A Zero-Sum Game. Eduardo Rabasa

had moved out of the estate. With the appropriate redesign, he suggested, Villa Miserias’ workers could live there. It was a delicate situation; they needed to tread carefully. But also be firm. In order to clearly differentiate Building B, it would be painted light ochre. The fittings would be replaced by ones of poorer quality and taste.

      The trickiest problem was yet to be resolved: how would the workers pay to live there? He wasn’t thinking of offering his mortgage scheme to more than two of them: Juana Mecha and Joel Taimado, the boss of the Black Paunches, as everyone now called the security squad. Perdumes handed a copy of his proposal to the board, as a mere formality before it was announced.

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      PROPOSAL FOR ACCOMMODATING WORKERS IN BUILDING B

      1. OUR ESTATE SUFFERS THE UNDESIRABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISTANT HOUSING OF OUR WORKERS. FOR THIS REASON, WE ARE OFFERING THEM THE CHANCE TO RENT IN THE SO-CALLED BUILDING B, AS SOON AS THE APPROPRIATE ADAPTATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE, THE COST OF WHICH WILL BE BORNE BY THE ADMINISTRATION.

      2. OUR COMMUNITY HAS MADE A GREAT EFFORT TO BREAK WITH IDEAS THAT HINDER ITS MOVEMENT TOWARD THE FUTURE. WE CANNOT EXEMPT THE WORKERS FROM THE PRINCIPLES BY WHICH WE NOW LIVE, NEITHER FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT NOR OURS: FOR FINANCIAL, ETHICAL, AND MORAL REASONS, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THEY FULLY COVER THE CORRESPONDING COSTS OF THEIR NEW HOUSING.

      3. IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR FINANCIAL MEANS, THEY WILL BE OFFERED A MIXED SCHEME THAT WILL MEET THE NEEDS OF BOTH PARTIES, AND COVER THE MONTHLY MORTGAGE PAYMENTS OF THE APARTMENTS.

       3.1. THE ADMINISTRATION WILL DIRECTLY RETAIN A THIRD OF EACH WAGE. THIS SUM WILL BE PUT TOWARD THE MONTHLY PAYMENTS.

       3.2. THE WORKING DAY WILL BE EXTENDED BY TWO HOURS. THE ENSUING INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY WILL ALLOW A NUMBER OF WORKERS TO BE LAID OFF. THE SAVINGS OCCASIONED WILL BE PUT TOWARD THE MONTHLY PAYMENTS.

       3.3. IN ORDER TO MAKE SAVINGS IN THE COST OF FOOD, FROM NOW ON RESIDENTS WILL BE ASKED TO TAKE THEIR LEFTOVERS TO THE CANTEEN, TO BE EATEN BY THE EMPLOYEES. THE SAVINGS OCCASIONED WILL BE PUT TOWARD THE MONTHLY PAYMENTS.

       3.4. ADDITIONAL ECONOMIES WILL OCCUR IN RELATION TO MEDICAL COSTS AND SICK, LEAVE SINCE LENGTHY TRAVEL TIMES CAUSE A VARIETY OF AILMENTS AMONG OUR EMPLOYEES. THE SAVINGS OCCASIONED WILL BE PUT TOWARD THE MONTHLY PAYMENTS.

      4. IN ORDER TO ASSIST THE DOMESTIC ECONOMIES OF OUR WORKERS, IN ANTICIPATION OF POSSIBLE POOR BUDGETING, MECHANISMS FOR REGULATING BASIC SERVICES WILL BE SET UP. IN THIS WAY, THEIR COEFFICIENTS WILL NOT EXCEED A QUARTER OF THEIR INCOME.

      5. WHEN THE MORTGAGES HAVE BEEN PAID OFF, THE BOARD WILL DECIDE ON THE RELEVANT PROCEDURE. UNTIL SUCH TIME EACH APARTMENT WILL REMAIN IN THE NAME OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER.

      The first person to receive the proposal was Juana Mecha. Broom in hand, she enthusiastically exclaimed, “The mules will get fewer beatings,” which escalated to a euphoric “Property will make us free” when Perdumes notified her she was to become a homeowner. In contrast, Joel Taimado’s response was the characteristic “Uh-huh” with which he impassively assented to everything from behind the dark glasses covering his face down to his three-whisker mustache.

