Melodrome Read online

  Come on, Suano, you’re a smoker. You don’t think you might be overdramatising?

  You have no idea what failure is.

  Well, as it happens…

  There’s a red blanket lying on the ground. Suano picks it up, gives it a shake and wraps it around himself. At some point she must have lit a cigarette. She’s smoking and touching her temple.

  You’re not going to ask if I’m cold too? You used to be such a gentleman. Suano…Suano…It’s red, anyway: a woman’s blanket.

  His gaze eats into her pearltex coat. A soberly sumptuous garment.

  I’m not sure of anything anymore, Suano, she says and stubs out her cigarette.

  How about that? he mumbles. Finally.

  You’re so…she says and moves her hand as if to grasp a word lodged in the air. So…quick, so sharp; that’s it; and I’m not saying this because…Suano, you’re the only one who can help me.

  You cry for help, take the outstretched hand, pull yourself up onto the bank, but you pull so hard your helper falls in, and as he admires you stretching out in the sun, he drowns.

  Woh, Suano. Really, there’s nothing in this for me.

  Under the pearltex coat, one of the buttons on Lerena’s blouse has come undone, and her breasts are partly visible. Suano looks, and his gaze moves down to linger on her legs as if he were trying to immunise himself, then returns to her eyes, which are golden in the light of the streetlamp. Lerena feels the force of his resentment and purses her lips as if swallowing a medicinal syrup. Her hair’s too thick to stay in place, tucked behind her ear, so she plaits it and gives the little girl another nickel for an elastic. She sees the night dew falling on Suano, who is gazing up as if into a snowglobe’s simulated blizzard.

  She starts talking.

  She says that a few days ago the guy she’s seeing…

  And halts, realising that she has released a piece of sensitive information. But Suano asks no questions. Lerena takes out a bottle of pills and swallows one dry: Quellax.

  All that’s going to do, he says, is block out the one important thing you should be telling yourself.

  I have to eliminate obstacles, she says, before continuing.

  She explains that three weeks ago, this guy – nothing serious, but he’s really nice – made a horrible scene; it all happened so suddenly she was caught off guard. Maybe he set it up that way. They’d arranged to meet at a cinema, and she had arrived three and a half minutes late. He refused to go in after the start of the film. She pointed out that he could always ask someone what had happened, and that it was neurasthenic to be so scared of doing stuff like that. He said he just didn’t feel like it anymore; she was always making him wait; he was sick of it. Later, back at his place, he accused her of being manipulative and fell into such a stubborn silence she began to wonder, after an hour, if she shouldn’t leave. He said he didn’t want to see her again. Lerena was shocked, and slept very badly back at her apartment. Which is why, the following day, when the rental manager knocked at her door to give her two days’ notice to move out, she was unable to react assertively. She was well acquainted with the miserly sadism of real estate administrators, the deals they did with the judges and the size of the bribes they demanded, but the guy was accusing her of fraudulently negotiating a rent reduction and manipulating the apartment’s elderly owner: the combination of charges left her gaping, with her tongue stuck to her palate. And she can’t be sure, but it may have been this silence that emboldened her boss to call her in to the personnel room two hours later and announce that, having observed for quite some time how Lerena’s attitude, with its combination of arrogance, pride, intimidation, assertiveness, moral blackmail and manipulative skill, was inhibiting rather than motivating the team of analysts under her supervision, quashing rather than nurturing their spirit of initiative, and not only making them inefficient as employees but also damaging them as people, he had decided to replace her; that’s the word he had used, replace, not dismiss or fire, when in fact he had already prepared her resignation, and produced it then for her to sign, along with a piece of paper on which the sum of her severance pay was crisply inscribed: seven thousand panoramics. Lerena’s tongue came away from her palate to ask him to repeat the charges. They all come down to one, he said: manipulation. She told him that she would study the document and the sum. Okay, Dost, I’ll see you tomorrow, said the boss (who until then had always been paternalistic, playful, spry, a groper, keen to prolong their conversations), and pointed to the door with two stiff fingers joined.

