Turing's Delirium

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  JUDGE CARDONA finds a pharmacy on a corner two blocks from Albert's house. It is closed. He rings the bell, and a short while later a woman with small eyes and a hawkish nose appears at a window on one side. She opens the door.

  "Come in, come in," she says, turning her back on him and rummaging through drawers in search of alcohol and gauze. Cardona sets his briefcase on the floor. Water is running off his clothes and onto the carpet.

  "I'm sorry, I'm making a mess."

  "Don't worry."

  Cardona's arms and legs are cold; he feels the uncomfortable wetness of clothes sticking to his body. He would like to be back at the hotel already, sitting next to a radiator or a heater, getting warm.

  "Have a seat," the woman says, pointing to a chair on which a Siamese cat is lying. "You're drenched. And that cut has to be taken care of right away, before it gets infected. What happened?"

  "Thank you, ma'am," Cardona replies without moving, clinging to his briefcase. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I came across the demonstration in the plaza."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry. But if you ask me, I completely agree with what's happening. Did you see the electricity bill last month? They come here to a poor country to get rich. Please, sit down."

  Cardona walks over to the chair and pets the cat, which has no intention of leaving its place. It smells of urine and is losing its fur; bits of skin are visible along its back. The woman pounds the counter with her hand, and the cat jumps up and runs into the back of the pharmacy. Cardona sits down. He remembers a conversation he had with Valdivia, the minister of finance, in the hallway of the Presidential Palace. They had just left a cabinet meeting where they had been discussing the problem of grassroots movements that were opposed to the privatization of national resources to foreign companies. Valdivia looked worried.

  "My dear judge, our people want the economy to recover, but when investors come from outside, they shout to high heaven. They don't understand that capitalist companies are not charitable organizations—they invest in Bolivia because they want to earn a profit. It's a never-ending problem, and I don't know how we'll ever change it."

  "I don't think we ever will," Cardona said. "A poor country isn't used to success. We're not used to people earning beyond what they need to provide for their family. That's where the phrase 'to earn a living' comes from. Honest work means earning a living. And if someone earns money, amasses wealth for himself, he's selfish, corrupt, or both."

  "You're right. We yearn for modernity, progress, but we're also afraid of losing our traditions. We want both, and that's just not possible. The neoliberal model is condemned to fail here, if it hasn't already."

  Cardona would have liked to have said that the problem wasn't the model but how it was being applied. Instead he asked, "But do you think that people will reach the point where they'd rather put investors on the run? If so, we should just close our borders right now."

  "Oh, they'll put them on the run, all right, and the next day they'll wake up with nothing. It will be a victory with no winners—just the kind of victory we like."

  The woman looks closely at Cardona's wound. "You're going to need stitches," she pronounces.

  "With no anesthetic?"

  "Stay calm."

  "Will it hurt?"

  "It won't take a minute."

  He closes his eyes and lets her do what she needs to do. He wonders whether he will have enough strength to reach Turing's house. He has to; he has to finish what he started.

  He leaves the pharmacy under a drizzly sky. His cut was deep and required three stitches. It still burns, but the pain is subsiding. Turing's house is located in a gated community on the outskirts of the city. Will he make it? He knows how to get there, he has studied the names of the streets; Rio Fugitivo has avenues that run the length of the city, and it is difficult to get lost. It will take about forty-five minutes to get there on foot. The blockades are the problem. With the way the city is, full of demonstrations and police, there will be risks. It could start to pour again at any moment, and he would have to take shelter somewhere. He is exhausted; his clothes are wet and stained with blood. So, what then? Go back to the hotel and take a shower? Lie down on the bed and let the drugs wash over him? Leave it all until tomorrow? No. Tomorrow Ruth will find out about Albert's death, put two and two together, and suspect Cardona. She will know that the trial was a ruse, a necessary lie to hide the merciless truth. Because the law is of no use in this country, mere subterfuge so that those in power can dictate the course of events at will. Cardona always knew it, just didn't want to believe it. Perhaps he thought that his word, his convictions could triumph. Vanity of all vanities, if that was the case. But no. Deep down all he wanted was to be one of them. And the only way he can exonerate himself is by taking the law into his own hands. By acting as judge and jury. Defeating the law will be his victory. And the only way to escape his own grave is by shooting his way out. He wipes his face with a dirty handkerchief, the purplish spots on his cheeks glowing.

