barbed statements claiming that fundamentalism could be explained by purely material circumstances. When he stated that 87.3% of evolution deniers treated their subordinates worse than chimpanzees, one young man could take no more and made a lunge for the sound equipment to turn off the microphone. G.B.W. Ponce came down from the stage in a series of jerky, mechanical movements to the sounds of the insults and boos of his devout audience.
What was revolutionary about his method was that it removed the need for studies and surveys. The responses to the questionnaire were sufficient. He updated his databases to keep them fresh and developed parameters for balancing the different variables, including the hedonistic slant inherent in advancing age. Having nothing more to prove to academia, he published a voluminous book of his findings, entitled God’s Dice. He was careful to keep it beyond the comprehension of non-initiates: the book didn’t explain anything. There were thousands of tables with statistical links from which the author could extract at will the conclusions he wanted to develop more explicitly. His authority was such that the arrows of causality began to point in every direction. It was no longer possible to tell what was the origin and what was the outcome.
One man read that self-sufficient women whose partners were addicted to videogames and marijuana tended to break off their relationships. After even the slightest argument, he would accuse his wife of wanting to leave him. He fought against the growing tension by increasing his dose of marijuana, and spending whole days playing videogames. When his wife finally departed, he self-pityingly accepted the fulfillment of the Poncean maxim.
A bureaucrat learned that public servants with double chins, over twelve years of service in the same post, and a predilection for sensationalist magazines, often stole the office staplers. He was enormously relieved to see that statistical absolution of his peccadillo.
A bored housewife read that, in 73% of cases, the first lesbian experience in her stratum occurred with the domestic help. Coming back drunk from a meal with her best friend, she called Josefina into her bedroom and tempered her confusion with imperative commands until she achieved satisfaction. Thanks to God’s Dice, she ran not the slightest risk of her new secret being discovered.
G.B.W. Ponce was intrigued by the practical reach of his paradigm. When he received Perdumes’ invitation, he was certain that Villa Miserias was the ideal laboratory in which to pursue his grand passion: codifying social existence down to the last minor detail. He made it a condition that his questionnaire would be distributed to every resident in the estate. Fabulous! No problem. That’s what Taimado and his Black Paunches are here for. He installed himself and his meager belongings in Building 29 and acquired two adjoining spaces in the commercial zone in which to launch his consultancy business, $uperstructure. When the transparent sign on a black background had finally been put up, Juana Mecha exclaimed to anyone who would listen: “If it isn’t the same river each time, at least it looks the same now.”
15
One of the keys to Quietism in Motion was precisely the fact that it included motion. G.B.W. Ponce had demonstrated that ascent of the social ladder was accompanied by an acceptance of the beliefs of the new rungmates. The members of the former “us” immediately became “them.” This in itself was not particularly important. What did matter was ensuring the changes of status were visible: making it clear that the only barrier to excellence was looking back at you in the mirror each morning. Selon Perdumes’ favorite example for highlighting the possibilities of social advancement was Mauricio Maso.
Maso arrived in Villa Miserias by accident while still in his puberty. He was living with other children in a sewer, earning a living by entertaining passengers in the metro: on the floor of the subway car he would lay out a T-shirt covered with pieces of broken glass and roll around on then. His skin was like a bloodied sheet of sandpaper, adorned with a maze of raised scars. He withstood the hardships of his profession by inhaling the glue supplied by his boss each night when he reported in. But that irascible tyrant only let the boys keep enough of their earnings for a couple of tacos and a soda.
One time, Mauricio Maso overdid the glue and came out of the metro feeling very disoriented. In search of somewhere to shelter from the rain that was making his wounds burn, he jumped over the wall surrounding Villa Miserias and took refuge among the garbage containers, where he competed with the stray dogs for a share of the leftover leftovers recently discarded there: eating a piece of fat on the bone only left him hungrier than ever. Then he stuck his head into a container in the hope of striking lucky, and found something better than food: a bag of marijuana some parents had found in their teenage daughter’s bedroom. He improvised a pipe from an empty water bottle, reactivated his glue-induced stupor with a couple of puffs, then lay down among the trash to gaze into the density of the clouded night sky.
A group of kids passed by on their way to a party and immediately recognized the smell. They followed the scent until they came across Mauricio, sprawled out, absorbed, firmly grasping his bottle in his right hand. He seemed to hear them say something, but the words formed waves in the air that broke before they became comprehensible. The most resolute of the kids opened his fingers one by one to liberate the weed, leaving in his hand a bill equivalent to two weeks’ honest toil for Mauricio. He managed to close his fist on it before falling exhausted into a deep sleep.
The following morning Mauricio went on a spree with his unexpected earnings. He went to the public baths to wash for the first time in weeks: the crusts of grime were stubborn, and without his coating of filth, the woman at the cash register didn’t recognize the brown-skinned, wily kid who came out. He bought a pirated T-shirt with the circular logo of a famous punk band and spent his last coins on a breakfast consisting of a chocolate-flavored concha soaked in atole.
Maso decided it was time to become independent of his guild and start working on his own, even if it meant renouncing his daily ration of glue. He sought out a stretch of the metro system far from the monopoly of his previous organization and, at night, went back to sleep among the trash in Villa Miserias. With his savings he bought a blanket, which he carefully hid each morning before sneaking out to work
Juana Mecha suspected something was going on when she began to find bloodied T-shirts in the trash. One day she arrived earlier than usual and managed to grab the arm of the frightened Mauricio before he could make a run for it. Vigorously shaking her broom as she walked, she spat out: “Better to eat humble pie than live like this.” Maso agreed to work as her assistant. His task consisted of separating out the trash for recycling before the truck arrived to mix it all up again. Mecha lent him a thin mattress and a pillowslip stuffed with a green housecoat; she regularly came by to take him to the leftovers canteen. In the afternoon, before setting out on her long journey home, she would give the kid a pat on the head, saying nothing more than: “Behave yourself.”
That was when Mauricio Maso’s second shift began. With increasing frequency, the youths began to return to request more supplies. The first time, it took him a few days to find what turned out to be oregano. When the unwary kids smoked it, none of them wanted to be the only one to own up to its lack of effect, so they pretended to be high as kites. Mauricio had kept some back for himself and on realizing he’d been conned, he changed his supplier. His clients congratulated him of the potency of his new crop. They were soon requesting powders and pills. His efficiency produced a rapid expansion of his client base: anorexic models bought amphetamines from him; hangover hippies danced to the beat of the sledgehammers on his acid. As part of his transformation into a businessman, Maso set himself the rule of only consuming his own merchandise.
His appearance was the first thing to change. He smartened up and acquired the first pair of the iguana skin boots that would become his trademark style. He took his rest on a real mattress and bought a portable, battery operated television set. Every night he went to bed in the narrow space between two garbage containers, watching the late-night repeats of primetime cartoons. He got hold of a sheet of acrylic and suspended it like a roof when it rained. He’d never before lived in such comfort.
One
