ElElorigen

origende
delalasubstancia
substanciaimportará
importarála
laimportancia
importancia del origen
deMÓNICA
by MÓNICAHELLER
HELLER

Presenta
Presents

SED
THIRST

DE
FOR

ÉXITO
SUCCESS
GEOMETRÍA PUEBLO NUEVO
GEOMETRÍA PUEBLO NUEVO

MARÍA GUERRIERI MARCELO GALINDO

PAULA CASTRO
MARÍA GUERRIERI CONSTANZA
MARCELO GIULIANI
GALINDO
PAULACOTELITO
CASTRO MÓNICA HELLER
CONSTANZA GIULIANI
ARIEL CUSNIR
COTELITO MARIANAHELLER
MÓNICA LÓPEZ
CLARA
ARIELESBORRAZ
CUSNIR MARIANA LÓPEZ
CLARA ESBORRAZ
en colaboración con
PABLO KATCHADJIAN y BÁRBARA
in collaboration with WAPNARSKY
PABLO KATCHADJIAN & BÁRBARA WAPNARSKY
 The workers would gather in Thirst for Success bar, exhausted by the
day’s work. They’d drink coffee, play cards... What else would they do? They
would do lots of things that will all be described in good time, and they really
enjoyed themselves, and at seven o’clock in the morning they’d go back to
work with their spirits refreshed. The nights were intense in contrast to the
appearance of Thirst for Success by day: bourgeois and shopkeepers having
tea and toast for breakfast, and meatballs with mashed potatoes, or chicken
breasts with salad for lunch while discussing their business with irritated
clients. The night shift and the day shift’s paths didn’t usually cross. But
some non-worker customers had discovered that Thirst for Success’s best
time – six-thirty to seven-thirty, mornings and evenings – was when the two
shifts overlapped. One of those customers was the Doctor, who lived across
the street on the third floor and had breakfast there every day at seven in the
morning as he watched the last workers leaving the bathroom, groomed and
smiling in their freshly laundered uniforms (Thirst for Success had a night-
time laundry service), pushing and shoving each other, cracking jokes and
hitting each other on the helmets with their tools. But on the morning this
story begins, the Doctor was looking at something else: a bullet hole in a
pane of glass. He had deliberately sat next to the pane of glass to study the
hole. ‘Why was he studying the hole?’ would be the natural question at this
point. He was studying the hole because he’d made it himself the night before:
he’d fired his revolver from the balcony and nobody had noticed. That was
what worried the Doctor: the bullet had pierced the glass with implausible
perfection and been lost on the floor amidst the cigarette butts. The butts
had been swept up at some point, but the hole was still there. The Doctor
stuck his finger into the hole and pulled it out in amazement.
 Right then, so there isn’t much more to this situation for now. The
story starts just after it. The Doctor got into the car to go to his Notary’s.
Two people worked at the Notary’s: Heller and Ruiz. Previously, there had
also been a notary, but she’d gone off to the jungle. Heller’s job involved
checking spreadsheets with sums of money and changing all the ‘1s’ to
‘6s,’ while Ruiz’s involved changing the ‘4s’ to ‘5s.’ Heller and Ruiz worked
there in the mornings; in the afternoons the Notary’s operated as a
Dental Surgery. Both the Notary’s and the Dental Surgery were run by the
Doctor. But Heller and Ruiz didn’t have their afternoons free: from 2 to
7 p.m. Monday to Friday, they attended an Acceptance Workshop which
the Doctor had sent them to the day he discovered they didn’t like their
work. The centrepiece of the Notary’s was a Table, and on the Table stood
a Greek lamp, which the Doctor claimed to have found while diving in the
Pacific Ocean, which was an oddity. The rarity wasn’t so much the lamp –
which looked much like any other second-century-BC Greek lamp – as the
location. It was a bronze lamp that ran on oil, but the Doctor had taken it
to an electrician to be converted into an electric lamp. News of the Greek
lamp in the Pacific Ocean had reached archaeologists, who’d been calling
him for weeks asking him to... The Table had been found somewhere
else, and it was beautiful. Then – and this is where it all begins – the
Doctor had been driving when he’d received a call from an archaeologist
who went by the surname of Bad, and for some reason – perhaps the
surname – the Doctor had allowed himself to be talked into handing the
lamp over to science for inspection for a few days. The Doctor called the
Notary’s; Ruiz answered. ‘Hello, Doctor.’ ‘The lamp, Ruiz, I want you to
wrap it carefully.’ ‘What lamp?’ ‘The lamp, Ruiz!’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said Ruiz and
hung up. But suddenly Ruiz wasn’t’ sure there ever had been a lamp at
the Notary’s. He asked Heller, and the same thing happened to Heller:
the lamp kept appearing and disappearing in their imaginations, which
is tantamount to saying it kept turning on and off. They’d been taught at
the Acceptance Workshop that, when they doubted the existence of the
things around them, they should stand face to face, concentrate and let
a question appear. So that’s what they did, and then the certainty of the
lamp appeared between them, and inside that certainty came the question
to be asked.
The waiter came over and asked
him ‘What are you doing?’ ‘What’s
this hole?’ the Doctor replied
authoritatively, but the waiter just
shrugged.
 HAS ANYONE
SEEN THE LAMP
IN THE NOTARY’S?
I DON’T KNOW, IT’S ALWAYS
THERE ON THE TABLE.

LET’S HAVE A LOOK.

LET’S HAVE A LOOK.

COULDN’T
COULDN’T IT BE
IT BE ONON
THETHE
DESK
DESK IN THE
IN THE OFFICE?
OFFICE?
 THIS IS SOMETHING
QUITE DIFFERENT
FROM A LAMP.

IT’S A
GERMAN
SAUSAGE.

Instead of a lamp,
there’s a German
sausage.

IT’S A
GERMAN
SAUSAGE

THEY USED TO CALL IT

A VIENNESE SAUSAGE IN
MY FAMILY.
SAME OK, BUT IT’S A
THING! DISASTER THAT,
APART FROM
THE LAMP GOING
MISSING FROM
THE NOTARY’S,
THERE’S A GIANT
SAUSAGE ON THE
FILING TABLE.

LET’S
COVER IT
UP WITH…

SAND
 DID YOU
MANAGE
TO FIND MY
LAMP?

NOPE.
 No, no, Doctor, I’m talking about
the pile of sand in the middle of
the road; there could obviously
IT ISN’T be a lamp under a mound of
UNDER THAT sand, as well as a Reserve. I’m
MOUNTAIN OF only saying something of the Fine, but I’m
SAND, IS IT? same order so that you can see talking about
we understand your concern. the mountain of
Imagine if a park ranger said, sand on top of
‘Has anyone seen the National the Table.
Reserve? A notary’s very clearly
can’t keep running smoothly
without a lamp.’

But we’ve already

checked: the lamp isn’t
there. Which lamp was No, it was a new lamp, an
it? The one on your antique lamp in fact, a Greek
desk for about lamp I found when diving;
ten years? I brought it here less than
a week ago.

Ah, no, we haven’t see it

But you were looking for it…

How can you look for some-
thing you haven’t seen?

No, it’s just we were looking

for the old lamp, not the Greek
one, and we found a Frankfurter
sausage instead.
Are you accusing us
of hiding the lamp? Sausages from Frankfurt?
Never heard of them.
No, I’m saying that if you’ve
looked everywhere, that’s the
only place it could be. I’m sure you have: there
are ordinary sausages
and ones that aren’t
Beneath a Great Mound of ordinary, which are the
sand is a National Reserve. ones from Frankfurt. I don’t know them. But what
you’re telling me could be of
use to my wife Kenny, who’s
All I can see is a pile of sand, preparing for an international
no ‘Great’ mound, and be- minced beef modelling
sides, the idea of ‘National But they’re sausages
competition.
Reserve’ is a very broad one
which doesn’t exclude the
lamp. You’re being so precise
just to expel my lamp from
the universe of possibilities Sausages from
makes me think you’re hid- Frankfurt.
ing something under that
pile of sand.
 Yes, yes, but it’s similar. The essential
condition, of both the hamburger and the Yes, yes, but it’s as if the
sausage, is first and foremost reconversion. problem were in your body:
Then agglomeration. In a way, it’s identical you can’t open the…
to the unifying principle of jurisprudence…
What I mean is, kneading a sausage
from Frankfurt can be quite exotic, and
what they’re always looking for in these …the notary wasn’t
competitions is innovation. feeling precise in her
movements and…
Oh, I didn’t
know that.
And did you ask the notary
about my lamp?

We can’t.
…and that interfered with her
ability to do her job, so…

WHY …that’s why we think she

CAN’T YOU?! went off to the jungle so
as not to put her notary’s
Because she’s licence at risk, because…
gone to the
jungle.

…because the problem actually lies

either in the doors or the people who
TO THE JUNGLE? DID SHE SAY were living in this house, and we
ANYTHING? DID YOU THINK SHE should find out who they were before…
LOOK STRESSED OUT? OR MAYBE
SHE WANTED A RISE… BUT THAT HAS NOTHING
That’s all she TO DO WITH MY LAMP!
said: that she
preferred the You asked why
jungle. the notary…
Did she take my lamp with her?

I don’t think so; I think she was

tired of the problems we’ve been
having with the doors since we’ve You’re making me dizzy.
been in this office. They don’t shut
properly or they’re hard to open. And what do you want us to do,
Doctor? We can’t always be on the
lookout for other people’s mistakes.

That’s true, and the

main problem is they’re But if you want to
symbolic; you can open a door and you’ve
hardly say you have got the door-handle in Let people free themselves, please,
problems with doors your hand, we aren’t what are we talking about? I didn’t
without thinking it’s going to claim that say you shouldn’t do anything.
the people that are the the problem…
problem.
 Yes, she was complaining.
When people complain, it
sounds like they’re asking Not me. When I get
others to do things. angry, I complain, but
I don’t ask anyone to
do anything. If I get
too angry, I take my
glasses off, go and get
my revolver and fire it
at a pane of glass. But
Well, there now all I want is to
you go. find my lamp.