  Cardona decides to continue on his way, far from the upheavals of collective will but at the same time paradoxically sure that what he has done and what he is about to do are an essential part of that will. A historic afternoon, and here he is, helping to create history as it is being destroyed. He comes upon streets and intersections littered with stones, broken bottles, and sticks; cars that defied the blockade and wound up with their tires slashed; stubborn fires devouring broken chairs, garbage, and newspaper; desperate firefighters trying to put out the flames with hoses that lack water pressure; groups of young people who have come in from rural areas, heading downtown; military troops on lookouts and police battalions clearing the streets of stones and running after demonstrators with tear gas; journalists with microphones and cameramen with cameras that never stop rolling, capturing the violent abandon and showing live images of the country, recording these scenes for online and television news broadcasts, for the summary of the week's events on Sunday, for historical archives. No one recognizes Cardona, nor does he do anything to be recognized. He walks on roads that run parallel to the main avenues, avoiding direct confrontation with the protesters. It's better this way. He is happy to have retired from the government in time, not to be part of the collapse. Ah, as if that were the whole truth. Frantic caravans of words obscure reality. Had he retired, or had he been forced to retire? They had made him tender his resignation. Perhaps they had realized that he wasn't one of them. Or they hadn't realized that he wanted to be one of them.

  While he walks, Cardona plays with a verse from Rubén Darío. Celeste fue la triste historia de mi corazón and unused to getting lost in the face of such obsequiousness. That's what being a minister does to you. What would Mirtha say if she knew that from time to time he missed the lunches and dinners at the presidential residence? Would she accept the tangled way in which he is apologizing? Would she be offended that he had to drag her memory into his own conflict? Blue was my heart, he mumbles. Blue my heart is still.

  Every now and then Cardona stops, exhausted, and wonders how it will all end. Will Montenegro fall? It is by no means a certainty: the government has been rattled before and has always found a way to sustain itself. The opposition forces have the necessary will to shake the government's foundation but not to give the final push that will precipitate its fall. Perhaps there is the fear of waking the ghosts of coup d'états, which fill the country's past. No one is happy with the way things are now, but the effort that it took to reestablish democracy two decades ago still weighs heavy. In the face of such hesitation and uncertainty, someone should do to Montenegro what Cardona just did to Albert: approach and shoot him point-blank in the chest. End of story. The demise of one baroque structure, which would likely give way to a new structure no less baroque. But that was for others to take care of, those who were up and coming. And yet who was capable of doing it? Who would not hesitate when listening to Montenegro's sometimes strange way of speaking? He would put a cigar in his mouth, bi
te down on it, and begin to talk. The words would tumble off his lips as if he were drunk. Cardona had had to pay close attention in order to understand him. Montenegro exercised his power in the smallest of details, obliging people like Cardona to concentrate as hard as they could in order to understand what he said, making them see that, just like the cigar, he had them between his teeth and could destroy them simply by biting down.

  He lets out a sigh of relief as he turns a corner and sees, three blocks farther on, the gated community where Turing lives.

  As he approaches, a question forms inside him, taking him by surprise: what has he done? He looks at his hands, dotted by wine-colored spots. Why kill the poor albino guard? He didn't have anything to do with it.

  , He continues on, thinking that even with Albert gone, he still misses the Presidential Palace. Cardona now knows he is no different from all those murderers he accused of sustaining Montenegro's dictatorship such a long time ago. Blue was my heart.

