33 Revolutions (4 page)

“I'm going,” the doctor announces. “It's all over.”

“I know,” he replies. “I know . . . ”

They part with a hug, knowing it will be the last, the final goodbye. He gets home and throws himself on the couch, tired, with no desire to think. He feels old, skinny, dirty, lost—what has changed since yesterday? He asks himself again if he's nothing more than a tortured aesthete, and he doesn't know what to reply. On one hand, like any other person in this scratched record he lives immersed in the epic of poor but dignified dignity, sacrifice as a modus vivendi, survival as self-improvement; on the other hand—he tortures himself—he doesn't understand why poverty is a work of art, or the highest stage of social evolution.

T
he twilight is slow, a hot micro-inferno in the middle of summer: A lethargy as big as the sea takes possession of life. He dozes off, letting himself be carried by images filled with sharks and corpses; he dreams that he bets on the eight (the dead man) and the ten (the big fish), winning a journey to the other world. He wakes bathed in sweat. It's nine o'clock, he knows that because of the thousands of TV sets around him all tuned in to the soap opera at high volume (the city comes to a standstill at that hour, hanging on other people's love affairs and dramas). He drags himself to the bathroom and throws a bit of water on himself, as an ineffectual solution to the heat. Then he makes a light, cold meal and devotes his night to a science-fiction movie. He sleeps on the couch, with the TV on, the balcony door open, and the minimal summer breeze sweetening his long sleep.

H
e wakes at six-thirty. He makes a strong cup of coffee without sugar and drinks it on the balcony, looking at the sea. He goes down to the bakery, where the people are standing and grumbling as they wait for their daily ration. He gets back to the apartment an hour later, knowing he's one of the privileged, that he doesn't depend, like others, only on his salary and the ration book: With the dollars his mother sends, he can stretch to a few luxuries—butter, yogurt, milk—allowing him to eat in a way that's unthinkable for many of his neighbors.

He devours his breakfast and smokes his first cigarette of the day with the news station on in the background. He reads a Russian novel. He's in a very good mood, he's slept well (in spite of the terrible state of the couch) and has several free days that he can add to his vacation. The news says nothing new (nothing he didn't hear yesterday, or last week, or the previous month) and he gradually stops paying attention to the monotony of the presenters. The novel, on the other hand, grabs him on each page, sinking into the announced tragedy of an anonymous, everyday person—so far, so alien, that he ends up feeling close to him.

Toward noon, he makes a frugal lunch and without stopping reading devours it in a few minutes. He's washing the plate and the frying pan when he hears voices in the corridor—first he takes no notice, thinking that it's a private matter, then, gradually, he understands that it's something less usual. New voices are added, questions are asked on all sides, there are concrete assertions (he hears the expression “Many died,” and now there can be no doubt).

“What's going on?” he asks, going out into the corridor, where a group of five or six people are talking without stopping.

“My nephew who works in the harbor,” a woman in her eighties starts saying, “called me just now: some individuals stole a boat.”

“A boat?” he asks, surprised.

“Yes, yes, a boat, one of those they use in the harbor”—a tugboat, someone specifies. “They hijacked it to leave the country, and apparently it sank as it left the harbor.”

“They sank it!” exclaims a neighbor, known for his eccentric opinions.

“How could they sink it? It sank!” replies a comrade, looking the eccentric in the eyes (a loud sarcastic burst of laughter can be heard).

“But when was this?”

“Last night, in the early hours, I don't know.”

“I've been listening to the radio all morning and they didn't say anything.”

“What could they have said, if they sank it themselves?” insists the eccentric (the comrade glares at him).

“And did anyone die?” he asks.

“Lots of them, apparently, but my nephew doesn't know how many. He says when he finds out more he'll call me back.”

“It must be the work of the enemy!” the comrade cries with patriotic fervor.

“Of course! If the enemy's at home!”

The debate freezes when another neighbor appears with a uniform from head to feet (serious face, pistol at his belt) and quickly walks past the group.

“So, is it true?” they ask him.

“All I know is what they told me over the phone: that something very serious happened and I have to go to my unit as soon as possible”—he pauses—“but I don't like it,” he says, before being swallowed up by the stairs.

He goes back to his apartment, just long enough to put his shoes on, change the roll in the camera, and go out to the street, where the sun strikes him as even more scorching than usual. He walks in the direction of the bay, observing attentively—pretending to be distracted—the huddles forming on the corners, among the people standing in line, and on the seawall. To all appearances, the scratched record of everyday life continues intact, repeating itself as it does every day; but deep down, something is moving, falling apart, breaking up.

He reaches the oldest part of the city and enters the harbor. There are lots of guards (public adornment): He can't get closer. A cop stands in his way and with regal courtesy advises him to beat it, comrade. He takes a few photographs. A small group is gesticulating, pointing to the old fort and then out to sea—he approaches—one of the guys asserts: “Yes, pal, I was standing right here last night, making out with my girl, and I saw it all, friend.”

H
e stops outside the eighty-year-old woman's door, a little hesitant. Before he can ring the bell, she opens, always on the alert for any movement in the corridor (local chatter, no doubt unfairly, brands her a gossip).

“Er . . . I'd like to know if you have news from your nephew . . . You know, about what happened in the harbor.”

The woman looks around, as if this is a bad spy movie, and murmurs conspiratorially:

“It's better to talk inside.”

The apartment is a museum of useless objects: Russian dolls, images of saints, and Chinese ornaments of little aesthetic value, he thinks. He sits down on a red couch covered in transparent nylon and full of cushions and plastic dolls. The kitchen is from the Fifties: the refrigerator and the shelves, all Formica and enamel, with rounded corners and alarming proportions in the context of that small space. The woman pours some herbal tea into cups that look like porcelain (are they?), and starts her babble:

“My nephew says it wasn't an accident at all”—he raises an eyebrow—“he says there were orders from above to prevent that boat getting away”—he feigns surprise—“that first they hosed down the deck with water cannon—like firefighters,” she adds, “and then they started to ram the boat until it sank.”

