Woes of the True Policeman

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Works of J.M.G. Arcimboldi (Carcasonne, 1925) NOVELS

The Enigma of the Cyclists of the Tour de France-Gallimard, 1956.

Vertumnus-Gallimard, 1958.

Hartmann von Aue-Gallimard, 1959.

Sam O’Rourke’s Search-Gallimard, 1960.

Riquer-Gallimard, 1961.

Railroad Perfection-Gallimard, 1964.

The Librarian-Gallimard, 1966.

The Endless Rose-Gallimard, 1968.

The Natives of Fontainebleau-Gallimard, 1970.

Racine-Gallimard, 1979.

Doctor Dotremont-Gallimard, 1988.

ESSAYS

The Downtrodden: Articles and Notes on Literature-Gallimard, 1975. (Collection of critical texts written between 1950 and 1960 for newspapers and literary magazines.) PLAYS

For Lovers Only-Gallimard, 1975. (Dated 1957 and performed for the first time by the Little Theater of Revolutionary Action, Carcassonne, 1958.) The Spirit of Science Fiction-Gallimard, 1975. (Dated 1958 and performed for the first time by the Colombian Company of Rebels and Toilers, Cali, 1977.) POETRY

Railroad Perfection; or, The Fracturing of the Pursued-Pierre-Jean Oswald, 1959.

Doctor Dotremont; or, The Paradoxes of Illness-Le Pont de l’Epée, 1960.

TRANSLATIONS

Songs of Hartmann von Aue-Millas Martin, 1956. (Selection, translation, prologue, and notes on the oeuvre of Von Aue, minnesinger.)

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Two Arcimboldi Novels Read in Five Days

Hartmann von Aue (Gallimard, 1959, 90 pages)

At first glance, Hartmann von Aue is an examination of moments from the life of the German minnesinger, but the central character is really someone else: Jaufré Rudel.

Rudel, according to legend, fell in love with the Countess of Tripoli after hearing her praises sung by pilgrims returning from Antioch. He wrote some poems about her that were admired by all and increased his fame. But none of this was enough for the Prince of Blaye, and one day, driven by the desire to meet his beloved, he became a crusader and embarked for the Holy Land. During the voyage he fell gravely ill. As fate had it, he was still alive when the ship docked and he was taken to a Tripoli hospital. The countess heard the news and came to see him. Surprisingly, Jaufré Rudel regained consciousness, praised God for allowing him to set eyes on his beloved, and immediately thereafter died in her arms. He was buried at the house of the Knights Templar. Soon afterward, the countess entered a convent.

Von Aue listens over and over to this story and reflects on love and death. At moments he envies the Prince of Blaye and at moments he dimly despises him. He is a nobleman and a soldier and Rudel’s fate seems to him unworthy, almost a betrayal. But the next moment, Rudel crossing the seas and dying in the arms of his beloved appears bathed in the most seductive light. Von Aue dreams of such a fate for himself. He tries to fall in love with Spanish women who live in faraway places, but the very attempt strikes him as banal. Von Aue is incapable of action.

In the novel there are references to other minnesingers: the best known is Heinrich von Morungen, who, along with Von Aue, takes part in the Fourth Crusade. During the voyage, the Swabian knight and the Thuringian knight compete in feats of arms, hunting, music, and poetry. Fatefully, Von Aue shares the story of Jaufré Rudel with Von Morungen. Von Morungen is seized by excitement: the passion of Jaufré Rudel that Von Aue transmits to him changes his plans and his fealties and sets him on a new path. In Von Aue’s vague memories, the figure of Morungen, ardent and unhinged, continues on to the East, to India. The fragile figure of Jaufré Rudel blazes like a torch: he is the Cross of the World.

With the years, the soldier gives way to the poet and the poet to the scholar: Von Aue, taking refuge in castle or forest, famed as the poet and adapter of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec and Yvain, bids farewell to the world without ever deciphering the transparent mystery of the Prince of Blaye.

Vertumnus (Gallimard, 1958, 180 pages)

The novel is set in an unspecified country in the Americas that sometimes resembles Argentina, sometimes Mexico, sometimes the American South. It is also set in France: Paris and Carcassonne. Time period: the end of the nineteenth century. Alexandre Maurin, landowner and man of strong character, orders his son to return to France. André, his son, objects, arguing that he was born in these lands and that his duty is to remain by his father’s side in times of trouble. Over the course of an endless afternoon with great black clouds hanging overhead, Alexandre Maurin warns André of the danger he faces if he stays. For some time now the local strongmen have been scheming to kill them all. André inquires about the fate of the seven boys who live with them, in the same house, sharing the same table, orphans or vagabonds whom Maurin has gathered up and raised in his own way. In a sense André considers them his brothers. Maurin smiles: they aren’t your brothers, he says, you have no brothers or sisters, at least as far as I know. The orphans will suffer the same fate as their father, that’s what Maurin has decided, but André, his only son, must be saved. Finally André’s departure is settled. Maurin and the seven orphans, by now armed to the teeth, accompany the youth to the railroad station: their parting is cheerful, the orphans brim with confidence and boast of their weapons, they assure him that he can go with his mind at ease, no one will touch a hair on his father’s head. The train trip is long and lonely. André doesn’t speak to anyone. He thinks about his father and the boys and believes that he has made an unforgivable mistake leaving them there. He has a dream: as death rains down all around them, his father and the orphans ride and shoot their rifles at a mass of enemies who stand motionless, gripped by fear. Then André reaches a port city, has an encounter with a woman in a hotel on a hill, boards a ship, is bored during the long crossing, arrives in France. In Paris he meets his mother, in whose house he lives for the first few days. His relationship with his mother is distant and formal. Later, with the money he’s brought from America, he rents a little house and begins his university studies.

For months he has no news of his father. One day a lawyer appears and informs him of the existence of a bank account opened in his name, an account with enough money in it for him to live on, finish his degree, and tour Europe. The account is replenished each year with a remittance from America. Your father, says the lawyer, is a man of means. An example for young people. Before he leaves he hands him a letter. In it, Alexandre Maurin provides more or less the same explanation and urges him to finish his degree quickly and to lead a healthy, virtuous life. The boys and I, he says, are holding down the fort. After two years, André meets a traveler at a party who has been to the part of America where his father lives. The traveler has heard talk of him: a Frenchman surrounded by American boys, some of them wild and dangerous, who has the local authorities in a chokehold; the owner of vast grazing and croplands, orchards, and a couple of gold mines. He lived, it was said, in the exact center of his possessions, in a big single-story house of adobe and wood, its courtyards and passageways labyrinthine. About the wards of the Frenchman, who ranged in age from eight to twenty-five, it was said that they were many, though probably not more than twenty in number, and that some of them had already claimed various lives. These words cheer and trouble André. That night he can learn nothing else, but in the following days he obtains the traveler’s address and pays him a visit. For weeks, on every sort of pretext, André smothers the traveler with attentions, his seemingly limitless generosity touching his new friend. At last he invites him to spend a few days at the family seat in Carcassonne, which he has yet to visit. The traveler accepts the invitation. The train trip from Paris to Carcassonne is pleasant: they talk of philosophy and opera. The ride from Carcassonne to the family seat is by stagecoach and along the way André is silent. He’s never been there before and he’s assaulted by a kind of irrational and nameless fear. The house is empty but a neighbor and some servants inform them that old M. Maurin has been there. André realizes that they mean his grandfather, who he’d thought was dead. Leaving the traveler settled at the house, he sets out in search of his grandfather. When he finds him, in a village near Carcassonne, the old man is very ill. According to the family that has taken him in, death won’t be long in coming. André, who is about to complete his medical degree, treats and cures him. For a week, forgetting all else, he remains by the old man’s bedside: in his grandfather’s face, ravaged by illness and hard living, he seems to glimpse his father’s features, his father’s fierce joy. When the old man recovers he brings him back to the house, over his protests. The traveler, meanwhile, has struck up friendships with a few of the neighbors, and when André arrives he reveals that he knows why he was invited. André admits that at first his motives were selfish, but now he feels true friendship. With the arrival of fall, the traveler leaves for Spain and the north of Africa and André remains in Carcassonne, caring for his grandfather. One night he dreams of his father: surrounded by more than thirty boys, adolescents and children, Maurin crosses a field of flowers on horseback. The horizon is vast and of a dazzling blue. When he wakes, André decides to return to Paris. The years go by. André receives his degree and starts a practice in an elegant quarter of Paris. He marries a pretty young woman from a good family. He has a daughter. He is a professor at the Sorbonne. He stands for Parliament. He buys property and speculates on the stock exchange. He has another daughter. Upon the death of his grandfather-at the age of ninety-three-he has the family seat restored and spends his summers in Carcassonne. He takes a lover. He travels around the Mediterranean and the Near East. One night, at the Monte Carlo Casino, he sees the traveler again. He avoids him. The next morning the traveler shows up at his hotel. He has lost everything, and he asks for a loan in the name of their old friendship. Silently, André Maurin hands him a more-than-generous check. The traveler, moved and grateful, tells him that he’s spent five years in America and that he’s seen his father. André says that he doesn’t want to know anything about him. He no longer even touches the account that his father adds to each year without fail. But this time, says the traveler, I saw him in person, I spoke to him about you, I spent seven days at his house, I can give you all sorts of detail about his life. André says that none of that interests him anymore. Their parting is cold. That night, on his way back to Paris, André Maurin dreams of his father: all he sees are children and weapons and terrified faces. By the time he reaches Paris, he’s forgotten everything.

