Turing's Delirium (20 page)

Back when he was fifteen, he had put his obsessive interest in soccer and friends to one side and begun to focus on women, strange beings who actually scared him a little. Perhaps he was afraid because he went to San Ignacio, an all-boys school; by not having women around, by spending his time closed up in that masculine world of obscenities and masturbatory fantasies, he did not know how to treat them. Then Mirtha became his obsession, but she had disappeared as quickly as she had entered. Nothing had been the same with women since.

Two fighter jets thunderously cross the sky, leaving a cottony slipstream in their wake. He snaps out of deep thought. Will it rain? Most likely. Seventy yards from the barricade he can see the fury on the demonstrators' faces: they are throwing cans and bottles and have started a fire in the middle of the street, using cardboard boxes and newspaper. "This is our mission—it's time for the Coalition!" The demonstrators' refrain is vague, out of sync. "This is insistence, it's time for resistance! An end, an end to this globalizing trend!"

He is approaching the barricade when a rock hits him above his right eye. He lets his briefcase fall and brings his hands to his face. One of the officers escorting him has also been hit; he is on the ground and bleeding from his left temple. The demonstrators cross the barrier and are held back by a police squad. Cardona hears shots in the air, and dry pops; he realizes it is tear gas. There are shouts, the sound of metal on metal. "Fucking pigs!" The phrase rises above all the other noise, taking over. "Pigs go home!" There is blood on Cardona's hands: his right eyebrow has been cut. He feels sharp, hot stabs of pain above his eye. He can barely open it, and the pain makes him dizzy. Should he go to a hospital? He picks up his briefcase; he had better keep going. Haltingly, he reaches the corner and turns left. He begins to run down a seemingly never-ending street as he feels a stinging in his eyes and a bitter smell fills the air.
Tear gas,
he hears someone shout,
tear gas.
The doorman had been right.

Cardona tries to keep moving with his eyes half closed. Adrenaline is suffocating his lungs. This is how Mirtha must have felt when she was facing the police and military at demonstrations. He had missed all of that. All he had wanted was for the university to reopen so that he could begin his studies. If it did not open soon, he would go to Brazil or Mexico. He had wanted to start a career, was worried about his future, not very interested in what was going on around him. One day he told this to Mirtha, who had come into his room while his sister prepared tea. She had asked him what he thought about the political situation and then told him she was surprised by his egotism, his ignorance of what was happening in their country. She was ashamed of him.
I can imagine what's going on. I'm not dumb, but I'm not brave; I'm not a hero,
he told her.
It's not about that,
she said, shaking her pigtails,
it's about keeping our dignity.
Then she had gone out into the living room. It was the last time he had seen her alive.

