DISGUISE

He was distracted, his mind lost in the labyrinths of a recent pain. That was why, when the beggar entered the car, mumbling his speech, he paid him no attention.

“I answer to no one; I beg for myself. For myself, I beg. I had an accident; I need help. A coin, please.”

The words forced their way out with difficulty, so it took him a moment to connect the request with the bulky figure swaying down the aisle to the rhythm of the train.

“I answer to no one; I beg for myself. For myself, I beg. I had an accident; I need help. A coin, please.”

Strange, he thought; something doesn’t fit.

He looked the beggar in the eyes and perceived the mismatch between the speech –repeated like a chant– and the gestures with which the man registered his surroundings. It was after six in the evening, rush hour. The car was full of people returning to their homes in the suburbs. Yet the beggar moved as if the train were empty.

He’s lying, he thought; he’s pretending there’s no doubt he’s playing a character created for begging. He wasn’t surprised. Although it belongs more to urban folklore than to serious studies, it is common knowledge that many people work as beggars with the same professionalism with which clocks are repaired or furniture polished.

It wasn’t worth torturing himself with such merciless reflection, he decided. He searched for some coins and prepared to give them to him as soon as he came closer.

Everything would have ended there, had it not been for the beggar letting out an exclamation, surely upon receiving a counterfeit coin. The exclamation itself did not surprise him; it wouldn’t have, even if it had been uttered in another language. What was strange was that for an instant –an infinitesimal fraction of a second– the beggar wavered at the threshold of perception, revealing that beneath his human shell there was an artifact, or something nonhuman that resembled one.

He rubbed his eyes, bewildered, as if it were logical to attribute the phenomenon to an optical illusion. When the beggar reached him, he tried to detect some other sign that might expose the other’s hidden nature, but he saw only a heavyset man, badly damaged by a massive stroke; he dragged his left leg, and the arm on that side hung like a piece of dead flesh. The speech difficulties were disguised by the habit of repeating the same discourse, though his voice trembled every time he pronounced the word “accident.”

He gave him the coins he had prepared. The beggar stopped and said:

“God bless you and give you double.”

Then, with a movement that contradicted the uselessness of the arm, he clenched his fist and the coins vanished. He didn’t put them in a pocket or drop them into the pouch hanging from his waist: they vanished.

Another optical illusion?

It occurred to him that he lost nothing by confronting him; in the worst case he would receive an incomprehensible response, outside the programming, or none. But the beggar had already turned his back on him, continuing his way through the packed car, leg dragging, hand dangling limply at the end of the arm. He didn’t ask for permission: he pushed forward and passed between people like a machine programmed to fulfill that objective.

A banal episode: it was over.

Was there any point in continuing to wonder about what he had seen the supposed artifact disguised as a beggar? A begging machine. Ingenious. Once design and construction costs were amortized, it would be an inexhaustible generator of profit, active twenty-four hours a day, all year long, year after year, tireless, efficient. Maintenance costs would be minimal: machines don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t receive wages, don’t engage in social protest, don’t demand vacations, don’t get sick…

Perfect.

He dismissed the idea as too fanciful and soon sank back into his deep melancholy. In truth, he didn’t care; even if things were as he had imagined, he didn’t care.

Nevertheless, when the beggar passed into the next car, he followed him with his eyes. There was a coincidence, at the very least, an intriguing one. The last car to be covered fits perfectly with arrival at the terminal. Eight cars, sixteen stations. Mathematically exact; a dramatic concession to symmetry, which usually does its best to slip away.

When he got off, he prolonged the investigation by positioning himself about twenty paces behind the beggar. The man –he resisted accepting that his vision might be taken as verified– remained beside the last door of the last car. That door, when the train reversed its direction to travel from the terminal back to the head station, would become the first door of the first car.

