Exquisite Corpse - Issue 4
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Muchedumbre
de Mauricio Montiel Figueiras
Crowd
by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras
translation by Jen Hofer
Continuado de Cyber Corpse #3 | Continued from Cyber Corpse #3

Como caspa legada por la sacudida de mil cabelleras durante la noche, la nieve cae sobre la ciudad: copos gruesos y lentos, cenizas de una muda catástrofe que congela calles, puertas, ventanas, toldos, autos y transeúntes en una postal ambigua. El cielo es la máscara con que cada mañana se asoma a la urbe un invierno que parece no querer terminar nunca. El albor ha fincado su imperio en todos los rincones del pa's: d'a tras d'a los periîdicos regalan al público estampas de un blanco escalofriante donde a veces se alcanza a perfilar un rostro hundido en las simas de un abrigo, a veces un árbol estrujado hasta los huesos por las bajas temperaturas; a veces, sîlo a veces, la silueta de un cadáver vuelto hacia un muro de argamasa se cuela a las últimas páginas de un semanario, entre los recuadros que no dejan de promocionar ropa térmica y calefactores. Los noticiarios radiofînicos se empeñan en transmitir, entre ráfagas de estática salpicadas de notas de Kurt Weill, las estad'sticas de mortandad; hay rumores de estaciones que saldrán del aire para siempre, de antenas transformadas por el hielo en mustias esculturas, de locutores cuya voz es un vaho continuo frente al micrîfono. Se habla de aerol'neas en quiebra por la acumulaciîn de vuelos cancelados, de un norte casi m'tico donde el agua caliente es desde hace varios años parte de la historia, de una crisis encabezada de algún modo por la industria lapicera que los medios de informaciîn no pueden delatar salvo por oblicuas referencias y que es la causa primordial del incremento en mitines y manifestaciones.
     A bordo de un taxi conducido por un anciano que se expresa a través de una bufanda en un dialecto lleno de extraños giros verbales y fibras textiles, Abel mira su reloj con aprensiîn para luego darse un golpe en la rodilla. Llegará tarde al trabajo. Sabe perfecta, desesperadamente, lo que eso representa: el señor Kane le descontará la jornada y lo obligará a permanecer en la oficina tres horas más que el resto de los empleados; ésas son las reglas no escritas de la empresa fabricante de lápices en la que se desempeña como contador desde hace un mecánico decenio. Si la memoria no le falla, tan sîlo en una ocasiîn anterior ha sufrido en carne propia la sanciîn diseñada "para los malditos holgazanes", en palabras del mismo señor Kane; una ocasiîn en que, al igual que hoy, el despertador no irrumpiî en sus sueños de nieve y cabelleras con la fuerza puntual de una excavadora. Con el desconcierto hecho un lazo en la garganta, se levantî en la gélida soledad del departamento quince minutos después de lo debido para enfrentarse con una mañana que le ten'a reservadas una tuber'a que castañeteaba como una dentadura, una taza de café recalentado en la única olla limpia de la cocineta, una camisa de la que ni siquiera un poco de lociîn ha podido erradicar el aroma a sobaco, una corbata de pajarita que se ha anudado pese a que de un tiempo a la fecha le recuerda una triste mariposa, una cartera con apenas los billetes suficientes para pagar el taxi que lleva diez -no, once minutos inmovilizado en uno de esos embotellamientos que la ciudad, según un célebre caricaturista, ha vuelto un producto de exportaciîn tan importante como el lápiz.
