Authors: Matilde Asensi
“Well, Darwin’s theory continues to be just a theory,” I remarked. “If, by now, they had been able to prove it, it would be Darwin’s law.”
My sister-in-law lost her patience. She was very young and had too short a fuse to put up with the silliness of others. But the truth was, the subject of Darwin had always interested me: Was it not surprising to think that no one had found even one of his thousands of alleged missing links that would have been necessary to prove the theory of evolution, and not just the those in the evolution of human beings, but also of all kinds of plants and animals? That meant something, and to me it seemed very odd.
“Do you want me to keep telling you what Daniel was working on or not?” she exploded. “Because, if you’re not interested, I’ll shut up.”
Sometimes it’s better to turn the computer off than to smash it on the ground. Ona was just a child dealing with a lot of problems, the worst of which was lying on the bed in the middle of the room.
“Please continue,” I responded kindly, “I’m very interested. All I ask is that you understand that I don’t have any idea about these things.”
She laughed, relieving the tension that reigned it the room. My brother had also calmed down and seemed to be sleeping.
“You poor thing,” she joked without any malice, “Daniel always says that you’re living proof that not studying is very profitable.”
I smiled, resignedly lowering my head. I had heard that sentence many times from my brother. When I was sixteen, my mother, who already lived at that time in London, gave me my first computer, a small Spectrum with which I started to program in BASIC. I made very simple applications, which I sold, with slight modifications, to a score of companies that were starting up in the strange field of computer programming. Shortly after, I bought an Amstrad, and almost immediately, a 286 clone with a graphics card. The demand from companies and government organizations for computer programs did nothing but grow. I was one of the pioneers of the internet which at that time was not, even by a long shot, the well-known World Wide Web born in 1991, but just a chaotic global network of local networks that communicated within it with crazy protocols and frustrating results. In September of 1993, investing all the money I had earned as a programmer, I started up the first internet provider in Catalonia, Inter-Ker, and began an HTTP
5
web design service. At that time, no one knew anything about the internet. It was all new and strange, a world made by autodidacts who learned as we went along, resolving problems with the touch of a key. The business worked well, but it was clear that it didn’t have a future: the World Wide Web was wild territory, and in a very short time it would become necessary to come to blows with other settlers for a few crumbs of the cake. So when I sold Inter-Ker in 1996 I decided to start a financial page, a portal that offered all that information (currency exchange rates, bank data, interest rates and loans, tables of investments and trade, etc.) that the businesses I had programmed applications for had to laboriously obtain from different avenues. It was called
Keralt.com
, and it was an immediate success. After just one year, I began to receive buying offers from the most important banking companies in the world. In
1999, on my thirty-second birthday, I became one of those guys that in North America they call ultra-rich, when I sold
Keralt.com
to Chase Manhattan Bank for four hundred sixty million dollars. My story was neither the only story like this nor the most well-known. Beating me in profit, for example, were Guillermo Kirchner and the Casares siblings, María and Wenceslao, of Argentina, who sold seventy-five percent of their
Patagon.com
portal to Banco Santander Central Hispano for five hundred twenty-eight million dollars. When it came down to it, the important thing about that transaction wasn’t all the money I received so much as the fact that they had bought an idea from me, only one of the many I could think up, so, with the dollars well invested, a few months later I began construction on my house, and I started Ker-Central, dedicated, on one hand, to programming internet security applications—antivirus software and firewalls—and on the other, to financing innovative projects in the field of artificial intelligence as it applied to finances (for example, the creation of neural networks for the advanced prediction of share prices). Ker-Central received these projects, studied them, and if they met the requirements and satisfied the advisory committee, produced and financed them, taking, obviously, a very high percentage of the profit. What no one in my family seemed to understand was that all of that had cost me many years of hard work, of struggle, and of lack of sleep. In their eyes, fortune had smiled on me because of some whim, and because of this my luck was just that, luck, and not the product of an effort like that which Daniel had expended in order to get where he was.
“The Miccinelli documents,” continued Ona, with a smile still on her lips, “written by two Italian Jesuits, missionaries in Peru, were comprised of thirteen folios, one of which, folded, contained a
quipu
that….”
