed date of publication. The torn edges were her final touch. Perdumes was amazed by the result. The sham clipping was anonymously left in the mailbox of one of the s who was already questioning the authenticity of the movement.

  The high point of the Marginals’ annual festivity was the moment when a piece of volcanic rock, with paperclip eyes and Styrofoam lips, was dissolved in strong acid. The s would sing the emblematic song just as the rock was about to completely disappear, with those who were still capable automatically gathering in a circle around the flask of acid. The current leader would raise the container to demonstrate that the solid might vanish but the spirit never. The others would nod to the rhythm of drumbeat, their faces hidden by their flowing locks. This was often the last image some of those present had of the evening.

  No one had anticipated the schism that was about to occur. With a true sense of drama, the puppet waited for the climax of the event. Just before the main guitar solo, when the master of ceremonies was already walking to the center of the room, he stopped the music by lifting the arm of the record player. Some of the participants continued to hear the solo in their heads; others spun round, horrified by the sacrilege. The puppet had something important to tell them. They had, for years, been conned by a false prophet. After a long, thorough investigation, he’d found a document by the journalist Stanley Higgins. They were nothing more than pawns in a perverse game of merchandising chess. He went on to read the article aloud in an affected tone.

  By the end, he’d triggered a theological debate that would divide the few who could still think into two bands. Those who didn’t want to believe him said it was a conspiracy: Why had no one else reported this? It was corporate interests trying to cast a slur on honest resistance. In contrast, their opponents had always known it was true, but hadn’t dared to say so because of the prevailing fanaticism. The powers that be had made sure that Higgins was silenced, somehow or other, and that was why the story had been buried. Did they really think a newspaper like that would risk its reputation publishing unverified information?

  Doubt continued to gnaw at the fraternity, until the sacrifice of the leader put an end to it. Lost for words, the members would read the article over and over, as if expecting that the next time it would say something different. The arguments put forward by the two sides had reached unbearable levels of abstraction. At that time, they were discussing whether the rock star’s outfits were in fact his own or part of the stage set. Only a grand gesture could avoid a confrontation. The leader crumpled up the clipping and put it in his mouth. To help him swallow, he took a swig of the blackish acid that had finished off the stone. A few drops stuck to the paper and charred the evidence; the rest destroyed his vocal cords. His most faithful followers rushed him to hospital, where the internal fire was extinguished by means of a stomach pump. He was close to death. The doctors insisted that the obstruction caused by the paper had saved his life, but, as a lifelong souvenir, he was left with incurable gastritis. Now he spoke in shrill whispers, like a Mafioso past his prime. It was the last time that the s met as a group.

  17

  Mauricio Maso’s double life began as had been promised. He moved into a shared room in Building B. At first, claustrophobia kept him awake at nights. But he struck up an almost instant friendship with his roommate, Beni Mascorro, who soon became his right hand man. Additionally, as Maso needed a respectable façade for his activities, he was included on the payroll of the cleaning staff. Sometimes he would forget to pick up his fortnightly pay packet.

  He started to surf the wave of efficiency inundating Villa Miserias. If possible, he avoided direct contact with his clients, except in cases involving carnal payment—a number that increased until it became his only addiction. Even then, the merc
handise was delivered the same way: first, a message had to be left in his mailbox. Maso assigned each of his clients a codename. He and Mascorro had fun creating labels that hit where it hurt. His order book showed six sprigs of hungry indecisiveness for Stinking Bedbug, two staples of prickly dandruff for Greasy Playing Card, five encapsulated lonelinesses for Bleeding Wrinkles, two drops of colorblindness for Toxic Baldy, four glassy veins for Big Ears the Whale, twenty spongy domes for Air Injection. Mascorro was in charge of making the deliveries and collecting payment. All packages also included a note containing Mauricio Maso’s favorite phrase, deriving from his metro days. On a certain evening, he’d gotten into conversation with a restless, bright-eyed globetrotter on a nonstop journey in search of a piece of a mammoth, lost in his childhood. Before leaving the train, the globetrotter had taken a small notebook from his pocket and written on one page what would become Maso’s mantra: “Drugs are vehicles for people who have forgotten how to walk.”

  As a gesture of reconciliation, Maso offered Taimado free trips for his entire squad. The Black Paunches fell over themselves to scrawl out their orders. Maso and Mascorro prepared them carefully: using spray paint of the appropriate color, they camouflaged significant amounts of the strongest powdered chili habanero they could find. Mascorro had to hold his tongue in ice-cold water for fifteen minutes after sampling a pinch. They made sure all the drugs ordered contained an adequate dose. Maso had a hard time not giving the game away when he delivered the suitcase to Taimado.

  No sooner had the avid Black Paunches congregated in the Chamber of Murmurs than they began to feel the effects of Maso’s vengeance. Those who inhaled the habanero directly into their brains experienced a reverberation that ripped through their nasal passages to the very back of their skulls. Between shrieks of burning agony, they rubbed their faces in the dry earth of the flowerbeds as if trying to sand them down the bones until the pain was rooted out. The ones who took capsules threw up food, bile, and eventually air, powered by the raging bombs in their stomachs. When the bubbles of love enveloped them, they felt arrows piercing their flesh, as if they were sieves spitting out streams of gastric juices onto the cosmic brotherhood. The acid group was infected by visions of snakes spraying them with flames. Their skin melted and regenerated, only to be charred again by the beasts. The only Black Paunch to inject a substance went into convulsions and drowned in his own spittle. His death was officially put down to a sudden heart attack.