A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  “During the children’s stay in The Land of Things with Multiple Names, ‘simulation’ had carefully studied their appearance and bearing. When it heard of their respective downfalls, it split in two and adopted their forms. It was tired of being a shadow of the real thing and wanted to experience the solidity of reality. After meeting its new parents, it felt at ease in its welcoming surroundings and they all lived happily ever after.”

  4

  “My son, as you travel the path of life, littered with innumerable joys and setbacks, you should proceed with extreme caution. Pleasing lies are among the most addictive of temptations: you should avoid them at all costs,” his father would say, giving him three pats on the head before turning out the light and leaving the room.

  Young Max would see forms dancing in the darkness. As he fell asleep, he would visualize flowers gobbling mules that became men wearing top hats and smoking cigars through their luxuriant beards. He didn’t want to let his father down: with all his might, he would try to deny the magical attraction of Princess M’s realm. His head spun. He was used to creating a mental image of his black, long-eared dog, fast asleep under the window looking out onto the green area. Whenever it saw a cat prowling along the wall outside, it would start barking wildly and bound to the window, crashing into the glass in its fury. On one particular occasion, the cat seemed to be taunting the sleeping dog. It moved its head up and down, making its enemy appear insignificant. Max’s first impulse was to wake the dog and point out the cat: it seemed a betrayal of his pet’s pride to let the provocation go unpunished. But when he was overcome by fondness at seeing it breathing so peacefully, he changed his mind. In the end, if it didn’t know of the cat’s presence, it was as if it didn’t exist. Max would then fall asleep on the frontier between the two kingdoms, thinking about how to keep a foot on either side.

  The father had methods of persuasion. Axioms and stories were an important element of a correct upbringing, free of illusions. There was just one thing missing. Dr. Michels was a firm believer in the notion that the flesh only remembers if it is branded with iron. Punishment had a spiritual value. The forbidden remained abstract until pain made it concrete. If taking a bite of a simple piece of fruit had opened the way to thousands of years of disastrous suffering, the importance of what was forbidden could not be underestimated. His son would some day be grateful for the small burn marks that would prevent his later expulsion from the paradise of just men.

  The doctor’s idea was an adaptation of a classic children’s story: every time Max told an untruth, he would paint his nose with gentian violet. The objective was to mark him with that purple liquid so often that Max would interiorize the stain and his mind would be fortified against lies.

  The problem was that Max didn’t tell lies. He never attempted to cross the limits set by his father. The doctor would listen, discouraged, to his son’s voluntary confessions of naughty acts: he had secretly given the dog a chicken bone; instead of doing his homework at the set time, he had spent thirteen extra minutes coloring in a picture in his pirate book; he’d considered drowning a cockroach in the toilet, but had finally put it in a box and taken it to the garden. Max’s confessions removed the doctor’s weapon; they took all the pleasure and meaning from punishment. The unopened bottle of gentian violet was his greatest failure. Max didn’t understand the harm his natural transparency, unmolded by castigation, could do him. For the doctor, it was like building a house of straw and spending the rest of one’s life hoping the wind never blew. He decided Max would have to learn the hard way: he would make his son tell an untruth whether he liked it or not. The end justified any means.

  The doctor showed himself to be in possession of a sadistic form of creativity. He elaborated situations that would place Max at a crossroads where, whichever direction he took, it would lead him away from any possible truth. He set traps in the areas where Max was most vulnerable. He knew, for example, of his son’s adoration of his old nanny, who had, for as long as he could remember, filled the gaps left by his mother’s many absences. The nanny was used to involuntary austerity; for her, it was enough to eat stale tortillas smeared with refried beans and a little diced cheese. But she loved the iced buns that could be bought by the packet and would carefully hoard her loose change to treat herself once every two weeks. The first time the doctor succeeded in painting Max’s nose, he bought a whole box of buns and asked that no one touch them. The nanny watched in desperation as the sell-by date approached; it seemed unpardonable that they couldn’t be eaten. When she’d almost saved enough to buy a packet for herself, she decided to open one of her master’s, hoping to replace it before he noticed. When the doctor confronted her with the absence, she admitted her guilt, offering to pay for the buns immediately. He told her not to worry, said she could eat as many as she wanted. It was a cheap price for what he would get in exchange.