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An Arcimboldi Novel Read in Four Days The Natives of Fontainebleau (Gallimard, 1970, 140 pages) A painter by the name of Fontaine returns to the city of his birth in the south of France after thirty years of absence. The first part of the book, briefly: the return trip by train, the view from the windows, the silence or loquacity of the other passengers, their conversations, the train corridor, the restaurant car, the step of the ticket inspector, assorted opinions on politics, love, wine, the nation, then night on the train, the countryside in the dark, and the moon. In the second part we see Fontaine two months later, settled on the edge of town in a little three-room house by a stream, where he lives in dignity and poverty. He has only one friend left: Dr. D’Arsonval, whom he has known since he was a child. D’Arsonval, who is well-off and fond of Fontaine, tries to help him financially but Fontaine refuses his help. Here we are given our first description of Fontaine: he’s short and lamb-like, with dark eyes and brown hair, his expression occasionally intense and his movements clumsy. During his absence he’s been all over the world but he prefers not to talk about it. His memories of Paris are happy and bright. In his youth Fontaine was a painter of whom great things were expected. Once (D’Arsonval remembers as he sets off on horseback for Fontaine’s little house), he was accused of imitating Fernand Khnopff. It was a trap set with malice and craft. Fontaine didn’t defend himself. He knew Khnopff’s work, but he preferred that of another Belgian: Mellery, the delightful Xavier Mellery, like himself the son of a gardener. That was the beginning of the end of his career. D’Arsonval visited him three years later: Fontaine’s time was devoted to the reading of Rosicrucian literature, to drugs, and to friendships that contributed little to his physical or mental well-being. He made a living by working some mysterious job at a big warehouse. He hardly painted at all, though once D’Arsonval was back working as a doctor in the Roussillon, he received invitations for various shows, presumably sent by Fontaine himself, from a group of painters who called themselves “The Occults”-shows that, as might be supposed, D’Arsonval did not attend. Soon afterward Fontaine disappeared. The third and last part of the novel is set in D’Arsonval’s library, after a long and lavish dinner. The mistress of the house has gone to sleep, and D’Arsonval’s four guests are single men: in addition to Fontaine, there is Clouzet, widower and fabulously wealthy merchant, an aficionado-like the host-of poetry, music, and the fine arts; the young painter Eustache Pérol, on the eve of his second and definitive trip to Paris, where he plans to stay and forge a career with the initial support of D’Arsonval and Clouzet; and finally the parish priest, Father Chaumont, who confesses himself ignorant of the delights of art. The postprandial conversation goes on until dawn. Everyone talks. Sometimes the discussion is calm, other times it is impassioned. Chaumont pokes fun at D’Arsonval and Clouzet. Eustache Pérol treats the priest like a spiritual outlaw. They bring up Michelangelo. D’Arsonval and Clouzet have been to the Sistine Chapel. Chaumont speaks of Aristotle and then of Saint Francis of Assisi. Clouzet recalls Michelangelo’s Moses and sinks into something that might be nostalgia or silent desperation. Eustache Pérol speaks of Rodin, but no one pays any attention to him: he’s reminded of The Burghers of Calais, which he’s never seen, and grits his teeth. D’Arsonval puts his hand on Clouzet’s shoulder and asks if he remembers Naples. Clouzet quotes Bergson, whom they met in Paris, and he and D’Arsonval laugh. Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe, whispers the priest. Soon the subject changes to Perol’s impending trip. Chaumont asks after his lady mother. Eustache Pérol confesses that she is beside herself. Clouzet says a few words about a mother’s love. D’Arsonval laughs in a corner of the library. They open another bottle of cognac. The only one who has done nothing but drink thus far is Fontaine. At four in the morning, when everyone is drunk (Father Chaumont dozes in an armchair and the others stroll around the library in shirtsleeves), he is moved to speak. He remembers his mother. He recalls his departure and his mother’s tears the night before as she packed his bag. He speaks of the joy of work. Of sublime visions. Of the monotony of life. Of his inability to decipher its mystery. Days in Paris, he says without rising from his seat and staring at the floor, are swift. But swift like what? like the wind? like amnesia? He speaks of women and sunsets, of terrible daybreaks and of blank, demonic faces. A heedless gesture, a word, and you’re sunk, the consequences will be unforeseeable, he says in a soft voice. He speaks of the death of his mother, of painters and of bars. He speaks of the Rosicrucians and the cosmos. One day, pressed by debt, he took a job in the colonies. He didn’t paint anymore-he had given it up, you might say-and in this new enterprise his rise was meteoric. No one could have been more surprised than he. In just a few years, he found himself in a position of responsibility that required constant travel. Yes, he had been all over Africa and even to India. Surprising countries, he says in response to the expectant looks of D’Arsonval and Clouzet and the dolorously skeptical gaze of Eustache Pérol. At a certain point, he says, a series of stupid mistakes obliged me to spend a month at a trading post in Madagascar. This was early in the year 1900. Life on the plantation and in the village was deadly boring. In three days his work was done and time passed with exasperating slowness. At first he occupied himself devising projects that might improve the living conditions of the natives, but he soon gave up the effort, thwarted by their passivity. Their lack of interest was universal. After their labors on the plantation, none of them wanted to do extra work. The apathy of the natives piqued Fontaine’s interest, and he decided to paint them. At first everything was exciting: with materials taken from nature, he made the colors and brushes. An employee of the company supplied him with the canvases: an old sheet and pieces of sacking and burlap. He began to paint; far now, he says, from the symbolist school, from the visionaries and the wretched Occults. Now it was his eye, his naked eye, that guided his hand. The divine innocence of the company man, he says. From the start, the painting escaped his control. He began with the sacking and burlap and saved the sheet for the grand finale. One night, as he gazed at the sacking by the light of an oil lamp, he realized that he had turned that poor Madagascar village into a vast, sumptuous palace crowded with passageways, stairs, and hidden corners. Like Fontainebleau, he says, though he had never been there. The next day he tackled the sheet. It took him eight days to finish it, painting around the clock: by day in the open air and by night in the dilapidated company offices. He went without food and sleep. On the ninth day he packed up his things and didn’t set foot outside his room. On the tenth day he departed in the ship that had come for him. A year later, settled in a small, friendly African city, he decided at last to take another look at his paintings. There were twenty small canvases and one big one, and together he called them The Natives of Fontainebleau. In the paintings, the village had, in fact, become a palace. The occupations of the natives had become the occupations of courtiers. The grand salons, their patterns of light and shadow, the statues, the mirrors, the murals, the heavy draperies: all seemed equally sunk in an unspecified illness. The floor oozed fever, the rugs seemed about to founder. In this setting, in an atmosphere at once oppressive and gay, his black subjects moved about, casting sidelong glances at the painter, at the future spectators of the painting, as if they were out in the open air. Fontaine seemed to hear again-to hear for the first time-the sounds of that village to which he would never return, sounds that he had mistakenly confused with those of any other African village. Now, thousands of miles away, he heard and saw it for the first time, and was horrified and amazed. The paintings, of course, were lost, adds Fontaine, except for the old sheet, which had accompanied him like an act of penitence each time he moved. After a long silence the voice of Chaumont, whom everyone had thought was asleep, is heard: you speak of sin, he says. D’Arsonval and Clouzet, suddenly full of unease, send for the carriage in order to set out immediately for Fontaine’s house to see this extraordinary painting. Pérol has fallen asleep, his face now peaceful and innocent. D’Arsonval and Clouzet each take Fontaine by an arm and go out into the courtyard, where the servant has already hitched up the horses. There, as day begins to dawn, they are served steamed milk, bread, cheese, cold meats. Fontaine stands and gazes up at the sky as he drinks a glass of wine. Father Chaumont joins them. The carriage traverses the sleeping town, crosses a bridge, enters a forest. At last they come to Fontaine’s little house: he takes the canvas from a chest, spreads it on the bed, and, without looking at it, steps away toward the window. From there he hears the exclamations of D’Arsonval and Clouzet, the murmurs of Chaumont. Soon afterward, as summer nears its end, he dies. When D’Arsonval clears out his few belongings, he searches for the painting but can’t find it.

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Two Arcimboldi Novels Read in Three Days

The Librarian (Gallimard, 1966, 185 pages)

The protagonist’s name is Jean Marchand. He’s young, from a good family, and wants to be a writer. He has a manuscript, The Librarian, on which he’s been working for a long time. A publishing house, recognizable as Gallimard, hires him as a reader. Overnight, Marchand finds himself buried in hundreds of unpublished novels. First he decides to set his book aside for a while. Then he decides to give up his literary aspirations (the practice of writing, if not his passion for it) to devote himself to the careers of other writers. He sees himself as a doctor at a leper colony in India, a monk pledged to a higher cause.

He reads manuscripts, has long discussions with writers, gives them advice, calls them on the phone, inquires after their health, lends them money. Soon there’s a group of about ten whom he can consider his own, whose novels he’s been involved with. Some-a few-find publishers. Parties are thrown and plans made. The rest come imperceptibly to swell the ranks of a collection of unpublished manuscripts guarded jealously by Marchand. Among these manuscripts by others is his own novel, The Librarian, unfinished and perfectly typed, neatly bound, a beauty among grubby, smudged, crumpled, dirty originals; a lady cat among tomcats. Marchand dreams that in one magical and endless night the rejected manuscripts make love every way possible with his abandoned manuscript: they sodomize it, rape it orally and genitally, come in its hair, on its body, in its ears, in its armpits, etc., but when morning comes his manuscript hasn’t been fertilized. It’s sterile. In that sterility, Marchand believes, lies its uniqueness, its magnetism. He also dreams that he’s the leader of a gang that scavenges metal from mines and that the mountain they must plunder by the light of the moon is hollow, empty. His prestige at the publishing house grows, as it must. He has recommended the publication of a young writer who is the hit of the season. Marchand knows that for every writer he allows to breathe, there are five who endure with him (with the best Marchand, the most improbable) the airlessness and darkness of their labyrinthine works.

Eventually, one of his writers kills himself. Another turns to journalism. Another, of independent means, writes a second and a third novel that only Marchand will read and praise. Another is published by a small regional press. Another becomes an encyclopedia salesman. By this point Marchand has abandoned any scruples, any hesitation: not only does he maintain steady relationships with the writers but in more than one case he has become acquainted with their families (dear M. Marchand), their girlfriends and wives, their generous grandmothers, their best friends. In his imagination, his manuscript lives on in the novels that he stores at his house: the character of The Librarian enters the lives of the other characters-the characters from the other books-just as he works his way into the lives of the writers. Of the first ten, only one takes the tempestuous world of publishing by storm (and even so, Marchand controls him to the point of making him write stories that only he will read, rewrite novels whose discarded fragments only he will possess); as the years go by, the others find new interests, stop writing, readapt themselves, grow up. But the flow of new manuscripts is unceasing: Marchand takes on another ten writers, then another ten, and so on until his library is filled with manuscripts-strange ones, bad ones sometimes; surprising ones, delightful ones, dark ones sometimes-that he personally takes care to see are rejected by publishers. There comes a moment when Marchand reads only unpublished works: the novel gives brief plot summaries of about forty.

Marchand has dreams: a great fire in his building, described by Arcimboldi with the precision of an architect and a firefighter; the appearance of a thundering Messiah who publishes all the filched manuscripts and condemns him to burn in hell, the Librarian’s greatest fear; the hatching of a generation of novelists who are as quick as lightning and whom he’ll coddle and lead, step by step, into his library of rejected writers. The novel ends abruptly. Marchand dies of a heart attack. Present at his burial, along with the employees of the publishing house, are many former writers. A moving truck transports his collection of manuscripts to a warehouse. Arcimboldi describes the warehouse in great detail.

Racine (Gallimard, 1979, 140 pages)

A fragmented biography, divided into cold and seemingly unconnected bits; perhaps a collection of prose poems, as one critic notes. Scenes from the life of Racine, following one after another like closed and stifling rooms: the death of the girl Jeanne-Thérèse Olivier, recounted with evident pain despite the chilliness-the purported objectivity-of the prose; the death of Jeanne Sconin, mother of the poet, two years after the poet’s birth; the death of Marquise Du Parc, the poet’s lover, in the year of the publication of Andromaque; work with Boileau, the head of Boileau, his profile; friendship with Molière and their subsequent falling-out; the death of Jean Racine, the poet’s father; early mornings in 1644 when the poet was a five-year-old orphan living with his grandparents; the unfinished and lost tragedies, the incalculable spent energy; life in Uzès, the birds of Languedoc, the poet’s uncle Antoine Sconin; the lie that surrounds him like a barbed and dirty cloud; marriage to Catherine de Romanet; the accusation that he poisoned Marquise Du Parc for her jewels; the study of Latin; the premiere of Andromaque with Marquise Du Parc in the leading role; the period when Marquise Du Parc worked with Molière; La Champmeslé’s bed; children; life in Versailles; the great blocks of ice of the seventeenth century; the music of Lully and Port-Royal.

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Two Arcimboldi Novels Read in Seven Days

Sam O’Rourke’s Search (Gallimard, 1960, 230 pages)

At first, this sad and rambling novel most resembles a plagiarized version of James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, or at best an adaptation. Despite the unremitting description of objects (beds, curtains, camp beds, guns, chairs, boxes of crackers, bottles, plates), very much in the style of the nouveau roman, the arc of James Hadley Chase’s story impresses itself with great force: some small-time crooks kidnap the daughter of a tycoon; before long, the bungling kidnappers lose their captive to another gang; the brains behind the new gang is a fat, surly woman (Mona); Mona’s deputies are her son (Chuck) and her godson (Jim, a.k.a. Kansas Jim). That same night-the night of the double kidnapping-we learn that Chuck is a dangerous psychopath and that he’s about to fall for the beautiful heiress, and that Jim is handsome and clever and hates the heiress with a passion: his reasons, explained at great length, fluctuate between a very personal sense of class struggle and an appreciation of the charms and natural camaraderie of chorus girls, whom he clearly prefers.

The rest of the gang consists of four drab and ruthless individuals: a black man, two ex-farmers, and a fifty-five-year-old Polish dancer. The daily existence of these characters is something that seems to fascinate Arcimboldi: their routines, their hideouts, their interests, their obsessions, the ease with which they “slide through cracks in time.” We soon learn all kinds of things about them: their favorite foods, their dreams, their favorite subjects of conversation, their hopes, their dark loves, their dark fates (cf. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables). Chuck and the kidnapped girl are like a kind of diabolical Romeo and Juliet, with Mona and the Pole (who sleep together once every two weeks, though almost without touching, masturbating each other from opposite sides of the bed with hands like insect antennae) as their antithesis: the old couple has attained or is about to attain wisdom, the state of a celestial Romeo and Juliet. Standing between the two couples in a space where everything is antagonism are the godson, the black man, sometimes the two ex-farmers: they are the spectators of love, the chorus that gives life and takes it away, that licenses it.

The two cities where the first part of the novel is set are described with seeming objectivity (another cascade of details), revealing glimpses of a dream landscape: clouds that hang incredibly low, at nearly the level of lightning rods; twisted, solitary trees (that Arcimboldi, for reasons unknown, calls Oklahomas) loaded with birds and rodents, greenish-black specters in desolate fields; illicit all-night gambling dens; seedy hotels with four beds to a room; farmhouses with barred doors and windows; cowboys who scan the valley from afar without dismounting. Down in the valley, the two cities glitter in the sun; up on the mountain, the cowboy smokes and smiles with an air of sadness, striking the same relaxed, careless pose that we’ve seen in so many movies.

