Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

Tamerlán approached now (obviously the congressman was last in line), but, instead of one note, he was carrying two, one in each nostril, and was smiling with his two fancy-dress fangs, the very embodiment of the capitalist bloodsucker.

‘Never seen this one?’ he asked me. ‘The Transylvanian Double Whammy. Watch.’

In front of the desperate congressman, who was wriggling and pulling faces, his dribbling muzzle pressed against the glass, Tamerlán leaned on the desk and, placing a straw at the start of either runway, snorted two lines at the same speed without leaving a crumb. Exaggerating his nasal intakes of breath, he stood there, arms akimbo, watching the whimpering figure at his feet.

‘What a sorry sight. Human dignity is just another commodity these days. If they were all like him, our efforts would be wasted, like those of a genius reigning over a tribe of idiots. All a mite embarrassing, isn’t it.’

‘As my grandfather used to say,’ I broke in, emboldened by my racing pulse, my heart using my ribcage as a punchbag, ‘there are people who think if they eat shit they’ll shit chicken chasseur.’

‘Nice. Anyway. Where was I? I think a great deal more clearly now. Now, Canal, let’s see if you can sort this mess out!’ The psychoanalyst didn’t answer, his fingers a blur over the keyboard, like the legs of a spider when an insect is trapped in the web, spinning it round and round, wrapping it in its silken shroud. ‘Ah. I love land, money and cocaine, because they have no limits. But time …’ he said, darkening his voice and addressing the sombre river that rippled in small crests in the wind, which blew stronger and stronger from the south-east, ‘… time is my worst enemy. Time has slapped me in the face and thrown down its gauntlet,’ he said, screwing up his face to deepen the wrinkles, ‘and I’ve decided to take it up. That’s why my son’s so important, Sr Félix. He’s the last weapon I have to meet that challenge. We’re almost there; I can see our goal, so glitteringly clear … A century or two at the most and we’ll see our dream realised. We’ve solved the equation of money by creating poverty for others to produce wealth for ourselves. But we haven’t solved the equation of freedom. We haven’t yet found a way to control others without controlling ourselves. As a class we’ve had to subject ourselves to the most rigorous norms of self-control that have ever existed, and all in order to get rich. Now that we have what we want, we should begin the struggle for our freedom. But our undoing is our ambition for more money, which necessarily entails having more paupers and more perfect systems of control. We have to discover the most efficient way … of imposing our freedom on the rest of the world. Freeing ourselves from these golden shackles that choke us.’

‘So you can shackle others with them,’ I broke in.

‘You’re getting the idea. Having more strength hasn’t made us freer; just the contrary. There’s the rub, the riddle, the equation reduced to its simplest form. If I manage to solve it, if I manage to solve the perverse equation of control and make it equal that of money, so that our freedom increases in direct proportion to the slavery of others, then my life will not have been in vain. That’s where the Third Foundation comes in: a city of the future ruled by free men!’

He was a torrent now, an avalanche of pure white snow roaring down from the summit of a high peak, devouring everything in its path; I had to ski with him to avoid being buried alive.

‘Like everyone else, you must have heard of conspiracies, secret lodges, invisible hands ruling the world from the shadows. It’s a vile calumny. We live in the light .’

A tear had opened in the thick covering of winter clouds and, through it, the last of the evening sun cast a divine beam that fell directly on the erect figure of Tamerlán: arms extended, eyes lost in an expression of complete beatitude. His shadow shot across the floor and on reaching the window carried on, projecting itself out and over the city to the horizon.

‘In the last two hundred years they have managed to make us feel guilty about our strength and wealth, ashamed of flaunting it, the way they used to beg us to in the olden days. That stage is drawing to a close. We no longer have an enemy out there to confront and the time has come once again to exercise our dominion from up here, in the heights,’ he said, so vehemently that, for an instant, he created the illusion that we were floating above the world in an Olympus of pure light, erected only by the magic of his words. ‘Transparency — absolute transparency such as exists up here — is the least of my aspirations. We have to be equal to the times, to understand that the danger has passed and we can come out, stop skulking and show ourselves the way we did in the past. The bourgeoisie was a transitional stage, a five-hundred-year Leopardist rodeo, after which we can go back — this time perfectly and for ever — to what deep down we never stopped being: feudal. Everything must come to light.’

‘Ethic cleansing you might say,’ I contributed.

‘Don’t be stupid: you’re on coke, not dope. It’s precisely the opposite. We have to lead again, this time without being manacled by all this legalistic bureaucracy. Haven’t you noticed? People generally defend lies far more fiercely than truth. We expend so much energy concealing what we do that we have barely any left to spare. Who are we concealing ourselves from ? From public opinion? We are public opinion. From the people? They’d be happy to see us act openly: they’d admire and love us for it. I daresay ninety per cent of their animosity towards us stems from the feeling we’re concealing something from them. And they’re right. That’s why we need to draw back the veil from their eyes so they can see us for what we are. The wall that fell three years ago was the wall of our shame. Once again we could walk naked through our paradise, without need of that annoying fig leaf that rampant Marxism had forced us to wear. The brutalised masses of the East crossed the rubble without understanding and roamed the streets of the other side as men and women possessed, their heads swimming with the glare of the neon, their muzzles pressed to the windows, with their indifferent displays of electrical appliances and prostitutes. Do you know the first thing East Berliners bought in West Berlin? Cars, televisions, Coca-Cola? No. Bananas. Years of spying on us through the keyhole hadn’t prepared them for such obscene exhibitionism. And, shaking them in their faces, we could finally tell the proles on our side: “Look, look, here are your heroes, these dopey, gawping simpletons who slobber and wet themselves over the spectacle of our naked potency. Look how they come to suck, these brave new men. And you come to papa too, or by the time you wake up your admired comrades will have drunk it all and there won’t be a drop left. The vacancies, my dear boys, are far more limited than before, and if you think you’re out for a stroll, think again. I’d get galloping if I were you.” You know, Sr Félix, after so many years of misunderstandings, what a pleasant surprise it was to confirm they’d never actually stopped loving us? They were waiting behind the wall like Romeos on heat. That’s why I’m on this crusade for absolute sincerity. Despite spending most of my life in this country, Sr Félix, I can never get used to seeing how people are deceived here; believe me, I’d reveal everything tomorrow: we’ve wasted too much time already. I have a book half-finished. It’s called The Entrepreneur, Or the Emancipation of the Upper Classes . If only I could wash my hands of this whole mess and devote my time exclusively to finishing it … I know I have to do it myself. There are no bards left to sing the feats of kings. Nowadays the great inspire no one but the writers of Yankee soaps. Strength has been so dehumanised that only weakness looks human. Who wants to sing the exploits of a plc? If some ambitious hack decided to tell this story, he’d probably choose your version, Félix, over mine. Get the picture? My triumphs as seen through the filter of your defeats, not the other way round.’