A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  2

  The burial service and the various eulogies stressed Dr. Michels’ honesty and rectitude, but principally his healthy obsession with the concept of truth. He’d debated with the ancient theoreticians on the concepts of natural vs. positive truth, and had regretfully admitted that, even in terms of revealed truth, it was a man-made concept. This conclusion made him implacable: he offered up the meaning of his existence to finding ways to avoid the temptation of diverging from the truth. What he found was deeply unappealing. Outside of vague moral notions and Manichean fables, truth was, in reality, no use at all. It maintained its status as a shared ideal only because of a tacit acceptance of its unlimited non-observance. Without lies, we would be constantly getting snagged: co-existence would be unviable, especially with oneself. He carried out a careful experiment, and realized that he lied no less than fifty times a day: how he was feeling, a person’s appearance, his liking for the family of a loved one, his social viewpoints. The consequences of always telling the truth would be, in fact, unpleasant.

  He also came to the conclusion that, without self-deception, we would never get out of bed. The ability to work at a mechanical task for no other reason than to receive a paltry wage with which to educate our children to work at a mechanical task for no other reason than to receive a paltry wage, accompanied by a partner absorbed in her own repetition, increasingly distanced by the layers of routine and resentment waiting to rise to the surface, with only such occasional palliatives as holidays that only throw more light on everyday uselessness, or alcohol-fueled outpourings to friends that end in our babbling theories so stupid we are ashamed to recall them, spurred on by the possibility of experiencing the pleasure of guilt produced by sleeping with one of their wives, escaping from our crushing personal horizons to the peaks represented by a son’s first tooth, the possibility of seeing him compete with other children of his age to see which of them is most loved by his parents, or by the professional recognition of a boss with rotting teeth, pleased by the increase in efficiency of the gear mechanism we grease, or the lows caused by the death of someone close, or the eruptions of frustration against some public figure stupid enough to transgress society’s lax codes of corruption and tolerance of his excesses. If we didn’t find, every day, hundreds of lies to silence the many who inhabit us, if we didn’t get even with our bodies by an injection of thickness into our arteries, if we didn’t put up with our envy of others in order to envy someone else, if we didn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the worst has passed, we couldn’t play out the daily comedy. The dilemma of existence reminded him of an actor trained to get inside his character until he actually becomes him, but who hasn’t been shown the method for getting back out. What alternative had the madman with the bushy mustache offered him? Art. It was a viable solution for a few; for the immense majority—including Dr. Michels—it was unattainable, unthinkable.

  He consciously encapsulated all his objections and stored them in a remote corner of his mind. From meditation, he borrowed the technique of automatically abandoning any notion related to what one did not want to think about. Every time some current appeared, threatening to drag him into the whirlpool of TRUTH, he would take refuge in the dirty pool of his truth. He understood that it was a matter of ambition. He ought to renounce the immaculate concept and focus on a fenced-in, pragmatic, realizable version: completeness is not human. Conversely, one had to be intransigent in relation to agreed truths. Only that way can chaos be tamed. He would not allow young Max to be seduced into falling into that pit of shining truths that was poetry.

  Centuries before, someone had warned of the danger to society involved in its metamorphoses. Dr. Michels had a clear understanding of this: how can a better future be constructed if things change in relation to the names they are given? If a chair was not only an object for sitting on, it might occur to one person to crash it down on another’s head. Only an objectified language could kill the thing and put it at the service of human development. His son would live in a certain, solid world, far from the phantasmagoric abstractions that had been the downfall of so many.

  Max had displayed a lively intelligence from an early age. When he was five, his father had tried reading him a classic treatise on the truth, but it had been too hard for him. Dr. Michels, therefore, changed tack: every night he would take up a thick, leather-bound volume and open it at random to tell Max a story. It was the moment when the two of them were closest. If during the day Dr. Michels was absorbed in his own occupations and the nature of the person whose task it was to attend to them, in that intimate rite with his son he shed a number of the prejudices that ruled his acts, and became simply a slave to the stories he rigorously recounted to his son. Max listened with a mixture of nervousness—he didn’t want to disappoint his father by not understanding—and desire to hear the variations that sprung each night from what seemed to him the same book.

  The most frequently repeated story was entitled “The Land of Things with Multiple Names.” As soon as it began, Max would shut his eyes especially tight, trusting in the pressure of his eyelids to ensure he wasn’t overcome by sleep before the ending.

  3

  “Once upon a time, there were two children who lived happily in the forest with their parents. Everything in their simple, honest life was in harmony; every element of their surroundings was the result of pleasant familiarity. Their father had warned them never to cross the clearing in the forest: on the other side was The Land of Things with Multiple Names. Nothing there was what it seemed. Even the most inoffensive thing might drive them crazy: words were in command there and every day they decided to name things differently. For example, the word ‘tree’ suddenly tired of its leaves and wood; it wanted to expand its domain, briefly spread its roots, so it lay in wait and, when a jaguar passed by, it seized its name. Now it was no longer ‘jaguar,’ and everyone knew it as ‘tree.’ Its spots began to show knots of bark and branches sprouted from its legs. Its gait became increasingly ponderous; it could no longer pounce. In time, it took root and became anchored to the earth. Its jaguar memory slowly dwindled. It would watch the other wild beasts hunting swiftly, remembering that it had something in common with them, but it no longer knew what. Eventually, it lost any trace of its former name.