He stops four blocks farther on, as he is leaving the Enclave. He passes by the building that at one time housed the telegraph company, Doric columns and two naked neoclassical goddesses flanking the entrance. He walks past a seven-story building; there is no sign to indicate what it is, but it must be important, because it is being guarded by several policemen. He can still hear shots being fired in the air. Television cameras arrive on the scene. A reporter shoves a microphone in his face and asks a few questions. Cardona keeps walking, his eyes burning. "Wait ... aren't you...?" Luckily, behind him several others are anxious to be interviewed. He does not want to have anything to do with cameras. He has not been around them for a long time now. And to think that at one time he had wanted to be in the limelight, to be in the best photos with Montenegro.
Were about to announce the new criminal code.
His office full of papers and requests for interviews. Weekends at the country homes of one ally of the regime or another, drinking Cuba Libres next to a pool, chatting with Montenegro's obese wife. It was rumored that she was behind the corruption in customs. Montenegro's godson, the ex-mayor of La Paz, white beard, affable smile, a glass of whiskey in his hand, approaching and remarking that Cardona must be hot, that he should take off his jacket. "In a while, thank you," Cardona had said, thinking about the file in his office with the concrete proof of bribes the godson had taken to accept a bid. The opposition was pressuring him to take the godson to court. He wasn't sure what to do, which he now thinks said a lot about him. Everything became clearer after Montenegro approached him beside that very pool and told him, in the same calm yet imposing tone his father had used with him when he was a child, to make that file disappear. It was not a suggestion; it was an order. "Certainly, general," he had said. "Of course, general." He also had photocopies of the invoice for a Beechcraft airplane for the presidency, $3 million, with Montenegro's signature authorizing the purchase. And he had a study by a consulting firm indicating that no more than $1.4 million should have been paid for that plane. So where did the money go? How could he ask the general? Time and again he had wondered whether he had the stomach for what passed as politics. He learned that he certainly did have the stomach for it. Next to the pool, the owner of the house—wearing a coquettish, incongruous white hat that covered her balding head—asked everyone to gather together to toast Montenegro's wife on her birthday,
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.
Montenegro looking sullen, beside him whispering,
Forget about that plane, judge, you're either with us or against us. Trust me, general. I simply need to have my answers prepared; reporters, the opposition, will soon be asking questions.
The water in the pool sparkling in the sunlight.
Answers for everyone's questions except my own.
The godson patting him on the back.
If you don't have the answers, you'd better leave.
Better late than never. Leave, hide from the cameras, from power, not be the one to show your face in such a shameful manner.
Going for a swim, judge? It's a little too late, I think, general. It's never too late for anything, take my word for it.

His eyes itch. He opens and closes them, again and again. The pain is throbbing. Even though his legs still feel stiff, the effects of the BMP have finally worn off. The violence in the street has forced him to wake up.

It's never too late? Judge, know thyself. Can he understand himself? For years he thought he did. Everything was clear to him: the objectives, the motives, the reasons, the intuition. Now all is blurred, and his pride has prevented him from asking for help. Well, yes, he once did. He went to a psychiatrist six months ago, after a week of insomnia. Sitting on a black leather sofa in front of that young woman with glasses too big for her face and an Argentine accent, he couldn't think about anything but how his friends would laugh if they knew. Men solved their problems on their own; shrinks were for sissies, and to top it all off they were ridiculously expensive and never offered concrete solutions. He told the woman about Mirtha, about his year of working for Montenegro. He said he had betrayed his cousin and felt the need to avenge her death, to kill those responsible. He told her he wanted to assassinate Montenegro, but he knew this was impossible. And if not him, then those responsible for Mirtha's death. At the end of the hour, the psychiatrist concluded that his concern for Mirtha, his need to avenge her death, was genuine. But, she asked, would he have felt the need if he hadn't destroyed his own self-image that year he spent working alongside Montenegro? She asked him to ponder that question and come back with an answer for his next visit, in a week. She called a couple of days later, to check on him. She was concerned that he was entering into a dangerous phase—all that talk of revenge and killing. Cardona listened to her and later asked what she meant by "dangerous phase." "Just that," she said. He remembered how uncomfortable he had felt on the black sofa, thanked her, and hung up. He never went back to see her.

Four blocks away is the house where Albert is being kept. He can see it at the end of his visual field, unobtrusive, unnoticed by neighbors and passersby. Jacarandas along the avenue. It is the house where someone who for a time moved the strings of Bolivian history is taking refuge. He should leave everything that is past behind and worry only about looking forward. He should walk with steady steps to that house. Ruth had gone to get the concrete proof that accused Albert and her husband, naming them responsible for several deaths, including Mirtha's. But Cardona, once he had received confirmation of his suspicions from Ruth's mouth, does not need proof. All he needs is to maintain his conviction, to stay strong. There should be no doubt. Maybe the force of his actions will be enough to bring him peace, to make living with himself bearable once again. For the rest, all he needs is the target and the polished metal in the briefcase that he is holding on to so tightly—or that is holding on so tightly to him.

