A Zero-Sum Game

by Eduardo Rabasa

  The gun in Max’s pocket was running out of breath.

  “Magnificent! Your material religiosity is magnificent! You still think something different exists in another dimension. Allow me to convince you that this isn’t the case. Didn’t your beloved Big Brother say the great ills of society would possibly never be righted, but that no one was ready to accept this? We’re offering to do that once and for all. Behind the façade of money, there is just more money. And then a bit more. For a very small number of residents, the only thing that makes them angry about large fortunes is that they don’t belong to them. The rest consider them as natural as the length of their penises.

  “We will be eternally grateful to you for helping us spread the new gospel. There is nothing hidden behind the appearance other than incarnations of new appearances. If you map the journey of each coin, you’ll discover not one of them is clean. And, following the same line of thought, I challenge you to show me a politician unwilling to kiss money’s ass. They know that refusal would be suicide. They would be unable to govern, or even be elected to power in the first place. Let it go. You’re better off enjoying the beautiful Nelly than resigning yourself to watching how others with a higher capacity for ignoring all those things that torment you, do just that.”

  By the time Perdumes had concluded his speech, his complexion was almost purple. He let his alabaster smile hang over the room while he waited for his opponent to make a decision.

  Max Michels clearly heard the snap of the inner safety catch connecting him to the familiar forms among which he’d being tiptoeing all his life. He released the revolver from the claustrophobia threatening to turn it against himself. At least the first shot would hit someone else’s flesh. He first pointed the gun at Orquídea: she had been the original standard bearer. Then he moved on to Ponce: he’d frigging love to check if those dark glasses were bulletproof. Finally, it was Nelly’s turn. With her, he’d descended into the well from which he would never return as himself. He allowed himself the luxury of imagining them as two lead characters in a classical tragedy. Too great a passion for a cold world. He could leave with her right now. He could…

  “Heavenly! Max, leave them out of this. Particularly the girl. It’s not her fault. This is between you and me now.”

  Perdumes’ face seemed the color of bone. The ubiquitous smile had called in missing. It pained Max to realize that, once again, the man was right. He was itching to know the color of the blood that ran in his veins. Maybe pale green. Then the Many pointed the revolver at Max’s temple: put an end to all this now, you’ll be able to take a rest, even from us. The hand oscillated between the two possible targets, unable to decide, but finally came to rest in one direction. Max closed his eyes before pulling the trigger. The notion of his whole life filing before his eyes made a brief appearance. But there wasn’t even time for that.

  A deafening explosion was heard just at the moment Max felt the truncheon blow that left him lying on the ground paralyzed from the waist down. The smoke-shrouded shadows were still standing, unperturbed. Before the hail of kicks from a squad of Black Paunches hit him, Max heard Joel Taimado giving his report to Selon Perdumes.

  “Hey boss, looks to me like these bullets are just toys. They’ve got jam inside.”

  9

  With great difficulty, Max opened his eyes. His lids felt as heavy as if they had been closed from his birth. His body was a rotting raisin, held in one piece by an arsenal of bandages, gauze, stitches, adhesive tape, shattered bones, and stabbing pain. But anyway, he’d been lucky. Before losing consciousness, he’d heard hysterical screams halting the furious onslaught of black boots. They had pounded him without completely breaking him. That same metallic voice, now in a sweetly wary tone, was attempting to wake him from his dream. It took Max a little longer to come out of the place of refuge he believed himself to be in.

  “Oh, Max. Like, what are you saying? Your nanny died years ago. Don’t you remember?” The sound of Nelly’s voice corroborated the information given by the walls: Max was in his apartment, recovering from a brutal beating. His tongue told him he was missing half of two front teeth. His left knee was swollen with liquid: a ligament must be torn. He asked Nelly for a mirror to see how this new chapter in his life would begin. His nose, with a new bump, looked like a continuation of the slash that ran down from his hairline, cutting through his eyebrow on its way. Was this the face of the new president of the Villa Miserias residents’ association?

  “Jeez. It’s…I don’t know how to say this…you got trounced. You didn’t even win in your own building,” wept Nelly disconsolately, as if she was condensing the whole gamut of earlier experiences in her tears. Her shoulders were shaking, with no apparent intention of stopping. It was one uninterrupted wail that didn’t admit any other possibilities: neither past nor future. The two people present there in that room were prohibited, for reasons they would never understand, from continuing to struggle to be in each other’s company.

  Max allowed himself a dark smile. He was finally returning to the point of departure, only more deformed in body and spirit. Since his childhood, his father had instructed him in the edifying properties of pain. Perhaps he would be satisfied now. He felt Nelly carefully molding her body to his. He didn’t have the strength to look at her, but caressed her thick hair with the few fingers that had escaped uninjured.

  Floating in a restless sleep, Max initially thought he was taking refuge in a dream. Yet the tenacity of the human contact gradually convinced him this was not the case. Now there was no doubt, Nelly was naked. With extreme care, she was removing the thin dressing gown covering his bruised skin. It was as if she was trying to heal every corner of him with fire: it was a pleasurable operation. Max deliberately avoided opening his eyes. Seeing. Not seeing. The difference was more a matter of grade than class. He wanted to allow Nelly to continue without distractions. What truth could his gaze arrive at that his body couldn’t? Nelly’s wails had become whimpers. Max suspected she was ready to cross the boundary into a region where he could no longer see her. More gently than was usual, she rolled on top of him. It made no difference whether or not he opened his eyes now: Why bother? Better to sail with her through less anguished waters.

