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Fiction

Royalty Check

By Mylene Fernández Pintado
Translated from Spanish by Dick Cluster

For Elisú

I walk into the bank, check in hand, and ask a security guard whether I can cash it. He takes my question to another man who might be a plainclothes guard, then comes back to tell me 1) that I can indeed cash my check at this branch, and 2) that the computer connections have been going down a lot today.

I don’t know exactly what this means in technical terms, but I soon see the practical result: slow at the best of times, the bank is putting its full capacity for sluggishness on display right now. Each time the machines lose the famous connection, the employees gaze at them in sadistic glee.

A gentleman who isn’t a bank employee but doesn’t seem fazed or flustered by the technical difficulties or the immobile line explains that of late many people have been changing foreign currencies into Cuban CUC. The exchange rates are highly volatile, he says, and from one day to the next what you’ve got may be worth much more, or much less.

From this man, who acts as if waiting in line at a bank on one of its worst days were his natural habitat, I learn that here, too, we have currency speculators, people who study the daily exchange rate and decide whether it’s high or low enough or whether they’re better off coming back another day. Whether they should risk acting or risk waiting, in other words. Some of them do their research before they head to the bank. They watch the international segment of the daily newscast intently and draw their own conclusions. They are masters of risk, brokers made in Cuba.

The gentleman in question remains cheerful and serene, though the only things moving are the hands of an immense clock. It’s on the wall behind the tellers’ backs so they can’t see the evidence of time passing, while we laboriously chew up and choke down every minute that goes by. The man tells me that in Switzerland current rates of exchange are given on television every day. Graphics display the movements of stock markets across all the planet’s main financial centers, as well as exchange rates, the price of gold by the ounce and of oil by the barrel, the NASDAQ index and the Dow Jones, too. In fact, he tells me, this information is always the final news item of the night. “But Swiss banks,” he concludes, “are not like these.”

I don’t know who NASDAQ and Dow Jones are, though I assume they must be wizards of international finance. Nor can I picture a Swiss bank. But any moviegoer knows a Swiss bank must be a paradise; in the movies, anyone who amounts to anything has an account at one—even evildoers, bad guys, mafiosos, ex-Nazis, forgers, art thieves, corrupt politicians, and tax evaders.

However little I can imagine a Swiss bank, I’m sure they don’t have long lines. Switzerland must abound with banks that are entirely devoid of connections that go down.

In this bank, which does not appear in any movie, we customers sit invoking the god Chronos and other deities of our predilection, whichever ones have the time to concern themselves with the functioning of DSL connections. We sit while we wait, occupying chairs in the order we’ll be called before the tellers. Every time a customer is called to a window, we have to change seats so as not to leave an empty space. It’s like some children’s game, musical chairs or a board game involving squares and dice. My mind flashes on Alicia en el pueblo de MaravillasAlice in the Town of Wonder—a satirical Cuban film of the early nineties. I wonder whether its writers dreamed up this kind of queue or copied it from some bank, train station, ration-book registry, hospital, legal services office, housing agency, passport office, or the like. That is, whether their fiction sprang from reality or the other way around.

Not daring to break the pattern, I switch chairs when those ahead of me in line do, but since the connections continue to drop, none of us moves very often. At one point, this rhythm is briefly disrupted, leaving an empty seat in the middle. A modern, distracted young woman who’s just come into the bank takes this seat, cutting ahead in line. She wields an iPod or iPhone or iPad—something with earphones—which she’s pulled from her pocket and is manipulating in some strange fashion. She goes on listening, deaf to any sound that doesn’t emerge from the machine.

It’s a fancy piece of equipment and she’s fully aware of that. Maybe that’s why she has jumped the line without looking at anyone or asking “who’s last?” Next to her, another young woman decides to pull out her cell phone, in a kind of challenge. I always thought cell phones weren’t allowed in banks; aren’t they what bank robbers always use to coordinate their plan of attack or issue orders to the drivers waiting to take off, Fast and Furious, with squealing tires and bags of plunder?

The two young women, each with her device, while away the time and show off their touch screen dexterity in a silent duel of thrust and parry. Next to me sits a nurse. Her dazzlingly white uniform exudes a cold perfection that seems to further tarnish the prevailing urban grime. The nurse has no cell phone but she does have a blood pressure gauge, so she opens its case, pulls out the sphygmomanometer, and studies its dial. The fact that it’s an analog gauge does not make her apparatus any less sophisticated, she appears to declare.

On the other side of the nurse sits the lover of Swiss banks, who a few minutes earlier was explaining the movements of financial indices. He has a calculator in his hand. The owners of the sophisticated devices look at him in amazement. They don’t even know that calculators exist. They can’t conceive that there are still machines that do only one thing—calculate—without playing music, taking pictures, or connecting wirelessly to anything. The nurse looks at him as if he were ill.

I imagine that the gentleman is calculating his impending transaction according to today’s rate of exchange. I wonder how exactly he decides whether he’s better off changing his money today or tomorrow. Maybe he has a good friend in Switzerland who calls him with the latest indices. Or an antenna at his house, one of those pirate satellite dishes that people conceal from the police in so many creative ways. A painter who was much taken by this crime, which involves such pure use of mimetic design, curated an exhibit in Old Havana of all the imaginative camouflages the owners of clandestine satellite dishes have invented.

Or maybe the gentleman has Internet at home or at work, broadband DSL, a connection at many kilobytes per second that allows him to open and close Web pages in a snap, without any crashes to slow his pace.

I watch them, immersed in their devices, transforming the unavoidable wait into something enjoyable and productive. I don’t have a netbook on which to write my endless masterpiece—I imagine the writers who produce such tomes must always have theirs at hand—but I do have the manuscript of a book of short stories, submitted to a contest I’m judging. I pull it out of my bag. The book is called You Move Like a Cat, and the author’s pseudonym is Juan Pérez, which shows a certain lack of imagination, but maybe writing the stories used up all his capacity to fantasize, and when the time came to select his alias, he was just too tired.

In the doorway, the bank guards kill time swapping jokes. In front of us, the tellers keep their eyes on their computers as the connections come and go. They’re enjoying the pleasure of entropy, a state in which nothing can be controlled and we are freed of all responsibility. Young Woman Number One listens to her music, Young Woman Number Two writes something on her phone. The nurse studies her sphygmomanometer. The gentleman calculates.

I turn to the manuscript and see that the first story has the same title as the book. Before I can read a line, the bank doors fly open. Two criminals, their heads and faces covered by ski masks, burst violently through the entrance, brandishing what appear to be long pistols or sawed-off shotguns. They shout that this is a heist, that everyone is to hit the floor and stay still.

The two young women scream, and the robbers threaten them and kick away their cell phones or iPods or iPhones or iPads so they can’t call the police. They kick away the gentleman’s calculator, too. When we’re all down on the floor with our hands behind our heads, he whispers to me that these things don’t happen in Swiss banks. This earns him a reprimand from one of the thieves. We should all keep quiet for our own good.