     Quitándose una imaginaria mota de polvo del puño del abrigo, Abel echa un vistazo por la ventanilla. La nieve se apila contra las aceras por donde la muchedumbre fluye en un arroyo incesante de cazadoras y sobretodos; la punta de zapatos y sombreros, el capî de los coches que exhalan nubes de vapor en forma de trémulos signos de interrogaciîn -–qué hacemos aqu'?, exigen los jerogl'ficos, –qué demonios hacemos aqu'?-, el cráneo y los hombros de los maniqu'es cargados en vilo por un grupo de peones de overol que intenta abrirse paso entre el tráfago matinal, las mejillas de la mujer que se detiene un segundo a media calle para consultar un trozo de papel y luego voltear hacia la brumosa altura de un edificio marrîn: nada está a salvo de la blancura. Abel suspira. Trata de concentrarse en los crujidos que emite el radio del taxi, entre los que se intuye ora una voz femenina entonando "Bilbao Song" de Weill, ora la helada voz de un locutor recitando estad'sticas, pero pronto se da por vencido. Lo que más lamenta, reflexiona, es faltar a su cita diaria con los empleados que se congregan en una enorme fila frente al reloj checador de la empresa. Pocas cosas le emocionan tanto como llegar temprano al trabajo y formarse en un pasillo, avanzar lentamente detectando las últimas hebras de sueño desprendidas por los cuerpos que se hacinan a su alrededor, oler los efluvios de café y tabaco rancio, escuchar los murmullos donde se alternan la queja y la resignaciîn; sentirse, pues, parte de un tumulto de abrigos ra'dos que tarjeta en mano rinde pleites'a al minutero que impone su presencia de tîtem al fondo del corredor, ser un engranaje más de la maquinaria que no tardará en repartirse entre oficinas y cub'culos inmersos en una luz cenicienta. Desde hace tiempo -–tres, cuatro años, un lustro, dos décadas, toda la vida?; no sabr'a decirlo- hay una suerte de estremecedora seguridad que le brindan las multitudes, los tropeles cuyos hábitos nîmadas se ha dedicado a seguir a través de notas, fotograf'as y reportajes; la certeza de que únicamente ah', en medio del gent'o, envuelto en una crisálida de estambres homogéneos que lo defiende y por la que debe luchar, está a salvo del mundo y sus afrentas cotidianas, a salvo del invierno que parece haberse apoderado del alma misma de la urbe, a salvo de la rutina y las pequeñas aunque c'clicas vejaciones que han hallado en la figura enhiesta del señor Kane a su mejor emblema, a salvo de una individualidad que cada d'a le pesa más al verla reflejada en el espejo que como un ojo insondable cuelga encima del lavabo. A solas en el alba amarga del departamento, sentado frente a su tazîn de avena, enfundado en largos calzones de algodîn que guardan el secreto de sus poluciones nocturnas, con los pies descalzos y ateridos de fr'o, no es nadie, apenas nombre y apellido en una credencial olvidada en un cajîn, una firma en un contrato cuya tinta ha resentido el paso de los meses; ante el reloj checador, en cambio, vestido con el tácito uniforme de la empresa -abrigo, chaleco y tirantes, traje de preferencia oscuro, gafas de aro redondo, sombrero de fieltro-, es una de las células que integran un organismo productor que a través de la jornada funciona según sus propios cîdigos. Es, sencillamente, alguien más, algo invulnerable: nada puede dañarlo sin dañar al resto al que pertenece. Hay d'as en que despierta con la sensaciîn de haber sido en otra vida una estad'stica -uno de los cincuenta obreros heridos de gravedad al derrumbarse un bloque de la pirámide donde trabajaban.
     Un golpe en un costado del taxi lo devuelve a la mañana inmaculada. Por el rabillo del ojo alcanza a distinguir una ráfaga gris; un joven con suéter y boina de lana ladeada a la derecha se detiene un instante a observarlo para luego proseguir su carrera enloquecida hacia el frente del congestionamiento. Al joven no tardan en un'rsele otros dos, cuatro, seis, ocho, diez, veinte, treinta, cien: una cuadrilla de boinas ligeramente ladeadas precipitándose entre coches y autobuses, dirigiendo un concierto de golpes en capîs y cristales, reclamando no sîlo los espacios entre veh'culo y veh'culo sino también las aceras, dejando tras de s' una larga estela de rostros azorados. Abel gira en el asiento, mira por la ventanilla de atrás: como un enjambre textil proveniente de calles y callejones aledaños, de umbrales donde la nieve derretida inaugura un idioma de signos acuosos, las boinas han usurpado la avenida. El radio cruje, brota un anuncio de zapatos a mitad de precio: "No permita que el invierno se le suba por los pies". "Jotrj manjfestjson", farfulla el taxista: otra manifestaciîn. "Maljtoj joljajznejs", dice: malditos holgazanes. Abel voltea a verlo y por un segundo cree reconocer, al fondo de esas pupilas que lo escrutan desde el retrovisor en espera de una respuesta, el brillo glacial caracter'stico del señor Kane. Una imagen familiar relampaguea en su mente: un lápiz recién afilado, semejante al que siempre lleva en el bolsillo interior del saco, hundiéndose en la gelatina ocular. "S'", murmura, "malditos holgazanes, qué culpa tenemos nosotros", y después se vuelve a concentrar en la calle.
