1. Lost Characters
Vicente Puchol
Chapter 1
And if the lack of any exit was the sign that we are not permitted to think of
an exit of any sort; that is, that we must simply establish ourselves in the
place that appears to be without exit, and to adapt ourselves to it, rather
than looking for the “habitual” exits?
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Until I received the news that I had been sentenced to indefinite custody in the Penal
Institution for the Socially Maladapted, or PISM, and that I was to be transferred there
immediately, I had never even heard of the place. Don Pablo Jordán, my lawyer, tried to explain
to me how the PISM operated.
“It’s not an ordinary prison. It’s an institution for social rehabilitation, with two levels of
security. There’s an outpatient facility, where the inmates themselves are permitted to
determine the unit’s rules and regulations, and where they can even put forward candidates for
release by a panel of expert judges, outside the PISM.”
He paused and took a deep breath.
“There’s also an inpatient facility, where a team of psychotherapists, called ‘Inquisitors,’
designs a specific treatment plan for each inmate, depending on his or her rehabilitation needs.

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Once the panel of Inquisitors declares that an inmate’s treatment is complete, the inmate is
released, regardless of the length of his or her sentence.”
He smiled reassuringly and went on, “Since you’re a normal person – a victim of
circumstance really – you’ll be released right away. The fact is, you’re lucky that you were
chosen to serve your sentence in the PISM.”
“Oh, is that so?” I asked, with cynical surprise. “And why have they chosen me?”
“I don’t know. Members of the PISM recommend which convicts should be sent there.
But their decisions are made according to secret criteria that the judges don’t even know.”
Admitting this, my attorney was unable to hide his discomfort.
“The PISM works on the principle of an open-ended sentence,” he continued, “which
means that the amount of time served depends on the inmate’s rehabilitation. The sentence
isn’t a punishment, they say, but a cure.”
I was surprised by my attorney’s explanations, but no more than he appeared to be. He
had lost a case that he should have won. At the beginning of that last conversation, he was
fearful and unsteady – perhaps he was casting about for the technical flaw in his ineffectual
defense – and we struggled to understand each other.
I pressed him for more information, “What’s the difference between the PISM and a
psychiatric facility?”
“The role of the PISM is to bring about a social cure and the rehabilitation of inmates
according to current norms. Its work is based on the firm conviction that laws must be obeyed –
and the role of a psychiatric facility is to treat mental illness, not to rehabilitate prisoners.”
He could see that I was perplexed by this distinction, so he took another approach.

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“As soon as the Inquisitors see that you’re normal, you’ll be released. That wouldn’t
happen at an ordinary penitentiary. And in the meantime, you’ll feel free inside the walls.”
“And you?” I asked. “You wouldn’t be wondering now if I’m normal or not, would you?”
My attorney interpreted this comment as an attack.
“No! I already told you that I didn’t have any doubts about it. That’s why it’s only logical
that you’ll be released right away.”
“Logical or just?” I insisted, fussily.
At this, my attorney, who was fat and shortsighted, stared at me through his thick
lenses. He had fully recovered his self-confidence.
“Justice doesn’t exist. It’s a Platonic ideal, which the Judeo-Christian tradition grafted
onto Roman law. Ever since, humanity has raised palaces to justice. But in lay societies, only the
law exists. And the law, when there is a conflict of interest, protects whatever the legislator has
given preference to. Naturally, for attorneys, our clients’ interests are always the most
important…”
He smiled, satisfied at his speech. But I had the impression that he was professionally
incapable of understanding my serious misgivings, and that my presumed normality was for him
a legal matter like any other. Overwhelmed by pride and indignation, I lost my head.
“I don’t understand the law – the only thing I know is that among the lot of you, I’ve
been found guilty!” Slamming the door, I stormed out of his office.
On the way home, my fury, so recently unleashed against my attorney – who really had
done the best he could – gave way to sorrow. If the judges had found me guilty, why would the
Inquisitors find me innocent, when they were the ones who had recommended that I be

4. Lost Characters 4
remanded to the PISM? Fear of their criteria – unknown even to the judges – filled me with
anguish. I thought, “These Inquisitors will be tenacious types, they’ll have a completely
opposite view on life from mine, they’ll want to make me over according to their model, they
will be fanatics…”
I locked myself in my apartment to wait for the police to take me to the penitentiary. I
was too agitated to eat or sleep. I paced from one room to another, looking for an exit, turning
the record player on and off with irritation. From time to time, with my muscles aching from
thrashing about so much, I fell onto my bed, dizzy and confused. Unable to cling to a single solid
thought, I wandered, lost, in fifty square meters.
When the police knocked at the door, I was still disoriented. A uniformed officer pulled
a document out of a case on his belt and read it to me. It was the Order for Enforcement of
Judgment. I was so discouraged that I could barely pay attention. After they’d handcuffed me,
they put me into a patrol van. The peepholes, which were covered with heavy grating, gave no
hint of what was outside. For hours, I traveled inside a strong box, as if I were a dangerous
fugitive.
All official consideration for me was finished: the pre-trial release, the procedural
problems and pauses that had dragged my trial out for so long that I’d begun to dream that the
judges had forgotten me, the much-debated doubts about the culpability of my behavior at the
scene of events. The scene! The idea made me shudder. I was overcome by a feeling of
alienation. This attack on my sense of reality was making me crazy.
When the van finally stopped, the doors to my cubicle were opened. I couldn’t reconcile
myself to the idea that I had traveled here in a patrol van, which was an affront to my status as

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a member of the middle class. It was nightfall, and a group of armed men trained a flashlight on
me, ordered me to get out, and frisked me. This was beyond the pale, calling into question as it
did the trustworthiness of my guards, and I was forced to acknowledge with great sorrow that I
was entering a pitiless center of power. After they had verified that I carried no contraband,
they pushed me back into the van and slammed the door. I was unable to make out any details
of the prison in the darkness. We slowly crossed what must have been a courtyard and went
down a ramp.
When I exited the van again, a semicircle of uniformed men trained their machine guns
on my guards and me. I was nauseated by their distrust. I was a peaceful citizen, despite my
sentence, and my guardians were officers of the law. The court officer remained calm. He was
of slight build, with a pasty complexion and an absent gaze. It seemed that he was as much a
victim of circumstance as I. We were in the basement of a fortress, surrounded by cement walls
and illuminated by neon bars that gave the faces surrounding us an inhuman paleness. The
elevator doors opened and one of the machine-gun bearing guards moved quickly into the
back. Next, the court officer and I were pushed in, followed by two more guards. No one spoke
as the elevator rose through the building. I noticed that the court officer also felt he was being
closely watched, but he understood and forgave the guards’ uneasiness. After all, he was an
officer, and I was a prisoner.
Getting out of the elevator, we walked single-file down a long corridor. It was a sad
procession. I felt humiliated by my handcuffs and an oppressive desperation overcame me. A
phrase from the Gospel – Race of vipers! – briefly enraged me, but I calmed myself again,
surrendering to the inertia of my destiny. I thought, “They’re going to brainwash me, blur my

6. Lost Characters 6
conscience, make me swallow their morals, and they won’t give up until I’ve assimilated
everything. Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood.” Again, the New Testament came to mind,
enraging me. The procession stopped in front of a large, translucent glass door and the court
officer and I entered an administrative office.
The ceiling was as high as a factory’s. On the back wall there was a control panel like
those found in airports, and the room was filled with desks, computers, and electronic
equipment. Men and women dressed in white coats swarmed around the various devices. Most
of them wore blue badges; some wore gold. The court officer strode confidently toward a large
desk bearing the nameplate “Auditor General,” but by the time he got there, his proud
demeanor had dissolved. After a respectful silence, he took a clear folder out of his document
case and humbly handed it to the man behind the desk. Unlike the court officer, the Auditor
was muscular and ruddy, but his gaze was oddly sleepy. He carefully read the top document
through the transparent cover and when he lifted his eyes from the page, another man,
standing behind the desk waiting for this signal, took the folder from the Auditor, removed the
document he had just read, and walked away with it. This time, the Auditor opened the cover
and read my sentence in depth.
While he was engaged in this task, I noticed that the staff’s badges were rhomboid in
shape, and this insignificant detail intrigued me. I considered that all insignia were by nature
pretentious, and that if the PISM aspired to distinguish itself from similar institutions, it would
be obliged to adapt an extravagant one. My mind wandered among emblems and symbols –
just as dreams do, they all have a meaning. In this case, what meaning could a rhombus have?