The mathematical precision of the cripple’s behavior continued to collide head-on with logic. If his appearance and conduct suggested a man who could barely fend for himself, the way his work was organized demonstrated the opposite. He thought he glimpsed, fleetingly, a change in attitude when new passengers began filling the cars, but he dismissed it as unimportant.

It was at that moment that he decided to follow the beggar to the end of the world, if necessary. He had nothing important to do, no one was waiting for him, and in any case, it would do him good to focus on a novelistic enterprise… even if it were an illusion, a sovereign absurdity.

When the train was about to depart, at the very last second the beggar boarded, which forced him –lost in his speculations– to run so as not to miss it. Only the spontaneous help of someone who jammed the automatic doors allowed him to make it aboard before the train started moving.

Once inside, with no chance of getting a seat, he crouched down to remain unnoticed and carefully observed the beggar’s actions.

“I answer to no one; I beg for myself. For myself, I beg. I had an accident; I need help. A coin, please.”

The same words, the same dark hesitation on “accident.” With enviable precision he crossed the car at exactly the time it took the train to travel between the first two stations.

As he felt the excitement grow inside him, the excitement of pursuing the clarification of a mystery, however small it might be, he imagined three or four possible outcomes, some of which involved a certain risk to his physical integrity. Was he operating under the influence of a suicidal impulse? He considered the idea, though not entirely. His inner wound was deep, the kind that does not heal easily. But he was certain that his desire to know would prevail over any unfortunate tendency.

He searched for the beggar once more. He did not see him, of course. He must be in the third car, and if the mode of action was as expected, there was no reason to worry; he would not lose him.

At that point a new doubt assailed him. If the artifact theory was correct, the beggar would never get off the train –or at least he would never leave the terminal stations– remaining in a kind of closed circuit. Surely, he would meet whoever oversaw collecting the proceeds, but he himself would obtain no further data. It was his own limitations, eating, sleeping, satisfying physiological needs, that would eventually make him lose track of the cripple.

There was no point. He was chasing a ghost. It would be better to abandon things at this stage, before obsession chained his will.

Even so, he allowed himself one last gambit. If he managed to bypass the pursuit –given that he already knew it would lead nowhere– and instead discovered among the other passengers someone who had noticed the beggar’s strange behavior, he might arrive at a satisfactory answer without further effort.

That possibility encouraged him so much that he dared to approach the nearest person.

“Excuse me,” he said to a young man with curly red hair who had spent the entire ride searching for a comfortable position for his large backpack. “Did you notice the beggar who passed by a while ago, the aphasic one, fat, repeating a broken-up speech?”

The young man looked at him oddly but did not seem bothered by the intrusion.

“I see him every day when I travel; I don’t pay him any attention anymore. What did he do?”

“Nothing special, really. It’s hard to explain. You’ll probably think I’m crazy or chasing something strange.”

The young man shrugged. “I’ve probably heard worse, for sure.”

“All I have is a sensation, a flash. I saw something very strange when he passed by me earlier; I’ve been following him ever since.”

“Then you let him go, he’s about three cars back.”

“That doesn’t matter. I know where he is right now. That’s not it. He maneuvers with regularity, like a machine.”

“A robot beggar?” The young man grasped the idea immediately. “Sounds absurd.”

“Yeah, doesn’t it?” The train had been filling up at every station, and the atmosphere was already unbreathable. He wondered how the beggar managed to keep to the pattern: one car per segment. “According to my calculations,” he continued, “by the eighth station he’ll have reached the last car, which will force him to take a train going the opposite way, or the next one in the same direction as this one.”

“Are you sure about what you’re saying? Look, I don’t know you. You could be a lunatic who’s gone off on that tangent. And the beggar hasn’t done anything to me. Do I have to choose between the two of you?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” The young man seemed to realize he’d been rude and tried to make amends. He extended his hand and introduced himself. “My name’s Julián; I do this route every day.” He smiled. “I study downtown, Social Sciences.”

“That’s great. I’m Esteban Gandolfo. As you can see, I waste my time on this nonsense.”