  “Maximiliano, would you be good enough to come here for a moment?” he called as his son was getting ready for school.

  “What is it, Dad?” asked Max, not suspecting the trap.

  “Do you by any chance know who ate the buns I expressly asked not to be touched?”

  His words fell on Max like a hammer blow to the neck. He knew it must surely have been his nanny. Any answer he gave would incriminate her. If he accused her, it would not only be a betrayal, but also a lie, since he was not completely certain she had done it. Trembling, he looked at his father, who already had in his hand the purple punishment he was anxious to administer.

  “It was me, Dad,” he said in self-sacrifice, his head bent.

  His father took his arm and marched him to the kitchen. The nanny was dunking a bun in atole while listening to the news on her old radio. She suspected something was going on when she saw young Max’s tearful eyes and tried to shield him by asking if he wanted quesadillas for breakfast. Max shook his head, proud of his ineffective attempt to protect her.

  Max’s father took him to the bathroom and sat him on the toilet seat. As he soaked a piece of cotton wool in the purple liquid, he consoled his son with his exquisite affection:

  “My boy, when your understanding is sufficiently mature, you will realize that your father is your best friend. Other people with whom you form emotional relationships will come and go; your father, in contrast, will always be there for you.” He then meticulously covered every inch of Max’s long straight nose in gentian violet.

  In the beginning, he invented slight variations of the same scheme on a daily basis. Threatened with his dog being given away, Max took the blame for an act of destruction instigated by his father, and the same happened when the neighbors complained that some hyperactive kid had been ringing bells and running away and when Max’s trousers were found to be inexplicably covered in mud. It was just a matter of provoking a situation that would end in an admission of guilt. His father would then conduct an investigation that exonerated Max, punish him for lying and send him to school with a purple nose. The first time the young cleaning woman, Juana Mecha, saw him coming out of the building looking like a clown who’d just received a scolding, she gave him a candy and prophesized: “Your invisible rays will eventually dazzle them.”

  As the father’s addiction took hold, his methods became more absurd. He once handed Max an article to read on the fluctuations in the stock market:

  “Maximiliano, would you be good enough to tell me which company experienced the greatest fall in its share price yesterday?” From his tone of voice, Max knew that there was no way of knowing even the nature of his fault.

  “I didn’t understand the article, Dad,” he replied, bored by the pantomime about to unfold. He would have preferred to move directly to the punishment without the need for so many formalities.

  “Let’s examine the case more carefully. You surely remember that the article mentioned a case related to sausages?”

  “The brand we buy. It said something about rat meat.” Max watched as his father’s features closed ranks around his di
sproportionally long front teeth. Who would have imagined there were rats with tortoiseshell spectacles?

  “Making use of your faculties of reasoning, would you say this referred to something good or bad?” the rat-detective tenaciously countered.

  “Very bad.” Max longed to drown out the inquisitorial voice in a stream of purple water.

  “So, if we follow this reasoning through, based on our faithful friend logic, would you be inclined to say that the situation of the sausage factory improved or became worse?”

  “Worse.” Submerge it until not even the rat could hear its cries.

  “Do you see that you did in fact have all the necessary information for answering my question? Notwithstanding, you looked your father in the eyes and said in all confidence that you didn’t know. Come with me to the bathroom this instant.”

  On another occasion, he maliciously asked, “Maximiliano, if you were to search your heart to find who you have more affection for, would you choose me, or would it be perhaps your mother?”

  “I love you both equally.”

  “My son, what you say is impossible. First, because emotions cannot be scientifically measured. Moreover, without conceding your assertion, the possibility of your loving us equally is practically zero. I am sorry to have to tell you that you are, once again, lying.”