  “The names lived in a constant state of war, attempting to convert others to their meaning. Not one of them was sure what anything was called. An anarchy of forms reigned and what today was one thing might not be tomorrow.

  “The ruler of that country, Princess M, was in constant search of new names to enrich her realm. She used to trick them by offering a fun-filled world in which everything played at being everything else and nothing was ever boring. They were free to recover their names and leave when they wished, but they never did. Once they had discovered the pleasures of escaping from the tyranny of fixity and understood that her magic allowed them to be everything and nothing at the same time, none of them wanted to quit her kingdom. It was like an endless masked ball, liberated from the crushing responsibility of being always the same before others.

  “One day the children’s football accidentally went beyond the confines of the forest. On other such occasions, they had turned around and returned home, but this time the little boy was determined to enter the forbidden land, so he crossed the threshold with a firm stride. His sister waited to see what would happen. She watched as her brother attempted to pick up the ball and saw how it bounced away from him, reaching ever-greater heights. The boy allowed the ball to move away and then ran at it, kicking with all his might. The ball gave a whimper and flew off like a shot. It soon unfolded a pair of majestic wings: ‘eagle’ had stolen its meaning. For a while, it played a sort of aerial soccer with the boy, but as it was every moment more ‘eagle’ and less ‘ball,’ feathers began to cover its surface and the outlines of a beak and talons appeared. As the boy ran to kick it one more time, it took flight at the last minute—pretending to be reacting to the impact of his foot—and car
ried out a series of swoops that filled the boy with excitement; he had never before managed to kick the ball in that way. When the former ball was completely ‘eagle,’ it masterfully took to the air, thanking the boy for the chance to free itself from its fixed leathery existence.

  “The girl crossed over to join in the fun. They ran happily around finding unexpected properties in each thing. ‘Rabbit’ lost its solidity and color, floating hither and thither like multiform cotton wool: it wanted to be ‘cloud.’ The little girl picked a clover plant that then spitefully sprayed her face with a repugnant smell: it was beginning to transform into ‘skunk.’ They went along, marveling at it all, not thinking of the road home, until they came to Princess M’s castle.

  “They had never seen anything so miraculous. The princess had such control over words that she had constructed her castle of an infinite number of them, arranged in such a way that it appeared to each observer in the form he wanted to imagine. The two children saw the castle of their respective dreams, which changed as they conceived some new element: they saw a file of immense towers, waterfalls of chocolate, nonexistent animals composed of fantastic combinations, wild hanging gardens. Colors seemed to have been exclusively created to be displayed in that kingdom. Princess M was awaiting them inside her castle.

  “Everything felt comfortingly familiar. With unaffected warmth, Princess M showed the children her rooms and looked on in satisfaction as they made use of the possibilities of language to manipulate things at their will. The princess was excited to think that she had found lasting companions. Finally, she could demolish the walls of her terrible loneliness. Perhaps these children would evade the fatal destiny of so many others who had come before them.

  “The children were enchanted by the metamorphosis of their surroundings. Their family home seemed a distant memory; they were thankful for their escape from the predictable world where everything was always the same. It was fine for simple people like their parents, happy with their tranquil routine, but they were made for something different. The princess taught them increasingly sophisticated techniques for manipulating words. They were prodigies, easily meeting each new challenge. Princess M played with them for hours, making and unmaking unimaginable worlds. Even the words were amazed by the fluidity with which they changed: the meanings would last seconds and then they were a different brick in the construction of another madcap reality.

  “The Land of Things with Multiple Names was not exempt from terrible dangers. The children had to be on their guard against attacks from words wanting to impose their meanings. The simplest defense was to make oneself invisible. The princess told them that if they did not attempt to hold onto their own meanings, no one could force another onto them. The words that lost their identities were those so stubbornly vain about meaning just one thing that they were easy targets for the envy of weak-spirited concepts, affirming their identities by taking possession of others’.

  “In demonstration, she called ‘pig’ and ordered it to attempt to steal her meaning. Although aware it was destined to fail, ‘pig’ automatically obeyed. At first the princess resisted, concentrating on the features that defined her as the beautiful and powerful M. The children watched incredulously as she began to grow a hoof and her well-modulated voice was replaced by high-pitched squeals. ‘Pig’ thought it perceived a possible victory: no other word had gotten so far in an attempt to steal Princess M’s meaning. With her last glimmer of thought, the princess imperceptibly changed tack: she forgot all her defining features, put up no resistance to being something different, stopped trying to appear in her accustomed form. Instead, she concentrated on breathing deeply so she would seem like the air that entered and was expelled from her lungs, without struggling to be anything but her being, renouncing the pursuit of adjectives that originated in external mirrors. ‘Pig’ was thrown back against the wall. It made its painful way out in search of a victim more inclined to give up its meaning. It seemed to the children that Princess M was more beautiful than ever.

