How to Order the Universe Read online

  They watched the film three times in a row. That was the other advantage of E’s cinema. If the viewers wanted to watch the film again, E could start it over. It wasn’t for nothing that E was the operator; within that bastion of uncomfortable chairs, things were done his way.

  After E closed the cinema for the day, they went to a bar. And, though it was always best not to talk about politics, they talked. And since they were on that topic, they touched on religion too.

  On arriving at that place of trust and transcendence, D told E about Kramp products, and E told D that his true passion wasn’t film but black-and-white photography.

  When they were on their third bottle of wine, E said that there was a town that he wanted to photograph in particular, a ghost town, which was located on the route that D’s Renault (which, when viewed from the moon, was a speck that looked like it had come to a standstill along a straight line) took every week.

  XII

  Before long, D and I had something like a modus operandi in place.

  When we came to a town, before stepping inside any hardware store, we verified that our shoes were shiny—in the case of the contrary, D had a brush in the glove box—and lit a cigarette. A lucky cigarette.

  The latter was a right I gained in the third or fourth month, once D had confirmed the value of my presence beside him whenever he approached a counter.

  “Your mother can’t know about this.”

  “Of course not,” I said, letting out a tiny puff of smoke.

  We headed for the hardware stores, and the scene was the same in all the towns, with three possible variants: things were good, things were so-so, or things were bad. It all depended on how Kramp products had performed since our last visit.

  1.Products delivered and sold without a hitch: things were good (in such cases, usually D collected the amount owing and sold something else, and I was given a cheap gift).

  2.Products delivered but not sold: things were so-so. When this happened, D uttered some adage about time: it’s all a matter of time, put on a brave face in bad times, give it time. And we hurried out.

  3.Products delivered but with variations: things were bad. This meant that there were discrepancies between what the person in charge had ordered and what had arrived, usually introduced intentionally by D. And there were times when the company offered special incentives to sell one product or another: May, month of nuts; June, month of hammers; July, month of Phillips-head screwdrivers. In these cases, the affected party’s reaction depended on the number of times it had happened and the nature of the product, for receiving an oversupply of two thousand umbrellas at the beginning of winter wasn’t the same as receiving the same consignment at the beginning of summer.

  This final scenario was where, most of the time, my work began. Because it was one thing to tell a man clutching a sample case that he was shameless, and quite another to tell him so when his other hand was clutching mine.

  And I didn’t speak, only fixed my gaze on the person in charge.

  In another life, I had learned different kinds of gazes: an indifferent gaze, a sweet gaze with a touch of melancholy, a bored-and-desperate gaze. The final resort was my on-the-brink-of-tears gaze. And that was the most intense of all. If the person in charge focused on my pupils, instead of encountering me, he or she encountered every possible form of fragility: world hunger; ice sculptures that, after so much effort, were reduced to water; the Soviet space-dog Laika turning around and around and around in the long night of infinity. All things had come to inhabit those small dark circles. Because that was the nature of life: to be small and dark. You know it, D knows it, in my seven short years I know it, and you, what do you do? You insult it because of an oversupply of nails and nuts. End it already, end this nonsense, end all this.

  I thought this but didn’t say it, for I was aware that a single word could break the tension and dramatic effect that I’d learned to wield in a few short months.

  We came and went along the highways. And when we’d done so for around one year—roughly the halfway point of my career—I asked D for a commission commensurate with my talent. It was only fair, considering that I worked hard every day, whether by practicing in front of the mirror or by experimenting with my school friends using the same silent method—retracting my friendship, and then extending it again in exchange for a sandwich or magazine.

  Before going on I should clarify that my motivation wasn’t only material. It was also an early bid to discover the weaknesses of the human heart, a search for justice.

  Thinking about what I’d learned in my math class, I continued:

  “I want my share, one-tenth.”

  “Forget it.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure how to keep dividing, so I responded:

  “In that case I want seven pesos for every hundred that you take in.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Five pesos for every hundred or I won’t come with you ever again.”

  I remember that we were in a coffeehouse, and D lifted his gaze from the yellow cards on which he was making a note of the orders and looked at me, sizing up how genuine my words were and making a quick mental review of the status attributed to childhood around the world. Accepting my deal would make him the employer of a child, and child labor had been forbidden for a while now. But there was also Einstein, who had said that thing about everything being relative. We hadn’t understood him, but some element of his declaration had stayed with us.

  I couldn’t go home with money in my pocket because it would come to my mother’s attention, and, if she took up the thread and started pulling, she would find out about my truancy and D’s irresponsibility.

  I couldn’t go home with money, but:

  “We’ll do a quid pro quo.”

  “And what’s that.”

  “I won’t give you money, but each time we make a sale of more than one hundred thousand pesos, I’ll buy you something.”

  “I accept.”

