by Pablo Poveda
Blanca looked like another person. I had the feeling that I was the only person on the planet who did not change appearances between phases. I was the only one-faced coin, one single personality, and it was counterproductive and exhausting. It was hot, and I needed a shower. Beams of sunshine hit the wall by the fridge next to Blanca, who made toast in a black pan and poured two cups of black coffee.
I crept like a walrus on the shoreline and grunted.
“Did you have a good sleep?” she asked in a soft voice. “I didn’t want to wake you up, but your phone has been ringing several times.”
“My phone?” I asked, still sleepy to understand. “How about you? Did you rest?”
“Just enough,” she said and put the burnt bread on a plate. “There is little information about that woman.”
“What have you got?”
“An address,” she said. “The address of a center.”
“There isn’t much we can do with that information.”
“We have to go to the apartment, Gabriel. There is no other option.”
I got up, grabbed the cup from the table, and sipped the coffee. It burned my throat. I looked out the window.
“I’ll go by myself,” I said. “You’ll wait for me outside.”
“No,” she replied.
“If something happened to you — ”
“Nothing will happen to me,” she interrupted me confidently. “They are just a bunch of amateurs with no idea what they’re doing whatsoever.”
“You underestimate them,” I said. “I don’t want you to pay too dearly.”
I returned to the table and sat next to her. I took several bites of a slice of toast with butter and then took a shower. When I came out of the shower, there was an old laptop computer waiting for me on the table. Blanca had not changed clothes and was wearing a sleeveless shirt, through which, one could see a black brassiere.
I turned on the computer.
“What do you know about movies?” she asked with her eyes fixed on the screen.
“I’m not too fond of them,” I responded. “I’ve never been too interested.”
“You’re a strange man,” she concluded. “Everybody likes to watch movies.”
“Not me. It’s just one more type of entertainment. I respect actors and understand they get paid for a job that consists of entertaining others.”
“It’s a difficult profession,” she said at the same time she typed on the computer.
“Just like any other,” I insisted. “An actor is simply... that.”
I was not interested in dramatic art or million-dollar lifestyles. I had no respect whatsoever for what movies represented, but intuition told me she did. Personal disputes aside, I did not regard dramatic art as a form of creation but mere representation. Therefore, I was not interested. I held musicians, writers, and even painters in great regard. I had stigmatized actors the same way as football players, pop stars, or any journalist who ended up hosting a television show. Everyone had a right to earn their salary the way they could or would as long as it was legal. However, I could not tell Blanca that if we deviated from the boundaries of our relationship and conversed about other than our investigation, or the origin of our names — topics such as movies, music, or any other — we could end up arguing.
That was a personality trait of mine, and I could not change it. I could not disguise myself and interpret one of those multiple faces that many people possess. Maybe that’s the reason why I did not have any respect for actors. To my mind, it was but a form of saying: I must unleash my frustration here, for it is the only place where my emotional baggage takes on a poetic or human shape. I can express the same idea but under a different form, and I will get people to listen to me once and again.
In my eyes, that was a bleak picture. I looked at the telephone and noticed two missed calls from Ortiz. By now, I was probably without a job. The newsroom had become a foreign ground for me.
I asked Blanca to turn off the music and turned on the radio. On the radio news show, they reported on Hidalgo’s death. The announcer gave a list of names, public figures, and politicians who, besides the funeral, would perform a homage.
“Everyone wants to attend the party,” Blanca pointed out. “We should go.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It’s a disgrace.”
“It could be interesting” — the girl continued looking at the screen — “I’ve found something. Initials.”
I looked at the screen and saw the letters C and F. Then I looked at her. Honestly, I would have preferred to be in that apartment for a completely different reason, without clothes on and in the bed, instead of impersonating two callow university students doing a final project.
“Damn, Blanca,” I said. “I’m not so sure there is something in there.”
“So,” she replied, “we’ll never know.”
I insisted we investigate more. Blanca’s naiveté blinded her from the realm of possibilities. Journalism in movies was a profession of certainties, big newsrooms, long print runs, individual writers, and happy endings. Real life did not resemble that. The world was too obscene and macabre a place to portray in a movie script. Hollywood had a good recipe to conform to our preconceptions, and that is how they confused us. Most of the time, journalism was a mere word, and the profession, just a bore to pour data without corroboration nor dilation in it of itself.
People did no longer shock at the news that someone had jumped off of a third floor, or that a woman had beheaded her husband. Comparing such news with the footage of carnage was a cheap joke. However, home homicides, the stories we picked up in the streets, and those small notes that appeared without a picture in 2x5 columns with a brief title in bold font, was the most horrific thing one could fathom because it was real, and we wished never to have to write stories like those again. I understood that stepping in that path meant that I was heading to becoming a black and white headline without a photograph.
