second was that the job should give me access to all the available data on this city’s residents, so that I could set up a network of informers as vast as my growing photo collection. At school, my own means had been amply sufficient, but if the whole universe was now to be my hunting ground, I would need resources that would be just as unlimited. A detective? A journalist? A spy? Those professions were canceled out by the third and last of my conditions. The work should not imperil me in any way, or bring me—it is the same thing—any public recognition. I needed a post as burned out and monotonous as my own face.
When I saw the ad for an apprentice to the archivist of photography files at the Department of Traffic Accidents, I knew right away that I had found what I wanted. It was satisfying also to realize that my recommendation—which amounted to an order—that Tristan Pareja study law, a career so close to power and its secrets, was beginning to bear fruit. I wasn’t going to suggest that he become a plastic surgeon, now, was I, Doctor? The man had already woven a ring of law school classmates and their parents who could be influenced because of the juicy reports that I had obtained for him. Now, almost effortlessly, he managed to meet Pompeyo Garssos, the Director of the Archives, and to put in a good word for me that guaranteed me the position. Although the first few days don Pompeyo was bothered by the fact that the new employee never seemed to be at work—his eyes would slip over me, unseeing, and roam somewhere else—he soon began to appreciate my skills. Never before had that collection been as immaculately well organized: each photo easy to find, each piece of information at the tip of his fingers.
As I classified the photographs, I took a couple of seconds to look intensely at each one. A few, the more interesting ones, I would set aside; would explore the owners of those faces at my pleasure during the years to come. It was as if the whole country had become my schoolyard, allowing me to stalk an almost infinite variety of orgasms, the faces of men who beat their children and smile at their neighbors, the eyes of a woman who knows her husband is cheating but doesn’t dare tell him to get out because she needs the money.
Of course, to take that initial tour of this city’s adults and the countless malevolent adventures their faces promised was only the first step in a more ambitious plan, just as you, Doctor, without any doubt, gain something more than personal gratification when you alter the features of your patients.
To make headway within the Department of Traffic Accidents until I was in the exact place where I could carry out my projects, I specialized in exposing the people who had obtained fake drivers’ licenses. Until I arrived at the archives, it had basically been impossible to discover if a person had filled out an application under an assumed name. Any name—which is no more than a sad jumbleof sounds, at least you’ll agree with me on that, Doctor—can be hidden in the great jungle of unknown names, as a tree can be hidden in a forest. You know as well as I do that the most ordinary of noses can be used to conceal the strangest face. Or am I wrong, Mardivelle? Those impostors were so sure that nobody could identify them that they didn’t even take the trouble to disguise their features, they didn’t even seek your help, Doctor. Later, of course, you must have made a fortune, trying to paste innocence on the most guilty faces. I could go so far as to declare that I have been at the origin of some of your most lucrative contracts. Our two careers run a parallel course—each one of us working with the counterfeit currency that shines in faces that are not ours. Attempting to make them pass the test of my eyes. Not bad at your work, Doctor. I owe you some thanks. You’ve made my work more entertaining. More challenging.
But at the time it was as easy as can be. Before the other
Chelle Bliss, Brenda Rothert