Cesar Aira - Shantytown

Ecstasy enveloped him from within. He needed that, and much more besides. His old problems had intensified and were building to a crisis. His nemesis, the judge who had sworn to destroy him, was hot on his heels, accumulating evidence, and no doubt preparing her final attack. But he would be a step ahead. . thanks to that pair of teenagers, the not-so-innocent pawns in his Machiavellian plan.

At the age of fifty, ravaged by failure, by the slow, corrosive contamination of crime, by divorce and fatigue, just when there seemed to be nothing left for him. . Cabezas had discovered that he still had time; and in the time that he had left, whether it was long or short, he could do a lot. But not a lot of anything. That was precisely what was ending or had already come to an end: the free, open possibility of anything. There was one path left, and only one: evil. That was the way to renewal and action. He had discovered that he wasn’t too old for that. When every other avenue was closed to him, when it was all definitively finished. . a path opened up in the opposite direction, the dark path of evil, like a second life. And once he had set forth on it, no hope or ambition could be too great, because he really could do evil on a vast, inordinate, epoch-making scale, like a superhuman monster.

It was a consequence of age, not of some psychological tendency or inclination. Age and the experience that had built up over the years of his life. He had toyed momentarily with the other alternative: love. But he soon came to the conclusion that it was impossible. Love, in any of its forms, required the involvement of another person, and it was becoming clear to him that he had left all the others behind. This was something that he had to do on his own.

He ascended to untrodden heights, to the summit of the cosmos, abode of the great forces that move all things, beyond the realm of life. Who said he was just a corrupt policeman? And what if he was? Even confined to the meanest of forms, even if he was nothing more than a stray bundle of policeman’s atoms, he could still channel the supreme powers of evil and create a new universe, a new city for himself, the hidden city, of which he would be king and god.

The heavens were bursting, their lights spinning crazily, the divine gas igniting in icy flames as the black throats let out their roars, which were echoed by a groan of exaltation exploding from the lips of Ignacio Cabezas.

Maxi went on leading this disjointed parade for a long time; there seemed to be no end to his meandering, and yet, at the same time, it was speeding up. Finally the chapter of rummaging came to a close, and the scavengers whom Maxi was helping turned homeward. Once they crossed Directorio, the whole family climbed up onto the cart, and their human draught horse started trotting through the dim labyrinth of the projects, following the little streets that led toward the shantytown. As he passed under the streetlamps at the corners, the stalkers glimpsed his sweaty form. His mouth was open — he must have been panting — and he was so intent on his task that he didn’t look back once. Which was just as well because with the frequent flashes of lightning the girls — who were half a block behind with nowhere to hide — were clearly visible in silhouette. They in turn were so worried about being noticed by Maxi that they never thought to look around, so they didn’t see the car that was coming up behind them in first gear, stopping at every corner. The street was otherwise empty, and when the lightning relented the darkness thickened. A massive wind had risen, blowing in all directions, chaotically. The plants in the little gardens were thrashing about madly, throwing off leaves and buds like a frenzied gambler tossing dice.

Suddenly, in a paroxysm of thunder and lightning, the rain came crashing down. Thousand of gallons of water fell at once, in black swells heaved about by the wind, which collided with resounding wallops. Jessica and Vanessa were horrified to see the cart ahead of them accelerating suddenly. It was getting away, leaving them there, exposed to the elements, with nowhere to shelter. . or so they thought. Headlights suddenly lit them up, and they heard a roaring, distinct from the noise of the storm, approaching till it almost touched them: it was the furious acceleration of a car, and then the squeal of brakes. Jessica jumped aside so as not to be struck by the door swinging open.

“Get in!” shouted an urgent voice from inside.

The two girls screamed like banshees, and their shrill notes spiraled up among the torrents inextricably, although they were screaming for different reasons: Jessica because the storm, although it hadn’t come as a surprise, had made her quite hysterical; Vanessa because, in the greenish light from the dashboard dials, she had recognized the bestial face craning forward to look up at them. It was the hideous man who had stopped her in the street, the stalker from her worst nightmares. It was so unexpected, and at the same time so horrifyingly opportune, that her whole being was seized by a spasm of terror, and she saw him as a bloodthirsty stegosaurus hoisting his rocky neck from a lake of oil, on the night of the end of the world. The escalation of her cries was answered by more crackling flashes in the sky and Jessica’s continued shrieking, which made Vanessa scream more loudly still because she thought her friend had recognized him too. And their notes at the very top of the scale were accompanied by the policeman’s hoarse bass, shouting angrily:

“Get in, you stupid bitches! Get in, for fuck’s sake, or I’ll blow you away!” As if he really would, he began to fumble at his chest, near his armpit, but the nervous tension in the air had flustered him as well, and he fell forward onto the passenger seat. When he lifted his face again, a moment later, it was even more horrible and distorted than before. And when he pulled his hand from underneath his body, and reached out toward the girls, almost touching them, it wasn’t a gun he was holding but a small crystal flask, streaming with rain, from which the lightning struck scarlet sparks.

“GET IN!!”

Whether spellbound by the ruby flask, which seemed to make the rain more liquid in the space around it, or frightened by that madman’s anger, or because they really had nowhere else to go and were getting soaked, the girls obeyed. They had been warned so often, ever since they could remember, against the temptation of getting into a stranger’s car, there was really no excuse for yielding to it now. But people quite often do exactly what they shouldn’t, automatically ignoring every sensible and reasonable course of action. And the man wasn’t actually a stranger, which is what made it really strange. Unfortunately Vanessa was stuck in the middle, between her friend and the policeman, and this would lead to mutual recriminations later on: Vanessa would say that she had been pushed in by Jessica, who would claim, in all sincerity, that she had simply followed Vanessa’s lead. In any case, once they were in, Cabezas stretched out his arm in front of them and yanked the door shut as he stepped on the accelerator and released the clutch. The car shot away.

“Do you remember me?”

Vanessa had lost her voice somewhere in the back of her throat but finally she found it again:

“Yeah. You’re Cynthia’s dad, right?”

The familiarity of her tone wasn’t really surprising; she had the manners of a typical convent-school girl.

In the darkness, Jessica’s face twisted into a grimace of astonishment. She had met Ignacio Cabezas, Cynthia’s father, and this wasn’t him. Vanessa must have been getting mixed up. But when she heard him say, “That’s right,” the first thing she thought was that he must have been the father of a different Cynthia, and since there was a girl at their school with that name, apart from the one who got killed, Jessica guessed that she was this man’s daughter. In any case, it was a relief to learn that there was some connection, and she relaxed a bit, but not for long.