The bank staff are now tied up with their mouths taped shut. The robbers are very well-equipped, but they know they don’t have much time. The bank’s front wall is almost entirely glass; we must be offering quite a strange spectacle to the pedestrians in this very busy area. Due to the lack of Internet connection, the employees who have keys to the vaults are not on-site. So the thieves have to make do with what they find in the tellers’ drawers and with whatever we happen to have on us, those of us whom chance placed in the here and now, when we might very well have been somewhere else.

The gentleman attuned to Swiss orderliness begins to feel unwell. The nurse asks the robbers to please let her examine him, and points to the sphygmomanometer that earmarks her as a skilled professional. Kicked away by one of the criminals, it has ended up across the room. Probably broken, I think.

One of the robbers barks that he will not allow any such thing, that nobody better move from where they are if they want to stay alive. But the cardinal rule is in operation, the rule that decrees that every crew of bank robbers contains both good elements and bad, and the good ones will intercede. The problem is that in this case the bad faction seems to outrank the good. The band of bank robbers splits into two opposing camps. One is in favor of the gentleman receiving treatment, for a variety of reasons. First comes simple humanity, pity for a human being who has nothing to do with the bank. Next comes the fact that the nurse and her device present no danger as long as one of the thieves keeps an eye on what she does. Finally, they must consider the possibility of something going wrong with their scheme; if the gentleman dies, they could find themselves charged with murder as well as theft.

The good-guy robber is also the best-educated one. Socrates would have loved his ability to remain focused on virtue even in the midst of outlaws. He knows the Penal Code and the Law of Penal Procedures and even the sentences handed down in other cases of robbery when a death was caused by lack of medical attention. He recites the names of the crimes, the articles of the code, the attenuating and aggravating circumstances. Finally he lists the locations of the prisons where he and his comrades could end up and the length of the sentences they’ll have to serve if they don’t do something, right away, for the gentleman who is feeling ill.

The gang leader says that if they keep on arguing about the old guy’s fate then for sure they’ll get caught and sent away for a long time. He says all the talk is putting their plan at risk, and they should get back to work.

The nurse is brave. She says she’ll take responsibility and they can shoot her if they want; there are no exceptions to the Hippocratic oath. She tries to get up. One of the young women who lost their devices starts to cry and tells the nurse that she’s going to get us all killed, she should just stay put and give us a chance to get out of there alive.

The crying makes another robber nervous. That’s also a rule: there’s always an unstable element in the crew, someone not quite right in the head, suffering from an Oedipus complex or something. These unpredictable members can turn out to be the most vicious of the lot, or else they’ll become the first victims of the heartless leader, or of a policeman or bank employee with an exaggerated sense of duty.

The good-guy robber has been assigned to watch us, no doubt because he lacks talent for threatening tellers, pointing his gun at their temples, breaking into their cash drawers, and dumping the money into a bag. He takes note of the manuscript that, not having been judged dangerous enough to get kicked away, has suffered only the loss of its first and last pages and otherwise remains in my possession. He asks whether it’s mine. I explain that I’m a writer, that I came in to cash a royalty check, and that to keep myself busy during the wait I began reading the manuscript because I’m one of the three judges of the contest it was entered in.

The guy examines the manuscript, leafing carefully through its pages. He asks me how I like it.

I tell him I haven’t started it, that I was just about to begin when they burst in.

He reaches the last page and says it looks to him like a good book. He says if he were the judge he’d give it the prize.

I tell him it’s not that simple; there are three judges on the panel and this book is competing against twenty other entries. And although it’s true that so far I haven’t seen any others that look like winners, I still have this one and two more to read. I don’t tell him that I’m the only judge who actually reads the books; the other two are happy to follow my advice and will say that they, too, find my candidate to be the obvious standout.

The robber seems to smile inside his ski mask and tells me that, by his calculation, Juan Pérez has a thirty-three percent chance of winning, much better than the five percent he started out with. And he leaves.

My jaw drops. This educated thief knows about the law and is quick with his math, even if he’s not very good at stealing.

Then I realize something else: one of the missing pages is the only one with the author’s name on it.

How, then, did the robber know that the author of these stories called himself Juan Pérez?

Elementary: The robber who knows his penal codes and his percentages also knows about literature. That is, he writes it.

In short, he is Juan Pérez.

This discovery gives me goosebumps. I have a valuable piece of information. I’m the only one who knows the identity of one of the thieves.

No, actually, I don’t. Juan Pérez is an assumed name. That’s why it’s called a pseudonym and why it’s used to hide a real identity, be it a writer’s or a bank robber’s. Or both at once.

But if we get out of this alive, all I’ll have to do is give the manuscript to the police. It’s sure to have fingerprints on it, or maybe the type of printer can be identified. At least that’s the way things go on TV; the tiniest sample of clothing or saliva, hair, sweat, or scribbling is enough for the police force of any city in the world to find out who it belongs to. Police science has advanced so much.

Robbers have made a good deal of progress, too. This crew has perfect ski masks, and are dressed in all-black, tight-fitting outfits that allow them perfect freedom of movement. If they weren’t bank robbers, they might be members of a modern dance troupe. And they’re wearing gloves.

Maybe someone at the Writer’s Union will remember who handed in this entry. Or they’ll have the sealed envelope containing the author’s real name, book title, and other data, to be opened only after the jury has determined the winner.

Maybe Juan Pérez submitted his book by mail. Maybe the envelope with its return address and postmark has been thrown away.

But they’ll still have the sealed envelope. If Juan Pérez wants to win the contest and get his prize money—less money, of course, than what he and his accomplices are stealing right now—if he wants to see his book published, be lionized at the launch event, get reviewed, join the literary crowd, and end up sitting in a bank holding a royalty check, or rather, lying face down on a bank floor with that check, he has to have included his true name, address, phone number, and a biography of two lines, minimum, in a sealed envelope.

Everything is happening very fast. Even the clock seems to be hurrying up a bit. But one of the thieves doesn’t like the sound it makes, and fires at it. The clock shatters. Everyone screams. Now, as in the story of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, time comes to a stop.

Then, as if emerging from every chink in the walls, from the crevices of the windows, from the holes in the locked doors, surging from the floor and the cash drawers, dropping from the ceiling and the chandeliers, bursting in from all sides, a special squadron of police fills the bank with bulletproof vests and state-of-the-art weaponry.

We all scream, except for the bank staff who can’t because their lips are sealed with tape. We don’t dare move except to squeeze together as tightly as we can, keeping our heads glued to the floor to avoid the bullets.

In the midst of the firefight, the iPad-iPod-iPhone woman scurries to recover her device. A lot is happening at once. It’s hard to look everywhere, especially when you’re trying to keep your head as far as possible from the shots ricocheting on all sides.

I look for Juan Pérez, who has taken off his mask, but his back is turned and I can’t see his face. In the confusion of screams, blows, people tied and untied, criminals, tellers, and customers, Juan Pérez disappears. Like in that film with Clive Owen, the one where the bank robbers blend in with their hostages, where the thieves are so ingenious and organized that you have to be on their side. Although from now on, after this, I’ll never take the side of a criminal again, even a celluloid criminal. I’ll be a fundamentalist in the religion of law and order.

Well, I won’t be on the side of bandits, but I can’t avoid a certain feeling of sympathy for Juan Pérez. The robber without a face, going under an assumed name, with a broad range of knowledge, and a good heart. Who moves like a cat, both in his book and in his escape.