Actually though, I did want

to ask you for something,
but nothing to do with
this, something else.
OOF!
WHAT?

Oh, nothing. To run a

little errand for me.

Oh, no,
not more
errands.

Something that
won’t be any
trouble at all.
Let’s
hear it…

I need you to
help me pick up a
motorboat from
Is it yours?
a mooring.

It was my sister’s, but if I can find

somewhere to keep it, it’ll be mine. I can’t
pick it up on my own, and anyway, I need
one of you to keep it in their flat.

Sounds a bit over the

top. What’s the boat
got to do with us?
Fine. No lamp, no boat…
I SEND YOU TO AN
ACCEPTANCE WORKSHOP,
BUT YOU WON’T ACCEPT
ANYTHING!
 The Doctor left the Notary’s irritated, muttering things that were inaudible He kept the car running and again took the Mill Road. He recalled his
but in any case negative. He got into his car and took off his glasses; he took irritation and realised it had shifted onto another plane: resentment towards
the gun out of the glove compartment, fired it at the windscreen and left a his employees for stopping him... That was it! What they’d stopped him doing!
perfect, round hole. Just as he was about to hand his lamp to Bad, it had disappeared. ‘The lamp
He started his car, and as he turned onto the Mill Road, a sea breeze disappeared as if by magic,’ he said to himself. He said it to himself then
began to blow through the hole. ‘Ah, what a beautiful breeze... If only my car immediately told himself another thing: ‘Magic doesn’t exist, what exists is
was a motorboat and, instead of running a notary’s, I were a boatman’. He magical effects.’ And as he pronounced the words ‘magical effects’ out loud,
took a bend, felt the breeze, turned his head and spotted Innocence asleep he realised he was approaching the Notary’s for the second time. To avoid
on the back seat. He wondered how she could still be asleep after the noise driving past the door again he went the wrong way up a one-way street and
of the gunshot. He released his left hand from the steering wheel to pick up took the Mill Road for the third time. He sat there musing on his imaginary
the gun and fired again; this time the bullet didn’t hit the glass but passed Arab descent and the very real effects it had on his behaviour. He resolved to
precisely through the hole left by his previous shot, and seeing the bird still ask Innocence if his descent was credible and saw Innocence was asleep. He
asleep, he came to the same conclusion he always reached: that Innocence shouted to wake her up and Innocence woke up.
was deaf. Which he was very well aware wasn’t true, as he used to wake her
up by shouting, and the shouting did indeed use to wake her up. Innocence
was a black seagull. ‘A black seagull,’ he repeated to himself. But that fact
contributed nothing to his understanding of why she wouldn’t wake up. The
doctor was – and this is an essential piece of information to understand his You’re going round
outlook on life and ultimately this story – of Arab descent. Not descent from and round in circles,
you’ll never get
any old Arab, but one charged with Arab traits he imagined an American anywhere.
scriptwriter would portray in a war film: viz., irascible. The doctor identified
strongly with that adjective: ‘irascible’. ‘Irascible,’ he repeated to himself. He That’s true,
but…
was always repeating it to himself. And by repeating it so often, he had happily Go straight
adapted and resigned himself to the hot-tempered side of his character, which ahead down
stemmed from his imaginary Arab descent. that road.

He drove around in his car hoping to find something unexpected, and as

he drove, Innocence awoke of her own accord. Instead of what he expected
to find, he discovered something predictable: that if you go round in a circle,
you come back to where you started. From the Notary’s, he had taken the He headed down the road, but after less than thirty seconds, he came up
road that led to the mill and, without giving much thought to what he was against a giant mountain of sand in the middle of the roadway with a hundred
doing, had driven back from the mill to the Notary’s. He didn’t get out: it was labourers at work. He wanted to find out what was under the mountain of
the time Heller and Ruiz were at the Acceptance Workshop. ‘It’ll probably sand, but he had to ask twice, and as he did so, he realised that his Arab
help them accept they have to keep my motorboat in their flat.’ descent receded when faced with a crowd of workers.
 EXCUSE
ME, WHAT’S
UNDER THIS EVERYONE
MOUNTAIN? KNOWS THAT:
A NATIONAL
RESERVE.

EXCUSE ME, WHAT’S UNDER

THE MOUNTAIN OF SAND?
 SORRY, IT’S
JUST… I’VE GOT AND A TAB TO
6 KIDS TO FEED. SETTLE IN… I’LL BUILD A TUNNEL
THIRST FOR INTO THE NATIONAL
SUCCESS. RESERVE AND FIND
THE LAMP.
And how will you build the tunnel? I’m having
How come you’re so sure my lamp’s dinner behind
in here? You’ve never seen it. my wife’s back!
Which is tantamount
Yes, but… Think… Have a look, a careful to saying you’re eating
look: it’s an oil lamp but at the same time in Heller’s presence.
enlightens; it’s Greek but appeared in the
Pacific; it’s international but yours; it’s
useful but at the same time of scientific That’s different.
interest; its place is the Notary’s which at The other day
the same time is a Dental Surgery. Perhaps the notary was
the doors don’t open or close because what
goes in and what comes out is on another COULDN’T YOU telling me…
plane. Which is tantamount to saying you HAVE CALLED
can enter a place with your head completely
enlightened and leave in total darkness.
HER?
She called me… And she said, ‘Do you
Like a bar! realise how much truth there is in
having a tooth pulled compared to the
Exactly. Or let’s be honest: simple act of having a building that
has the signing of a title already exists with people already living
deed ever ended in a tooth in it registered by a notary? What does
being pulled? that contribute to this reality? Nothing,
it contributes nothing.
But there are timetables! What kind of
twaddle is that? There are timetables Does the notary want me to close the
that order us. It’s a Notary’s in the office now, when we don’t even have
morning, a Surgery in the afternoon. a signature to vouch for anything?

That’s all in your Head. I’m not No, what she’s saying is more profound
ordered by timetables at all. and more sensitive: her actions are
minor, slight, subtle… You can’t see it
because you’re too busy managing and
Tell me the truth, it’s
looking for that lamp. And anyway, you
your lunch hour. Is that
can’t see it because it isn’t your problem.
why you aren’t at the
Notary’s?
The lamp is my problem, and I
Do you know what can’t see it either. Don’t worry, it’s
time I have dinner? nothing personal with you people. If
you’re going to help me to find the
How could I? It’s lamp… But are you sure it’s here?
none of my business.
It’s obvious it’s here. Can’t you see the
connection between the two mountains
At ten in the of sand that Heller mentioned?
But that’s
morning.
the Notary’s
opening times!

After being found out by the Doctor, Ruiz offered to collaborate in the search
I told you, I’m for the lamp when he was actually simply doing something else: namely, working.
not ordered by Heller had given him the idea by relating the two mountains of sand, but the
You’re eating timetables.
behind my back. last thing she wanted was for Ruiz to work so hard. She was trying to distract
him with sausages and fruit he hid in the Notary’s; she’d peel potatoes in the
Acceptance Workshop and say the potatoes weren’t there or were something
else, but Ruiz always saw them for what they were and accepted them.
 The workers’ clothes were washed in the wee small hours at Thirst for
Success. They were hung out on ropes in the traditional way, and fastened And what’s
with pegs; nothing special, except for the accumulated water, which had beneath the
Reserve! What is beneath
made it necessary to open up a manhole and install a drain to prevent Thirst the Reserve?
for Success from flooding. But since the building work had been completed,
the number of workers doing their laundry had tripled and the drainage
had become inadequate. Was Ruiz aware of that? Probably. So, Ruiz was An estofado.
probably hiding this inadequacy from the laundry staff just the way he would Ooh, a hotpot, yes.
Yummy. What kind?
sometimes deceive people who put his drinks on the tab. And outside, as
Ruiz approached with his co-workers, Heller stood amid the clothes hanging Sausage.
from the lines extracting the juice from some aloe vera plants that decorated
the windows of Thirst for Success. Never tried it.
Any good?
Me neither,
that’s why I’m
I hear some people looking for it.
make brews out of What?
aloe vera. Is that what Italians like it if
you’re doing, Heller? it’s with sausages
from Frankfurt.

Sausages from
Are you’re making Something Frankfurt
some drinks? like that… or German
sausages. And do you know
how to prepare it?

Is it
cheap? No, I don’t. Nor
Reckon so, there’s aloes
does Ruiz, but…
everywhere… And some folk
So what’s the point of all this
put aloe vera on their wounds.
effort? Ah, sure, tiredness
makes things look like they’re
worth it, typical. But you
Gross!
have seen the estofado then?
What do I dunno, they must
they do have some idea.
that for? No, we’ve only seen the
sausage in its initial, shall we
say, natural form; now I’m
looking for the sausage already
Can a plant really have transformed into an estofado.
so many properties It can, as long So they didn’t
and none of them do as there’s hire you?
any harm? no allergic
reactions.
Si, I was hired
as an outsourced
So does the provider.
problem lie with Things that do unerring good Which is like
the plants or the aren’t that rare. It’s the same a contract that
with the National Reserve, which ensures you’re hired
people then?
protects what’s inside but also somewhere else.
protects what surrounds it.
So what does
Heller do with Well, there you
the aloes? I’m just go… I was born
checking. before yesterday…

