A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  The most surprising thing is that the other candidate didn’t raise a hair. During the whole debate, he acted as if he was a shop dummy with pre-recorded cassettes inside him. He repeated the same old policies in the same old tone, and made automatic gestures, never showing the palms of his hands. He didn’t even clean the cream off his glasses after the attacks, just went on speaking as if nothing had happened, expressing his good intentions with a cream-pie face.

  The audience wasn’t willing to identify who had thrown the missiles. When the event had finished, the Black Paunches licked the fingers of suspects they picked out at random, but nothing. To judge by the sour looks of the Paunches, the residents were using their ingenuity to protect themselves. In the end, there were no arrests.

  And there was no need for them anyway. González was celebrating with his followers in a marquee set up right next to the main stage. His team released a shower of gray confetti as he was making his triumphal entry, and the bits of paper stuck to the cream on his face. With his hands laced over his head, he went on wagging his elbows in celebration for a few minutes until all his followers left.

  A pretty obvious change has taken place in Michels during the campaign. His standpoint has become more and more obscure, like he feels more and more comfortable in the dark. His campaign promises are like maxims. In the debate, he said he’d bring in policies that separated the residents further from each other. He also told them he’d fulfill his promise to make them self-reliant. To no longer have to feel guilty because they have more than the bunglers, the people with no ambition, the lazy bastards (dear readers, forgive my language, but that was the term he used), the idlers, the weak, and the dregs of society in general who don’t want to add their push to the progress of Villa Miserias. The most powerful words of that night were when he said that if you can’t bear seeing the workers eating leftovers, then don’t go to the canteen at mealtimes. Period. He finished off the debate with a pronouncement that showed no pity for anyone: “Forget apologizing for being what we are! I’m not offering the best for each one of you, only for those of you who are able to get it.”

  The residents gave him a wholehearted ovation. Some of them were waving around cardboard axes with what looked like blood on the blades, very probably handed out by his campaign team. So maybe the tide has turned and Michels has won over the dark side of the residents. At least that’s how it seemed during the debate.

  There’s no going back now. The borderline used to seem to me a punitive concept, more like a warning than a reality, until I suddenly crossed it. That image of not stopping when going downhill is incomplete. It forgets to mention that first you have to scale the huge desire to run headlong down the slope. I wanted to be one of the great majority who graze placidly across the plains. Not to have to confront either steep upward paths or vertiginous descents. On election day, I intend to take another look at my father’s secret hiding place. We’ll see if I’m destined for martyrdom or villainy. That’s if I have the guts to find out.

  I hadn’t realized the managers were cream-pie proof. There’s no way of stopping them. Modesto González spoke about the importance of selling the best of Villa Miserias. Maximizing the profitability of our image. Taking full advantage of the brand. Each new layer of cream made him stronger. Anonymity gave him a more clearly defined character. Big Brother mentioned the importance of a flesh and blood figure that could attract emotions. The wheel hasn’t moved on, but it is still turning. We are no longer monitored from any specific center. We’re kneaded into shape by abstract forces, emphatic maxims, mysterious, remote entities. The law always favors those who make the rules. Feelings are numbed. The protest is always the same, the photo of a woman covered in blood. This time they’ve gone too far! And then, back to reproducing the chain of subjugation at every level.

  The bosses make corporate retreats to encourage unity with the workers. That complicity authorizes the later trampling underfoot. Those at the vanguard of thought have as many as three mansions. Union leaders say that seeing them arrive in luxury cars raises the workers’ morale. The talking cream pie was right when he said it makes no difference which of us wins. And although he didn’t state it openly, the reason is obvious. Political struggle is a form of entertainment floating over an implacable economic base. The workforce is so flexible that it’s not even a workforce anymore. Just cheap pieces of machinery, discarded without the least ceremony.

  The front row of notables was there, with one empty seat, as usual. The chief wouldn’t be long in coming: until, once more, he didn’t. To calm my nerves, I tried finding differences between them, but they just melded together like a shapeless gob of spit. I shook my head gently to settle myself back in my mind. That apparent lightness of a liquid allows it to spread unhindered, and it’s not until you try to stand up that you understand its incredible weight.

  Sao and Pascual are as fed up as I am. We’re not going to meet up again until election day. Even though I still haven’t finalized the precise details of my plan, they mustn’t suspect what it is. Sao would be too frightened. She knows me better than anyone, but not well enough. I really don’t want to cause them pain. What they don’t know is that I’ve still got more doors to open.

  I was so absorbed in my thoughts when I left the debate that I almost tripped over Juana Mecha’s broom. She must have been waiting for me. I gave her a huge hug to stop myself crying. She examined me with her hands on her chin, as if trying to work out who was standing before her. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her dismayed: “The eye that sees and is seen by the dragon’s gaze ends up seeing and being seen by the dragon’s gaze.” She kissed my cheek before returning to her sweeping. Her shift had ended some hours before.

  I turned the key and kicked open the door. A deal’s a deal. It was late already, too late for that committed journalist air. The darkness of her eyes made me reckless. There were only a few nights left before the final cavern.

