(Fiction became real again–Atlanta, 2007)

With growing nervousness he made triangular shapes by folding the little paper that said 22-A. He tried to think about the advantages of the A or the K over the intermediate letters. He was sure he would say the word as soon as he faced the woman at door H.

This absurd certainty had frightened him so much that, without looking anywhere, he took a step and left the line. He feigned discomfort. He took his suitcase and headed to the bathroom. He made several suspicious movements: he took a hallway full of people going in the opposite direction; he had to struggle with ten or twenty people who didn’t notice someone was going against the flow. Everyone smelled of perfume, of cleanliness. The men wore black and blue suits. Even the homophobes wore pink socks and ties, because it was fashionable. Sweet perfumes predominated. One even smelled like watermelon, but without the stickiness that comes from the sugar of dried watermelon on the hand. At least five women wore real jewelry, mostly white gold. They all looked alike. They must all have been beautiful, according to the enormous beauty ads in the duty-free shop windows. Full lips of a mouth that could open and swallow a person. Giant eyes with wrinkle-free eyelids.

Although he had been born there, although he had lived there for forty years, 22-A felt like a foreigner, or something caught his attention. He was disturbed by offending the strict routine; lately he hadn’t fulfilled the usual Sunday services; a recent experience in the mountains—he had been disconnected for a week, cut off by a weather accident from all the indices he loved most—had kept him under a mild but suspicious fever. His new state revealed itself in enigmatic phrases, perhaps thoughts. “One day for God,” he said to a friend from the stock exchange, “six days for Money.”

He took another hallway just to save himself from the current that dragged him in a compromising effort. Although he didn’t know where the row of bathrooms he had used half an hour earlier was, he walked with feigned confidence. After several changes of direction that must have been picked up by the hidden cameras in the dark Christmas spheres, he found a restroom.

He entered a stall, dragging his suitcase cart, and forced himself to urinate. But he had nothing to do and feared that someone might be watching him through the air vent. A black hole revealed no glass eye. Nor its absence either.

The obscene dialogues of the sixties, which had been erased for years by the rigorous moral hygiene in place, were beginning to return in a more dignified form. In impeccable red printed letters, the company W wanted to remind the happy urinator that the world was in danger and needed his cooperation. Across the way, on the door, another sign warned the current defecator of the deceptions of all forms of relief and the need for permanent maximum alertness.

He tucked himself away modestly and left, absurdly nervous. What would he say if someone stopped and interrogated him? Why was he nervous? If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have any reason for that pallor on his face, for that revealing sweat on his hands.

While washing his hands, he saw it. This time, yes, there was a small camera. Or it pretended to be a camera, it didn’t matter. Like those half-spheres hanging in big stores. Out of ten, maybe one has a camera that watches. What matters isn’t whether it exists or not, but that no one can say for sure if it exists or not. A kind of agnosticism of the other’s gaze was the best restraint for the basest instincts. Surveillance that no one could accuse of violating privacy, because all those were public places, including the bathroom area where people wash their hands. The cameras (or the suspicion of cameras) were there for the safety of the people themselves. In fact, no one was against this system; quite the opposite. One would have to imagine how terrible it would be if those checkpoints didn’t exist. Those who occasionally dared to imagine it were horrified or wrote voluminous novels that sold like hotcakes.

For some reason, 22A understood that going to the bathroom and not being able to urinate couldn’t be anything extraordinary. Less suspicious. This thought calmed him. Touching his stomach, then his head, trying to think what might have upset him, he left again, heading toward door H.

“The monster must die. What do you think?”

“Which monster?”

“Which one? Beardy.”

“Oh, right, Beardy, the monster…”

“Do you doubt he’s a monster?”

“Me? No, I don’t doubt it. He’s a monster.”

“Then why do you ask which monster? Were you thinking of Oldbeard?”

“Well, no. Not exactly.”

“What other monster could deserve to be judged in a court like the one that judged Beardy? Can you explain it to the audience of Your News Show?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“But you doubt.”

“Yes, of course, I doubt. I firmly doubt.”

“Incredible. Who are you thinking of?”

“I can’t say.”

“What do you mean you can’t? Don’t we live in a free world?”

“Yes, Sir. We live in a free world.”

“Then say what you’re thinking.”

“I can’t.”

