A Zero-Sum Game Page 9

  The eight-column headline announced: DUSTSTORM OF EMBEZZLEMENT. Based on anonymous sources, the article gave details of the operation, the amounts involved, and the items the corrupt official squandered them on. There was a sketch representing those involved with plump figures and tracing the embezzled funds from the hardware store to the girlfriend. The box summarizing the main points of the story gradually tapered down to the word “rat.” One resident corroborated the report: “I knew something was going on. The doors were more squeaky than usual, even though they were regularly greased. My kids said I was crazy.” This first revelation of a filthy scandal had established the credibility of the newspaper as an organ working in the defense of civic truth.

  21

  Before ringing Pascual Bramsos’ doorbell, Max Michels fixed his eyes on his own apartment, just visible in the distance. Had she come back from her morning’s tasks? How could you say you were the owner of a concrete structure hanging in midair? Leaving him the apartment had been his defunct father’s most generous and perverse deed. Where would he be living with her now otherwise? Since he was by then closer to completing his registration as a candidate, he allowed himself a small provocation of the Many: Going to let this pass without even a “Fuck you,” are you? Nothing. Well I’ll be damned! Their silence maddened him more than their aggression. Just the thought of blowing up the apartment with all of us in it…

  The works he now felt so ashamed of had commenced with the commercial expansion, but the truth was that the dust was never going away. The T&R construction company had taken on the task of transforming of the structures of Villa Miserias; its hydraulic equipment demolished the nostalgia standing in the way of an inflexible future. The task consisted of transferring, as faithfully as possible, the inequalities of the new order to the external reflection that would give them visible form. T&R had to ensure that the environment adapted to the proprietor and not the proprietor to the environment. Incentives to be different had to be created.

  Through a new twist in the financing scheme, the residents were given the chance to locate themselves in their corresponding realities. The original concept of Villa Miserias had involved two apartments per floor. At Perdumes’ request, T&R suggested a new design. The apartments on the first floor and one of those on the second were divided in two; the third floor remained as it was and the top floor would become a single, spacious penthouse.

  The assessed value of the properties increased and with it the rent, so that a number of families had no choice but to move to the smaller apartments. The prices of the most luxurious properties ensured that they were out of the reach of the great majority. The resettlement was a protracted act of violence. Despite a natural resistance to change on the part of the residents, in general the mechanism itself was allowed to assign each to his appropriate place. The subtle manner in which the elderly couple, Don Feli, and Doña Bere—long-term owners of apartment 4A in Building 6—were crushed served as a warning that sentimentality wouldn’t stand in the way of the advance of the estate.

  As a young woman, Doña Bere had inherited the property in which she resided with her two sons, living frugally on her husband’s wages as a hydraulic engineer. After the children had left home, they got by on their pensions. When a brusque T&R executive presented them with the opportunity to spend their last years in an apartment double the size, they both knew this was nothing more than a formal procedure required by protocol. The couple had neither the means nor the desire to accept the offer. It was then suggested that they consider moving to one of the redesigned apartments on the lower floors. They’d be more comfortable with less space to worry about; and with the price difference, they would have sufficient savings for any of the eventualities associated with their age. Don Feli showed the executive the door: he left without responding to the hand held out to him.

  The power of the new times sprung from the patience of its mechanisms. The elderly couple were no rivals for the ravenous breach that opened up between those who had most and those with least. As the upper floors filled with the beneficiaries of the merchandising lottery, these same people defended their right to employ sweepers to brush away the rest. The first blow fell when the coefficient of the service charge was raised in proportion to the size of the apartment. At the same time, T&R began making the alterations to the building, so that the rebellious elderly couple found themselves regularly without such basics as water and electricity. When they submitted a complaint to the board, it was explained that they would have to put up with it in the name of progress.

  T&R then started remodeling the adjoining apartment to form a single living space, leaving the demolition of the thin dividing wall until the end. When Don Feli saw the outdoor Jacuzzi arrive, he knew there was no way to prevent the inevitable. The construction company finally defeated them by attacking their sleep: they paid the workers overtime to drill through the night. Their nerves shattered, the couple submitted another complaint. They again came up against icy bureaucracy. With no desire to discover what the next measure would involve, the couple went straight to T&R’s offices to negotiate their property transfer. There, they were met by the same side-parted executive with his superior air. They were lucky. One of the apartments on a lower floor of the same building was still available. Their relocation wouldn’t be too traumatic. Unfortunately, the market had fallen a little since his initial offer, so they wouldn’t get as much for their money. The elderly couple didn’t haggle. Resignedly, they accustomed themselves to their new confines. Don Feli’s long years in hydraulic engineering told him that no dam could contain the impersonal tidal bore they were swept up in.

