A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  They were unsettled times, with great confusion and hilarious syncretisms. There was, for instance, one lecturer with upper-arms bulging with fat who attempted to impart the new divinatory sciences: she was supposed to teach the students to construct probable scenarios and project equilibriums. It was a matter of classifying reality into viable alternatives so that it didn’t veer toward the undesirable ones. A tool of deceptive simplicity existed that simulated games in a four-block diagram. The participants made decisions based on their own situation, taking into account their assumptions on the behavior of the others. The basic dilemma used was that of two prisoners who had to decide, without consulting each other, whether or not to confess to a joint crime. The lecturer had to demonstrate that although the optimal decision was not to confess—in which case there was no proven crime—the ultimate equilibrium was for both to confess, and thus equally fuck each other up. The key to the theorem was a blind faith in the fact that the other would seek personal salvation.

  The lecturer spent the first class attempting to explain the diagram and its functioning. After remembering so many letters and numbers, she had to sit down to rest for fifteen minutes, while a student fanned her to waft away her flushed embarrassment. The criminals escaped from their square prison each time she tried to explain her thought processes to her students.

  “If number two doesn’t confess and one does, there’s no equilibrium because, given what they know, added to what they know the other knows, there’s no incentive to reach a point of equilibrium.”

  The students gazed at her, uncomfortable and embarrassed.

  “Listen, it’s not my fault. That’s roughly what the book says. It isn’t that easy to translate.

  “But get it into your heads that the important thing is that it depends. If hegemony sutures the imaginary reconstruction, the two criminals could fraternize and not give way to the repressive intimidation.”

  “Why?”

  “It says here that’s not the right question. Now it’s ‘Why not?’; remember, not why but why not.”

  Even paid agitators had to reconfigure their proposals in relation to the new geometric politics. Their efforts to harangue the student body in the language of the new times left Max with a sense of sympathy for the absurd. A leaflet posted on the faculty walls captured the effectiveness of the virus in the jargon of the day:

  COMRADES:

  THE AUTHORITIES CONTINUE THEIR POLICY OF APPEASING

  THE OWNERS OF THE FREE MARKET.

  THEY OPPRESS THE PEOPLE BY KEEPING INFLATION LOW

  THROUGH RAISING PRICES.

  SAY NO TO THE PRIVATIZATION OF THE TAMAL SANDWICH

  STAND!

  FREE ATOLE FOR ALL UNIONIZED WORKERS AND STUDENTS!

  NOT ONE STEP FURTHER!

  COME TO THE RALLY AND DROP A SLIP OF RECYCLED

  PAPER IN THE SUGGESTION BOX.

  THE STUDENT ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE COMMITTEE

  FOR INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY.

  23

  Max’s study plan also included a synopsis of the history of political thought. Based on academic readers summarizing classic texts, he seemed to perceive a movement that was the antithesis of the tone of the contemporary panorama. Classical thought was presented with a sort of veneration of the obsolete: the great philosophers had served as a transition to the present evolutionary stage; they were like highly gifted children who managed to get a glimpse of something, but always within the framework of superstition. They functioned as pearls to adorn, with some erudite reference, contemporary debate; were relics testifying to the passing of other times, now distant from the universality of science.

  What Max noted was the inverse: despite its hyper-realistic pretensions, political narrative was acquiring an increasingly fictitious character. The point of departure and the end met to close a circle that no longer even bothered to take into account some of the most manifest features of any attempt to explain the social sphere. In years gone by, the graybeard who signaled the disenchantment of the world proposed setting out from “what is” as it presents itself, even as a point of departure for those who wanted to transform reality. In present times, the reverse process was followed: to set out from a list of indisputably good desires, and to assume that—with sufficient will on the part of those with power—one could reach a just Utopia where everyone would stay in the place corresponding to him.

  Everything could be justified in the name of the transformation of the inert masses into proud, participative citizens, conscious of their rights and obligations. What did it matter that “what is” was widespread hunger, violence, ignorance, rage, banalization, morbid curiosity, and snobbism? There was no way that the poor taste of gatecrashing the institutional-perfection party would be allowed: the ballot box will make us free…handsome, smart, good, and better. Anything not in tune with the choir of new ideals was punished with the most absolute segregation: it would be banned from mention at conferences, in cultural magazines, and on boring television programs in which regulated cruelty was extolled. The simple fact that people would periodically turn up in their millions to scratch a determined mark on a piece of paper—without having any real idea of the implications of the alternatives—was sufficient to legitimize any state of affairs. Brutality became a leftover concept to be corrected little by little. Gradually. In installments. Of course plurality involved self-criticism: it wasn’t a perfect system, but it was the best ever invented. That was enough to make it impossible to question.

  There was in the university one muscular provocateur who enjoyed quoting a melancholy, heteronymic author: even the most avant-garde were indignant about the proposition that the distance between a cultured man and the average worker is greater than that between the worker and a monkey. Fascist! Reactionary! Think again, buddy! Did you know he spends the whole day eating tuna, lifting weights, and watching videos of gory fights? I’ve heard he has more than one girlfriend at the same time! He’s a pervert!