  By the final semester of his last year at elementary school, the ritual was wearing thin. However, the doctor’s determination to conclude his educational cycle wasn’t going to weaken when he was so close to completing his mission. Each morning, without even getting out of his bed, Dr. Michels asked his son if he’d lied the day before. If Max replied that he hadn’t, he would—by use of twisted syllogisms—demonstrate the opposite. In the case that he admitted his fault, the doctor would ask for an explanation. When Max came up with something, his father would send him to the bathroom to paint his own nose with gentian violet. It often happened that his nervousness would stop him thinking of any specific untruth; in that case, he’d lied in saying that he had lied. He only told the truth at weekends and on public holidays.

  At the request of a kindly teacher called Severo Candelario, the school authorities interrogated the child about the matter. He explained that the gentian violet was just to keep at bay the germs produced by a strange allergy. (His lie to the school director led to the next day’s punishment.) Their duty done, the topic was never mentioned again.

  His classmates weren’t so indulgent: they insulted him and invented cruel nicknames; he wasn’t allowed to take part in any of their games; they filled his backpack with rotting giant radishes encrusted with potato noses; they threw erasers at him and slapped his head when they passed him. Max understood this was all a consequence of the discipline imposed on him by his father, so he generally forced himself to put up with it until one day, during recess, a boy tipped purple jelly onto his hair. In what was almost a reflex action, Max wiped off the offending dessert and flung himself at his aggressor. He pulled him down by the hair and after banging his face into the ground a few times, forced him to lick up every last bit of jelly. The child cried loudly as he spat out pieces of gritty purple jelly. Severo Candelario had witnessed the entire scene. When he thought things had gone far enough, he ran up to pull the furious Max away, then carried him to his classroom to calm down and sent the nurse to look after the other child. In his report on the event, he stated that the boys were wrestling when the injured party accidentally hit his head. That was the last time anyone bothered Max; from then on they just ignored him.

  5

  In addition to a stronger character, Max gained something more valuable during his purple year: the close friendship of two other, obviously different children. Nothing could now break that initial pact of mutual protection between Max’s nose, Pascual Bramsos’ burned ear, and the almond-shaped eyes of his desk-mate Sao Bac-Do. She came from a distant land with swarms of bicycles and pointed hats; her parents had arrived by chance in that foreign country, seeking refuge from the rain that burned their children. While they were learning the language, they worked industriously in their small laundry. Even at that early age, all the other children had been taught to make judgments based on similarity. Rather than perceiving the seed of extraordinary beauty, they saw in Sao a girl with a prominent forehead and slit eyes who couldn’t pronounce her ‘r’s. When she’d transformed into a teenager with a mystical attraction, she would laugh as she spurned the gallantries of those same boys who had enclosed her in a circle, uttering guttural sounds, and stretching out the corners of eyes with their fingers.

  Sao, Max, and Pascual formed an order with rules that were incomprehensible to others. They used to meet during the recess in the musty tunnel connecting the two schoolyards to take their revenge—via marbles—for that day’s insults. The marbles were given warped versions of the names of their principal tormentors, and then, in fine, black felt-tip pen, Pascual would draw some feature on them, making them objects of fun. The three were also the masters of a secret Head World, where everything was the opposite of the reality that besieged them outside the tunnel. In Head World, you walked on the ceiling, and the ground protected you from the whims of the subsoil. It was inhabited by beings with half-molten ears, multicolored noses, and eyes like lines that stretched to the horizon. The three monarchs had a circus in which they kept scary caged creatures that provided a contrast to themselves, reminding them of how lucky they were; contemplating those symmetrical appearances, the lunch boxes with designs of robots with missiles for arms, listening to the smooth chatter made them dizzy. Those beings reproduced automatically on contact, producing a shower of raindrops made in the image of the hundreds of thousands of others; they communicated by a song of elongated vowels, puckering their open lips to show their teeth. Sao, Max, and Pascual used to act out their favorite part of life in their own world: they would enter the circus ring, performing a dance only they knew—learning its steps meant escape from the cages for the interchangeable creatures—and move about under the spell of the beat of imaginary drums, while the freaks of normality looked on in perplexity. Some began to imitate them and so others would join in too. By the end of the recess, everyone in Head World would be contorting themselves to the rhythm of its three creators. When the school bell rang, they all immediately disappeared, incapable of accompanying them to the real world where they each had to take up their respective roles. Hand in hand, they would run back to the classroom, still glowing with the acquired powers their classmates would never experience.