     Las boinas son ya un ejército que trota bajo la blancura en filas apretadas. El temblor que en un principio se hab'a insinuado en la carrera de jîvenes aislados es ahora algo insoslayable: la presencia de la multitud, el ritmo cronométrico de la multitud. Peatones, conductores y pasajeros han sido hechizados por el desfile; desde la frágil guarida de gafas y pestañas, cientos de ojos contemplan el discurrir de hombres de diversas edades con la vista puesta en la distancia. Como impulsado por una repentina descarga de electricidad, Abel extrae la cartera, extiende sus tres únicos billetes al taxista y abandona el coche. Ignora, al echar a andar bajo la nieve, si el grito que se pierde pronto entre sus pasos está dentro de su cabeza o si, por el contrario, es la cabeza del anciano la que ha salido un momento por la ventanilla: "Maljtoj joljajznejs!".
     Para cuando las últimas hebras de la frase se extrav'an en el aire, Abel se ha disuelto en la marcha. Mira a izquierda y derecha, sintiendo con un dejo de placer las primeras percusiones de la taquicardia que suele asaltarlo en los grandes almacenes por los que le gusta deambular los domingos por la tarde -la adrenalina de la multitud, los tambores rituales de la multitud-, ladeándose con ademán inconsciente el sombrero como si quisiera integrarlo de una buena vez a la legiîn de boinas en la que ya paladea el dulce sabor del anonimato. A unos cent'metros de su codo derecho avanza, entre resuellos que delatan su paulatina ascensiîn a las cimas de la obesidad, un hombre en cuyas facciones surcadas por venas de sudor se dibuja el abismo al que Abel se ha asomado en tantas y tantas fotos. Es un rostro cuyas señas particulares se reducen a la ausencia de ellas, un rostro que acusa una fascinante limpidez por la que boga una mir'ada de rostros, la faz numerosa del gent'o que desde la penumbra de la historia ha atestado coliseos, erigido templos y acueductos y pirámides y muelles, desatado guerras, construido y destruido urbes, derramado una sola sangre lo mismo en la arena que en el lodo, en estepas que en montañas, bajo puentes y en velámenes blanqu'simos. Nieve, piensa Abel, los ojos fijos en los del hombre fijos a su vez en la lejan'a; las masas corren siempre hacia el origen de la nieve.
     La marcha da un giro a la izquierda y comienza a gotear a través de un estrecho callejîn: hombro con hombro, boina tras boina, los alientos trazando garabatos ef'meros en las páginas de la mañana. Cae un basurero, caen dos, caen ocho; cae un joven en una pila de v'sceras humeantes, cae un viejo que recibe el impacto de un tacîn -de veinte, de cien- en la cintura y en la nuca, en las nalgas, en las piernas. La marcha abandona el pasaje y su trote deviene de pronto galope, veloz aunque ordenada carrera por otra avenida donde el tráfico también se ha congelado. La sinfon'a de bocinas que acompasa este cambio de ritmo no tarda en sucumbir bajo un nuevo concierto de golpes en capîs y cristales al que se agregan notas inéditas: el relincho de un caballo que se desploma en una esquina con todo y conductor y carreta de tomates, el estruendo que produce la vitrina de una tienda al ceder al asalto de un muchacho armado de una vara de hierro. Abel se limpia el sudor de la frente y no puede reprimir un oscuro alborozo; hay algo en esas verduras que ruedan entre llantas y pies como glîbulos sangu'neos, algo en esa tempestad de vidrio reventando en la banqueta que le evoca una sensaciîn ominosa, el momento antes de que un lápiz se hunda en la gelatina ocular, justo el segundo previo a que alguien se desprenda de la multitud y recupere fugazmente su condiciîn de individuo -el preludio a la violencia masiva. El alborozo, no obstante, se desvanece sin dejar más que algunos copos sueltos ante el primer ramalazo de angustia; a espaldas de la marcha, en alguna zona del horizonte, ha estallado una sirena que advierte la cercan'a de la amenaza policial. Abel voltea hacia atrás y hacia arriba; cree distinguir, resbalando por la fachada de un edificio de ladrillos, salpicando las facciones que penden como gárgolas de los ventanales, el borbotîn de sangre inaugural derramado por un alud de patrullas. Las boinas aprietan el paso y empiezan a serpentear ágilmente entre los autos, creando una v'bora en cuya piel uniforme sîlo destaca el sombrero de Abel.