The police manage to capture everyone else. The bandits’ guns turn out to be toys, but they looked real enough. The chief of the anti-bank robbery squad informs us we’re all witnesses, that it’s our duty as citizens. I wish Juan Pérez were here so I could ask him whether it’s true that we’re required to make statements, sign them, and present ourselves at the trial. But if he were here, they’d have arrested him, too.

The chief goes on informing us of our civic rights and responsibilities. He asks us not to make any statements to the press until we’ve finished speaking to the authorities.

We all provide our IDs and the police take our contact information and tell us we’ll be summoned within the next forty-eight hours. That’s the title of a movie with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, who make a great pair. The grumpy policeman and the likeable thief.

I won’t tell the police that Juan Pérez was one of the band. He’s the only one who sympathized with the Swiss-loving gentleman and actually defended him. Who does math in his head, who knows the law, who writes. It would be criminal to put such a cultured plunderer in jail.

I’ll give him the prize. That way he’ll know. If I give him the prize he’ll know I haven’t betrayed him. Although his criminal comrades might do that. To judge by what we saw, he was not a favorite of the gang’s pitiless leader.

I won’t give him the prize. Surely he doesn’t want to be caught; even if he wins, he won’t show up to bask in the honor. He might even think it’s all a trap—awarding him the prize, counting on his neophyte vanity. Then, when he shows up at the ceremony, a whole crowd of plainclothes police surrounds him, cuffs him, and carts him off to jail.

No, Juan Pérez will not fall for such a simpleminded ruse.

But—why did he enter his book in the contest? Or did that happen before he was recruited to rob banks? And what made him choose to be a thief rather than a writer?

Maybe Juan Pérez is an undercover infiltrator. That’s why the police operation was so efficient: they already knew the whole plan. The only reason they didn’t appear right away was to avoid awakening suspicion. That also gave Juan Pérez time to escape, without the others knowing he wasn’t caught.

But even if he is an undercover policeman, he still won’t show up to collect the prize. The ceremony always attracts television crews who film the proceedings for the cultural segment of the news, photographers and journalists, who snap photos and record interviews for the next day’s arts and culture page.

The police open the doors wide to make room for the wheeled gurney carrying the gentleman out to an ambulance—already parked outside with its doors ajar, its staff ready to administer first aid—that will take him to the nearest hospital. The self-sacrificing nurse walks beside him, keeping her eye on the dial of her sphygmomanometer, still working despite the kicks, or so it seems. After the gurney departs, the rest of us will be able to leave, too, to emerge into the city, into the open air, into our simple daily lives as citizens to whom nothing spectacular or dangerous occurs.

None of this is true. There are no plunderers who threaten us, nor police who frustrate their scheme. Juan Pérez is not an enigmatic, charismatic thief filled with knowledge, lyricism, and humanity, but only the pseudonymous author of a painfully mediocre book. The bank queue continues to be slow, bereft of connection, rhythmic in its snail’s pace, floating in the sweet tranquility of lives on hold beneath a timepiece that ticktocks like a cuckoo clock. It’s a collective siesta, like when small children nap in their cots, or with their little heads down on their little classroom desks. Each one with his or her favorite toy, the iPad-iPod-iPhone, the sphygmomanometer, the calculator, the book of stories entitled You Move Like a Cat.

The doors open to admit a woman with hair dyed a menopausal red. She asks me in a friendly way whether I’m last in line. I stand up and, turning toward the exit, say, “Not anymore.” I leave, my royalty check uncashed.

© Mylene Fernández Pintado. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2016 by Dick Cluster. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

For Elisú

I walk into the bank, check in hand, and ask a security guard whether I can cash it. He takes my question to another man who might be a plainclothes guard, then comes back to tell me 1) that I can indeed cash my check at this branch, and 2) that the computer connections have been going down a lot today.

I don’t know exactly what this means in technical terms, but I soon see the practical result: slow at the best of times, the bank is putting its full capacity for sluggishness on display right now. Each time the machines lose the famous connection, the employees gaze at them in sadistic glee.

A gentleman who isn’t a bank employee but doesn’t seem fazed or flustered by the technical difficulties or the immobile line explains that of late many people have been changing foreign currencies into Cuban CUC. The exchange rates are highly volatile, he says, and from one day to the next what you’ve got may be worth much more, or much less.

From this man, who acts as if waiting in line at a bank on one of its worst days were his natural habitat, I learn that here, too, we have currency speculators, people who study the daily exchange rate and decide whether it’s high or low enough or whether they’re better off coming back another day. Whether they should risk acting or risk waiting, in other words. Some of them do their research before they head to the bank. They watch the international segment of the daily newscast intently and draw their own conclusions. They are masters of risk, brokers made in Cuba.

The gentleman in question remains cheerful and serene, though the only things moving are the hands of an immense clock. It’s on the wall behind the tellers’ backs so they can’t see the evidence of time passing, while we laboriously chew up and choke down every minute that goes by. The man tells me that in Switzerland current rates of exchange are given on television every day. Graphics display the movements of stock markets across all the planet’s main financial centers, as well as exchange rates, the price of gold by the ounce and of oil by the barrel, the NASDAQ index and the Dow Jones, too. In fact, he tells me, this information is always the final news item of the night. “But Swiss banks,” he concludes, “are not like these.”

I don’t know who NASDAQ and Dow Jones are, though I assume they must be wizards of international finance. Nor can I picture a Swiss bank. But any moviegoer knows a Swiss bank must be a paradise; in the movies, anyone who amounts to anything has an account at one—even evildoers, bad guys, mafiosos, ex-Nazis, forgers, art thieves, corrupt politicians, and tax evaders.

However little I can imagine a Swiss bank, I’m sure they don’t have long lines. Switzerland must abound with banks that are entirely devoid of connections that go down.

In this bank, which does not appear in any movie, we customers sit invoking the god Chronos and other deities of our predilection, whichever ones have the time to concern themselves with the functioning of DSL connections. We sit while we wait, occupying chairs in the order we’ll be called before the tellers. Every time a customer is called to a window, we have to change seats so as not to leave an empty space. It’s like some children’s game, musical chairs or a board game involving squares and dice. My mind flashes on Alicia en el pueblo de MaravillasAlice in the Town of Wonder—a satirical Cuban film of the early nineties. I wonder whether its writers dreamed up this kind of queue or copied it from some bank, train station, ration-book registry, hospital, legal services office, housing agency, passport office, or the like. That is, whether their fiction sprang from reality or the other way around.

Not daring to break the pattern, I switch chairs when those ahead of me in line do, but since the connections continue to drop, none of us moves very often. At one point, this rhythm is briefly disrupted, leaving an empty seat in the middle. A modern, distracted young woman who’s just come into the bank takes this seat, cutting ahead in line. She wields an iPod or iPhone or iPad—something with earphones—which she’s pulled from her pocket and is manipulating in some strange fashion. She goes on listening, deaf to any sound that doesn’t emerge from the machine.

