surrounded by sick cows, manure, and the smell of disinfectant?
It’s as though he’s suddenly discovered a new meaning of the phrase
cost of living.
Where else has he seen the species priced in this way? Maybe in films … slaves in films about Rome, who are bought and sold in town squares for a handful of crude, poorly made coins, or for a few little gilded discs masquerading as coins, which a greedy hand shakes in a bag to make their obscenity ring out like a tambourine. And prostitutes, of course, who are at once so archaic and so auratic, although with them it’s never clear whether the price is for the prostitute herself or the package of services she offers. But that’s cinema, and he knows all too well how distrustful he must be of anything that impresses him. And besides, with both cases—the slaves under the whip, the women offering their flesh on the street—there’s always the same pathos and emotional agitation, a truly cancerous form of extortion that makes it virtually impossible to understand anything. The policy is ruthless in that regard. It doesn’t soften emotion, it destroys it. One life equals a hundred thousand dollars. Period. Where else has he seen the orders of the flesh and of money converge like this, with such impassive matter-of-factness? Suddenly, the dead man’s voice comes back to him from some distant Sunday lunch, speaking with a terrified tremor. He doesn’t see him straight away, something that happens to him often with certain memories: they come back to him lacking a component, such as images, or sounds, or smells, or any of the resonance of the experience, as though someone’s intercepted them on their way from the archive to him. But against this momentarily black canvas, he hears his voice repeating a number over and over again in a falsetto,
four million,
the amount that the armed organization that has kidnapped the iron-and-steel company’s general manager isdemanding by way of ransom, until the picture grows clearer and the dead man appears, utterly beside himself, his whole face bloodshot, gesticulating in his shirtsleeves at a table spread with food that’s growing cold, and then taking advantage of the general stupor into which the guests have fallen to stretch out a hand and snatch a crostini. Yes, these numbers tell him something. Much more, in any case, than the phrase
cost of living
in its most common sense, the one everyone uses it in because the price of every single thing and good and service changes from one day to the next, though the crucial question is never answered: why the phrase applies to fluctuations in the price of milk or clothing and not in the price of a captain of the refrigeration industry or an executive at a multinational company.
It’s like a fever. Every week the front pages of the papers announce a new record. Four million for the general manager of the iron-and-steel company, a case the dead man knows well, partly because it concerns the corporation he works for, but more because, as he himself says, it hits very close to home, and proves what the discovery of his body at the bottom of the San Antonio River spells out in black and white: how close he is to being next. But there’s also the twenty million that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias demand for Roggio in Córdoba, the five million for the metalworker Barella, the two million three hundred that the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo gets out of Lockwood, the million for John Thompson from Firestone, the twelve million Esso pays for Victor Samuelson after five months in captivity. And so on, up to the zenith, the blow to end all blows, the
ne plus ultra
of the flesh–money tariff system, which manages to contain a whole cycle of inflation within itself: the five million that the Montoneros demand when they kidnap the Born brothers in September 1975, and the forty or sixty million—reports vary—that the grain processor Bunge y Bornends up paying out in April 1976, when
It’s as though he’s suddenly discovered a new meaning of the phrase
cost of living.
Where else has he seen the species priced in this way? Maybe in films … slaves in films about Rome, who are bought and sold in town squares for a handful of crude, poorly made coins, or for a few little gilded discs masquerading as coins, which a greedy hand shakes in a bag to make their obscenity ring out like a tambourine. And prostitutes, of course, who are at once so archaic and so auratic, although with them it’s never clear whether the price is for the prostitute herself or the package of services she offers. But that’s cinema, and he knows all too well how distrustful he must be of anything that impresses him. And besides, with both cases—the slaves under the whip, the women offering their flesh on the street—there’s always the same pathos and emotional agitation, a truly cancerous form of extortion that makes it virtually impossible to understand anything. The policy is ruthless in that regard. It doesn’t soften emotion, it destroys it. One life equals a hundred thousand dollars. Period. Where else has he seen the orders of the flesh and of money converge like this, with such impassive matter-of-factness? Suddenly, the dead man’s voice comes back to him from some distant Sunday lunch, speaking with a terrified tremor. He doesn’t see him straight away, something that happens to him often with certain memories: they come back to him lacking a component, such as images, or sounds, or smells, or any of the resonance of the experience, as though someone’s intercepted them on their way from the archive to him. But against this momentarily black canvas, he hears his voice repeating a number over and over again in a falsetto,
four million,
the amount that the armed organization that has kidnapped the iron-and-steel company’s general manager isdemanding by way of ransom, until the picture grows clearer and the dead man appears, utterly beside himself, his whole face bloodshot, gesticulating in his shirtsleeves at a table spread with food that’s growing cold, and then taking advantage of the general stupor into which the guests have fallen to stretch out a hand and snatch a crostini. Yes, these numbers tell him something. Much more, in any case, than the phrase
cost of living
in its most common sense, the one everyone uses it in because the price of every single thing and good and service changes from one day to the next, though the crucial question is never answered: why the phrase applies to fluctuations in the price of milk or clothing and not in the price of a captain of the refrigeration industry or an executive at a multinational company.
It’s like a fever. Every week the front pages of the papers announce a new record. Four million for the general manager of the iron-and-steel company, a case the dead man knows well, partly because it concerns the corporation he works for, but more because, as he himself says, it hits very close to home, and proves what the discovery of his body at the bottom of the San Antonio River spells out in black and white: how close he is to being next. But there’s also the twenty million that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias demand for Roggio in Córdoba, the five million for the metalworker Barella, the two million three hundred that the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo gets out of Lockwood, the million for John Thompson from Firestone, the twelve million Esso pays for Victor Samuelson after five months in captivity. And so on, up to the zenith, the blow to end all blows, the
ne plus ultra
of the flesh–money tariff system, which manages to contain a whole cycle of inflation within itself: the five million that the Montoneros demand when they kidnap the Born brothers in September 1975, and the forty or sixty million—reports vary—that the grain processor Bunge y Bornends up paying out in April 1976, when