Daniel Saldaña París - Among Strange Victims

Marcelo rings the doorbell of his own — my own — glorified apartment, and I get up from the armchair and open the door, which he himself could have opened since he has keys, but which, I guess, he prefers not to open out of respect for my privacy. I open the door, and he comes in and sits in the armchair opposite the one in which I was sitting — I think he must have noticed a sign, the depression left by my weight on one of the armchairs, and for that reason sat in the other one: objects are traitorous — after, naturally, greeting me in a slightly chilly way, the way Europeans do. (But, I ask myself, have I ever in my life greeted any other European person?) And having installed himself in the opposite armchair, he asks what I’ve been thinking, as he did yesterday, as I suspect he will do tomorrow, as I hope he will continue to do for some time (the time I’m here, in his glorified apartment, for example, or the time our relationship lasts, which can’t be forever, I tell myself: nothing is), because I like the idea of someone asking me fairly regularly what I’ve been thinking — it’s never happened before — although I’m not sure if I have today, in contrast to yesterday, anything to tell him.

Marcelo sits in the opposite armchair and asks me what I’ve been thinking—“What have you been thinking?” he asks — and in his tone I once again note a tinge of sincerity, or at least a consideration for his fellow man I hadn’t thought him capable of. A sincerity or consideration I hadn’t, in fact, thought any of my fellow men capable of, since not one of them had ever before made the effort to ask me what I was thinking, unless my thoughts had immediate — real and verifiable — repercussions in his own life: people are, in the end, a bit egoistical. Marcelo is also a bit egoistical, like other people, but apparently he is, in addition, a fellow man, in the sense explained above: he’s interested in my thoughts. (Oh, fellow men, sailing around under the flag of egoism so they won’t be noticed in the busy crowds; fellow men walking hurriedly out of the metro station, or serving coffee in a greasy café in the downtown of an enormous city, or working in offices and bothering you with all kinds of stupid stuff so you don’t know they are fellow men, so you think they are people, or even frigging people: the frigging people who bother you and plague you and aren’t interested in what you’re thinking; but they don’t fool me, I’ve got it straight now: everything is full of fellow men; you drop your guard or get distracted, and fellow men come out from under a stone; even a piece of volcanic, or at least porous, rock — I know nothing about geology — can have fellow men under it.)

“I’ve been thinking of my fellow men,” I tell Marcelo, and he gives me a strange look, as if saying — thinking, I mean—“This guy’s as crazy as a coot” or rather — he’s not a local—“This guy’s lost his marbles.” But I haven’t lost my marbles, quite the reverse: I feel sane. Although, of course, you can’t trust your own sensations: in their way, lunatics also feel sane; only our fellow men can give us a hint about our own mental health, and if the fellow men are themselves crazy, there’s no way of knowing who’s the lunatic. It’s the same with societies: when the frigging people, all the people, are crazy, the one sane person seems crazy — I think, for example, of the Nazis and those who opposed them.

Marcelo says, “You mean you’ve been thinking about your fellow man, don’t you? It’s really an abstract category: there are people in the plural, but your fellow man is uncountable. .”

How to tell Marcelo he is fundamentally wrong, and with him all of Christendom?

15

Cecilia calls me on my cell phone in the evenings, just around sundown. My cell phone only has reception at the front door of the glorified apartment (it’s an exaggeration to call it a house), as if on crossing the threshold you were entering hallowed ground, a sort of temple with horrible armchairs, in which it is no longer necessary to communicate, or in which any possible form of communication depends on the telepathic abilities of the tenant, which is me. I don’t have telepathic abilities, or I haven’t developed them or been shown how to, so in the evenings, when I see nightfall coming on — the air cools, the dust settles — I sit on the front steps with the door open and put the cell phone down beside me, waiting for Cecilia to call and entertain me with the tangled narrative of her day. She is, in some sense I can’t quite put my finger on, let’s say a postmodern narrator. She tells me about the museum, about Ms. Watkins’s latest uncalled-for remarks, about Ms. Watkins’s latest lovers, and about the latest arguments she’s had with Ms. Watkins. (Offices are like monarchies; that’s why if anyone starts to go mad — even subtly — in an office, their whole conversation becomes centered on the words and actions of the monarch. His, or in this case, her, presence then threatens to overwhelm everything else: the monarch is behind every conversation, like an internal enemy, and his, or in this case, her, recurrence in the sphere of ideas harms the enraptured person and his family. He, or in this case, she, is included in every topic, if only remotely. The possibility of being fired writhes like an overexcited boa constrictor in the subconscious of each and every subject, and when one of them breaks — when one of them, due to personal circumstances, collapses — that possibility seems to announce itself in innumerable ways, and its asphyxiating form begins to tighten its hold on the body of the hireling. When this person finally senses the inescapable grip of the snake, the boa stops; the possibility of dismissal is dimmed and retracts or lies still, as if tamed; then and only then can it be said that the office has matured inside the hireling. Then and only then can the monarch feel satisfied, and go out for breakfasts that last the whole day without fear of a possible riot or an act of irreverence in his, or in this case, her, realm. Cecilia, unfortunately, is that unhinged element in the office toward whom Ms. Watkins seems to have directed her entire constrictive potential.)

So here I am sitting on the front steps, waiting for Cecilia to call and tell me more details of the life of Ms. Watkins, the sovereign of that office in which, until not long ago, I acted as a tame knowledge administrator. And in a certain sense, although I hate those conversations, I’m also grateful for them, because hearing about Ms. Watkins reminds me of my office days, and when I remember them, I can perceive the at times elusive continuity of my existence: I see myself as a person to whom things happen, and not as two or more unconnected guys who only share a name and a certain speculative propensity.

But Cecilia doesn’t call this evening. And night falls slowly as I watch the paving stones soften, or so it seems to me. When I’m at the point of giving up, of going inside and assuming Cecilia isn’t going to call today, the security guard of the Puerta del Aire residential estate appears at the end of the street, walking with a confident, strangely rhythmic step. He has the military air that in this country forms a halo around anyone in uniform, making him a potential son of a bitch. The pistol at his waist gleams for an instant when he passes through the milky light of a buzzing street lamp surrounded by moths. The guard walks toward me, and although the light is now behind him, making it impossible to see his face, I suspect he’s looking at me, assessing my expression and posture in case it’s necessary to eradicate me. ( Eradicate is a word the uniforms use to try to professionalize their most audacious thoughts.) But he doesn’t eradicate me. He walks up, and I raise my eyes, slightly intimidated.