It’s a fancy piece of equipment and she’s fully aware of that. Maybe that’s why she has jumped the line without looking at anyone or asking “who’s last?” Next to her, another young woman decides to pull out her cell phone, in a kind of challenge. I always thought cell phones weren’t allowed in banks; aren’t they what bank robbers always use to coordinate their plan of attack or issue orders to the drivers waiting to take off, Fast and Furious, with squealing tires and bags of plunder?

The two young women, each with her device, while away the time and show off their touch screen dexterity in a silent duel of thrust and parry. Next to me sits a nurse. Her dazzlingly white uniform exudes a cold perfection that seems to further tarnish the prevailing urban grime. The nurse has no cell phone but she does have a blood pressure gauge, so she opens its case, pulls out the sphygmomanometer, and studies its dial. The fact that it’s an analog gauge does not make her apparatus any less sophisticated, she appears to declare.

On the other side of the nurse sits the lover of Swiss banks, who a few minutes earlier was explaining the movements of financial indices. He has a calculator in his hand. The owners of the sophisticated devices look at him in amazement. They don’t even know that calculators exist. They can’t conceive that there are still machines that do only one thing—calculate—without playing music, taking pictures, or connecting wirelessly to anything. The nurse looks at him as if he were ill.

I imagine that the gentleman is calculating his impending transaction according to today’s rate of exchange. I wonder how exactly he decides whether he’s better off changing his money today or tomorrow. Maybe he has a good friend in Switzerland who calls him with the latest indices. Or an antenna at his house, one of those pirate satellite dishes that people conceal from the police in so many creative ways. A painter who was much taken by this crime, which involves such pure use of mimetic design, curated an exhibit in Old Havana of all the imaginative camouflages the owners of clandestine satellite dishes have invented.

Or maybe the gentleman has Internet at home or at work, broadband DSL, a connection at many kilobytes per second that allows him to open and close Web pages in a snap, without any crashes to slow his pace.

I watch them, immersed in their devices, transforming the unavoidable wait into something enjoyable and productive. I don’t have a netbook on which to write my endless masterpiece—I imagine the writers who produce such tomes must always have theirs at hand—but I do have the manuscript of a book of short stories, submitted to a contest I’m judging. I pull it out of my bag. The book is called You Move Like a Cat, and the author’s pseudonym is Juan Pérez, which shows a certain lack of imagination, but maybe writing the stories used up all his capacity to fantasize, and when the time came to select his alias, he was just too tired.

In the doorway, the bank guards kill time swapping jokes. In front of us, the tellers keep their eyes on their computers as the connections come and go. They’re enjoying the pleasure of entropy, a state in which nothing can be controlled and we are freed of all responsibility. Young Woman Number One listens to her music, Young Woman Number Two writes something on her phone. The nurse studies her sphygmomanometer. The gentleman calculates.

I turn to the manuscript and see that the first story has the same title as the book. Before I can read a line, the bank doors fly open. Two criminals, their heads and faces covered by ski masks, burst violently through the entrance, brandishing what appear to be long pistols or sawed-off shotguns. They shout that this is a heist, that everyone is to hit the floor and stay still.

The two young women scream, and the robbers threaten them and kick away their cell phones or iPods or iPhones or iPads so they can’t call the police. They kick away the gentleman’s calculator, too. When we’re all down on the floor with our hands behind our heads, he whispers to me that these things don’t happen in Swiss banks. This earns him a reprimand from one of the thieves. We should all keep quiet for our own good.

The bank staff are now tied up with their mouths taped shut. The robbers are very well-equipped, but they know they don’t have much time. The bank’s front wall is almost entirely glass; we must be offering quite a strange spectacle to the pedestrians in this very busy area. Due to the lack of Internet connection, the employees who have keys to the vaults are not on-site. So the thieves have to make do with what they find in the tellers’ drawers and with whatever we happen to have on us, those of us whom chance placed in the here and now, when we might very well have been somewhere else.

The gentleman attuned to Swiss orderliness begins to feel unwell. The nurse asks the robbers to please let her examine him, and points to the sphygmomanometer that earmarks her as a skilled professional. Kicked away by one of the criminals, it has ended up across the room. Probably broken, I think.

One of the robbers barks that he will not allow any such thing, that nobody better move from where they are if they want to stay alive. But the cardinal rule is in operation, the rule that decrees that every crew of bank robbers contains both good elements and bad, and the good ones will intercede. The problem is that in this case the bad faction seems to outrank the good. The band of bank robbers splits into two opposing camps. One is in favor of the gentleman receiving treatment, for a variety of reasons. First comes simple humanity, pity for a human being who has nothing to do with the bank. Next comes the fact that the nurse and her device present no danger as long as one of the thieves keeps an eye on what she does. Finally, they must consider the possibility of something going wrong with their scheme; if the gentleman dies, they could find themselves charged with murder as well as theft.

The good-guy robber is also the best-educated one. Socrates would have loved his ability to remain focused on virtue even in the midst of outlaws. He knows the Penal Code and the Law of Penal Procedures and even the sentences handed down in other cases of robbery when a death was caused by lack of medical attention. He recites the names of the crimes, the articles of the code, the attenuating and aggravating circumstances. Finally he lists the locations of the prisons where he and his comrades could end up and the length of the sentences they’ll have to serve if they don’t do something, right away, for the gentleman who is feeling ill.

The gang leader says that if they keep on arguing about the old guy’s fate then for sure they’ll get caught and sent away for a long time. He says all the talk is putting their plan at risk, and they should get back to work.

The nurse is brave. She says she’ll take responsibility and they can shoot her if they want; there are no exceptions to the Hippocratic oath. She tries to get up. One of the young women who lost their devices starts to cry and tells the nurse that she’s going to get us all killed, she should just stay put and give us a chance to get out of there alive.

The crying makes another robber nervous. That’s also a rule: there’s always an unstable element in the crew, someone not quite right in the head, suffering from an Oedipus complex or something. These unpredictable members can turn out to be the most vicious of the lot, or else they’ll become the first victims of the heartless leader, or of a policeman or bank employee with an exaggerated sense of duty.

The good-guy robber has been assigned to watch us, no doubt because he lacks talent for threatening tellers, pointing his gun at their temples, breaking into their cash drawers, and dumping the money into a bag. He takes note of the manuscript that, not having been judged dangerous enough to get kicked away, has suffered only the loss of its first and last pages and otherwise remains in my possession. He asks whether it’s mine. I explain that I’m a writer, that I came in to cash a royalty check, and that to keep myself busy during the wait I began reading the manuscript because I’m one of the three judges of the contest it was entered in.

The guy examines the manuscript, leafing carefully through its pages. He asks me how I like it.

I tell him I haven’t started it, that I was just about to begin when they burst in.

He reaches the last page and says it looks to him like a good book. He says if he were the judge he’d give it the prize.

I tell him it’s not that simple; there are three judges on the panel and this book is competing against twenty other entries. And although it’s true that so far I haven’t seen any others that look like winners, I still have this one and two more to read. I don’t tell him that I’m the only judge who actually reads the books; the other two are happy to follow my advice and will say that they, too, find my candidate to be the obvious standout.