Yeah, sure, it’s a just an

expression, we speak the
same language… Quite
Well, if you’re checking, a long time before, I’m
tell me what all this has to thirty-five years old.
do with the lamp, right? What I mean is, so much
Hahahahahah because interest in a lamp?
Nope.
they’re beating about the Look, if I spot a lamp
bush. Did you see the news while I’m looking for
about the chicken? the estofado, I’ll let
you know.
Are they offering a
They called the fire reward for the lamp?
brigade to get it down What I mean is…
from a tree, it’s incredible. hahahahahaha. This is
What are people a partnership now, ok?
thinking of? I don’t
know. You’ll have to
subcontract
yourself then.
Let’s suppose I do,
I accept, ok?
Later… hahahahahaha it turns out
that while they were rescuing the
chicken from the tree – because
they still didn’t know they were
going to find a chicken up there
– the firemen see there’s this guy
hauling a truck up a building
with ropes. *
Really?
While all this was going on, Kenny, the Doctor’s wife, was at home making
minced-beef figures. The fact she was doing this has an explanation: she’d
What a waste of effort. Did the always been a mystical in nature but had repressed it by going in for materials
haulier leave the chicken up there? science with a company that built bridges and oil rigs; she did that without
If he had his hands that full…
What a waste of effort. But, hey, complaining, even with a degree of pleasure – the pleasure of repressing her
what’s with that lamp? own nature, but also the pleasure of designing bridges and oil rigs – until
retirement; with plenty of free time and no repression, her nature began to
What
lamp?
make demands, and it was then, watching a cookery programme, that Kenny
discovered minced-beef modelling. ‘So many years doing things to not accept
Nothing, you told the Doctor there my own nature,’ Kenny said to herself as, in near ecstasy, she was making
was a lamp, but then you started
on about the estofado. Know
a ball with another ball inside. She stood gazing at what she’d made, until
what? I wasn’t born yesterday. she squeezed it, and the balls then began to take on the shape of an axe; but
Or before yesterday either.
suddenly the axe regained its initial form, two balls which were stretched
into the shape of a worm, which immediately morphed into... Kenny went to
fetch more beef but grabbed an apple.
 The problem for Kenny was to stem the flow of forms, because any still
form was worse than the movement. Unless a form came along that asked to
stem the movement. And while Kenny knew that, in principle, the appearance
of such a form was tantamount to death, she also knew that something like it
could exist in life: the apple-covered projector was the proof. We need to talk
about this projector covered by an apple, which came into this story together
with the Greek lamp. It was like this. One day the Doctor came back from
an expedition to the Pacific Ocean organised by the diving school he was
attending; he put his suitcase down on the floor and placed two packages on
the table. ‘What’s that?’ asked Kenny. ‘That, this,...’ said the Doctor with a
smile, gazing at the packages, ‘I found while diving.’ But Kenny didn’t believe
him. ‘Oh, yeah?’ she laughed, and then the Doctor, who wasn’t capable of lying
more than once a conversation, told him how a local diver, a country man, an
Indian, had offered him two things he’d found diving – without a mask or a
tank – that day: a lamp and a projector, both bronze, both clearly antique,
though the projector looked modern. ‘The projector definitely works,’ the
country man had told him, and the Doctor had shown interest because it was
cheap and he wanted one to watch films on. The country man had said, ‘Both
or neither.’ ‘Hey!’ said the Doctor. ‘Otherwise I’ll have them melted down for
taps.’ The Doctor ended up buying both. Kenny opened the packages. The
projector, they soon found out, didn’t work: it didn’t even have a cord. Why
would it have a cord when it was ancient? The lamp didn’t have a cord either,
but that made sense because it was an oil lamp. They put olive oil in it and lit
it. It was perfect, but anyway the Doctor said, ‘I’m taking it to the technician
to have a wire fitted and a... lamp.’ ‘That’s too bad,’ Kenny said. ‘Perhaps the
projector runs on oil, too?’ asked the Doctor, but they couldn’t find anywhere
to pour it in. ‘How did you ever think a rusty old brass projector could work,’
Kenny asked the Doctor. ‘I don’t know, you think differently when you’re
travelling,’ came his sheepish reply.
 The next day, the Doctor went to work and took the lamp with him to
leave at the technician’s. Kenny was left alone, staring at the projector with
curiosity. She said to herself, ‘I’d like to know what this projector is.’ She
didn’t actually say it to herself, but that was the trigger. She searched the
Internet and found nothing. Then she looked for information about the
lamp and quickly identified it as Greek, second century BC. Several had been
found, but never of course in the Pacific Ocean. She then searched on ‘second
century BC Greek projector’, and she did find something: accounts of what
the Greeks in antiquity called ‘projectors of all things.’
Archaeologists assumed this to be a myth, as they’d never found one. ‘Aha,’
Kenny said to herself, looking at the projector with interest. One day, Kenny
was wandering around the house at a loose end, listening to the whispers of
her mystical nature in the background. ‘Hello, hello,’ it said to her. ‘Hello,’ she
said, and pointed the projector at the television and turned on the television.
‘Haha,’ she said. There was a cooking programme on, and though she
didn’t like cooking, when the chef said ‘Grab the apple,’ Kenny
grabbed an apple from the fridge; then the cook said
‘Now put it in the food processor,’ and Kenny, She looked at the result and realised the form was perfect. It was at that
who didn’t have a food processor, stuffed moment – and this is important – that the Greek lamp disappeared.
it, on the cook’s prompt, into the Dazed from the projector with the apple, she looked at the television
mouth of the projector. screen again. Despite what reason might claim, it was still strange that, with
the projector covered, the chef was still there; the cook said, ‘Flatten the minced
beef,’ so Kenny grabbed a lump of minced beef from the fridge and... That was
how it started. Then she found out about the contest.
Now that’s all out in the open, we can return to our story’s present.
Kenny, then, was trying out some minced-beef forms for the contest when the
doctor suddenly came in with several male and female workers and irritating
enthusiasm. ‘We’re taking the motorboat up to the rooftop terrace!’ he shouted.
‘Great,’ replied Kenny, flattening a hedgehog. ‘And another thing,’ the Doctor
told her looking at the squashed hedgehog, ‘you need sausage-meat to win
the contest, because it’s more malleable and will allow you to be innovative.’
‘You think so?’ ‘I’m in no doubt.’ ‘Well, I can try.’ I’ll bring you some,’ said the
Doctor to Kenny, and to the workers he said, ‘Shall we?’ But a group wanted
to stay to help her with the beef: ‘As long as she doesn’t mind,’ they said. ‘No,
please, of course I won’t mind,’ said Kenny, not having thought about whether
she minded or not, so she immediately thought about it: she didn’t mind.
 semi-naked bodies against each other while making pelvic motions. This
produced elongated figures with baroque fringes, which they would then
offer to Kenny and hang from her neck like necklaces. No one was saying or
said a word. He felt attracted, but not so attracted that an event collateral
to the kneading of beef captured his complete attention: five yellow helmets
perched on the parquet in a perfect circle. As we were saying, the image
captured his complete attention but, we would add, not so complete that
he didn’t focus back on the dance. Not so much for lack of desire to knead
They left the flat in three groups: the doctor and two workers who used with the group than for fear of intervening and interrupting everything, he
the front lift, and three workers who went down in the side lift without decided to retreat to the rooftop terrace where minutes before they’d left the
realising a sixth worker had taken the emergency stairs. As he descended, motorboat. He climbed in and sat with his back to the steering wheel on the
an odd thought occurred to him: ‘Just being alone doesn’t mean I’m not a port side. He felt a cool breeze blowing, a cool breeze that inspired him to
group. A helmet, in this case my helmet, speaks for itself: even if the whole perform this revolutionary aesthetic act: he dumped some bins of rainwater
group isn’t there, it’s as if it were.’ He raised his eyes towards the ceiling into the boat and left his yellow helmet floating in it when it was full enough.
and said to himself, ‘Of all the workers I know, Ruiz is the only one who, As the helmet floated on the terrace, something difficult to describe was
when he’s on his own, it’s just like... he was on his own. He doesn’t form going on at the side of the road. So, in keeping with such difficulty, we’ll describe
any kind of group because he wears his helmet to hide. This thought left it quite inadequately: bespectacled teenager looking... weird-looking, cutting
him immersed in a series of reflections that gained and lost meaning as they off the leg sawing away at another virtually identical teenager, same hairstyle,
coiled and uncoiled. He thought about the yellow of his helmet and what the same clothes, same glasses, just as weird-looking. Duplicated, the weirdness
colour might stand for: ‘It doesn’t stand for anything, it stands for yellow. then seemed like something utterly commonplace and badly described. The
But yellow in conjunction with the helmet, provided the helmet isn’t there to Doctor, who unfortunately happened to be driving past in his car writing
conceal, represents what doesn’t need to be more than one in order to be a prescriptions, on seeing the freshly cut leg, went down to tend the teenager
group.’ He took it off to view it in its new expanded dimension and realised followed by all five workers. Without asking any questions, he tore a piece of
he was in the second basement. The helmet looked a greyish green that, jacket off one and wrapped it around the injured leg while the other teenager
as he retraced his steps and approached the exit door, veered towards the tried to keep sawing. That’s when one of the workers realised things could get
yellow which ‘It’s impossible to conceal it: colour is separated from matter even worse: he took the saw off him and threw it far out into the grass, put
just the way workers v...’ He wasn’t able to finish this thought because he one leg on his stomach and held him by the neck so that Ibuprofen (that was
was distracted by the fact that the glass of the entrance door was broken: it the Doctor’s name) could perform his healing and write out his prescription:
had a hole the size of a cannonball. He climbed through the hole to find the Amoxicillin 500 mg, iodine baths, 50 ml diluted in a litre of water twice a
Doctor’s car pulling away with Innocence flapping and jumping about on the day. He was going to note down a third thing but said something instead of
roof. writing: ‘May I know why you’re doing this?’ ‘For a dare.’ ‘So what was the
‘I’ll run holding my helmet and catch up with them,’ he said to himself, dare?’ ‘Whether I dared to or not.’ ‘Whether you dared to what or not?’ ‘To
and he ran in the direction of the car without a thought for the fact that all his cut off his leg in front of my little sister.’ ‘But now he’ll have to spend the rest
five companions were crammed into the back seat, or that the doctor couldn’t of his life with...’ ‘Yes, of course, without a leg, these are things not everyone
bear to drive any other way than with a free passenger seat, or for what was would dare to do because of the consequences they have: but I took the risk,
about to happen. What was about to happen was that he imagined himself I dared.’ ‘But what kind of...’ ‘It’s just that...’ ‘Shut it! Let me bandage him.’
catching up with the car and taking that sixth place in the back, and so he He bathed his leg with disinfectant and made a tight tourniquet until the leg
decided to go back to the flat with the group making minced-beef figures. slowly stopped bleeding. ‘And then I was going to cut off the other one.’ The
There were all his compañeros in the middle of a pagan rite, a spiral dance Doctor took off his glasses. He pulled the revolver out of his apron and fired
with Kenny at the Centre of the Scene. ‘Pagan rite’ and ‘spiral dance’: that with a sweep: the bullet cannoned off the lens of first one of the teenagers’
was how Roca (that was his name) translated what he’d just seen and couldn’t glasses then the other’s like a billiard ball. ‘Nooooooooooooooooooo,’ the
stop watching: his five companions were modelling the beef by rubbing their workers shouted in chorus: ‘Doctor! Look what the little sister’s doing.’
 INNOCENCE! The little girl ran off with the saw and passed the
Doctor grinning fiendishly, who tried in vain to grab her by the hair. With a
sudden lurch she broke free and carried on running. As she was trying to get
away, the teenager whose leg had been sliced off crawled across the grass and
grabbed her by the ankle so that she fell right on top of the saw. Innocence
had abandoned her severed wing at the roadside and had taken refuge in the
petrol station toilet. The Doctor, who had been tracking her with his eyes,
went into the bathroom to find her dying in the basin of the sink. ‘Doctor, it’s
not that I don’t like my life, but I don’t think I can ever like what I like most
again: going to sleep and waking up to your shouting.’ ‘But I can cure you, I’ve
done thousands of operations.’ ‘I understand, but I’d prefer a more edifying
fate: I want you to sacrifice me and deliver up my flesh for that contest.’
The Doctor then gave in to his desires as he never had before: he
immobilised her neck using the bathroom tap, took off his glasses and
pressed Innocence’s head against the lens. Through that small piece of glass,
he saw Innocence’s skull explode. Then he carefully cut off her head with a
modelling knife and put it away in his apron pocket. If we were to leave aside
the incident he had immediately afterwards with a fake policeman and a fake
revolver, we might say this was the last time he was seen firing a gun. And if
we take into account his appearance, his bedside manner, we might say we’re
about to see him without glasses for the first time: his face is pure, without
glazing, which still leaves us with the mystery of whether it’s a satisfied or an
unsatisfied face.
 THE RUMOUR THE RUMOUR
WENT ROUND WENT ROUND
THE WORKERS THAT THERE WAS A
THAT THEY WERE HIGHLY VALUABLE
SELLING SOME LAMP BURIED IN
SPECTACULAR THE GREAT MOUND.
HOTDOGS THEY AGREED AND
DOWNTOWN; AND SET OFF TO LOOK
AS THEY ATE THEM, FOR IT.
 Or do you mean ‘organic’
I think we should look for in the political sense?
that lamp before Ruiz comes.
So we find it first.