“What’s a quipu?” I interrupted.
“A quipu…. Well, a quipu…,” She seemed unable to find adequate words. “A
quipu
is a thick wool cord from which hang a series of colored strings full of knots. Depending on the arrangement of these knots, their thickness, and the distance between them, the meaning varied. The Spanish chroniclers maintained that Incan
quipus
were accounting tools.”
“So the quipo was a kind of abacus,” I suggested.
“Yes and no. Yes, because it really did allow the Inca to keep track, in minute detail, of the taxes, weapons, the population of the empire, agricultural production, etc., and no, because according to references found in minor documents and in Guamán Poma de Ayala’s chronicle, discovered in 1908 in Copenhagen, the
quipus
were something more than simple calculators: they also related historical, religious, or literary occurrences. The problem was that Pizarro and the successive viceroys of Peru made it their business to destroy all the
quipus
they found, which were many, and to massacre the
Quipucamayocs
, the only ones who knew how to read those knots. Their interpretation was lost forever, and the only thing that remains is the obscure memory that the Inca controlled the administration of the empire with some exotic tangled strings. Whenever a
quipu
was found in some burial site, it was sent directly to be shown as a curiosity in some museum. No one knew how to read it.”
There were some quick knocks at the door, followed by the entrance into the room of a nurse with enormous bulging eyes and a hoarse voice who carried in her hand a tray full of medications.
“Good evening,” she greeted us with a friendly manner, heading rapidly toward Daniel. Since the side table was occupied by my laptop and my cell phone, she left the tray on the bed. “It’s time for his medication.”
My sister-in-law and I returned the greeting, and, like the audience at a play watching the
actors on stage, we stayed in our seats and followed her with our gaze. We knew the ritual from having seen it the night before. After making my brother ingest the chlorpromazine tablet and the thioridazine drops, with much effort due to his lack of cooperation, she put the mercury thermometer under one of his arms, and around the other, she wrapped the blood-pressure cuff. All of this she did with agility and skill, without error, moving with the dexterity that comes from many years of experience. Having concluded this first phase, she moved on to a second that we did not know:
“Do you want to go for a walk, Daniel?” she asked in a loud coarse voice, literally putting her face against my brother’s, who now had his eyes open again.
“How can I want to if I’m dead?” he responded, loyal to his new creed.
“Would you rather we sat you in a chair?”
“If only I knew what a chair was!”
“I’ll help him up,” I said, getting up. I couldn’t take any more of that absurd conversation.
“Don’t bother,” the nurse told me, lowering her voice and gesturing me not to move. “I have to ask him these questions. We have to test his progress.”
“It doesn’t seem as though there is any….” murmured Ona, sadly.
The nurse gave a sympathetic smile. “There will be. It’s still early. Tomorrow he will be much better.” Later, turning back to me as she released the cuff from my brother’s arm and collected the thermometer and the rest of her things, she said: “Insist on asking him if he wants to take a walk. Do it every time you put the drops in his eyes. He has to move around.”
“I don’t have a body anymore.” Daniel declared, looking at the ceiling.
“Yes, you do, dear, and a very nice one!” she exclaimed happily as she went out the door.
Ona and I looked at each other, trying to contain our laughter. At least someone was in a good mood in that dreadful place. My sister-in-law’s face, however, changed quickly:
“The drops!” she said guiltily.
I nodded and picked them up from the bedside table, handing them to her. My laptop had turned itself completely off and my phone had automatically disconnected from the internet.
Talking to him, saying a continuous stream of sweet things to him, Ona put the fake tears in my brother’s violet eyes. I observed them intently, reaffirming for the thousandth time my unbreakable decision never to be part of an emotional community of two. I couldn’t take the idea of tying my life to that of another person, even for a short time, and if, dragged by circumstance, at some time I had been crazy enough to do it, I always ended up tired of putting up with nonsense and desperate to get back my space, my time, and my supposed solitude, in which I was very comfortable and very free to do whatever I felt like. Like the title of that old Manuel Gómez Pereira movie, I always asked myself why they called it love when they meant sex. My brother had fallen in love with Ona and was happy living with her and their son; I simply liked my life exactly as it was and I didn’t contemplate the need to be happy, something that seemed to me like an aspiration foreign to reality and an unfounded fiction. I contented myself with not being miserable and with enjoying the temporary pleasures that life offered. That the world made sense through happiness sounded to me like a cheap excuse not to confront life head-on.