  Everything has been an excuse. All of this has very little to do with Montenegro's culpability and everything to do with Cardona's. The state chewed him up, then spat him out. Blue my heart is still.

  Chapter 37

  ONE NIGHT KANDINSKY decides to visit his parents. He waits for what seems like forever for the door to open. His mom's eyes light up at the sight of him; he melts into her embrace. She is thinner; he can feel the bones along her back.

  "What a surprise! Come in, come in. You're so pale."

  All of us, little by little, lose weight, begin to disintegrate. In the hallway he comes upon his dad's sullen face, grease-stained coveralls, and gray, threadbare T-shirt. He coldly shakes Kandinsky's hand.

  "Thought you'd forgotten about us."

  Everything seems small, dirty, and rotten to Kandinsky. Had he really lived here for more than fifteen years? How had he been able to stand it? He looks at the boxes piled high in the hallway, the flickering light of the lamp in the cramped living room with its color TV, the walls crumbling from the humidity, the poster of San José, and the effigy of the Virgin of Urkupiña with a lit candle at her feet in the kitchen. He misses the workshop, would like to see the bicycles—broken-down skeletons standing on their heads—that await his dad's deft hands, the tools strewn on a wooden table, the screws and chains on the dirt floor. When he was a boy, in Quillacollo, he could spend hours watching his dad work. It wasn't a stretch to go from that to tearing apart and putting back together anything he could get his hands on, radios and television sets found in garbage dumps.

  He says nothing. He had suspected he would feel like a stranger; that this is indeed his feeling, however, hurts. He had held on to a faint hope: his parents' house was his house too. Perhaps returning was no longer possible. So now what?

  He will not ask them for forgiveness; this visit is already an apology. He will not tell them what he does. He will give them a wad of cash and say goodbye, telling them that he has not let them down, that they can always count on him.

  He goes into the room that he used to share with his brother, Esteban. The smell of dirty clothes and stagnant air assaults him. His bed is gone. Esteban is stretched out on his, smoking and reading by the light of a lamp. He is well built, taller than his older brother. Kandinsky extends his right hand. His brother does not acknowledge the greeting, tapping his cigarette into an ashtray on the bedside table.

  "How are you, bro?" Kandinsky asks.

  "Fucked, but still honest."

  His tone does not invite further conversation. Kandinsky doesn't know what to say to him either, what to ask him. He notices the difference in the way they are dressed. He is wearing brand-new jeans and a black sweater. Esteban is wearing old brown pants and a faded red shirt.

  "What're you reading?"

  "Nothing that'd interest you," Esteban replies between gritted teeth, as if trying to contain the annoyance caused by Kandinsky's presence. "Just old Marx."

  "What makes you think I wouldn't be interested?"

  "You're not the type."

  "You'd be surprised."

  Fucked, but still honest. What was that supposed to mean? Suddenly he understands: it's because of that time when he came and gave his dad an envelope of cash. They have no idea how he earns a living and came to the conclusion that those bills could have been obtained only illegally. How else could he have gotten them? Such miracles didn't happen in this country. They are so honest and even prouder than he is. They could forgive him for disappearing, but not for possibly having done something illegal to escape poverty.

  "You're not being fair to me."

  "Whatever. You have no right to demand anything of us." Kandinsky leaves the room. He walks past his dad without saying goodbye. He gives his mom a quick kiss and heads out the door. One day they will know the truth. One day they will understand.

  He walks along the sidewalk that borders the main building at San Ignacio. His fingers twitch nervously. The tingling sensation comes back into his hands and wrists. At times the pain is unbearable.

  A guard dog appears from among the pine trees behind the wrought-iron gate, his open mouth slobbering. He snaps at the fence, startling Kandinsky, who spits at the dog and begins to run.