How much is Organic in the

it worth? sense that we
can be more
aware.

I don’t know, it doesn’t

matter. I’m curious already.

We lack a
goal.
And what do we do with the
lamp if we find it?

No idea, can’t
think of anything.
The lamp
could be the
That’s not goal.
good.

Why isn’t
it good? Perhaps looking
for the lamp will
lead us to being
more aware.

Because we lack
a goal: to be more
organic.

How aware do we
want to be?
We are organic,
we aren’t stones.

Stones are
organic.

Everything’s
organic.
 Organising
ourselves in our Has the assembly
own interests? already started?

Ah, right.
Yes, it
Let us know.
has.

And we don’t even

know if we’re
interested in the
lamp.

Several of us brought this

sand to the middle of the If you ask me,
road. You can consider that the key lies in
a fairly playful activity. the Doctor’s Why?
shots.
And don’t you think
it’s too much to you
that just beneath
this mountain there
are now so many Because they don’t seem to
things? make any sense. And what
seems to make no sense
might just make sense.
Perhaps they’re saying
that so we clear
the road. That’s pretty
far-fetched.
If we’re going to
be more organic, I It isn’t far-fetched,
think we should set it’s enigmatic.
up a representative
assembly and vote
on things.
I agree. We should set the
agenda to be discussed. I Ruiz said when
propose we start with one Ibuprofen gets angry,
that I find interesting: he shoots at glass.
when can we consider we
haven’t found the lamp? All the more reason. His
We’ve been looking for an anger’s connected to this
hour now, and it hasn’t lamp which won’t appear.
turned up. It’s a mystery.

Yeah, I’m on the

edge of my seat.
Not if you ask me, I
reckon he only shoots
Yeah, ok, but what he at glass because he
says is more important. can’t shoot at the I propose a vote: who
When can we definitely lamp: it’s a release thinks the shots are a clue
consider we haven’t that leads nowhere. to finding the lamp, and
found it? who thinks the lamp was
destroyed by the Doctor’s
shots and isn’t around
anymore?
 Sorry, I wanted to say something: putting
which way we vote to one side, I think
it’s important not just to agree the kind I don’t think you’re
of things to be voted on, but to adjust the likely to find an
voting options so we’re all truly represented estofado here.
by one of those options. Why
not?
Let’s try to look for options
that represent all positions
so we can build consensus.
Sounds fine.
Otherwise there’ll be no
progress.

Because all I can

imagine us finding
If you ask me, the key lies in the under a mountain of
Acceptance Workshop. It’s no sand are archaeological
coincidence that people who accept objects.
don’t find the lamp. To find things,
you have to have a suspicious outlook…
And what’s your opinion about
that thing they say about stuff
Or a curious appearing because someone’s
outlook! looking for it? Don’t you think
Yes, much it leads to the acceptance of
better: a curious anything that appears?
outlook.
Yes, they kind of
value the effort above
everything else.
So the Doctor did
himself a disservice
by sending them Exactly! Something looked And how would
to the Acceptance for is missing. And if you that work?
Workshop and to look accept it’s missing… well,
for your lamp at the itwon’t appear.
same time.
Something appears and that
I was thinking more about the immediately makes us assume it
search for the lamp leading us was looked for… And as there’s
somewhere else, about it being been an effort, the need for it is
an excuse for something deeper. justified. In other words, it’s
But the lamp isn’t
far away, it’s here. justified by inventing a false cause.
The Doctor told Ruiz.

I propose we abandon
logic, though,
I’ve got it, compañeros! because it’s formally I don’t feel like the
That could be a trap Compañero Ruiz said misleading and only archaeological effort
set by the bosses. there wasn’t a lamp under leads to error. goes against our
the mountain of sand, interests, though.
but an estofado.
 Archaeologists find stuff all the time;
the problem is, they don’t find what Because Heller
they’re looking for, or they pretend said it was under
what they’ve found was what they a mountain And is Sugarloaf
were looking for. It’s unprovable. of sand. a mountain of
sand?

Especially if some
random lamp has got
them all so worried. I dunno, never
But listen to this:
been to Rio de
EstoFado. Esto-Fado.
Janeiro.
Fado’s what they That’s
sing in Brazil. pretty far-
fetched.
PORTUGAL!

It doesn’t
Why’s it a make sense.
sacred mountain?

Well, bread’s pretty

h
h h
h h
h h
h !! sacred, and there’s a

h
h h
h h
h h
h hh cross at the top.

h
h hh
What if it was

h
h h
h h
h
sshh hh hh hh
in Portugal rather
than Brazil?

If you let
me finish, And… that changes everything
I’ll go on. quite a bit. Eurocentrism
makes you think we eat a lot
of bread in Latin America,
Eurocentrism could
as if we couldn’t be tempted
mean the opposite: that
with macaroons, éclairs,
GO ON!
we eat sugary bread
tarte tatin or a good tarte
thinking about pistachio
bourdaloue.
macaroons. Bakery
products just wouldn’t
make sense in Portugal,
Well, Fado’s sung in Brazil, right? Given the apparent though.
interest in this lamp, we can assume it’s worth some money,
It makes no
some sweet and easy money for us workers… So, if we have
difference.
the combination ‘sweet/Brazil’, and we’re looking for a
mountain at the same time, that mountain can only be the
Sugarloaf Mountain, which is a sacred mountain:
I’m sure that’s where the lamp’s buried. Let’s also remember
that they’ll try and
confuse us. One
Why are we compañero wanted to
looking for subcontract us.
a mountain?
 Sorry, but Fado was born in Portugal, even if they do sing it in
Brazil too. What I’m driving at is that I’m more interested in the
‘esto’ part, the ‘this’ part of esto-fado. If there’s been any misleading
intention, it’s precisely in ‘this’ because it points to something
immediately evident. Being so close to Brazil, it’s obvious the first
thing we’re going to think of is Brazil. Sugarloaf is just bait. They
think that, because we’re workers, we only eat bread or bread and
sugar. The issue is who’s stigmatising us.

Compañero
Ruiz?

The indicative ‘esto’ fills

with meaning by proxy
and could lead us to be
more aware of what’s
going on around us.

And is that how

we’d reach the lamp?
Do they want
us to vote on
something?

What
for?
To give it a bit
of organicity?

Well, we can vote. What’s the best way of getting the lamp:
a) questioning the superficiality of the images; b) being
guided simply by our curiosity; c) the Doctor’s annoyance;
d) talking to Ruiz and Heller to get them to deny the
lamp’s absence; e) following up the Brazilian Fado lead; f)
distrusting the Brazilian Fado red herring and travelling to
Portugal; g) following up the Eurocentrism lead; h) any of
the above, the lamp being a means, not an end?

Excuse me, I wanted to say something: the

options should be things of the same order and I’d suggest
things raised by a compañero. In other words, a we go
feeling and a place can’t be in competition. And ahead.
that business about the images is something
that hasn’t been dealt with in this assembly yet.