  23

  Villa Miserias’ public spaces had for years been bogged in functional insipidity. The board had no desire to do anything more than was strictly necessary. When consulted on the matter by Perdumes, G.B.W. Ponce explained that if people took their total lack of responsibility for granted, what was normal became a no man’s land. They had to stop treating the residents as if they were invalids. The board decreed that each unit had to be responsible for its own immediate environment. Those buildings with more proactive checking accounts gave their green areas such a face-lift that they looked like something from an architecture magazine; new, more elegant buzzer systems were installed, watched over by private doormen, who also washed the residents’ cars; the potholes were filled. The revaluation of the buildings contributed to giving the residential estate a smarter appearance as it encouraged the sluggards to keep up with their neighbors. Perdumes was gratified to see the effects of this break with the arbitrary tyranny of the board.

  There was one outstanding issue: what could be done about the public spaces that didn’t benefit any specific person? The communal funds wouldn’t stretch that far; and these spaces were considered to be unfair, as they didn’t benefit everyone equally. While the solution generated complaints from those who were mired in the past, the overwhelming majority welcomed it with tacit approval, particularly when they began to see the tangible results: the concessions for the improvements were spread around. The high wall surrounding Villa Miserias was spruced up by courtesy of a paint company. The trash containers were exchanged for larger ones, with an automatic recycling system that separated the garbage according to consistency, thanks to the generosity of a household appliance firm. The rusty swings were transformed into a small city for children, with a pirate ship, outdoor trampolines, climbing frames with rope bridges, and electric cars. The flat-screen TV store donated pieces of their equipment with a message from the owner wishing the children a happy playtime. The new barrier giving access to the estate carried the logo of a soft drink. Even the uniforms of the cleaning staff and the Black Paunches were changed for a more fashionable, flirtatious brand.

  24

  The resettlement was like an hourglass that was, from time to time, gradually turned over; it had the particularity that the most privileged stratum of grains formed a pressure block against the walls so as not to fall throu
gh the opening like the others. The result was a mass of grains, densely packed at the base, distantly observed by a superior compact layer. Apart from a few disoriented grains that somehow remained in the intermediate space, the greater part of the glass was empty, so forming a tension between the opposing poles. But there were two sides to the magic of Quietism in Motion: if one of the privileged grains lost its guile, it would suddenly slide and fall to the bottom with the rest. On certain inexplicable occasions, one of the grains from the inferior heap would rise up until it was rubbing shoulders with those above. The image of the whole varied little, although gravity ensured that growth tended to be greater in the lower half of the hourglass. Adaptation to a new stratum was always more laborious when it involved descent. Those who fell never ceased to look upwards to the sky and recall with nostalgia the good times when they were fortunate grains. Alternatively, the grains that made it to the top mingled with the others so that only a trained eye could tell the difference. It was to Perdumes’ great relief that the hourglass had become so fixed in the consciousness of the estate that a new upending was now unthinkable.

  The commercial expansion created the need for cheap labor. In addition, the increased consumption generated more trash, in both its literal and metaphorical senses: once the taboo that had confined the workers on the estate to Building B had been broken, they began to occupy the tiny apartments T&R had redesigned. Each relocation involved an application of the ochre paint signaling the condition of the occupant; the rectangles spread progressively until the mixture became more vertical than geographic. In a good percentage of the buildings, realities so disparate that they seemed to correspond to completely different species coexisted. Only the weight of the daily bustle of the estate and a vague presumption of just deserts stopped the sparks rising upward.

  Just in case they did rise, the process of reinforcing the security forces in terms of both manpower and equipment continued. There was also a proliferation of private mercenary groups to protect the right to ostentation of the most prominent residents. They moved around in a popular make of tank, disguised as an ordinary car. When Juana Mecha saw a motorcade of wry-necked bodyguards pass by, she exclaimed: “Reality’s just got more real.”

  This phenomenon was a direct corollary of Quietism in Motion. The rules were perfectly clear: they allowed for struggle that was harsh, merciless, unequal, abusive, cruel, deceitful, stark, implacable, traitorous—and other such derivatives—just so long as it occurred in the financial sphere. The barbaric times when physical force assured a place in the hierarchy were fortunately a quaint memory. Now a pudgy administrator, trained to teach the secrets of the market, could, in the event, crush a squadron armed with military hardware. There were no two ways of looking at it. Endorsing the use of physical force to defend oneself from financial issues was as absurd as allowing an illiterate person to use a dictionary in a spelling quiz. Competition was the static motor of the times, as long as it was understood on the basis of a set of norms designed to prioritize certain characteristics, backed up by a monopoly on public and private violence, in order for that monopoly to preserve its growing possessions.

  The productive transformation had its political counterpart: the residents of Villa Miserias were ready to choose for themselves. As access to the struggle was through a locked door, it was always the same person—broken down into such aspects as a greater of lesser degree of charisma, articulacy, and physical presence—who competed. The living legend of Severo Candelario served to dissuade naïve enthusiasts. Perdumes filtered out undesirable candidates and set others on the stage. Once there, they were free to tear one another to pieces. Their policies were interchangeable, and they articulated them like parrots repeating dogma. They were unimportant: a study by G.B.W. Ponce revealed that 88% of residents neither remembered nor understood the platforms of their future authority figures. It never occurred to anyone to question the direction of their plans. The generally held belief was that this was the best of alternatives. Debate centered on the outer shell.