Between the end of the first part of the novel and the start of the second, a washroom door is opened by someone unknown to reveal a dwarf brushing his teeth at a dwarf-sized sink. It’s at precisely this point that the second part begins: a private detective (Sam O’Rourke) kneels at a dwarf-sized sink brushing his teeth and staring at himself in the mirror-which is also dwarf-height-with an expression of infinite sadness on his face. Someone opens the door (presumably the same person who opened the door earlier and found the dwarf) and orders him to go in search of the missing heiress. The image of the detective on his knees brushing his teeth is one to which Arcimboldi will return over and over again: a man shrunk to his true size; the description of the washroom tiles (Hardee-Royston, green and gray flowers on a matte surface); the description of the single lightbulb hanging naked over the mirror; the shadow of the door as it opens; the bulky form in the doorway and the eyes of the stranger, invisible to O’Rourke but in which he intuits a gleam of surprise and fear; the gaze of O’Rourke, first in the mirror (in which he sees only the reflection of the stranger’s legs) and then upon turning to seek the face; voices that echo with strange limpidity; the water that runs in the chipped sink and trickles between the tiles.

O’Rourke’s search is limited to the two cities and the network of farms scattered between them. A single city, concludes Arcimboldi, is by its very nature unfathomable; two cities are an infinity. O’Rourke navigates this infinity with American simplicity and integrity. The senseless deaths (despite the author’s efforts to demonstrate-by the enumeration of causal events-that everything has a hidden meaning as unyielding as fate) follow upon one another with horrifying monotony. O’Rourke’s inquiries lead him to a church, an orphanage, the charred shell of a farm, a brothel. During the investigation, which is like a voyage, he makes new friends and enemies, reencounters forgotten lovers, is nearly killed, kills, loses his car, makes love with his secretary. The conversations that O’Rourke has with policemen, pickpockets, thugs, night watchmen, gas station attendants, informers, whores, and dealers are reproduced in full and concern the existence of God, progress, mathematics, life after death, the reading of the Bible, fallen women and saintly wives, flying saucers, the role of Christ on strange planets, the role of man on earth, the advantages of life in the country over life in the city (clean air, fresh vegetables and milk, guaranteed daily exercise), the ravages of time, miracle drugs, the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, the choice to bring children into this mixed-up world, work as a social good.

As might be expected, the search for the heiress never ends. The cities, A and B, increasingly resemble each other. Mona’s gang, once the ransom is collected, tries to flee but something nameless (and ominous) stands in the way. They end up settling in B, where they buy a nightclub in the suburbs. The nightclub is described as a castle or a fortress: from a secret room the heiress and Chuck watch the sunsets and the Oklahomas stretching into infinity. O’Rourke loses himself doubly: in the cities and in momentous and futile conversations. And yet, at the end of the novel, he has a dream. He dreams that Mona’s entire gang is climbing a flight of stairs. Mona is in the lead and Kansas Jim brings up the rear. In the middle is the kidnapped heiress with Chuck’s arm around her waist. They climb slowly but with steady and unfaltering steps-the stairs are wooden and uncarpeted-until they come to a hallway, dark or faintly lit by a yellowish bulb covered with fly droppings. There’s a door. They open it. They see a dwarf sink. Kneeling at the tiny sink is O’Rourke, brushing his teeth. They remain on the threshhold without greeting him. O’Rourke turns, still on his knees, and gazes at them. The novel ends a few lines later with some disquisitions on love and repentance.

Railroad Perfection (Gallimard, 1964, 206 pages)

Novel consisting of ninety-nine apparently unrelated two-page dialogues. All the dialogues take place aboard a train. But not the same train, or even during the same time period. Chronologically, the first dialogue (page 101) takes place in 1899, between a priest and a clerk for a foreign company; the last (page 59) in 1957, between a young widow and a retired cavalry captain. Following the order in which they appear in the book, the first dialogue (page 9) takes place in 1940, between a landscape painter and a surrealist painter whose nerves are shot, presumably on a train to Marseille; the last (page 205) takes place in 1930, between a woman traveling with two children and an old woman who is deathly ill but who never dies, among other reasons because the dialogue, like those that precede it, is interrupted: in general, the reader encounters conversations that he doesn’t see begin (and whose beginnings he can’t even imagine) and that after two pages will inevitably be cut off. Still, the careful reader will find clues that occasionally explain how a conversation started, what motivated it, the reasons behind it. Although most, at least on the surface, arise from the monotony of the trip, some have a more specific origin: a remark about the crime novel that a passenger is reading, a significant political or social event, a third person who has attracted the attention of two passengers. Each dialogue is given a short title that sometimes informs us of the profession of the speakers or their marital status or the destination of the train or the year or the age of the travelers, but not always, so that some chapters begin simply with a notation of the time: 3 a.m., 9 a.m., 11 p.m., etc. In addition, the careful reader will soon realize (though a second or third reading is often required) that this isn’t a collection of stories or of ninety-nine fragments connected solely by train travel: as if this were a mystery novel, we learn to recognize at least two travelers through the fragments of dialogue, two ambiguous characters who, despite changes of job, age, and sometimes even sex (but then the young woman who works as a secretary at a chocolate factory in the Jura is no such young woman), are the same person, and both are fleeing, or chasing each other, or one is chasing and the other is hiding. It’s also possible to piece together the clues to solve a crime, though the order in which the dialogues are presented tends to muddy the waters (conversation between the prefect of Narbonne and the Turkish intellectual, page 161; conversation between the train conductor and the sailor from Toulon, page 95; conversation between the proofreader whose mother has died and the town architect of Brest, page 51; conversation between the Italian immigrant and the watchmaker from Geneva, page 87; conversation between the fifty-year-old whore and the twenty-year-old whore, page 115); it’s possible to spin a comic tale (conversation between the bride and groom off on their honeymoon, page 27; conversation between the man of independent means and the owner of vineyards in the Roussillon, page 77; conversation between the vaudeville performer and the highway engineer-or is he a German spy? or a Strasbourg bohemian?-page 109); a story of devotion (conversation between the elderly baker and the elderly country doctor, page 153; conversation between the soldier on leave and the woman of mystery, page 163; conversation between the stutterer from Lille and the Paris taxi driver, page 171); the story of a trip-to Spain, the Maghreb?-that ends in the death of the traveler (conversation between the professor of medieval literature and the traveling salesman, page 143; conversation between the woman of mystery and the married woman, page 69; conversation between the twenty-year-old athlete and the twenty-eight-year-old college graduate, page 181; conversation between the bridge player and the Englishwoman of a certain age, page 197); and the story of a house that burned down (conversation between the gravedigger from the south and the gravedigger from the north, page 39; conversation between the housewife who likes to write poetry but doesn’t like to read it and the proofreader whose mother has died, page 119; conversation between the man who has never taken trains and the old man who was an only child, page 191). But the truly important story, the one that somehow encompasses and obliterates and supplants all the others, is the story of the chase. From the beginning, the reader is presented with a number of questions: is the pursuer motivated by love or hatred? is the pursued motivated by love or fear? how much time elapses from the start of the chase until the present day? at the end of the book is the chase still on or has it imperceptibly ceased at some point between 1899 and 1957? is the pursuer a man and the pursued a woman, or is it the other way around? what is the story and what are its outgrowths, elaborations, offshoots?

6

Friendships of Arcimboldi

Raymond Queneau, whom he considered to be his mentor and with whom he quarreled at least ten times. Five times by letter, four times over the phone, and twice in person, the first time with curses and insults, and the second time with scornful gestures and glares.

Georges Perec, whom he admired deeply. Once he remarked that Perec must surely be the second coming of Christ.

Raoul Duguay, Quebecois poet, with whom he maintained a relationship based on mutual hospitality: when Duguay was in France he stayed with Arcimboldi, and when Arcimboldi traveled to Canada or taught college classes he stayed with Duguay. On the subject of Duguay’s working life: he might be a professor at a Texas university for three months and a waiter at a bar in Vancouver for the next three months. Which is something that might seem perfectly normal in America but that never failed to astonish Arcimboldi.

Isidore Isou, whom he saw mostly between 1946 and 1948, and with whom he broke ties upon the appearance of the book Réflexions sur M. André Breton (Lettristes, 1948). As far as Arcimboldi was concerned, Isou was a “Romanian fuck-stick.”

Elie-Charles Flamand, whom he knew between 1950 and 1955. By this time the young Flamand was already extremely interested in esotericism, which in 1959 got him excommunicated by the surrealists. He and Arcimboldi shared a taste for certain poetic and kabbalistic interpretations of texts. According to Arcimboldi, Flamand was so unobtrusive that when he sat down it was practically as if he had remained standing. (This observation of Arcimboldi’s can be found in an Agatha Christie story.)

Ivonne Mercier, librarian from Caen, whom he saw from 1952 to 1960. He met Miss Mercier while on holiday in Normandy. For a year their contact was strictly epistolary, though frequent, consisting of two or even three letters a week. At the time, Miss Mercier was engaged and hoped soon to be married. The sudden death of her fiancé brought them closer. Ivonne Mercier traveled to Paris an average of six times a year. Arcimboldi, meanwhile, made only one more trip to Caen in his lifetime, in the summer of 1959, the year of the publication of the novel Hartmann von Aue and the poetry collection Railroad Perfection; or, The Fracturing of the Pursued. In 1960 Ivonne Mercier married a builder from the Normandy coast and broke off her visits to Paris. They continued to write for a few years, though very sporadically.

René Monardes, childhood friend from Carcassonne whom Arcimboldi always visited on his trips back to town. Monardes, a wine wholesaler, remembered Arcimboldi as a sincere and bighearted person. He had never read any of his books, though he kept some on the bookshelf in the dining room. Even after Arcimboldi had left France, Monardes claimed that he occasionally came back to visit. Once every two years. He comes, we have a glass of wine, maybe eat some figs under the arbor, I fill him in on the news, not that there’s much of it these days, and then he leaves. He’s still a nice guy. Not a big talker, but a nice guy.

7

Epistolary Relationships of Arcimboldi

Robert Goffin, ten letters dated between 1948 and 1951. Subjects: eroticism, painting, motoring, the weather, Belgian and French cyclists, scams and great scam artists.

Achille Chavée, fifteen letters, 1953 to 1960. Various subjects. Literature, as they say, is noticeable for its absence. In the letters, Chavée rallies Arcimboldi: courage, young man, courage.

Cecilia Laurent, of the Center for Atomic Energy Research, Paris. Forty letters, postcards, telegrams, all dated 1960. In one postcard Arcimboldi confesses that he wants to kill her. In the next letter he takes it back: what I really want to do is make love with you. To penetrate you = to kill you. That same afternoon he sends her a telegram: never mind, forget what I said, I didn’t mean it.

Dr. Lester D. Gore, of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Pasadena, California. Ten letters, dated 1962 to 1966, of a pseudoscientific nature. From one of them it may be deduced that Arcimboldi tried to visit Gore during a trip to the United States in 1966, but that in the end they were only able to speak by phone. (Was he trying to gather material for a scientific novel, as he explains in a subsequent letter?)

Dr. Mario Bianchi, head of the Plastic Surgery Department, St. Peter’s Hospital, Orlando, Florida. Eight letters, dated 1964 to 1965, of a pseudoscientific nature. Arcimboldi expresses an interest in techniques of facial surgery, in nerve elongation, in techniques for bone implants, in “photographs of the inside of the face, the inside of the hands.” And he explains: “color photographs, of course.” Dr. Bianchi expresses an interest in knowing whether any of Arcimboldi’s novels have been translated in the United States, and mentions an upcoming trip to Paris with his wife and son during which they might meet in person.

Jaime Valle, professor of French literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico. Five letters dated between 1969 and 1971. Subjects relating to the purchase of real estate, oceanfront properties, cabins in Oaxaca, hippies, peyote, María Sabina. Regarding Mexican literature: surprisingly, Arcimboldi has read only Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo, in Anne Fontfreda’s translation, Paris, 1951. And a bit of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It’s life in Mexico that interests me, not Mexican literature, he says. The last letter is a long defense of B. Traven, scorned by Jaime Valle as popular and facile.

Renato Leduc, whom he meets through a mutual friend, the exiled Panamanian Roberto Dole, black, homosexual, and pacifist. Ten letters dated between 1969 and 1974. Subjects: life in Mexico, the desert, the tropics, the places where it rains most and least. Leduc’s responses are clear and to the point. He goes so far as to send Arcimboldi photographs and maps, newspaper clippings and tourist pamphlets. He even presents him with a copy of his book Fábulas y poemas, 1966, and Arcimboldi promises to translate it, though nothing further is heard of the project.

Dr. John W. Clark, plastic surgeon, Geneva, Switzerland. Twenty letters between 1972 and 1975. Subjects: skin grafts, The Island of Dr. Moreau, the ultimate facelift.