Well, Sugarloaf and

the Brazilian Fado To avoid being too linear, I’d suggest
have won, I can’t we broaden the lamp inquiry into
believe it. three branches: one group goes to Rio
de Janeiro, another to Portugal and
another to France, because someone
mentioned patisserie.
 Two days ago, in the Great Mound, the same day the Doctor discovered it, ‘OK, guys, I’m going down. But we can’t all of us go down,’ he said, and
Ruiz found the entrance to a cave when he was digging and had immediately the four little ones began to cry. ‘But no, no, I’ll go with two of you, because
covered it up to hide it from the labourers. He’d been thinking about the I’ve got two hands, and the four of you who stay at the top will have a very
cave and how to explore it without being spotted. It wasn’t that he was important mission: to guard the entrance and shout if anyone comes. No,
suspicious or competitive or anything like that, but he preferred to deal with better if you stand in front of the hole so no one will see you and shout if
the matter of the lamp discreetly. He preferred to deal with the matter of the anyone comes.’ They stopped crying. ‘Gabo (11), Vina (2), you come with me...
lamp discreetly because he sensed there were forces involved in this loss. Pamo (14), you’re in charge of the rest.’
We don’t know what forces he was referring to, and we don’t know whether They went into the tunnel. They set off like this: Gabo (11) at the front,
that was Ruiz’s wording. It wasn’t Ruiz’s formulation; Ruiz’s wording was: ‘I Ruiz (50) in the middle and Vina (2) at the rear. But then they changed around.
don’t want any more trouble than has already been created.’ What trouble The first two metres of the tunnel were narrow, but then it widened so much
had been created? A lamp had been lost and... so Ruiz was going to the Great that in places they could walk upright: Vina (2) could walk upright almost all
Mound. He was going with his children because it was his day to look after the time; Gabo (11) sometimes could and sometimes couldn’t; Ruiz (50) very
them. Ruiz, as he himself has said, had six children: Pamo (14), Gabo (11), occasionally. And now and again they had to dig to access other parts of the
Mimirta (3), Samo (2), Vina (2) and Sambio (2). tunnel.
Down they headed. At one point, something unexpected happened: the
exact time arrived when Vina (3) had been born three years ago. Ruiz took
out a little cake he’d hidden, tried to light the three candles, but they kept
going out due to the lack of oxygen, so they sang her happy birthday in the
dark, gave her a hug and pressed on. ‘This must lead to the National Reserve,’
Ruiz said after a while. ‘Right,’ replied Gabo (11) and Vina (3). Well, it did.
We won’t describe or recreate the whole process. We’ll just relay something
we find interesting: they found things along the way, the more ancient the
further they descended: a boat, a car, a wagon, a boot, a Viking-looking axe,
a Luristan hatchet, a Neolithic axe, a Palaeolithic axe, a hominid skull, an
enormous femur.

When they arrived, they realised there was no one at the Great Mound.
This worried Ruiz, who was unaware that the workers had decided digging
there would be to fall into the bosses’ trap. But at the same time it made him
happy, because he no longer had to act discreetly. He took away the stones,
and the tunnel appeared.
 What’s
this, an
ecosystem?

Finally, they reached the

place they were expecting
to reach: the National
Reserve. And while reaching
it came as no surprise, they
were surprised to see what
they saw.
 OK, I GET IT,
BUT IT’S STILL A
POND WITH THE
SMELL OF FABRIC
CONDITIONER.
I’ll explain! There’s an idea
of ecosystem which is
the natural arrangement
of things through the
relationship between species
and environment. BUT THEN THERE’S THE
IDEA OF FENG SHUI.

which is the
harmonious
arrangement of
things in a given
space.

Sure, that’s
because
The national reserve
we’re right
is a perfect mix beneath
of ecosystem
and feng shui. the
workers’
laundry,
and the
liquid
spills
down here.
 There was always a
Yes, and it’s the water mixed laundry because the
with fabric conditioner that workers always washed
allows this habitat to exist. their clothes up here.
That’s what I was trying
to explain to you.
Before
there
What??? was
This is the a
.
water from laundry
Thirst for
Success’s
laundry?

And I
want to ask you
another question: have
you seen a Greek lamp
around here?

No, I haven’t see any; here

in Latin America we’ve
got everything we want,
we don’t need anything
imported.

What was it
like before?

SCREW
THE
IMF

what?
Before
Back at the Notary’s, Heller was pouring the aloe vera extract he’d collected
into other smaller fish-tanks into one giant fish-tank. As the liquid rose, a
sausage floated up to the surface.
This came as no surprise at all to Heller, as she’d put the sausage there,
but what she didn’t understand was why the sausage had something on it
that might be a hair, or rather, an eyelash. The sausage had just been taken
out of a vacuum pack but, of course, there could also be a hair in the vacuum
if there were sausages in there as well. Sadly, the vacuum is something else
that’s unprovable. ‘Hair and sausage aren’t contradictory things,’ thought Bad didn’t like waiting, it made him nervous. Heller said she’d be right
Heller, ‘or maybe in this new ecosystem another order of things is possible,’ with him but kept him waiting for a while. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, just to
she said aloud to herself excitedly, ‘and desirable!’ She inspected the sausage keep stalling, while thinking ‘There’s a human intervention here, but there’s
closely through the hole in the fish-tank: the hair sprouted directly from also something as natural as humanity.’ ‘I’m Bad,’ he said through the door
the sausage; it wasn’t implanted in a transparent voice. Heller liked him as soon as she saw him. Bad noticed
like some practical joke. And the Fish-Tank and asked her what she was doing. Heller explained what was
while she was inspecting it, Bad visible to the naked eye: ‘I put a sausage in the Fish-Tank and then filled the
arrived and rang the doorbell Fish-Tank with aloe vera extract.’ ‘And to what purpose?’ he asked. ‘Nothing
several times as if they didn’t special, I wanted to see what would happen.’ At the interest shown by the
want to open the door for him. archaeologist, she explained that she’d discovered an eyelash growing in
the sausage. ‘Given time, it could become a true archaeological ecosystem,’
he said to her, and asked about what he was really interested in – namely,
MEANWHILE... the lamp – although what he was really interested in was the projector, but
for some reason, Bad assumed there’d be less resistance to handing over a
lamp. He thought wrong, despite his clever face. Heller told him the lamp
was nowhere to be found and that she and Ruiz had been looking for it at the
Notary’s. ‘ Have you hidden it?’ asked Bad. Heller replied that they hadn’t, by
any means, and stopped paying attention to him. So, to convey to Heller how
important the lamp was to him, he explained that it was crucial in feng shui
terms, and the place where it was was of importance to the human ordering
of other things. Feng shui spreads a harmonious, balanced, conscious order.
If Heller didn’t know where the lamp was, she was keeping the lamp not only
from science as an object of scientific interest, but also from feng shui as
an element in relation to that other element which Bad was really interested
in: namely, the projector. Feng shui is inspired by wind/water energy, which
precisely excluded from the whole electrical elements more closely linked to
earth like the lamp and the projector. Heller looked at him as if for the last
time as she went to open the door, clarifying that the lamp was an oil lamp
dating from the second century BC. But Bad was already abreast of the repairs
the Doctor had made to it: ‘Don’t you realise it’s not time that matters, but
how these elements are organised today? The time of existing objects is the
present, as they continue to affect the energetic balance of any ecosystem.’
Heller then made an observation that led the archaeologist with the clever
face to have a rather scary über-clever face: ‘So what happens when a herd of
animals decides to follow a trail and then reorganise and change course? ‘The
tracks are far more difficult to read because time is at work on the tracks,
whereas in feng shui it’s tension in space that prevails,’ replied Bad. But Heller
couldn’t believe her ears, because if the archaeologist was guided by feng shui,
he was putting the spatial before the temporal to his advantage, and with
that gesture Bad was shifting from archaeology to sociology. Heller wanted
him to leave, yet at the same time the visitor interested her. She began to ask
him questions, making the excuse to herself in her Head that she was doing
it to wear him out and get him to leave, when in fact she hoped he would
be interested in her own experiments. So she asked him why, in the idea of
ecosystem, the concept of variety prevailed, the concept of the preservation
of a variety to ensure food and predation, which was tantamount to saying
life and death. Heller detested the idea of variety (a varied diet, doing varied
activities and having varied experiences). Repetition appeared as a new
opportunity, not only to suspend time – because when something is repeated,
time is suspended – but also to conceal oneself behind the appearance of
repetition. They’re united by nothing but...…Do we thus annul time then? No,
it isn’t possible to be say precisely yet, it needs developing. It’s like when a
grandfather doesn’t behave like a grandfather. For example, when he goes
fishing with his grandchildren, he’s still always an angler...…The grandfather
on the jetty is lost amidst other anglers, but when he returns home in his car,
with the open boot bristling with fishing rods fastened with ropes, he’s no *
longer an angler, never mind a grandfather. What is he then? This story stirred The Acceptance Workshop was to be held, in the Notary’s at the special
in Bad a desire to come clean because he identified as someone claiming to request of the Instructor (95). Her house had been flooded, and there were no
be looking for a lamp when in fact he was looking for something else. He told dental appointments pending at that time. Ruiz arrived with his six children
Heller that his main interest was a projector which, they thought, might have and left them at the reception desk. He asked his eldest to make sure they
been found together with the lamp and might be some kind of remote control keep their voices down and not make a fuss. While the children were playing
for it. ‘I didn’t know anything about the projector,’ Heller told him. ‘Are you with the empty fish-tanks and sticking their Little Fingers through the bullet
hiding it?’ asked Bad. ‘No, by no means,’ said Heller. ‘I believe you,’ said Bad. holes, Ruiz and Heller, supervised by the Instructor (95), caught up on all the
‘Do archaeologists always ask for things like that?’ she replied. ‘And how is it news about the search for the lamp.
we ask for them?’ ‘You know, you ask for them and expect them to be given to
you just like that?’ ‘We believe there’s an order to things and that the Human R (50): Can you believe that Roca’s been following me for days?
Hand (in this case, science’s) can order what gets naturally disordered. It is in H (39): To…?
no way natural to dive, and even less natural to remove something very ancient R (50): To explain his point of view to me, I suppose.
from the bottom of the sea, something of such archaeological value.’ ‘Ah, but M (39): And what would that be?
what gives it anthropological value then is the fact it stays hidden.’ ‘No, the R (50): That I’m looking for the lamp, not an estofado.
archaeological value is lent it by its appearance,’ he said. ‘I understand, but M (39): And how do you know?
you remove it from its natural place, shall we say, and bring it into a different R (50): They’re everywhere, they hear everything. And in the tunnel we
archaeological time: wouldn’t that be contradicting feng shui?’ ‘No, that’s found everything but the lamp. And, although there wasn’t a single worker
reinforcing feng shui, which trusts in the Intervention of the Human Hand.’ at the surface when we arrived, later as we advanced through the tunnel,
‘How interesting,’ said Heller and said goodbye with a bump of the elbow as there were more and more workers at the sides, even in the parts we had to
if they were colleagues. excavate to create space.
 R (50): Ah, of course, more succinctly put. In the reserve, this hermit
told us about species and environment. Imagine! She just kept banging on,
not to mention her being all chillaxed about everything there on the little
beach. Ah, hang on! At the end, she said something about feng shui too, but
I can’t quite remember.
H (39): So what’s in the Reserve in the end? A beach?
R (50): There’s this huge pool of water that smells like conditioner. It’s
all dead slippery, the three of us had hang on to each other and cling on to
the rock.
H (39): Great!
R (50): They’ve encased the drain of Thirst for Success’s laundry.
H (39): And was the lamp there or not?
R (50): I dunno, she told me she doesn’t want anything imported.
H (39): Yeah, sure, of course.
I (95): Well, it’s understandable, but… is it acceptable?
R (50): ...
H (39): ...
I (95): Let’s see, Heller, Ruiz, stand facing each other and let that
question appear.

