On the third day of his pupil’s absence, Candelario begun to worry. At the close of classes, he asked the grandmother if he could accompany her home to see how the girl was doing. The elderly lady thought that was fine: she was delighted to be able to talk nonstop the whole way and slightly exaggerated her arthritic gait so the teacher would take her arm when they crossed road junctions. As they were nearing the dirt track where the family lived, they saw the girl playing with her dolls outside the house. Her grandmother’s shout brought her back to reality. When she realized who was walking beside her, she ran back inside. The schoolmaster picked up her two rag dolls before going into the kitchen.
“Who the hell’s this jerk and what’s he doing here?” was the father’s greeting to his mother-in-law.
“A very good afternoon to you, sir. I’m Severo Candelario, your daughter’s teacher. Delighted to meet you. It’s just a few days to the Science Olympiad and I wanted to see how…”
“My daughter’s not taking part in any competition. Get the fuck out and leave us in peace.”
“Sir, forgive the impertinence, but please allow me to tell you your daughter has studied hard and is very excited about the Olympiad.”
“Listen, you bastard, no one makes me look small in my own house.”
“Would it be asking too much for me to at least say hello to her?”
“Why the hell should you worry about us?”
“Sir, with all respect, it’s a good opportunity for your daughter. If she wins the Olympiad she can travel and get a scholarship.”
On hearing this last remark, the father lunged at Candelario. The teacher and the dolls leapt to one side and their aggressor tripped on a chair leg. He was unable to put his single arm out in time to save himself and his face smashed into the edge of the kitchen sink. The girl heard the noise and came in to find her teacher attempting to help her father to stand up. Seeing him there, his left eye closed and bloody, she gave such a shriek that the teacher’s reflex action was to let the victim fall again to attend to the child, who only stopped screaming long enough to take a breath and start again. The grandmother took her to her bedroom. Candelario attempted again to assist the father, who, in an effort to clean himself, had gotten blood all over his face. He lashed out one last time, with an accompanying stream of insults. The schoolmaster understood that it was time to throw in the towel. He managed to mumble, “I’m extremely sorry,” before hurrying out of the family home, consoled by the two sad rag dolls he still keeps as a souvenir of the only stain on his record.
Perdumes planted the story on a few fertile tongues. It immediately put out roots in multiple directions. In one version, Candelario had forced the girl to bring him a steak and cheese sandwich every day. In another, he’d tied the invalid father’s remaining arm and one of his legs behind his back. It was the most widely broadcast version that broke Candelario: he’d touched the grandmother and the girl in inappropriate ways, obliging them to carry out the fantasies he mimed with the rag dolls.
The haggard teacher abandoned the campaign without giving formal notification. He was so depressed by the silent disdain of his neighbors that he practically never left his refuge, except to take his daily photo of the tree. And then came the final insult. On the same day as it was announced that the winner of the election was one of the two usual faces—Candelario would go down in history as the only candidate not even to win in his own building—a handwritten circular, without any official signature, was slipped under his front door. It stated that the tree in the green area behind Building 23 was a threat to the safety of the residents and so would be immediately felled. One member of the condominium was required to supervise the team of technicians who would carry out the task. The board was notifying Severo Candelario that he had been assigned this responsibility. He was to present himself in the green area at 7:19 the following morning to undertake this task.
Candelario turned up a few of minutes early to take his farewell photo. Taimado’s Black Paunches, dressed up as tree surgeons for the occasion, were ruthlessly punctual. Their electric saws were indistinguishable from their twisted grins. The schoolmaster signed the order unleashing the carnage and they inexpertly began lop the defenseless tree, brutally attacking even the fallen branches, brandishing their saws like obese ninjas finishing off the enemy. The trunk was attacked from several angles. It was hours before they managed to penetrate it, but when the tree was unable to hold out any longer, irregularly shaped chunks began to tumble down. As darkness fell—Candelario had not even moved when the Black Paunches had interrupted their work to eat their usual leftovers—they called it a day, leaving just a few inches of the base, scarred by the teeth of the saws. Candelario didn’t notice when the last of the saws was switched off; he could still hear the roar in his head when Clara finally came to take his hand and lead him back to their apartment.
The schoolmaster continued his usual routine. Every morning at 7:19, he would go out to take a photo of the mutilated trunk that would never again grow. He continued to fill albums, continued to flick the pages for visitors. It was now an ode to the decomposition of matter. After his retirement, he would spend hours sitting on his bench, mentally visualizing every detail of his tree. He was never alone; the two tattered rag dolls, by this time without eyes or hair, accompanied him. Severo Candelario became a melancholy statue symbolizing a remote era, almost totally erased from Villa Miserias’ collective memory.
12
And what if they heap shit on me too?
Yeah, you bastard. But would it be any worse than this?
Stop talking, you jerk. Just go put your name down. Get it over and fucking done with.
Shit! There she is talking to Perdumes. That great asshole’s dazzling her with his smile.
Sure it was really them?
Positive. I’d better get a move on and stop imagining all this trash.
Imagining trash? If you say so. We’re always here, ready for any eventuality.
13
It was also a breach for Perdumes, a signal that the time had come to close the polygon, so that all its points led to the same place. The bulldozers arrived and with them the dust. The dust that, from then onward, would so thickly coat the existence of Villa Miserias that the inhabitants only noticed it when it wasn’t there. Outside the estate, they found breathing a strange experience, as if something were missing, until they returned to the customary dose of irritation the air administered to their lungs.
His plan to limit the horizon began with territorial expansion: Perdumes acquired an enormous vacant lot adjoining the estate. The founders of Villa Miserias had, in their day, met with a complex ownership regime that had made any form of financial transaction impossible. But Perdumes knew who to talk to and how much to offer. A solemn ceremony was organized to inaugurate the works, during which Perdumes’ alabaster smile hit the intervening wall without shaking it, signifying the beginning of the future. After the demolition of the wall, the present-day limits of Villa Miserias were traced out. With the machinery came the hands needed for the construction of the future. The plot was to be fitted out as a commercial zone with office space. The Villa Miserians would soon be able to realize their most hidden fantasies. Up to that moment, the reach of Quietism in Motion had been limited by the rigidity of its structure, which made it hard to separate the residents by value. From that moment a reverse order process began: Perdumes had traced out the course on which the tide of those with the possibility of grasping a lifejacket would travel.
The already successful financial engineering scheme was set in motion again. In theory, every inhabitant of Villa Miserias had the chance to own his own business: in reality only a few would. The bottleneck