  Without uttering a word, I pulled Nelly toward the bedroom. She asked in a whining voice what was wrong with me. I responded by practically dragging her along, with her struggling to free herself from my grip. I planted myself in front of her, pressing her to me with both arms. She shook her head as if begging me, but all I could hear were the orders of the Many, who were, by then, massively overexcited, out of control. I threw her onto the bed and unfastened her belt. Her body was struggling so fiercely against me that all I managed to do was break the belt in two. That’s when she gave me the slap that prematurely blinded me. With her scratching and kicking, I tore off her jeans. Panting with fear, she pleaded with me to stop. But every moan aroused me a little more. Grabbing hold of her hair with one hand, I stood to take off my own clothes. I was going to possess her, whether she liked it or not. She took advantage of my distraction to stretch out a hand in search of some object. I was already down to my briefs when I felt a stabbing pain in my thigh. A pair of nail scissors had drawn a glob of blood. When I pulled the scissors out, it hurt more than the original injury.

  With blood-splattered horror, I began to mutter pusillanimous apologies. I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know what I was doing. I pleaded with her to forgive me. She snarled, angrier than ever before. Then she leapt into the bathroom and returned with a roll of bandage. “So, you sorry excuse for a man. Don’t even move.” She wrapped a strip of the bandage around my wounded leg and used the rest to tie my hands behind my back. Next, she finished undressing and mounted me. Her eyes were afire with pure disdain. Then came the insults, the blows, the bites, and the caresses. I’d never experienced such an exciting sense of panic. We were so involved I didn’t even notice the arrival of the blindness. My other senses were trembling in hypertrophy. Then came the calm. As a final punishment, she didn’t untie my hands for the whole night, but she did clean my wound before going to sleep, and again in the morning. I lay studying the cut for what seemed an eternity: I knew it was going to leave a permanent scar.

  DAY 10

  LEARNING
TO SEE IN THE DARK. AN INTERVIEW WITH CANDIDATE MAX MICHELS

  Nelly López

  The election is almost upon us. Max Michels arrives punctually for his appointment at the news office of The Daily Miserias. He is limping and says he had a domestic accident. He looks evasive. Like a gambler who’s seen the last card but is waiting his moment to turn it over. His close-shaven head shows his rapidly receding hairline. Looking into his eyes, you’d say he was a stranger even to himself. His destiny is on the point of arrival, but he’s still in total darkness. He still knows nothing about his future. He tells me he’s ready to answer the first question.

  Are you going to go back to being an anonymous office worker or do you think you’ll be a new kind of president?

  It’s not up to me. The voters make the decision. I’ve made my position very clear. I don’t want any more deception, no matter how beautiful it is. Either we face things as they are, or you’ve seen the last of me. That’s why there have been a great many people before me who could certainly make a better job of it.

  During this campaign, you’ve often projected an image of uncertainty. At times it seems like you’re doing the one thing you’ve always wanted to, but at others it feels like you despise the whole thing, and want to return to your former life. If you could choose your future, which would it be?

  I think you’re laying traps with that question. By this point, I don’t have a past life. Not even in my memory. This experience has affected every past and future fiber of my being. I’m very close to discovering what color it will finally be. But, in any case, there’s no use pretending I’m here of my own free will. I’ve spent many hours trying to discover if it started as my idea or someone else’s. I don’t know if I set my sights on something I couldn’t achieve, or if the goal I can’t achieve chose me, and I went along with it.

  Having said the, what happens in the future depends on my ability to be myself. If my fellow citizens accept me with all my contradictions, we’ll go ahead. In political campaigns, just as in love, you have to make concessions. But if this becomes official, the situation changes. I can’t do my job under the constant threat of being replaced by someone better. Neither my soul nor my body could bear it. It’s time to speak straight. I’ll soon know if my song wants to be heard, or if I should take it somewhere else.

  Don’t you think that’s just the easy way out? You’re passing the buck. Either they accept you as you are or nothing. That way, you’ve got both success and failure covered, and neither of the two are your responsibility. Do you think you’re so exceptional that we’ll accept blackmail?

  I don’t think I’m exceptional. Just the reverse. I don’t have any exceptional traits. I’m sure there are plenty of others capable of offering what we already know all too well. It’s very likely they’d be better bets. What makes me different is the fact that I don’t consider myself to be superior. The only thing is that if I’m going to continue along this road, I won’t have any part in deliberate farces. I might accept the bleakness of the environment, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s a part that shines, that makes me think it’s worth staying here. But what I don’t want to do any longer is to use kindly stereotypes to describe the darkness.

  It’s so easy to spout logical theories that finally translate into violence against the weakest. But be careful, because the naked truth can be more brutal than a deception that works for both sides. How can we be sure you’ll manage to maintain order without crossing your own boundaries?

  I think physical violence is just the most unsophisticated expression of violence in general. True, psychological terror is more bearable, but it’s also true that it compensates for its lower levels of intensity by its lasting effects.

