Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

‘I firmly believe parents shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging their sexuality before their children,’ he proclaimed. ‘Look, Sr Félix, I’m the first to admit that everyone’s entitled to express their opinion about the problems afflicting the world. But only mine is right. The great evil of our age, Sr Félix, is hypocrisy.’

His voice had slid gradually toward the same rapt and dreamy tone that had preceded his last great act of sheer terror. I looked around me in alarm: his son’s office was empty; on the floor below a young girl wept with frustration in front of a computer screen; in the other visible offices Tamerlán’s employees were going about their business — or rather, his; finally I spotted the congressman under the desk, massaging his booted kidney, and breathed a sigh of relief. If he comes over like that again, I thought to myself, I know which of us is more likely to be the object of his devotions.

But my confidence soon wilted when Tamerlán walked towards me and, linking his arm in mine, escorted me around the resonant floor of his office.

‘You work for me, Sr Félix, but perhaps you haven’t quite understood what it is you’re working for . It’s of the utmost importance that you and I understand each other over this, Sr Félix. You’ll see. Everything that’s worth anything in this world — art, science, culture: civilisation, in short — has been built by us.’

‘Us?’

‘No. Us. Look at the communists. Keeping a community of equal men going, handing out food to everyone, reducing wars to a minimum — easiest thing in the world. Without us, Man today would still be much the same as he was two hundred thousand years ago. We introduced inequality, and inequality is the engine of change. Without us, progress and civilisation simply wouldn’t have existed. And what is civilisation you may ask me.’

‘What is civilisation?’ I asked, not because I had the slightest interest, but because I knew that Tamerlán needed an echo to talk to.

‘Civilisation is control — controlling others primarily; but, to do that, we have to control ourselves. If the rider runs wild, how can the horse be tamed? We’ve fallen into the trap, Sr Félix: the civilisation we have created has led us to a dead end. If our control over others is to increase mathematically, our self-control has to increase geometrically. And every so often, in fairly regular cycles I daresay, our strength turns against us, restrains us like a straitjacket and, unable to bear it, we let ourselves go, and then everything goes with us. Every time we stage a revolution to rid ourselves of the unjust shackles imposed on us by society and try to relax for a change, to loosen up a bit — to indulge in a little harmless decadence for God’s sake! — our enemies seize their chance and, to contain them, our iron fist closes even tighter than before. And then they accuse us — us of all people — as if they weren’t the ones forcing us to take such extreme measures.’

For a moment I thought of patting him on the back to console him but, as my left arm was still linked in his, trying it with my right would be the spastic act of a contortionist.

‘On behalf of all of us I’d like to apologise …’

‘Not you lot! I’m not interested in the middle class! You’re subject to our authority, just like the poor, and at the same time your norms of self-control are almost as rigid as ours and certainly far more boring. No. Consider the poor. When they eat, for example. What lightness. What swing. With our kind, the act of eating is heavy . They, on the other hand … serve everything on the same plate, even dessert; they eat with their fingers; they tell dirty jokes to revolt their table companions and laugh with their mouths full; they talk about excreta, sex, disease and death, pick their rotten teeth and fart and belch and puke on the table, which is only cleared when the owner of the house and his brother-in-law, pissed on adulterated plonk, attack each other — one with a fork, the other with a broken bottle — and half the family lands up in hospital. At home two cousins take advantage of the grown-ups’ absence to fuck on the backyard table while their little brothers and sisters watch and clap without knowing why. The sunlight through the lusty vine traces filigrees on their skins; the bursting grapes drip their honey, the cicadas drone their song … How can we the rich eat all stiff and straight-laced as if someone had stuck the proverbial poker up our arse while they the poor laze about with their legs open, having a whale of a time? Table manners! Want to know what good table manners are? I would sometimes come home after a business lunch, or worse still, an intimate dinner party with friends, where I’d eaten politely — as if it were possible to tear something apart with your teeth politely , digest politely , turn dead animals and mutilated plants into shit politely — I’d get back from forcing down a distinguished dish, in a distinguished restaurant, with distinguished diners — a drove of sluts and queens trying to hide the fact they’re no better than pigs snuffling about in the sty — and shut myself in the kitchen and eat flour by the handful straight from the packet — flour — choking on the dust that got into my nose and lungs, retching till I managed to turn it into a paste and swallow it, and only then — only then — would I feel something akin to the joys of the gourmet. No pauper, for all their complaining, has ever had to go through what we go through day after day. They may be in chains, but on the inside they’re free. Ours is the opposite situation. Especially here in the city. Now, in the countryside …’ He inhaled deeply as if drawing in the combined fragrance of alfalfa and camomile. ‘Ah, the countryside. In the country you can still go into a peasant’s shack and shag the wife and all the daughters, in descending order of age — even the little boys if that’s your thing. Try doing that in a humble but dignified working-class home and see how far you get. If they don’t lynch you there and then, you’ll have the delegates in your office the next day and a strike on your hands. Don’t think I don’t appreciate resistance to authority, mind you. The unimaginative members of my class who want to break the will of the people once and for all are like that dove of Kant’s that thought it could fly better without the resistance of the air. No, the working class keep you — how can I put it? — in training. But everything’s more relaxed in the country, of course. It’s even better in Mexico or Peru: they still have Indians. I tell you, we made a big mistake here, exterminating them. Our greedy grandparents left nothing for us. Their only legacy to us was work, work, work. When do we play, I ask you? Where is our garden of earthly delights? Where do we go when the bell rings for break? If eliminating feudalism in Europe was a regrettable practical necessity, the rest of the world still offered innumerable opportunities to give your animal strength free rein and to wallow in the sweetest quagmire of all: subjugated human flesh; and the best thing is, it comes guilt-free. Remember what Nietzsche says about conscience? “It is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly.” After the Great War, Germany had her playground in the colonies taken from her and was eventually forced to do it in Europe. That was her great sin: doing it to the Europeans. If you keep the dog cooped up all day, it ends up doing it on the carpet. But is that the dog’s fault? The truth, Sr Félix — that diamond truth, pure and hard and brilliant, that generation after generation tries to besmirch so they won’t be blinded by its light — is that one’s freedom begins where another’s ends. The times I’ve tried to explain it to my son, and yet …’