When Ona returned to her chair, I went back to the business of
quipus
. Something told me that some knots had to be untied.
“You were telling me before about the Miccinelli documents and the Incan writing system….” I reminded my sister-in-law.
“Ah, yes!” she remembered, bringing her legs up into the chair and crossing them Indian-style. “Okay, so the thing is, while Laura Laurencich-Minelli studied the historical and
paleographic part of the documents, Marta Torrent studied the
quipu
that came sewn into the folded folio, and in doing so she discovered that there was a direct correlation between the knots and the quechua words that appeared written above the cords. She deduced, obviously, that she had before her a new Rosetta Stone, which would allow her to find the lost key to deciphering all of the
quipus
, but it would take years, so, with permission from the owner of the Naples archive, Clara Miccinelli, she made copies of everything and brought them with her to Barcelona.”
“And, once here, our dear Marta got to work and began to unravel the mysteries of that old writing system,” I commented, “but since it was a titanic undertaking, she looked for help among the best-qualified and most intelligent of her professors, and she chose Daniel, to whom she immediately proposed a collaboration on the project.”
Ona’s furious expression returned.
“But, Ona…,” I hesitated, “Dr. Torrent didn’t do anything other than offer Daniel a unique opportunity. Imagine if she had offered it to someone else! I don’t understand why it bothers you so much that she thought of Daniel for something so important.”
“Marta Torrent only offered Daniel the hard work of the project!” my sister-in-law said, irritated. “Your brother was very clear on that, he knew from the beginning that she would exploit him, and that later, when it came time for recognition and academic merits, he wouldn’t even get a thank you. It’s always like that, Arnau! He was killing himself working outside of class time so that she could receive, comfortably seated in her position as head of department, updates on the progress he was making.”
I was somewhat surprised by that energetic response. Things must be very bad at the university for Ona to express herself like that. Normally my sister-in-law was an agreeable and mellow young woman. It’s not that I hadn’t heard of the abuses that went on in the departments, but I never would have suspected that my own brother was one of those poor unfortunates being leached off of by his superiors. Still, it was the manner and not the meaning of Ona’s words that shocked me.
Daniel, probably incited by the tone of our conversation, suddenly became violently agitated and began to tirelessly repeat the word which, that night, had obsessed him:
“
Lawt’ata, lawt’ata, lawt’ata
….”
“There’s still one more thing I don’t understand, Ona,” I mentioned thoughtfully. “If Quechua was the official language of the Incan Empire and the
quipu
of Naples also came with the key in Quechua, why did Daniel abandon the study of that language in order to devote himself completely to Aymara?”
My sister-in-law arched her eyebrows and looked at me with very wide, disconcerted eyes.
“I don’t know,” she declared at last, in a dispirited voice. “Daniel didn’t explain it to me. He only told me that he had to focus on Aymara because he was sure that’s where he would find the solution.”
“The solution to what?” I objected, “To the
quipus
in Quechua?”
“I don’t know, Arnau,” she repeated. “I just now realized.”
When I was writing the code for some application, as simple as it might be, I never made the mistake of supposing that among the thousands of lines I was leaving in my wake, there was no hidden fatal mistake that would impede the function of the program on the first try. After the effort of conceiving the project and developing it over a period of weeks or months, the hardest and most passionate work still remained: the desperate search for those imperceptible structural failures that ruined the immense, expensively-erected building. Nevertheless, I never faced the
code empty-handed since while I wrote routines and algorithms, a sixth sense kept me aware of where those dark areas were that probably would later be the source of all problems. And I never doubted the truth of those intuitions. When, upon finishing a program, I applied the compiler to test the function, it always ended up confirming the connection between the final errors and those dark areas. Looking for them and finding them was much more interesting than correcting them, because correcting was something simple and mechanical, while discovering the problem, chasing after it, following a feeling or a suspicion, had its element of the heroic, of Ulysses trying to get to Ithaca.