“Aren’t you free to say that Beardy and Oldbeard are two monsters?”

“Yes, sir, I’m free to say it and repeat it.”

“Then?”

“Am I free to say everything I think?”

“Of course. Why do you doubt it?”

“Anything I say could be used against me. It’s better to be a good person.”

“Of course, freedom and licentiousness aren’t the same.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Are you going to tell me what you were thinking?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were you thinking that thank God dictators are judged by justice?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve always thought that all dictators should be judged. It saddens me a little that some always escape.”

“Excellent. The problem is that we don’t live in a perfect world. But your words are very brave. Of course, such an act of rebellion wouldn’t have been possible under a monstrous dictatorship like Beardy’s or Oldbeard’s.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you realize you can say it freely?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is anyone torturing you to say what you don’t want to say?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you understand, then, the value of freedom?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. We’re going back to the studio and continuing with Your News Show, where You are the main star. Can you hear me, Rene? Hello, can you hear me?”

But he didn’t join the line he was waiting in to enter. He wanted to know if he was sure of himself. For a moment he felt better; the symptoms of panic were gone. But he still hadn’t reached the certainty that, even if forced, he wouldn’t utter the word. He knew that fractions of a second were enough to say it. Fractions that had been fatal for many people who, unaware of the danger, unaware of the consequences of their actions, had dared to use it in jest. He knew of the case of a foreign senator who had entered a store to buy a pen. When he passed through the checkout, the clerk asked him what it was. Why the hell did she ask that? Didn’t she know that a pen is usually used for writing? Even if the pen had other functions, for example, sexual or for serving bread at breakfast, what did it matter to her what he wanted that tiny object for, sold in her own store? That is, in the store of someone she didn’t know but for whom she worked day after day under those lights that didn’t allow her to know if it was day or night, like in industrialized chicken coops where the good layers never see the variable light of the sun.

A pen, miss. That’s what the senator should have answered. But no, the fool said the word, as if irony were recognized by the law. How stupid; irony is only recognized by intelligence. If that were that, the senator wouldn’t have said it. He said it because that wasn’t that, and saying it was supposed to be funny, like when the surrealists put a pipe in a museum and titled it This is Not a Pipe.

The senator was lucky because he was a senator. His country paid a fortune, and he was released after several days in jail. A poor devil, who knows what. A poor devil has to be very careful not to say the bad word and, moreover, not to seem like he’s about to say it.

As soon as he reached this point, he realized that saying it was a matter of a slight distraction. A slight betrayal, the kind that a sick man or woman often commits against their own physical integrity, throwing themselves off a balcony for no reason or planting a kiss on the most puritanical woman on the continent, who at the same time is the boss on whom the job and life of a poor devil, a sick devil, depend.

He stood up almost rebelliously. He stood up without thinking. Suddenly he found himself standing, surrounded by people who, without stopping their hurried pace, looked at him as if he were crazy. He was starting to look suspicious, now not just to himself but to everyone else. He realized that far from helping him, the delay and the meditation were doing him harm. In bad, in terrible condition, he would reach the woman at door H. He would face the least attractive of all the officials and say the word. The more he thought about it, the more likely it became. Hadn’t he been thinking about going to door H when suddenly he found himself standing, in one leap, next to his gray suitcase and the other people watching him pass by?

Suddenly, without remembering the previous steps, he found himself in front of the woman at door H, who asked him:

“Anything to declare?”

To which he responded with a silence that suspiciously began to stretch.

The woman at door H looked at him and then at the guard. The guard approached, pulling a transmitter from his belt. Two more appeared immediately.

The woman repeated the previous question.

“Anything to declare?”

“Peace,” he said.

The guards grabbed him by the arms. He felt hydraulic pliers cutting through his muscles and finally breaking his bones.

“Peace!” he shouted this time. “A little Peace, yes, that’s it, Peace! Peace, damn it! Peace, you son of a bitch!”

The guards immobilized him with a high-amperage electric shock.

He was accused in court of threatening public safety and later convicted for having concealed the word in time with the word Peace, which is also dangerous in these special times. The defense appealed the ruling citing psychiatric disturbances resulting from his recent traumatic experience in the mountains.

Atlanta, 2007

Ideology and Intervention: A Critical Review of Jorge Majfud’s The Wild Frontier