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The court officer, believing he understood the cause of my puzzlement, generously offered an
explanation. “All the machines here communicate with one another,” he said kindly.
Forgetting for a moment the enigma of the rhombus, I shifted my attention to the room
around me. The court officer was correct – it was a hive of electronic activity. The document
extracted from my case file was generating a great deal of administrative energy, and I noted
more movement at certain desks than at others. Relying on the agent’s friendliness, I dared to
say, “It’s a computer room, of course.”
My comment surprised him. He must have admired those machines without really
understanding what they were. Perhaps he was still obliged to struggle with dossiers in hard
copy and knew well the trouble that a lost document could cause. It wasn’t surprising that he
would find the idea of a file going missing in a computerized office impossible to believe. He felt
compelled to tell me, “Documents are never lost here, they are merely transformed.”
“That’s the law of conservation of energy, applied to administrative organization,” I
replied.
He smiled happily, but I couldn’t help unloading my frustration on him. “The problem is
that these electronic devices are programmed by human beings, and a computer crash can
cause problems for anyone,” I continued.
The court officer’s attitude shifted to that of a rifleman whose unit was under attack.
“They have corrective mechanisms,” he spat.
“I know very well what a system-wide crash looks like,” I countered.
The Auditor nodded solemnly. My sentence was in order. Of course it was! His assistant,
who had silently returned to wait behind him, quickly handed him a freshly printed card to sign.

8. Lost Characters 8
The Auditor signed it without looking at it and his assistant gave it to the court officer, who
gazed at it for a while – he was within his rights as an administrator, after all – as if it were a
fine engraving. Then he carefully tucked it into his document file, bowed to the Auditor, and
without a word to me – Had he forgotten our recent friendly exchange? – turned on his heel
and walked proudly away, satisfied at having done his duty. He was an honest man, although a
bit cold. The Auditor looked right through me, his eyes revealing a hint of drowsiness. I made a
restrained gesture in the hopes of rousing him, but he didn’t react. Then I realized that for him I
was only a criminal, and I felt a stab of sorrow. I didn’t see myself that way at all. The Auditor’s
assistant signaled for me to follow him, and he led me between two rows of desks toward a
door. There, a man wearing a triangular badge stepped toward him and the assistant handed
me over. As he took me into the next room, the man with the triangle said, “Wait here.”
The waiting room contained nothing but a row of wooden chairs. Outside, in the
administrative office, they were transforming my sentence and my criminal history into
digitized data, before sending them to the Inquisitors who would be charged with reforming
me. Anguish again overcame me. Nobody wants his personality adjusted. After a while, two
men who were also wearing triangular badges indicated that I was to accompany them into a
smaller room whose walls were covered with white tiles. Florescent light bounced off the tiles
so strongly that I had the sensation of being bombarded with tiny particles. They removed my
handcuffs and made me undress. They shut me, naked as a newborn, in a sort of strongbox,
where I was sprayed first with a harsh liquid, then with a refreshing one, and finally, I was
blasted dry with a gust of hot air. When I came out, they gave me a cup to urinate in, extracted
a blood sample, and took my blood pressure. They next moved me into another room, where

9. Lost Characters 9
two more men, wearing pentagonal badges, were waiting for me. There was no room for
doubt; the increased complexity of the pentagon indicated they held a higher rank than the
men with the triangles. One of the Pentagons examined my genitals and the other used a
magnifying glass to inspect the condition of my skin. After this examination, the two Triangles
pushed a gurney into the room and ordered me to lie down. They restrained me and rolled me
into a dark room that was filled with medical equipment. The Triangles stood waiting while the
Pentagons began to work. It was clear that the latter worked well together. Various electronic
devices were passed over different parts of my body, each generating its own buzzing sound.
The Pentagons were at the controls, making their observations jointly. Now and again, they
exchanged a friendly comment. I let myself be swayed by their good humor and ventured, “Am
I well?”
“At present, there are no foreign objects visible,” came the reply.
“There’s only one foreign object here, and you’ll never locate it because it’s invisible –
my mind,” I joked.
“We aren’t interested in your mind, we’re only interested in your physical brain.”
“Tell me, why are you all so fond of polygons?” I ventured.
They didn’t answer, but one of the Triangles stepped forward and said, “You’d better
shut up.”
“But you haven’t even had the courtesy to give me a drape for my penis,” I protested.
“All right, that’s enough,” said one of the Pentagons, abruptly. The show was over.
The Triangles waited until the last device had been stored and then pushed the gurney
out of the room.

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“Those Pentagons must have committed a procedural irregularity. They were very
brusque in their examination,” I observed.
No one paid any attention to me. Passing from the darkness of the x-ray room into the
shower of florescent light, I had to shut my eyes tightly.
“You wouldn’t have any sunglasses, would you?” I asked.
The Triangles did not answer; they undid my restraints and gave me an undergarment, a
shirt, a pair of rough cotton pants, and a pair of sandals. They ordered me to dress.
“But I only asked for a pair of dark glasses,” I complained.
One of the Triangles, squat and dark-skinned, stretched his dwarf’s neck as far as he
could toward me, frowning. But he said nothing. As soon as I’d finished dressing, they grabbed
me and dragged me onto a metal chair where they immobilized me by tightening shackles
around my arms and legs.
“I’m a journalist,” I said. “Be careful what you do to me.”
“Hook him up.”
The Triangles began to cover my head, body, and limbs with cables that were connected
to a large electric device. When they had finished, two new Pentagons entered the room. I
asked them sarcastically.
“You’re not going to burn me at the stake, like the Inquisitors used to do with heretics,
are you?”
One of the Pentagons put his hands on his hips and looked at me.
“You’d better gag him. He’s a real chatterbox.”
“He’s a journalist,” the short-necked Triangle helpfully clarified.

11. Lost Characters 11
As the Triangles put the gag into my mouth, the Pentagons made comments, never
taking their eyes off of me.
“These intellectuals are always trying to feed us the same garbage,” said one.
“They think they can solve everything with the stroke of a pen,” added the other.
“They think they’re oracles.”
When the Triangles had finished their task, one of the Pentagons patted me on the
shoulder.
“Now we’re going to use a CAT scanner to examine your neural function. The Inquisitors
will be in charge of examining your dirty tricks.”
His colleague switched on the machine. The Triangles sat on a pair of stools and
watched while the Pentagons rushed around in continual consultation. I thought that the court
officer would have enjoyed this performance. He was a mechanic at heart; he would have made
an excellent Pentagon. After a while, one of the Pentagons ordered, “Remove the gag.”
The short-necked Triangle expertly untied the knot behind my head and pulled the gag
from my mouth.
“Have you made any earth-shaking discoveries?” I asked ironically.
No answer. The court officer would have said, “Calm down now.” The short-necked
Triangle was staring at me. I smiled at him, and he again stretched out his neck, pressing his lips
together.
“We’re finished here,” a Pentagon announced.
The Triangles jumped up as if they’d been shocked, and began to carefully remove the
cables. They next undid the shackles.

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“Let’s go,” they said.
Leaving behind the florescent-lit exam rooms, we walked down two hundred meters of
corridor and took an elevator. Its automatic doors opened on an empty room. It was immensely
silent – a rough rug muffled every footstep – as they led me down a row of cells. They pushed
me into one of them.
“I haven’t eaten,” I told them.
The short-necked Triangle made a face, and they both walked away without answering.
The cell was very narrow and simply furnished. There was a large window of translucent glass,
reflecting at this hour an intense blackness. I went to wash my face, but remembering my
recent and thorough disinfection, I stopped. Exhausted and faint, I opted to lie down instead,
leaving until the next day the freedom of initiative that my attorney had assured me was part of
the regime here. The temperature was perfect, and in a few minutes, I was sound asleep.
When I woke up, the cell was filled with an intense light. It must have been a beautiful
morning. I smiled. After washing up, I walked into the corridor. I was fiercely hungry. Outside, I
found only a troubling silence. All of the doors were locked, and nobody answered my knocks. I
spent a moment in the vestibule trying, in vain, to find the elevator button. At the end of the
corridor, I located an identical vestibule, but there was no elevator button there, either. I went
back to my cell and threw myself on my bunk. What were they going to do with me now? The
sun was beating against the window.
“Patience,” I told myself. “Until the administration has received the lab reports, they’ll
probably keep me in quarantine, so that I don’t start some sort of epidemic.”