     Y entonces, al final de la avenida, la ciudad se abre igual que un puño para ofrecer uno de sus remansos de concreto: una plaza en toda su blanca desnudez. En el extremo oeste se ha improvisado una plataforma sobre la que se yergue un podio que ostenta un curioso emblema: el rostro de un obrero con la boca distendida por un grito ante el que ondula un lápiz partido a la mitad. De postes y arbotantes cuelgan banderines con la misma efigie, altavoces que remiten a la tristeza de ciertas plantas de invernadero. Las boinas invaden silenciosamente la plaza y la v'bora se deshace en un millar de hormigas que se alinean despacio frente a la plataforma, al pie del podio ocupado de golpe por un hombre calvo, de barba pequeña y puntiaguda, que viste levita negra y lanza en todas direcciones una mirada encendida por el fuego del liderazgo. Crujen los altavoces, crujen la nieve y la escarcha bajo la presiîn de mil suelas de goma; el hombre del podio carraspea ante el micrîfono, levanta poco a poco el brazo derecho, extiende el 'ndice como para sentenciar la culpabilidad de la distancia. Su voz, el graznido de una estatua a punto de cobrar vida propia, conquista la plaza, las calles, la urbe entera:
     -Allá, en los bosques, el enemigo sigue trabajando.
     La frase es un dique que se derrumba y da inicio a un torrente donde la arenga y el disgusto, la solidaridad y la reconvenciîn, la ráfaga l'rica y el apunte profético se confunden y atropellan con la furia de los troncos desgajados a merced de una crecida fluvial. Abriéndose camino entre la multitud con codos y rodillas, Abel intenta acercarse lo más posible al frente; reconoce, brotando en medio de las boinas como flores de papel, diversas pancartas entrevistas en los diarios que exhiben el fruto de una falsa inspiraciîn: "Muera la industria lapicera", "Los árboles son de nuestras chimeneas", "Alto a la opresiîn del grafito", "Prohibido escribir en invierno", "Más calor, menos escritura". A intervalos regulares que se antojan perfectamente medidos, el hombre del podio alza el 'ndice derecho para acusar a la lejan'a de la nieve que continúa cayendo impávida, atenuando los aplausos que de vez en vez explotan contra el cristal de la mañana. Abel se encuentra a unos metros de la plataforma cuando descubre, a su izquierda, a un niño de no más de cinco años subido en los hombros de su padre; viste también boina y suéter, pantalîn oscuro, pequeños zapatos de goma, y desde su atalaya mira al hombre del podio con los ojos huecos de la muchedumbre. Casi al mismo tiempo, al cabo de una nueva andanada de aplausos y v'tores fr'os, se hace una quietud donde Abel alcanza a palpar, segundos antes de que se materialice, la presencia fatal de otra turba. De pronto, a una pausa del orador, se cuela una sirena policiaca; de pronto el ulular se duplica, se cuadruplica, se reproduce en cada esquina de la plaza. De pronto las boinas comienzan a ser bañadas por una sangre intermitente. De pronto es el pandemînium, el primitivo pandemînium.
     Protegidos por caretas y escudos pasados de moda, armados de porras que esgrimen con evidente intenciîn fálica, enfundadas las manos en guantes de cuero negro, los polic'as han establecido en torno a la plaza un cerco de botas ávidas por entrar en acciîn. Fugaz, absurdamente, por el lapso de un parpadeo, la visiîn de Abel es la de un ave que sobrevolara el escenario a tientas, sin el afilado pico de la "l"; allá, desde esas imaginarias alturas, las boinas constituyen la pupila de un ojo delineado de golpe por el r'mel de la autoridad. Y entonces el r'mel se corre hacia adentro, invadiendo el cristalino, y la pupila revienta en un tropel de part'culas que huyen en todas direcciones, logrando que Abel regrese a ras del suelo y reasuma su îptica fragmentaria. Ve, as', cîmo las boinas emprenden una torpe retirada, cîmo la polic'a alza sus porras en un tétrico intento por emular al orador que alguien -hay cuatro espaldas cubiertas por abrigos que aletean en el aire inmîvil- ha arrancado del podio. Ve, mientras los altavoces empiezan a emitir una desafinada pieza de Kurt Weill, a una treintena de jîvenes aproximándose con varas de hierro al cerco policiaco; ve las varas estrellarse en los escudos como batutas que marcaran el principio de una violenta sinfon'a; ve o al menos cree ver, justo cuando la primera porra se impacta en el primer rostro, a un enorme copo de nieve aterrizando en una nariz que se vuelve un rojo surtidor. Ve a una boina, a diez, a cincuenta, caer igual que extrañas monedas para ser pisoteadas junto a las pancartas en la fusiîn de las dos multitudes; ve a un hombre, a cinco, a cien, tropezar y transformarse en meros recipientes de puntapiés y porrazos; ve