  6

  Dr. Michels worked in a cyclical way. To be precise, he considered that the cult of luxury that was beginning to spread through the air of the age to be the result of a lack of boundaries, the capricious desire both to have and be everything at once. For this reason, it was his duty to train Max to see beyond the falsities of immediate pleasure and penetrate into the gauntest regions, however hard it might be. He went back to the beginning to verify if the paint on his son’s nose had seeped into his bones.

  “Maximiliano, be so good as to come here for a moment.”

  “What is it Dad?” Max came toward him calmly, uninterested in the new means of turning his nose purple.

  “Given the perceptiveness you have inherited from me, have you by chance noticed the clothing your nanny wears on the days when she rests from her work-life duties?”

  The doctor challenged his son to meet and hold his gaze. Max was slow in responding, hoping to anticipate the landmines.

  “She wears the same pink uniform every day.”

  “You are surely aware of the reasons why she behaves in that way.”

  “So she doesn’t wear out her other clothes.”

  “In that case, do you not find certain contradictions in the fact that she possesses a number of articles of cheap clothing, but decides not to wear them?” Without giving Max time to reply, he inserted another bar into the construction of his character, “And answer me another question. Have you noticed that even on those
occasions when we offer her a portion of our food, she chooses to enjoy her plate of slightly rancid refried beans?”

  “She doesn’t like to take advantage.”

  “If your words are true, how do you explain that we have repeatedly caught her secretly sampling our bacalao during the Christmas festivities?” Before Max could draw breath, he continued, “Hold your tongue while your father is speaking. I will finally ask you to reflect on the following. Have you noticed the smell in the kitchen when your nanny has spent a considerable time there?”

  Max felt the cold sweat emitted by every pore in his body become a torrent. Normally, when his father had him on the ropes, he would go immediately to the bathroom, without saying a word, and paint his nose. Now, on the point of disobedience, his knees began to buckle; he found it difficult to breathe.

  “Please reply, Maximiliano.”

  “The food sometimes contains strong-smelling ingredients.”

  “And what about the evenings she spends watching television without cooking?”

  “The smell clings to her. Some days she doesn’t have time for shower.”

  “And how would you respond if I mentioned the rank scent of the perfume she puts on to go to mass?”

  Max ran to the bathroom and picked up the bottle of gentian violet. Dr. Michels followed him as quickly as he could. Before the liquid could soak into the cotton wool, he thundered, “Maximiliano, do not even consider disobeying your father in this way!”

  That moment was fixed in Max’s memory as the passage from a hard but cushioned world to a complex one, constructed from thorns. He thought of all the boring classical plays his father had taken him to. Beneath the bizarre costumes, the innocent cardboard scenery, the inviolable honor of damsels, and gentlemen who would choose death rather than stain that honor, beneath all that was a true lie: bald actors and actresses with sagging flesh—their miserable lives plagued by trivial cares—who their own characters would have roundly despised. Soaking the cotton wool would mean a prolongation of his sojourn in the phase from which his father’s expectant gaze wanted to expel him. They stood quietly, like two gunslingers, each waiting for the other to make the first move. After a few moments, Max threw the piece of cotton wool into the bin and put the cap back on the bottle of gentian violet. He lowered his arms and whispered, “We’re not all equal. They are different.”