everyone else were part of the natural order of things. He had been chastised for going forward in the lessons, for studying on his own ahead of the class. It had been that way since the first grade, when, thanks to a neighbor who had also taught him how to play soccer, he arrived at school already knowing his multiplication tables. He was generous with his homework: classmates would line up to copy from him before the bell rang. He was a tall boy of few words, and this attracted the girls, as did his sparkling coffee-colored eyes. He had lost his baby fat, become an awkward adolescent, and had a long, thin neck upon which his head seemed to turn independently of the rest of his body.
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Tesla was a state school. He wished it had a computer lab like the one at San Ignacio, a block from his house, near a park dotted with graceful jacaranda trees. The San Ignacio students would come to his house so his dad could fix their bicycle tires or put air in their soccer balls. They would joke around, speak disdainfully about girls, and have money in their wallets. Behind the door, through a cracked window, he watched these well-dressed boys, who would sometimes drive to school, insolent in their belief that the world belonged to them. He hated it that his dad had to serve them.
He had also gone with his mom to wash clothes or clean immense houses with porcelain-adorned living rooms and backyard pools. He will never forget the house of a particular doctor: the children's bright rooms, the Macintosh computer, posters on the walls of Maradona, Nirvana, and Xuxa. It was from the "good classmate" awards on the walls that he discovered that the children went to San Ignacio. He did not want to divide the world so simply, but he was hardly a child anymore and was beginning to learn about injustice.
He used to play pool with his friends, until one afternoon he passed a video arcade and curiosity propelled him inside. The sounds of explosions, the intense, flickering colors ... There he spent the few coins that he earned by occasionally helping his dad. He was extremely adept at pinball and Super Mario. He was obsessive; entire afternoons would go by as he tried to beat a record.
But the money disappeared quickly. What was he to do? One sunny morning when he had skipped school, he approached the entrance to San Ignacio. A Brasilia was parked outside with the window half open. He turned his head left and right; he was alone. He reached his hand in through the window, opened the door, and found a twenty-dollar bill in a compartment next to the gearshift.
That was his first robbery. There would be others. At first his victims were San Ignacio students. Later he expanded his area of operations. When he went with his mom to the houses she cleaned, it was easy to slip away from her and put anything that might be worth a few pesos at the pawn shop into his pockets: earrings, a ring, a fine ceramic ashtray that he hoped the owners wouldn't even miss.
He earned a reputation at the video arcade as the pinball king. When asked what his name was, he told them it was Kandinsky. He had liked the name ever since he saw a poster for an exhibit at one of the houses his mother cleaned. It was a sonorous name, there was rhythm and harmony in the combination of vowels and consonants; it was a name he liked to repeat as he walked the streets of Rio Fugitivo alone, the first and third syllables explosive, the second a bridge that is stressed, the tone rising.
Soon he switched to the Internet cafés that began to pop up all over the city. For the equivalent of fifty cents he could play on the computer for an hour, war and strategy games in which he would compete with other players in the same café, or others on computers in the same city or in other cities, even on other continents. He soon learned the stratagems that made him a fearsome opponent. He was quick with his hands, and his mind was quicker still. He seemed, on a certain level, to understand
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Tesla was a state school. He wished it had a computer lab like the one at San Ignacio, a block from his house, near a park dotted with graceful jacaranda trees. The San Ignacio students would come to his house so his dad could fix their bicycle tires or put air in their soccer balls. They would joke around, speak disdainfully about girls, and have money in their wallets. Behind the door, through a cracked window, he watched these well-dressed boys, who would sometimes drive to school, insolent in their belief that the world belonged to them. He hated it that his dad had to serve them.
He had also gone with his mom to wash clothes or clean immense houses with porcelain-adorned living rooms and backyard pools. He will never forget the house of a particular doctor: the children's bright rooms, the Macintosh computer, posters on the walls of Maradona, Nirvana, and Xuxa. It was from the "good classmate" awards on the walls that he discovered that the children went to San Ignacio. He did not want to divide the world so simply, but he was hardly a child anymore and was beginning to learn about injustice.
He used to play pool with his friends, until one afternoon he passed a video arcade and curiosity propelled him inside. The sounds of explosions, the intense, flickering colors ... There he spent the few coins that he earned by occasionally helping his dad. He was extremely adept at pinball and Super Mario. He was obsessive; entire afternoons would go by as he tried to beat a record.
But the money disappeared quickly. What was he to do? One sunny morning when he had skipped school, he approached the entrance to San Ignacio. A Brasilia was parked outside with the window half open. He turned his head left and right; he was alone. He reached his hand in through the window, opened the door, and found a twenty-dollar bill in a compartment next to the gearshift.
That was his first robbery. There would be others. At first his victims were San Ignacio students. Later he expanded his area of operations. When he went with his mom to the houses she cleaned, it was easy to slip away from her and put anything that might be worth a few pesos at the pawn shop into his pockets: earrings, a ring, a fine ceramic ashtray that he hoped the owners wouldn't even miss.
He earned a reputation at the video arcade as the pinball king. When asked what his name was, he told them it was Kandinsky. He had liked the name ever since he saw a poster for an exhibit at one of the houses his mother cleaned. It was a sonorous name, there was rhythm and harmony in the combination of vowels and consonants; it was a name he liked to repeat as he walked the streets of Rio Fugitivo alone, the first and third syllables explosive, the second a bridge that is stressed, the tone rising.
Soon he switched to the Internet cafés that began to pop up all over the city. For the equivalent of fifty cents he could play on the computer for an hour, war and strategy games in which he would compete with other players in the same café, or others on computers in the same city or in other cities, even on other continents. He soon learned the stratagems that made him a fearsome opponent. He was quick with his hands, and his mind was quicker still. He seemed, on a certain level, to understand