A Zero-Sum Game Read online

  The already successful financial engineering scheme was set in motion again. In theory, every inhabitant of Villa Miserias had the chance to own his own business: in reality only a few would. The bottleneck was formed by the residents themselves, draped in the material of their specific capabilities and ambitions. Those interested had to put an ear to the chest of the community to learn to hear the pulse of its desires. However, it was good news for everyone: those of limited vision could be employed as assistants, checkout operators, waiters, guards, janitors, and so on. The outside world was no longer beyond the confines of Villa Miserias.

  The outer shell was quickly constructed. A concrete monstrosity, hygienic and functional. The interior spaces were also soon occupied by a range of outlets catering for everything from the most essential needs to those no one had ever suspected to exist.

  One of the more successful cases catered to the youngest residents. It offered items for the amusement of children, including rattles, soft toys, and construction kits, but also strollers. Each of its articles was adorned with a glowing screen; interspersed between the cartoons and children’s movies shown there were commercials made by the store itself. This promoted family harmony since the children could spend hours sitting in front of the screen, their parents frequently watching with them. The children demanded the movie of their favorite bear, which they watched on the belly of a toy bear, along with the commercials in which the bear expressed itself happy to be their friend. Villa Miserias’ children would grow up in the shelter of the magical worlds contained in their toys. Their parents gladly forked out the cash in exchange for the free time it bought them.

  In addition to the stores, not-for-profit organizations also sprung up. A group of refined ladies launched a cultural center called Leonardo RU, inspired by a new vision: they were tired of the arts being monopolized by a pedantic elite. Their project offered the ordinary person the possibility of buzzing with artistic creativity. A band of experts gave courses in literature, painting, music, and much more, in which they imparted the general principles of a work without the need to read it, see it or listen to it: there was absolutely no reason to expose the members of the center to complex issues. They even offered an express telephone service, something of first importance for social events. With just a single phone call, an overview of the book, movie, or exhibition of the moment could be obtained, including a critique of the weak points of the plot, plus arguments for supporting the notion that it was, in fact, a metaphor for the feeble human condition. There were members who complained because some other dinner guest had come out with the same idea before they could express it, so the experts began to prepare a variety of opinions, in the interests of fomenting plurality and debate.

  In relation to creativity, they transferred to the field of the arts the age-old maxim that learning is, in fact, a process of remembering what you already know: the ladies believed that artistic talent was present in everyone, but the snobbism of the elites meant only very few had the right to enjoy it. Numerous artists in the making, assisted by the facilitators, created works of great technical skill.

  In painting, the student would give a rough outline of the work. So as not to interfere in the creative process, the facilitator didn’t even listen to this. The student would then stand confidently before the canvas, the tutor took his arm and together they would begin to paint. Students were instructed to allow themselves to be carried away by creative ecstasy and to close their eyes during the process. The final product left them feeling so proud that it didn’t matter if it was somewhat different to what they had originally conceived. In musical composition, the facilitator would ask the student to say the third note in the scale and then write this down; then the fifth, the first and so on. In the end, without the facilitator having written a single note, a melody existed, written by the student. When it came to instruments, they were taught to play the separate notes or chords and these were recorded. A team of technicians then united them to form a complete song, played by the neophyte. At the end of each course there were exhibitions, dramatized readings, and prerecorded concerts where a new generation of artists were welcomed into the world.

  A group of lawyers who believed in the importance of civic unity for eradicating injustice created an organization to help the stray dogs that plagued the streets of Villa Miserias. For a monthly fee, people could adopt a stray from their catalog. The sickly-sweet names beneath the photos would soften even the most hesitant heart. Once the canine had been adopted, the organization took responsibility for bathing and delousing it, administering its vaccinations, and feeding it. As the period of domestication was traumatic for the dog, the adoptive family was not allowed to see it until this had been completed, but they could send it letters and gifts. However, the organization was unwilling to be responsible for outbreaks of violence among the dogs, nor did the owners have time to oversee them. The solution was for the dogs to go on living in the street, receiving food and periodic attention from the association. Once a month, there was a supervised visit in their premises, where the family could meet its new member. The dogs tended to keep their distance; the owners were moved to see the results of the new lease of life they had offered the canines. They would tell it all the family news. Some smuggled in food, in violation of the rules of the organization, which didn’t want to have the dogs sniffing around the premises the whole day. Word got around in the doggy underworld, so that the number of strays went on increasing. They were divided between the fortunate that enjoyed the good life, and those left abandoned to their fate. The organization couldn’t do everything.