The robber seems to smile inside his ski mask and tells me that, by his calculation, Juan Pérez has a thirty-three percent chance of winning, much better than the five percent he started out with. And he leaves.

My jaw drops. This educated thief knows about the law and is quick with his math, even if he’s not very good at stealing.

Then I realize something else: one of the missing pages is the only one with the author’s name on it.

How, then, did the robber know that the author of these stories called himself Juan Pérez?

Elementary: The robber who knows his penal codes and his percentages also knows about literature. That is, he writes it.

In short, he is Juan Pérez.

This discovery gives me goosebumps. I have a valuable piece of information. I’m the only one who knows the identity of one of the thieves.

No, actually, I don’t. Juan Pérez is an assumed name. That’s why it’s called a pseudonym and why it’s used to hide a real identity, be it a writer’s or a bank robber’s. Or both at once.

But if we get out of this alive, all I’ll have to do is give the manuscript to the police. It’s sure to have fingerprints on it, or maybe the type of printer can be identified. At least that’s the way things go on TV; the tiniest sample of clothing or saliva, hair, sweat, or scribbling is enough for the police force of any city in the world to find out who it belongs to. Police science has advanced so much.

Robbers have made a good deal of progress, too. This crew has perfect ski masks, and are dressed in all-black, tight-fitting outfits that allow them perfect freedom of movement. If they weren’t bank robbers, they might be members of a modern dance troupe. And they’re wearing gloves.

Maybe someone at the Writer’s Union will remember who handed in this entry. Or they’ll have the sealed envelope containing the author’s real name, book title, and other data, to be opened only after the jury has determined the winner.

Maybe Juan Pérez submitted his book by mail. Maybe the envelope with its return address and postmark has been thrown away.

But they’ll still have the sealed envelope. If Juan Pérez wants to win the contest and get his prize money—less money, of course, than what he and his accomplices are stealing right now—if he wants to see his book published, be lionized at the launch event, get reviewed, join the literary crowd, and end up sitting in a bank holding a royalty check, or rather, lying face down on a bank floor with that check, he has to have included his true name, address, phone number, and a biography of two lines, minimum, in a sealed envelope.

Everything is happening very fast. Even the clock seems to be hurrying up a bit. But one of the thieves doesn’t like the sound it makes, and fires at it. The clock shatters. Everyone screams. Now, as in the story of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, time comes to a stop.

Then, as if emerging from every chink in the walls, from the crevices of the windows, from the holes in the locked doors, surging from the floor and the cash drawers, dropping from the ceiling and the chandeliers, bursting in from all sides, a special squadron of police fills the bank with bulletproof vests and state-of-the-art weaponry.

We all scream, except for the bank staff who can’t because their lips are sealed with tape. We don’t dare move except to squeeze together as tightly as we can, keeping our heads glued to the floor to avoid the bullets.

In the midst of the firefight, the iPad-iPod-iPhone woman scurries to recover her device. A lot is happening at once. It’s hard to look everywhere, especially when you’re trying to keep your head as far as possible from the shots ricocheting on all sides.

I look for Juan Pérez, who has taken off his mask, but his back is turned and I can’t see his face. In the confusion of screams, blows, people tied and untied, criminals, tellers, and customers, Juan Pérez disappears. Like in that film with Clive Owen, the one where the bank robbers blend in with their hostages, where the thieves are so ingenious and organized that you have to be on their side. Although from now on, after this, I’ll never take the side of a criminal again, even a celluloid criminal. I’ll be a fundamentalist in the religion of law and order.

Well, I won’t be on the side of bandits, but I can’t avoid a certain feeling of sympathy for Juan Pérez. The robber without a face, going under an assumed name, with a broad range of knowledge, and a good heart. Who moves like a cat, both in his book and in his escape.

The police manage to capture everyone else. The bandits’ guns turn out to be toys, but they looked real enough. The chief of the anti-bank robbery squad informs us we’re all witnesses, that it’s our duty as citizens. I wish Juan Pérez were here so I could ask him whether it’s true that we’re required to make statements, sign them, and present ourselves at the trial. But if he were here, they’d have arrested him, too.

The chief goes on informing us of our civic rights and responsibilities. He asks us not to make any statements to the press until we’ve finished speaking to the authorities.

We all provide our IDs and the police take our contact information and tell us we’ll be summoned within the next forty-eight hours. That’s the title of a movie with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, who make a great pair. The grumpy policeman and the likeable thief.

I won’t tell the police that Juan Pérez was one of the band. He’s the only one who sympathized with the Swiss-loving gentleman and actually defended him. Who does math in his head, who knows the law, who writes. It would be criminal to put such a cultured plunderer in jail.

I’ll give him the prize. That way he’ll know. If I give him the prize he’ll know I haven’t betrayed him. Although his criminal comrades might do that. To judge by what we saw, he was not a favorite of the gang’s pitiless leader.

I won’t give him the prize. Surely he doesn’t want to be caught; even if he wins, he won’t show up to bask in the honor. He might even think it’s all a trap—awarding him the prize, counting on his neophyte vanity. Then, when he shows up at the ceremony, a whole crowd of plainclothes police surrounds him, cuffs him, and carts him off to jail.

No, Juan Pérez will not fall for such a simpleminded ruse.

But—why did he enter his book in the contest? Or did that happen before he was recruited to rob banks? And what made him choose to be a thief rather than a writer?

Maybe Juan Pérez is an undercover infiltrator. That’s why the police operation was so efficient: they already knew the whole plan. The only reason they didn’t appear right away was to avoid awakening suspicion. That also gave Juan Pérez time to escape, without the others knowing he wasn’t caught.

But even if he is an undercover policeman, he still won’t show up to collect the prize. The ceremony always attracts television crews who film the proceedings for the cultural segment of the news, photographers and journalists, who snap photos and record interviews for the next day’s arts and culture page.

The police open the doors wide to make room for the wheeled gurney carrying the gentleman out to an ambulance—already parked outside with its doors ajar, its staff ready to administer first aid—that will take him to the nearest hospital. The self-sacrificing nurse walks beside him, keeping her eye on the dial of her sphygmomanometer, still working despite the kicks, or so it seems. After the gurney departs, the rest of us will be able to leave, too, to emerge into the city, into the open air, into our simple daily lives as citizens to whom nothing spectacular or dangerous occurs.

None of this is true. There are no plunderers who threaten us, nor police who frustrate their scheme. Juan Pérez is not an enigmatic, charismatic thief filled with knowledge, lyricism, and humanity, but only the pseudonymous author of a painfully mediocre book. The bank queue continues to be slow, bereft of connection, rhythmic in its snail’s pace, floating in the sweet tranquility of lives on hold beneath a timepiece that ticktocks like a cuckoo clock. It’s a collective siesta, like when small children nap in their cots, or with their little heads down on their little classroom desks. Each one with his or her favorite toy, the iPad-iPod-iPhone, the sphygmomanometer, the calculator, the book of stories entitled You Move Like a Cat.

The doors open to admit a woman with hair dyed a menopausal red. She asks me in a friendly way whether I’m last in line. I stand up and, turning toward the exit, say, “Not anymore.” I leave, my royalty check uncashed.

© Mylene Fernández Pintado. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2016 by Dick Cluster. All rights reserved.

