Cesar Aira - Varamo

It hadn’t been an accident but an attempt on the Treasurer’s life. Although unconscious, he established a temporary office in the house on the corner, whose occupants had been woken by his driver. They put him on a sofa and sent for a doctor and the Treasurer’s secretary. The presence of the latter was superfluous, because the black man, Cigarro (as well as being a driver and a betting agent, he was also a purveyor of smuggled tobacco; hence the nickname), took control of the situation. Before Dídimo, the secretary, arrived, he explained his suspicions to Varamo: the attack had been perpetrated by anarchists, pretending to participate in a regularity rally that was under way, an event of national significance. Since Varamo wasn’t familiar with rallies of this kind, Cigarro explained.

In so-called “regularity rallies,” the aim is to maintain a predetermined speed, and the winner is not the first to arrive, but whoever deviates the least from that speed between the start and the finish. But how could they tell who was sticking to the speed and who wasn’t? Well, said Cigarro, it was pretty complicated but perfectly feasible, although it did require meticulous planning and many calculations. If the total length of the course was two hundred miles, and the set speed was fifty miles an hour, and a car left at exactly five o’clock (the competitors didn’t start all at once, but one every fifteen minutes), it would pass the midpoint (the hundred-mile point) at exactly seven; a timekeeper stationed there, with a list and a watch, would record its passing. At many other points along the route there were other timekeepers noting down the times at which each car went by in exactly the same way. When the rally was over, all the lists were gathered up, there was a general reckoning, the average punctuality of each competitor was calculated in minutes and seconds, and the winner was whoever turned out to have been the most punctual. But wasn’t that too simple? wondered Varamo. If the driver had a list of the checkpoints and the times, couldn’t he just pass each point at the time he was supposed to, without worrying at all about traveling at a constant speed? For example, after passing one point he could drive at top speed till he was near the next one, then stop and wait until it was time to go past. Cigarro laughed, pleased to be asked this question, and proceeded to enlighten Varamo: apart from two or three indicative checkpoints, whose locations were indulgently revealed to the public, all the rest were kept secret. Only the organizing committee knew where they were. Varamo nodded. But it seemed like a very boring event, a test of patience and nerves, without any kind of emotion. Cigarro, Dídimo and the doctor, who had arrived in the meantime and joined the conversation, agreed, although the doctor added a qualification: one kind of emotion was replaced by another, and the competitive spirit lived on. He concluded, philosophically, that “it took all sorts.”

At this point, Cigarro, who was well informed, had something to contribute. But first he inquired about his boss’s condition. “Uncertain,” pronounced the doctor succinctly, and they resumed their conversation. The rallies, said Cigarro, were fundamentally technical competitions, an opportunity for the fledgling automobile industry to test its innovations, and they appealed mainly to car fanatics rather than to the general public, which made them somewhat esoteric. The rally under way was a special case, because it had been promoted by the Central Administration as part of the festivities for the inauguration of the linked highways running right across the isthmus, connecting the cities of Colón and Panama. In fact (and here he lowered his voice, as if revealing a state secret) the rally had been planned, mainly, as a trap for anarchists. To them, a regularity rally was a provocation; its strict regulation of time and space was bound to prove repugnant to the libertarian spirit. The way things were going, with conspiracies about to erupt across the country, the event would act as an irresistible lure. In fact, competing in a regularity rally was so nerve-wracking that it could turn a normal and previously law-abiding citizen into an anarchist. There had been a number of such cases. If a competitor suspected (sometimes with good reason, but almost always jumping to conclusions) that he no longer had a chance (having passed too many hidden checkpoints too early or too late), he would quite often give up trying to maintain the pace, and instead of simply going home, would tear away at full speed, come up beside another car in the competition, and challenge the driver by revving loudly, honking and making obscene gestures, trying to make him chuck in the rules by appealing to his machismo and the primal urge to get ahead and leave all the others coughing dust. If this operation failed, all the rogue driver had to do was race ahead a bit (and how he relished the freedom to do that, while the others were still slaves to the speedometer) and try it on the following car, or rather the car ahead. If regularity rallies were a kind of education that built the driver’s character, these brutish outbursts were the midterm exams.

The first part of the rally, and by no means the easiest, was a complicated circuit through the streets of Colón, before setting off on the journey. Some were expected to drop out even at this stage. Before settling down to a long, sleepless night of attending to telegraphic reports from the main checkpoints, the Treasurer had wanted to go out and see some of the competitors who had already set off, while they were still in the city. This too, Cigarro added incidentally, was something of a provocation, especially if his route crossed that of the rally at certain intersections, or all of them, given that the drivers couldn’t slow down. But since the Minister had a comprehensive schedule, he wasn’t really running a risk, accustomed as he was to performing the most complex mental calculations. .

At this point, Doctor Garruto asked why the Treasurer was taking an interest in this rally. It didn’t seem to be directly related to his portfolio, although everything came under the umbrella of the national economy in one way or another. Cigarro glanced at Dídimo, the secretary, who after heaving a melancholy sigh explained that the Treasurer was also acting, that night, as Minister of the Interior; he had assumed this additional responsibility and been sworn in a few hours earlier, just minutes after the previous Minister’s sudden resignation.

Garruto and Varamo raised their eyebrows in surprise. The Minister of the Interior had been a dominant figure and exercised a veritable hegemony over the nation’s political life. His resignation, which had not been publicly announced, came as a shock. Cigarro, speaking like someone who knows a great deal more than he is prepared to say, remarked that the worsening of the situation had left no alternative, then took up the tale where he had left off: the Treasurer, sitting in the back seat, had told him which streets to take, where to stop, when to go on, and in this way they had been able to watch a large number of competitors driving past in front of them at a pleasantly constant pace. He hadn’t made any mistakes along the way, or at this corner, Cigarro could swear, so the collision had been deliberate, and premeditated, to judge from the way the culprit had fled. But it would be easy to catch him. Well, perhaps not easy. It was a matter of doing the sums; given the premises on which the rally was run, they could use the relevant information (as he said this he took the lists and maps from his pocket and spread them out) to calculate where the fugitive would be at any particular moment. No crime writer had ever invented a surer, more geometrical method of identifying and apprehending a criminal. All it required was a little mental effort. He invited them to move to the dining table, where they would be able to work more comfortably. Once they were there, he started handing out the papers; but Varamo excused himself, saying that he hadn’t brought his reading glasses (a lie, since his eyesight was fine). Cigarro muttered a remark about some people’s lack of patriotism, while the other two concentrated obediently on the task.