  Although Lerena didn’t stay awake all night (nothing could do that to her), she tossed and turned, stewing in dreams of fighting back and proving her mettle. She felt as if the cosmos was dry retching, trying to spit her out. But she was not going to be spat out with miserly severance pay. The next morning, she went to her kosmepit to have her skin cleansed and her make-up done, bought a superlative mauve pearltex coat and, as the elevator rose to the offices of the consulting firm on the thirty-second floor, decided on a sum and prepared a speech in two slow, blunt sentences. The boss listened to her without so much as an ironic smile. Perhaps he was offended by the slightly intimate

  tone of her voice, that involuntary touch of…Lerena wasn’t sure what it was, but she wouldn’t have said it was erotic. In any case, he went over a series of episodes recorded by the company’s vigisystems: conversations between Lerena and the analysts who reported to her, scenes that lasted two minutes at the most, in which her comments provoked a progressive and apparently irreversible collapse of self-esteem, legible in the subordinate’s features. Pained and broken smiles. Bletched beginnings of explanations. Gazes turning inward, brimming with self-pity. The rash of resignations and absenteeism in the ranks of the company’s valued staff was down to her, although the scenes ended with the group in question somewhat uneasily reaffirming its seasoned team spirit. She said that her priority had always been to toughen people up. Her ex-boss let out a little puff of laughter. He abstained from accusing Lerena of sadism. He said that her attitude had been extremely harmful to the company’s human resources, extremely harmful, and that if she didn’t sign her resignation and accept the terms of the settlement, they would destroy her. Then he added: Remember we can finish you, Lerenita. Her antidote to the venom of this sudden but premeditated familiarity was a recklessly bold counterattack. She signed nothing. She’d give that smiggit’s lawyers something to think about. She drew herself up to her full if modest height and walked out, concealing her desperation beneath her impeccable grooming. She took no personal belongings from her desk. While waiting for the lift, she loosened her hair with a gentle shake. Her body ached as if it had been beaten, not only by the boss but by her whole team of analysts, and some of the other teams as well. She was reeling, mortified.

  She remembered that in one of her sessions with Doctor Botilecue, long before the spark of desire had leapt between them, he’d asked her if she didn’t think that trying to manage every scene and manipulate all the actors was not just an exhausting task but one that was impossible to accomplish even moderately well. It was irritating to admit that he had touched a nerve. Because of a single character flaw, she was losing her lover, her job and her home.

  Or rather: three defeats had come together in a single disgrace provoked by that flaw. That vice. She would have to take a look at herself: she might not have noticed what she was doing, but others had clearly taken it to heart. That was for later. The present was the present, and when she stepped out of the lobby, Lerena was going to be literally on the street.

  Somewhere near the twenty-fifth floor, she sensed that other people had entered the lift. But she didn’t really look at them until the fourteenth.

  They were standing in front of the door, three of them, elbow to elbow, confining her to the space between their black tactical jackets and the mirror at the back of the lift. Lerena’s sense of smell was unreliable, but she said they had smelt of damp esparto, oily skin and nutmeg. They were tall: they m
ust have been from the island’s central ranges. The cyborgs on either side, brushing the ceiling with their manes, had an air of starched immobility, as if they were living in an endless rite. The woman in the middle, shorter by a finger, or less, full-bodied and round-shouldered, looked like a model deity designed for the launch of a new civilisation: solid, pale, severe, with grey hair unsullied by dirt or shampoo, and features of shale. Forty or so, she had an aura of inner experience and gave off resolve, composure and restrained strength, all in a sort of purr. Apparently she was hard of hearing, because the guy on the right had to repeat: Dona, hey, Dona Munava, Dona, saying her name more than five times before she turned to him. But, as if they were taking turns, it was the other one who asked the question:

  So when, Dona?

  The twenty-ninth, said the woman, with a voice that smoothed out the sound like a bricklayer’s trowel. Two seconds later she turned around, scratched her back, and looking over Lerena’s head into the mirror, she said: The twenty-ninth or the thirtieth, brachos, but the twenty-ninth is better; the twenty-ninth.

  Lerena didn’t wonder why these people kept repeating themselves. When the lift reached the ground floor, she watched them as they walked across the lobby. On the way out, they stopped for a moment to address the guard who had opened the door for them, criticising his servile attitude as if from an ideological podium. No dividing the earth from the sky, said Dona Munava’s levelling voice.