Derecho de autor

Para Elisú
 

Entro al Banco con mi cheque en la mano. Pregunto al guardián de la puerta si puedo cobrarlo en esta sucursal, él a su vez le pregunta a otro que no sé si es otro guardián, vestido de civil. Regresa y me dice: Primero, que sí puedo cobrar el cheque y Segundo: que las conexiones se caen a cada rato.

No sé exactamente lo que esto significa en términos técnicos, pero sí lo que trae como consecuencia. El Banco, normalmente lento, hoy luce sus mejores galas a lo slowdown. Los empleados miran las computadoras con gozo sádico, cada vez que pierden la famosa conexión.

Un señor, que pese a no ser empleado no parece abatido ni desesperado por los problemas tecnológicos o la cola que no avanza, me explica que en estos días, mucha gente viene a cambiar monedas extranjeras en CUC. Hay una gran inestabilidad en el valor del dinero y de un día para otro, lo que tienes vale mucho menos, o mucho más.

Hablando con él, que se comportaba como si la cola de espera de un Banco en una de sus peores jornadas, fuera su hábitat natural, aprendí que tenemos nuestros accionistas de bolsa, de producción nacional.  Personas que miran el cambio del día y deciden si es bueno, o si es mejor regresar otro día. Si arriesgarse y cambiar o arriesgarse y esperar. Algunos de ellos se informan antes de venir al Banco. Miran atentamente el segmento internacional del noticiero y sacan conclusiones.  Son maestros del riesgo. Brokers made in Cuba.

Siempre amable y sereno, pese a que lo único que se mueve en el Banco es el inmenso reloj de pared que está de espaldas a los empleados, por lo que ellos no ven cómo pasa el tiempo mientras nosotros deglutimos cada minuto, me contó que en Suiza, todos los días dan esa información en el televisor. Explican con gráficos cómo van las bolsas en los principales mercados financieros del planeta, el cambio de las monedas, el valor del oro y el precio del barril de petróleo en el mercado internacional, el índice Nasdaq y el Dow Jones. Que esta es  siempre la última noticia de los telediarios de la noche. -Pero los bancos suizos no son como estos-me dijo al final.

No sé quiénes son Nasdaq ni Dow Jones, seguro dos pillos de las finanzas internacionales. Tampoco logro imaginarme un banco suizo. Pero, basta ver cualquier filme para suponer que deben ser el paraíso, porque todo el mundo que se respeta en las películas, tiene una cuenta allí. Aunque no sean siempre personas respetables sino los malos de la película: mafiosos, ex nazis, falsificadores, ladrones de obras de arte, políticos corruptos o evasores de impuestos.

Pero, aunque no consiga imaginarlo, estoy convencida de que no habrá grandes colas. Seguro hay muchos bancos en Suiza y en ninguno se cae la conexión.

En este Banco que no sale en las películas, los que esperamos invocando al dios Cronos y rezando a alguna divinidad que se ocupe del ADSL, lo hacemos en un modo que podría llamarse “la cola sentada”, porque ocupamos los asientos en el orden en que debemos ser llamados para comparecer ante las cajas. Cada vez que uno de los clientes acude a una de las cajas, debemos movernos de sitio para no dejar asientos libres en el medio, como en esos juegos infantiles de la sillita o en los de dados y casillas vacías. Me viene a la mente el filme Alicia en el pueblo de maravillas y me pregunto si sus guionistas, inventaron este sistema de hacer cola o si lo copiaron de algún banco, estación de trenes, Terminal de guaguas, Oficodas, hospitales, bufetes de abogados,  oficinas de la vivienda, de inmigración, etc, etc, etc. O sea, si la ficción bebió de la realidad o si la provocó.

No oso romper la “cola sentada” y me muevo como los demás que me preceden, pero como las conexiones se caen continuamente, no hemos podido hacerlo mucho. En un momento en que se vacía un asiento, el ritmo de ocupación de sillas se rompe por unos minutos dejando libre un puesto en medio de la fila de esperadores. Una muchacha moderna y negligente que acaba de llegar, se sienta, es como colarse sentada. Esgrime un ipod, iphone, ipad, con audífonos, lo saca del bolsillo, programa algo y sigue escuchando, sorda a todo lo que no provenga de su dispositivo.

El suyo es un aparatico muy sofisticado y ella lo sabe, quizás por eso rompe la fila, no mira  a nadie, no pregunta el último. A su lado, otra muchacha, en franco desafío, decide sacar su celular-siempre creí que en los bancos no se permitía el uso de los celulares, es así como los ladrones se ponen de acuerdo para atracarlos y dar órdenes a los choferes que los esperan afuera para partir rápidos y furiosos con el botín.

Ambas muchachas, cada una con su artificio, ocupan su tiempo de espera a la vez que ostentan sus patrimonios táctiles en una especie de duelo, de partida de ajedrez, de contestación y réplica silenciosas. A mi lado, una enfermera vestida tan de blanco que mancilla con su pulcritud fría e insolente la cálida suciedad citadina, las mira severamente. La enfermera no tiene celular, pero en cambio, posee un aparato de esos de medir la presión, así que abre el estuche, extrae el esfigmomanómetro y se pone a examinar algo en el relojito.

El señor que me explicó lo de las oscilaciones de los índices de la Bolsa, y que ama los bancos suizos, está al otro lado de la enfermera y tiene una calculadora en la mano. Las propietarias de los sofisticados artefactos lo miran con extrañeza. No saben que existen calculadoras. O no creen que existan aún calculadoras que hacen solo eso, calcular. Que no tienen música ni cámara fotográfica ni wireless. La enfermera lo observa como si estuviera enfermo.

Imagino que el señor está calculando su operación según el cambio del día. Me pregunto cómo hará él para saber si es más conveniente cambiar hoy que mañana. A lo mejor tiene un gran amigo en Suiza, que lo llama y le orienta en materia de cambios monetarios. O puede ser que tenga una antena en su casa, de esas parabólicas que están prohibidas y que la gente  ha escondido de la policía de maneras tan creativas que un pintor, fascinado con un delito que era puro arte del diseño mimético, hizo una exposición en una galería de la Habana Vieja, en la que el visitante podía recrearse con todas las  variantes que sus poseedores habían urdido para camuflar sus antenas parabólicas.

O quizás el señor tiene, en su casa o en su oficina, Internet de banda ancha,  de esos que se conectan a  muchos kilobytes por segundo y encuentran y abren las páginas Web sin que  se caiga la conexión.

Los miro, enfrascados en sus objetos, haciendo agradable y provechosa la espera inexorable. No tengo una netbook para ponerme a escribir mi masterpiece infinita, es lo que se supone que tengan los escritores a mano siempre, pero traje el manuscrito de un libro de cuentos que participa en un concurso en el que soy jurado. Lo saco de mi bolso. El libro se titula “Te mueves como un gato” y el seudónimo de su autor es Juan Pérez, qué falta de imaginación para buscarse un nombre falso, quizás empleó toda su fantasía para escribir los relatos y a la hora de procurarse un alias estaba ya demasiado cansado.