  The council of notable academics—always the same people—decided to expel him from Eden: unlike them, he would never have life tenure ensuring a comfortable existence. He wouldn’t attain the paradise of thirty years reciting the same books to generation after generation of naïve students. It was one thing to be tolerant, but quite another to allow the teaching of inappropriate thought. Young minds were not yet ready to be corrupted.

  This man was the only member of the staff willing to oversee Max’s thesis. The original title, “Have You Ever Seen a Democrat Without Shoes?” was rejected by the course coordinators. Anxious to get around the red tape, Max opted for The Construction of the Imperfect: The remaining challenges for participative theology. The committee was thrown off track by the agglutination of terms from the dominant canon, so didn’t notice the actual meaning until the thesis had been printed out.

  Max concentrated on a simple exercise. He made an exhaustive review of those theoreticians who postulated the existence of society as a communal pact. Without exception, he found that in exchange for the renunciation of natural freedom and individual power, the collective yoke always offered something else: protection, well-being, respect for private property etc. He examined the texts line by line and came to two conclusions:

  1. Rights are created and conceived by man himself. Not being, in themselves, either universal or evident, their validity was subordinate to their efficacy. If they were not observed during any given event, they had no purpose. Rhetorical rights are equivalent to nothing.

  2. The shell of the pact has absolutely no value as such. Without the promised benefits, it is an empty form with no justification in itself. If institutions don’t respond to its specific aims, the dissolution of the pact becomes legitimate through the same line of reasoning that brought it into existence.

  As the requirements of the thesis included some form of numerical analysis, Max added an appendix with three graphs. The first was entitled “Liberty.” To draw it, Max got hold of historical data on the percentage of the po
pulation in prison in industrialized nations and calculated the ratio, weighted by population size. His coefficient of prisoners demonstrated an unequivocal tendency to rise: increasing numbers of citizens in affluent countries enjoyed the benefits of development from behind bars.

  The second was called “Equality.” It was very similar to the first, except that in this case what was charted was the coefficient measuring the distribution of wealth. Here again, there was a pronounced tendency toward a concentrated high-income group on a planetary scale, greatly increasing the gap between haves and have-nots.

  He named the last graph “Fraternity”; this simply showed the number of armed conflicts per year, weighted by the number of deaths and the costs of war damage. Even if a couple of historical peaks that went off the graph were omitted, once more, there was an indisputable rise.

  He rounded off his thesis with a single-page conclusion, left completely blank. After a less than exciting viva, marked by unease and latent tension, Max was awarded a university degree. Sao and Pascual invited him to dine on their favorite mushroom quesadillas in celebration.

  24

  After his graduation, Max thought over his options for setting out on the path of social rhetoric. The trust fund left by his father was very clear: he would only receive money for three months following the completion of his studies.

  He regularly checked the classified ads of The Daily Miserias, but the same job opportunities appeared again and again: plumbers, bathroom maids, watchmen, cellar men, weekend child-minders. One day, almost by accident, before turning the page, he saw the following announcement:

  WANTED: SOCIAL SCIENTIST NOT GIVEN TO STUPID

  AFFECTATION. THOSE INTERESTED SHOULD

  CONTACT $UPERSTRUCTURE ON 55 73 93 94.

  NUMBSKULLS NEED NOT APPLY.

  He’d heard talk about the wizard of social-trends analysis who had recently arrived in Villa Miserias. It was said that his equipment for dissecting the collective spirit was so powerful that it could dispense with the soul itself; it was capable of publicly denuding it without even the need to look.

  After a call so succinct it left Max wondering if it had actually taken place, he was invited to a meeting with G.B.W. Ponce, the messiah of $uperstructure, at Alison’s. The same day. Twelve minutes later. Ponce’s identifying features: graying hair and an undone tie.

  Max was there a minute early. Ponce was already waiting with two beers. Before giving any sign of having noticed Max’s presence, he finished his own off at full speed.

  “So you’re interested in sticking your head in the gutter, are you?” he asked by way of introduction.

  Max hesitated before responding to this unexpected question. He considered asking his potential employer to repeat it, but that didn’t seem to fit with the etiquette of the occasion. Instead, he remembered that arrogance was prescribed.

  “Pleased to meet you, Señor Ponce. I’d just like you to know that shit doesn’t frighten me. I’ve spent my whole life escaping from fairy stories. Even when they are well-intentioned, they do a lot of harm.”

  This was enough to confirm G.B.W. Ponce’s intuition. The boy was hired.

  “Let’s just get one thing very clear, er…Max? You’re called Max, right? I’m not offering you anything more than my vision. It looks a whole lot like the one people think they have. The difference is that I can show you what to do so that they can’t tell their vision from mine.”

  “That’s enough for me. And I offer not to look away, no matter how crude the spectacle is.”

  “Come in tomorrow and we’ll arrange the details. Welcome.”