  The timbre of Nelly’s breathing became heightened until it crystalized into a mantra Max refused to obey: Look at me, look at me, I’m begging you to look at me. He grasped her buttocks more tightly in an attempt to distract her: Nelly continued to emit that command camouflaged as a plea until, unwillingly, Max opened his eyes so as to continue being unable to see her.

  Nelly appeared immediately, arching back her body: Max could see her as clearly as he had felt her touch. Her black hair was falling over her shoulders. Her sweating body belonged fully to Max. At last. The expression on Nelly’s face was one of jubilant ecstasy: she knew it was different this time. She didn’t even take her gaze from Max at the moment they climaxed simultaneously. She lay above him, breathing, for a few minutes more. Outside, night was falling. They fell asleep in silence. A moment before doing so, in his inner self, Max articulated the thought that there might, after all, be a new chapter in the book with blank pages. The wimp had triumphed. The Many hadn’t even had the balls to recognize their resounding defeat.

  The following morning, Max woke embracing the empty space where Nelly should have been sleeping. With great difficulty, he got out of bed. It—everything—had been worth the effort. The thorny path only made the arrival more unique.

  He found Nelly standing in front of the painting in the living room. Her hair, tied back, gave her a demure air. As soon as he saw her, Max knew it was all over. There was no need for explanations. And Nelly did not seem disposed to offer any either. She gave him one last look, allowing him to imprint in his memory the image that would torment him.

  “Oh, Max. There’s nothing left to say. Goodbye. And best of luck with everything.”

  Before Max had even had time to embrace her, Nelly had quietly closed the door, as
if, with that considerate gesture, she was erasing the wake of her fleeting irruption into the life of Max Michels.

  Max took down the painting to torture himself for a moment with the hidden axiom. He read it again and again until it was empty of meaning: reduced to a random collection of letters that could have taken any other form. Any form at all. Suddenly, they flooded onto Max’s internal screen. They didn’t coincide with the words on the plaque, either in number or order, but were, even so, trying to say the same thing. Max limped to the bedroom to dress. He needed to unload the burden of this new certainty onto his enemy. He would go in peace to visit Selon Perdumes.

  10

  When he left the building, Max noticed something had changed. He was used to seeing the dust floating in the sunbeams filtering through the trees. But now this phenomenon seemed to have gone into reverse: the dust was clouding the halos of light, now tired of putting up resistance. Hearing the familiar trsssh, trsssh of Juana Mecha’s broom, he went up to her in the hope of hearing some enigmatic comment that might clarify the situation.

  “Good morning, young Max,” she said with her sweeper’s courtesy.

  Disconcerted, Max made his way toward the Villa Miserias administrative offices, where Selon Perdumes would undoubtedly be present at the swearing in of the new president. When he arrived, the ceremony had just ended: Modesto González had taken office. Perdumes was nowhere to be seen: perhaps he was just late, or had, for some reason, decided not to attend the ritual investiture of his new mascot.

  With a sense of foreboding, Max asked if anyone knew where he was. Who? Selon Perdumes. Never heard of him. One after another, the officials and curiosity seekers looked at him as if he was unhinged, noting his bruises but not daring to ask if he was out of his mind. Convinced this was just another of Perdumes’ perverse games, Max proceeded, in his ungainly gait, to the absent man’s apartment.

  The residents he passed on his way were in on the joke. They seemed genuinely shaken by his mention of the stranger with an unpronounceable name. The poor defeated candidate! He’d had some accident that had addled his wits. They wished him a speedy recovery before continuing on their way.

  Breathing painfully, Max rapped on the door of the apartment. An alarmed, middle-aged woman appeared, clearly getting ready to leave for work. He demanded to see Selon Perdumes, but received the same answer: Who? Never heard of him. Are you feeling all right?

  Max shouted out the name, as if trying to force his enemy out of his hiding place. Terrified, Señora Eloisa Roca asked him to get out her home. That gentleman had never lived there. The family photographs were proof that the apartment had been kept unchanged for many years, in memory of the original owner, her mother, the widow Inocencia Roca.

  Beaten, Max Michels shambled through the streets of Villa Miserias in search of some explanation. The residents watched him with pitying disinterest. He stopped and looked around him. They all had a common trait that outshone any other of their facial features: as they hurried past, they offered him an alabaster smile.

  EDUARDO RABASA studied political science at Mexico’s National University (UNAM), where he graduated with a thesis on the concept of power in the work of George Orwell. He writes a weekly column for the national newspaper Milenio, and has translated books of such authors as Morris Berman, George Orwell, and W. Somerset Maugham. In 2002 he co-founded Sexto Piso, recognized as one of Mexico’s leading independent publishers, where he currently serves as editorial director. A Zero-Sum Game is his debut novel, published in Mexico by Surplus Ediciones (Sur+), in Spain by Pepitas de calabaza, in Argentina by Godot Ediciones, in France by Éditions Piranha, and in the US by Deep Vellum. In 2015, he was selected among the best 20 young Mexican contemporary authors in the Hay Festival’s México20 project.

  CHRISTINA MACSWEENEY is a literary translator specializing in Latin American fiction. Her translations of Valeria Luiselli’s works have been published by Granta and Coffee House Press; Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award in 2015, and The Story of My Teeth was a finalist for the same award in 2016, and won the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies México20, and Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare (And Other Stories, 2016). Her most recent published translation, Daniel Saldaña París’s Among Strange Victims, was published by Coffee House Press in spring 2016, and a short story, “Piñata,” by the same author was included in the 2016 National Translation Month publications.

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