Among Strange Victims (37 page)

“What do you think?” Jimmie eventually asked. “Do you want to join the project?”

Marcelo stammered feigned admiration and praised the gringo's narrative talents. “But I'm not sure,” he then said, “what all this has to do with me.”

Jimmie hit his brow with the palm of his hand, like someone who has remembered that he's left the stove on three blocks from home. He took a deep breath and began a new monologue at the very moment Micaela returned to the room and sat cross-legged in her place, putting her empty glass down in front of her without having served another round of tequila to the others, as Marcelo imagined she would.

The thing was that the objectivity of the method, its ability to effectively predict or anticipate the future, depended not only on the hypnotist's training and the willingness of the hypnotized subject, but also on confirmation by others of the content observed during hypnosis. That is to say: a fetish could be a fetish or it could be the fruit of the individual's imagination, and only during a collective session of hypnosis, with everyone involved simultaneously diving into the future, or into the subconscious, or wherever the hell they were supposed to be diving, could the form of an unmistakably anticipatory object be defined. Everyone would search for the same fetish during the session and, given that they were intimately connected, thanks to the group exercises undertaken beforehand, the anticipatory potential of one member of the group would empower the other hypnotized subjects. On their return from the voyage, they would describe the object to each other, then they would proceed to construct a replica in clay or latex or whatever.

Jimmie paused for as long as it takes to smile. His eyes opened enormously wide and seemed bluer than ever. Marcelo glanced at Velásquez, his ally in reason in the midst of barbarity, but Velásquez was looking fixedly at the gringo and appeared to have jumped the gun on the hypnosis session. Marcelo saw his friend had, some time ago, become ensnared in Jimmie's web, and that his predilection for all things magical, perhaps due to his American origins, was much greater than his (Marcelo's origins were, when you came down to it, European and rationalist).

Marcelo had to make some response, and he knew what it should be: this was all madness and too much like the Mexican B movie Velásquez had recommended to him. He had no intention of getting involved in any such game, and if it hadn't been for the tequila, it would all have been a waste of time. But he didn't say any of that.
His desire to please at any cost was stronger that his convictions, and he didn't want to generate disaccord between the gringo and Velásquez, since the fat professor must already have said something about his willingness for the gringo to risk inviting him. So, Marcelo agreed with feigned enthusiasm. He said he was ready to participate in the collective hypnosis session, that they should get out the pocket watch or whatever was needed.

Jimmie gave a triumphal smile, and Velásquez's previously stern face appeared to relax into an expression of relief. Micaela stood up and, after lifting her skirt to her waist, slid her white panties down to the floor, where they lay like a dead animal. She took Marcelo's glass, which by then contained not a drop of tequila, and placed it under her skirt. After a moment of general expectation, the tinkle of urine was heard and Micaela took the glass, with a little piss in the bottom, from beneath her skirt. She repeated the ritual with the three other glasses and finally arranged them all in the center of the table; then she poured a shot of tequila into each glass of piss. Jimmie drew the girl to him, sat her on his knees, and kissed her on the mouth. Velásquez was the first to raise his glass, and he then clinked it with those of the gringo and the girl. The three looked simultaneously at Marcelo, and he wondered if they had rehearsed this gesture beforehand. His head hurt, and he thought, “I'm drunk; I'm so sloshed I'm seeing things, and this is not happening.” He raised his glass and enthusiastically clinked it against the others.

He had never tasted anything so delicious.

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There was just one last thing to be done before the preparatory sessions of hypnosis could begin. Each time Jimmie mentioned it, he lost his cool. According to him, it was dangerous to initiate a session of collective hypnosis with an even number of participants. Once, in Trinidad and Tobago (When had he been in Trinidad and Tobago?
thought Marcelo, without believing a word of what the gringo was saying, or only half believing it, as if departing from the promise that it was necessary to compensate for his exaggerations with a veil of incredulity, even though, at heart, one might feel darkly attracted by his exaggerations, by the prospect that they might not be exaggerations), he had tried it with a group of four, and the results had been disastrous. Marcelo interrupted: “Aren't there supposed to be three of us? Micaela, Velásquez, and me, with you directing us?” No, Jimmie also intended to enter the hypnosis, to guide them from the inside, or something like that. Marcelo thought about Foret, about the photos from his final years, where he still looked like an elegant gladiator, a type of dark superhero, living his double life as a poor poet and fifth-rate boxer, his life as a beggar and the prince of brawling, his multiple lives dedicated to love, and that other life, the only redeeming one, the life he shared with Bea until the summer of 1918. Marcelo thought about Foret because there was nothing in his own predictable life story with a high enough level of mysticism or madness with which to compare and measure the madness of what was taking place. He turned to the great ones. That, thought Professor Valente, is what tradition is: a series of parameters for measuring the madness of the things that happen to us. He believed, with Protagoras, that man was the measure of all things. And Richard Foret, in this case, was man.

Micaela already had a lot of experience in individual hypnotism since Jimmie had been inducing deep states in her for months (Before fucking her? Marcelo wondered), but it was possible that, in a group session, the girl would be unable to control the course of the hypnosis.

The reasoning seemed to him, at best, muddled, but after many failed hints from Jimmie, and Velásquez telling him bluntly, Marcelo understood they wanted him to persuade his “stepson”—as they called Rodrigo—to join the project. Marcelo had never thought of Rodrigo as his stepson, but he now realized he could justifiably be considered as such since Adela and he had been living together for a good while, and were talking about the possibility of prolonging this situation, even after Marcelo's time in Los Girasoles came to an end.

To Marcelo, the warning—foolishly repeated by Velásquez and the gringo since the day they had drunk Micaela's urine—not to tell Adela anything seemed curious. Only Rodrigo was to be told, and then he would accept the warm invitation to lose his wits and keep the secret from his mother.

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