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Hunger once again drove me to my feet. Officially, it had only been twelve hours since
I’d last eaten, although in reality twenty-four hours had passed. “It will always be difficult to
make computers align with the reality of human life, and those Pentagons who are in charge of
me seem to be guided by them like a flock is by its sheepdog,” I mused.
Communication with the outside world was completely forbidden in the PISM –
naturally, they’d taken my cell phone away. As I looked at the square of light it occurred to me
that, like the polygonal badges worn by the institution’s grim workers, it was a sign of an
institution overseen by geometric souls. In the past, prisons were both squalid and sterile, but
progress had – technically, at least – humanized some of them, like the PISM. It proposed the
rehabilitation of its prisoners, bringing them into harmony with current legislation and societal
expectations. Of course, these were at the mercy of continually shifting political ideas. The first
step was to remove the prisoners’ possibility of contemplating day and night.
My treatment appeared to begin with a study of my psychological reaction to isolation
in my cell, just as the Pentagons had studied my physical reactions the night before. The
sentence, “We aren’t interested in your mind, we’re only interested in your physical brain,”
made that obvious. I imagined there was worse yet to come.
After a few hours, my mood turned gloomier. I was famished, and yet nobody had
appeared to bring me a meal. I inspected my cell from top to bottom, discovering only a tiny
metal grate – an air conditioning vent – nearly at ceiling level. Outside, in the hallway and
vestibule, there was a series of small glass rectangles and cylindrical boxes mounted at regular
intervals high up on the walls. Could they be microphones, cameras, or radar transmitters?
There was no way of knowing, although I was certain that the whole complex was monitored by

14. Lost Characters 14
closed-circuit video. What Don Pablo Jordán had clearly told me was that the inmates lived in
an open regime, and that individual initiative was respected, although also carefully watched.
So it seemed to me that the most reasonable course of action was to continue to look for an
exit.
I found myself in the second vestibule staring at the elevator door as if it were a work of
art and I, a museum visitor. Suddenly, I spotted a double door off to one side. I pushed against
it and it opened into an enormous, windowless room. I entered and closed the door, plunging
myself into darkness. I started walking blindly, hesitantly, across the room, wandering lost and
puzzled. I found another set of double doors like the first, which also opened. I trudged on in a
pointless quest, crushed by the dark and empty space surrounding me. I had no idea where I
was. My head was spinning as if I were trapped in a nightmare. The only lights were red
pinpoints at wide intervals that seemed to measure the distance in the huge space.
More geometry! I remembered the court officer’s words: “All the machines here
communicate with each other.” The PSIM was an enormous machine and I was trying to
escape, fool that I was, from one of its cogs. Again, the court officer’s words came to me. “They
have corrective mechanisms.” That was it! The elevator worked via remote control, like a
garage door. They knew that I didn’t have access to a remote, so they weren’t worried that I’d
escape. It was useless to keep looking for a way out. I turned around and walked determinedly
back toward my cell.
Just what was the point of this huge suite of rooms? To make the inmates tremble in the
shadows? When I calculated that I’d walked further on my return trip than I had on my way out,
I stopped, dumbfounded. Was I lost? Were they trying to confuse me? I sleepwalked toward

15. Lost Characters 15
the glass rectangles, now lost in the darkness, and said loudly, “What can a man do when reality
stops making sense? You are making me doubt my senses! This isolation is too much – it’s
affecting my sanity. If it’s true that the PISM is only interested in bringing the maladapted back
into line with societal norms, you must be trying to unbalance me in order to push me towards
them. I don’t know how to fight the silence and darkness in these pointless rooms that lead
nowhere. The only thing I can do is to look after my mental health and wait, like a beggar, for
you to take pity on me.”
I slid to the floor and discovered with great surprise that its cold, smooth surface was
marked with small tire tracks. I scratched a bit and saw that the floor was slightly dusty.
Continuing my investigation, I found that there were many different kinds of tracks, nearly all of
them resembling the scratches that impetuous roller-skaters would make when racing down
the hallway. One in particular was an oblique line, perhaps the mark of a powerful standing
start like a lightning bolt, to judge from the depth of the scratch it had left behind. This
discovery made me think that perhaps the path I’d followed on my return had been diagonal,
and for that reason I was struggling to find the door. Could it be that I was sliding along the
hypotenuse? Now the PISM’s variously-shaped insignia made sense to me. They symbolized the
polygon formed by the institution’s different buildings. It was a mathematical penitentiary! The
cold tiles were numbing me, and I struggled to my feet convinced that the PISM held no infinite
straight lines. I knew that once I reached a wall, if I stuck close to it I would eventually find a
door.
Which door would it be, the one leading back to the vestibule, or one that opened onto
a dead-end? I felt like a drunken sailor looking for his bunk among the dark shapes in the hold,

16. Lost Characters 16
or a theologian hesitating between reason and anathema. I wandered breathlessly, aimlessly,
until my legs gave out and I fell to the floor. I crawled along like a worm, in search of a wall that
would, most likely, lead nowhere. But as was the case with straight lines in the PISM, its rooms
weren’t infinite either, and my arm finally bumped against a baseboard. I was overcome with
relief and exhaustion. The cold from the floor had worked its way into my kidneys and my
bones. A flashlight-bearing expedition wandered through the shadows of my mind without
finding me. In the midst of my delirium, I imagined a phantom patrol that had lost its way; I was
in the depths, unconscious, beaten down by a feverish sleeplessness, absurdly hobbled. I awoke
with a shout, moved closer to the wall, and began to creep forward again.
My fatigue and uncertainty led me to imagine that I was walking along the cornice of an
interior courtyard and my legs trembled, threatening to knock me down and into the void. But
how could that be if I’d just gotten up off the floor? It didn’t matter – I couldn’t see anything,
and the courtyard could loom up in front of me without warning. Had I lost my mind? After
being crippled by those fierce hours of panicky waiting, I was finally able to calm down a bit and
emerge from the horror that had overcome me, my muscles, dog-tired, refused to function. I
hung onto the wall and walked heroically along the cornice. At the same time, I was terrified by
the depths of the imaginary courtyard that I had not been able to reason away. I inhaled deeply
to fend off the dizziness caused by the pull of the void.
I fantasized about an Egyptian lost inside a pyramid, far behind a funeral procession that
had forgotten him, making his terrified way through the dark galleries, only to find that he had
been sealed inside for eternity. Burning his torch down to the end, he would wander up and
down endless passageways, destroying his fists pounding them against immovable stone walls,

17. Lost Characters 17
and shouting like a madman until he was hoarse. He would then return to the main burial
chamber to see himself reflected in the embalmed corpse lying there, and when his torch
guttered out, he would stretch out on the floor to let the last hours of his life slip by, taking
leave of his sanity in the face of death.
My anguish was pressing down on my poor, worn-out nerves. The lights of my own life
were dimming. I collapsed. When I came to, the smell of the floor tiles made me retch, but I sat
up, ready to use the last of whatever strength I still possessed. After all, I wasn’t lost inside a
pyramid! And with the clumsy haste of a fly beating against a windowpane, I rushed along the
imaginary cornice toward the door that I knew must be there somewhere. Just like the fly, I
banged into, not a windowpane, but a perpendicular wall, the side of a cube. I had passed from
linear geometry to spatial geometry!
Soon, I found a door, and moving forward while leaning against the wall I found another
and another, until I burst into the second vestibule, where I threw myself onto its soft carpet
and dozed for hours. When I woke up, I moved toward the elevator door and I questioned it as
if it were the Sphinx. As in a hallucination, its doors slid open. Looking closer, I noticed that
under my feet and hidden by the carpet just in the middle of the elevator opening was a
mechanism that, when stepped on, made the elevator doors open and close. I pressed my foot
on it a number of times, feeling the limitless joy of my surprise discovery, before stepping into
the elevator. I had no idea which of the numbered buttons to push, so I naturally chose one at
random and the elevator began to descend.
My breath quickened and I could barely stand upright. I was terrified that the doors
would open and I would find myself in a vestibule identical to the one I had just left. But when

18. Lost Characters 18
the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, I could see a platform pulsing with humanity.
Many of them were dressed as I was, while others were wearing white coats and triangular
badges. Astonished, I stepped out of the elevator. I didn’t dare take any initiative, despite what
my attorney had told me. Then I saw a long line of people waiting in front of a lighted sign that
read INFORMATION. As I took a place behind the last of them, I noticed that many of my fellows
were looking at me curiously. The women were dressed exactly like the men. It was well known
that in the PISM there were no barriers or differences between the sexes. (“Within its walls,
you will feel free,” my attorney had told me.) I waited my turn silently and shyly, with my hands
in my pockets and my head down. The inmates were talking, but I wasn’t paying attention to
what they were saying. I didn’t have the strength to listen or to speak. When it was my turn, I
stood in front of a woman wearing a rhomboid badge. She was seated behind a thick panel of
glass with a slot at the bottom, through which came her voice.
“What do you want?”
“I want to eat.”
She looked at me with administrative rudeness.
“Next.”
The inmate behind me, seeing that I hadn’t moved, shoved me out of the way. I turned
to speak to the Triangle who was closest to me and the people in line began to murmur.
“There you go – he’s going to rat him out.”
“And he just got here.”
“Well, he looks like he’s still wet behind the ears.”
An agile and alert Triangle approached me.