  In Playground, Kandinsky meets in a private chatroom with the four members of the Restoration whom he chose to accompany him in the next phase of his plan—Corso, Baez, Vivas, and Padilla. The chatroom has 128-bit encryption, one of the most secure oh the market. Kandinsky, through his avatar BoVe, tells them that all their work against the government of Playground has been a preliminary step for what is to come.

  KANDINSKY: were at war a new type of war b proud u were chosen 4 the most diphicult part

  BAEZ: whos the enemy

  KANDINSKY: security systems govt sites multinationals w/ investments in the country

  CORSO: whatre the objectives

  KANDINSKY: phinal V no more no less

  CORSO: 2 much

  KANDINSKY: its not 2 late 2 leave

  PADILLA: were with u we just need speciphic objectives

  KANDINSKY: globalux the rest is up 2 u use the whole arsenal virus DoS graphphiti

  BAEZ: were part of the Coalition

  KANDINSKY: were not part of anything but people think of us as the resistance well be the resistance we are the resistance

  He asks each one of them to act on his own, to prevent the intelligence service from finding similar structures that might get them caught. They will report to him once a week, in a previously agreed-upon chatroom.

  They sign off and meet up again in the anarchist neighborhood in Playground, this time together with the other members of the Restoration. They will speak as if their conversation in the private chatroom never took place.

  The attacks signed by the Resistance begin at the same time as the Coalition's protests against the hike in electricity rates (there are street demonstrations of all kinds in the country's largest cities, but the center of events is Rio Fugitivo). This coincidence will lead the country's main media analysts and advisers to the ministry of the interior to conclude that the groups are working in concert. Traditional uprisings, which were notably successful in the second half of the twentieth century, had managed to unite forces with a new kind of rebellion, one that used digital technology to send its message and to paralyze—sometimes for hours, sometimes for days—information systems belonging to the government and a few large corporations.

  The media cover the huge national protests against the government. The leader of the coca growers, through his anti-neoliberal tirades and insults hurled at the imperialist gringos, is able to unite the forces of the left that had been dispersed and fragmented for the past fifteen years. The analysts do not consider him a possible candidate for the presidential election next year; they say that his support is limited to rural areas of the country and does not reach the departments in the tropics. The media give the same coverage to the coca leader as to the Resistance's movements. They are fascinated by the figure of Kandinsky and have qu
ickly turned him into a cyberspatial combination of Don Quixote and Robin Hood. There are no photos of him or statements that reveal his identity, which leads to a series of speculations. Some say he must be a foreigner, because of his name and because such technological prowess could only come from abroad; others say that he is actually a local rebel and that even the government should be proud of his work. Hundreds of young people from different social classes appropriate what he represents—his anti-globalization stance, his decision to confront their submissive government—and there is no shortage of hacker apprentices, copycats by the dozen, who try to follow his lead and attack the Web sites of local mayors, a regional development company...

  Lying on the mattress in his apartment, watching Lana Nova report the news on his cell phone as he lets his hands rest, Kandinsky loves the media coverage that surrounds his movement. He revels in his subordinates' successful attacks even more. The most creative is Baez, who has implemented an electronic version of what young Argentine and Chilean activists do when they discover where an official from the old dictatorship lives. They go to the official's home and cover the walls in phrases that allude to his past (quotes from victims of torture, resistance leaders), letting the neighborhood and the media know that someone who took part in the massacres lives there. This strategy of attack is known in those countries as escrache. Baez has a list of old civil servants from Montenegro's dictatorship and sends them e-mails containing a blunt message: Murderer, your hands are stained with blood. Ciberescrache, he calls it. He started out with a few of his colleagues at the Black Chamber. His next step will be to make the names known.

  One weekend Nelson Vivas and Freddy Padilla are murdered, a day apart. Vivas is stabbed early Saturday morning as he leaves the El Posmo building, and on Sunday night Padilla is shot in the back of the head at the front door to his house. The media report these two deaths as if they were separate incidents; no one seems to know that both men were members of the Resistance.