MARTINGALE

He was tired of being left-handed, and though he knew that even if he succeeded in writing with his right hand, it wouldn’t prove anything—perhaps only that he was a stubborn old man—the challenge excited him.

He found an unused notebook and a pen in the desk drawer. While deciding what to write, he instinctively gripped the pen with his left hand—a reflexive gesture. He switched it to the other hand and felt strange: he had been writing with his left hand for over half a century, probably the oldest left-hander alive. Back in his school days, teachers were strict about such matters and often punished those who didn’t correct themselves. But that wasn’t the point. What should he write?

“Trial number one.” He underlined it. Even underlining required significant effort. “Dextrorotatory, as opposed to levorotatory, refers to a characteristic of polarized light.” He examined the result: not bad. The hardest part had been training his unpracticed muscles to form the loops and spirals that handwriting demands. Normally, he used his right hand for cutting, gripping, holding, scratching—simple, clumsy movements.

Mastering the technique of writing with the non-dominant hand, he wrote, involves the individual’s will as a cohesive whole, the same will required to modify any other aspect of personality, eliminate a vice, or overcome a frustration. He also underlined the last three words.

In truth, the content didn’t matter; he was writing for practice. Yet the hidden intention had surfaced: to overcome a frustration. Being left-handed had made him unhappy; in the past, he had envied the other children, though he stubbornly hid it. The automatic writing with his right hand had revealed the truth in the second paragraph. He also noticed three other modest, almost invisible words forced out by more than one unsatisfied desire: modify any trait. Could such a basic trait be altered simply by wanting it? Pure fantasy. He had proven he could transform his right hand’s clumsiness into a degree of dexterity, but nothing more.

The paradox made him smile: his left hand was dexterous—would his right hand become sinister because he forced it to perform unnatural tasks?

He looked at the words, satisfied. His fluidity had improved, and though the handwriting was clearly different, soon it might be impossible to distinguish the left-hander from the right. The idea of exploring other areas, especially negative ones, was tempting. He decided to make a list of things worth changing.

He wrote change at the top of a blank page, noticing as he did that he dotted the “i” like an expert. He underlined it. Beneath the underlined word, he wrote personality. Then, work. That was obvious, a natural consequence of the previous item. If my personality changes, I won’t last three hours in that rat hole.

Sexuality. For an older man, solitary and shy, who had never lived with a partner, that issue deserved a radical change.

Children. He paused. That was going too far. The mechanism might be the same to change hands, character, job, or loneliness into companionship. But some things—the Moon, the Nobel Prize—are beyond the reach of amateurs.

Discarded.

Discarded?

He didn’t dare cross it out. He wrote below it instead. Television. Refrigerator. Was he going astray?

He shook his hand; he had been subjecting it to merciless strain. He read what he had written. For the first time, it all seemed like utter nonsense, though his primary goal was being achieved satisfactorily. The last words showed subtle, elegant handwriting; no one he knew could produce such beautiful script with their non-dominant hand.

“Would you like some mate, dear?”

The voice from the kitchen yanked him violently out of his musings. Mate? Who? Who had spoken? He lived alone and always had. A bachelor in a large, empty house.

“No,” he replied tremulously, unsure. He had never drunk mate. Who was this woman?

“Coffee, then?” The voice came closer. “Tea?”

“Coffee, fine,” he said, swallowing with difficulty.

The woman fell silent, though it was clear she handled the kitchen tools with the familiarity of someone who had done so for years. Years? Where had she come from? Could the traits of handwriting, swimming against the current, summon unknown forces and produce real changes? There had to be a better alternative explanation—something to do with blocks or amnesia.

“It’s ready. Should I bring it to you?”

He had to see this creature conjured by words. What would she look like? Young? That would be an excessive reward. He wouldn’t manage to seduce her. Or he would—and make a fool of himself.

“I’m coming,” he said without conviction. Anxiety gnawed at him, and his hand throbbed again.

“Two sugars, as always?” the woman asked when he entered the kitchen, without looking at him. She seemed just over thirty, dark-haired and neat—perhaps a servant he had settled for, lacking the courage to aim higher. She was pretty, and when she looked him in the eyes for the first time, he noticed her green, large, beautiful eyes.

He woke at 5:30. Contrary to all predictions, the woman hadn’t vanished overnight. Who would have imagined? His bones and muscles ached, and his hand felt as though rewriting reality demanded an effort akin to the act of sex.

Quietly, so as not to wake her, he sat at his desk and pulled the notebook from the drawer. Everything he had written the night before was intact. What if he erased it? Would the woman disappear without leaving any trace except a tingle in his groin? He didn’t dare risk it.

The persistence of hallucination, he wrote, is rooted in the subject’s disturbances, not the intrinsic qualities of what is hallucinated. The more believable the hallucination, the deeper the trauma that causes it.

My God, I’m insane! How can I take this seriously? Yet it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, as he acted as though he weren’t mad.