  “The boy and girl mastered invisibility. They delighted in walking around with an air of vulnerability, easy prey for any word hoping to extend its meaning. They would keep a sly watch on the onslaught and, at the last moment, withdraw behind a cape of transparency, leaving the confused word in search of a new target. Nevertheless, just as with all their predecessors, the children became ever less satisfied with the game of changing forms. The obedience of the concepts was not enough, they longed for total incorporation, to eliminate the boundaries that separated them from language and take on its properties in a permanent way. If in their distant past livese they had used words to name and order the world, they now wished to be the names and create a new order each day, to carry within themselves all possibilities. The challenge was to convert themselves into people of their own design, with capabilities only limited by the confines of language. They wanted to cut any connection with external reality, inhabit the worlds produced by their own minds.

  “One day ‘firefly’ accidentally flew into the girl’s mouth; instead of spitting it out, she swallowed it. She felt light, aglow. She tried a similar experiment with ‘iron’ and, although she found it difficult to digest, she felt more solid. She tempted ‘moderation’ to take possession of her and rather than making herself invisible, she did nothing. The word attempted to penetrate her from all sides without success. From that moment on, ‘moderation’ refused to have anything to do with that soul: she became insatiable, devouring whatever she could. Her aim was to retain every characteristic of the other, to be all things at once. She buried her essence under fatty layers of the foreign attributes she accumulated as she tore the words apart to incorporate their properties. Her addiction distanced her from her brother and the princess. It had stopped being a game. She gobbled sacks of words without even noticing their meaning. Each day, she had to make herself a new dress, as she would have burst the seams of the previous one.

  “The time came when she was no longer recognizable. She couldn’t even move: she was a sphere capable of conjuring up any form, color, texture, past and future, dream or nightmare. It was as easy for her to evoke a tropical form as a glacial one. She relived nonexistent moments when she saved lives, won prizes, was a river, or visited distant planets. No one else existed for her. Eventually, she no longer fitted on the page, so she stopped being part of the story. She existed in an eternal limbo, where she only had herself to satisfy the holes, monsters, and specters her imagination constantly created and filled.

  “Her brother had not come out of his room for a long time. He seduced words to stay with him in his refuge by telling them the plans he had for them: he would use them to reach a place no one had ever been before. His skill in arranging them would completely erase the distance between a thing and its name. At first, they proudly lined up to be part of the worlds he dictated. They were conscious of participating in something beautiful and enduring. But then he began to demand more of them; poor ‘anguish’ made a great effort to disperse its mists and become pure negative emotion: nothing it did was ever enough. The boy flogged it with a whip of terrifying, incomprehensible phrases. With each lash, he demanded greater effort and drama. It was no good. There was always a residue between the emotion and the meanings. As a punishment, the boy loaded it with sophisticated adjectives. ‘Anguish’ became increasingly more artificial and lost all its effect. It then received more lashes, until it could no longer even stand on its own two feet.

  “The density of the accumulated words was immense. It was impossible to walk around his room without bumping into some weary, famished concept. Then the foreseeable happened: the words rebelled and turned on their master. They had had enough of being used to originate tangled, insubstantial environments. Their plan worked perfectly. The boy was so entranced by what he considered to be his poetic talents that he no longer paid attention to the effects of his arrangements of the words. While he thought he was creating complex abstract worlds revealing the depths of the soul, t
he words silently regrouped to form an unbreakable cage.

  “When the boy tried to go outside for some fresh air, he realized what had happened. His flowery constructions were nothing more than thick bars. He started to unmake them, subjugating one word at a time: terrified, they gave in to his will. ‘Guile’ had seen this coming, so it gave the signal to move to the next phase: the words began to swell until they ruptured their boundaries. The cage became a lump of spongy concepts. The boy panicked. He didn’t understand the meanings. He could see tightly packed letters impeding his escape, without knowing what they referred to. The words had swollen to the point where they were empty. The boy crashed his head into one of the bars. The impact shattered ‘greed’ and left the aggressor with his face splattered with its ink. With the boy now confused, ‘waters’ gave the order for all the words to force down until they expelled their waste matter. The floor of the cage was flooded with the dots of ‘i’s, accents, the feet of ‘m’s, even whole letters the most coquettish words wanted to replace with others. ‘Broom’ bustled up to order the boy to sweep up the fetid waste. When the boy had finished, the words covered the floor in waste matter again. He was trapped in an interminable cleanup operation of the residues of language, expelled by words that had absolutely no meaning.

  “Princess M was left alone once more in her interminable wait for someone capable of playing with the words without being destroyed by his own pretension. Others came, but with decreasing frequency. ‘Applause’ took command of her realm, boasting of all the traps into which so many naïve people had fallen while attempting to seek her favor by dominating the words.

  “The children’s parents searched for many days without finding them. They had already lost all hope when the two children suddenly returned as if nothing had happened. The parents smothered them in kisses, hugged them tightly. Although they felt something important was missing from the children, they were so relieved to have them back that they preferred to let the matter go.