Dr. André Lejeune, Lacanian psychoanalyst. Eighteen letters between 1963 and 1974. Discussions of literature from which it may be deduced that Dr. Lejeune is a reader to be reckoned with, as well as a shrewd and mordant critic. The final letters contain veiled threats. Arcimboldi discusses killings, people who talk about killings, blood, and silence.

Amelia De León, Mexican professor of French literature whom Arcimboldi meets on a brief trip to Oaxaca in 1976. Ten letters, all with some exotic postmark, like Mauritania or Senegal; all dated 1977. In them, Arcimboldi makes constant though oblique references to age, to the joys of being twenty-nine and about to turn thirty, which was the case of Professor De León in 1977. Her letters are cold and academic: Stendhal, Balzac, etc.

8

Hobbies and Training

The piano. Arcimboldi learned to play the piano when he was forty-five. His teachers were Jacques Soler and Marie Djiladi. He never had a piano at home or felt the need for one. And yet when he went out at night and came upon a piano at a bar or a friend’s house he would do anything to be allowed to play it. Then he would sit down and run his fingers over the keys and although he played very badly he forgot everything and sang-in a cracked and barely audible voice-blues, ballads, love songs.

Magic. From the time he was very young he was interested in magic tricks. His apprenticeship was anarchic and ad hoc. He never followed any particular method. At the age of fifty he decided to apply himself to the School of Thought, which should really be called the School of Hidden Words, and involves guessing the objects that an audience member is carrying in his or her purse or wallet. For this trick it’s necessary to have an assistant who uses coded language to inquire after the objects. But it can also be performed without an assistant, according to the magician Arturo De Sisti, by working solely from a person’s external appearance, an alphabet that leads via unexpected yet clear channels to the things he keeps in his pockets. In this case the hidden words aren’t those uttered by an assistant but those spoken by a tie, a handkerchief, a shirt, a hat, a dress, a necklace: words barely whispered, concise words that hardly ever lie. This is not, let it be said, a matter of judging by appearances, but rather of establishing a correlation, a continuity, between what is in plain sight and what-by virtue of its small size or for the sake of convenience-is tucked away. He also developed an interest in the art of making people disappear. Theories on this tricky maneuver were developed by many schools, from the Chinese to the Italian and the Arab to the American (which was itself divided into two schools: the classic school that made people disappear and the modern school that made trains disappear). It’s not known which school interested Arcimboldi. No one ever saw him make a person disappear, though with some friends he talked about it quite a bit.

9

Sworn Enemies of Arcimboldi

Lisa Julien, whom he met in 1946 and with whom he lived from 1947 to 1949. Their breakup was violent: Arcimboldi, in a conversation recorded in 1971, acknowledged having slapped Miss Julien twice, first with his open palm and then with the back of his hand. Between the first and second blows there were punches (Arcimboldi ended up with a black eye), kicks, scratches, and strong words that the writer describes as a limit experience. From beneath the hail of blows, he says, he managed to catch a curious and distracted glimpse of pure nothingness. Miss Julien’s hatred was lasting: in a rare interview conducted in 1992 by a pseudoliterary scandal sheet as part of a feature titled “The Long-Suffering Companions of Creative Men,” she referred to the writer as “that loathsome, impotent dwarf.”

Arthur Laville, reader for Gallimard and art critic for various European and American trade publications, who saw the main character of The Librarian as a malicious portrayal of himself. Laville, in an uncharacteristic fit of rage, launched a feud with Arcimboldi that lasted from 1966 to 1970. He was also presumably the author of a number of anonymous death threats and countless phone calls during which he showered the writer with insults and mockery or was silent, breathing heavily and noisily. At the end of 1970, Laville’s anger subsided as abruptly as it had arisen. In 1975 they ran into each other in a hallway at Gallimard and exchanged civil remarks.

Charles Dubillard, patriotic poet, huckster, and inveterate Pétain supporter. In 1943 he gave a public thrashing to the young Arcimboldi, who, it’s worth mentioning, had done nothing to avoid the fight, assuring the friends who tried to talk him out of it that nothing in the world would deprive him of the pleasure of bashing out the brains of that fascist pig Dubillard. In 1947 they met again, this time in Paris, at a poetry reading at which Dubillard, converted to Gaullism, read a poem about the hills of Languedoc, the traces of time, and the light of the motherland (according to Arcimboldi every messiah of fascism got his start and finish under the rustling petticoats of the motherland). The fight, this time, was at the back door of the hall. Arcimboldi was alone, which meant that no one tried to stop him. Dubillard was accompanied by three college friends, one of whom ended his brilliant career as a socialist minister in the eighties, and together they tried to convince Arcimboldi, first, that times had changed, and second, that Dubillard was much stronger and bigger than he and therefore, objectively speaking, it wasn’t a fair fight. They fought anyway, and Arcimboldi lost again. Their next encounter was in 1955, at a well-known Paris restaurant. Dubillard had given up literature and become a businessman. This time all they did was shove each other and shout insults, until Arcimboldi’s friends broke things off by taking him away. Their final encounter was in the fall of 1980. Dubillard was out for a walk with his grandson and his grandson’s nanny and they ran into Arcimboldi. The latter considered spitting at the boy but he thought better of it and contented himself with spitting at a wheel of the baby carriage. Dubillard showed no reaction. They never saw each other again.

Raoul Delorme, concierge of the building where Arcimboldi lived from 1959 to 1962. Amateur writer of poems about horses and meticulous crime stories in which the killer is never caught. For a while Arcimboldi tried to convince some magazines to publish his work. According to him, Delorme might have been an extraterrestrial boy scout, or perhaps just a telepath. There soon sprang up between them a cool and contained hatred. Delorme, according to Arcimboldi, performed Black Masses in his cramped concierge quarters: he defecated on books by Gide, Maupassant, pissed on books by Pierre Louÿs, Mendès, Banville, shot his wad between the pages of books by Barbusse, Hugo, Chateaubriand, all with the sole intent of improving his French.

Marina Libakova, architect, literary agent, and poet. One month of passion and five years of hard feelings. One night, according to Madame Libakova, in her house in Thézy-Glimont where they were spending the weekend, Arcimboldi, without provocation or explanation, tossed into the fire a poetry manuscript that she had kindly and eagerly presented for his consideration. 1969-1973. She also admits that Arcimboldi asked her forgiveness for his stupidity something like three hundred times over the course of those five years. No letters were preserved.

V. KILLERS of SONORA

1

Pancho Monje was born in Villaviciosa, near Santa Teresa, in the state of Sonora.

One night, when he was sixteen, he was woken up and led half-asleep to the Monte Hebrón, a bar where Don Pedro Negrete, the police chief of Santa Teresa, was waiting for him. He had heard of him but never seen him. Accompanying Don Pedro were two old women and three old men from Villaviciosa, and lined up before him were ten boys about the same age as Pancho, waiting for Don Pedro’s decision.

The superintendent was sitting in a high-backed chair like a throne, though it was covered in frayed fabric, different from all the other chairs at the Monte Hebrón, and he was drinking whiskey from a bottle that he had brought from home, because no one at the Monte Hebrón drank whiskey. Behind the chief and the old men, in the shadows, was another man who was also drinking. But he wasn’t drinking whiskey, he was drinking Los Suicidas mescal, a rare brand that couldn’t be found anywhere anymore, except in Villaviciosa. The mescal drinker’s name was Gumaro and he was Don Pedro’s driver.

For some time, without getting up from his chair, Don Pedro examined the boys with a critical eye while every so often the old men whispered in his ear. Then he called Pancho and ordered him to step forward.

Pancho was still half-asleep and he didn’t understand the order.

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes, you, idiot, what’s your name?”

“Francisco Monje, at your service,” said Pancho.

One of the old men whispered again in Don Pedro’s ear.

“What else,” said Don Pedro.

“What else?” asked Pancho.

“Francisco Monje what, boy,” said Don Pedro.

“Francisco Monje Expósito,” said Pancho.

Don Pedro stared at him and, after consulting with the old men, made his choice. The other boys went home and Pancho was ordered to wait outside.

The sky was full of stars and it was as bright as day. It was cold, but Don Pedro’s Ford was still warm and Pancho put his two hands on the hood. Inside the Monte Hebrón, Don Pedro handed out money and inquired about people’s health, whether the family was well, whether so-and-so had died or so-and-so had disappeared, then he said good night, ladies and gentlemen, and hurried out, followed by his driver who looked asleep.

Pancho and Don Pedro sat in the backseat and the Ford rolled slowly along the dark streets of Villaviciosa.

“Damn it, Gumaro,” said Don Pedro, “I forgot all about the streetlights for this shithole town.”

“What lights, boss?” said Gumaro without turning.

That night Pancho slept at the house of Don Gabriel Salazar, a Santa Teresa businessman, in one of the rooms built onto the gardener’s house, a room with four bunks and the smell of sweat and tobacco. Don Pedro turned him over to an American called Pat Cochrane and left without a word. The American asked him a few questions and then gave him a Smith & Wesson and told him how it worked, how much it weighed, how to engage and disengage the safety, how many clips he should carry in his pocket at all times, when he should draw it, and when he should only pretend to draw it.

That night, the first that Pancho had spent away from Villaviciosa, he slept with the pistol under his pillow, and his sleep was fitful. At five in the morning he met one of his roommates, who came in drunk and stared at him for a long time, muttering incomprehensibly while Pancho, huddled in the upper bunk, pretended to be asleep. Later he met the other one. They didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them.

One was tall and fat and the other was short and fat and they were always seeking out each other’s eyes, exchanging glances as if to confer silently about each new situation. They were from Tijuana and they were both named Alejandro: Alejandro Pinto and Alejandro López.

The job was to protect Don Gabriel Salazar’s wife. They were her private bodyguards; that is, bodyguards of the second rank. More seasoned men were on call for the protection of Don Gabriel, gunmen who came and went with a swagger, men better dressed than Pancho and the pair from Tijuana. Pancho liked the work. He didn’t mind waiting for hours while the mistress visited her friends in Santa Teresa, or leaning on the white Nissan, waiting for her to emerge from a boutique or a drugstore flanked by his two comrades, who on such occasions, out in the field, tended to confer with their eyes even more than usual.

Of the other bodyguards-the boss’s-he had only a vague impression: they played cards, drank tequila and vodka, were laid-back and swore a lot, at least one of them smoked weed. Their jokes were delivered like remarks about the weather, as if they were discussing the chaparral, the rain, relatives crossing the border. Sometimes, too, they talked about illnesses, all kinds of illnesses, and there no one could match the two tubs from Tijuana. They knew everything, from the different kinds of flu and adult-onset measles to AIDS and syphilis. They talked about dead or retired friends or comrades, afflicted by all kinds of ailments, and the sound of their voices didn’t match their faces: their voices were soft, bereaved, at times murmuring like a river that flows over sandstone and aquatic plants; their gestures, however, were broad and self-satisfied, they smiled with their eyes, their pupils shone, they winked complicitly.

One of the bodyguards, a Yaqui Indian from Las Valencias, said that death was no laughing matter, much less death from illness, but no one paid any attention to him.

The bodyguards’ evenings stretched on almost until dawn. Sometimes Pat Cochrane, who spent his nights at the main house, would show up at the gardener’s house to gauge morale, offering words of encouragement when spirits were low, and if he was in a good mood he would even put on water for coffee. In the mornings almost no one talked. They listened to Cochrane or to the birds in the yard and then they went into the kitchen, where Don Gabriel’s old cook made them dozens of fried eggs.

Though Pancho didn’t trust his two comrades from Tijuana, he soon got used to his new life. One of the gunmen from the big house told him that every so often Don Pedro Negrete supplied new recruits to certain local outfits or power brokers. The food was good and they were paid each Friday. It was Cochrane who assigned tasks, arranged life in the gardener’s house, scheduled guard shifts and escort duties, and paid them at the end of the week. Cochrane had white hair down to his shoulders and was always dressed in black. From one moment to the next, depending whether it was sunny or cloudy, he could seem like an old hippie or a gravedigger. His men said he was tough and they treated him with familiarity, but also with respect. He wasn’t Irish, as some thought, but American, a gringo, and Catholic.

Every Sunday morning, Don Gabriel Salazar’s wife brought in a priest to say Mass at the private chapel on the other side of the big house. And Cochrane was the first to arrive, nodding to the mistress of the house and sitting in the first row. Next came the domestic staff, the cook, the maids, the gardener, and some bodyguards, though not many of them, since they preferred to spend Sunday mornings at the gardener’s house, playing cards, cleaning their guns, listening to the radio, thinking or sleeping. Pancho Monje never attended the service.

Once Alejandro Pinto, who didn’t go to Mass, either, asked whether he believed in God or whether he was agnostic. Alejandro Pinto read occultist magazines and knew the meaning of the word agnostic. Pancho didn’t, but he guessed it.