  A bar called Alison’s also opened and became very popular among the male population of Villa Miserias. They gathered there to yell along with every variety of sporting event, transmitted nonstop, at full volume, on the giant screens covering the walls of the bar. Betting money was prohibited, but clients could make wagers using the trays on which the food and drink were served. The main attraction of Alison’s lay in a squadron of good-looking cheerleaders in civilian clothing who chatted with the clients every night. They were perfectly capable of dealing with unsolicited attentions, but the bald gorillas who acted as bouncers still prowled around them just in case. In addition to good looks, another factor was necessary to be employed there: an exceptional head of alcohol. The auditions were brutal. The girls were required to imbibe a succession of different drinks in a limited time, with television screens on and music blaring, to test their resistance in real life conditions. Every time something occurred worthy of an adrenaline rush—a goal, a hole in one, a spectacular crash, or savage knockout—they had to high-five, bonk heads or chests, and scream euphorically. Very few passed the test. The ones left at the end were invincible.

  The procedure was for them to go up to tables for a casual chat; soon afterwards, they ordered a drink for which they immediately paid with money from the bar. They would down this in one, amid laughter and sporting banter. The men, however, couldn’t allow themselves to be left lagging; a new round quickly appeared with drinks for everyone. It was not infrequent for a visit to Alison’s to end in the involuntary use of the bald gorillas’ home-delivery service, even if it meant carrying the client. The only memory he would have of the evening was a photo of his group of friends hugging the good-looking girls. He would count the days until he could go back.

  Each year, on the evening of the anniversary of the opening of the bar, only the most assiduous clients were allowed in. The festivities included a long-standing tradition: the table that chucked up most didn’t pay its check. As the clients sometimes missed the bucket provided for the occasion, by the end of the night the floor would be awash with a slippery, pinkish, lumpy slush. The record—three bucketfuls—was held by a group of middle-aged financial executives, who proudly held up their trophies in the photos displayed on the walls of the most paradisiacal bar ever imagined.

  14

  The reforms signified the commencement of perpetual change. From then onw
ard, there would always be work in progress. Hence the dust. And also the noise. The transformations were like a loose hosepipe spraying water in all directions. To give them some coherence, Selon Perdumes brought in a man capable of measuring everything. G.B.W. Ponce had acquired great renown in the socio-scientific community for a statistical discovery known as the Ponce Scheme. After years of battling with his algorithms—his beaky condor face lost its glow and his hair started to gray—he’d managed to compress thousands of variables into a method he retained for his personal use, in spite of stratospheric offers to share his secret. Inspired by the philosophical notion that history is just an untiring repetition of itself, he proposed to condense the millions of correlations studied into an accurate predictive method: his aim was to quantify the eternal return. If all thought, every impulse or action is contained in the characteristics that define each individual, he could explain real events without having to wait for them to occur.

  He investigated innumerable causal relationships, looking for recurring patterns. Beginning with the most obvious categories—social class, nationality, skin color, religion—he managed to corroborate common suppositions. In general terms, people’s thoughts and actions could be blocked out, according to the specific group they belonged to. Ponce concentrated his attention on the remainder, the minuscule deviations within a single group. Why did some millionaires wear denim jeans and jackets? What was the difference between adulterous believers and their chaste counterparts? What did women who lied about their age have in common? Why did hoods indicate a tendency to mindless acts of violence?

  He tried out his theory on hundreds of the most elusive variables: the type of music listened to, favorite sexual fetish, being an early morning or night person. Almost all these variables fitted within more general categories, but some stood out for their predictive power. Among people with an average income, those who had had wooden toys were, as a rule, less given to accumulation; those who couldn’t dance salsa had a greater tendency for masochistic relationships. He refined and purified until he arrived at the famous Ponce Questionnaire. Seventy-one questions that summarized the narrative of human behavior. With a margin of error of ±3.14%, it could predict political opinions, consumption patterns, movie preferences, the cost of an engagement ring. Armed with his database, Ponce would consult his cyber-seer and note down the answers. It never failed on the outcome of an election, the sales volume of a new model of car, the numbers of demonstrators at a protest march, or the average abortion figures in a particular stratum of women.

  It also worked at an individual level. Once a person had allowed him to take an X-ray of his soul, G.B.W. Ponce was the owner of his future. He knew, with terrifying precision, what that person would think or choose given certain alternatives. On one occasion, a progressive colleague had made a virulent attack on his method—the very idea of its implications deeply alarmed him. Ponce announced a public challenge: the colleague should hand him a sealed envelope containing a document outlining his position on various controversial topics, his normal mode of transport, the number of jackets with elbow patches he had in his closet, and other personal peculiarities. He would then complete the Ponce Questionnaire. The computer crunched the data and came up with the right answer on subjects such as his views on homosexuals being able to enlist in the army, the hours of television he allowed his children to watch, whether or not he believed in personal pensions, and his favorite cruise route. The humiliated professor retired in silence. Ponce’s flamethrower had melted his waxen autonomy.