H (39): Could all that be related?

R (50): How do you mean related? Does
all this mean that
H (39): And… I mean you’re doing everything to find the lamp which won’t Roca, having found out Ruiz
appear, everything we do find isn’t the lamp and is always something else; the was working on the Great Mound
with his sons solely out of his interest in
workers know everything we discuss and are also doing their level best to find the lamp, is actually trying to help open our eyes
it first, but even so, they can’t find it either. The Doctor asks the same question to the Doctor’s deception, since we were obviously
unaware of the circumstances in which the lamp had
all the time and, because he’s angry, he shoots anything with glass in it. A little been found and the Doctor himself had betrayed us by
partisanship is in order: every search requires a precise approach of its own. concealing the fact that the lamp had been bought from
a country man who knew very well there was nothing
R (50): Something strange is happening: in the tunnel we found things more useless or obsolete than a remote control without
that are much more difficult to find than a lamp. And when we reached the what it controls?
Reserve, this hermit woman who was breastfeeding animals explained things
about the ecosystem. The guys were fascinated.
H (39): Bad ended up telling me that what the archaeologists were
looking for was a projector which they assumed had to be together with the
lamp because it might be its remote control. But then, this is weird,…he told
me about feng shui.
R (50): And what’s feng shui?
H (39): An ordering with human intervention founded on the relationship
between wind and water.
 I (95): Is that a rhetorical question?
R (50) and H (39): It’s an acceptance!
I (95): Remember, simplicity’s highly valued when it comes to
acceptance.
H (39): Something that controls without the possibility of acting on
what it controls can cause a real disaster.
I (95): Fine! And what else is an acceptance?
R (50): Pamo! I sent him out to buy a packet of sausages and he
came back with a super-hotdog.
I (95): Yes again. What about you, Heller?
H (39): The occultation of one star by another, eclipses.
I (95): Could be. What’s up, Ruiz?
R (50): No, I thought that... If an occultation, like an eclipse What if
the Doctor?
I (95): What if the Doctor WHAT?
R (50): I was thinking the Doctor may have the projector at his
house and something blocked it up and We have to go and see!
H (39): Oh I’d love to go but I could also accept staying here *
I (95): Fine everyone accepts what they accept, the way the axe cuts Ruiz went out in search
the trunk to make its own handle. of the projector of all things with his six children, but the
first thing that popped up was Roca. They were going to catch a bus, but as
we shall see, Roca talked them into walking to the Doctor’s house. In fact,
he persuaded them to walk to where they were going without ever finding
out where they were going or why. We know this; Roca never found out. He
went and stood in front of him, saying: ‘I don’t know you, but I know we’ve
got a lot of people in common, people who know both of us. Not only do
they know both of us, but they’d be more than interested to find out what
we’re talking about to see how it plays out this business about us workers
being present everywhere and you on the other hand hiding behind your
helmet because you’re only interested in yourself. So I’ll tell you something:
what I’m going to tell you isn’t an isolated thing, it’s two isolated things:
one is what I’ve just told you, and the other is I don’t understand why you’re
doing what you’re doing, because in another sense I feel a really strong
affinity for you and the aesthetics of your family: you and your children are
like yellow helmets, you don’t need more than one to form a group.’ Roca
said all this with authority and then said something else with a completely
different demeanour: ‘You’re waiting for the bus... Don’t you want to walk
together and chat for a while?’ ‘All right,’ said Ruiz, ‘but take that helmet
off.’ Roca took off his helmet. Ruiz took it from his hand and put it on. Roca As they continued on their journey, they noticed the presence of workers
bowed his head. Ruiz asked him if he had any food in his backpack. ‘Chicken growing exponentially, unlike the objects that had kept appearing on the way
estofado.’ He opened his backpack. He took seven small plates and plastic down the tunnel, which became more and more distant from the present.
cutlery from his own and shared out the estofado with his children. ‘You say This was a hint of what the future would be like: fifteen women workers
I’m hiding, you say you don’t know me, you say I work alone and that, when and three men workers in the timberyard; seventy workers preparing food in
I work alone, unlike other people, there’s absolutely no group correlation Italian Square; fifty women workers singing protest songs in the karaoke bar;
built through my helmet. That’s all very well, but what I can see is you spend three assemblies on the road, two of them massive. And at the door of the
all your time spying on me. So first off, you know me very well but you say we Doctor’s house something out of the ordinary was taking place: Ibuprofen
don’t know each other. Second, you pretend to be a revolutionary but spend was in his pyjamas without his glasses shooting a policeman in the arse with
all your time spying on me like some fucking pig.’ ‘This Roca bloke spends all a fluorescent butterfly.
his time spying,’ said Mimirta. ‘He spends all his time spying and pretends
to be a revolutionary, but all he does is go on excursions to the Sugarloaf
with his friends,’ added Sambio. ‘I spy for the good of the whole group,’
Roca defended himself. ‘Makes no difference to me if you spy on me or not,
because if hide, it’s so my wife won’t see me having dinner at noon.’ ‘Eh,
Roca, seeing as you’re making us walk there, how about standing us some
ice-creams,’ said Vina. Samo repeated the same thing, word for word: ‘Eh,
Roca, seeing as you’re making us walk there, how about standing us some
ice-creams,’ ‘But I’m a worker, a yellow helmet.’ ‘Go on then yellow helmet,
cough up for some ice-creams,’ mouthed off Pamo. They were opposite the
ice-cream parlour; Pamo went straight up to the counter and ordered two
kilos of ice-cream. ‘It’s on a bogof: two kilos for the price of one,’ said the
ice-cream seller. Roca paid for the ice-cream while Ruiz rinsed the dishes in
the drinking fountain so he could share it with his children. ‘I like it mixed
with the taste of the chicken estofado, Dad,’ said Vina. ‘Ok,’ said Ruiz. ‘Ok,’
said Roca, ‘so where are you going?’ ‘We’re turning here, at the corner, if
you want to follow us and spy on us it won’t make you any more or less of
a p...’ ‘You don’t get it: I’ve given you my lunch, I’ve bought you two kilos
of ice-cream, and you’re still hiding things from me.’ ‘Yeah, but you only
had to pay for a kilo. So what are you saying? That the value of the other
kilo is being concealed? Apart from being an interested party, you’re also
paranoid,’ Pamo pronounced at him again. ‘I don’t know where you’re going
with that. What’s up? Have you already found that lamp and don’t want to
tell me?’ ‘I dunno,’ said Ruiz, ‘you’ve got groups of yellow helmets all over
the shop looking for the lamp, but you think I’m the one who’s going to find
it. That’s because, apart from spying on me, you’re suspicious, distrusting
and lacking in faith. You’re so suspicious that you interpret what’s right
in front of you and see things as if reality might split in two You’ll have
to believe me, I’m telling you in capital letters: BENEATH THE NATIONAL
RESERVE THERE’S AN ESTOFADO, LITERALLY.’ ‘Alright, alright, I get the
picture I like exchanging points of view, but...,’ said Roca on his way out.
‘Byyyyyyyeeeeeee,’ crocodiled Sambio without Roca hearing him.
 He wanted to bribe us to get his
vote in the contest, he’s … one of
the jurors, a policeman.

In disguise? So
But he isn’t a policeman, what’s the difference
he’s in disguise; can’t you between a costume
see he’s wearing a red and a disguise?
costume?

The same as the difference between

whether or not you keep an old projector, a Kenny makes
projector we found out would be like the the best minced-
disguise or the costume of the lamp. Well, beef figures, and
we were told it’d be more like your remote we don’t need to
control, but I dunno, I thought it was a bung anyone to
nice comparison. win that contest.

Of that we’re sure, what we’re not

sure of is whether or not you’ve
got that projector. Well, yes, I have
got one, but it’s
all rusty, it’s no
use at all.