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“Where have you come from?”
“A deserted floor.”
The Triangle winked at the inmates in line and signaled me to follow him. They began to
cheer for me, mockingly.
“Bravo! Goal!”
“You’ll get far.”
“Because you’ve got a long way to go!”
The Triangle pushed open a door marked NO ENTRY and led me down a hallway lined
with glass doors. I felt that I was finally on the right path, but at the same time I was alarmed.
The Inquisitors were surely waiting for me in their secret offices. The Triangle took me to a
gilded Rhomboid who sat behind a desk, overseeing a group of blue Rhomboids, all busy at
different machines. He asked me, “Have you been exploring?”
The gilded Rhomboid’s team mocked me. Coming on top of the inmates’ derision, it
irked me. I said angrily, “No, but I’ve been explored.”
The Rhomboid didn’t bat an eye. I understood then that it was useless to adopt a
dignified attitude in an undignified place. I hurried to explain.
“I’ve been at the Institute two days, and after running a battery of tests on me, my
keepers left me in isolation. I managed to get out, and here you have me.”
The Rhomboid inhaled sharply through his nose. With the disdain of a superior bothered
by an inferior, he explained brusquely, “It wasn’t isolation. It was an Inquisition that failed.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“What’s your name?”

20. Lost Characters 20
“Jaime Villa.”
The Rhomboid turned to a computer and keyed in my name. On the screen, I read
“Fourth Community.” The Triangle grabbed my elbow and dragged me out of the office.
“Your Community is on the top floor. Push the button marked ‘four’ in the elevator.”
I stepped into the elevator, pushed the button, and in spite of my suffering, finally took
control of my destiny as an inmate.

21. Lost Characters 21
Chapter 2
The Fourth Community’s platform looked the same as the Third Community’s did. The
walls were blindingly white and an intensely bright light poured down from the ceiling lights. I
stood in line in front of the Information Office and this time, despite my exhaustion and lack of
morale, I made an effort to observe everything that surrounded me. The platform was
hexagonal, and on its walls were lighted signs reading Information, Technical Booths, Council of
Inquisitors, Inquisitor General, Grand Inquisitor, and Orderly Corps. The sixth wall of the
hexagon opened onto a gallery that was as wide as a street; inmates walked along it toward an
unknown horizon while orderlies wearing white coats and triangular badges, watched over
them. There was an endless flow of these Triangles in and out of the office of the Orderly Corps,
which led me to understand that they formed a kind of strategic, prowling army.
The Rhomboids, I figured, must be administrators, and the Pentagons were doctors,
psychiatrists, or therapists. In other words, they were the Inquisitors. That only left me to figure
out what rank the superior polygons held. I asked a tall, slim female inmate who was in line in
front of me. She pointed to the lighted signs.
“And what are the Technical Booths for?” I asked.
Her face was very attractive, but something about it reminded me of a bird of prey.
“They’re for cock-fighting.”
She collected a punch card at the window and as she turned to leave, added, “Or card
games.” She walked off, swinging her hips sensually.

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I was unable to ask her anything else, because a Rhomboid wearing heavy round glasses
that made him look like an owl was waiting to “inform” me. “Excuse me. I’ve been assigned to
this community. I need to know where I can eat and sleep,” I began.
“What’s your name?”
“Jaime Villa.”
My relief at having escaped from my solitary hell was as great as the Court Officer’s
happiness at having done his duty in handing me over to the PISM. The owl typed my name into
a computer and when he’d received an answer to his query, keyed in more information. A
printer produced a punch card, which he slid under the window to me.
Hoping to avoid a repeat of the shoving I’d received in the Third Community, I stepped
out of line to examine my punch card. I read it, not with the Court Officer’s esthetic pleasure,
but rather with the avidity of a starving man. Out of an unintelligible series of numbers and
letters – the PISM’s esoteric code – I was only able to glean that my cell was number 56. Finding
something to eat, it seemed, was up to me. Since I had no idea how to manage that, nor did I
know where to find my cell, I asked an inmate who was observing the back-and-forth of the
offices with solitary pride. He was tall and well built, with chiseled features. I showed him my
punch card and confessed my complete ignorance of the world in which I found myself, as well
as my extreme hunger. His cheeks moved slightly, but didn’t quite form a smile. His eyes were
filled with a measureless sadness, which struck me as incompatible with his arrogant disdain.
“When did you enter the PISM?” he inquired.
“Just now.”
At that, his bronze mask broke into a smile and his eyes wrinkled with ridicule.

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“I hate liars,” he growled.
“I’m sorry. It was two nights and a day ago.”
“We don’t measure time in days or nights here, only in bowls of bitter stew.”
“And what do I have to do to get some of that stew?” I begged.
“Overcome your disgust.”
“Right now, I’m so hungry I’d eat ground-up bones.”
His eyes drilled into me. I had no reason to resist his gaze; all I wanted was for him to
tell me how to find the two things I needed the most: food and my cell. However, in exchange
for shedding this little bit of light on my dilemma, he required something in return.
“What did they do to you up there?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He gave me a long look, as if he’d just reached a number of conclusions about me. Then
he looked toward the technical booths, and with a cold and bitter smile, he began to speak.
“This, sadly, is not a prison, but a laboratory. The inquisitors have no scruples – they’re
completely outrageous. For them, time has no importance, even though we men have only a
little time allotted to us. A minor offense can land you here for your whole life, if you resist
their methods. Haven’t you heard of the marranos?” he asked, assuming that I was ignorant
about something that was in fact quite common. “It was a derogatory term that Spaniards of
the past used to refer to Jews who had converted, because they believed that their conversion
wasn’t genuine, but was only to save themselves from the flames of the Holy Inquisition, all the
while maintaining their ancient rituals. So they called them pigs, or marranos, animals that the

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Jewish religion considers unclean. Here at the PISM, the inmates who are chosen by the Council
of Inquisitors to be released are also known as marranos.”
“And what are the inmates chosen by the other inmates called?”
My interruption surprised him. He didn’t seem used to being interrupted. After looking
me up and down, apparently confirming his poor initial impression of me, he carried on with his
speech. He didn’t answer my question.
“They think we’re abnormal, that after having had our share of hard knocks in life, we’ve
been lucky to end up here, so they can turn us into pure gold. They think they’re alchemists,
when in reality all they know how to do is to fill us with lead. They use the same tactics on
everyone: the bastards make us poor devils dream of a lost character, which we’ll find again if
only we submit. For now, the only option for an individual is to take a position of passive
defense. I’m here for defending my dignity. I was unfairly attacked and I jumped on my attacker
– it turned out worse for him than it did for me, and he died. It was violent. The Inquisitors
don’t have the same opinion of dignity that I do, and they believe that I need to change my
attitude. As you might imagine, I’m not going to give them an inch. A man died! When they’re
convinced that there isn’t anything else to do with me, they’ll let me go. After all, you can’t fight
a man’s dignity forever. And if they don’t let me go for one reason, I’ll find another one that will
get me out of here, probably worse than that got me in here. The inmates all call me Ferruccio,
which means ‘man of iron’ in Italian, but that’s not my real name.”
And without having answered any of my anxious questions, he calmly turned his back on
me, crossed his arms, and turned his attention to a group of inmates near him who were
chewing over some topic or other. A woman was in the middle, talking non-stop. She was

