Cesar Aira - Shantytown

Meanwhile, Maxi was sleeping more deeply than ever. If it’s true, as people say, that nothing is more soporific than the sound of rain beating on a roof, conditions were ideal, though he didn’t really need any help. And the natural process had not been interrupted. No one had come to bother him; no one had entered his cubicle. But he must have been dreaming as never before. Unfamiliar beds make for more abundant dreaming because there are more physical disturbances for the dreamwork to interpret.

Cabezas hurled himself at the door, and the impact burst it wide open. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Inside there was. . simply nothing. There was no room. It was a door in a facade, behind which stretched a desolate scene full of rain, with other shacks, near and far, illuminated by the lightning. It was similar and different at the same time: outside, but also inside. His first thought was that he should have expected it: nothing’s ever that simple. But what could have gone wrong this time? The only explanation that occurred to him was that the Pastor had lied; but he hadn’t, Cabezas was quite sure of that. “The dead don’t lie,” he said to himself. And yet the truth was also an abyss. He didn’t have time to explore it because the judge appeared suddenly from the mouth of a dark alleyway, followed by her samurais. He raised his pistol thinking, “Goodbye proxidine,” but before he could pull the trigger, she emptied the magazine of her submachine gun into his body, riddling it with at least a hundred bullets the size of dates. As he fell down dead, his eyes closed on the vision of that mysterious patio-like space.

What had happened? The Pastor had not lied, and no one had shifted Maxi. So? The boy’s protectors had adopted a solution that was rather more complicated, but possible and logical in the circumstances. They changed the configurations of the lights in all the streets. Since they didn’t know if Cabezas had memorized the series, they had to change them all so that he wouldn’t get suspicious. They preserved the order, shifting everything six places, so the “duck” ended up shining over the entrance of the sixth street to the right, which is where the killer policeman went in hoping to find his treasure and found his ruin.

But did that mean that the shantytown could “spin”? Could that be possible? Perhaps it had been doing just that from time immemorial. Perhaps it had only ever existed as an endless rotation. Perhaps it was the famous “Wheel of Fortune,” not standing up, as everyone imagined, but humbly laid on the ground, which would mean that it was no longer a matter of some riding high while others were cast down: everyone was low, all the time, simply changing places at ground level. There was no escaping poverty, and life was made up of little shifts which were insignificant in the end. Anyway, those tiny fractions of a revolution were extremely rare; they occurred once in a blue moon, by a combination of circumstances so complex that no one could unravel it. That was what had just happened, and no one had noticed. It was the only thing that the television couldn’t cover, but the news teams had plenty to keep them busy.

News girls and cameramen had gathered around the body (the second one that night) and were waiting for a statement from the judge, who was quietly giving orders to her men. Finally she faced the cameras, and they thrust the microphones at her. Someone had opened an umbrella and was holding it over her head. Her words were broadcast live to the whole country:

“What we have seen here tonight is the demise of one of the most dangerous criminals to have threatened our national security in recent years. Let it be a warning to us, for the death of Inspector Cabezas does not mean the end of the proxidine problem; far from it — the problem has barely begun. He was a man of superior intelligence, perhaps the finest mind in Argentina: had he been able to use his gifts for good, he would have achieved great things, but he chose the infernal path of artificial contiguity. Many have been lured as he was, and sadly we can be sure that many more will follow. It is an endless slippery slope: people begin out of curiosity and end up killing in order to get to the “mother of all drugs.” Everyone is drawn to her, rich and poor, men and women, old and young alike. The mass media have a categorical duty to make it clear to society as a whole that the “mother” cannot be reached. All efforts in that direction are futile, at least within a human lifespan. You and your colleagues have repeated over and over that it is a “one-way street,” and that is not a metaphor, because proxidine’s effect on the user is to make the trajectory literally infinite. There is no point searching for the “mother” outside ecstasy for she is within it, implicitly, and all along the path of drug use she changes, taking on every conceivable form, in an incoherent and irresponsible succession, which leads the user astray as dreams abuse the sleeping mind.”

July 29, 1998