‘The gates to the castle of the mind will only open for the chosen ones,’ he announced. ‘The Viennese doctor was wrong to try to keep the powerful forces of the unconscious under lock and key. In the course of evolution it is the destiny of the unconscious to become real, to step out into the world and go wherever it pleases. It’s what we became rational for. That’s what he couldn’t read in Greek tragedy. Look what he bequeathed us as the keystone of Western consciousness: not the hero, but the wimp.’
‘Let’s see if we understand each other. You’re suggesting that what Œdipus should have done instead of plucking out his eyes was to say to the people of Thebes, “Sure, I fucked my old lady. So what? If you’ve got a problem with that, I’ll fuck you too.”’
He answered coldly, as impervious to irony as the printed circuits of a computer.
‘The interest of that myth is merely human. As human as the psychoanalyst who invented it.’
‘And what’s your interest?’
‘I thought you’d realised,’ he said evenly, staring at me impassively through the concentric spirals of his milk-bottle bottoms. ‘Sr Tamerlán is the superman.’
* * *
Back at ground level, I was curious to visit the spot where the body would have hit the ground, but to get there I had to run the gauntlet of the mind-bending central canyon. From a distance I could have sworn that, stretching out both arms, I could touch the sides, but it turned out to be just another optical illusion: standing halfway between the towers I realised they were much wider apart — a good five metres at least. I couldn’t stay there for more than a few seconds: they generated a forcefield between them, as if someone were driving two powerful magnets as close together as possible; it was an unpleasant feeling like seasickness, and to make matters worse, when I reached the other end of the canyon I was hit on the head by an empty detergent bottle. Furious, I spun round to see where it had come from: emerging from a stiffened sleeve, a leathery hand covered in blackened wrinkles poked out from round the next corner and beckoned to me with a worm-like wiggle of its hooked finger. By the time I got there, it had disappeared, only to reappear a few metres further on and vanish again. I pursued the elusive reflection — a hand, the flapping heel of a boot, the tip of a yellow-and-grey beard — until I reached the tower’s east face, as smooth as the surface of a frozen lake standing on end. But whoever it was I was pursuing had vanished as if they’d fallen into it. Curiouser and curiouser! I lit a cigarette. White against the tower’s golden skies, a flock of egrets sailed across the sheer grid of video-wall, bound for the reflected marshlands of the Ecological Reserve. Only when I looked down from the living frieze encircling the heights did I see it: poised on a mosaic of recently planted sods (this must have been the spot) by the tower’s marble base was a broken supermarket trolley, from which rose a pretty good likeness of the golden tower, ingeniously hashed together out of corrugated cardboard, thick wire, tin cans, tin foil, polystyrene containers, drinks cartons and plastic bags. It was less perfect, of course, than the model in Tamerlán’s office, but friendlier and softer, probably because its flimsiness reminded me of the ones we used to build at school, of the first foundation of Buenos Aires, the Cabildo or the Casa de Tucumán; but I had trouble getting a close-up view of it because it receded as I advanced. For a moment I thought it might be remote-controlled, but then I spotted the mangled shoes among the four wheels of the trolley, shuffling along as if their laces were tied together. I sprinted after them, grabbed the trolley by the handle and wheeled it around as if heading for the checkout.
‘I can see you but you can’t see me!’ said a voice from inside the tower.
Peering into two of the windows I discovered that, while they looked at first glance as if they were made of sweet wrappers like the rest, they were in fact made of cellophane. Two eyes peered back at me in fright, blurry through misted breath. I lifted up the trolley in both hands, tower and all, removing it from him like a hat. In the middle of the grass, looking as disconcerted as a hermit crab out of its shell, stood a profusely bearded tramp with drooping lower lip and bloated body, cowering beneath his dirt-caked jacket. He pointed to somewhere behind me, his eyes gleaming, so I turned round and saw our reflection.
‘There’s no getting back from the other side!’ he exclaimed.
I tried to approach him, but he wheeled the trolley between us.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He put his finger to his lips like a nurse on a hospital poster and, looking around him, bared two rows of peg-like teeth that reminded me of the corn on a well-gnawed cob. Then he whistled.
‘The way up’s the same as the way down,’ he said, and opened his eyes wide in panic. A white cloud enveloped us and, when it began to disperse, I could see him in the distance, manœuvring his trolley and its teetering tower across the lawn, making a break for the nearest stack of containers. Standing beside me was a man in a red uniform with a still-smoking fire extinguisher hanging from one hand.
‘Been bumming around here for two or three weeks, he has,’ he remarked. ‘They never used to leave their caves before. We tried to winkle him out a few days ago, but the containers are all interconnected and he moves through them like a mole. Should get them fumigated,’ he said, lowering his gun, and immediately vanished into a side door, which, when it closed, was just another piece in the wall of mirrors.
Chapter 2. THE CORDOBESE ARMADILLO
Back at home I tossed the first ten-thousand-dollar wad onto the bed, where it bounced with the unbeatable elasticity of nice, crisp notes, and after taking a deep breath I dialled the number on which the whole deal hung.
‘Hullo,’ I said when someone answered. ‘I’d like to talk to Lieutenant Colonel Verraco.’
I heard the familiar chuck-chuck of the bugged phone line. Years of ripping off the phone company had sharpened my ears, a talent shared by all us night-hunters. The operator at the other end took a few seconds to connect the tape-recorder, a couple of breaths to give the trackers a head start, and then said commandingly:
‘Identification.’
‘Private Felipe Félix, Class of Sixty-Two, Regiment Seven, Company B, posted in La Plata, Puerto Argentino and Mount Longdon,’ I reeled off in a single breath.
‘Please hold,’ he said, and a muzak version of ‘The Peronist March’ popped up over the line. I waited about ninety seconds (they’d obviously put a rookie on me: they cut their teeth tracing trivial calls) and a doleful voice crept into my ear.
‘Who is speaking?’ it lowed.
‘Conscript Private, Class of Sixty-Two, Felipe Félix, Regiment Seven …’ I reeled off the litany, but was cut off by a muffled snigger, and the elevator music came on again. I was about to hang up and start again when Verraco answered.
‘Argentina’s by the year 2000!’ he said instead of ‘hello’, which threw me for a second, until I realised he was talking about the Islands.
‘Argentina’s, sir, Lieutenant Colonel, sir. Private Felipe Félix reporting for duty, sir.’
‘Been a while since we heard from you, Félix. You haven’t even been coming to the reunions. What can your old Commander do for you? Shove off, hop it, he’s a friend,’ he suddenly yelled at some obscure cranny of the telephone network in a different voice. ‘Go and practise some shooting if you’ve got nothing better to do!’
‘Wondering if you were still interested in the video game, sir,’ I began, and in five minutes I had the whole thing wrapped up. Years ago Verraco had come and asked me to design him a video game of the Malvinas War to be installed in his offices in the new SIDE building. He hadn’t had much luck with promotion after the war until somehow he managed to wangle his way into Intelligence. He now had the clout to call the shots and the time to spend on his big hobby: winning the war he’d lost. He’d been luring me into designing the game with special favours — getting the police off my back like fleas off a dog for one thing; it was to be the envy and admiration of his colleagues and would add to his standing in the demanding ex-combatant community. By delivering the game I’d repay these favours and make him a happy man, and I’d also be able to walk right into the impregnable edifice of the State Intelligence Secretariat, sit down in an office specially put aside for me and, while personally installing the video game (my condition), I could quietly run through their files and take whatever I needed. A hundred thousand dollars, like falling off a log, I told myself, and moved on to the next level.