25. Lost Characters 25
incredibly ugly; it made her seem mad. She had a crew cut, like a man’s, and wildly staring eyes.
She whispered a question in Ferrucccio’s ear, pointing in my direction. After he answered, she
was my side like a shot.
“You must be the Doorman.”
“Why would I be a doorman?” I asked.
“Because I’m the Locust, and I know everything that goes on in this hole. You just spent
a whole day on the games floor, banging into doors. Around here, news travels at the speed of
light.”
Without waiting for my response, she went back to the group and took up her harangue
where she’d left off. I walked away and headed down a long gallery. Given the number of
inmates bustling along it, I guessed that it had to be the community’s main thoroughfare.
The gallery was lined on both sides with lighted signs reading “Common Room.” They
were clearly very popular. I could see benches along the walls and I also observed the same
cylindrical boxes and glass rectangles that I had seen on the floor where I’d been isolated. This
confirmed my suspicion that there was a closed circuit TV network throughout the penitentiary,
with Polygons continually at the controls, studying us. We were completely cut off from the
outside world.
This thought upset me, but then I remembered that there wasn’t anyone on the outside
who would be concerned enough to want to visit me in any case. I was surprised at my glum
reaction, but I chalked it up to the dismal atmosphere surrounding me. At this point, the
Inquisitors would have already ranked me among the stupidest inmates in my Community,
especially after my performance on the abandoned floor. Not to mention the nutcase who’d

26. Lost Characters 26
just given me the nickname “Doorman.” What a great first impression I’d made! I decided that I
needed to move cautiously from now on and not draw too much attention to myself. But if I
didn’t behave appropriately, how was I ever going to be chosen for release by the Inquisitors?
Release! Absorbed in these surprising thoughts, I didn’t realize at first that there was an inmate
standing in front of me, sniffing me boldly, as if he were a dog. He laughed for no reason. I
stepped away from him brusquely and kept walking.
The gallery opened onto a pentagonal platform– with signs reading Auditorium,
Gymnasium, Refectory, and Infirmary – that led to four huge rooms and to the corridor of cells.
Without hesitating, I headed for the refectory. There were two long counters on either side and
the center area was full of tables for four. One counter distributed food and the other, uniforms
and toiletries. Sharp objects such as scissors, nail files, and razor blades could only be obtained
from the SWUs – Secure Warder Units – who attended each inmate individually.
As far as I could tell, the refectory was only open at certain periods of time, and I felt
lucky to be able to serve myself two bowls of an unappetizing soup that appeared to include a
number of ingredients scientifically calculated to provide the inmates with everything they
needed for health and nutrition. If the kitchen staff never varied the ingredients, I could
understand why Ferruccio was so irritated. Along with my food, I was given a wooden spoon
and a plastic bottle of water. After eating, I went to my cell. It was identical to the one on the
deserted floor I’d been on earlier. I threw myself on the mattress and in no time was dead to
the world. I woke peacefully a few hours later, scrubbed myself clean in the shower, and went
out to see what was happening in the rest of the Community.

27. Lost Characters 27
I learned that the platform where the services were housed was called the Pentagon and
the platform with the various administrative offices that I’d seen earlier was the Hexagon. The
gallery was still humming with inmates. Some were walking in one direction or another, and the
others were seated on benches, watching the parade. One male inmate with the sharp look of a
bloodthirsty wolf paused in the middle of the passageway to take a good look around. If I’d
seen him on a street, I’d have sworn that he was looking for someone to kill. Since he was in the
main gallery of a penitentiary, the criminal merely listened to what was being discussed in one
of the common rooms before walking away, visibly worried.
The wolfish inmate was followed by a skinny, red-faced man whose body was so worn out
that it seemed likely he’d collapse at any moment. However, his face was suffused with the
most brilliant, beatific smile I’d ever seen, even on the faces of the most fortunate souls of the
“other world,” as the PISM’s inmates called everything outside the institution’s walls. It was
hard to tell if he was headed to his grave or returning from it, but he vibrated with a mysterious
happiness. “He’s a few cards short of a deck,” I thought.
Watching the pure soul follow the dark one as closely as his own shadow led me to
contemplate the contrasts and dirty tricks that defined this prison world. I wondered about the
experiences that had shaped Ferruccio’s theory regarding the lost characters who walked along
behind the inmates and who were thus saved by the Inquisitors’ methods. A sad young woman
looked at me as we crossed paths; she seemed as surprised when I looked back at her as I was
at her astonishment to see me looking at her. Our gazes tangled themselves around this
confusion and for a number of seconds we were tied to each other until she finally broke the
subtle bond with a graceful movement of her head.

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When I turned to look back at her, I tripped over a drunk who was stumbling and about to
fall. How had he managed to find alcohol in this hermetically sealed world? His cheeks were
pockmarked and his smile reveled gold teeth that sparkled in the bright light. Without warning,
he sat calmly down on a bench. Perhaps he’d only been acting drunk.
An older inmate, whose torso was so rigid that it seemed he was wearing some sort of
brace, bowed ingratiatingly to me. I imitated him until I was equally rigid. Then, with a rapid
movement of his armor-plated body, he righted himself while looking forward and I realized
that he hadn’t even seen me. He’d only stumbled. Behind him, a potbellied man with small eyes
walked beside a female inmate who was moving her breasts with incredible jauntiness. He
asked her, “Wouldn’t you love a nice single-malt Scotch right now?”
The man with the scarred cheeks and the brilliant smile pointed at them and said, “Those
two are always acting as if they were just passing through the place.”
The potbellied man seemed delighted at the insult. He smiled even more suavely and
added, “And some fresh oysters, with just a drop of lemon juice?”
“They don’t talk to anyone else because they think they’re better than all of us,” insisted
the pockmarked man.
The potbellied man turned and stared him down. “Why don’t you stick your tongue in
your ear?”
The man with the scarred face put his hand to his face, sadly. I wasn’t sure if it was
because he wanted to hide the craters that his life had left there, or because he was sorry
about what had just happened.

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Fed up with all the to-ing and fro-ing, I joined the ranks of the observers and found space
on a bench. No sooner had I sat down than a limping inmate stopped inexplicably in front of me
and offered me his hand.
“Would you mind terribly if I communicated with you?” he asked gallantly.
“I’d be delighted,” I replied with the same courtesy.
“Many thanks. My name is Del Clavel.”
“I’m Jaime Villa.”
“Very well, Mr. Villa. You’ll have noticed that good manners do not exist in this world. It’s
a society of the maladjusted, which is a judicial euphemism for a community of criminals.
Meeting someone like you, who is so sensitive to closed doors, is stimulating. My imprisonment
is due to an erroneous interpretation of my responsibilities. I lost a document due to the
carelessness of my wife, and I can’t prove to the Court that the cession of my rights has a legal
cover. The Inquisitors don’t understand anything about legalities, they only see what’s in front
of them. They’re like blinkered mules. It’s pitiful. For me, it’s a pleasure, it gives me real
satisfaction, to pass the time with a civilized person. I know that in the other world calling you a
person, a civilized person, is as common as saying ‘Good morning,’ but here we’re surrounded
by dark and criminal minds, so it’s a tribute that I’m sure you will appreciate. I haven’t heard
anything from my wife in many moons and I’m really quite concerned. She could surely find
that document at any time and take it to the Court, but she’s not very careful about papers. She
doesn’t think they’re important – she can’t even tell the difference between a pamphlet and a
legal document, and she’s so obsessed with tidiness that she’s always throwing them away.

