Stories

The Word

(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

The Full Weight of the Law

Short Story from Had Other Plans by Jorge Majfud

On the morning of July 27th, the newspapers and television reported a strange crime committed in Sayago. Two homeless men had killed a third, likely the night before. Though not alarming, the news surprised many. The reasonable thing, and what is most common, is to kill for money, pride, or some family passion. And none of these things could apply to a half-man who lived in the city’s garbage dumps.

The exact reason for the beating was never known; and no one wanted to know more once the judge sentenced the killers to ten years in prison. But I, the judge, never entirely forgot the case, and some years later, I visited the prisoners in jail. I did it almost in secret, as with everything, because people liked to say that I favored criminals over victims. Now, if I had to pass sentence again, I would give them another ten years in prison; not for justice, but out of compassion. I believe I can explain myself.

The dead homeless man was Dr. Enríquez, who had lived without a home for the last six months. Eusebio Enríquez was a surgeon and had lost his eldest daughter in an operating room on January 24th, where he himself had intended to relieve her of an incurable illness. The surgeon had no reason to blame himself for his daughter’s death, but reasons mattered little because, suddenly, he went mad and one night left his home. He crossed the city in the January rain and abandoned himself by the railroad tracks in Sayago. He let his beard grow, dirtied and faded his clothes; he quickly lost weight, and his face grew darker and more sunken, giving him the unfamiliar appearance of a Hindu sannyasin. He became so marginalized from society that he ceased to exist for the government and for society; and that is why they could never find him. Soon after, he met Facundo and Barbarroja, the two men who would later beat him to death with iron bars.

Neither Facundo nor Barbarroja were criminals, but people feared them or, rather, avoided them, as if poverty were contagious. While there were people who believed in God or in Hell, there were alms. But, little by little, good conscience and the tax on evil diminished, and these wretched men became part of the national unconscious, the hidden shame of a prosperous or pretentious economy.

The two men lived a nearly nomadic life. They inhabited any and all corners of the old train station, always avoiding the guard who might catch them sleeping in an abandoned train car or in the iron storage shed where they took refuge on rainy days. «This place is sad,» Enríquez would say to himself, «the good thing is that they don’t know it.»

But, I repeat, neither of them was capable of killing a bird. It is also true that during those six months of living together, Enríquez spoke to them only once. Still, the beggars held no grudge against him. They knew he was a poor madman who had once lived like ordinary people, who must have had a house and a car and even a family, because they had seen him flee from an elegant woman in clean clothes. They had learned to live with him like a family that has a mute or disabled member. Once, when the cold was unbearable and their jaws began to tremble, they brought him a can of boiling herbs. And he did not refuse it.

But that winter was one of the worst the beggars could remember. Temperatures dropped below zero; puddles froze over by morning, and the grass turned white with frost. It became increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find glass bottles, much less sell them. Because people avoided those men whose beards and clothes worsened with each year. And so, little by little, they lost the little oral contact that connected them to the world.

Barbarroja fell ill from hunger, and Facundo began to complain all night about rheumatism or some other indecipherable ailment. The illnesses and sufferings piled up until they blended into a single hell. Yet, the two beggars continued to wait for spring and the summer heat, which each day seemed further away. Enríquez knew it. He knew this could be the last winter for his companions: their feet were swollen and purple, their faces pale and sunken, their hands useless. Only a depressing optimism kept them going, according to him.

One morning, Enríquez opened his mouth to read them their death sentence. That day was the only time the three of them spoke, and they talked for hours. Facundo and Barbarroja learned who the madman was and almost confirmed what they had imagined. In reality, the madman was, or had been, a rich man. A petty bourgeois, to his acquaintances, but a rich man to those outcasts.

The conversation ended with a proposal from the madman.

