Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldan

Author:Edmundo Paz Soldan [Soldan, Edmundo Paz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9780547798004
Google: V1pfU-eCDtYC
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2007-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

JUDGE CARDONA LEAVES the hotel with his black briefcase in hand and comes upon a hostile, cloudy sky, the sense that drizzle is imminent. It had been brighter in the hotel room. He does not remember Rio Fugitivo being like this, a city of weak sunshine and gray clouds about to pour rain. Nostalgia has gotten the better of him, and the sunny days from his childhood and adolescence, which perhaps were few, have eclipsed all others. It happens to the best of us. We are restless creatures, governed by an incurable desire for paradise. But paradise is not what we have been given, so we invent it in our memories, based on a few furtive weeks when we were happy, perhaps in the beginning or somewhere along the way where the road forked and life took us. The tricks of fate, which can also bring happiness.

There are police in the plaza and the neighboring streets are deserted, with sticks, nails, and stones scattered on the pavement and sidewalks and debris swirling in the wind. It is Friday afternoon. Yesterday, after the woman left, Judge Cardona overindulged in BMP and passed out on the white tile bathroom floor after vomiting violently. He woke up today at noon, a bitter taste in his throat and mouth, his palate extremely dry. "History was being made as I slept," Cardona, stroking his beard, says to the doorman..

The doorman tells him that he was right to have stayed in his room. The evidence of yesterday afternoon's and this morning's confrontations is all over the streets. Everything is blockaded. Yesterday a group of demonstrators took the plaza and then the police took it back. Today they plan to reach the mayor's and the prefect's offices; the police have cordoned off the plaza. "If I were you, I'd stay in my room. This is going to get ugly. The demonstrators will be back with renewed force, and the police will use tear gas. I've seen it a thousand times. You learn a lot working in the main plaza." He blinks as if he has no control over the muscles in his eyelids.

"Unfortunately," Cardona says, scratching his right cheek, "I have urgent business."

Every time he comes to Río Fugitivo, something strange happens. Existing in multiple historical temporalities, its inhabitants dream of the modern convenience of cable TV but are anchored to the premodern past of strikes and street protests. It's no different from the rest of the country. Many Internet cafés do not progress make. Many supermarkets and shopping centers either.

Cardona had better walk. Avenida de las Acacias is relatively close by, only about ten blocks away. He touches his briefcase and feels protected—from the future, the past, himself. His legs are tingling and exhaustingly heavy; the effects of BMP are still coursing through his body. Dry throat, nausea. Perhaps he should wait a while, until his mind clears, until the fog lifts. No, no, no. He has waited long enough. Neither lucidity nor a lack thereof will change the radical cruelty of the facts.

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