“Agnostic? That’s for faggots,” he said. “I’m an atheist.”

“What do you think comes after death?” asked Alejandro Pinto.

“After death? Nothing.”

The other bodyguards were surprised that a boy of seventeen should be so sure about what he believed.

2

In 1865 a thirteen-year-old orphan was raped by a Belgian soldier in an adobe house in Villaviciosa. The next day the soldier’s throat was cut and nine months later a girl was born, named María Expósito. The young mother died of childbed fever and the girl grew up in the same house where she was conceived, as the ward of the farmworkers who lived there. In 1880, when María Expósito was fifteen, on the feast day of St. Dismas, a drunken stranger rode off with her on his horse, singing at the top of his lungs:

Qué chingaderas son éstas

le dijo Dimas a Gestas.

On the slope of a hill that the country folk, with inscrutable humor, called the Hill of the Dead and that, seen from town, looked like a shy and curious dinosaur, he raped her several times and vanished.

In 1881 María Expósito had a daughter whom she baptized María Expósito Expósito and who was the wonder of the town of Villaviciosa. From the time she was very small she showed herself to be clever and spirited and although she never learned to read or write she was known as a wise woman, learned in the ways of herbs and medicinal salves.

In 1897, after she had been away for six days, the young María Expósito appeared one morning in the plaza, a bare space in the center of town, with a broken arm and bruises all over her body. She would never explain what had happened to her, nor did the Villaviciosa officials insist that she tell. Nine months later a girl was born and given the name María Expósito, and her mother, who never married or had any more children or lived with any man, tried to initiate her into the secret art of healing. But the only thing the young María Expósito had in common with her mother was her good nature, a quality shared by all the María Expósitos of Villaviciosa (though some were quiet and others liked to talk), along with a natural ability to forge bravely ahead through periods of violence or extreme poverty.

The childhood and adolescence of the last María Expósito, however, were more carefree than her mother’s and grandmother’s had been. In 1913, at sixteen, she still thought and behaved like a girl whose only duties were to accompany her mother once a month in search of herbs and medicinal plants and to wash the clothes behind the house, in an old oak trough rather than the public washtubs that the other women used.

This was the year that Colonel Sabino Duque (who in 1915 would be executed for cowardice) came to town looking for brave men-and the men of Villaviciosa were famous for being something more than brave-to fight for the Revolution. Several boys from the town enlisted, selected by the town officials. One of them, whom until then María Expósito had thought of only as an occasional playmate, the same age as she and seemingly as naïve, decided to declare his love the night before he went to war. For the purpose he chose a grain shed that no one used anymore (since the people of Villaviciosa had little left to store) and when his declaration only made the girl laugh he proceeded to rape her on the spot, desperately and clumsily.

At dawn, before he left, he promised he would come back and marry her, but seven months later he died in a skirmish with federal troops and he and his horse were swept away by the Río Sangre de Cristo, also known as Hell River because it ran brownish-black. Though María Expósito waited for him, he never returned to Villaviciosa, like so many other boys from the town who went off to war or found work as guns for hire, boys who were never heard of again or who cropped up here and there in stories that might or might not have been true.

And nine months after his departure María Expósito Expósito was born and young María Expósito, suddenly a mother herself, set to work selling her mother’s potions and the eggs from her own henhouse in the neighboring towns, and she did fairly well.

In 1917, there was an unusual development in the Expósito family: María got pregnant again and this time she had a boy.

His name was Rafael and he grew up amid the tumult of the new Mexico. His eyes were green like those of his distant Belgian great-grandfather and his gaze had the same strangeness about it that outsiders noted in the gaze of the townspeople of Villaviciosa: it was opaque and intense, the stare of a killer. The identity of his father was never revealed. He might have been a revolutionary soldier, or a federal soldier, since they, too, were seen around town at the time, or he might have been some random local who preferred to remain in prudent anonymity. On the rare occasions when she was asked about the boy’s father, María Expósito, who had gradually adopted her mother’s witchlike language and manner (though all she did was sell the medicinal brews, fumbling among the little rheumatism flasks and the drafts for the curing of melancholy), answered that his father was the devil and Rafael his spitting image, and despite what one might imagine, the inhabitants of Villaviciosa weren’t ruffled in the slightest by this reply, since all the local boys, some more than others and some less, might have been the sons of Pedro Botero.

In 1933, during a Homeric bender, the bullfighter Celestino Arraya and his comrades from the club The Cowboys of Death arrived early one morning in Villaviciosa, the bullfighter’s hometown, and took rooms at the Valle Hebrón bar, which at the time was also an inn, and shouted for roast goat, which they were served by three village girls. One of those girls was María Expósito. They left the next morning at eleven and four months later María Expósito confessed to her mother that she was going to have a baby. Who’s the father? asked her brother. The women were silent and the boy set out to retrace his sister’s steps on his own. A week later Rafael Expósito borrowed a rifle and set off on foot for Santa Teresa.

He had never been in such a big place and he was so struck by the bustle of the streets, the Teatro Carlota, and the whores that he decided to spend three days in the city before carrying out his mission. The first day he spent searching for Celestino Arraya’s haunts and a place to sleep for free. He discovered that in certain neighborhoods night was the same as day, and he pledged simply not to sleep. On the second day, as he walked up and down the main street of the red-light district, a short, shapely Yucatecan girl with jet-black hair down to her waist and the look of a woman to be reckoned with took pity on him and brought him home with her. There, in a hotel room, she made him rice soup and then they spent the rest of the day in bed.

It was the first time for Rafael Expósito. When they parted the whore ordered him to wait for her in the room or, if he wanted to go out, at the entrance to the hotel. The boy said he was in love with her and the whore went off happily, laughing to herself. On the third day she brought him to the Teatro Carlota to hear the ballads of the Dominican troubador Pajarito de la Cruz and the rancheras of José Ramírez, but what the boy liked best were the chorus girls and the magic numbers by Professor Chen Kao, a Chinese conjurer from Michoacán.

At dusk on the fourth day, well fed and at peace with himself, Rafael Expósito said goodbye to the whore, retrieved the rifle from the vacant lot where he’d hidden it, and headed resolutely to the bar Los Primos Hermanos, where he found Celestino Arraya. Seconds after he shot him he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had killed him and he felt avenged and happy. He didn’t shut his eyes when the bullfighter’s friends emptied their revolvers into him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Santa Teresa.

In 1933 another María Expósito was born. She was shy and sweet and so tall that even the tallest men in town looked short next to her. From the time she was eight she spent her days helping her mother and grandmother to sell her great-grandmother’s remedies and going along with her grandmother at dawn to gather herbs. Sometimes the peasants of Villaviciosa saw her silhouette against the horizon and it struck them as extraordinary that such a tall, long-legged girl could exist.

She was the first in her family to learn to read and write. At the age of seventeen she was raped by a peddler and in 1950 a girl was born whom they called María Expósito. By then there were five generations of María Expósitos living together outside Villaviciosa, and the little farmhouse had grown, with rooms added on any old way around the big kitchen with the hearth where the eldest prepared her brews and medicaments. At night, when it was time for dinner, the five always sat down together, the girl, her lanky mother, Rafael’s melancholy sister, the childlike one, and the witch, and often they talked about saints and illnesses, about money, about the weather, and about men, whom they considered a scourge, and they thanked heaven that they were only women.

In 1968, while the students of Paris were taking to the streets, the young María Expósito, still a virgin, was seduced by three students from Monterrey who were preparing, or so they said, for a revolution of the peasantry, and whom after one thrilling week she never saw again.

The students lived in a van parked at a bend in the road between Villaviciosa and Santa Teresa and every night María Expósito would slip out of bed to go and meet them. When her great-grandmother asked who the father was, María Expósito remembered a kind of delicious abyss and had a very clear vision: she saw herself, small but mysteriously strong, able to take three men at once. They hurl themselves on me panting like dogs, she thought, from in front and behind so that I can hardly breathe and their cocks are enormous, they’re the cocks of Mexico’s peasant revolution, but inside I’m bigger than them all and they’ll never conquer me.

By the time her son was born the Paris students had gone home and many Mexican students had stopped existing.

Against the wishes of her family, who wanted to baptize the boy Rafael, María Expósito called him Francisco, after Saint Francis of Assisi, and decided that the first half of his last name wouldn’t be Expósito, which was a name for orphans, as the students from Monterrey had informed her one night by the light of a campfire, but Monje, Francisco Monje Expósito, two different last names, and that was how she entered it in the register at the parish church despite the priest’s reluctance and his skepticism about the identity of the alleged father. Her great-grandmother said that it was pure arrogance to put the name Monje before Expósito, which was the name she’d always had, and a little while later, when Pancho was two and running naked along the sand-colored streets of Villaviciosa, she died. And when Pancho was five the other old woman, the childish one, died, and when he turned fifteen, Rafael Expósito’s sister died. And when Don Pedro Negrete came for him the only ones left were the lanky Expósito and Pancho’s mother.

3

“We saw them from the distance and right away we knew who they were and they knew we knew it and they kept coming. I mean: we knew who they were, they knew who we were, they knew that we knew who they were, we knew that they knew that we knew who they were. Everything was clear. The day had no secrets! I don’t know why, but the thing I remember best about that afternoon are the clothes. Their clothes, especially. The one who was carrying the Magnum, who was going to make sure that Don Gabriel’s wife died, was wearing a sharp white guayabera with stitching on the front. The one carrying the Uzi was in a green serge jacket, maybe two sizes too big.”

“Ay, the things you know about clothes, darling,” said the whore.

“I was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and some drill pants that Cochrane had bought for me and already taken out of my weekly pay. The pants were too big and I had to wear a belt to keep them up.”

“You’ve always been on the skinny side, sugar,” said the whore.

“All around me it was the different outfits that were moving, not the flesh-and-blood people. Everything was clear. The afternoon had no secrets! But at the same time, everything was out of whack. I saw skirts, pants, shoes, white tights and black tights, socks, handkerchiefs, jackets, ties, a whole store’s worth of clothes, I saw cowboy hats and straw hats, baseball caps and hair ribbons, and all the clothes flowed along the sidewalk, flowed through the arcade, completely removed from the reality of the pedestrians, as if the flesh they sat on repelled them. Happy people, is what I should have been thinking. I should have envied them. Wanted to be them. People with money in their pockets or not, but glad to be on their way to the movie theater or the record store or anywhere, people going to eat or drink beer, or on the way home after a walk. But what I thought was: all those clothes. All those clean, new, useless clothes.”

“You were probably thinking about the blood, darling,” said the whore.

“No, I wasn’t thinking about the bullet holes or the blood splattering everything. I was thinking about clothes, that’s all. About the motherfucking pants and shirts going back and forth.”

“Don’t you want me to go down on you, sugar?” asked the whore.

“No. Stay where you are. Don Gabriel’s wife, I didn’t see her clothes. I saw her pearl necklace. Like a solar system. And I saw everything about the couple of fat slobs who were with me: the way they looked at each other, the shiny jackets, the dark ties, the white shirts, and the shoes, how to describe them, leather shoes that weren’t old but weren’t new, either, shoes for jerk-offs and scum, shoes for losers, with creases where you can see the pathetic celebrations and fears of men who’ve sold out everything and still think they can be happy or at least hold on to some kind of happiness, some dinner every once in a while, a Sunday with the family and the kids, the poor brats stuck in the desert, the crumpled photos good for squeezing out a couple of tears, tears that stink of shit. Yes, I saw their shoes and then I saw the parade of clothes in the air and I said to myself look at the waste, look at the wealth in this city of sin.”

“Now you’re exaggerating, love,” said the whore.

“No, I’m not. It happened exactly the way I’m telling you. Don Gabriel’s wife didn’t even realize that death was on top of her. But the slobs from Tijuana and I saw it and right away we knew what we were seeing. The killers walked like movie stars. Like a weird cross between movie stars and clerks. They walked slowly, not bothering to really hide their guns and never taking their eyes off us for a second. I guess that was when my buddies decided they’d had enough. Those looks, they were thinking, beat the looks they’d been exchanging and after a second, they just spun around and went running, no, not running, trotting like draft horses, swinging past the crowds of people on the sidewalk and the arcade. They didn’t say a thing to me. And I had no time to yell assholes, cowards, faggots.”

“The worst kind of trash, darling,” said the whore.