  Radical policies went no further than to propose the quota of leftover food per household be proportional to the coefficient, or that the board offer free vouchers for tai chi classes. Perdumes made sure that the form the root took was never mentioned. To do so would be as fruitless as proposing a modification of the climate. The electoral debate must not attack the beliefs that had formed reality in this particular way. As was his custom, Perdumes made use of an image: a dog doesn’t abstain from biting its master because of a calculation of the negative consequences this would involve; the nature of the relationship meant that the act would not even occur to the animal.

  With the sphere of ideas duly anaesthetized, the fight was centered on rumor and scandal. The elections were a test of a candidate’s ability to sling mud at his rival in the appropriate style, and at the proper moment. The residents gave themselves up without reservations to the swing of the pendulum of indignation-forgetting-indignation-forgetting-indignation-forgetting offered by the revelations and accusations of the campaigns.

  The Daily Miserias reported it all with sensational impartiality. If the scandal was of a sexual nature, they automatically doubled the print run for that day. Orquídea López had a strict ethical conscience: the readers had a right to know everything. Private life became a thing of the past with the decision to enter the public sphere. Sometimes she had to use indecorous methods to obtain information, but Orquídea justified this with the notion that every journalist is a paid detective and you can’t go into the sewers without getting your shoes dirty.

  Each day, there would be a front-page opinion poll carried out by G.B.W. Ponce—all the candidates used the services of $uperstructure. Ponce would analyze what his database had already told him: the quantitative effects of the electorate’s opinions. He had never fallen outside his ±3.14% in his prediction of the results.

  25

  By the time Max Michels came to his decision, a fair number of managers of the winds of change blowing through Villa Miserias had already come and gone. Perdumes continued to present them with a statue to commemorate the end of their terms of office; it was still the same man with a sphere, but with one variation: the man was now upright, his arms akimbo. Standing at one side of the sphere, he now had no direct contact with it: he simply supervised its correct course.

  Max left his apartment and knocked on his friend Pascual Bramsos’ door. He found him working on an installation, soon to be exhibited, that had involved cutting dozens of egg shells in half and then—after cleaning them—filling a number with plaster to strengthen them. The exteriors of the shells were painted with an imperceptible layer of varnish. The piece was designed to be shown on a single occasion. The eggs would be glued very close together on a concrete base measuring nine feet by three, with the solid shells randomly placed, so that a volunteer could attempt to walk over the work without breaking any of the others.

  Max took Bramsos’ arm and asked if he would accompany him on an important mission. As they entered the administration office, Bramsos still had no idea of Max’s intention. When the latter said, “I’ve come to register as a candidate in the election,” his friend and the assistant exchanged wide-eyed glances of surprise. A pencil rolled from the desk onto the floor under the impulse of the gentle current of fresh air entering through the window.

  II

  1

  The succession of millions of instants, memories, smells, voices, joys, sadness, and all the other elementary particles constituting that thing he called his life seemed to Max Michels completely contingent and necessary. Everything was so fragile; the least variation would have ruined his present configuration. He wouldn’t be that Max, but another. At the same time, not even the most irrelevant things could be questioned. That’s how it had been, period; on a gilt plaque on the wall of the apartment his father’s familiar axiom was written: “The measure of each man lies in the dose of truth he can withstand.”

  Shortly before dying, hi
s decrepit father had asked for a moment alone with his only son. True to the meticulous judicial principles that ruled his existence, he first explained the plan for ending it: Max was about to come of age; he was leaving him the apartment and a trust fund to cover his expenses until he finished his education. He wasn’t going to spoil his son by willing him the rest of his patrimony: it was going to the private institution of rigid freethinking in which he’d once studied to become the eminent member of the legal profession he now was. In return, the institution promised to place an effigy of him at the entrance to the library.

  “Maximiliano, at this crucial moment, I am about to inform you of your true inheritance,” he said with solemn magnanimity. “You must exercise extreme care in relation to the specious reasoning of the weaker sex. Keep women at a prudent distance from family and friends, both of which are sacred treasures in the attainment earthly joy. And last but not least, show yourself to be powerful with those of humble origins and humble with the powerful. A tendency to equalize either of those extremes will diminish you.”

  Max had narrowed his eyes as he scanned every self-satisfied furrow of his father’s face, as if deliberately searching for something he knew he wouldn’t find. Was it his turn to say something? His father had reached out a hand to seal the moment with a firm clasp, just as Max had been taught to do since his childhood.

  “The serum that breathes the last ounce of energy into my veins is on the point of running out. Be so good as to leave me and call the nurse.”

  “Goodbye Dad,” Max had said, hurrying out of the room.

  Minutes later, the last thing Dr. Michels’ elderly heart did was to obey the order to stop, and Max entered adulthood three weeks before the date marked on the calendar.