  Do you think revealing relationships can lead to outbreaks of violence? I’m sure you do. What I would ask in this case is why you concentrate only on the visible violence and not on the violence underlying it. If the slave rebels when shown the whip, is the person responsible for that act of rebellion the one who taught him he was being whipped?

  People who know about these things say there are always dissident voices in any form of order. The typical agitators who threaten the status quo with their protests. And what’s more, it’s common for them to disrupt the functioning of an important part of society. How do you intend to deal with those voices that disagree with the direction you’ve taken?

  It’s been a long, tortuous road. I’ve already, in fact, had to confront the shrieking of innumerable cowardly voices. They know my weakest points well, and can sense the moment when they’ll face least resistance to their main objective. They want to maintain the chaos that provides them with their particular way of life. Let me give you an example. Throughout this whole phase, an anonymous group has been determined to confuse me by means of aggressive pronouncements. At every opportunity, they have questioned my ability to meet the challenge I decided to take on. They have resorted to the lowdown method of offering whatever bait they can come up with, knowing that some of it will be taken.

  If I may, I’d like to take advantage of this space to tell them, straight out, that—for practical reasons rather than some personal belief—I intend to tolerate those voices, learn to live with them, rather than attempting to silence them. I’ve realized that frontal attack only strengthens them. So, I intend to use my energy to differentiate between the constructive voices and the sadistic ones. Since I have no choice but to listen to all of them, it will be my privilege to decide which ones it’s important to enter into negotiations with, and which will have to be ignored until no one can hear them any longer.

  It seems like there’s no place for compassion in your vision. Although it might appear contradictory, when you see a person who’s hurt you has a pair of scissors stuck in his leg, you might feel like helping him. Don’t you think your crusade for the unvarnished truth will, in the end, lead you to see reality just in terms of black and white?

  Once again, it’s just the opposite for me. The black and white are produced by the need to see everything as rosy hued. The majority of people concerned about general well-being are in fact more worried about their concern than general well-being as such. A sharp musician summed it up in an incontestable definition: “Cocaine Socialism.”

  Renouncing what is unnecessary for life is achievable. What’s standing in the way of living with what we need and sharing the rest with others? Quite simply our thirst for capturing the infinite in each moment of existence. Compassion functions as a modern form of the selling of indulgences, except now you don’t have to wait for death to receive the key to paradise. Every act of charity sates more guilty consciences than hungry stomachs. Every year, Villa Miserias breaks its own record for charitable donations. But has the chronic poverty that charity is there to combat diminished? Not in the least. The differences are increasingly insulting. It’s lucky for clear consciences that absolution has a price, a price each one of us sets, and that, on the whole, doesn’t in any way affect our ability to enjoy life as we wish. By just handing over a check to people we wouldn’t share a toilet with unless it’d first been disinfected, we tick the box of social responsibility.

  It’s very easy to heal the wound caused by a pair of nail scissors. But more complicated to make a serious examination of the structural causes of that all-out warfare. Stabbing with scissors is a legitimate defense to a cowardly act. But even so, you can’t avoid the explosion of violence by just repudiating it. An understanding of the reasons for its existence is also necessary.

  In my vision, it’s the nuances—the different layers of reality—that stop us putting off until tomorrow the possibility of finding a better way of living together. Let’s accept that all we have, each day, is the present moment. And for that succession of presents to produce a different panorama, we first have to take a look at ourselves in the mirror that our ideas, norms and institutions want to permanently cloud.

  If things had started differently, they wouldn’t have ended this way. Wh
en I lost my self, we were both lost. Unless at the bottom of the hole there’s a different reality, with more than one tone. My father’s dead and gone. Forget the idiotic stories. I’m almost ready to find out what’s left for me to do.

  When I entered her aunt’s apartment for the interview, I saw Nelly’s suitcases. She claimed it wouldn’t be ethical for us to sleep together on the day of the election. Her professional coolness showed me yet another facet of her personality. Even the Many repented their excesses. We joined forces in turning back the clock. The scissors came out of the wound. The blood went back into the vein. Instead of being thrown onto the bed, Nelly sprang at me like a panther. Each reversal of events added a portion of clarity to the shadow. Rather than strangling each other while trying to piece together a completely black jigsaw, we were composing a photo in which only Nelly and I fit, with no place for Perdumeses, Ponces, Taimados, Bramsoses, or Candelarios. What could all the stupidity matter to us when we were capable of looking at each other that way? Both the beginning and end of the ball of wool were present in that first moment. The Many accompanied me in the lament: if only we’d known how to roll it…

  The interview was a fencing match with rubber foils. I hadn’t expected what came afterwards, so it didn’t occur to me to wear a mask. The basic function of our unflagging conflict was made clear. So many scenes we could have avoided if we’d accepted what anyone else could have seen. Juana Mecha warned me from the very first day. But I didn’t then know I was already blind. A home built on mutual resentment is astonishingly durable. Each blow adds a new layer to the walls, isolating it from contact with other possibilities, until they become so thick that only an enormous implosion can bring them down. Which of the two of us will have the courage to set off the device?