Los guardianes del Banco bromean, ociosos, en la puerta. Los empleados miran las computadoras en las que la conexión  va y viene, con el placer que encierra la entropía como estado en el que nada se puede controlar y los exime de cualquier responsabilidad. La muchacha uno oye música, la muchacha dos escribe algo en su teléfono. La enfermera escudriña el esfigmomanómetro. El señor saca cuentas.

Paso la primera página del manuscrito, veo que el primer cuento es el que da título al libro,  y antes de leer la primera línea se abren las puertas del Banco y unos malhechores con las cabezas y rostros cubiertos por pasamontañas, empuñando algo que parecen escopetas recortadas o pistolas largas, irrumpen violentamente y vociferan que todo el mundo al piso, que nadie se mueva, que esto es un asalto.

Las muchachas chillan, los asaltantes las amenazan y empujan a patadas los celulares o ipods o iphones o ipads para que no puedan llamar a la policía. Empujan también la calculadora del señor que, una vez todos en el piso con las manos detrás de la cabeza, me susurra que en los bancos suizos no pasan estas cosas. Recibe una reprimenda de uno de los ladrones. Debemos, por nuestro propio bien, permanecer en silencio.

Todos los empleados son atados y se les pone precinta en la boca. Los ladrones se han equipado óptimamente. Pero, saben que tienen poco tiempo, la fachada del Banco es de cristales y seguramente ofrecemos un espectáculo bastante raro a los viandantes en esta zona tan transitada. Como no hay conexión, los que tienen las llaves de las bóvedas no están. Así que tendrán que conformarse con lo que hay en las cajas, y lo que tengamos nosotros, esos a los que el azar colocó aquí y ahora. Y que muy bien podíamos no estar aquí ni ahora.

El señor amante del orden suizo empieza a sentirse mal. La enfermera pide a los ladrones por favor, que le permitan examinarlo y señala el esfigmomanómetro, que la identifica como persona capacitada y que, luego de la patada de uno de los delincuentes, ha ido a parar a la otra esquina. A lo mejor ni funciona.

Uno de ellos  grita con voz firme que no está de acuerdo y que nadie se moverá de su sitio, enfermo o sano, si quiere seguir con vida.  Pero se cumple la regla de oro, esa de que en todas las bandas de asaltantes de bancos, hay ladrones buenos y ladrones malos. Y el bueno intercede ante el malo. El problema es que parece que el malo es el de mayor jerarquía. La escuadra de malhechores se divide en dos facciones. Una está a favor de que el señor sea atendido, y las razones son varias. La primera,  es la simple humanidad, piedad por un ser humano que nada tiene que ver con el Banco.  La otra, que la enfermera y su “esfigmo” no son peligrosos, basta que uno de ellos controle todo el proceso. La tercera, es que hay que pensar también en la posibilidad de que algo les salga mal en el asalto y si el señor muere, además del robo, les tocará vérselas con un delito de asesinato.

El bueno de la banda es el más culto. Le habría encantado a Sócrates, es capaz de divisar el bien aún en medio de tantos forajidos. Conoce el Código Penal, la Ley de Procedimiento Penal y recuerda algunas sentencias de otros casos de robo en los que hubo un muerto por falta de auxilio. Recita los nombres de los delitos, los artículos, las atenuantes y agravantes. Y finalmente enumera las direcciones de los centros penitenciarios a los que irán  a parar y el tiempo que estarán allí adentro si no hacen algo ahora mismo, por el señor que se siente mal.

El jefe dice que si siguen debatiendo la suerte del viejo, entonces sí que los cogerán a todos y les meterán por la cabeza una pila de años. Que la discusión está poniendo en peligro el plan. Que se pongan para las cosas.

La enfermera es valiente. Dice que lo hará bajo su responsabilidad y que si quieren que le disparen. Que el juramento hipocrático no tiene excepciones. Y trata de levantarse. Una de las muchachas despojadas de sus aparatos empieza a llorar y dice que al final nos matarán a todos por culpa de ella. Que se esté tranquila a ver si salimos de esta.

El llanto pone nervioso a otro de los asaltantes. Esta es otra regla, siempre en estas bandas hay alguno desequilibrado, al que le falta una tuerca o tiene complejo de Edipo. Esos siempre dan sorpresas, pueden volverse los más despiadados o ser la primera víctima del jefe desalmado, de la policía o de un empleado con exagerado sentido del deber.

El ladrón bueno, al que han dado como tarea vigilarnos, seguramente porque no tiene talento para ser todo lo malo que se necesita para amenazar cajeras, apuntarle a las sienes, romper las cajas y vaciar el dinero en sacos,  se fija en el libro, que como no fue juzgado peligroso no recibió patadas sino un par de maltratos que le arrancaron la primera y la última páginas y permanece aún a mi lado. Me pregunta si es mío. Le explico que soy escritora, que vine a cobrar un cheque de Derecho de Autor y para hacer algo mientras esperaba, me puse a leer el manuscrito porque formo parte del jurado en el certamen en el que este libro concursa.

El tipo mira el libro, pasa las páginas. Me pregunta si me gusta.

Le digo que aún no lo he empezado a leer, que estaba por hacerlo justo cuando ellos entraron.

Llega a la última página, hojeándolo con cuidado, y luego lo cierra y me dice que a él parece un buen libro. Que si fuera  jurado lo premiaría.

Le digo que no es tan fácil, que somos tres en el jurado y que hay otros 20 manuscritos que compiten. Y que si bien es verdad que hasta ahora, ninguno de los que he leído tiene pintas de ganador, me faltan por leer ese y otros dos. No le digo que soy la única del jurado que se lee los libros y que los otros dos secundarán felices mi propuesta y dirán que también para ellos, mi candidato es el premiado indiscutible.

El ladrón bueno parece sonreír bajo el pasamontañas y me dice que según sus cálculos, parece que en este momento, Juan Pérez tiene un  33 %  de posibilidades de ganar. Y se va.

Me quedo bocabajo, pensando que el ladrón culto sabe de leyes y que es rápido con las matemáticas aunque no sepa robar.

Y entonces me doy cuenta de que una de las páginas que falta es la que decía el nombre del autor.

Entonces ¿cómo supo que el autor de esas historias era Juan Pérez?

Elemental, el ladrón bueno y culto, que conoce las leyes y hace cálculos algebraicos, sabe de literatura. O sea, escribe.

Es Juan Pérez.

El descubrimiento me pone la carne de gallina. Poseo una información valiosa. Soy la única que conoce la identidad de uno de los bandoleros.

No. No tengo ninguna información. Juan Pérez es un nombre falso. Por eso se llama seudónimo. Y se usa para que uno no sepa el verdadero nombre de las personas. Sean escritores o ladrones. O las dos cosas.

Pero, si salimos de esta, bastará entregar el manuscrito a la policía, ahí estarán sus huellas digitales, o quizás se podrá identificar el tipo de impresora que produjo el libro. Al menos en las series de la televisión, basta una micro muestra de tela, de saliva, de pelo, de sudor, o cualquier trazo en una página, para que los científicos de la policía de cualquier ciudad del mundo, averigüen a quién pertenece. Las ciencias policiales han avanzado mucho.