a un anciano apoyarse contra la plataforma para tratar de colocar en su sitio la oreja que le cuelga de un estambre carmes'; ve varias caretas policiales sucumbiendo a los embates de súbitas navajas de resorte; ve a dos muchachos sosteniendo por las axilas a un tercero cuyas facciones son ya una incomprensible mancha de tinta. Ve cîmo la atmîsfera es surcada por bîlidos que hacen pensar en una lluvia de estrellas oscuras; entre los huecos de la cortina de humo que desciende inesperadamente sobre el mundo, ve: una hilera de manifestantes esposados al ser guiada hacia el extremo norte de la plaza, una decena de hombres hincados que estrujan sus boinas y piden clemencia a los escudos erguidos ante ellos, una porra derribando el micrîfono del podio, un joven con las mejillas húmedas acunando en el suelo a una figura inerte, un zapato infantil -en la pupila del recuerdo aparece un niño subido en los hombros de su padre- sepultado a medias en la blancura como un memorándum de la inocencia perdida. Ve, luego de que el arrugado uniforme de la empresa lo convierte en periodista a los ojos de dos polic'as, y mientras abandona la plaza humeante donde las sirenas han logrado derrotar a Weill, a un cuerpo tendido bocabajo en la nieve. De la pulpa que ha ocupado el lugar de la cabeza nace una melena que se extiende más de un metro sobre el piso; insîlita flor sangu'nea que, salpicada de copos, flota hacia la realidad desde las aguas del ensueño, gobernadas -bien lo sabe Abel- por la reina de todas las cabelleras.

      

Like dandruff left behind from a thousand thick tresses being shaken out during the night, snow falls on the city: thick, slow flakes, the ashes of a mute catastrophe which freezes streets, doors, windows, awnings, cars and pedestrians into an ambiguous postcard. A winter that seems never to want to end peers out onto the enormous city each morning with the sky as its mask. The white has extended its empire to every corner of the country: day after day the newspapers present the public with images of a horrifying white inside which it is possible, sometimes, to make out a face buried in the abyss of an overcoat or sometimes a tree crushed to the bone by the low temperatures; sometimes, only sometimes, the silhouette of a corpse turned toward a mortared wall slips onto the back pages of a weekly, between the unending advertisements for thermal clothing and heaters. Radio newscasts are devoted to transmitting mortality statistics between bursts of static, peppered with notes from Kurt Weill pieces; stations are rumored to have gone off the air forever, their antennas transformed by the ice into gloomy sculptures, the voices of announcers merely continuous vapors in front of the microphone. People talk of airlines going bankrupt from the number of canceled flights, of an almost mythic north where for many years hot water has been a legend from some distant past, of a crisis headed in some way by the pencil industry, which the news media cannot denounce other than with oblique references, and which is the fundamental cause of the increase in riots and demonstrations.
     In a taxi driven by an elderly man who talks through his scarf in a dialect full of strange verbal turns and textile fibers, Abel looks at his watch apprehensively, then slaps his knee. He'll get to work late. He knows perfectly, despairingly, what this means: Mr. Kane will deduct the day's pay and will make him stay at the office three hours later than the rest of the employees; those are the unwritten rules of the pencil-manufacturing company where he has worked as an accountant for the past mechanical decade. If his memory doesn't fail him, it was only on one other occasion that he himself suffered the sanction designed, in Mr. Kane's own words, "for those goddam lazy-asses"; one occasion when, just like today, the alarm clock hadn't erupted into his dreams of snow and long tresses with the punctual force of a jackhammer. With a knot of uneasiness in his throat, he got up fifteen minutes later than he should have in the icy solitude of his apartment, to face a morning which held in store for him a set of pipes that chattered like dentures, a cup of coffee reheated in the only clean pot in the kitchen, a shirt from which a bit of cologne had not even been able to eradicate the odor of armpit, a bowtie which he has kept tying despite the fact for some time now it had reminded him of a sad butterfly, a wallet with barely the number of bills needed to pay the taxi which had now spent ten - no, eleven minutes immobilized in one of those bottlenecks which the city, according to a celebrated cartoonist, had turned into an export product as important as the pencil.