They entered the Doctor’s building, which was chock-a-block with

workers: more than twenty or thirty waiting to take the lifts. They had to
take the stairs. On the landing some workers were preparing white Martinis.
In another group a dozen workers were drinking mojitos on the balcony.
Ruiz went in unobtrusively, without attracting attention, and his six children
automatically tried not to attract attention. Behind them came the Doctor
and they locked themselves in. From the other side came the lively bustle of
workmen. The Doctor opened the cupboard and took out the projector from
under a blanket; he showed it with his arms aloft, assuming it had special
value. ‘The projector of all things,’ said Ruiz, ‘and... it’s blocked up by an
apple! That’s why the lamp disappeared as if by magic.’ ‘But they also said
it was a myth, Dad,’ said Vina. ‘Sure, but that’s what myths are for: to come
to terms with the real as a reality; once the content of the myth has been
materialised, contrary to popular belief, it remains the content of a myth. The
same thing happens with reality: it couldn’t be more reliably proven that the
real does not exist and yet, on the other hand, we could be about to witness
the appearance of a lamp.’ ‘Well, why don’t you remove that apple for one
thing and see what happens,’ said the Doctor. ‘I want Pamo to remove it,’ said
Vina. Gabo got down on all fours. Sambio didn’t even want to look. Pamo,
with great self-assurance, unblocked the projector of all things and removed
the apple.
 ‘And now,’ said Ibuprofen, ‘that lamp had better have turned up. After I strangest part of this true wonder: another miniature which, when observed
shot that policeman in the arse, the sound of that shot keeps echoing around with our heads upside down, we soon realised was a perfect reproduction of
my head, the memory of Innocence.’ They called the Notary’s to ask Heller; her father’s Head.
Heller said no lamp had appeared. ‘Don’t you see? Nothing’s appeared, take
that apple away and stop inventing excuses for not being able to find my lamp.’
They couldn’t find it, but what they didn’t know was that, at that very moment,
Wow, I should
the Sugarloaf group was arriving at the exact spot where there was an identical learn how to
lamp fifty metres underground. ‘There’s no myth that’s tolerable: we found it make some-
thing like that!
because we looked, we looked because we dug,’ said one of the workers. But,
at the same time, a lamp also appeared in the Manhole leading to the National
Reserve, right where Ruiz had been digging hidden beneath his helmet. ‘It ¡KE-NNY!
appeared because the current brought it,’ said the lad who’d found it. And
¡KE-NNY!
more Greek lamps appeared simultaneously: in Greece, Poland, Colombia,
Canada, Norway, Panama. We assume these appearances had nothing to do
with having removed the apple from the projector lens. It’s just it needs to be
said: we don’t believe in myths, and by not believing, we’re more than open
to extraordinary events occurring: and just as Ruiz made his mind up to go Then, spurred on by the workers, Kenny began to copy the simplest
out with his children and take the apple, something extraordinary happened: part: the braided gnocchi. Despite concentrating hard, it didn’t look
they found Vina sculpting a figure with the sausage meat Kenny had dropped anything like it. Vina walked her through it step by step, but it still didn’t
on the floor while modelling. The figure she had made was indescribable, look anything like it; she tried several times until, on an impulse, she
and that’s exactly why we’ll try to explain what it looked like with all kinds managed to braid five or six gnocchi. ‘Little by little I’ll get the hang of it,’
of adjectives and details: the base was notable for a braid of gnocchi coiled said Kenny, and the workers said, ‘Of course, finding out how to do it is
around on themselves, reminiscent of the hair of the eighteenth-century how you get it done.’ ‘Well,’ said Ruiz, ‘if you want, Vina can stay with you
French nobility, and which in turn lent a loftiness to this group of majestic until the day of the contest, so she teaches you how to do it.’
figures; from it stretched a vine of hanging flowers, the kind that it was hard Kenny agreed and practised what Ruiz’s daughter taught her, but as
to see how they were supported; long, stylised stems opened into corollas, the days went by, seeing that Vina had an unattainable skill and an endless
pistils and stamens blinking at the detail with a magnificent pearly sheen; repertoire of figures, she decided – and breathed not a word to anyone
from within emerged a miniature oriental motif, a bouquet of dragons which about her plan – to go to the contest with Vina concealed under her dress
through a magnifying glass we were astonished to discover was made up of so that the girl could make similar figures during the competition.
thick sweeping brushstrokes simulated with tiny beef impastos; around it
floated several stars, little stars that glittered through the subtle choice of *
traces of fat and bone that lent them a gloss and at the same time lit up the The organising committee’s initial idea had been that the finals of the
minced-beef modelling competition would be held in a massive, majestic
venue. But in the meantime, like almost everything else in the last few
weeks, the organising committee had changed: it had been expanded and
was now a mixed worker-bourgeois committee. The idea to ‘open things
up a bit’ had begun as a bourgeois concession to appease the workers’
militant enthusiasm, but events had turned out in such a way that the
workers on the organising committee felt they were the ones making
the concession: ‘We’re letting them have this last moment in the sun,’
they said, ‘the next committee will be 100% workers.’ This was no doubt
true, because there were hardly any bourgeois left who acknowledged
themselves as such: almost all of them went around dressed as workers.
And it wasn’t to conceal themselves: it was clear to everyone that, in the
new set-up, living as a worker was less strenuous than living as a bourgeois
or businessman.

*
Some disguised themselves as street-sweepers, others as policemen,
others as metalworkers, others as builders. And they had no plans to remove
their disguises ever again, partly because, as we’ve said, they didn’t want to
go back to their former lives and partly because they realised that, when they
took the disguise off, there’d be nothing underneath (the bourgeoisie was
disappearing).
There was something in this joint committee that was a mutual concession
and a pleasure to everyone for its symbolism: it was that Thirst for Success, the
only place workers and bourgeoisie used to share albeit in different time slots
before the events we narrate, was the venue for the final of the competition.
The final, because there were only three competitors left: Kenny, as we already
know, was one; another was a metalworker who, like Kenny, had discovered
his vocation late in life – though in his case not because of retirement, by
which time his fingers would have been ruined, but stimulated by the general
atmosphere; and the third was... Need we say it?
We think not: it would contribute nothing.
Better if we talk about the competition itself, which, unsurprisingly given
the excitement and anxiety surrounding it, was beset by problems. The first
problem of the evening was that the managers of Thirst for Success had set
aside a corner of the bar for the event. ‘You want us to do everything in that
corner?’ said one of the organisers to the manager on duty. ‘What do you
want? Shut everything down so they can do stuff with beef? People come
here to have a drink too, and with that massive new thing there’s no room,
and the stage is left free for assemblies.’
There was nothing to be done about it and nobody argued at all, because
it was obvious the manager was right: there was no room. And there was no
room because of ‘that massive new thing,’ which was the workers’ solution
to the problem of serving coffee, carrying it to the tables, removing the dirty
cups, washing them. The problem wasn’t only all the work it took to do all that,
but that those who did it spent too long with their bodies in close proximity
to coffee, causing caffeine saturation in the blood which had horrible effects
after a month of work there. Particularly irritation of the intestines, which,
as has been known for some years now, produce neurons, a ‘second brain,’
and this second brain was clever enough to realise it couldn’t be upset all day
and night, so it invented ways of eliminating toxins, which produced effects
like this:
 Or this: We have the solution
so close at hand we can’t see it: a
machine! Machines are organs of the hu-
man brain created by the Human Hand, the
objectified force of knowledge. We knew how a
society without the disguise of class would be
possible: by socialising the product of the
total general intellect of the planet.
This is the time to do it!

The worker was applauded, and the applause reignited the debate.
Someone said it was naïve and outmoded to suggest that machines were
neutral entities that could change sign when they changed hands. To this
someone else replied that it was precisely a question of creating a new
So an assembly was called to solve the problem. The situation wasn’t machine, not of reusing an old machine: a new machine that internalised the
exceptional: all over the world workers were devising ways to solve historical ongoing political process of liberation within its construction. The worker was
labour problems. In this assembly there were several positions. One was to applauded. ‘A new machine!’ everyone shouted. ‘But don’t say expropriation
switch to decaffeinated coffee because, they claimed, coffee was a stimulant then, it’s confusing,’ said a worker. ‘It’s an expropriation not of a machine
for a kind of (bourgeois) life that had anyway disappeared. This position was itself but of the ability to make them,’ said another. ‘Sure, imported stuff!’
ruled out because nobody wanted to lose the possibility of being stimulated someone said. ‘But you can’t talk about expropriation and imported stuff
so easily and quickly with almost no side effects. Another stance was that if the bourgeoisie no longer exists,’ said someone else. They all agreed. But
no one should serve and everyone should make their own coffee because the what was a new machine? Attending the assembly was a scientist disguised
age of servitude had passed. There was agreement that the age of servitude as a worker, who had spent the last ten years researching the creation of
was over, but the idea that everyone should use the espresso machine and machines with organic parts, and he decided it was time to come forward
wash their own cups was deemed impractical: ‘The result will be horrible and propose that He proposed it, but there were fears, and one in particular:
burnt coffees that cause intestinal pain and ulcers and bad moods, and the the production of an organic slave machine. The scientist, then, hastened to
machine will break, which costs a fortune; they’ll waste the coffee and not clarify that, among his assumptions, was the idea that the organic elements
wash the cups properly, or break them.’ Other stances were immediately should be happy doing what they were doing and could leave the job whenever
ruled out (such as changing the waiters and baristas every day, or wearing they wanted, and even leave under their own steam. He was applauded and
special uniforms – ‘That’s very hot,’ said one, and rightly so), and it seemed a called on to build it. Before long this coffee machine appeared, which was
solution wasn’t going to be found until one worker picked up the microphone the ‘massive new thing’ the manager was talking about and which produced
and said: and served coffee with evident joy:
 We have to say anyway that the machine was far less organic than it looks in
the drawing. It had an organ sensitive to taste that had been produced using mouse
genes, another organ sensitive to temperature... and that’s it. The rest was a merely
decorative disguise concealing a giant espresso machine, although it has to be said,
the disguise was organic too: artificially cultured human skin. But it couldn’t leave
under its own steam, nor could it feel happiness; on that point the scientist had lied,
albeit without malicious intentions. And it did make an incredible cup of coffee.
In any case, because of the space occupied by the massive coffee machine, there
was just one corner left to hold the contest. There they accommodated the finalists:
Kenny, the metalworker and the third person sat down. Among the audience was
the Doctor, on the edge of his seat, and there was also Ruiz too, with five of his
children. Vina was inside Kenny’s dress ready to make her beef figure. They blew
a whistle and the contest got under way.
 He’s skilled this
metalworker is, I’ll copy
that tortoise he’s making.
 The metalworker, who had a Thirst to win the contest, thought the tortoise
he was modelling wasn’t good enough to take First Prize. He turned his
modelling back into minced beef. He decided to drink a coffee from the new
organic machine in order to concentrate and start making an improved version
of his tortoise. It was at that moment that he spotted the Third Person copying
his modelling.