  During the trip that followed my negotiation, we closed a sale for a special offer on drill bits. Beautiful drill bits, many, very many drill bits, drill bits to fill an entire town, the entire world—and even, it seemed to me, an entire galaxy.

  The first thing I wanted was a sample case the same as D’s, but yellow. I’d seen it in a toy shop.

  When we went to look for it, the yellow sample case was no longer there, but as a consolation D bought me a nurse’s carrying case. A plastic one, with a white cross in the middle, which I started to use each time I went to work with D, making the part I was playing more realistic.

  Soon, to the carry case was added an array of dolls, each dressed in their country’s traditional clothing; a green coat with a brooch; a yellow Mickey Mouse thermos; a reversible cap; a puffer vest; and a dozen other things that I jotted down on the notepad I always carried with me, under the title reimbursements.

  Approaching eight years of age, I had discovered that, while D was nothing special as a father, he made an excellent employer.

  XIII

  A week after seeing the continuous showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, D dropped by the cinema again.

  And he said to E:

  “That town you wanted to visit isn’t in the category of conquered territories, or in the category of territories yet to be conquered, but I can take you tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t have a hardware store.”

  “And so?”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll be out the front tooting the horn at ten on the dot.”

  In hindsight, D was the one who should have been worried. But since he wasn’t, at ten on the dot he went by E’s, and he deposited him in the main square of the ghost town, which he would do many times over the next few months.

  While E took his photographs and made his enquiries, D would go to the neighboring town to fill it with locks and nuts. When he was done, he would return to the ghost town to collect E.

  On the way back, they spok
e about all sorts of topics, and, among other things, E told D that a foreign newspaper was interested in his photographs.

  For D, anywhere abroad was excessively far away, so they changed the subject and spoke about the film that would screen at the cinema the next week: To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck.

  XIV

  Sales, like any form of work, was a means of survival. And as with most other means of survival, the average human being couldn’t make it to the end of the month, but only approximately to day fifteen. From then on, the human being was obliged to fall back on his friends, on cheques with thirty-day clearances, on pawnshops, and on moneylenders, the latter only in extreme cases. It happened to everybody, D included.

  Smaller-scale strategies were added to the general ones and, all told, served the overall objective to survive.

  These ploys were carried out every day and had slight variations, depending on the trade. In the case of sales, they functioned roughly like so:

  INVOICES

  This strategy was viable in coffeehouses, restaurants, and even hotels. In the final two was where it really paid off. It was very simple: in the invoice description, you changed one coffee to two, one lunch to two, one night’s stay to two. The company paid your expenses and, without knowing it, your partner’s as well.

  Because the complicity of all parties was required, generally this was only done in the coffeehouses, restaurants, and hotels that were frequented by traveling salesmen.

  Some refined these strategies. I remember a hotel that also ran a clothing store. Sweaters, overcoats, boots, shirts, and ties were sweetly camouflaged under the concept of three nights’ stay, when really it had been one.

  We left the hotel warm and triumphant. This wasn’t theft; it was tiny spoils from the war that all human beings must unleash against the system that oppresses them. So thought the intellectuals who, from a coffeehouse, had observed the world’s workers. We, in another coffeehouse, hadn’t thought it, but we knew it in the bottom of our just-as-tiny hearts. This wasn’t theft. And even if it had been, we wouldn’t have cared.

  ROAD TOLLS

  The Reimbursement of Expenses Strategy had a fundamental problem: you had to account for the expenses.

  Every week D had to send off a spreadsheet detailing invoices from hotels, restaurants, and—this was the most complex point—road tolls.

  While there existed a circuit of hotels and restaurants that were prepared to falsify invoices, turning a road concession system to our advantage was simply beyond all possibility.

  What we did, if we wanted to justify a trip we hadn’t taken, was simple: the next time we passed by the toll booth, we parked the car on the highway verge and searched for the receipts that had been tossed out the window by people who traveled without accounting for their expenses.

  The procedure was carried out judiciously. No more than one or two days could pass between the road toll you wanted to claim and the day you searched for it, because, after that point, the receipts would blow a long way down the highway, or they would be in poor condition due to the summer sun or winter rain.

  Likewise, it wasn’t worth getting too close to the road. We searched for the scraps of paper on the verge only, otherwise you ran the risk of getting hit by a car. And if that happened, it would be impossible to explain to my mother what I’d been doing hunting for scraps of paper on the side of the road on a school day. She was an absent mother, but that didn’t mean we should abuse the fact.

  No doubt she wouldn’t have understood the quid pro quo or the parallel education system because, as D said, my mother was a sensitive woman, or the closest thing to sensitive we’d ever known. My mother was beautiful, and goodness and beauty were one and the same. “Scholastic philosophy said so, and last week’s Selections from Reader’s Digest did too,” D continued. But I’d stopped paying attention.