     Flicking an imaginary speck of dust off the cuff of his overcoat, Abel glances out the window. The snow piles up against the sidewalks where the crowds flow in an incessant stream of trenchcoats and woolen overcoats; the tips of shoes and people's hats, car hoods exhaling clouds of steam in the shape of tremulous question marks - what are we doing here?, the hieroglyphs demand, what the hell are we doing here? -, the heads and shoulders of mannequins carried by a group of workers in overalls who attempt to force their way through the morning bustle, the cheeks of a woman who stops for a moment in the middle of the street to consult a slip of paper and then turns toward the misty height of a brown building: nothing is exempt from the whiteness. Abel sighs. He tries to concentrate on the crackling of the taxi's radio, behind which he can make out now a female voice intoning Weill's "Bilbao Song," now the freezing voice of an announcer reciting statistics, but after a short while he gives up. What he regrets most, he thinks, is missing his daily appointment with the employees who assemble in an enormous line in front of the company's time-clock. Few things move him as much as arriving early to work to line up in a hallway, to move forward slowly and detect the last strands of sleep floating off the bodies which heap up around him, to smell the emanations of coffee and stale tobacco, to listen to the murmuring which alternates between complaints and resignation; to feel, that is, part of a tumult of frayed overcoats which, timecards at the ready, pays homage to the mechanism that imposes its totem presence at the far end of the corridor, to be one more gear in the machine that will quickly distribute itself among the offices and cubicles immersed in an ashy light. For some time now - three, four years, a lustrum, two decades, his whole life?; he really wouldn't know - he has felt that a sort of terrifying security is provided by crowds, those throngs whose nomadic habits he has followed religiously through articles, photographs and special reports; a certainty that only there, in the middle of a mob of people, wrapped in a chrysalis woven of homogenous threads which protects him and for which he must fight, is he safe from the world and its daily affronts, safe from the winter that seems to have taken possession of the very soul of the city, safe from routine and from the small though cyclic abuses that have found their most apt emblem in the erect figure of Mr. Kane, safe from an individuality which weighs upon him more each day as he sees it reflected in the mirror hanging above his bathroom sink like an inscrutable eye. Alone in the bitter dawn of his apartment, sitting in front of his bowl of oatmeal, sheathed in cotton long underwear which holds the secret of his nocturnal emissions, his feet bare and numb with cold, he is nobody, scarcely a first and last name on an i.d. card forgotten in some drawer, a signature on a contract with its ink faded from the passage of the months; before the time-clock, on the other hand, dressed in the tacit company uniform - overcoat, vest and suspenders, suit, preferably dark, glasses with round frames, felt hat - he is one of the cells forming a productive organism which functions according to its own codes throughout the workday. He is, simply, just another someone, something invulnerable: nothing can harm him without harming the whole to which he belongs. There are days when he awakens with the sensation of having been a statistic in another life - one of the fifty laborers gravely wounded when a section of the pyramid where they were working collapsed.
     A blow to one side of the cab brings him back to the immaculate morning. Out of the corner of his eye he can just make out a burst of grey; a young man wearing a sweater and a wool beret tilted to the right stops for a moment to look at him, then proceeds with his mad race toward the front of the congestion. In no time another two, four, six, eight, ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred youths join this one: a gang of slightly tilted berets rushing headlong between cars and buses, conducting a concert of blows against hoods and windshields, reclaiming not just the spaces between vehicle and vehicle but the sidewalks as well, leaving behind a long trail of startled faces. Abel turns around in his seat, looks out the back window: like a textile swarm coming from adjoining streets and alleys, from doorways where the melted snow unveils a language of aqueous signs, the berets have usurped the avenue. The radio crackles, erupts into a commercial for shoes at half price: "Don't let winter get in through your feet." "Janjthrj dejmojnstjajtion," the cab driver jabbers: another demonstration. "Gojdjaj lajyasjej,", he says: goddam lazy-asses. Abel turns to look at him and for a second he thinks he recognizes, in the depths of the pupils which scrutinize him from the rear-view mirror, awaiting his response, the glacial brilliance that characterizes Mr. Kane. A familiar image flashes across his mind: a just-sharpened pencil, similar to the one he always carries in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, plunging into the ocular jelly. "Yes," he murmurs, "goddam lazy-asses, it's not our fault," and then he focuses his attention once again on the street.
