So to speak
João Bandeira
You cocked your eyebrows a little, as though wondering about the nature of the thing in front of you but didn’t have time to formulate anything. Because all of a sudden a voice, already mid-sentence, was saying yes, they were all part of the same group and subtly stood out from the rest of the family to which they belonged—a very old family in fact, one that stretched centuries, even millennia; Pliny, the Elder, had written about them—due to the unprecedented and heightened power of their usual capacities. First of all, their extraordinary ability to change color, and what’s more, to combine several of them through so-called pigment translocation via the skin (which was somewhat dry, like certain rocks and tree trunks, you thought, staring wide-eyed at the changes taking place and noting the streaks of color interspersed with other colors that were at first sight more vibrant). An organic reaction, the voice noted, especially when part of some sort of interaction.
Of course, the voice continued, the success of this phenomenon relied above all on the participation of cyanophores, for blue, of leucophores, for what people perceived as white, and so on and so forth with other chromatophores, which, as you should have known, were not exclusive to these restless beings although they were particularly active in them. They also demonstrated other abilities, as you could see: a contortion in the patterning of certain upper regions, helical movements or expansions that started at the center and radiated to the edges of the skin, and other things that would, in time, emerge. Eventually, you would come to understand that all these things worked together to form something like a system of constant change on the appearance of their skin, which was in fact composed of various layers that were themselves unstable; hence why, time and again, certain sections would appear farther down or higher up.
Though not always the case, it seemed these layers could also change, yet without ever unveiling the base layer, much as, the voice added, the insatiable Leonardo had concluded in his research; he who, to impress visitors, was known to attach a fake beard to his trained lizard. But that’s neither here nor there, the voice pondered. This is why it was possible then, much as it is now, to take in their overall appearance when casting your eyes over one of them; and yet it wasn’t unusual for people to feel confused—no, you’re not the only one—because sometimes, seconds after looking attentively at a particular section, for example, it would have already changed, having spliced or coalesced with some other part that—wait, had that been there before? All of which gave rise to a sense of turbulence, and to frequent remarks about the vertiginous feeling that came from glimpsing unknown dimensions inside their insides, as someone once said.
You had probably already noticed that, aside from manifesting fluctuations in the appearance of their skin, they also embodied a series of identities. It’s hard to say, and hypotheses are still being put forward on the matter, but the secret may have resided in their mysterious ability to transmigrate through known subspecies—of which there are many—and also through subspecies that have never before been seen or at least never catalogued, without ever ceasing to be themselves. And since the subspecies all had a gift for mimesis too, some of the characteristics assumed by the creatures in question were, the voice emphasized, memories of what their relatives had, so to sepak, assimilated, across time and space (aahhh, you breathed, thinking to yourself: they must also react by simultaneously mimicking various human traits, such as tiled walls, basketball hoops, clothing patterns, Wentworth Thompson pages, satellite photographs, overgrown gardens, computer screen protectors, the tower Mendelsohn built in honor of Albert Einstein, del Cossa’s snail, fizzy drinks, or, who knows, maybe freckles, the outer ear. . . Maybe they even jotted in shorthand on their skin the electrical impulses captured in the brains of those who stood before them.)
Their creation in rectangular and movable laboratory vivaria, which addressed the basic material conditions that would allow them to thrive rather than simply survive, was essential to the continual emergence of the beings’ new aptitudes. Especially in terms of their interactions with their environments—although it’s worth remembering that it’s not always voluntary, the voice added (though, unwilling to accept so much certainty, and longing in vain for fewer explanations, you doubted the truth of this), such that alterations occurred in relation to the size and layout of a space, to variations in incidences of light, seasonal changes in weather, etc., and above all in relation to the slightest movement of any human beings in close proximity to them.
On their part, people started believing that their ability to assimilate and transform meant they might be taught to speak. And this gave way, as it often does, to a ceaseless gabfest from various groups with supposed good intentions. But as time passed, the main reason for their presence was forgotten and people started instead to talk among themselves—about food, travel, global warming, personal problems, soccer, Prince Andrew. . . But that’s another story, apologized the voice (which, it’s worth noting, you were the only one listening to). In any case, many pointed out that a sound-vibration had been perceived in the places around which the vivaria were installed.
An expert stated that the string of unprecedented phenomena was artificial and had been triggered by the administration of certain substances, a classic long-term experiment by a certain independent and visibly well-informed researcher. According to the voice, if you bought that explanation, these phenomena were the fruit of an interplay between imagination and results obtained by someone who seemed to be responding to a hibernal (infernal? you wondered if this is what the voice had said, but couldn’t ask since the voice didn’t seem open to conversation) or, to use another word, a wintry work environment. Perhaps tired of her own disquisitions, the voice admitted a preference for the most accepted version of the story, which claimed that everything about them could be traced to an initial chameleon that, lost in the constructions of the Jaipur observatory, had a vision in which it was a broken kaleidoscope that nonetheless spun indefinitely.