“It sank?” he asks.

“Well, actually, the boys had orders to stop it, not sink it”—and the woman, with a startlingly coquettish gesture, winks at him with one eye while staring at him fixedly with the other. “There were about seventy of them, and at least thirty drowned.”

Back in his apartment, he tunes to the news station to see if they say anything. He knows it's always like this; faced with a lack of information, all that is left is speculation and gossip. News items travel from mouth to mouth, getting distorted on the way (like a damned scratched record) until they become urban myths of more than dubious veracity. They spread like a virus in this defenseless organism, making any distinction between reality and fantasy, metafiction and fiction, impossible. There's a lack of verifiable sources, he thinks: Like the news, as unlikely as it is uncertain (next year production will increase by such and such percent; the new trade deal with China will raise our consumption capacity by this much percent, the radio headlines recite). He eats rice and fried eggs without any appetite, all the while asking himself what's going to happen now. He goes blank for a few minutes, staring engrossed at the wall. The question returns, obsessively, and the wall doesn't answer.

H
e goes up to see the Russian woman. He knows that she receives foreign radio every day: That's how he finds her, sitting by the radio. The scratched record of criticism from overseas echoes around the living room of her small apartment, as square and Soviet as the building. The Russian woman bites her lip, anxiously. Political nature has operated in her since childhood: When she was little, she received letters from her parents, both guests in Siberia, and at one time in her life she herself was accused of the worst crime of all: doing business.

They sent her to this inhospitable island, a last chance to go to the heaven of the righteous: She came to redeem herself and ended up black marketeering, he thinks. He observes her on the sly (her hard, stiff beauty, and that warm smile of hers). He thinks he's starting to fall in love with her, and is surprised: He comes to the conclusion that she is the only thing dear to him in his life. She asks:

“You're going too, aren't you?”

They look at each other for minutes, maybe years, and he doesn't answer. They converse in silence, accompanied by the muffled noises of the city and a pathetic bolero spewing out apathetically from the radio.

H
e calls a former classmate from the university, whose interest in the mechanics of cameras led him to become passionate about photography itself. He goes to visit him just after the soap opera, with a bottle of rum, some cigarettes, and two undeveloped rolls.

The kitchen is transformed into a small darkroom; on the little table there appear a Czech enlarger and trays of developer, fixer, and water, and they spend the next hour developing and printing a few copies.

“Things are getting bad,” his friend says with cinematic gravity. “This is a shipwreck and the rats are abandoning the ship. Mark my words: The revolution has failed,” he says, not devoid of grandiloquence and provocation (enfant terrible), he thinks. He used to be truly fat, Pavarottian, with a spirit the size of the universe; now he's skinny and dull, lacking in charisma. Anemia has stripped him of his identity. His optimism disappeared along with his belly, as if that had been the precise measure of his hopes and happiness.

“It isn't just failing,” he continues, “but it insists on dragging us down with it. And what the fuck can we do? Do you realize we've always been part of this? What are we going to do now?” cries the former fat man, on his third or fourth rum.

He lights a cigarette, smiles faintly like an old, badly paid clown, and starts to sum up:

“First, this island is sinking into the sea—”

“That's the problem,” the former fat man cuts in, “the island is sinking and we can't blame anyone else. We've torpedoed ourselves. Mark my words: ourselves.”

“Of course,” he intervenes as if the thing were of little importance. “Do you know anything about the tugboat they sank?”

“What tugboat?” the former fat man retorts. “Boy, haven't you learned that things only happen if the news says they happen? Have you heard an official version?” At his negative gesture, the former fat man continues, “If they haven't said anything, it means nothing happened. And that isn't up for debate, comrade.”

They drink rum for hours. The alcohol invites inevitable nostalgia, that scratched record of the distant past . . .

“What about my photographs?” he asks. “What do you think?”

“Boy,” the former fat man replies, “for a begin­ner they aren't bad. What camera do you use?”

“A Kiev,” he replies.

The former fat man looks at him sarcastically. “Pal, that's not a camera, it's a device that's useless for contemporary photographic practice.”

“What?”

“Throw that shit in the garbage, man, it's no good for anything.” The former fat man goes to a cupboard filled with parts and cameras and comes back with a black Pentax (old, solid), two lenses (a 35 and a 200), and a flash. “This is a basic but decent kit. It's a loan,” he adds. “The only thing I ask is that you take good photographs. This won't last: We're making history, comrade.”

They part and he starts to head home. He traverses the night, bumping into things, bouncing between walls and doubts. We aren't making history, he thinks: We're being carried away by it. Like the currents of the sea. We're getting farther and farther from the coast. We're drifting: History is sweeping us along. After decades of trying to tame it, it's rebelled. We haven't been able to transform it, and now we have to pay the price.

A day is scratched . . .

T
hey're knocking angrily at the door. His hangover has him frozen. He was sleeping with his clothes on, including shoes, and now with more than questionable balance he gets up. The eighty-year-old woman's smile fades when she sees him, although she is too polite to make a vulgar or inappropriate comment.

She shows him the newspaper:

“You see? I told you there'd been an accident,” she says, pointing to a paragraph. “An irresponsible act of piracy . . . an unfortunate accident.”

“Good,” he murmurs. “That means we can have a clear conscience.”

The woman smiles. “Conscience maybe. All the rest is worry,” and she goes, closing the door delicately.

The office manager on the telephone:

“Listen . . . I know you're sick but you have to be there this afternoon; there's going to be an emergency meeting. I assume you've read today's paper.”