     By now, the berets are an army trotting in tightly-packed lines through the whiteness. The tremor which had initially insinuated itself with the mad dash of a few isolated youths is now something unmistakable: the presence of the crowd, the chronometric rhythm of the crowd. Pedestrians, drivers and passengers have all been bewitched by the procession; from behind the fragile shelter of glasses and eyelashes, hundreds of eyes contemplate the men of varying ages who flow past, their gazes fixed in the distance. As if propelled by a sudden charge of electricity, Abel takes out his wallet, holds out his only three bills to the cabby and abandons the car. He isn't sure, as he starts to walk through the snow, if the shout which is quickly lost in his footsteps is inside his head, or if, on the contrary, it's the head of the old man that has leaned out the window for a moment: "Gojdjaj lajyasjej!"
     By the time the last strands of the phrase dissipate into the air, Abel has dissolved into the march. He looks to the left and to the right, feeling, with a jolt of pleasure, the first impact of the tachycardia that usually assaults him in the large stores he likes to peruse on Sunday afternoons - the adrenaline of the crowd, the ritual drumming of the crowd -, tilting his hat with an unconscious gesture as if he wanted to integrate it once and for all into the legion of berets in which he could already savor the sweet taste of anonymity. A few centimeters away from his right elbow a man moves forward with heaving breaths that belie his gradual ascent toward the heights of obesity, a man on whose features, furrowed by veins of sweat, are drawn the abysmal depths to which Abel has sunk in so many, many photos. It is a face whose particularities are reduced to the very absence of particularities, a face which registers a fascinating limpidity over which skim a myriad of faces, the numerous façades of the mob which since the dawn of history has packed coliseums, erected temples and aqueducts and pyramids and docks, unleashed wars, constructed and destroyed cities, spilled its singular blood, the same on sand and in mud, on steppes and on mountains, beneath bridges and beneath white, white sails. Snow, Abel thinks, his eyes fixed on the man's eyes, which are fixed in turn on the distance; the masses always run toward the origin of the snow.
     The march turns left and begins to trickle through a narrow alley: shoulder to shoulder, beret after beret, their breath tracing ephemeral scribbles on the pages of the morning. A garbage can falls, two fall, eight fall; a youth falls in a pile of steaming viscera, an old man falls and feels the impact of a heel - of twenty, of a hundred - on his waist and on his neck, his buttocks, his legs. The march leaves the alleyway and its trot soon becomes a gallop, a swift yet ordered race toward another avenue where the traffic has also frozen. The symphony of horns accompanying this change of rhythm does not take long to succumb to a new concert of blows against car hoods and windows, to which unplanned notes are added: the neighing of a horse that topples over on a corner, spilling everything including the driver and his cart of tomatoes, the clatter of a shop window as it yields to the assault of a kid armed with an iron pipe. Abel wipes the sweat from his brow and cannot repress a dark joy; there is something in these vegetables rolling around among tires and feet like red blood cells, something in this storm of glass exploding on the sidewalk that provokes in him an ominous sensation, the moment before a pencil plunges into the ocular jelly, the second just before someone pulls himself out of the crowd and fleetingly recovers his state of individuality - the prelude to mass violence. His joy, however, evaporates, leaving behind nothing more than a few stray flakes in the face of his first flash of anxiety; behind the march, on some spot on the horizon, a siren has exploded, signaling the nearness of the police threat. Abel turns to look back, to look up; he thinks he can make out, sliding across the front of a brick building, splashing the faces that hang like gargoyles from the windows, the inaugural torrent of blood-red light loosed by an avalanche of squad cars. The berets tighten their steps and begin to snake nimbly between the cars, forming a serpent against whose uniform skin only Abel's hat stands out.
