No Place for Heroes

31

ON THE THIRD day of Mateo’s isolation, Lorenza decided to cancel all her appointments and stay in the hotel with him, playing with him on the PlayStation, to see if she could reestablish some sort of contact in this manner. If Muhammad can’t go to the mountain, the mountain is going to have to sit down at the PlayStation.

“Can I play with you?” she asked.

“No, you don’t know how.”

“You can teach me.”

“You’re too old, you don’t have the reflexes.”

“So try me.”

“All right, but let’s play Dynasty Warriors.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Lock the door and hang up the sign, so no one interrupts.”

“Who’s going to interrupt?”

“Just hang the sign, will you? Dynasty Warriors is my favorite of all the PlayStation games. You play in steps, and the more you advance, the more skilled Wei-Wulong becomes and the more powers he acquires,” he explained, suddenly very talkative. Speaking of Wei-Wulong filled him with pride, as if he himself were the one who possessed those powers. Lorenza hung the sign on the doorknob and they entered, Wu, Shu, and Wei, the three kingdoms of Dynasty Warriors, where everything was brutal and luminous. Here there was no resting, but also no fatigue; the battles were ferocious but devoid of blood and bodies, because when an enemy was eliminated, all it did was flash and disappear right away. Mateo barely blinked, everything about him was concentration, tension, and alert reflexes, his vision good only for the vertiginous slashes of the swords. Lorenza noticed how amid those brilliant, sparkling colors, the room vanished and the other world slowly shut off, a slow and boring thing. At this moment, Mateo does not exist, she thought. Wei-Wulong has taken possession of my son.

“Didn’t you say you were going to show me?” she asked, and her voice startled Mateo, who had completely forgotten she was there.

He replied that he would, and began to explain the game to her, not handing over the controls yet, telling her when she should bring out the catapults, when she should use the drawbridges, how to score points. Finally, she got him to turn over the controls, but because she played horribly he quickly grew impatient, upset with her and with her incompetence, and made her turns shorter and shorter as he made his longer. His explanations, at first very enthusiastic, became more sporadic and succinct, until he again immersed himself fully in what seemed like a religious silence.

Lorenza soon opened the door and left the room, and Mateo did not even notice.