“Are you planning to follow him?” He made an ambiguous gesture in the direction where the cripple might be at that moment. The question implied another.

“I have nothing better to do. I was widowed two months ago. When I get home, I sit in a chair and spend hours staring into emptiness. Sometimes I remember and turn on the television; then I spend hours staring at the television as if it were emptiness. This, at least –even if it’s crazier– looks more interesting, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry,” said the young man, uncomfortable, unaccustomed to expressing condolences.

“No problem. I apologize again for dragging you into this.”

The young man adjusted his backpack and prepared to fight his way upstream through the human tide that filled the entire car. But he didn’t manage to take even five steps.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he said. “He has it well-rehearsed.”

“I think it would be best to intercept him at the eighth station, outside the train.”

“Better. Count me in.”

Apparently Julián had decided to trust his recruiter’s instinct. What had seduced him in the proposal? Had he noticed something interesting, or was he one of those obliging types who sign up for anything? Esteban felt invaded by a series of turbulent emotions. Considering that the beggar must have been five cars away, they had just enough time to think of a strategy. Two stations. One and a half, really.

That was why it threw them off to see the beggar coming back, advancing with difficulty, out of time and out of distance, reciting his monotonous chant.

“I answer to no one; I beg for myself. For myself, I beg. I had an accident; I need help. A coin, please.”

“You meant this one, right?” said Julián.

“This is the one,” Esteban conceded. “But something doesn’t fit. He shouldn’t be back already. I registered a way of acting, unchanging, or so I thought; this doesn’t obey the pattern.”

“He’s turning back before the eighth station. Maybe he noticed? You said he crossed the train in one direction and at the eighth switched to another.”

“That was a hypothesis. It seems it’s been refuted.”

The beggar was very close now, dragging his leg, the arm hanging limp, the same speech, with its slip on “accident.”

“If there’s no routine, there’s no mystery,” said the young man. “Just a poor cripple trying to earn some coins.”

“Wait a moment. The arm.”

“What about it?”

“It’s the other one.”

Unexpectedly, a dark-skinned woman with long eyelashes and a tired expression seemed interested in the conversation, and without anyone giving her an opening, she decided to intervene.

“I noticed it,” she said. “When he passed going the other way, the damaged arm and leg were on the left side, and now he’s dragging the right.”

“Exactly!”

Without going too deeply into it, Esteban had already drawn a couple of preliminary conclusions: there were two beggars, identical or nearly so, moving through the train in opposite directions; or there was only one beggar, but the pattern wasn’t one car per station–it adjusted itself to the decisions of an operator controlling him remotely. That would explain the change in the crippled arm and leg. Absurd? For the moment, he had nothing better.

Julián and the woman seemed to have tuned into each other and were exchanging opinions, speculating about the beggar phenomenon.

“I dare go further,” she was saying. “I think he’s not human.”

“You really thought that?” said Esteban. “Don’t tell me!”

“It’s crazy, right?”

“Not at all; I sensed–or thought I sensed–something similar.”

“Quiet,” said Julián. “Here he comes. Let’s confront him. What could happen?”

“That’s it. Let’s take him out of the routine.”

Without hesitating, Esteban took out a bill –not coins– from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it in front of the beggar’s nose. The beggar raised his left hand to take the money, at the same time reciting the customary thanks.

“May God bless you…”

But the bill had vanished, whisked away by a simple flick of the wrist. There was no confusion in the beggar’s expression, though there was a strange, sharp whistle, as if a valve had released pressurized air.

“One answer, and the money is yours.”

“What are you doing to him?” said an elderly woman with gray hair. “Don’t be heartless. Give him the money and leave him alone. Don’t provoke him. He’s a poor cripple!”

“I answer to no one; I beg for myself,” said the beggar.

“He’s lying! He’s a begging machine.”

“For myself, I beg. I had an accident.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this!” the older woman protested again, furious. “Don’t make him suffer! You must be a real piece of filth to…”

“He begs for an entity alien to us, for reasons we don’t know. He’s not human!”

