High-Rise

J.G. Ballard

High-Rise (1975)

Li há alguns anos o conto Billenium, de 1962, passado num futuro distópico, numa cidade sobrepovoada onde cada metro quadrado era avidamente disputado. Na altura, creio ter lido algo sobre High-Rise ser o desenvolvimento dessa ideia. Por essa razão esperava encontrar uma relação entre as duas obras semelhante à que existe, por exemplo, entre o conto A Sentinela e o romance 2001: Uma Odisseia no Espaço, de Arthur C. Clarke. Por certo fui induzido em erro, porque a relação entre Billenium e High-Rise, se a quisermos encontrar, existirá apenas na disposição do pesadelo urbano como pano de fundo. Sem a fina ironia que impregnava o conto Billenium, High-Rise é uma novela de tons escuros, doentia, onde se conta a história da desagregação de um edifício como estrutura social.

Num luxuoso empreendimento imobiliário ainda em construção, a primeira torre está terminada e, agora, completamente habitada: 40 andares, 1000 apartamentos, 2000 moradores. Mas o imóvel é aquilo que se designa hoje como um “edifício doente”, causador de insónia e problemas psicossomáticos. Em breve, o desleixo, as avarias, o vandalismo e a violência, sempre em crescendo, tomam conta da situação, começando por dividir o prédio em três zonas, inicialmente associadas a uma divisão por classes que estava latente na sua ocupação. Acompanhamos, assim, o olhar de três personagens: Richard Wilder, um produtor de documentários televisivos que mora num dos andares inferiores; Robert Laing, professor de medicina e residente num andar da metade superior; e Anthony Royal, o arquitecto do empreendimento, que ocupa um dos melhores apartamentos, no último piso.

Com a evolução da narrativa, a divisão entre os moradores acentua-se rapidamente até desembocar na mais completa barbárie. E, se há os que abandonam o edifício, e os que, sem o abandonar, fingem uma normalidade inexistente, voltando ao fim de cada dia de trabalho para esta selvajaria descontrolada, a narração foca-se naqueles que cortam todo o contacto com o exterior, fazendo da torre o horizonte apocalíptico da sua existência quotidiana.

The psychology of high-rise life had been exposed with damning results. The absence of humour, for example, had always struck Wilder as the single most significant feature—all research by investigators confirmed that the tenants of high-rises made no jokes about them. In a strict sense, life there was "eventless". On the basis of his own experience, Wilder was convinced that the high-rise apartment was an insufficiently flexible shell to provide the kind of home which encouraged activities, as distinct from somewhere to eat and sleep. Living in high-rises required a special type of behaviour, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here, Wilder reflected. Vandalism had plagued these slab and tower blocks since their inception. Every torn-out piece of telephone equipment, every handle wrenched off a fire safety door, every kicked-in electricity meter represented a stand against decerebration.

What angered Wilder most of all about life in the apartment building was the way in which an apparently homogeneous collection of high-income professional people had split into three distinct and hostile camps. The old social sub-divisions, based on power, capital and self-interest, had re-asserted themselves here as anywhere else.

In effect, the high-rise had already divided itself into the three classical social groups, its lower, middle and upper classes. The 10th-floor shopping mall formed a clear boundary between the lower nine floors, with their "proletariat" of film technicians, air-hostesses and the like, and the middle section of the high-rise, which extended from the 10th floor to the swimming-pool and restaurant deck on the 35th. This central two-thirds of the apartment building formed its middle class, made up of self-centred but basically docile members of the professions—the doctors and lawyers, accountants and tax specialists who worked, not for themselves, but for medical institutes and large corporations. Puritan and self-disciplined, they had all the cohesion of those eager to settle for second best.

Above them, on the top five floors of the high-rise, was its upper class, the discreet oligarchy of minor tycoons and entrepreneurs, television actresses and careerist academics, with their high-speed elevators and superior services, their carpeted staircases. It was they who set the pace of the building. It was their complaints which were acted upon first, and it was they who subtly dominated life within the high-rise, deciding when the children could use the swimming-pools and roof garden, the menus in the restaurant and the high charges that kept out almost everyone but themselves. Above all, it was their subtle patronage that kept the middle ranks in line, this constantly dangling carrot of friendship and approval.

The thought of these exclusive residents, as high above him in their top-floor redoubts as any feudal lord above a serf, filled Wilder with a growing sense of impatience and resentment. However, it was difficult to organize any kind of counter-attack. It would be easy enough to play the populist leader and become the spokesman of his neighbours on the lower floors, but they lacked any cohesion or self-interest; they would be no match for the well-disciplined professional people in the central section of the apartment building. There was a latent easy-goingness about them, an inclination to tolerate an undue amount of interference before simply packing up and moving on. In short, their territorial instinct, in its psychological and social senses, had atrophied to the point where they were ripe for exploitation.

Li anteriormente:

Passaporte para o Eterno (1963)