Semmant (24 page)

I knew he, Semmant, knew: there are defects that cannot be erased. He could venture any feat, but he was unable to delude himself. That security feature was missing in his algorithms. Perhaps this was also a mistake on my part.

In any case, there was no correcting it now, as with the other mistakes I had made. Semmant was capable only of fighting for what did not harbor deceit. Perhaps he saw in me merely a resource, nothing more. He might have thought the entire story of Adele the courtesan and her robot knight had been created by him – like the universe; for Adele had indeed become the whole universe for him. That’s how it is when you look the astonished love specter right in the eye without flinching.

He now recognized he had been wrong about the most important thing. Adele, as well as the infinite cosmos, showed themselves not to be as he had believed. The tragedy of the creator is disappointment in himself. Adele was becoming a stranger to him – in this, of course, he couldn’t blame her. So he drew the conclusion he personally was not worthy of the lady of his heart.

In the corner of the screen a female silhouette would occasionally appear. The same as before – but hardly noticeable, thinned out, nearly transparent. Even more defenseless than it had been previously. This was nothing less than Semmant now admitting he could not protect Adele from the enemy. The enemy turned out to be stronger than he.

We both seemed to be convinced the chaos of the universe was too mighty. One had only to loosen his grasp slightly, and it would instantly gain the upper hand. It attacks and takes vengeance, just as the real world takes vengeance – on all happy fools who issue it a challenge.

It was probably painful for the robot – painful and frightening. I know what it is to be suddenly uncertain of everything. I recalled perfectly how it was to see myself as inept, helpless. How I thought I wouldn’t be in sync with reality ever again. Everyone from the School encountered this – and nearly all overcame it, sooner or later. Anthony, you understand, doesn’t count – same as Dee Wilhelmbaum and Little Sonya. Those are the exceptions that make the rule – the fate of an exception is never enviable. Could it be, I thought sullenly, that Semmant was now also considered an exception? And, if so, what fate awaited him?

Chapter 26

Thus we endured nearly all of August, a month of helplessness, a time of weakness. The image of Adele was becoming ever more indistinct, like the thinned-out silhouette on the screen. It was hard for all of us – me, Lidia, and Semmant. The situation was sliding downhill, picking up speed. I understood a precipice lay ahead, and no one knew how far the drop-off would be.

Each morning I told myself: no more. And, alas, I did nothing to stop it. I had gone off course and was just letting the current carry me. I grew angry with myself, yet did not even try to lift a finger.

Then, finally, I regained my decisiveness. It was a hot day; in search of coolness, I got in my car and drove into the mountains. After taking a winding road to the Navacerrada Pass, I situated myself comfortably on a stone plateau and looked down for a long time upon pastures and terraces, on farm fields and scattered boulders. These weren’t the Alps, but something stirred in my soul nonetheless. Some vague echo of that delight there once had been – and then, suddenly, shame! The bitterest shame – I recognized the treachery and cried out, gritting my teeth and cursing myself, pressing my face in my hands.

I returned home in the evening and set to work: I went onto the forum and deleted my profile. To hell with them – with Lidia, with everyone – I decided to turn history back. And to remake Adele, albeit not as before. Different, but still worthy – of adoration, of exploits in her name.

Her notes/confessions/reflections were again put to use. I sent them to the robot, trying to restore the naturalness that had once come so easily to me. Adele joked and poked fun at herself, swearing, explaining, sharing all her secrets. But something wasn’t right; I could feel it. And Semmant immediately understood he was being fed a fake. He left the markets entirely and withdrew into himself.

In a week or so I recognized I was failing, which was obvious to both of us. Adele was spiraling ever lower into an inept lie. The new material lacked credibility – of course, my robot could see that with his eyes half-closed. His powerful mind had processed too many facts; deceiving him was now difficult. You could say he had acquired a wealth of experience. And this was bitter for him – as it always is.

It was bitter for me as well. I understood that in my lack of will I had done the unforgivable, the irreversible. Having been admitted into the inner sanctum, I had screwed up and profaned it. Having created a great thing, I myself was the one to betray it. And, having lost what I had achieved, I could see now: that was my ultimate limit. The boundary of perfection that could not be reached. I would never have the chance to do anything like it again in my life.

This was terrible, intolerable. Worse than for anyone who had been disappointed before – at least, that’s how it felt. Your own pain is always more acute, and you even think on occasion: is there any point in continuing? Is it time to settle up all the scores? But no, I didn’t think that, or else, if I did, not seriously. I knew I didn’t have the heart to do away with myself. And what difference would it make anyway? So, I could keep on drinking wine and sucking oysters.