Damn sunny summers and their beaches full of vulgar and ordinary people. I emphasize the difference because most of them had little to contribute to their own lives, caught in targetless social cells of conformism and void conversations. Vulgar people meandering shirtless, displaying their flaccid flesh and bellies. Their guts deformed by the excess of beer and lack of exercise, over the years, take the shape of a giant olive. Shameless men and women smeared with lavender-scented milky cream wear gas-station-bought sunglasses, carry umbrellas sponsored by ice cream makes, have on straw hats that advertise a beer brand, and display themselves like elephant seals. But, since it is summer, everything goes, and the only thing that matters is to have a good time as long as they have a glass of cheap gin and lime in their hands.
The keys to Clara’s apartment remained there, next to furniture’s ashtray, waiting to be put in my pocket. Sooner or later, I would have to if I was to end this whole story. But something did not fit in the plan that Hidalgo’s lover had traced for me. The policeman had warned me not to trust her. Besides, the apartment must be surveilled by the sect.
Blanca would not give up until we managed to get in there, that was evident. However, something deep inside of me told me that we should wait.
“I have what we need,” Blanca said with a bright face.
She had found several articles about a therapeutic group named The Silent Brotherhood. I had never heard that name before. I asked her to read what she had found for me while I lit a cigarette next to the window and poured a little more coffee in my cup. Comments on the Internet forums denounced the wrongdoing of that organization that diminished people psychologically through hypnosis or psychological abuse. She kept reading the opinions that repeated the same stories with different names, family members, and friends. Everything signaled to a sect, but there was no evidence its purpose was economic.
Those organizations were but grounds for the survival of the fittest, in which a weaker person would run into a stronger one who sought to get something out of them. These micro so
cieties are found in the underworld and threaten the very system in which we live. It was like a network of ideas operated within a Platonic network of thought. Like societies could reproduce within themselves, like internal fractals, giving rise to other up to an infinite possibility. I refused to believe that those limited and self-contained groups were so different from the one that the mainstream consensus considers as the one and free.
I did not consider myself to be free, just as I could not deem my thought to be free either. It could not be. Had I been born in another environment, had another background, I would have become a completely different person, but I was not, and I had to accept that major truth. The injustice, dogmas, education, and what I heard at home, school, or friends growing up was a reinforcement of the influence that would chisel my personality. And so, I had become a diminished being full of biases thanks to a social system that was slowly breaking down. Ideas were but a set of concepts that distorted over time to conform to our whim, displaying them under the preferred frameworks until we believe they were absolute truths, just to leave them in the storage cabinet when we did not deem them fit. Memories were photo albums; some images were difficult to retrieve, whereas others were permanently at hand. Therefore, living the moment was advisable as long as we understood that it only existed in our very own reality plagued with lies and illusions. The present, the second hand perpetually moving around the dial, was the only reality that we could consider authentic because later, it was to become a memory colored in matte shades. Our memories become distorted by our biases.
“We should try,” Blanca said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d rather stay out of this.”
“As you wish,” she replied. “I’ll attend one of their sessions. I want to meet these people. I want to find the relationship that you told me.”
“What if they brainwash you?” I asked mockingly.
“That’s a risk that we have to take,” she said. I approached her from behind and had a look at their website. It was an ordinary, pulchritudinous, and undecorated building. The descriptions on the website were adorned with quotes by Confucius, Siddharta, Lao Tzu, and other oriental philosophers. Everything seemed so peaceful in the photos. I could use some peace, I thought. “Are you sure you don’t want to try? They have a meditation area.”
“That world is falling apart, Blanca,” I commented.
“Your world is falling to pieces too,” she replied. “It may inspire you.”
“I have a life to get back to,” I said. “I doubt starting a new one is the solution.”
“You win,” she said without questioning me.
She was determined. She continued watching the pictures. There were no people, nor faces. Anonymity prevailed in the place. Neither were there news articles or testimonials, so common in websites that promote a center of the likes. There were no FAQs, no lists of activities.
Then I saw a face. It was a man with short gray hair. His face looked amicable, but his eyes were haughty.
“Zoom in that photo,” I told Blanca. Blanca opened the picture on a new window. A sequence of pictures played in my head; the images that conformed it fell like cards of a deck hurled in the air. It was him. My mind raced and went dark. It was the man at the police station, the man I had tripped with days before. Son of a bitch. The sweats came back. I recalled Hidalgo. I related him to the man in the image. I wanted to break his neck. The man who pricked my arm could be the same man who broke into my apartment while I was unconscious. Had he sedated me? It was indubitably him. His face appeared on that website that credited him as the spokesperson for the organization. I changed my opinion. I am coming too.
* * *
We drove to the center while we came up with a credible story. Investigative journalism was not my strong suit, but Blanca seemed to be experienced. I never told her, but when I read the articles she had written, I was pleasantly surprised. She was good, driven, and best of all, fearless. Difficult years awaited her, but who cares about that when one is about to join a sect that is based on silence and achieving inner peace. Blanca and I were going to pretend to be an ordinary couple with problems at home. She had the idea, and I liked the ring to it.