K
ANDINSKY LIKES TO WALK
in the downtown area, known as the Enclave. He enjoys the motley collection of street vendors and the pervasive aroma of skewers of
anticuchos
and
chola
sandwiches being sold on street corners; the decaying façades of buildings; retirees and the country's old heroes sitting on benches in the plaza, reading newspapers; and the massive cathedral, its steps now the protectorate of beggars. Years ago, during one of the fleeting bursts of economic prosperity that have marked the history of Rio Fugitivo, the Civic Committee worriedly watched how new construction was popping up at will all over the city. These buildings altered the urban landscape, and while they did give Rio Fugitivo a more modern, progressive face, it was not worth losing its image as a traditional city, a quiet refuge. Colonial churches and nineteenth-century mansions were being destroyed; the quiet enchantment of old, of that which stood as testimony to the passing of time and by its mere presence battled the empire of what is ephemeral, was being lost. Could the downtown not be an enclave of tradition in the midst of so much modernity? The Civic Committee mobilized its forces to try to prevent any new construction in the old quarter. They were successful, but the battle continues. Today the new city is laying siege to and suffocating the old, flanking it on all sides, waiting for a single mistake in order to achieve victory once and for all. The Enclave is sufficient proof that what is old in and of itself is not enough to bear witness to history and grandeur. Buildings dating from the late nineteenth century—the National Telegraph Company, the local railway headquarters—and from the mid-twentieth century—the Departmental Theater—stand empty and are dying a slow death. Other buildings persist in defiance, like the mansion that today houses the Palace Hotel and the one that was once the headquarters of
Tiempos Modernos
and is now the computer institute where Kandinsky studied.

Kandinsky would like all of Rio Fugitivo to be like the Enclave—a place frozen in time, its back to the hypermarket that the planet has become. There are many others who think like him, even in the same empire. He has not forgotten the Seattle protests in November 1999; they made him realize that he is not alone, that there is generalized discontent with the new world order. If young people in more prosperous countries are capable of erupting as they did in Seattle, it is possible that an even more devastating explosion could occur in a region as poor and with as many contrasts as Latin America. Rio Fugitivo should become the Seattle of Bolivia and the whole continent. The work of Kandinsky and a few other activists is designed to ensure that the winds of discontent will be felt.

 

The first thing you need to begin a revolution, Kandinsky thought, his hands behind his head, is to recruit people. He was lying in his sleeping bag while Phiber, having gone to bed late, was snoring. Kandinsky's fingers ached and were still moving as if he were typing on the keyboard, a habit he had picked up over the past few weeks. What words was he writing in the air? What software code was he improvising in front of an invisible monitor? In the early morning a cold draft still permeated the room, but the first rays of sunlight were peeking in through the curtains. Outside the window, the red neon light on the sidewalk across the street was starting to lose some of its brightness. The city was waking up; the streets were filling with the screeching of buses and the high-pitched voices of newspaper vendors.

Kandinsky had not been able to fall asleep. It happened sometimes, when his head continued to spin. He couldn't stop thinking, couldn't disconnect. Thought thinks and drags you along with it, to fertile or not-so-fertile lands. The important thing was to unite thought with desire, intuition, feelings. When the rational and irrational were in tune, sparks flew.

Sometimes he imagined himself with Laura, who had ignored him ever since their encounter in the bathroom. Who did she think she was?

The first thing he had to do was leave Phiber's house. With all the money they had earned, he could get an apartment. It was absurd to have a well-stocked bank account and sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag each night. Phiber said they shouldn't call attention to themselves with a lot of sudden purchases, that the police would become suspicious. The office they had set up was enough. "There's no rush."

But there is,
Kandinsky thought. He had decided to claim his part of the money and move that very week. The revolution couldn't wait. He needed to find partners and followers like himself, discontented with the way things were and willing to do something about it. He pictured an army of young people taking back the proposals for Utopia and social change from previous generations, shaking off their apathy, and unleashing their fury against a government bought by multinational corporations, against the new world order. Discontent was in the air, and it was simply a matter of harnessing it. It wouldn't be easy, but as a mural on one of the walls at San Ignacio said, nothing is impossible for those who are capable.