“I stood there motionless, next to the señora, who didn’t know what was going on, why we had stopped, noticing how my white shirt and drill pants were shivering, too big, if my belt hadn’t been pulled tight they would’ve fallen down and lain there shivering on the ground. But I also had time to get a look at the killers. One of them, the one with the Magnum, walked on as if he hadn’t noticed a thing, and the other one smiled at the sight of my two buddies running off, as if to say life is funny isn’t it, as if to say running away isn’t cowardice, it just means you’re light on your feet. I noticed the one with the Magnum: he reminded me of someone from Villaviciosa. There was something sad and serious about him and he wasn’t so young anymore, or that’s how it seemed to me. Not the other one, I’m sure the other one was from the city. Then people began to back away, probably because they saw the guns or because all of a sudden they realized that there was going to be a shoot-out or because they got a look at the señora and me and thought we looked like goners.”

“I can imagine how scared you must have been, love,” said the whore.

“I wasn’t afraid. I waited until they were just fifteen feet away and when I had them there, before anyone could scream, I pulled my gun out nice and easy, no sudden movements, and took them both down. The assholes never got a shot out. The one with the Uzi died with a look of surprise on his face. Then I turned, angrily, since rage was all I felt then, and I emptied the rest of the clip at the slobs from Tijuana trotting away, but they were already too far. I think I wounded a bystander.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, darling,” said the whore.

“They held me for five hours at the General Sepúlveda police station. Don Gabriel’s wife told the police that I was her bodyguard but they didn’t believe her. Before they put me in the patrol car I told her to call her husband and then go to some coffee shop to wait for him and not come out, and if there was a way to lock herself in the bathroom at the coffee shop, she should go ahead and do it. Then they cuffed me, put me in the patrol car, and took me to the station.”

“I’m sure they knocked you around, love,” said the whore.

“I had to answer all kinds of questions. The police wanted to know whether I knew either of the dead men, whether I knew the wounded pedestrian, why I fired at the slobs, whether I was high and what drugs I consumed on a regular basis, whether it was me who killed Pérez Delfino, Juan Pérez Delfino, Virgilio Montes’s right-hand man, whether I knew any traffickers from Arizona, whether I had ever been to some fucking bar in Hermosillo, the Adiós, Mi Lupe, where I’d gotten the gun, whether I was friends with Robert Alvarado, whether I had ever been to prison and what prison and why and how many times. I’ve never been locked up, I told them. I wasn’t shivering anymore and my brain was registering people instead of clothes, people with an interest in me, people who wanted to hear what I had to say, people who wanted to sucker-punch me, people having fun or bored of it all, people doing their jobs. But I didn’t say a word. Where did you learn to shoot? asked those flesh-and-blood people, do you have a permit? where the hell do you live? And I just kept my mouth shut, call Don Gabriel Salazar, he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you need to know.”

“You took it like a man, darling,” said the whore.

“Five hours later Don Pedro Negrete arrived and the policemen stood to attention. Don Pedro came in with a smile on his face and his hands in his pockets, like he had all the time in the world and he didn’t mind coming in to the station on a Saturday night. Who put this boy in the tank? he asked without raising his voice. The deputies who were questioning me pissed themselves they were so scared. Me, boss, said one. Ay, Ramírez, you really fucked up this time, said Don Pedro, and Ramírez almost threw himself at his feet to kiss them, no, Don Pedro, it was just routine, I swear, Don Pedro, we never laid a finger on him, ask him, for the love of God, Don Pedro, and Don Pedro looked down at the ground, looked at me, looked around at the other policemen, ay, Ramírez, Don Pedro laughed, ay, Ramírez, and everyone except for me started to laugh, too, they were starting to recover, relax, and they laughed, they laughed at poor Ramírez, man, you’re in the shit now and Ramírez gave each of them a look, one by one, like he was saying have you all gone crazy? and then even I laughed, and that poor dumbshit Ramírez finally laughed a little too. And now that I think of it, the laughing sounded strange, it was laughing but it was something else too. You’ve never heard a bunch of cops laughing at another cop in an interrogation room. It was a kind of onion laugh. The bad boy inside each of them laughed and the onion burned away little by little. The laughs echoed off the damp walls. The onions were small and fierce. And to me it felt like a welcome or a celebration.”

“I like to hear one cop laugh, not a lot of cops all together, sugar,” said the whore.

“Gumaro, who was leaning in the doorway and who I hadn’t noticed until then, laughing. Don Pedro Negrete laughing, which was like the laughter of God and smelled like whiskey and expensive cigarettes. And all the laughing from the men who were about to be my crew, finding it honest-to-God funny, the beating that son of a bitch Ramírez was going to take.”

“I think I know the Ramírez you’re talking about, love,” said the whore.

“I don’t think so, Ramírez died before you got here. He tried to get Don Gabriel Salazar to hire him, but it didn’t work. Don Gabriel wanted me, but Don Pedro Negrete told him he couldn’t have me, he’d had his chance and now he’d lost it, he’d put me with two faggots who weren’t worth even a bullet in the back of the head, his man Pat Cochrane was worthless, and I wouldn’t be coming back. I gave you the boy, Gabriel, he said, and you almost got him killed. This time I’m keeping him. That was how I quit working for Don Gabriel Salazar. Don Gabriel wasn’t too happy with Don Pedro’s explanation, but when he said goodbye to me he gave me an envelope of money, from his wife, he said, who’d been a wreck for a week but who was still grateful for my services. With the money, I bought myself clothes and rented an apartment in Colonia El Milagro, on the south side of Santa Teresa.”

“You’ve never invited me to your apartment, sugar,” said the whore.

“It was my first place and it’s still the only place I’ve ever had. It’s on the third floor and it has a dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It doesn’t get any light, which for me is an advantage because I usually sleep during the day and I like the dark. When I turned eighteen I bought myself a ’74 Ford Mustang. It was an old car, but it was pretty and the engine had been tuned. You could say that it was almost a gift. One good turn deserves another, Pancho, they told me, and I said okay.”

4

Pedro and Pablo Negrete were born in Santa Teresa in 1930. To the surprise of their family and the amusement of the neighbors they turned out to be monozygotic twins. Until they were sixteen they were identical and only their mother could tell them apart. Then life changed the brothers radically, though beneath the surface a keen student of human physiognomy could see that their physical differences were like the reaction of each to the other. Thus, Pedro’s mustache and Pedro’s eyes, his strong hands, his steady pulse, his gut, the belly of a man who likes his food and drink, found their perfect counterpart, their ultimate elucidation, in the bloodless lips and thick glasses that Pablo had been stuck with since his sixteenth birthday, his manicured hands and his flat and ulcer-plagued stomach. Until well into adolescence both were of medium height, thin, dark, mild-looking. Then Pablo grew two inches taller than his brother and acquired a perennial expression of perplexity. Pedro, in contrast, remained the same height-in fact, as he got fatter he seemed to shrink-but his features grew stronger and his face filled out and his meekness was exchanged for an effortless congeniality, a deceptive congeniality that actually inspired respect or fear. By the time they were seventeen they were completely different. Pablo decided that he wanted to go to college and Pedro joined the Santa Teresa police force, thanks to the good offices of an uncle who was a sergeant. It was the first time that the twins had been apart.

Pedro, shoehorned into a shiny blue uniform, spent his days wandering Colonia Juárez, especially Calle Mina, home to streetwalkers and the strangest stores in the city: hardware shops that looked like gunsmiths’ shops, gunsmiths’ shops that looked like jails, doctors’ offices that cured impotence and all kinds of venereal diseases, tiny bookstores where mystery novels, romance novels, and books about World War II overflowed onto the sidewalk, taxidermist shops that displayed leopards and eagles on their high, dark shelves, cantinas and pulquerías frequented by shady-looking characters.

Pablo, meanwhile, embarked on the study of law and at night he washed dishes at an Italian restaurant on Calle Veracruz, between Colonia Escobedo and Colonia Juárez. The owner was a former teacher of his, a professor of rhetoric, and the restaurant was the only Italian spot in Santa Teresa, at least in those days. Later there were pizzerias and hamburger joints and even soda fountains, everything to suit the tastes of a modern city, but back then there was only one Italian restaurant, one Basque-French restaurant, and three Chinese holes-in-the-wall. Everywhere else the food was Mexican.

The first years weren’t easy. A certain tendency toward melancholy and a reasonably happy childhood did nothing to prepare the two brothers for the world of work, but at the core they were tough and they soldiered on. Little by little they got ahead and managed to adapt to their circumstances. Although Pablo Negrete soon realized that the law bored him more than it interested him, a small amount of scheming got him his degree and a scholarship to study philosophy in the capital. Pedro, meanwhile, furnished sufficient proof of his courage as a police officer and a man, but most of all of his exquisite nose and tactful handling of the people who mattered. Quietly he rose through the ranks of the Santa Teresa police department. His superiors respected him and his subordinates half loved and half feared him. It was around this time that all kinds of gossip about him began to spread. It was said that he had slit the throat of a whore in her hotel room, that he had killed a leader of the railroad union (though the train didn’t pass through Santa Teresa), that for the benefit of a local rancher he had engineered the disappearance of five seasonal workers clamoring for what they were owed. But nothing could ever be proved.

Pablo completed his philosophy degree with a thesis titled Heidegger and Mexican Thought, which some fellow students and professors judged to be in the great critical tradition and that was actually tossed off in twenty-five days, plagiarized from all kinds of sources, by the Michoacán poet Orestes Gullón, who three years later would die of cirrhosis of the liver. Gullón, reporter for El Nacional, author of slanderous palindromes and acrostics, as well as poems occasionally published in a few Mexico City journals and provincial newspapers, was Pablo Negrete’s one friend during his profitable and happy time in the capital; serious-minded and polite, he knew how to avoid making enemies, but his only real friend was Gullón. With the latter he spent time at Café La Habana, on Calle Bucareli, and at the bar La Encrucijada, on Bucareli at Victoria, and at some dubious dance halls on Avenida Guerrero.

The northerner and his friend from Michoacán were an odd couple. Gullón was a talker, cultivated and self-centered. Pablo Negrete was reserved, not too busy grooming his ego-though he did put a lot of care into his attire-and his knowledge of the Greek classics left much to be desired. He was interested in German philosophy. Gullón professed an Olympic disdain for it: he said that the only decent German philosopher was Lichtenberg, who was less a philosopher than the ultimate jokester and clown. He liked Montaigne and Pascal. And he could recite from memory bits of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Zeno of Elea, to the delight of Pablo, who grew fonder and fonder of him as time went by.

Unlike his brother, Pedro Negrete had many friends. Being a policeman made it easier. A policeman, he discovered without being taught, could be friends with anyone he wanted. The cultivation of friendship, an art previously foreign to him, became his favorite pastime. As a boy, friendship had struck him as mysterious, sometimes risky, even reckless. When he was older he understood that friendship-the essence of friendship-resided in the guts, not the brain or the heart. Everything boiled down to the play of mutual interests and a way of touching people (touching them physically, hugging them, slapping them on the back) with confidence. And it was precisely in the police force where this art was most vigorously practiced.

In 1958, at the age of twenty-eight, he was named detective. Shortly afterward Pablo returned to Santa Teresa and obtained a post at the university. They had no money but they had wiles and they continued to rise in their careers. In 1977 Pedro Negrete was promoted to police chief of Santa Teresa. In 1982, after his predecessor became embroiled in a scandal, Peblo Negrete took the rector’s chair.

Shortly after meeting Amalfitano-seven hours later, in fact-Pablo called Pedro. The call was prompted by a premonition. This is how it happened: that afternoon, the new philosophy professor had stopped by his office to introduce himself, and that night, in the quiet of his library, with a whiskey and the third tome of Guillermo Molina’s History of Mexico within easy reach, the rector found himself thinking again about the professor. His name was Óscar Amalfitano, he was Chilean, he had previously worked in Europe. And then he had the vision. He wasn’t drunk or especially tired, so it was a real vision. (Or I’m going crazy, he thought, but immediately rejected the idea.) In his vision, Amalfitano was riding one of the horses of the Apocalypse through the streets of Santa Teresa. He was naked, his white hair was wild and bloody, and he was shouting in terror or joy, it wasn’t clear which. The horse neighed as if it were in its death throes. Its neighs stank, literally. As the horseman rode by, the dead piled up in the doorways of the old city. The streets filled with corpses that decomposed rapidly, as if time were dictated by the fiendishly swift passage of horseman and horse. Later, as the vision faded, he saw miniature tanks and patrol cars at the university and torn banners, though this time there were no dead bodies. They’ve taken them away, he thought.

That night he couldn’t find Pedro anywhere and it took him longer than usual to fall asleep. The next day he called the General Sepúlveda police station and tried to reach his brother. He wasn’t there. He called him at home and didn’t catch him there, either. At night, from his office, he called the police station again. He was asked to hold. From the window he watched the lights of the neighboring buildings go out and the last students scattering across the campus. He heard his brother’s voice at the other end of the line.