     And then, at the end of the avenue, the city opens like a fist to offer up one of its concrete oases: a plaza in all its white nudity. On the far west side is an improvised platform where a podium stands, displaying a curious emblem: a worker's face with his mouth distended in a shout, in front of which floats a pencil broken in half. Pennants with the same image hang from posts and beams, the loudspeakers are reminiscent of certain sad hothouse plants. The berets silently invade the plaza and the serpent disintegrates into a thousand ants that slowly form lines in front of the platform, at the foot of the podium suddenly occupied by a bald man with a small, pointy beard, who wears a black frock coat and casts his gaze, kindled by the flames of leadership, in all directions. The loudspeakers crackle, the snow and frost crackle creak the pressure of a thousand rubber soles; the man on the podium clears his throat in front of the microphone, raises his right arm little by little, extends his index finger as if to proclaim the distance guilty. His voice, the croaking of a statue about to come to life, conquers the plaza, the streets, the entire city: "Out there, in the woods, the enemy is still working." The phrase is a dike that collapses and gives way to a torrent in which harangues and dissatisfactions, solidarity and reprimands, lyric bursts and prophetic notes mingle, collide with the fury of tree trunks ripped loose by a rising river. Opening a path through the crowd with his elbows and knees, Abel tries to get as close as he can to the front; he notices, sprouting out from among the berets like paper flowers, various placards he's seen mentioned in the newspapers, displaying the fruit of a false inspiration: "Death to the pencil industry," "The trees belong in our fireplaces," "End the graphite oppression," "Writing in Winter is forbidden," "More heat, less writing." At regular intervals that seem to him to be perfectly measured, the man on the podium raises his right index finger to accuse the faraway snow which continues falling, intrepid, attenuating the applause which explodes from time to time against the glass of the morning. Abel is just a few meters from the platform when he discovers, to his left, a boy of no more than five, sitting on his father's shoulders; he, too, wears a beret and a sweater, dark pants, small rubber shoes, and from his vantage point he watches the man on the podium with the hollow eyes of the crowd. At almost the same time, after a new round of applause and cold cheers, there is a stillness during which Abel manages to sense, seconds before it materializes, the fatal presence of another mob. Suddenly, as the orator pauses, the sound of a police siren filters in; suddenly its ululating is doubled, quadrupled, reproduced in every corner of the plaza. Suddenly, intermittently, blood-red light begins to wash over the berets. Suddenly pandemonium, primitive pandemonium.
     Protected by face masks and out-of-date shields, armed with clubs which they wield with obvious phallic intention, their hands sheathed in black leather gloves, the cops have erected a fence of boots, avid to enter into the action, around the entire plaza. Fleetingly, absurdly, in the blink of an eye, Abel's vision becomes that of a bird, an ave, flying blindly above the scene, without the sharpened beak of its "l"; from there, from those imaginary heights, the berets make up the pupil of an eye ringed, suddenly, by an iris of authority. And then the iris charges toward the interior, invading the crystalline lens, and the pupil explodes into a jumbled mass of particles that flee in all directions, causing Abel to return to level ground and resume his fragmentary optics. In this way, he sees how the berets undertake a clumsy retreat, how the cops raise their clubs in a sullen attempt to imitate the orator whom someone - there are four backs covered by overcoats that flap against the immobile air - has snatched from the podium. As the loudspeakers begin to emit an out-of-tune Kurt Weill piece, he sees about thirty youths approaching the police fence with iron pipes; he sees the pipes crash against the shields like batons marking the beginning of a violent symphony; he sees, or at least he thinks he sees, just when the first club makes contact with the first face, a huge snowflake land on a nose which turns into a red fountain. He sees one beret, ten, fifty, fall exactly like strange coins, only to be trampled with the placards as the two crowds fuse; he sees one man, five, ten, stumble and become merely recipients of kicks and bludgeons; he sees an old man leaning against the platform to try to put his ear, which hangs from a crimson filament, back in its proper place; he sees various police masks succumbing to the surprise attack of hasty switchblades; he sees two kids holding a third up by his armpits, his features an incomprehensible inkstain. He sees how the atmosphere is cut through by fireballs that call to mind a rainstorm of dark stars, and between the gaps in the curtain of smoke descending unexpectedly over the world, he sees: a line of demonstrators being handcuffed as they are guided to the far north edge of the plaza; about ten men, kneeling, wringing their berets and begging the shields standing before them for mercy; a club knocking the microphone from the podium; a youth with damp cheeks cradling an inert figure on the ground; a child's shoe - a boy sitting on his father's shoulders appears in the pupil of his memory - half-buried in the whiteness like a memorandum of lost innocence. He sees, after his wrinkled company uniform has turned him into a journalist in the eyes of two cops, and while he abandons the steaming plaza where the sirens have succeeded in defeating Weill, a body stretched out face down in the snow. Out of the pulp which now occupies the place where the head once was sprouts a mane which extends more than a meter across the ground; a strange, bloody flower peppered with snowflakes, floating up toward reality from the waters of a dream governed - as Abel well knows - by the queen of all tresses.

To be continued...


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