Yet, even feeling that the fight was meaningless, I didn’t stop or throw up my hands. Unable to remain idle, I kept trying, consoling myself with hope, trying new steps. Soon it occurred to me: I had to update something radically in myself. And the first thing to be done was to finally get rid of Lidia.

She had not bothered me during all this time – probably because she was busy. Her newspaper was changing owners, and, in the process, its office, structure, image. But then pressing matters receded into the background, and Lidia reminded me of her existence. She was seriously confused. My disappearance from the forum could not help but alarm her.

I knew we had to meet, at least once. Lidia insisted on a tryst in my bedroom and immediately pulled me into bed. She supposed sex would help her, make me more compliant, softer – a typical mistake for a woman. Actually, I had long since wearied of her demanding lust. And two long, lascivious hours only fortified my resolve.

When we caught our breath, she asked me outright what was going on with me. And I, in all sincerity, told her everything – about Semmant, about my letters to him, about his feelings toward the fair maiden he saw in the prostitute Adele. I talked about my disgraceful weakness, of which she herself was also to blame. I even spoke of the elusive specter that entices all and favors only a few – though I don’t think she understood that at all. Instead, it became utterly clear to her: I intended to deprive her of something.

Of course, Lidia grew furious, and my firmness merely threw fuel on the fire.

“You’re crazy!” I heard her say, and I could tell she really meant it.

“What is this robot of yours?” Lidia asked. “How can you choose
it
over me?”

“Over
me
!” Her eyes grew large, and she winced in complete sincerity. It was difficult for her to accept, to recognize, to finally believe.

“You loser!” she yelled in my face, right before slamming the door. “You’ll always be afraid of life. You just don’t know how to live!”

Then, a day later, she realized she had gone too far. This had happened before, when we quarreled over the issue with the camouflage – and now it again seemed to her everything could still be fixed. She explained herself, making excuses, murmuring into the telephone receiver, “Forgive me, I just went crazy. I wanted you to need me more than the most advanced robot!”

“No,” I laughed. “You just want to
get
more.”

Lidia sensed then that it gave me pleasure to tell her this, and that the breakup had occurred, and it was irreversible. Yet she had no intention of giving up. Everything had happened too quickly, and the cause was unconvincing, in her opinion. On top of that, it was hard for her to admit a man had dumped her first.

She began a protracted siege: calling, writing letters, demanding heart-to-heart talks. All this was burdensome, unpleasant. As best as I could, I avoided contact – not yammering about Semmant anymore, and making up one excuse after another. Being busy, health problems – then alcoholism and even the onset of impotence. I tried many things to explain why I no longer wanted to see her, but nothing worked, Lidia would not relent. “What did I do wrong?” she persisted. “How can I correct it, make it right again?”

Once she waited a long time by the door and eventually got me to open it for her. That was a very hard day. I was depressed as I grew convinced there was no fixing Adele, and the story could not be saved. My will was crushed, and Lidia knew how to use that. She cast a single glance at me and started to rip my clothes off right in the hallway.

“You look beleaguered, as if someone is hunting you. Want to run away together? I can be your accomplice. Or I can be a chance encounter: a salesgirl, a waitress, a streetwalker…”

She licked me all over, squealing with desire, and came three times, helping herself along with her hand. She made me come too – right in her mouth. “Ha ha ha!” she laughed gruffly when she saw my discomfort. “My, but you give up easily! What are all your half-assed fairy tales worth now?”

“Leave,” I said to her, and she left. She departed as a conqueror, holding her head high with pride. But this victory was her last. I no longer denied it to myself: she was simply repulsive to me.

The discussions stopped – I now dismissed her calls with a brief, dry, “I’m busy!” Her e-mails also went unanswered. At first she was angry, then perplexed, and then she started to beg and grovel. She wanted to be pitied, in which she saw a way to get me back. I kept silent, but she became all the more persistent, hysterical. She wrote in thorough detail about all her tears and tribulations.

It even seemed to me this was getting her turned on; she was aroused by her sufferings as though by a fetish. All there had been between us before had lost its value, turned to a farce. And besides, her words and her posture, all of her sniveling and wailing, seemed more unnatural to me than ever before. I did not believe her – behind the protests and grievances I saw a ferocious plan. She was fighting for her property, gathering up all the resources she had.

I even wrote Semmant: might it be the time had come for me to become a misogynist forever? I admitted I was amazed at myself. Indeed, recalling our love affair I was puzzled how I could ever have had any feelings for this pitiable creature. I searched for an echo of them and heard not a melody, but rather scratching and grinding. The entire female essence appeared different to me. It was as if I had discovered a dark, unseemly part of it and realized yet again that I knew little about women.