También los delincuentes se han sofisticado. Los pasamontañas de estos son perfectos. Visten todos de negro, ropa ajustable que les permite moverse con soltura, tanto que si no fueran ladrones podrían pertenecer a una compañía de danza moderna. Y además, tienen guantes.

Quizás alguien en la Unión de Escritores, recordará la persona que entregó el libro. O conservarán la plica, ese sobre en el que los autores escriben su nombre real, el título del libro y otros datos de interés, y que se abre una vez que el jurado ha decidido el ganador del concurso.

Puede ser que Juan Pérez haya mandado su libro por correo. Y que en la Asociación de Escritores, hayan botado el sobre con el matasellos.

Pero tendrán la plica. Si Juan Pérez quiere ser premiado y recibir su dinero- que será siempre menos del que se está robando ahora mismo con sus compinches- ver su libro publicado, presentarlo y ser aplaudido, recibir críticas, integrar el gremio literario y terminar sentado en la cola de un Banco con su cheque, o acostado boca abajo en el piso de un Banco con su cheque, deberá escribir en la plica, su nombre,  dirección, teléfono y al menos, dos líneas biográficas.

Todo sucede de manera vertiginosa, hasta el reloj parece que se apura un poquito. Pero su ruido no le gusta a uno de los ladrones y le dispara. El reloj se rompe, todos gritan.  Ahora, como en la historia del sombrerero y la liebre marceña, el tiempo se detiene. 

Entonces, como salidos de cada uno de los poros de las paredes, de las hendijas de las ventanas, de las aberturas de las puertas cerradas, brotando del piso, de las gavetas, descendiendo del techo y de las lámparas, emergiendo de todas partes, una super escuadra especial de policías irrumpe en el Banco, con chalecos antibalas y armas de última generación.

Todos gritamos, menos los empleados que tienen la boca sellada con papel precinta. Pero no osamos levantarnos, y lo que hacemos es juntarnos todos, siempre con la cabeza pegada al piso para esquivar las balas.

Se forma el tiroteo, la muchacha del ipad-ipod-iphone corre a recuperarlo. Suceden muchas cosas a la vez. Es difícil mirar a todas partes al mismo tiempo, sobre todo si tratas de mantener la cabeza lo más lejos posible de los disparos de ambos bandos.

Miro a Juan Pérez, que se quita el pasamontañas pero como está de espaldas no veo su rostro. En la confusión de gritos, golpes, personas atadas y desatadas, bandidos, cajeros y clientes, desaparece. Como en aquel film con Clive Owen en el que los asaltantes se mezclaron con los rehenes. Eran tan ingeniosos y organizados aquellos ladrones que uno estaba de parte de ellos. Seguramente después de esta, no estaré nunca más de la parte de los criminales del celuloide. Seré una fundamentalista de la ley y el orden.

Bueno, no estaré de la parte de los bandidos pero no puedo evitar un sentimiento de simpatía por Juan Pérez. El ladrón sin rostro con un nombre falso, una amplia cultura y muy buenos sentimientos. El que se mueve como un gato, en su libro y para escapar del Banco.

La policía logra atrapar a todos, las armas eran de los atracadores eran de juguete pero parecían de verdad. El jefe de la escuadra anti robos nos comunica que somos todos testigos, que esa es una obligación ciudadana-me gustaría que Juan Pérez estuviera aquí para preguntarle si es verdad que estamos obligados a declarar, firmar e ir al juicio. Pero si estuviera aquí, lo habrían apresado.

El jefe sigue informándonos de nuestros derechos y deberes civiles. Y nos pide que no hagamos declaraciones a la prensa hasta que no hayamos hablado con ellos.

Les damos nuestros documentos, toman los datos de cada uno de nosotros para contactarnos y nos dicen que nos llamarán para declarar en las próximas 48 horas. Hay una película que se llama así, con Nick Nolte y Eddie Murphy. Hacían una muy buena pareja. El policía gruñón y el ladrón simpático.

No diré que Juan Pérez era uno de los ladrones. Era el único que se preocupaba por el señor que ama a los suizos, que lo defendió. Que saca cuentas, que sabe de leyes, que escribe. Sería un crimen tener un saqueador tan culto en la cárcel.

Le daré el premio. Así lo veré. Si le doy el premio, comprenderá que no lo he delatado. Aunque podrían delatarlo sus compañeros de fechorías. Por lo que vimos, él no era del agrado del jefe despiadado.

No le daré el premio. Seguramente no quiere ser descubierto, así que aunque gane, no se presentará a recibir su lauro. Podría pensar que le estamos tendiendo una trampa. Premiarlo contando con su vanidad de escritor novel, y una vez que se presenta en el salón de ceremonias, el público, compuesto íntegramente por policías vestidos de civiles, le cae arriba, le pone las esposas y se lo lleva. Preso.

No, Juan Pérez no caerá en una celada tan estúpida.
 

Pero ¿por qué mandó el libro al concurso? ¿O lo envió antes de que lo invitaran a asaltar bancos? ¿Y qué lo hizo optar por ser ladrón en vez de escritor?

Quizás Juan Pérez es un policía infiltrado en la banda. Por eso la operación policial fue tan eficiente, porque sabían todo. Pero, demoraron en llegar para no despertar sospechas. Por eso Juan Pérez escapó. Así los otros no sabrán que él no fue a la cárcel.

De todas formas, si es un agente encubierto de la policía tampoco podrá venir a recibir el galardón literario. En las premiaciones están siempre los de la televisión, filmando todo para ponerlo en la sección cultural del noticiero. Hay cámaras y periodistas, gente que hace fotos y escribe artículos que luego son publicados en la edición del periódico del día siguiente, en la página dedicada al acontecer cultural.

La policía abre la puerta de par en par para sacar la camilla del señor que será llevado en una ambulancia- estacionada afuera con las puertas abiertas y todo listo para dar los primeros auxilios- al hospital más cercano. La enfermera abnegada va a su lado y controla el reloj del efigmo, que parece que pese a las patadas sigue funcionando. Luego, podremos salir los demás. A la ciudad, al aire libre y a nuestras vidas simples de ciudadanos a los que no les sucede nada espectacular ni peligroso.

Nada de esto es cierto. No hay rapiñadores que nos amenazan ni policías que frustran el robo. Juan Pérez no es el enigmático y carismático asaltante de vastos conocimientos, lirismo y humanidad sino solo el seudónimo del autor de un libro muy mediocre. El banco, aún huérfano de conexiones, lento y rítmico en su lentitud, se balancea en la dulce paz de la espera bajo el tic tac del reloj que parece de cuco. Como una siesta colectiva. La que duermen los párvulos luego del almuerzo, en sus catres o con las cabecitas bajas en las mesitas pequeñas del aula. Cada uno con su juguete preferido, el ipod-ipad-iphone, el efigmo, la calculadora, el libro de cuentos titulado Te mueves como un gato.

Las puertas se abren, y dejan pasar a una señora con el pelo teñido de rojo menopáusico, que amablemente  me pregunta si soy la última. Me levanto y mientras me dirijo a la salida, le digo- Ya no-. Y me voy con mi cheque de Derecho de Autor, sin cobrar.

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