30. Lost Characters 30
If there was some way to contact family members from here, I’d be able to call her on my
cell phone and guide her to that document, because it does exist and it has to turn up
eventually, if of course it hasn’t found its way to the trash can, but it’s not humanly or officially
possible to make a call from this prison – there’s no signal. I’ve tried to explain my powerful
need to locate the document to the Inquisitors, but they haven’t paid the slightest attention to
my arguments. They simply repeat, quite stubbornly I might add, that I ought to consider my
situation as if all of my papers were in order, and give myself over to the process of
readaptation. But I’m sure you’ll understand how contradictory and excessive this insistence is.
They want me to work on a hypothetical situation, and I’m a man, Mr. Villa, who believes above
all else in reality. The fact is, here at the PISM, there is no such thing as an objective view of
each person’s circumstances. The Inquisitors treat every case in the same way, whether the
inmate is a heartless killer or a man who has simply been the victim of his wife’s ignorance.
There’s no fairness here – I’m just going to say it. Fairness is looking at each person as they are.
And let’s just forget that whole, ‘Mr. Del Clavel, you haven’t organized the sketches for your
Inquisition’ business. That’s why you, a person who has been able to maintain his patience
when faced with so many closed doors, even at your young age, how can I say it, are an
example worthy of imitation. We are in a desperate situation, Mr. Villa, because the fact is that
here real principles are not principles, but rather fantasies, and that is no way to live. Look, I’ve
always tried to see things as they are – I’m not a demagogue who’s dedicated to pleasing the
masses, like so many others here. You’ll meet them soon enough. I understand the thorny
difficulties that I have to deal with, and even so I’m determined to confront the Inquisitors. I
encourage you to do the same. Those of us who are civilized people have to present a unified

31. Lost Characters 31
front against the barbarism of the rest of the inmates, on the one hand, and against the
scientific violence of the Inquisitors on the other. One can’t be demoralized by having found
that all the doors are locked, because if they call you Doorman it means that you’ve opened all
of them. Here is my hand, Mr. Villa. I’d like to shake yours with the same pleasure as before this
communication. Can you see that I’m an open door?”
And having finished this long-winded monologue, Del Clavel stood up and walked away.
His right leg was shaking and he wore the arrogant and hardened expression of a man who is
ready to fight for his cause until his strength gives out.
Dumbfounded by Del Clavel’s outburst, I headed toward the Pentagon. I found several
circles of inmates there, but while the groups in the Hexagon appeared to be dedicated to
discussing personal matters, these gave the impression of being minor political rallies. In the
center of each circle was an orator who the rest of the inmates listened to with rapt attention.
The biggest group surrounded a speaker who moved his hands so much that from a distance he
seemed to be a deaf-mute who had no other way of communicating. As I got closer, I heard one
of his listeners criticize him. “When you speak in public, you get in so deep that you end up over
your head.”
“And you’re a Centrifuge faker!” came the speaker’s reply.
I asked an inmate standing near me what that meant. He stared back at me. When I saw
that he wasn’t going to stop staring, I explained that I had just joined the Community. Suddenly,
he became a new man.
“So, you’re Doorman!” he exclaimed excitedly.

32. Lost Characters 32
I shrugged, indifferent, and his expression shifted back to a sort of primitive
bewilderment. He was looking at me open-mouthed now.
“Do you look at the Inquisitors that way, too?” I asked him.
His face contorted with pain, and like the speaker, he seemed suddenly out of his depth in
the conversation. He waved his arms and waggled his head. It was clear that he was anxious to
get away from me. Finally, with a grand gesture, he rejected the whole Pentagon, shouting,
“The truth does not exist!”
I shrugged again, and he spat at me. Probably the rules, the orderlies, and the closed
circuit TV wouldn’t allow him to do anything more serious. For the first time in my life, I didn’t
care about the insult. Maybe it was due to the fact that I, like the man who’d just spit on me,
rejected the whole Pentagon. Or perhaps the injustice of my confinement had pushed me so far
from everything that I believed that I was in over my head as well. The only thing that worked
was my survival instinct, which dimmed my reaction to the inmate who was about to explode
and led me to hide myself in a different circle, this one presided over by a quiet older man
holding up a pocket watch by its chain. Its crystal was broken, and once in a while he moved its
hands, showing it to his audience as if it were a miraculous relic. Despite his advanced age, his
hair was thick and dark; his gaze was dreamy, and his voice was peaceful.
“You can see what time is. Nothing. I can stop it with this watch at any hour, and leave it
there, at the mercy of my will. Well, we are all stopped watches. Outside, in the other world,
we never stop moving, tick-tock, tick-tock, but here time has died, and we’ve ceased ticking.
We’re like this unsprung watch – we can be set to any time. Before, we kept time badly, but we
kept it. Now we’re stopped and the only thing we can do here is to move from one hour to

33. Lost Characters 33
another, like the hands of this watch. I used to be a salesman, which is a respectable profession.
Now I do what time does here: nothing. If one of you asked me, ‘Zachary, what are you
selling?’, I’d answer ‘I’m not selling anything.’ And if you asked me, ‘So why do you force
yourself to talk as much as in the good old days?’, I’d say, ‘For no reason.’ ‘Listen, Zachary,’
you’d insist, ‘I don’t understand you. Or maybe you’re just winding me up with your patter.’ I’d
tell you that I don’t understand myself either. When you’ve got a watch that keeps time, you
don’t stop to look at its works, but when it stops, you open the back and see a set of wheels,
cogs, and springs that only an expert watchmaker could explain. I’m a broken watch, and since
I’m not a watchmaker, I can’t fix myself. That’s all I know. The Inquisitors have given me back
my watch, but as you can see, it doesn’t work. They don’t know how to fix it, either, and the
only thing they can tell me is to say what I’m feeling. Well, fine. I’ve said it.”
When he stopped speaking, the group faded slowly away. One of the inmates commented
as he went, “He’s been deceived by words.”
Zachary remained fixed to the spot where he stood, alone. It seemed that the blazing
energy he’d shown earlier had singed his face, leaving behind the sadness of a sleepwalker. A
little while later, he seemed to come to. He walked away with his head down.
When the refectory opened again, I hurried in for another bowl of soup. No sooner had I
started guzzling it down than a young woman sat down at my table. Her face had a classic
profile that evoked an ancient Greek sculpture. I was fascinated by her beauty, but I quickly saw
that her interest in me was not due to a mutual feeling of attraction.
“Are you the new inmate?”
“Yes.”

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“And how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. Can’t you see what a good appetite I have?”
“That’s normal. You must have gotten pretty hungry upstairs.”
I looked at her grimly – she obviously knew about me already – and kept eating.
“You’re starting to climb the spiral, and when you get to the decisive point, nothing will
bother you at all.”
“I understand. After your nerves become liquid, they pass into a gaseous state.”
“Our life here is disconnected from the other world. Our only option is to think about
different things.”
“What things?”
“Well, reality, for example. People tend to see it as it serves them, and as a result they
don’t see a lot of truth. Look, I never used to pay any attention to my dreams, but now that I’ve
learned to interpret them I understand myself much better. The other day, after a good session
with my Inquisitor, as I was leaving I noticed that he’d enjoyed my flirting with him. And that
night I dreamt that I was with him in the technical booth. Before I could leave, an inmate, who
I’d always thought of as a clown, slipped in. When I shook hands with the Inquisitor to say
goodbye, I felt ashamed, and the inmate started jumping around and laughing at me. That’s
when I woke up. It seems that the meaning of the dream is both a desire and a fear of letting
myself feel my emotions freely. What do you think?”
“It’s curious. Really curious. And in the other world, as you say here, how was your love
life?”
“Normal.”

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“So what’s this about not being able to feel your emotions freely?”
“That’s just it. I’ve discovered that I feel them, but I hold certain things back.”
“Like most people.”
“But most people don’t know it, and I do.”
“That’s magnificent.”
“What’s magnificent?”
“The way that you know yourself.”
“Oh, but there’s more. Knowing myself better means that I know others better, too,
because human lives are interrelated.” She opened her hands and lightly laced her fingers
together. “Do you realize that the ideas here are different than in the other world?”
I was still fascinated by that beautiful face, but she was waiting for my response to her
comment, nothing more. I couldn’t help letting show my annoyance at her failure to find me
attractive. “Your problem is that in the past, you never saw anything besides what the mirror
reflected, and now that you don’t have it…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She interpreted my words as a response to her lack of interest in me, and she couldn’t
help throwing a dart of her own.
“I can’t understand how a man who is so sure of himself could spend more than 24 hours
locked on the games floor without figuring out how to use the elevator to get out.”
“And I can’t understand how you, as smart as you are, are still locked up here, listening to
the orderlies’ gossip.”

