Llops i caputxetes.

Aixeco la tapa del vàter per pixar i ho veig, la llepada de merda seca a la paret interior de la tassa.

«És molt bonic advocar per la igualtat de gènere al mercat laboral i no replantejar-se qui neteja el vàter a casa», deia una economista de qui Ilegia una entrevista I'altre dia a l'oficina en els meus matins de no fer res.

Passejo la mirada pel lavabo, però no com sempre, pensant: «Hauria de posar-hi quadrets bucòlics i inspiradors o tovalloletes grogues que fessin joc», sinó com ho feia la meva àvia, amb una mirada inquisitorial. M'adono de la quantitat de ronya que hi ha per tot arreu, de la crosta groguenca de la banyera, de les restes seques de dentífric a la pica. Penso quant de temps deu fer de l'última neteja a fons. Quan vam decidir que el nou replantejament econòmic deixava fora la Gladys, que a més de cuidar els nens ens donava un cop de mà amb la neteja, l'Horacio em va dir: «Ja me n'encarregaré jo, olvidate». Quan ho decidíem ho vaig veure, com en una il·luminació, com en una aparició mariana, em vaig veure a mi mateixa amb els guants de goma grocs, el Pato per desinfectar el vàter a la mà, ajupida a la tassa, pensant: «Net? Quins collons, net!». Em vaig veure arribant a aquest extrem, als límits de la pandemia, de l'ebola, del tifus, de l'escorbut. «Jo ho veig net, flaca», em diria ara mateix si s'aixequés, amb els cabells despentinats i els calçotets negres amagant una semierecció. Hi ha una lluita, aquí, no només contra els gèrmens. Ell es grataria el cul i em ficaria la mà al pit, amb els ulls encara clucs per la son, aliè a aquest camí cap a la igualtat que ell no ha hagut de transitar mai, amb guants de goma i un pot de Pato a la mà. I penso en tots aquells homes arribant a l'Everest, o al pol Nord, o a l'Antàrtida, o a la fama, quan el que realment és una fita és arribar aquí, en aquest lloc on el vàter es perd cap endins, la cova fosca on rau el perill, l'agonia, l'autèntica lluita de generes.

Class struggle revisited.

In the rarified air that was pumped into the Concorde Room, there nonetheless hovered a hint of something troubling: the implicit suggestion that the three traditional airline classes represented nothing less than a tripartite division of society according to people’s genuine talents and virtues. Having abolished the caste systems of old and fought to ensure universal access to education and opportunity, it seemed that we might have built up a meritocracy that had introduced an element of true justice into the distribution of wealth as well as poverty. In the modern era, destitution could therefore be regarded as not merely pitiable but deserved. The question of why, if one was in any way talented or adept, one was still unable to earn admittance to an elegant lounge was a conundrum for all economy airline passengers to ponder in the privacy of their own minds as they perched on hard plastic chairs in the overcrowded and chaotic public waiting areas of the world’s airports.

The West once had a powerful and forgiving explanation for exclusion from any sort of lounge: for two thousand years Christianity rejected the notion, inherent in the modern meritocratic system, that virtue must inevitably usher in material success. Jesus was the highest man, the most blessed, and yet throughout his earthly life he was poor, thus by his very example ruling out any direct equation between righteousness and wealth. the Christian story emphasized that, however apparently equitable our educational and commercial infrastructures might seem, random factors and accidents would always conspire to wreck any neat alignment between hierarchies of wealth on the one hand and virtue on the other. According to St Augustine, only God himself knew what each individual was worth, and He would not reveal that assessment before the time of the Last Judgement, to the sound of thunder and the trumpets of angels – a phantasmagorical scenario for non-believers, but helpful nevertheless in reminding us to refrain from judging others on the basis of a casual look at their tax returns.

The Christian story has neither died out nor been forgotten. That it continues even now to scratch away at meritocratic explanations of privilege was made clear to me when, after a copious lunch rounded off by a piece of chocolate cake with passionfruit sorbet, an employee called Reggie described for me the complicated set of circumstance that had brought her to the brutally decorated staff area of the Concorde Room from a shantytown outside Puerto Princesa in the Philippines. Our preference for the meritocratic versus the Christian belief system will in the end determine how we decide to interpret the relative standing of a tracksuited twenty-seven-year-old entrepreneur reading the Wall Street Journal by a stone-effect fireplace while waiting to board his fight to Seattle, against that of a Filipina cleaner whose job it is to tour the bathrooms of an airline’s first-class lounge, swabbing the shower cubicles of their diverse and ever-changing colonies of international bacteria.