  Lerena fell under the spell of an imminence. She followed them along the avenue. When she saw them climb into an aircab and take off, she turned around, went into the fortune dealer’s shop that chance (or something else) had placed in her way, and played the number 29 in Onzena Island’s annual lottery, one of the few with a cash prize. To be more precise, she bought a ticket with the number 03029.

  Then, to stop herself thinking, she decided to go straight to her mother’s apartment.

  Lerena’s mother, overwhelmed by the affection of her other two children, had taken to simulating a frail senility so that they would let her read in peace. Lerena never asked her for anything, not wanting to be in her debt, but she supposed that in this case her mother might be happy to be owed a favour for once. She asked if she could stay for a few weeks, just until. Her mother flew right off the handle. How did she get to be so cynical? What kind of daughter rations her visits to make each one a precious gift, or buys her mother clothes but never asks if she actually likes them, or indulges her and listens as if following some set of guidelines? It was all true, except for the part about not having the space to put her up. All right, OKAY, said Lerena’s mother: to be honest, she couldn’t stand the thought of living with such a wheedling, egocentric daughter; why didn’t she go manipulate her boyfriend?

  Lerena persuaded the manager of the Vivante Hotel to let her have a room for three whole months at a discount rate. She moved in with her clothes and prosthetic devices. Although, in the first week, she spent a long time in front of the broad window, staring at the Seibel Esplanade, not once did she notice the transformations of the river’s surface; she was too busy scrapping one action plan after another. She could no doubt have found a better position in some other company, but she couldn’t see how she would ever disguise her character well enough to stop nambicles shrivelling up with fear. She had to come up with something to occupy the gaping space within her. She couldn’t go on filling it with clouds, propped there, gawping at the riverscape. She had to endure as the earth endures. Later, when the accusations stopped, she would devise a plan for not dividing the earth from the sky.

  At the end of the month, the number 03029 came up second in Onzena Island’s Good Luck Lottery. Lerena won five million nine hundred thousand panoramics, enough to buy nine floors of the building where she used to work, in Seibel Bay.

  She transferred half the money to a Gala Island Bank account, along with a tax statement, and took the other half, in panoramic bitcards, back to her hotel room, where she stowed it in the safe. That night, she got the bundles out and piled them on the bed, letting their filth defile her to the point of purification. Then she sat down to examine them. This is what the pyramid of money conjured up.

  A strategy combining financial and real-estate investments – a company that would give her free reign to implement the bold ideas her managers were always squashing – a season of hard partying at the worldcasino in Villa Crevatti – a trip to the Loop Delta to clear her skull of bad vibrations and fill it with new business ideas – an overdue gift for her brother Vanico: titanium caps for his eldest son’s deteriorating knees – or she could go to her mother’s place, give her a kiss on the forehead, take another serve of misunderstanding, and calmly set down on the living room table enough bitcards to buy a hundred-and-twenty-square-rod apartment.

  As soon as she decided that the first thing to do was administer this proof of affection to her mother, Lerena realised that she could do nothing at all with the bitcards until she had shown her gratitude to Dona Munava, as they had called her. It wasn’t just an abstract moral obligation; it was muscular: she couldn’t pick up a bundle of the cash with any thought in mind but giving it to that woman. Not a single bundle.

  How do you interpret that, Suano? Lerena asks, interrupting her story: not being able to move your arm unless it’s to…

  Suano doesn’t open his mouth.

  No kneecaps or apartments or vacations or plans. She was absolutely sure that if she used a single bitcard for any purpose other than repaying Munava’s gift, something bad would happen to her. Not that fate or luck would deal her a one-off punishment; they would turn against her, and for good reason: giving back was a whole world-view.

  And now the world was hiccoughing. Hic. Hic. It was asking her to receive a sacrament. Lerena had never felt called in that way, and the most unusual thing for her was feeling with her heart and mind at once. Placing her hand on the pile of money – she could touch it now – she swore in a whisper that she would not invest or spend a single bitcard more than she needed to survive until Munava had received her due: the gift that would prove Lerena’s gratitude and honour the promise that she was making. She was the one who was making the promise. She put twenty-five thousand panoramics in a bag and placed the bag in her little backpack; then she returned the rest of the money to the safe. She realised that to make a promise is to have a certain idea of oneself, and to keep it is to reaffirm a personality. To know oneself better.

  What does Suano think?

  Suano doesn’t open his mouth.

