think. After all, that vigilantes’ underground field was pretty odd, but its post-romantic aura left anyone startled. Every manifestation worked out as invitations. “However, invitations for what?”— he thought.
He also started to verify the information on the written notes that were in a notebook, which was mixed with several photographs. In these pictures, black and white pictures, people are mostly in-group, always standing in a very formal way, wearing dark clothes and showing a serious facial expression. Most part seem to be men, many of them wearing similar suits. Rafael stared at the portrayed people and did not understand whether it was on purpose or not, but those people who were in the photos barely could be noticed. It was as if they were blurred, darkened like shapes. The places looked like car garages with lights on, long avenues, cloudy squares and stainless-steel elevators, subterranean car parking lots and glassy malls…
As Rafael put the pieces back together out of the envelope, he tried to outline something, but each new element he discovered seemed to widen even more the universe of these ‘Complete Men’. The photos reminded him some sort of a ‘film noir’ detective movie starring Humphrey Bogart, displaying an atmosphere worthy of a 20thcentury expressionist theatre play.
It was very nice for him to receive this envelope, yet there were more things to see that Roberta included in the envelope. She herself had received a newspaper cut out by the time she was writing about the issue that had the following message:
“We are after complete students for a humanities school with no place. The candidates must be diplomats interested in helping the next of kin and should benefit from a good mental and physical health. Please contact us: 0800 423 42 44”.
As a matter of fact, the cut out was already pretty damaged. It was an extremely used and handed newspaper cut out. Even so, Rafael managed to read the phone number in the inscription. It was not obviously a news piece, but rather a classified advertisement that Roberta had found somewhere or that someone had sent to her anonymously. By placing these elements altogether, Rafael started to get scared, for every clue pointed out to something typical from a scenario of obscurantism, however his intuition was telling him that this aesthetics vigilante underworld had nothing to do with weapons, prostitution, money laundering, drug traffic or any criminal organization of sorts. The looks were of course suspicious, but merely in the way that the whole thing was mysterious. Post-romantic is the most suitable term.
Rafael called Roberta: —Hello? Roberta?
— Yes… who is this?
— It is Rafael Sterling here, the journalist who asked you about err …
— Oh, I know. Tell me something. — she interrupted him with a sympathetic tone.
— I am calling just to thank you. I fell in love completely with the case, the characters, and the universe that is implied in the phenomenon of the ‘Ample Men’ and …— before he has finished his sentence, Roberta interrupted him again:
— Hmmm… but … please notice that a little bit after the news was published we managed to conclude that the individuals of that subculture were not called ‘Ample Men’. That mention was an error, which we corrected in the meanwhile here in office. Have you managed to watch the videotape I sent to you, in MiniDV format?
— I must confess I have not. But what makes it so special? — Rafael asked while thinking.
— The tape is a recording of one of the persons who attended “The Schools”. Someone must have made a copy of it and sent it to the press. Nonetheless, nobody thought it mattered. I have only managed to write something about it, much as you know I did, right? But after that
we received the videotape in which we learned that these individuals who participated in this subculture were named as ‘Complete Men’. And they even had schools set up, and operations and all that! — said Roberta with the most thrilled and bright tone of voice in the world.
— Oh, that is why in that classified ad in the newspaper piece you sent me there was a mention about ‘Complete Students’ and also to ‘schools’. I see…— Rafael concluded his insight. — Exactly. Now you must examine each and every element, and in a few days you give me a call. Is that ok for you? I am very sorry, but I just cannot continue such kind of research — Roberta ended up with a weight in her stomach.
— Yeah, sure. No problem.— Rafael added.
— In the meantime, I would be pleased if you would inform me about the development of the research. Can it be this way? — asked the journalist arching a smile along with a cigarette just lit up.
— Sure, why not? I am the one who has to thank you!— Rafael said goodbye gently as his gaze turned to the MiniDV player while hanging up the phone. He would not rest until he had listened to all the contents of the tape.
At the same time he was smoking in the balcony, he was also staring at all the awkward characters on his Victorian looking-brick-filled walls… He was dreaming, but he knew that he still had to face up the office in the real world, at least to deliver some texts about music such as some reviews about the latest works of Michael Nyman and Danny Elfman, Solar Fields and Depeche Mode. Of course, that was a piece of cake for Rafael. The weather was getting better, sun shining high, and he had to call his girlfriend Sylvie.
October 18, 2000
Suiting better the jacket, Rafael left Sylvie’s flat and got into a coffee shop to grab a hot cup of coffee. It was too much cold outside and his dark overcoat made him look like an identical character to the Complete Man’s pictures. Rafael only noticed it while he was having coffee in the counter, observing his own reflection in a smudgy vintage mirror over the coffee machine. He purchased a pack of Davidoff gold and left the establishment counting how much change he had in his pockets, where he found a paper where it was written “Do it!”. “Well, well!”— he thought surprised. He kept walking and looked back to the girlfriend flat’s door. He got more and more intrigued with this story of the Complete ones. “But what the hell is this whole thing of Schools for Complete Men? But Complete in what sense?”— Rafael was pulling strings in order to understand the chain links, despite missing some parts.
The elements were communicating with each other but merely video tapes seemed to provide the ultimate explanation. He got home and the first thing he did was to open a window. Then he turned the TV set on and the videotape recorder. He inserted the tape in the MiniDV camera and plugged the whole thing in order to watch the movie on the big screen. The film started entirely in black and white; it was poorly recorded, half-blurred. It looked like it respected the quality standards for propaganda or archive settings demanded by this subculture.
— We do not know why, nor how, but this tape that reached Roberta Wagner’s hands, a noble journalist of our society, actually made her scared and thrilled. But maybe, just maybe she might have missed the message. And there is only one Rafael Sterling…— he thought to himself.
THE VIDEOTAPE
The movie started with a lot of static interference and the recording quality was quite deficient: dark colors, too much contrast and excessive grain in the image did not help anyone to understand what exactly was depicted. In part, it seemed a documentary film, and on the other hand, it seemed a graphic manipulation. Gradually, there was an increasing quality in the movie as horizontal lines pop up, showing a clearer image. The noisy rain was clearing down, simultaneously other sounds were introduced and here a film noir style movie started, sometimes displaying disturbing pixels and aesthetic slashes of diagonal cuts in the framework. One could see several groups of people, amidst them