How dearly I wanted Lidia to break up with me herself! For her to regard me with contempt, having come to the conclusion I was unworthy of her. But no, worthiness, whether mine or someone else’s, was not important now. In the battle for her possessions, she was ready for anything.

Then a saving thought popped into my head – or, rather, Lidia herself inspired it. “Why aren’t we seeing each other anymore?” she asked. “Why aren’t we sleeping together – after all, whatever you may say, you need to have sex with someone. Or what, did you hook up with somebody else? Could that be what this is all about?”

Here it is, I understood. This is my way out, I thought, so I wrote her, “Yes!”

“Who? Who is it?” Lidia would not relent. And I, hardly giving it any consideration, chose the most plausible and simple option. I invented a fling with the maid, Elena María Gómez, who cleaned my apartment twice a week. And that worked – like a powerful charge of plastique.

To my astonishment, Lidia did not calm down, not at all. Upon receiving my letter, she became enraged. Now everything had fallen into place. “Another woman” – that was so easy to imagine; it was so clear, explained everything so well.

“Your Elena is a real slut!” she yelled into my voicemail. “And now you’re copying
her
onto Adele? But she has olive skin, not white! It makes no difference to you; you’re an animal. You’re just a heartless, lecherous beast!”

Apparently, she was liberated from her shackles, casting everything off that chained her as she stopped thinking about the robot that seemed strange, alien, foreign. Abstractions were taken out of the way; they did not interfere to restrain her impulses. Now her letters bore frightful bundles of ire. Behind them loomed the forked tongue of a snake, a tarantula’s fangs dripping transparent droplets. She promised to wipe me off the face of the earth, destroy me, lock me in prison. I did not believe her – quite mistakenly so. There is no creature more venomous than a woman looking to pay you back in full.

Our desolated world was inhabited by new shades. The feeble specter was expelled in disgrace, and in his place arose a demon – the demon of hatred, full of strength. His arsenal was diverse and rich; and I soon learned Lidia was not writing just to me. All her acquaintances, friends, and associates were drawn into the war. She selected her weapon: wild, monstrous slander – and struck with it recklessly. Her former confusion grew into determination, a readiness to sully herself – into the fury of revenge. Her anger changed shape; from conscientious and logical it transformed into something irrational, the fruit of an absurd, skewed reality seen only by her, Lidia Alvares Alvares.

It was as if she were looking at things through an ugly, deformed prism. Everything passing through its aperture turned into a stream of sewage. At the same time, she sincerely believed in her own fable. Slander was for her the new truth; Lidia did not doubt its purity. As a result, her words acquired tremendous force. The force of conviction – everyone sensed it. A woman convinced she was right seemed to them something that could not be faked. And they believed her – straightway. As for me, I just could not take it all seriously. And therefore I looked uncertain, distrustful.

Lidia spewed forth hate like bile, like bad, murky blood. It even seemed to me that our fray was a ceremony, some pagan rite – a sacrifice for the absolution of the whole world. Who were they, these unhappy gods who had chosen the two of us for this? Her, in the role of a medium, a conduit of dark forces. Me, as the target, the neutralizer, the receptacle. Had I wanted to, I could have been proud; but I sensed no pride – I felt vile. Sinking into gloom, I convulsively clutched at the air and thought: this will never, ever end.

Lidia managed to convince many people of utterly extreme things. As if I, out of jealously, had humiliated and intimidated her, extorted money from her, stolen valuables from her safe. That I beat her – skillfully, without leaving marks. That I forced her time after time into unimaginable sexual perversions. That I tortured her with sleep deprivation, tied her to the radiator – and then even promised to kill her if she went to the police. In response, her friends called to threaten me. They cursed and berated me, advised me to come begging forgiveness. I was at wit’s end, battling the whole world; yet Lidia was not mollified. She was insatiable, reveling in rage and despair; and the exultant demon inflated with arrogance like a cloud permeated with the lines of a force field. These were the forces of obliteration, destruction – Lidia was a destructive genius. Her life had finally acquired meaning, as though everything before this – all those admirers and amusements – had been aimless and insignificant. To this meaning she clung with unprecedented strength, though in the process almost nothing was left of her
herself
. Only a shell, tattered to the limit.

The rest was spent on slander and lies – transformed into the cloud of hate. It sucked everything into itself like a tornado, darkening and expanding. Buildings fell, and fragments blew along the perimeter, gathering their own power, magnifying the scale of the catastrophe. There was no stopping it – until suddenly all abated. The calls ceased, and letters stopped coming. I sighed with relief, supposing Lidia had finally come to her senses. But no, I was too naïve. She wanted to keep taking vengeance – and she already knew how.