  XV

  The day I met E—the photographer—he got into the passenger seat. I remember him saying something about the rows of poplars along the trails that led from the highway, and that a good black-and-white photograph was one that showed the whole spectrum of greys between each extreme. The light made the objects appear, or it made them disappear.

  The light.

  He made us pull over, and got out to photograph the poplars because E, unlike us, seemed to have all the time in the world.

  D and I made the most of the interlude and lit a cigarette. E was one of those people whose very presence gives others permission to act naturally. The sort of person who doesn’t expect you to arrive on time or, when you do arrive at last, to say something important. The sort of person who distrusts order and who, consequently, brings a little bit of chaos with him wherever he goes.

  When finally he had photographed the trees, E showed me his photographic camera. It was a Canon FTb, the same model that reporters used to document the war in Vietnam.

  The light, which made objects appear, or made them disappear.

  The trace.

  That was what E wanted to capture.

  “I hunt ghosts with this camera.”

  “And what are they like?”

  “White, and covered in a sheet that has holes for them to peer through.”

  What E didn’t know was that, a few months later, he would be one too. In those years, our cities were full of them.

  E knew this; E was searching for them; E summoned them. And, later, he would join his family.

  That day, I remember we dropped him in the town, and, in the afternoon, we collected him before going back to the city.

  “Did you find many?”

  “Many what?”

  “Ghosts.”

  “No, no luck today.”

  “Next time.”

  “Let me see . . . actually, I think I might have just found one, look here.” Click.

  The photograph that E took of me, which he gave me on our next trip, is one of the few keepsakes I have from the period. I’m in the back seat of the Renault, smiling and opening my eyes wide.

  A black-and-white photo, with the whole spectrum of greys between each extreme.

  XVI

  The salesmen’s destinations were cities and, mostly, towns.

  These functioned as base camps, the strategic hearts of which were the hotels. Once set up, the salesmen embarked upon—we embarked upon—forays to conquer the neighboring territories. We were colonizers, and we wanted to convert the savages to the religion of Kramp products, Parker Pens, English cologne, or Made-in-China plastic products.

  The more virgin territories there were, the better it was for us: the towns spontaneously recovered their virginity every thirty days, a time period that roughly coincided with the spell between the salesmen’s visits.

  These forays were governed by stricter rules than our usual trips, and during my two years of work I only went on four or five, as I could only take part during school breaks. And an eight-year-old girl, as a rule, isn’t allowed to stay anywhere overnight without a reasonable explanation.

  What I could do was skip school—which I was doing more and more often—and go home acting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, thanks to the enlightenment D provided: “Most of the time, complex problems require surprisingly simple solutions.”

  So we made a false booklet of parent–teacher communications that D signed (truancy), which coexisted with the real booklet of parent–teacher communications that my mother signed (meeting requests, museum visits, a farm excursion). Depending on the circumstance, I had to hand over one booklet or the other.

  “You must never mix up the booklets.”

  “Of course not.”

  It wouldn’t have made a difference. With thirty students in the class, it was almost impossible for the teacher to memorize the narrative thread of any one of our booklets. And as for my mother, she was a reserved woman. Although, now that I think of it, she wasn’t reserved. She was simply sad, and her sadness meant she couldn’t pay attention to details.


  Each highway, town, and city had its place in my parallel education about the workings of things. While the central cosmogony was associated with Kramp products, D added new elements whenever my comprehension required it.

  The relationship between time and space, for example.

  “Do you remember my telling you R’s story?”

  “The one about the man who faked his own death?”

  “No, the one about the man who worked for the local council and used an entire year’s budget to construct a landing strip for small planes—on which, of course, no small plane ever landed.”

  “I remember. He planned the whole thing when he was a kid. His classmates testified, saying that back then he would spend all day making paper planes.”

  “That’s the one. Now, think: if that had happened in a city, how long would everybody have been telling the story?”

  “Weeks.”

  “And if it had happened in a town?”

  “Months.”

  “And if it had happened in a small town?”

  “Years.”

  “Exactly.”

  We continued the trip in silence, and after the Renault had progressed roughly a kilometer, I said to D that there was a fourth option:

  “If the town were really really really small they’d be telling R’s story forever.”

  D said, “Most likely,” and half a kilometer later he added that physics had yet to discover an explanation for this particular phenomenon, because an explanation had not yet been found for why those kinds of towns existed in the first place.

  We could add to the relationship between time and space the evolution of the species theory, the expansion of the universe theory, and even some basic notions of physics and theology.

  My comprehension of the world expanded like a sponge, especially when you include everything I heard at the hardware store counters, in the coffeehouses, the hotels.

  When, years later, I told my friends about these memories, I tried to make it clear that D hadn’t been a fool—that’s what my grandmother on my mother’s side called him: “the fool”—but a pioneer of systemic pedagogy.