The phenomenon became official when fixed on paper, sustained by a theory. Rereading what he had written, he realized, for the first time, that the content outweighed the words. Perhaps he was caught in a temporal anomaly. If so, the changes would last only as long as it takes a rubber ball to rebound off a wall. That was the key! Entropy was about to rewind itself. For an indeterminate period, the struggle between order and chaos left a number of atypical phenomena adrift, and during that time, anything was possible.

“Why are you up?” the woman said sleepily. “It’s so early.”

Change this old man’s sexuality… he wrote hurriedly.

“Is something wrong?” the woman persisted.

“Nothing, just a moment—I’ll be right there.”

He was terrified at the possibility of losing control over the changes, given that he didn’t know how long the anomaly would last. But the urgency of his desire overpowered him. From a certain perspective, he was satisfied with what he had achieved, even if he didn’t manage another change. The passion with which he embraced the woman erased his last doubts.

“I don’t recognize you,” the woman remarked.

He laughed silently. I’m someone else, yes. He caressed her neck, inhaled her natural scent. He tried not to think about the rubber ball, poised to leave the wall and begin its rebound. Then again, if entropy had taken millions of years to reach this point, why shouldn’t he cling to the wall like a limpet?

“I’d spend all day in bed with you,” he finally said.

“But you’re thinking about something else. What is it?”

“It’s a secret.”

“We shouldn’t have secrets.”

“This one, yes. Don’t pry.” A trace of his usual gruffness slipped into his words. He wasn’t willing to let himself be managed by the woman—or by the changes themselves, even if he had achieved them through his own effort.

He agreed to stay a few minutes longer but escaped as soon as he could. New changes had occurred to him; he had to reshape reality while it was still possible. Fantasies of power besieged him; a new sensuality took him by storm.

Change, he wrote, the cruelty of the powerful, illness for health; eliminate hypocrisy, increase love. Unfortunately, he couldn’t verify the results of these changes, but he had no right to stop.

Change shattered dreams into realized ones…

“What’s wrong?” the woman said, startling him.

“I’m unwell and will stay that way until you tell me how you appeared. Yesterday, you didn’t exist.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve been married for over twenty years.”

“Impossible!”

The lines, which for a moment had overlapped, began to separate. The ages didn’t match, the house morphed before his eyes, like in dreams. But while dreaming, it’s real; it only ceases to be so upon waking. He seized on an interesting thought in passing.

“Do we have children?” he asked.

“Of course we do, but they don’t live with us. Why are you asking? You couldn’t have forgotten them.” She looked frightened.

“Where do I work? Am I a nobody or a genius?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Do you realize nothing fits? Which hand do I write with?”

“Your right,” she said.

“Have I always written with my right hand? Am I not left-handed?”

“Not that I know of.” Now she was very frightened.

“Maybe I was left-handed until a few hours ago. I dreamed of a life where I was a bitter, gray old bachelor who wrote with his left hand.”

“Try writing with your left hand…you won’t be able to.”

“No! Things I don’t want might happen. I need to be alone for a while; I need to think.”

The woman left. Soon he heard the sounds of her preparing food.

Change my mood, he wrote. Didn’t I manage to change my personality?

It was dangerous. A change like that could trigger others, less desirable ones. He crossed out change my mood; he would remain irritable.

From the kitchen, the woman protested.

“What did you say?”

“Stop making those idiotic lists and come spend time with me.”

“You’ve been rummaging through the drawers!”

“So what? Am I your maid?”

Change this unbearable witch, he wrote, for a sweet solitude.

He stopped. Smelled. Listened. Observed. The pen, suspended between his index and middle fingers, danced a tribal rhythm. Abruptly, he stood.

He scoured the house from top to bottom. No trace of the woman.

He was getting the hang of it. The hand!

Yet he felt the fear return that the changes would reverse themselves when thermodynamic equilibrium was restored.

What if the ball stuck to the wall? That could hurt him.

Let’s find a way to stabilize the changes, to solidify them. Reality behaves by negotiating agreements, forging commitments with facts. Reality exists if there’s a document to prove it. It’s paper, not breath, saliva, or excrement, that demonstrates the existence of Newton and Torquemada, Goethe and Parmenides, Cleopatra and my grandfather. These days, is Swift more real than Gulliver? Shakespeare than Hamlet?

He reviewed the reality he had created with his right hand and found it satisfactory. Perhaps it was possible to create another with his left hand, but he wouldn’t risk the pot by playing blind. He had one last move to perfect the sequence—one as perfect as it was invisible to the untrained eye.

He inhaled and exhaled. It might be the last time he did, he conjectured. He wasn’t worried.

Change, he wrote, my questionable condition as a living human being, self-aware, for the firmer and more definitive one of a fictional character in a story that someone, someday, might happen to read.

Original title: Martingala

Translated from the Spanish by Sergio Gaut vel Hartman