Our scruffy attire reflected an evident rock influence void of any new age/spiritual persuasion. Blanca’s tight striped shirts — which revealed the size and shape of her breasts — her knee-torn jeans and her eternal Chuck Taylor low-cuts would draw attention to us. Kids in metal bands or biker circles would surely find her delightful. I did not want to idealize and put her on a pedestal next to all the other pretty girls I had met because then she would be out of my league, and there would be nothing for me to do. A man like me had to learn to keep his desire aside without going into idyllic reflections of far-fetched fantasies, because one day, desire would become an obsession, and Blanca would realize it, losing interest in me forever.
“It won’t work,” I told Blanca at the time we looked at our reflection on the window of a furniture store.
Despite my disguise — which consisted of chunks of orthodontic wax in my mouth to distort my face and loads of bronzing foundation borrowed from Blanca’s makeup case — we looked good together.
The reflection portrayed two complete strangers who were slowly approaching each other. I pictured us, living together in her apartment. I remembered the images of her place from a wandering perspective like the camera angle in one of those French black and white films, with posters in which everyone wears plaited pants. I pictured us both sitting at the table, sipping coffee, and spreading butter on toasts, while the laptop played her hellish music in the background. In that small rental, two people could live together. We would sleep holding each other every night, spooning so that she could feel my boners in her buttocks before falling asleep. Blanca Desastres would be the first thing I would see upon waking up, and the last one before falling asleep. She was different. Despite her apparent toughness, I knew that she could take care of me just as well as I would take care of her. We were two latent fires living among hot coals. With her, everything was possible, and while we looked at each other on that window, I realized that I was falling for her.
That one was becoming the most entertaining summer of my life.
“It’s here,” she said. “Are you ready? Don’t overshoot it.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied, making sure every piece of my makeshift costume was in place. “I’m in character.”
We rang the bell, took off our sunglasses, and entered a white building with popcorn walls. It smelled of cleanliness and disinfectant, much like the lavatories in hospitals, where one can still inhale the souls of the deceased.
We walked down a corridor. The premises consisted of a ground floor with high ceilings, spacious enough to include several rooms. It looked like it once was a warehouse.
A girl appeared, walking slowly toward us. She was wearing a plastic smile on her motionless and relaxed face like she had rehearsed that gesture. She had her hair tied in a ponytail and a physician white coat on.
“Good morning,” she said. “How can I help you?”
Suspicious of our arrival, she explained where we were. Blanca came forward and explained we were a troubled couple. She listened attentively with a soft and leisurely countenance. That place looked like the stage for a bandage commercial — white, aseptic, airy.
A man came into the scene, walking out of one of the rooms. It was him, the man from the police headquarters, the man from the website, and he was next to us. He looked at Blanca while she talked and then he looked at me. He smiled and walked to the woman who paid attention to my companion, who spoke non-stop like a tropical parrot. He wore a black blazer and a white shirt underneath, approached the girl from behind, and rested his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said in a deep, hypnotic, but welcoming tone of voice. “My name is Cornelius.”
He shook our hands firmly while he held his smile. His gaze was exactly like in the pictu
res — a pair of dark, impassive, and piercing eyes. He projected an aura of leadership that became evident when he walked. That bastard must be the overlord of all those mindless sheep.
Blanca and I introduced ourselves and explained to him the alleged problem that had brought us there. Blanca was outstanding at making stories. Even better than at writing them. I struggled to keep track of all of the isolated events that she told in order to make the story more believable, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and nod, looking at the floor to feign embarrassment, and let her do all the talking.
“How did you hear about the center?” Cornelius asked, caressing his chin.
I began to sweat. I gulped discreetly.
“Through a friend,” Blanca said.
“Name?” the woman inquired.
“We’re all family here,” Cornelius said, softening the question.
“Antonio,” said Blanca, “Antonio Hidalgo.”
“Interesting,” said the man. Then he gestured to the girl by touching her waist and sent her away. “I’ll take care of it, Carolina.”
“Did I say something inappropriate?” Blanca replied, faking confusion. “Hidalgo was my teacher. He spoke highly of the center. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
The man changed his intrigued expression and sketched a rehearsed smile. He opened his arms and invited us to follow him.
“Welcome,” he said.
We were officially invited to join the Silent Brotherhood.
9
A big bulletin board welcomed us. On a black background, a big white circle with a black speck in the center covered the wall. I had seen that symbol before. We studied it carefully. To the left, there was a picture of Carl Jung that displayed a quote of his. God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere, it read. I highly doubted God was there. Circles with a speck in the center, circles everywhere. Such an abstract symbol could yield whichever interpretation suited the observer’s intentions.