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She stood up, furious.
“Listen, handsome, your adventure upstairs is common knowledge.”
She motioned to the mannish female inmate with the mad expression, Locust, who
shuttled over. “Who’s this?” she asked.
“That’s Doorman,” Locust answered, shrinking away and looking up at me openmouthed.
“Get out of here! You look like a clown!” I shouted, banging my fist on the table.
She bowed reverentially to me.
“Actually, everyone thinks I look like a bug, and that’s why they call me Locust,” she said,
pulling herself up rigidly and opening her eyes wide. She did remind me of an insect.
“They’re right.”
“And this pretty girl,” she said, pointing to my table mate, “is the Dragonfly. Goodbye,
Doorman.” She stalked off.
“See what I mean?” said Dragonfly with acid coquettishness.
“There was no reason for you to call her over to prove your point.”
Dragonfly became serious. The silence was stressful. I quickly finished my bowl of soup
and decided not to have a second, so that I’d be hungry at the next meal and not have to
overcome the disgust that Ferruccio had warned me about. Dragonfly looked at me, intrigued. I
returned her gaze. “What’s behind that mask?” I wondered. As I stood, I expected that she’d try
to get me to stay, but she looked away and I returned to my cell.
Trying to salvage my pride, I asked myself, “Could she be a lesbian, like Locust? They seem
very close… but I don’t think so. That was a lousy attempt at a pickup!” I apologized to myself,

37. Lost Characters 37
“It’s not that I didn’t know what I was doing, it was her damned indifference. But then, I didn’t
know how to get past it, either.”
Under a cloud, I entered my cell to find a note pinned to a small corkboard behind the
door. I had an appointment in the technical booths the next morning. The booths were closed
in the afternoons, and the inmates spent their time sleeping, walking around, or making love. I
could be in bed with Dragonfly right now if things hadn’t gone so badly, but things here never
seemed to go well for me. Just before I drifted off to sleep, Locust’s face drifted into my
memory. Her protruding eyes bothered me. It occurred to me that her inability to keep still
belied a powerful need to escape from her own ugliness, not to rediscover this lost character
that the Inquisitors promised to those who believed them, as Ferruccio, the man of iron, had
explained. Dragonfly was a good nickname for that beautiful girl – her skin shimmered. Locust’s
skin was yellowish-grey. And the woman with the raptor’s profile had enormous hips and hard
breasts. I fell asleep with these thoughts wandering through my mind.
The inmates were waking up.
“Is this your first appointment?” the last inmate in line asked me. He was an older man,
with thinning hair and undistinguished features. He had a potbelly and as he walked, he swayed
from the ankles up. His face was flushed.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s obvious that you’re a beginner. There’s always a long wait, not that it matters; we
aren’t in a hurry around here. – Listen, Carmela, sit and wait for them to call you. Nobody’s
going take your turn. – That woman shakes in her boots every time she has to face the
Inquisitors. The other day she told me that the Inquisitor General said, ‘When you did what you

38. Lost Characters 38
did – and you know what I mean – you weren’t afraid of anyone, and now you don’t even have
the courage to play this innocent game.’ The Inquisitor General is the Dean of the PISM; he
rules the roost. You want to have him on your side.” He stood on tiptoe to see how far the line
had moved. “They must be ready to put the final touches on my case so they can release me.
What did you say your name was?”
“Jaime Villa. But you didn’t ask.”
“I’m Ildefonso Sopelana. As I was saying, the Inquisitor General is a despot. – Well,
Carmelita, are you feeling better? – This is much harder for women, especially if they never
worked outside the home. What did you say your job was?”
“I’m a journalist. But you didn’t ask me about that, either.”
“The press forms public opinion.”
“Ildefonso Sopelana, please come to the Council of Inquisitors’ office,” boomed the
loudspeaker.
Sopelana froze as if he’d just been caught doing something that wasn’t allowed. He
rushed over to the office. When he came back, he was perspiring.
“Requirements and more requirements,” he sighed, wiping his brow with a handkerchief.
“This is a purgatory of procedures, believe me. They’re always giving you the run-around, and
it’s always something picayune they want. Well, the line’s much shorter. Let’s see which
Inquisitor we end up talking to. Usually it’s the same ones, but once in a while there’s a new
face.” He seemed suddenly distracted, as if he’d just seen them in his imagination. “They’re
very deliberate about everything, which is their job, what the hell, but in the mean time,
they’ve got all of us on tenterhooks. What did you say your name was?”

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“Jaime Villa.”
“I’m Ildefonso Sopelana. It’s our turn. The problems we have to discuss are always the
same, but the way of looking at them changes. Then there’s the second part, the jury, the
Sublime Doorway, or simply the Doorway. It’s the organization that releases the candidates
presented by the Council of Inquisitors, or by the inmates themselves, via popular vote. The
Doorway is the worst requirement of all. Have you had to face it yet?”
“I just got here.”
“I lost track of what you were saying. Well, it doesn’t matter. The jury is made up of
specialists from the other world, whose only mission is to free us or remand us to custody.”
“I see. A ‘removable’ organization.”
“More like ‘on-and-off’. They can open the door or close it.”
“Like a switchman.”
“What does a switchman have to do with the jury? Your fear of the booth is making you
rave. It’s our turn now.”
Sopelana slid his punch card under the glass toward the bespectacled receptionist and
leaned toward me to whisper, “I think her glasses are awful.”
“She looks like an owl.”
My companion was again briefly distracted, but then he forced a smile and said, “You’re
mixed up again. The ones who look like owls are in the jury, and she’s the switchwoman.”
“By the way, if the candidates for release who are chosen by the Inquisitors are marranos,
what do you call the candidates chosen by the inmates?”
“They’re ‘spoon-fed.’ Why are you interested in something stupid like that?”

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“I’m new.”
“I could tell right away!”
When the owl-switchwoman returned his punch card to Sopelana, I saw that his hand was
trembling slightly.
“What booth is it?” he asked me, embarrassed. “I can never make out these scribbles.”
“Next,” said the owl-switchwoman.
I had to leave him so I could hand in my punch card. Sopelana headed for the booths,
swinging his potbelly.
“Excuse me,” said the Rhomboid behind the glass. “Here’s your card.”
I hurried to take my punch card back from her and saw that I was assigned to Booth #33.
An orderly took my card from me as I entered a long hallway. The booths were situated on the
left and right, the odd numbers on one side and the even numbers on the other. They were all
identical, made of reinforced metal with a single translucent pane of glass for a window. The
floor was covered with the same carpeting as the deserted floor, and the silence was also the
same – there was a complete lack of life here. It seemed that Ferruccio was correct that there
were areas in the Institute that were devoid of reality. They made me feel leaden. At the same
time, as I walked, I had an unreal sensation of zero gravity. It was fear.
I imagined 60 year-old Ildefonso Sopelano, trembling and helpless as he wandered the
corridor hoping to find his booth by chance. It was worse for him, I thought. And he surely
thought the same about Carmela, and she would have the same opinion of the inmate before
or after her. So often our pity is a defense mechanism.

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When I came to Booth #33, I opened the door, and Locust’s nickname for me rushed into
my mind, irritating me. That bitch! I entered a cubicle with a table and two wooden chairs in
the center. There was a sliding panel at the back of the booth that served as a door. Standing in
that geometric space, I felt infinitely despondent. The sensation of having lost my personality
that I’d felt in the hallway terrified me again, but this time, without a point of reference to fix
on, I felt myself identifying with the terrible bright light. I was aware of the fragility of shapes
and colors in this world and of the sudden blackouts that annihilated them. My conscience was
hollowed out; I couldn’t locate it anywhere. I yearned to have strong roots, to fight against the
void.
The door at the back of the cubicle slid open. A tall, ungainly man wearing a white coat as
lightly as if it were a workman’s coverall stepped through. His gold hexagonal badge blinded me
as if he had shined a flashlight in my eyes.
“I’m the Inquisitor General. Sit down, Villa.”
He held my gaze like he was aiming a gun at me. I obeyed.
“So you’re a journalist!” He rubbed his hands together with pleasure and stuck out the
tip of his tongue. “You don’t know how happy I am to have you here.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning his elbows on the table. “We’ve needed
someone of your profession here in the Institute to see up close just how well it works.” He
eyes sparkled as he observed me; he was clearly dedicated now to his favorite pastime.
I didn’t want to look away, fearing that if I did it would make my insecurity obvious, but I
couldn’t help myself. He was trying to exasperate me, and I thought of poor Sopelana.

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“This isn’t a place where criminals come to be punished. That would be as stupid and
brutal as mistreating an animal.” He leaned closer to me. “They come only to understand and to
be understood.”
I bowed my head slightly, moving my gaze as far as I could from his.
“What do you think, Villa?”
“I think it’s very good.” I was surprised that my words sounded perfectly normal.
“The length of the sentence, as you know, depends entirely on the inmate’s treatment
requirements. When you have to take a nasty-tasting medication, you don’t savor it, do you,
Villa? You drink it straight down.” He leaned back, smiling. “That’s exactly what you have to do
here. Or would you rather grow old within these walls?” he asked, all at once deadly serious.
“I understand,” I answered with dismay.
“As you’re so young, being sentenced to the Institute is really very fortunate for you,
despite everything else, because you’ll have the opportunity to make yourself over. That will
lead to you producing higher-quality work, without a doubt. I’ve read some of your articles, and
I’m sure of it.” He suddenly gawped, his eyes wandering.
“I believe you,” I said in an attempt to break the spell.
The Inquisitor General, reacting to my words, returned to normal.
“A twenty-year prison term, for example, can be reduced to just a few months thanks to
the PISM. Or a very short term can stretch out for years. Everything depends on the inmate’s
flexibility or stubbornness. If his criminality isn’t pathological and he isn’t corrupt, there’s
nothing to fear. He’ll find his freedom just around the corner. All he has to do is follow the
regulations.”