“I need a report on a foreign national,” he said, “a discreet inquiry, just for the sake of curiosity.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked his brother for such a favor.

“Professor or student?” asked Pedro Negrete, who had taken the call in the middle of a poker game.

“Professor,” he said.

“Name, first and last,” said Pedro, gazing gloomily at his cards.

The rector gave them to him.

“You’ll have his life and complete works in a week,” promised his brother, and he hung up.

5

Amalfitano was born in 1942, in Temuco, Chile, the day the Nazis launched their offensive in the Caucasus.

He completed his secondary education at a high school lost on the muddy plain and wreathed in the mists of the south. He learned to dance rock and roll and the twist, the bolero and the tango, but not the cueca, though more than once he bounded under the leafy bower, handkerchief at the ready and driven by something deep inside of him because he had no friends in his burst of patriotism, only enemies, purist hicks scandalized by his heel-tapping cueca, his gratuitous and suicidal heterodoxy. He slept off his first drinking binges under a tree and met the imploring eyes of Carmencita Martínez and swam one stormy afternoon in Las Ventanas. He felt misunderstood and lonely. For a brief time he heard the music of the spheres on the bus and in restaurants, as if he had gone crazy or as if Nature, sharpening his senses, were trying to warn him of some invisible menace. He enrolled in the Communist Party and the Association of Progressive Students and wrote pamphlets and read Das Kapital. He fell in love with and married Edith Lieberman, the most beautiful girl of his generation.

At some point in his life he realized that Edith Lieberman deserved the world, which was more than he could give her. He drank with Jorge Teillier and he discussed psychoanalysis with Enrique Lihn. He was expelled from the Communist Party and he continued to believe in the class struggle and the fight for the revolution of the Americas. He taught philosophy at the University of Chile and he published essays on Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, and Marcuse. He signed declarations and letters by leftist groups. He predicted the fall of Allende but he did nothing to prepare for it.

After the coup he was arrested and brought in blindfolded to be interrogated. He was tortured half-heartedly but believed that he had endured the worst and was surprised by his resistance. He spent several months in prison and when he got out he joined Edith Lieberman in Buenos Aires. At first he made a living as a translator. He translated John Donne, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Henry Howard for a series of English classics. He found work as a teacher of philosophy and literature at a private middle school and then he had to leave Argentina because the political situation had become untenable.

He spent a while in Rio de Janeiro and then they went to live in Mexico City. There his daughter, Rosa, was born and he translated J.M.G. Arcimboldi’s The Endless Rose from the French for a Buenos Aires publishing house while listening to his beloved Edith speculate that Rosa’s name was an homage to the title of the novel and not, as he claimed, a tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. Then they went to live in Canada and then Nicaragua because both of them wanted their daughter to grow up in a revolutionary country.

In Managua, he was paid a pittance to teach Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, Lenin, but he also taught classes on Plato and Aristotle, Boetius and Abelard, and he realized something that in his heart he had always known: that the Whole is impossible, that knowledge is the classification of fragments. After that he taught a class on Mario Bunge that was attended by a single student.

A short while later Edith Lieberman got sick and they left for Brazil, where he would make more money and be able to afford the medical care that his wife needed. With his daughter on his shoulders he swam on the most beautiful beaches in the world while Edith Lieberman, who was more beautiful than the beaches, watched from the shore, barefoot in the sand, as if she knew things that he would never know and she would never tell him. He was active in a Trotskyist party in Rio de Janeiro. He translated Osman Lins and Osman Lins was his friend, though his translations never sold. He taught courses on the neo-Kantian philosophy of the Marburg School-Natorp, Cohen, Cassirer, Lieber-and on the thought of Sir William Hamilton (Glasgow, 1788-Edinburgh, 1856). He was with his wife until her death, at 3:45 a.m., while in the next bed a middle-aged Brazilian woman dreamed out loud about a crocodile, a mechanical crocodile chasing a girl over a hill of ashes.

After that he had to be father and mother to his daughter, but he didn’t know how and he ended up hiring a servant for the first time in his life: Rosinha, northeasterner, twenty-one, mother of two little girls who stayed behind in the village, and who was like a good fairy to his daughter. One night, though, he went to bed with Rosinha and as he was making love to her he thought that he was going crazy. Then he got himself into the usual hot water and had to leave Brazil with time enough only to pack the little they could take with them. At the airport his daughter and Rosinha cried and his friend Luiz Lima asked what’s wrong with these women, why are they crying.

After that he lived in Paris, his savings at a low ebb, and he had to work hanging posters or mopping the floors of office buildings while his daughter slept in a chambre de bonne on avenue Marcel Proust. But he didn’t give up and he strove and strove until he found a job at a high school and then a German university. Around this time he wrote a long essay on Macedonio Fernández and Felisberto Hernández, focusing on their importance as Latin American thinkers rather than their literary achievements. And on the first vacation he was able to permit himself he took his daughter to Egypt and they went sailing on the Nile.

His situation seemed to improve. Their next trip was to Greece and Turkey. He wrote about Rodolfo Wilcock and the phenomenon of exile in Latin America. He took part in a colloquium in the Netherlands and he bought a laptop computer. Finally he ended up at the University of Barcelona, where he taught a course on idiocy and self-awareness that was so popular that his contract was renewed for a second year. But he never finished the course. Around this time he received a letter from a friend in Mexico, Isabel Aguilar. She had been a student of his in Mexico City and at one time she was in love with him. Now she was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Santa Teresa and she offered him a job. She said that she was friendly with the head of the department, Professor Horacio Guerra, that for a month now there’d been a position available in the department, and that if he wanted it it was his. Amalfitano discussed it with his daughter, wrote to Professor Aguilar to thank her, and asked her to send him the contract as soon as possible.

6

The four policemen got up from their seats at a table at the back of Las Camelias, the bar across the street from the General Sepúlveda police station, when they saw Pedro Negrete and Gumaro coming toward them. The policemen were in tracksuits and Pedro Negrete and Gumaro were wearing suits and ties, though Gumaro’s suit and tie were cheap and wrinkled and Don Pedro’s were expensive. It was eleven in the morning and the four policemen had been at the bar since ten, eating ham-and-cheese sandwiches and drinking beer. Don Pedro instructed them not to get up and ordered a whiskey with water and ice. Gumaro sat next to Don Pedro and didn’t order anything. When the waitress brought Don Pedro the whiskey he asked what his boys owed. The policemen protested, no, no, Don Pedro, it’s on us, but Don Pedro said to the waitress: “Charge it to me, Clarita, and that’s an order.”

Ten minutes later Pedro Negrete called for another drink and encouraged the policemen to follow suit. The policemen said that one beer was enough for them, but this time they were paying.

“Out of the question,” said Don Pedro, “I’ve got it.”

The waitress brought another round of beers and another whiskey for Don Pedro.

“Aren’t you drinking?” asked Don Pedro.

“My stomach is funny today,” answered Gumaro in an spectral voice.

The policemen looked at Gumaro and Don Pedro and then they started to eat the peanuts that the waitress had left on the table.

“Young people today can’t hold their liquor,” said Pedro Negrete. “In my years in uniform I knew a cop who drank a bottle of tequila every morning before he went on his rounds. His name was Emilio López. Alcohol was the death of him in the end, of course. We never let him drive the patrol car, but he was a good guy, the kind of man you could trust.”

“He died of a burst liver,” said Gumaro.

“Well, those are the risks.”

“His liver was the size of a plum.”

Don Pedro Negrete ordered another whiskey. The policemen accepted another round of beers.

“Did you know General Sepúlveda, lads?”

“No,” said one of the policemen. The others shook their heads.

“You’re young, of course. Did you know him, Gumaro?”

“No,” said Gumaro with a sigh.

“Right after I joined the force I was assigned to guard his house. He lived on this very street, which was already named after him, General Sepúlveda at Colima. It was a big house, with a pool and tennis court. I was stationed at the door and my two buddies were in the street, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to and I just stood there thinking. Then it started to rain, only a drizzle, you could hardly see it, but to be safe I took shelter under a gazebo in the yard. Then the door to the house opened and General Sepúlveda himself appeared. He was wearing a burgundy robe and underneath it he was in pajamas, it was the first time I had seen him in person and I thought he must be at least ninety, though he was probably much younger. At first he didn’t notice I was there. He glanced out into the yard and up at the sky. He seemed worried about something. Maybe he was afraid the rain would ruin some of his flowers, but I don’t think so. When he saw me, he beckoned me over. At your service, mi general, I said. He didn’t say a word, just looked at me, and with a wave of his hand he signaled me to follow him into the house. Of course, as you can imagine, my orders were to stay outside, in case some asshole got past my buddies in the street, but mi general was a tough old son of a bitch and I obeyed without a murmur. As impressive as that house was from the outside, boys, on the inside it was stunning. It had everything. Paintings over six feet tall. It was more like a museum than a house, which pretty much sums it up. Of course, I couldn’t stop to get a good look because mi general was walking quickly and I had to follow close behind so I didn’t get lost in those endless hallways. At last we came to the kitchen and mi general stopped and asked if I wanted coffee. I said I would be delighted, of course, but since I saw that his hands were trembling I offered to make it myself and then the old man sighed, he said all right, go ahead, and he dropped into a chair. I remember that while I was making the coffee I heard him breathing behind me and for a moment I wondered whether something was wrong. Has anything like that ever happened to you, boys?”

The policemen shook their heads.

“Well, there I was, making coffee, and I could hear mi general breathing and I said to myself: careful, Pedro, you don’t want General Sepúlveda to die on you. And I was about to ask the general whether he was feeling poorly and whether I should call a doctor, when all of a sudden the old man asks what’s your name. And I say: Pedro Negrete, at your service, mi general. And he asks how old I am. And I say: twenty-three, mi general. And by then I have his coffee ready and I set it on the table and I notice that the general is staring at me, his eyes are boring into me, and I think, this man is sizing me up, but why is he sizing me up? And then the general says he doesn’t feel well and I say if you want I can call a doctor, mi general, or an ambulance, all you have to do is say the word, but the general looks me up and down and laughs. Not just any laugh. The kind of laugh that makes your hair stand on end, especially when you’re young, and he says I don’t need a doctor. And I got the sense that the word doctor struck him as funny, because when he repeated it he laughed again. And then I thought, old age is making mi general soft in the head. A naïve, foolish thought, because after all, how old was mi general back then? fifty-eight or fifty-nine, in the prime of life, as they say. And a single look at him was enough to tell you that no such thing was possible, the man was saner than you or me, boys, nothing screwy about him. And that’s where I was, my mind flitting from one thought to the next, when I heard mi general ordering me to pour myself a coffee, too, a gesture I appreciated, since I could really use one. And when my coffee was ready, mi general pointed at a cupboard and told me to open it and I opened it and found a stash of whiskey, because mi general drank only whiskey, boys, like me. And he said-I remember like it was yesterday-Negrete, get down a bottle of whiskey and warm up my coffee a little. And I poured a nice splash of whiskey into his cup, which was almost empty, and then mi general said warm yours up, too, jackass, because you’re going to need it. Which was an offer that sounded more like a warning or a threat, don’t you think? but I ignored it because frankly I felt like a drink. So I poured whiskey in my coffee and I drank it down. And when I was done mi general made a toast-to life, I think-and I raised my glass too. And as we were going on the fifth or sixth shot the old man said that in the servant’s room there was a dead body. And I said: you’re kidding, mi general, and he looked me in the eyes and said that he never kidded anyone. Go take a look, he said, see for yourself. Then I got up and went searching all over the house for that goddamn room. I got lost a few times, but at last I found it. It was under the main stairs, the ones that went up to the second floor. And what do you think was the first thing I saw when I went in? Mi general Sepúlveda sitting on one of the beds, waiting for me! I almost shat myself I was so scared, lads! What do you say to that?”

“Incredible,” said the policemen.

