“And what are those people doing over there, madrina?” inquired Juana, tugging on Todos los Santos’s skirt.
“They are playing a game called tennis.”
“But they’re not children… adults play too?”
“Yes,” said Susana, showing off. “And the one who catches the ball in his hand wins.”
“No, the one who throws it the furthest with the racket wins,” corrected Todos los Santos. “The racket is that squashed basket they have in their hands.”
“And inside there, in Barrio Staff,” Ana wanted to know, “do people also die?”
“Yes, they do. Death is the only thing that strikes them whenever it wants.”
twenty-four
A ball of rice. The critical events that occurred next originated with a soggy, cold ball of rice cooked in vegetable oil, one of those balls without salt or God’s mercy that the management of the Troco distributed among the workers at lunchtime, and which they, not wanting to subject themselves to the displeasure of sinking their teeth into, preferred to kick around in the soccer matches they improvised in the building that served as their dining hall.
That morning, sheets of indecisive rain undulated across the sky, evaporating upon contact with the scorched earth, and the men of Campo 26 worked reluctantly amid dense clouds of heat. Delaying his appointment with death, Sacramento had decided to test the stamina of his weakened legs in the open air after having been released from the hospital. His unexpected recovery from an affliction lying somewhere between malaria, amebic cysts, and yearning for eternity was not so much due to the brown mixture, the white mixture, or the poisonous, pink quinine, as to the life-giving power of a dream and the palpable effects of the object that provoked it: the trinket of hair that Payanés had given him. Because as Olguita explained to me, nothing protects you with such loyalty nor transmits such vigor as an amulet made from the hair of the one you love, and the inverse is also true: An array of ills can be unleashed by a single hair from the head of someone who hates you.
“You don’t have to be very sharp to realize the power of hair,” she told me one day. “You only have to see how it continues to grow after death. As if that weren’t enough, it’s the only part of the human body that doesn’t feel pain or decompose.”
“Does it protect you even if the tuft hanging from your neck hasn’t been cut for you but for someone else, and its owner doesn’t even know that you are the one wearing it?” I ask her.
“One would suspect that under those conditions it would protect you less, but it would still protect you. Anyway, it worked for Sacramento, and he isn’t the only one to have been saved by hair.”
“Are you a living being or a suffering spirit?” a disconcerted Payanés asked his friend, who an instant earlier he had given up for nearly dead, as he saw Sacramento appear on skinny Emilia’s platform with the uncertain step of Lazarus, who arose and walked, still shaken by a tremor from beyond.
“I’m still not sure,” answered the resuscitated man.
“Are you well?”
“I am, which is saying a lot.”
“It’s a miracle! Without warning you’ve come back to life…”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but at least the will to live has come back.”
“It’s incredible, I’d even swear that you’ve grown,” said Payanés to hide his churning feelings, and he confessed to himself that he had been prepared for his best and only friend’s death but not to see him alive again. “Before, I was a couple of inches taller than you, and now you must be taller than I am.”
“They say the fever either kills or stretches,” replied Sacramento, and he sat down off to the side to watch, worn out by the exertion of breathing among the healthy again and stunned at the velocity and precision with which Payanés and his new work partner fit and coupled the pipes. Pajabrava had replaced Sacramento and was a man with a persistent gaze and the air of an apostle who had the habit of locking his eyes on others until he managed to plant the seed of fear within them. Years of experience around the globe had made him a petrolero trashumante, as they call those who follow the pipeline on its journey from the jungles of Catatumbo to the deserts of Syria, going off, coming back, and going off again. Sacramento tells me that they called the man Pajabrava — slang for “avid masturbator”—because he never missed an opportunity to preach against the practice of masturbation, which was so useful in regions of lonely men. During his discourse, Pajabrava penetrated his listener with his discomforting drill-like gaze while he overwhelmed him with quotes from diverse masters of Eastern thought, until forcing him to admit that onanistic practices were responsible for man’s perdition and his flagging will.
“You’re so fast at your work, hermano,” said Sacramento to Payanés, who glistened shirtless, bathed in mist and sweat, exhibiting the bleeding rose on his chest as if it were a medal, and who was so synchronized with skinny Emilia’s bold metallic vibration that it almost seemed like a male coupling with a powerful and ferocious female. “You’re ten times quicker than when we started.”
“You see, now they call me Cuña a Mil, because I can fit a thousand bands an hour. I told you I was going to become the best cuñero in the country.”
“Because you gave up the filthy habit of playing with yourself,” Pajabrava started off with another sermon. “That’s where your energy comes from. If you go back to messing around, you’ll be no good for this work and all the good rhythm you’ve developed will go to hell. A worker who masturbates is worth less than a burned match. That’s why we’re the shit we are, look around you, a poor yellow crushed army of unredeemed jerk-offs.”
“Jerking is the opium of the people,” declared Payanés, parodying words that had been repeated around the camp lately.
“Jerkers of the world unite!” added an amused Sacramento, feeling once again like a member of the human race.
“Make fun of me, I don’t care,” responded Pajabrava. “But I’m warning you, each drop of semen that you waste is an ounce of vital force escaping from your body.”
“You’re right, we shouldn’t waste precious semen. Let’s go demand that the company provide each worker with a little jar so he can collect it properly.”
“Good idea, compañero,” said Montecristo, one of the other members of the team. “And they should put some barrels in the middle of the camp so all the men can empty their jars into them, and then they should consider the possibility of digging a huge lake to hold the barrels containing the entire nation’s life force.”
“And there would be a bonus for the worker who makes the largest individual contribution,” said Macho Cansado, pantomiming a spasmodic ejaculation.
“The era of white gold has begun!” shouted Payanés, inspired by the band that had risen up against Pajabrava, whom no one had dared to stand up to until now because of his experience and seniority or perhaps out of guilt for the venal pleasures of lonely nights, or out of fear of being petrified by his cold, stiff gaze, like that of the walking dead.
But the unstable and heated spirit in the camp wasn’t coming just from the evil eye that Pajabrava was propagating with his insistent morality. Some other undetermined discomfort was hanging over the men, like pepper in the air, an insect invasion, or excessive humidity, something that electrified the surroundings, an uneasiness among men who didn’t know quite what they were doing there, as if suddenly their own pants were too big or too tight, as if what until yesterday was sufficient and good is today too little, too late, obsolete. A generalized nervousness was lurking around the 26 that restless morning, making the men talkative, susceptible, prone to joking, and unfocused.