  Although still determined, Lerena had entered a phase of stagnation. Not that she was having second thoughts about searching for Munava – the possibility of failing in the search had not occurred to her – but she noticed right from the start how obstacles kept cropping up. When she went back to the building where she used to work and took the lift up to the twenty-fifth floor, where she thought the woman and her two bodyguards had got in, the light gave her a sudden migraine, followed by dizziness and nausea. Perhaps she had been smoking too much; perhaps it was returning to the scene of her mistreatment; but she was not defeated. She came back the next morning, after a day without smoking. The entire twenty-fifth floor was occupied by an airline from Banion Island. So Lerena went down to the twenty-fourth, where there were six offices. The first belonged to a patent attorney. The second to a river transport company. The third to a law firm: Lerena rang the bell, let the receptionary scan her, and as soon as she set foot on the carpet was met with such a flood of acid waves she retreated immediately. The fourth office belonged to an importer of production-line tools for making plastic containers.

  On the door of the fifth office, Lerena read:

  Diffusion Inc.

  Protect – Manage – Disseminate

  She rang; someone opened the door, and she went in. The vestibule was decorated with photographs of prize-winning animals, pylons in fields, marinas, steel houses with solar panels, campuses, and the foundations of buildings under construction. To the waxy, smili
ng secretary, Lerena said bluntly that she was looking for Munava. Dona Munava? replied the man, surprised. It took him a moment to realise that he had given himself away: he knew her. Not here… he stammered. Lerena didn’t want to upset a member of the group that had helped her, but she sensed immediately that she was, of course, dealing with a constellation, a system, a set of interlinked parts. So where…? she hazarded. The secretary took her to see a savings administrator. Lerena drank muddy coffee and left a lipstick mark on the cup; she said she had a personal message for Munava, watched the man write something down, and left Diffusion with an address in Melirden, an outlying suburb, where there was supposed to be a dressmaker’s shop, which turned out to be a haberdashery attended by an old galvanised cyborg. This old lady sent her to talk with her son, who was a foreman in a canned-food plant, and he sent her to his ex-wife, a potter with a workshop in the city; the potter was Munava’s second cousin, though she hadn’t seen her for seven years, and she was the one who told Lerena about the Felinezo Hills. None of this, Lerena felt, was getting her anywhere. And yet, persistence in the task of giving thanks was enlarging the space inside her: there was a wide desert in her soul, dotted with oases. In the days that followed, an impersonal, external force kept stopping her, sidetracking her, bouncing her off elastic ropes, car and all, from the suburbs to the country to the island’s central ranges. Until one afternoon, in the bar of a fluid station, while she was scolding herself for leaving lipstick marks on cafito cups, something she overheard in a conversation between customers sent her back to the city and the office of an agent who represented variety artists.

  He was exuberant and cheerful, but turned to steel as soon Lerena asked him about Munava. Lerena said that all she wanted to do was express her gratitude. This sentence, she had discovered already, tended to smooth away some of the impediments, as if it were taken for granted in certain circles that a great many people had reason to be thankful to Munava and her followers. With a trace of tenderness, the agent showed her a promotional photo: it was Munava, Dielsi Munava, five or six years younger than the woman in the lift, with wavy chestnut hair, drawn cheeks and deep forest eyes. She made a powerful impression, in more than one way. Lerena felt that the photo was encouraging her to go ahead and give thanks, but at the same time holding her back, like a hand against her chest. What she managed to get out of the agent was that the woman in the photo had been a famous roganto singer, a star of that fruity melodic style, at once diaphanous and mocking, which, to the eternal chagrin of Lerena’s mother, was confined to the island’s central ranges. Dielsi Munava was no longer in show business. At the time of the photo, she had been suffering from phesomosis, a lymphatic disorder; that was why she looked so pale. That’s a lie! Lerena found herself saying, as if she were channelling her mother’s generation, but then she backed it up for herself: A lie! No, miss, it’s true, said the agent. Why would she have retired otherwise, when she was so popular? It’s a lie, murmured Lerena, with a certain ferocity. Somewhat to her surprise, the man began to back down. Well, it’s what they told me, miss, and I didn’t go investigating. After a hesitation, he added: It was like there was an invisible fence, with a sign on it warning me not to. Pishfiddle! said Lerena, though she could see the sign now too, or part of it.