The TV channels were in a frenzy. They had found photos of Cabezas in their digital archives and they were alternating them with the live images. For some reason his face was horribly distorted by the electronic medium, becoming more grotesque with every passing second. It must have been because they hadn’t yet been able to find real photos and were making do with artist’s impressions. Meanwhile the archives kept providing images: an identity photo of Cynthia Cabezas; shots from her funeral, with the girls from Misericordia, and her parents in tears. And then, all of a sudden: old photos of Cabezas and Judge Plaza at some night spot, looking young, holding glasses of champagne; the Pastor preaching to a congregation; the judge with her son in her arms, when he was just a few months old; Cynthia as a little girl on the beach with her parents. . And the night, the rain, the city seen from helicopters — all the channels had sent one out — an ocean of confusion, from which the ghostly face of Cabezas reemerged, grimacing, it seemed. . A birthday party ten years ago, with Cynthia and the child who would grow up to be the Pastor at the head of the table, wearing paper hats. . It was the theme of life’s brevity again, but in the world of images this time. And it was taken to an extreme by the fantasy that was hovering over the viewers at that moment: an intergalactic traveler arrives in a strange world without any kind of protection (what protection could he have?). The environmental conditions are totally hostile to life: he’s doomed, obviously; he’s going to die in a few tenths of a second; you could say he’s as good as dead. . And yet, for the time being, he’s alive, arriving in the world, in the world’s horrific reality. And “the time being” is all there is.
XI
Meanwhile, Cabezas hadn’t gone very far with his two passengers. In the end, the edge of the world was too remote; it couldn’t be reached within this life, and after the first moment of panic, he hadn’t really intended to go that far. He went around behind the cemetery and the Piñeyro Hospital and headed east on Avenida del Trabajo. The land sloped steeply down toward what is appropriately called “Lower” Flores, and as the water rose to the tops of the wheels, Cabezas realized that if he couldn’t drive at top speed, he didn’t really feel like driving at all, so he might as well stop. He thought that perhaps he should make a decision before getting too far away. Or maybe it wasn’t as rational as that: something was holding him back, keeping him within the circle where things were happening. There was still a lot to be sorted out, and the further away he was, the harder it would be. So he pulled up at the corner of Carabobo and pointed to the little pizzeria:
“We’re going to have a coffee and calm down,” he said, as if they’d gone out for a spin. The girls were too rigid with fear to react, so he invented a detail to make it more convincing: “You can walk back home from here when it stops raining.”
This sounded plausible, even though the end of the rain seemed a world away. They got out and made a dash for it. The place was empty, except for a pair of sweethearts holding hands and talking in whispers, their gazes oscillating between the windows and the television over the door. The newcomers sat down at a table and stared at the screen. The show was just beginning.
They saw it all. Cabezas was so fascinated by what was happening on the television and by his own thoughts that the girls could have slipped away without him noticing, but oddly enough it seemed that they were in no hurry to be gone. It was still raining just as heavily, and they didn’t want to get wet; in the state they were in, a trivial consideration like that mattered more than being at the mercy of a man described by the reporters as a dangerous criminal. Also, they didn’t want to miss any of the dramatic events unfolding on the screen.
Although Cabezas had been waiting for the judge to pronounce his name, when she did, he couldn’t help whispering, “The bitch!” But what came next was more surprising. It was obvious that they really were getting him mixed up with the father of Cynthia Cabezas; they’d spun a whole plot out of that misinformation. For some time he’d been haunted, as the hunted often are, by the old idea that he was caught up in a case of “mistaken identity.” When he heard the judge’s words and saw the old pictures on the television, the idea took on monstrous proportions: not just huge, but deformed. It wasn’t that they had mixed him up with another man, leaving his true identity aside; they knew who he was and they were still mistaking him for someone else. If he’d been a better sport, he might have admitted that he had it coming because he was the one who’d started the confusion. But he wasn’t in the mood for subtleties like that.
He looked on helplessly as the images followed one another, and the error reinforced itself and spread. He began to wonder how far it could go. Could it go all the way round and come back to bite the tail of the truth it had left behind? The only way to stop it expanding would have been to impose a universal silence. . And the human race wasn’t going to stop talking. There was no point trying to set the record straight. Once a misunderstanding was out there, it couldn’t be reeled back in. The only solution was to make the best of it and press on, improvising all the way. Somehow, things worked out in the end, mysteriously enough. Even so, a feeling of deep despondency had come over him, due in part to the fierce insistence of the rain, both on the television and outside the windows of the pizzeria. The water was still rising. That sea of error: the world. And he had to keep going, on and on, burdened with all the solipsisms of his sloppy thinking and a mass of information drawn exclusively from television, bits and pieces as random as the sequence of episodes in a dream. He had to keep fleeing forward, but to where? What would become of him? Was he destined to be an eternal fugitive, eternally forbidden to look back? His despondency was deepening and coming to seem inflexibly ordained. This line of thought led him to the conclusion that his case was irremediable; after all, only the human could be remedied. .
Meanwhile on the esplanade, where everyone had paused to respect a mother’s pain, the action was resuming. The cameras focused on Judge Plaza again, and she regained her fighting spirit. The manhunt was beginning: the judge and all her officers disappeared into their cars, in one of which they stowed the corpse, and drove off leaving boiling wakes in the big choppy lake that had covered the avenue. The breathless commentaries of the news girls, who were following the police in their various trucks, explained that they were heading for the nearby shantytown, which was still crowned with a great dome of light. According to the television — which is the very essence of action and therefore never wrong — the judge had ordered her samurais to take up positions all around the edge, and as soon as the perimeter was secured, she would go in herself, leading the way, armed to the teeth, ready to kill or die.
An unforgettable spectacle was about to unfold. The broadcast was charged with anticipation: millions of viewers were following the events in real time. The rain had broken all the records and its density and violence were still increasing. The shantytown must have been flooded, but the action was rushing on regardless, without waiting for conditions to return to normal. The apocalyptic downpour was becoming a mere backdrop to the adventure: people were beginning to act as if it were some kind of special effect.
And the rain served as a bridge to convey the sense of adventure because it was raining both on the scene where the events were taking place and on the houses of the people who were following the coverage; the rain was beating on the roofs and the walls, seeping in under the doors. . Cabezas shifted on his seat and noticed that there was water underfoot. The floor of the pizzeria was submerged. The streets outside were a sea: the water was already up to the windows of his car, which was parked in front of the door. Twice a minute, flashes of lightning lit up the view.