A Zero-Sum Game. Eduardo Rabasa

waited for the climax of the event. Just before the main guitar solo, when the master of ceremonies was already walking to the center of the room, he stopped the music by lifting the arm of the record player. Some of the participants continued to hear the solo in their heads; others spun round, horrified by the sacrilege. The puppet had something important to tell them. They had, for years, been conned by a false prophet. After a long, thorough investigation, he’d found a document by the journalist Stanley Higgins. They were nothing more than pawns in a perverse game of merchandising chess. He went on to read the article aloud in an affected tone.

      By the end, he’d triggered a theological debate that would divide the few who could still think into two bands. Those who didn’t want to believe him said it was a conspiracy: Why had no one else reported this? It was corporate interests trying to cast a slur on honest resistance. In contrast, their opponents had always known it was true, but hadn’t dared to say so because of the prevailing fanaticism. The powers that be had made sure that Higgins was silenced, somehow or other, and that was why the story had been buried. Did they really think a newspaper like that would risk its reputation publishing unverified information?

      Doubt continued to gnaw at the fraternity, until the sacrifice of the leader put an end to it. Lost for words, the members would read the article over and over, as if expecting that the next time it would say something different. The arguments put forward by the two sides had reached unbearable levels of abstraction. At that time, they were discussing whether the rock star’s outfits were in fact his own or part of the stage set. Only a grand gesture could avoid a confrontation. The leader crumpled up the clipping and put it in his mouth. To help him swallow, he took a swig of the blackish acid that had finished off the stone. A few drops stuck to the paper and charred the evidence; the rest destroyed his vocal cords. His most faithful followers rushed him to hospital, where the internal fire was extinguished by means of a stomach pump. He was close to death. The doctors insisted that the obstruction caused by the paper had saved his life, but, as a lifelong souvenir, he was left with incurable gastritis. Now he spoke in shrill whispers, like a Mafioso past his prime. It was the last time that the s met as a group.

      17

      Mauricio Maso’s double life began as had been promised. He moved into a shared room in Building B. At first, claustrophobia kept him awake at nights. But he struck up an almost instant friendship with his roommate, Beni Mascorro, who soon became his right hand man. Additionally, as Maso needed a respectable façade for his activities, he was included on the payroll of the cleaning staff. Sometimes he would forget to pick up his fortnightly pay packet.

      He started to surf the wave of efficiency inundating Villa Miserias. If possible, he avoided direct contact with his clients, except in cases involving carnal payment—a number that increased until it became his only addiction. Even then, the merchandise was delivered the same way: first, a message had to be left in his mailbox. Maso assigned each of his clients a codename. He and Mascorro had fun creating labels that hit where it hurt. His order book showed six sprigs of hungry indecisiveness for Stinking Bedbug, two staples of prickly dandruff for Greasy Playing Card, five encapsulated lonelinesses for Bleeding Wrinkles, two drops of colorblindness for Toxic Baldy, four glassy veins for Big Ears the Whale, twenty spongy domes for Air Injection. Mascorro was in charge of making the deliveries and collecting payment. All packages also included a note containing Mauricio Maso’s favorite phrase, deriving from his metro days. On a certain evening, he’d gotten into conversation with a restless, bright-eyed globetrotter on a nonstop journey in search of a piece of a mammoth, lost in his childhood. Before leaving the train, the globetrotter had taken a small notebook from his pocket and written on one page what would become Maso’s mantra: “Drugs are vehicles for people who have forgotten how to walk.”

      As a gesture of reconciliation, Maso offered Taimado free trips for his entire squad. The Black Paunches fell over themselves to scrawl out their orders. Maso and Mascorro prepared them carefully: using spray paint of the appropriate color, they camouflaged significant amounts of the strongest powdered chili habanero they could find. Mascorro had to hold his tongue in ice-cold water for fifteen minutes after sampling a pinch. They made sure all the drugs ordered contained an adequate dose. Maso had a hard time not giving the game away when he delivered the suitcase to Taimado.

      No sooner had the avid Black Paunches congregated in the Chamber of Murmurs than they began to feel the effects of Maso’s vengeance. Those who inhaled the habanero directly into their brains experienced a reverberation that ripped through their nasal passages to the very back of their skulls. Between shrieks of burning agony, they rubbed their faces in the dry earth of the flowerbeds as if trying to sand them down the bones until the pain was rooted out. The ones who took capsules threw up food, bile, and eventually air, powered by the raging bombs in their stomachs. When the bubbles of love enveloped them, they felt arrows piercing their flesh, as if they were sieves spitting out streams of gastric juices onto the cosmic brotherhood. The acid group was infected by visions of snakes spraying them with flames. Their skin melted and regenerated, only to be charred again by the beasts. The only Black Paunch to inject a substance went into convulsions and drowned in his own spittle. His death was officially put down to a sudden heart attack.

      Maso took advantage of the chaos to play his masterstroke. He broke into the Black Paunches’ lockers with a picklock and scattered their belongings around the Chamber of Murmurs, leaving a trail of scapulars of the Virgin, music systems, and cologne. Using leftover leftovers, he attracted a dozen stray dogs and locked them in with the food. As the Black Paunches gradually reemerged from their lava nightmares, they found their possessions chewed and covered in piss and shit. They kicked the dogs to death, knowing that they couldn’t touch the real culprit. When Taimado passed her with his arms full of stinking clothing, he had to impotently listen to Juana Mecha’s satisfied, “That’s for soaking my spare mattresses.”

      18

      Maso’s business career was on the up and up. There were incalculable advantages to his sector of the market: the initiates always wanted more; they were ready to pay any price, there was no need for publicity, and economic crises made consumption soar. Every night, after giving Taimado his cut, Beni Mascorro would stash yet another briefcase safely away in the apartment. Money was no problem: the difficulties were social acceptance and space.

      There was a proliferation of anti-drug neighborhood watch groups who received substantial donations to their cause. They organized courses, lectures, and brigades, and produced videos and pamphlets with heartrending stories of ruined lives put back together again. Maso was the enemy, the iron ball attached to the chain of hysteria that linked them all. When the unrest grew, the usual mechanism came into play: one of Maso’s delivery boys was captured by a Black Paunch. The neighborhood organizations would record the statistic; the annual report would free up funds for the next exercise. Things went on as normal.

      Nevertheless, Maso was still forced to endure the sight of decals showing his face branded with a bleeding cross or the accelerated pace of mothers holding children by the hand when they saw him sweeping up in his beige uniform. His only consolation was one of Mecha’s enigmatic, oft-repeated sayings: “Your burden is that they like their guilt so much.”

      Space began as a practical matter. The briefcases stuffed with cash were squeezed under their beds until not even one more would fit; the other room in the apartment was occupied by a gardener and her grandson. Since none of the owners would rent their properties to Maso, he offered to pay the woman’s rent if she moved into the adjoining building. The owner of that apartment gave way when offered a briefcase full of money. The other residents checked the workers’ regulations in search of a rule prohibiting this abuse: the assessed value of their properties had immediately fallen. When the outrage had been carried to its completion, the residents of Building B expressed their repudiation of the event by painting the corresponding part of their façade with an ochre blemish. The workers thought it was a gesture of cohesion. And while the owners came out publicly against the invasion of brooms, cleaning rags, and truncheons, they privately began attempting to rent out their