A Zero-Sum Game. Eduardo Rabasa

of the divisive stain that would spread throughout Villa Miserias.

      Mascorro was the next to be recompensed. It took Maso quite a while to process the separation from him. For a time, they went on sleeping in the same bedroom, using the other room for storage. Before sleeping, Maso enjoyed going into the details of his day, unconcerned by the snores of his roommate, who would wake up at intervals to offer some monosyllable showing he was following his boss’s exploits.

      It was almost impossible to walk around the apartment without bumping into some piece of imitation mahogany furniture, the huge television set and sound system, the stuffed moose’s head fixed to the wall, or Maso’s increasingly large collection of clown figures. Mascorro felt intimidated by the clay, porcelain, plastic, plush, and even metal clowns, formed from screws, nuts, keys, pieces of piping, and other odds and ends. However, on Maso’s birthday, he turned up with a flesh and blood clown, to the enormous surprise of the birthday boy and Mecha, who, on seeing him, exclaimed: “It’s not just with bread that saltwater dams overflow.” The clown entertained them with jokes and party games for two hours, and even gave Maso a balloon carousel. When the function came to a close, Maso began to pull out wads of bills to give the clown as a tip, then closed the briefcase and handed it over to him intact.

      Mascorro himself had the second ochre patch painted on the annex of Building B. When he had taken the last packing case from his old apartment, he saw Maso standing firmly in the doorway. Mascorro opened his mouth to speak, but his boss raised a hand; he nodded, gave his subordinate a couple of bone-rattling pats on the back, turned around, and closed the door behind him without another word. While Mascorro was moving his belongings into the new apartment, the neighbors produced a concert of slamming doors.

      19

      The other tenants in Building B also started to benefit from Mauricio Maso’s presence. He had parabolic antennas installed on the roof. These inverted flying saucers were capable of picking up hundreds of channels in incomprehensible languages. But between the linguistic barriers and the hassle of keeping up to date with the new codes for stealing the signal, the end result was that people watched the same programs as before. Even so, several children started to wear baseball caps and T-shirts with the logos of foreign teams; the male members of families blamed each other when the women complained about them having accidentally left the set tuned to porn channels.

      Soda and snack vending machines were installed in the lobby. Mascorro was in charge of refilling a basket brimming with coins every morning so that the tenants could buy whatever they liked. They particularly enjoyed the sound of the cans falling. When the captain of the cleaning staff soccer team asked for help in buying new gear, Maso didn’t hesitate. They agreed to order the same color that already distinguished them.

      The maximum cohesive element was a small altar—also in the lobby—surrounded by black candles, kept alight day and night. They illuminated the image of a religious icon that was particularly characteristic of a certain sector of Villa Miserias. Although the protectress had been born into a different social caste, her mercy was great enough to find a place for those brown skinned sons. Maso and his men repaid her with complete devotion.

      The artist Pascual Bramsos’ paternal relations were deeply religious. In spite of the protests from his historian mother, his grandmother had taken on the task of indoctrinating her small grandson with her beliefs during the regular outings when the parents left him in her care. The child’s bed was underneath a shelf, on which rested an image of the Virgin, surrounded by candles to ward off evil spirits. On the evening of the accident, an electrical transformer exploded, shaking the whole apartment. The candles tipped over and a stream of hot wax fell directly onto the boy’s ear. Despite numerous operations—paid for by the grandmother—instead of an ear, he was left with what looked like a pink, processed-cheese cauliflower with a hole in the center. Bramsos’ childhood was a form of medical torture. Nevertheless, it was not his grandmother he blamed, but the Virgin who had decided to mutilate him. When he was old enough, he honed his technical skills in art school. He was in training to respond to the aggression.

      The first thing he gave form to was an impeccable clay Virgin. Then he intervened in the figure until he attained a syncretism of traditions, affinities, phobias, and hatreds. He allowed her to retain the long habit covering her legs, but undressed the upper half of the torso, leaving uncovered a pair of intentionally augmented breasts. Her proud head was draped in a tunic, hiding her hair. On her face, he placed a black mask with a long, pointed nose. The reddened lips were slightly parted. When he showed the piece in an exhibition at the art school, it had to be kept under guard because of the anonymous threats to destroy it.

      Maso heard of its existence from an employee who supplemented her earnings washing clothes for a number of residents, including the Bramsos family. The description appealed to both his love of bright color and his violent hatred of organized religion. When he was still a child and working in his subterranean slash show, strong rains had one night flooded the sewer he lived in and he’d sought sanctuary in a church. The following morning, he woke to find the face of the priest smiling into his delicate features. He invited Maso to his rooms, offered him a shower, food, and clean clothes. He requested that, before leaving, Maso come to the confessional for purification. As Mauricio Maso had never been in a church before, he thought it normal to find himself in the narrow cubicle, on his knees before the seated parish priest. He closed his eyes, as he’d been taught, and listened to a passionate prayer in a strange language. The rising crescendo of the voice frequently faltered. The boy felt a slight tug at his head as the priest said: “Now I’m going to pardon your sins.” When he opened his eyes, Maso understood what that absolution involved. He managed to push the man away from him and crashed backwards through the fragile wooden door. Priestly threats of God’s revenge and eternal hellfire followed him as he left.

      Mascorro communicated his boss’s interest in the piece to Bramsos. The budding artist already had radical ideas about selling his work, but his fondness for the products of the prospective client eased the exchange. Maso reified the representation; his neighbors followed his example. Taimado ordered his men to make offerings of some piece of their personal armory. The altar was littered with knives, ninja stars, truncheons, spiked rings, and sharpened screwdrivers. Other employees showered her with their cleaning rags, bottles of bleach, gardening gloves, toilet brushes. Juana Mecha welcomed her with: “Dispossession can only be covered up by dispossession.”

      20

      And just to fucking cap it all, she has to be a journalist, thought Max Michels as he picked up a copy of the free newspaper in which there would surely be an article written by her, secretly directed at him. While he was aware of how arrogant his paranoia was, it didn’t make it any less probable that he was right. Expecting an attack from the Many, he considered the possibility that the threat lay in her professional intelligence, which openly defied Max’s stereotype of his sort of woman. Confronted with this strategy, the Many decided to attack on another flank: As if you were bothered about that, you sod. What you’re really afraid of is anyone knowing. Don’t trouble your head, you’re already dead meat. The others will find out sooner or later. That’s a cert. But then, who knows? Her interests have got nothing to do with mine. Think so? That’s your problem, smartass.

      Feverishly leafing through that day’s issue, Max had the impression of having read it a hundred times before. The news items, headlines, advertisements, and trivia were decidedly secondary. What mattered was the statement of intent: Selon Perdumes had been convinced that transparent information was a well-calibrated thermometer for measuring the development of a community. As people became masters of their own destinies, the responsibility to know what was going on and offer justifiable opinions increased: the residents had to stop being mere spectators of what concerned them. The reforms had offered an opportunity to crystalize needs: it was the moment to create a newspaper, The Daily Miserias. Perdumes had a clear idea of the appropriate format. Based on a study by G.B.W. Ponce, he knew that Villa Miserians spent 6.8 minutes a day informing themselves of their reality. He had statistical evidence of graphic preferences, type of language, topics of interest, and the ideal length of articles. There had been no time to lose or gaudiness to be stinted.

      The result was a concise newspaper, in which illustrations, photos, and boxes with huge arrows predominated.