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He cupped his chin in his hand as if he were about to listen to a joke and asked, “So tell
me, Villa, what would you do with an individual who decides to take photographs of a drowning
man rather than throw him a life-ring?”
“That isn’t my case at all.”
The Inquisitor General dropped his gaze as if he were deeply ashamed. Then, gently
scratching his beard, he nodded.
“That’s true. The circumstances surrounding your crime were different. It was a
parabola.” He lifted his rooster’s head to the ceiling, and continued tersely, “But if you do
decide to explain it to us, be sure you make a good case for yourself.”
He stood angrily and left the room without saying goodbye. The Inquisitor General, with
his mobile little moustache and his bright, mocking eyes, his shifts in mimicry and his ironic
twists, his shifts of humor, sudden appearances and disappearances, all of it, gave me the
impression of a diabolical puppet. “Cockfights,” Raptor had said when I asked her what
happened in the technical booths. The Inquisitor General’s expression as he left the cubicle
demonstrated just how accurate her description was.
And now what? Was the show over, or was there worse to come? I decided to wait a
while, guessing that this first intervention was my “welcome.” Now they’d probably want to
start diagnosing my personality, taking it apart and rearranging it in curves, grades, and angles –
giving it a full representation in diagrams that would show my weak points and sketch out my
irregular profile. Later, they’d calculate how to bring about my readaptation and begin a series
of the kind of manipulations that Ferruccio hated. I certainly understood his fury better than I
did the Inquisitor General’s at my explanation of my case. My treatment would consist of

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correcting the errors of my evolution, pushing me to address my deficiencies, freeing me of my
defects, and restoring me completely, as if I were a damaged painting.
Immobilized in the confining cubicle, I imagined myself caught in a mousetrap, obliged to
change my ways if I wanted to be free. I thought of obstinate heretics burning in effigy, of the
original marranos, of those who were marginalized and benighted for their beliefs, of fugitives
carrying nothing but their consciences, of scapegoats, and a profound dejection came over me.
The panel slid open again and a young man, wearing a blindingly white coat with a blue
hexagonal badge, smiled at me in the friendly manner used by surgeons just before they cut
you open.
“I’m your Inquisitor, but I’m not here to condemn you for heresy,” he said, smiling, “like
the Holy Inquisition of the past. Rather, my goal is to help you to be released as soon as
possible.”
He carefully sat down and placed a folder on the table. He was close-shaven, and his
expression was serene. His words soothed me, and for the first time since I’d stepped into the
booth, I relaxed.
“Thank you.”
He pulled four color prints out of the folder and placed them in the center of the table. He
arranged them in a square and put the folder away.
“I’d like you to look carefully at these four paintings.”
I leaned over them as fearfully as if I were looking down into a well. Even though the
figures in each painting were clearly human, they were vaguely and imprecisely drawn, which
made it difficult to know what they represented. The image in the upper left showed two men

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in a room, with a table between them. One was seated and the other was standing with his arm
raised; a door was partly open and a mysterious figure was looking through into the room. This
scene was open to many interpretations, and I thought that everyone who looked at it could
explain it differently without being wrong. They would all eventually lose themselves in
innumerable connotations, although they would never discover its true meaning.
Were these the methods that Ferruccio condemned? Why? What reactions could these
innocent drawings unleash in the psyche? The drawing on the upper right of the square was the
most confusing. The only things that were clearly drawn were a bed and a wardrobe. The rest
was dark and difficult to make out. I decided to come back to it later.
In the drawing on the lower left I saw a man leaning against a streetlamp, alone on a rainy
night, and I jumped. It reminded me of the suicide on the viaduct. Because I’d failed to go to his
rescue, I’d been condemned to the PISM. I looked away. The Inquisitor was scrutinizing me. The
friendliness of his greeting had faded away. He was another man; his face had been
transformed into a grim mask. The last painting left me practically indifferent. My attention still
was completely focused on the previous image. Nevertheless, the final image was definitely the
easiest to understand: a tennis game, captured at the moment of the serve, was being played in
front of two couples. The strange thing was that the couples weren’t watching the game, nor
were the players taking it seriously, given that their places on the court were incorrect. When I
looked up again to review the images, the Inquisitor quickly started to remove them from the
table.
“I’ve hardly had time to glance at them.”
“That’s enough time.”

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After putting the paintings back in the folder, he handed me a pen and a stack of blank
pages. Each one bore a serial number and an official stamp.
“Now, please write a story that connects the four scenes that you’ve just viewed in the
paintings. When you finish, leave the pages on the table.” With a polite smile, he left the room.
Because the pages had serial numbers and seals, it was clear that I couldn’t write a draft
first, and any corrections I made would have to be legible. If they weren’t, the Inquisitors would
ask themselves, “What is he trying to hide from us?” First, I had to think the story through;
then, I’d skillfully write it down. It was essential to avoid any error that could compromise my
professional position. They had taken my warning that I was a journalist too seriously. It would
be naïve of me to try to sweet-talk them, but now that I had the opportunity to explain my so-
called criminal conduct from my point of view, I was going to take advantage of it.
Now they would see that I had behaved as any normal person would. There was an
enormous difference between simply being convicted of criminal responsibility and being a
pathological criminal or a corrupt person, as the Inquisitor General had said. I was going to use
this inquisition to make it clear that my conscience and behavior were completely within the
bounds of societal norms, which is what the Inquisitors needed to know in order to release me.
My attorney had already played these notes at my trial, but now the song was different. I was
going to demonstrate that if I were truly maladapted, there wouldn’t be enough penitentiaries
in the country to lock up the others like me who were roaming the streets, free. The ball was in
my court, and I badly needed to score.
“If you decide to explain it to us, be sure you make a good case for yourself,” had been
the Inquisitor General’s last words to me. Of course I would! Tying the four paintings together

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was not going to be that difficult. Two of them, the one with the streetlight and the one with
the table, were clearly representations of how the events of my case had unfolded. The one of
the bedroom and the one of the tennis match were not. They want me to tell a story with these
four images, so they all had to have the same underlying message. But if art uses unreal
elements to express the knowledge of reality, why not do the same with the other two
paintings? I remembered a conversation with my attorney. He’d said, “You’re not guilty of
anything, Jaime, get it into your head. But if your dog has taken a chunk out of someone, don’t
be surprised if the law pursues you and not your dog.”
“I don’t understand what this story about the dog has to do with anything,” I had replied.
“Oh, but it fits perfectly. Insurance companies need a fall guy, and they chose you
because you were the perfect target.”
“When the accidents happened, I was confused,” I thought. Exactly like the tennis player
in the fourth painting. That cheered me up. And the picture of the bedroom? It was the one
that made the least sense to me; it only suggested painful emotions – the distress of two lovers
discovered at the height of their passion, or the nightmares of a solitary man, his abandonment
and desolation. It was the most symbolic painting of all of them. It perturbed the viewer while
obscuring its meaning. On the other hand, the painting of the tennis match was a metaphor for
finding myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Then something else occurred to me. It seemed that the penal authority was independent
from the judiciary. If the PISM’s guards didn’t trust court officers, it stood to reason that the
Inquisitors would have the same reservations about judges. Wouldn’t they want to review the
whole case, studying from up close the version that was most important to them – that is, the

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accused’s? If I could convince them to absolve me, would they send me to the Sublime
Doorway right away? Or would that cause a crisis in their relationship with the courts? No, the
PISM had to be very proud of its penal science, and after all it wasn’t the individual Inquisitor
who conceded or denied release, but rather an independent jury. There was no doubt that I
needed to lay all my cards on the table. The winds had changed. It was time to work! Even if I
made a mistake in the telling, surely my conscience was clear enough to extract the truth. After
a careful selection of the facts, I started to write.