«It will get colder,» he told them, «and you will die. You no longer have defenses, and your bodies are failing. The suffering will last until September. Or, in the worst case, until October. But you will die. And if you’re lucky enough to survive this year, you’ll die next year, after suffering twice as much as you will this winter. But you are so poor that you don’t even have ideas. You won’t know how to escape this hell. Not even in the easiest way. You are so poor that you haven’t even thought of going to prison, where inmates enjoy a bed with blankets and a roof and where they eat almost every day. You are so poor that you won’t even have the strength to rob a market, because if you try, they’ll kick you out and you’ll end up with your forehead bleeding on the pavement. And if they jail you for theft, they’ll release you back to the street in two days, because the prisons are full and even the judge will take pity on two miserable, starving men. But since I’m a doctor, I’m going to tell you what you must do to save yourselves.»

The beggars exchanged glances, unsure of what to think. They even began to doubt the story he had told them earlier about his family and his former life.

«To go to prison for many years, you have to kill me. Don’t look at me like idiots. Hide that honest stupidity you’ve been carrying around, stinking in your clothes.»

Facundo and Barbarroja knew or imagined that the madman was worse than ever that day. But he kept insisting, with fanatical realism, on the convenience of sacrificing one of the three.

«God will punish us,» said Barbarroja.

«God has already punished you. Can you imagine a Hell worse than this? Do you see what I’m saying? You are so poor that you have no ideas. You no longer reason. Do I have to come and tell you what to do? Besides, why would God punish someone who kills a murderer? The Bible says, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ I killed a child, my own daughter. Do you feel sorry for me?»

The beggars stood up and retreated, frightened. The madman was beginning to truly scare them. Time passed, a week or two, and they didn’t speak again. They didn’t even approach him and avoided looking at him. On the 24th, it rained heavily. Facundo and Barbarroja moved to the abandoned shed at the station. As I said before, they only went there on rainy days because the guard would hassle them if he found them inside. On the other hand, I think they preferred the roofless train car because it was more discreet and the dark void of the shed’s height didn’t bother them. (Despite living on the street, I discovered that both suffered from a strange form of agoraphobia.)

That day, the madman didn’t enter the shed. He stayed out in the rain all night, like a ghost with his hands in his pockets, sometimes looking up at the sky, which outlined him with lightning and erased him with the dark rain.

On the 25th, the madman, exhausted by hunger, cold, and a lack of will to live, fell unconscious. On the 26th, the beggars decided to bring him a can of boiled herbs, but he no longer responded. His gaze was lost, and he could barely move his eyelids. His skin was white and cold, with no reaction or sensitivity of any kind. Facundo pressed his ear to the madman’s chest and confirmed that his heart was barely beating. Throughout the night of that day, the two men silently monitored the almost imperceptible beats of the madman’s heart. They waited or cared for him with fear and anxiety. Barbarroja began to tremble as never before, his shoulders hunched, unable to control his lips, which seemed to recite a voiceless speech.

On the 27th, the madman’s heart could no longer be heard, and by nightfall they thought he was dead. But he wasn’t. Therefore, the coroner’s conclusion was correct: Eusebio Enríquez did not die of cold or hunger; he was beaten to death by two beggars who confessed to the crime and were saved from a certain lynching outside the courthouse because the police dragged them to a van where they were dumped like trash.

Montevideo, 1996

From Had Other Plans by Jorge Majfud

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

Desire

I did not invent this story. It is a story that was once told in many forms, but it always told, more or less, the same thing. Then, due to the urgency of recent centuries, it fell into oblivion. Like the stories that matter, it may not be true, but it is truthful.

They say that two thousand five hundred years ago, there was a very good man who, on a dark night, received a visit from God. He couldn’t see Him, but he could hear Him.

The man was frightened because the voice was not of this world. Immediately, he knew it was God, who had heard his prayers and had, at last, decided to speak to him.

The good man had fallen ill and was alone, abandoned, so God offered to grant him a wish.

His heart raced, but before he could say anything, God continued: «You have always been a compassionate man. In your prayers, the men and women of your village have never been absent. So, whatever you ask for yourself, I will give twice as much to each of them.»

The man fell silent and, after a moment of thought, said:

«Very well. Take one of my eyes.»

jorge majfud, Jacksonville, 2018

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