  Each fresh success gave him greater confidence. He was to be found in the most venerable seats of learning, giving presentations to packed lecture theaters, always dressed in the same way: red canvas tennis shoes, slightly torn jeans, and a white shirt, plus his indispensable dark glasses. He enjoyed seeing the effects of his provocations. Once, he turned up at an ultraconservative university disguised as a robot. He explained to the audience he was going to demonstrate that the only God they should worship was the automaton each and every person has within him, and followed this with barbed statements claiming that fundamentalism could be explained by purely material circumstances. When he stated that 87.3% of evolution deniers treated their subordinates worse than chimpanzees, one young man could take no more and made a lunge for the sound equipment to turn off the microphone. G.B.W. Ponce came down from the stage in a series of jerky, mechanical movements to the sounds of the insults and boos of his devout audience.

  What was revolutionary about his method was that it removed the need for studies and surveys. The responses to the questionnaire were sufficient. He updated his databases to keep them fresh and developed parameters for balancing the different variables, including the hedonistic slant inherent in advancing age. Having nothing more to prove to academia, he published a voluminous book of his findings, entitled God’s Dice. He was careful to keep it beyond the comprehension of non-initiates: the book didn’t explain anything. There were thousands of tables with statistical links from which the author could extract at will the conclusions he wanted to develop more explicitly. His authority was such that the arrows of causality began to point in every direction. It was no longer possible to tell what was the origin and what was the outcome.

  One man read that self-sufficient women whose partners were addicted to videogames and marijuana tended to break off their relationships. After even the slightest argument, he would accuse his wife of wanting to leave him. He fought against the growing tension by increasing his dose of marijuana, and spending whole days playing videogames. When his wife finally departed, he self-pityingly accepted the fulfillment of the Poncean maxim.

  A bureaucrat learned that public servants with double chins, over twelve years of service in the same post, and a predilection for sensationalist magazines, often stole the office staplers. He was enormously relieved to see that statistical absolution of his peccadillo.

  A bored housewife read that, in 73% of cases, the first lesbian experience in her stratum occurred with the domestic help. Coming back drunk from a meal with her best friend, she called Josefina into her bedroom and tempered her confusion with imperative commands until she achieved satisfaction. Thanks to God’s Dice, she ran not the slightest risk of her new secret being discovered.

  G.B.W. Ponce was intrigued by the practical reach of his paradigm. When he received Perdumes’ invitation, he was certain that Villa Miserias was the ideal laboratory in which to pursue his grand passion: codifying social existence down to the last minor detail. He made it a condition that his questionnaire would be distributed to every resident in the estate. Fabulous! No problem. That’s what Taimado and his Black Paunches are here for. He installed himself and his meager belongings in Building 29 and acquired two adjoining spaces in the commercial zone in which to launch his consultancy business, $uperstructure. When the transparent sign on a black background had finally been put up, Juana Mecha exclaimed to anyone who would listen: “If it isn’t the same river each time, at least it looks the same now.”

  15

  One of the keys to Quietism in Motion was precisely the fact that it included motion. G.B.W. Ponce had demonstrated that ascent of the social ladder was accompanied by an acceptance of the beliefs of the new rungmates. The members of the former “us” immediately became “them.” This in itself was not particularly important. What did matter was ensuring the changes of status were visible: making it clear that the only barrier to excellence was looking back at you in the mirror each morning. Selon Perdumes’ favorite example for highlighting the possibilities of social advancement was Mauricio Maso.

  Maso arrived in Villa Miserias by accident while still in his puberty. He was living with other children in a sewer, earning a living by entertaining passengers in the metro: on the floor of the subway car he would lay out a T-shirt covered with pieces of broken glass and roll around on then. His skin was like a bloodied sheet of sandpaper, adorned with a maze of raised scars. He withstood the hardships of his profession by inh
aling the glue supplied by his boss each night when he reported in. But that irascible tyrant only let the boys keep enough of their earnings for a couple of tacos and a soda.

  One time, Mauricio Maso overdid the glue and came out of the metro feeling very disoriented. In search of somewhere to shelter from the rain that was making his wounds burn, he jumped over the wall surrounding Villa Miserias and took refuge among the garbage containers, where he competed with the stray dogs for a share of the leftover leftovers recently discarded there: eating a piece of fat on the bone only left him hungrier than ever. Then he stuck his head into a container in the hope of striking lucky, and found something better than food: a bag of marijuana some parents had found in their teenage daughter’s bedroom. He improvised a pipe from an empty water bottle, reactivated his glue-induced stupor with a couple of puffs, then lay down among the trash to gaze into the density of the clouded night sky.

  A group of kids passed by on their way to a party and immediately recognized the smell. They followed the scent until they came across Mauricio, sprawled out, absorbed, firmly grasping his bottle in his right hand. He seemed to hear them say something, but the words formed waves in the air that broke before they became comprehensible. The most resolute of the kids opened his fingers one by one to liberate the weed, leaving in his hand a bill equivalent to two weeks’ honest toil for Mauricio. He managed to close his fist on it before falling exhausted into a deep sleep.