“What are you saying? What are you talking about?”

A man dressed in the green-and-yellow uniform of a waste-collection company advanced on Esteban with the intention of striking him. Unintentionally, the crowd prevented him from reaching his target. Even so, several people began to side with the cripple, who –to anyone observing the scene– was the victim of a sadist, a madman, or something worse.

Even the woman with long eyelashes and Julián began to look at him with distrust, wondering whether they had ended up on the wrong side of the movie. Had he been disturbed before, or had the process begun at that very moment?

“Leave him alone! Can’t you see he already has enough of a cross to bear?” interceded a pregnant woman. “You don’t know what respect is.”

A fertile wave of protests rose in chorus, merging with the sounds of the train as it continued its way, indifferent to the conflict unfolding inside.

“I need help. A coin, please.”

“Someone calls security!” shouted a tall, obese man with a shaved head and a thick black mustache. “Security! Security!”

“Wait,” said Esteban, cornered against one of the automatic doors; his chances of being thrown onto the platform if the train stopped were enormous. The pressure of the crowd was increasing and he, hands raised, was failing to convince anyone, quite the opposite. “I’m not trying to hurt the cripple. Just listen there’s something very strange going on with this man. I only want to find out. They noticed it too,” he added, pointing to Julián and the dark-skinned woman.

“I need help. A coin, please.”

“I didn’t,” the young man defended himself. “I only followed him out of curiosity.”

The woman remained silent; she had exhausted her arguments, and weariness was once again taking hold of her will.

“I answer to no one,” the beggar insisted obstinately.

The train had stopped at a station, but the doors were not open. The stop was lasting longer than usual, so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that news of the disturbance had reached the ears of security personnel; they would be organizing to act. Time was running out and Esteban could think of nothing effective. Fortunately, the crowd’s aggressiveness, held in tense suspension, had diminished… but there were no guarantees that violence would not erupt at the slightest stimulus.

“In the first car!” Esteban heard people shouting. “There’s one who hurt the Penguin!”

The Penguin.

So that was what they called him? The twisted hilarity the idea produced in Esteban vanished when he realized they were accusing him of an abuse he had not committed. The crowd had pulled away from him and now looked at him with disgust, apprehension, resentment. It was everything he needed.

He snatched Julián’s backpack and, gripping it with both hands by the straps, swung it against the beggar’s head at the exact moment the chant was repeated yet again:

“I had an accident…”

“You’re about to have another one!” Esteban howled.

The backpack struck home, and the head went flying like a meteor, brushing every handhold along a row, which rang musically. The beggar’s body began to spin out of control, and a rain of plates, components, capacitors, resistors, and who knows what else spilled over the train’s passengers. Screws and washers rolled across the car floor, forming an absurd little stream.

“A coin, please,” the decapitated body continued to beg. Esteban deduced that the playback unit must be somewhere near the armpit. But that deduction was relegated to second place when he noticed that almost all the passengers were throwing themselves at the beggar’s loose components, while others –bolder still– were dismembering him to seize arms and legs.

At the other end of the car, the waste collector dressed in green and yellow triumphantly held up the head, asserting the superiority of his physique over those trying to snatch it from him. When he was sure everyone recognized his right, he unscrewed his own head and proceeded to replace it with the beggar’s.

“It’s the latest generation!” he exclaimed, euphoric.

A round of applause crowned the conquest.

Most of the passengers lost interest in Esteban –whom minutes earlier they had nearly lynched– and devoted themselves to comparing and appraising the pieces obtained in the dismantling. Of the beggar there remained only the core of the torso with the sound unit, which for some strange reason no one had claimed.

Esteban crouched down and was able to hear, though the volume was now very low, the unchanging plea, almost inaudible:

“…I beg for myself. For myself…”

At last, the doors opened, and the crowd spilled out onto the platform.