What?
Is he
copying?
TA
KE Y
TH T M E !
AT NO TOI S
! R
TO
 All this happened, and under other circumstances it would have meant
that... But nothing happened; it was as if the fight had taken place behind a
curtain. The two returned to their places. The metalworker began to fashion
the new version of the tortoise, which was truly improved and admirable for
a number of details that wouldn’t be visible in a drawing: underneath, it had
veins and millimetrically precise texturing; on top, the bony plates were clearly
outlined, stepped and striated; the legs were formed by hard scales; and most
surprisingly, it had internal organs. The Third Person soon pulled himself
together too and began trying out shapes. The audience couldn’t understand
what they were doing, and neither could they: they felt they had another Third
Person inside them who was taking control of the situation. Yet what they
were making was extremely simple: a croissant. And Kenny, who was feeling
so confident with Vina under her dress and hadn’t had to interrupt anything,
was presented with a problem she hadn’t anticipated and which was in part
caused by the fight. Vina’s little hands had no trouble reaching out of the dress
for the beef, and no one had noticed anything unusual at first. But after the
fight the jury’s attention towards the contestants sharpened – or the other
way around: in order to ignore the
fight they looked more intensely
at the tables – so Kenny felt she
had somehow to cover Vina’s little
hands; she soon felt that her hands
had not only to be over Vina’s to
conceal them, but also touching the
ball of minced beef so as not to
arouse suspicion in the jury; this
light contact with the minced beef
brought Kenny her familiar ecstasy,
and after a brief anxiety attack, she
stopped fighting against her fingers
and threw herself into the task.
As a result they made the figure
with four hands: an unbelievable
figure, a total surprise both to
her and Vina.
 metalworker; the other half – ex-bourgeois and workers – wanted to award it
to the metalworker and were dead against Kenny. Each half said: ‘Oh no, no
way.’ This was because each of the options stemmed from different aesthetic
concerns; briefly, you could say it was the old antagonism between fantasy
and realism. The fact that the choice was a false one didn’t help to bring
the positions any closer together. To all intents and purposes, this aesthetic
Kenny’s figure prompted a great deal of enthusiasm, and so did the debate was far from being settled, and we may imagine the form it takes
metalworker’s, but nobody said anything about the third person’s croissant. will be one of the keys to the political future of the revolution. In the end,
The jury was divided: one half wanted to award the prize to Kenny, the other as the debate couldn’t be resolved at that stage, there was no choice but to
half to the metalworker. ‘We’ll deliberate and come back in five minutes,’ they reach an agreement: to award the prize to the Third Person, whose croissant
said. But we still haven’t mentioned the audience. The enormous audience posed no dilemma of any kind. It was either that or leave it vacant. The award
was on the edge of their seats, and, like the jury, it was divided between was announced half-heartedly, people began to disperse and a sad mood
Kenny and the metalworker. The whole bar had in the end been seduced by descended upon those remaining.
the competition. While the jury was deliberating, a group of workers were
cleaning the boards the scores were to be recorded on.

‘Don’t go!’ said a worker on the jury who came up with an idea to stop
the end feeling so drab and dreary. They put the three figures on the grill
The Doctor was worried, thinking the metalworker would win. His along with lots and lots of left-over meatballs, burgers and sausages – ‘Why
fellow metalworkers were also worried, thinking Kenny would win. But was there so much beef?’ wondered those remaining, and the answer was
meanwhile, the jury couldn’t reach agreement. One half – ex-bourgeois and that everyone had thought it was up to them bring their own beef – cracked
workers – wanted to award the prize to Kenny and were dead against the open some bottles of wine and the atmosphere started to feel festive.
 again, then said, ‘Yes, that’s fine. But we’d better go looking for the lids to
the lamps, which are smaller and therefore harder to find.’ ‘The lids?’ said
several workers. ‘Yes, oil lamps used to have a lid on top so the oil wouldn’t
spill out.’ ‘And what do we want the lids for?’ asked one worker. ‘Well, so
the lamps are complete.’ ‘And what do we want them to be complete for?’
‘So the oil doesn’t spill out.’ ‘We don’t want to fill them with oil.’ ‘Are you
going to modernise them? It would be a shame...’ ‘No, no, but...’ ‘Are you
going to use them with oil? It’s dangerous if it spills, it could set fire to
everything.’ ‘We didn’t think of that. We were thinking of letting them
There’s
enough of that stand.’ ‘As decorative objects?’ ‘Well... When you put it that way, we don’t
tortoise to go
around
like the idea, it’s dead bourgeois.’ ‘So we’d better find the lids.’
everyone. The Third Person, who was listening to the conversation, chimed in,
‘Hey, I’ve just found one! Then everyone saw in amazement that what the
Third Person had found was a beautiful bronze lid with a beautiful carved
croissant. ‘Ah, you copied!’ the metalworker said angrily. ‘Leave him alone,’
said a worker. ‘But he’s copying all the time!’ insisted the metalworker. ‘No,
I didn’t copy, I thought about copying it,’ the Third Person replied offended.
Bad asked the Third Person to let him see the lid; he inspected it and said,
‘The croissant motif is interesting, I’ve never seen one like that before.’
The workers asked him where the lid could be from, and Bad told them,
‘It must have been next to one of the lamps they found.’ ‘And how come
we didn’t see it if it was plainly visible?’ asked a textile worker. ‘Well,’ said
Pamo, ‘what’s plainly visible is that you’ve eaten all the prize’s meatballs
and models except for the croissant.’ ‘Let Vina have it,’ said Ruiz, but Vina
didn’t fancy either the minced beef or the croissants. Just then a banana
fell from a post outside the bar, so, horrified, everyone went outside to see
what had happened. They saw a banana had fallen. The banana had fallen
on its tip and split in half. ‘Haha,’ said the Third Person. ‘This is no laughing
matter,’ said Bad with concern. The metalworker asked the Third Person if
he had copied that banana. ‘It’s dead hard to copy that,’ he said to him.
It was the first time the revolutionary atmosphere had felt festive,
which was essential if the revolution was to be felt as a fact. On one table
was the Doctor’s modernised lamp. And on another table was another very
similar lamp, but unmodernised.
‘Who would have imagined the revolution would come hand in hand with
archaeology,’ said Bad the archaeologist, who was standing there wearing
his helmet and a thoughtful expression as he filled the lamp with oil. A
group of workers said to him, ‘It’s all down to the lamp and the projector;
without them nothing would have happened.’ Bad looked at them and said:
‘No, the business about the projector was a myth; lamps appear because
they’re looked for.’ ‘That’s what I said!’ a worker replied, ‘and we’re going
to keep finding lamps and debunking all the myths.’ Bad looked thoughtful
 Everything that was happening only served to hide the fact that it was
embarrassing no one was eating the croissant going cold on the grill. So Bad
said he’d feel very fortunate to be able to try the First Prize himself. But when
he went to fetch the croissant, the Doctor had already broken it in half and
was sharing it with Kenny. ‘Everyone here just wants the limelight,’ said the
disgruntled Bad. ‘We can’t understand why it bothers you,’ Kenny and the
Doctor said. ‘I understand,’ said the Third Person but didn’t add anything
further because he didn’t really understand: he just wanted Bad to appreciate
him. The barbecue had finally ended. The split banana was still in the street.
The last rays of sun hid behind the Doctor’s building, and as the building was
silhouetted, the sea breeze coming from his terrace bore the stench of the
banana rotting on the pavement. ‘It’s perfect and embarrassing,’ said Kenny.
‘It’s really perfect and embarrassing,’ remarked the Doctor. But no one wanted
to take care of the banana, which was not in good shape anymore. ‘We could
make a figure,’ said Kenny, but a worker came over and said she thought it
advisable that no one else ever thought they had the right to give form to a
figure. ‘That’s the trouble with science,’ she added, but no one understood
why she said it, or even noticed that she said it. They put the banana in
the mincer, which started but made an odd noise. ‘You’ve just ruined the
machine,’ said the bar manager when he heard the noise. But no one was to
blame because they’d all put it in there. The manager continued: ‘If you mince
beef now, it’ll taste of banana.’ Nobody answered him; he went on: ‘Imagine
eating a hamburger and it tasting of banana.’ Nobody answered him; he went
on: ‘It’s shocking what you’ve done.’ ‘That’s a gastronomic problem,’ said the
worker, who’d become uncomfortable, but no one answered her. Kenny tried
to make light of it all: ‘We did what we had to do; sometimes instructions get
detached from the elements and a will operates that we know nothing about.
Also, for example, we were ignorant of the Third Person’s talent, but what we
really didn’t know was the Third Person in Person. And now we know him,
we can realise that he’s an excellent Person.’ Nobody answered her. Kenny
said this because she wanted to look like a good loser: she didn’t really like
the Third Person at all. But Bad had liked him when he said ‘I understand
you.’ No one understood a thing: it was a moment of extreme confusion. It
was the smell of banana mixed with the sea breeze: a particularly obscure
sunset. The Doctor looked around him and sighed. He bent down to pick up
a helmet that was lying on the floor. His intention was to put it down on a
chair, but instead he placed it on his Head.
El origen de la substancia importará la importancia del origen, by MÓNICA HELLER

Presents

THIRST FOR SUCCESS

GEOMETRÍA PUEBLO NUEVO

MARÍA GUERRIERI
PAULA CASTRO
COTELITO
ARIEL CUSNIR
CLARA ESBORRAZ
MARCELO GALINDO
CONSTANZA GIULIANI
MÓNICA HELLER
MARIANA LÓPEZ

in collaboration with
PABLO KATCHADJIAN
and
BÁRBARA WAPNARSKY

Editor, Project Manager

MARCELO GALINDO

Co-editor, Curator
ALEJO PONCE DE LEÓN

Design
JOB SALORIO

Project Coordinator
AGUSTINA VIZCARRA

English Translation
IAN BARNETT

Photo p. 9
BRUNO DUBNER

Printed in April, 2022

at Talleres Trama

Buenos Aires, Argentina

The 59th International Art Exhibition

La Biennale di Venezia