      The workers very soon began to move in. Overflowing boxes wound around with tightly knotted rope, tables with legs that didn’t match, and grannies in wheelchairs colonized the ochre building. No one had foreseen the size of the families. In some cases, an apartment was divided between two employees, in a temporary decree that became permanent. The regulated lighting coated every corner with its subdued yellow; the cap on the use of water left more than one person covered in soap mid-shower. In the staff canteen, a certain amount of initial disgust had to be overcome when it came to the banquet of leftovers, which sometimes included half-eaten chicken legs, soup ready-seasoned with lemon and hot sauce, rock-hard beans mixed with rice, and cheese. Some preferred to accustom themselves to cold food as a means of neutralizing the envious glances directed at those who managed to receive protein. To compensate for the drop in wages, several employees moonlighted, doing the odd jobs the owners of the apartments preferred to avoid. The project was pronounced a success. The workers had decent housing and labor relations improved notably. The members of the residential colony got much more for the same money. It was a fine adjustment of the gears that drove Villa Miserias.

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      The other building to escape the omnipresent gray was farthest from Plaza del Orden, the social and geographical center of Villa Miserias. Despite being on the margins, it immediately caught the eye. The two façades visible from within the estate displayed an intervention by a young artist, Pascual Bramsos: a paint-rollered giant composed of hundreds of silhouettes of miniscule men. The figure was in free fall, having received a blow from an abacus thrown by a chameleon brandishing a catapult above its head. Bramsos was intelligent enough to start with the colossus, so the board members thought the allegory of union it transmitted funny. Then, working the whole night, he created the homicidal chameleon. It was well before noon when the order to return the building to its gray normality was issued. Bramsos armed the neighbors, and a hail of eggs rained down on the man charged with the eradication of the work. He only got as far as castrating the giant with a brushstroke to the groin. The author of the work decided to leave it that way as a finishing touch. Perdumes used to amuse himself looking out on it each morning when he got out of bed.

      The most eloquent thing that could be said about the estate’s residents was that the sum of their parts exceeded, in every sense, their whole. Having pursued imperfect Utopias for some years, they tended to air their bureaucratic frustrations by giving their opinion on anything and everything, just to have something new to spout off about. After Building B, they started on the one with lowest overall coefficient: its influence was close almost non-existent. It was also the only one to have three separate residents’ groups with pretensions to legitimacy, but which never sent delegates to the general assembly.

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      Such was, in broad outline, the general panorama of Villa Miserias when the schoolmaster Severo Candelario became the hinge that would close the door to the past and allow in the whirlwind of dust still blowing at the time of Max Michels’ decision. Before leaving his apartment, he looked contemptuously at his friend Pascual Bramsos’ painting hanging on the wall. For a moment he believed the frame was shaking, that it was trying to detach itself, as if catapulted by some irresistible force. Before this could happen, he took hold of it with both hands and carefully placed it on the floor. For the last time, he stood directly in front of the phrase written on the wall, hidden by the work. The fact was, Max was about to take a quantum leap toward discovering just how big he was.

      As he set out, Max weighed up the situation, taking into consideration the reasons that, in their moment, had been behind Severo Candelario’s actions. In comparison to Max, who was aware—precisely thanks to Candelario's misfortune—of the insurrection involved in his decision, the teacher had lacked the necessary guile to understand the magnitude of his actions. Candelario had been able to appreciate the texture of the details but not the whole picture. He’d seen the chance to add his voice to something that worked, and so had decided to take an active part in it. His enthusiasm had prevented him from correctly interpreting the obstacles put in his way when he asked for the registration form, or the fact that he was the only male candidate without a mustache in living memory. His campaign had been anything but radical; he helped carry the old ladies’ shopping bags, asked the children about their favorite superheroes. At several years’ distance, the outcome of the story rested on a single detail, his electoral slogan: “With your constant help we’ll get better and better.” It was based on pedagogic principles such as the importance of each cell playing its part for the good of the whole and the notion that untiring repetition leads to perfection. Without realizing, he was attacking the very foundations of Quietism in Motion.

      Candelario was in the habit of taking things calmly. Years of teaching had taught him that the task of molding souls required perseverance, a quality clearly expressed by his most treasured possession: a growing collection of yearly albums of black and white photos. On each odd-numbered page, a photograph was pasted in exactly the same place. Always the same image, taken every day at 7:19 in the morning, from the same angle. Even when he caught pneumonia, he managed to persuade the doctor to allow him his daily expedition