  Welcome. Welcome. Welcome…The sounds echoed in staccato, unsuccessfully trying to catch Max’s attention. He was already at another table. Without his body. He was urgently fantasizing about how to get to know the woman he couldn’t take his eyes off: Nelly López, Orquídea’s niece. For Max, her black eyes tinted the entire place. He stood up, following a silent command, halting on his way every few steps to inhale composure. At her table—unaware of Nelly’s scribbling in her notebook—he stopped to check, for the last time, just what he was contemplating.

  “Hi, I’m Max Michels. I think I’ve just fallen in love.”

  The first answer came from a nearby table, where a group of youths were downing beers to celebrate their grades. In imitation of the celebration on the screen, the most euphoric were splattering the floor with what remained of their drinks. The empty glass crashed to the ground, looking something like a shuttlecock spewing beer. The last rebellious drops traced a perfect parabola before hitting the floor, awaiting the cloth that would soak up their identity, without any possibility of return.

  III

  1

  “Exactly who are you?”

  “Who else would I be? Nelly López.”

  “And what are you doing here?”

  “Well, you asked me in.”

  “Do you sleep with everyone who asks you in?”

  “The ones I like, yes.”

  “Just curious.”

  “Ugh. Don’t tell me you feel more at home with the usual stuff?”

  “No way. This is very dark. I need to see you.”

  “Ah, no. Leave it be. You have to get used to it.”

  2

  When Max woke there was no trace of his guest. Even the sheets had been straightened in the half where she’d slept. Although he hadn’t drunk much the night before, his mouth felt furry, his head heavy; home to a constellation of fugitive stars, twinkling moments in the life of Nelly, as recounted by herself. In his mind’s eye, he could even see the moment when they went to his bedroom. After that everything was a solid wall of darkness. His skin remembered the shudders, but however hard he tried, there was no image associated with them.

  Some inner sense was warning him not to get involved with a presence capable of destroying him: their respective strengths were just not comparable. He fantasized about throwing every insult he knew at her, saying the most wounding things he could think of. It wasn’t that he wanted to cause her pain, but simply to make her refuse to see him again. But at the same time, he was consumed by the desire to sink back into that incandescent darkness. It was a matter of instinct. Of pride. Never before had his body cried out with such shuddering delight. His cells went into hyper at the very thought of it happening again. But the absence of self-congratulatory images was unbearable; he was almost uncertain that the events had actually occurred.

  It was all an extension of the impenetrable blackness of Nelly’s eyes: voracious irises that unwillingly ceded a little ground to the snow of the eyeball. Even before they had left the bar, he had been determined to find some nuance, patchiness, wrinkle, some chink of difference within that black cavern. Zilch. Nelly gave nothing away. The very notion that she possessed pupils was an act of faith. Max got as close as he could; they had to be somewhere. Nelly’s amused smile breathed laughter at him. After that failure, he consoled himself by trying to demonstrate that a more intense black existed in the world outside her eyes. First he compared them with the glass of bitter, sugary liquid on the table; the ease of their victory made him want to throw the fluid in her face. He found a black lighter that, for an instant, seemed to aspire to a comparison. After that Nelly gave him the clip that restrained her cascade of waist-long hair; its prongs paled in comparison with her eyes. Max next tore off a piece of the black cloth surrounding the autographed photo of a sporting legend hanging on the wall. He was immediately surrounded by bald gorillas, and had to give a little something to soothe their itchy palms. When that final adversary was defeated, Nelly asked him to stop. All this—with the added frustration of not being allowed to pay the whole check before moving on to his apartment—left Max with an awareness of the inevitability of his future:

  “What’s the point? Your eyes are blacker than the deepest melancholy.”

  The next flashback had them in Max’s living room, each holding a glass of wine, sitting on the old sofa that had been reupholstered s
o many times; at this particular moment, it was covered in the faded, apricot-colored material Max hadn’t changed since his father’s death. Behind them hung the familiar axiom: “The measure of each man lies in the dose of truth he can withstand.” Incapable of destroying the plaque, Max had muffled its message beneath a work by Pascual Bramsos, an unsolicited gift from the artist not long after he’d started university. At first it had seemed a celebration of a new cycle, but, after all the hours of contemplation, Max now understood it had more to do with the end of an era.

  The painting showed three small, upended, paper sailboats. The boat on the right was decorated with a purple nose; the one in the center had a pair of almond-shaped eyes along its whole length; the left-hand boat was distinguished by a scorched ear, dripping globs of flesh. All three rested on dog-eared toothpicks covered in tiny splinters—somehow resembling peculiar, pockmarked men—and were plowing through the sinuously textured sea. The toothpicks, in turn, hung from the crests of three deep waves, blue arcs—surging inexplicably from the upper edge of the painting—impeding their upward descent. As a frame, Pascual had covered the four shores of the canvas with a single, long strand of red yarn, glued in studied disorder, so that it was impossible to follow its garbled path. The continuity of the frame was unquestionable: it had no visible beginning or end.

  “What does it mean?” asked Nelly after frowning at the artwork for several minutes.