“Of course, there was nothing uncanny about it. While I was looking all over the house for the room, the old son of a bitch had gone straight there. That was all. But the scare of it almost killed me. The first thing I managed to say was: mi general, what are you doing here? The old man didn’t answer or if he did I instantly forgot what he said. Next to him on the bed was a shape with the sheet pulled up over its head. The general got up and motioned for me to come and take a look. I crept forward, boys, and lifted the sheet. I saw the face of a man who might have been sixty or eighty, his face covered in wrinkles, some of them deep grooves, though his hair was black, jet-black, cut very short, fierce, if you know what I mean. Then the general spoke. I swung around as if I’d been touched with a live wire. The general was sitting on the other bed. He’s dead, isn’t he? he asked. I think so, mi general, I said. But I uncovered him again, the dead man was wearing only his pajama top, but this time I pulled the sheet down to his knees, Christ, I’ve never liked the genitals on a stiff, boys, and I examined him carefully to see whether there were any signs of violence. Not a one. Then I checked his pulse. He had rigor mortis up the ass, as our friend Dr. Cepeda says, and I covered him back up with the sheet. This man is dead, mi general, I said. I thought as much, he said, and then for the first time he seemed to collapse, though it was just for a second, I thought he was about to fall apart, bit by bit, but as I said, it was just for a second. He pulled himself together instantly, rubbed his unshaven face, and ordered me to sit across from him, on the dead man’s bed. The funeral home will have to be called, he said. I thought to myself that who he should really be calling was a doctor to issue a death certificate, and the police, but I didn’t say anything, after all, I was the police and there I was, wasn’t I? Then mi general, seeing that I wasn’t asking any questions, said that the dead man was his employee, his only employee, and that he had been with him for longer than he could remember. This man, he said, this motherfucking corpse, saved my life three times, this bastard was by my side all through the Revolution, this dead meat nursed me when I was sick and took my kids to school. He repeated this several times: he nursed me when I was sick and took my kids to school. Those words made an impression on me, boys. They summed up a whole philosophy of dedication and hard work. Then mi general looked at me again that way he had of looking at you like he was grabbing your heart and he said: you’ll go far, kid. Me, sir? I hope you’re right. And he: yes, you, jackass, but if you want to go far and hold on to what’s yours you have to keep your head on straight. Then it was as if he had fallen asleep and I thought: poor guy, the shock of finding his man dead must have exhausted him. And I started to think, too, about what he’d said to me and about other things and the truth is that suddenly I felt this great sense of calm or quiet fill me, sitting there on the dead man’s bed, across from mi general, whose head had fallen to one side and who was snoring a little. But then the general opened one eye and asked me whether I knew where Nicanor was from and I gathered that Nicanor was the dead man and I had to tell him the truth, which was that I didn’t know. Then mi general said: he was from Villaviciosa, damn it. And I took note of that. And mi general said: those jackasses are the only men in all of Mexico who can be trusted. Really, mi general? I asked. Really, he said. Then I called the funeral home and I led mi general into another room, so he wouldn’t feel bad when he saw Nicanor being put into a coffin. We talked until his lawyer and secretary got there. That was the last time I saw mi general. The next year he died,” said Don Pedro as he ordered his fifth whiskey.

“He must have been quite a man, General Sepúlveda,” said one of the policemen.

“More than a man, he was a hero,” said Pedro Negrete. The policemen nodded.

“And now get to work,” said Don Pedro. “I don’t want any bums on the force.”

The policemen got up instantly. Two of them were wearing shoulder holsters under their tracksuit jackets and the other two were carrying their guns on their hips.

“You stay here, Pancho, I want to talk to you,” said Don Pedro.

Pancho Monje said goodbye to his comrades and sat down again.

“What are you working on?” asked Don Pedro.

“The shooting in Los Álamos,” said Pancho.

“Well, you’ll have to take a break for a few days to tail a university professor. I want a complete report in a week.”

“Who’s the individual?” asked Pancho.

Don Pedro pulled a bundle of papers from his suit pocket and began to go through them one by one.

“His name is Óscar Amalfitano,” said Gumaro. “He’s Chilean. He teaches philosophy at the university.”

“I want a careful job,” said Don Pedro. “You’ll deliver the report to me personally.”

“At your service,” said Pancho.

7

Homero Sepúlveda (1895-1955) showed an aptitude for military leadership from an early age: at eight he was tall and dauntless and he captained a gang of kids that made itself hated and legendary in the neighborhoods surrounding the old Municipal Slaughterhouse that once stood on the east side of Santa Teresa, where the man soon to be so prominent in the Revolution grew up. His father was a schoolteacher, originally from Hermosillo, and his mother was a self-effacing housewife, born in Santa Teresa. He was the third of a litter of three brothers and four sisters, all tall and strong, though none of them with Homero’s eyes. He didn’t attend high school.

When the Revolution began, he and his older brother Lucas took up arms with Pancho Villa. Soon his skill at mounting ambushes, planning raids on enemy supply bases, and moving his troops at lightning speed earned him a well-deserved reputation for bravery and intelligence, a reputation he would never lose. But unlike his brother Lucas, who was brave and intelligent, too, and who died in a cavalry charge in 1917, Homero Sepúlveda was also (and chiefly) cautious and prudent and possessed the ability to predict the twists and turns of fate. It wasn’t long before he earned his general’s stripes, bestowed on him by Pancho Villa himself aboard his private train.

He battled Porfirio Díaz and was a dyed-in-the-wool Maderista (though in his heart-like his father, who read the Latin American classics-he was never too deeply convinced of anything), he fought tirelessly against Huerta and Pascual Orozco, and then he retired, young and newly wed, and returned to Santa Teresa until the Villistas went back to war, this time against Carranza, whom Sepúlveda fought with few resources but great art, winning respect near and far and earning himself the nickname Epaminondas of Sonora or-it depended on the poet and the spot where the ode was composed-Scipio of Chihuahua, not to mention the Spanish baker who called him El Empecinado of the North or the Milans del Bosch of the Border, though General Sepúlveda always preferred the Greek and Roman references.

He was the only Villista chief (except for Ángeles and Lucio Blanco) who fully exploited the marriage of cavalry, mounted artillery, and mobility: he was skilled at exploiting victories and penetrating the enemy’s rear guard, creating chaos.

He didn’t fight against Obregón. For a while he retreated to his house in Santa Teresa, supposedly writing his memoirs but really letting matters take their course. Then he was admitted with full honors into the Obregonista camp. He was a personal friend of General Plutarco Elías Calles. In 1935, his friendships and clout got him named state governor. He prospered, like all of them, and his house in Santa Teresa grew like an Erector set, without rhyme or reason, with new wings and stables and staff quarters and even a tennis court used only by his children. As a politician he was a disaster and there were those who said he was like some notorious Greek tyrant or deranged Roman general and others who likened him to Napoleon the Small or the bloodthirsty hypocrite Thiers, but General Sepúlveda didn’t give a fig about the nicknames and comparisons, classical or modern.

He survived three assassination attempts.

He had three sons, two of whom went to study and live in Texas, married American women, and founded the Austin branch of the Sepúlveda family. The third never married and lived in the big house in Santa Teresa until his death, in 1990. General Sepúlveda hardly undertook or encouraged any public works during the long years in which he served Mexico as governor of his home state or senator of the Republic. Three years before his death the street where he lived was rechristened Calle General Sepúlveda. After he died his name was given to a street in Hermosillo and the Santa Teresa State Hospital.

A life-size bronze statue memorializes him now in the city’s main square. Its creator was the sculptor Francisco Clayton and it portrays the general staring nostalgically into the distance. It’s a strange sculpture, with much more dignity than the intellectuals of Santa Teresa, with their sarcastic and naïve mockery, give it credit for, and it’s also a sad sculpture-so sad, one might say, that it is rendered absent.

8

Pancho Monje began to tail Amalfitano one Monday morning. He watched him leave at nine for the university and then, half an hour later, he watched his daughter leave. The usual thing would have been to follow Amalfitano, but Pancho let himself be guided by his instinct. When Rosa had turned the corner he got out of the car and followed her. Rosa walked along Avenida Escandón for a long time. For a moment Pancho was convinced that she didn’t know herself where she was going, then he thought that maybe she was on her way to school, some school, but the lightness of her step and the fact that she wasn’t carrying any books convinced him otherwise. At the intersection with Calle Sonora, Avenida Escandón changed name and got more crowded, and suddenly Rosa disappeared. There was no lack of coffee shops nearby, and Pancho went into one of them and ordered a breakfast of coffee, huevos a la ranchera, and toast. When he took the first sip of his coffee he realized that his hands were shaking. That night, at the police station, he was told that a girl had turned up dead in Parque México and he learned that Álvarez and Chucho Peguero were on the case. He went to see them and asked who the dead girl was.

“Edelmira Sánchez, sixteen, hot stuff,” said Álvarez, and showed him a picture of a girl in a torn dress.

While his buddies were working, he thought, he had spent the whole day at home, watching television and doing nothing.

On Tuesday he began his vigil at Amalfitano’s house at seven in the morning. He left the Ford parked a block away and waited. For a long time he thought the house seemed empty, as if life inside had ceased that night while he was away, unable do anything about it. At nine the door opened and Amalfitano appeared. He was wearing a black blazer, and his white hair, perhaps too long for a man of his age, was still wet. Before he closed the door he said something to someone inside the house and then he set off walking. Pancho let him get a head start and then he got out of the car and followed him. Amalfitano’s strides were long. In his right hand he was carrying a cheap briefcase and there were two books in the pocket of his blazer. He passed several people but didn’t say hello to any of them. When he got to the bus stop he stopped. Pancho walked on past and went into a store, some fifty yards away. He found a can of Nestlé evaporated milk, paid for it, took out his penknife, punctured the top in two places, and drank from it once he was back out in the street. He passed the bus stop again, but didn’t pause. Amalfitano was reading one of the books. Pancho walked to where he had left the Ford and started it. Then he headed down the street until he found the bus that Amalfitano was waiting for and followed it. When the bus got to the stop, Amalfitano was still there. He got on with some other people and the bus pulled away. At nine forty Amalfitano entered the university amid a stream of students. Pancho followed him into the philosophy department and spent a while chatting with a secretary. The secretary’s name was Estela and she liked to go out dancing on Saturday nights. She was twenty-eight and divorced. She believed in friendship and honesty.

“Clearly you work in the philosophy department,” Pancho said.

When he got back to Amalfitano’s house Rosa had already gone out. Pancho rang the doorbell for a while. Then he went back to the car and put on some music. He felt his eyes closing and he fell asleep. When he woke up it was past noon. He started the car and drove away. He spent the rest of the day at El Jacinto, a bar on Calle Nuevo León that catered to policemen. At seven he went to wait for Amalfitano at the entrance to the university.

The next day Pancho arrived a little before nine. At nine fifteen a taxi stopped in front of the house and Amalfitano ran out. At nine thirty Rosa emerged and set off on foot toward Avenida Escandón. This time she was carrying a plastic bag full of videocassettes. When Rosa turned the corner Pancho got out of the car and headed for the house. Getting in was no problem.

The house consisted of a living room with an open kitchen, two big bedrooms and one small one, which was used as a junk room, and a bathroom. Behind was a yard with no plants or flowers. Pancho spent a while poking around the bedrooms. He didn’t find anything of potential interest, except some letters from Barcelona. He sat in a chair by the living room window to read them. He didn’t read all of them. Then he spent a while in Rosa’s room. He liked the smell. He looked for pictures but all he could find were a few snapshots of a beautiful woman with her arms around a girl. Hanging in the closet were clothes that might have been a girl’s or a woman’s. Under the bed were a pair of plush Pluto slippers. He smelled them. They smelled good. Like the feet of someone young and healthy. When he put them back under the bed his heart seemed to leap into his throat. He knelt there, still, his face buried in the blankets, which also smelled good, of lavender, warmth. Then he got up and and decided he had seen all he wanted to see.

9

That night Professor Isabel Aguilar was thinking about Amalfitano when he called on the phone. Though it was still early, she had already put on her pajamas and poured herself a whiskey, which she planned to drink while she read a novel that she had been wanting to read for a long time. She lived alone and in recent years she had even found a certain satisfaction in that. She didn’t miss being part of a couple. There hadn’t been many men in her life and almost every relationship had ended in disaster. Isabel Aguilar had been in love with a philosophy student who ended up turning to the occult sciences, a militant Trotskyite who also ended up turning to the occult sciences (and bodybuilding), a truck driver from Hermosillo who made fun of her love of reading and who only wanted to get her pregnant (and then run off, or so she suspected), and a Santa Teresa mechanic whose intellectual horizon was soccer matches and weekend drinking marathons, marathons to which she herself became addicted. The only real love of her life was Óscar Amalfitano, who had been her philosophy professor at UNAM and with whom she had never gotten anywhere.

Once Isabel Aguilar went to see him at his house, in Mexico City, prepared to confess her feelings for him, but when she knocked at the door it was opened by a woman so beautiful and with such a visible look of happiness and self-confidence that she almost turned and ran down the stairs.

From that day on she became very good friends with Edith Lieberman, whom she admired and loved wholeheartedly, and she banished the love she felt for Amalfitano to the limbo of platonic affections. When Amalfitano and his family left for Canada their ties weren’t severed. Once a month, at least, Isabel wrote a letter telling them about her life and her professional advances and each month she got a letter, usually from Edith, updating her on the vicissitudes of the Amalfitano family.

When Edith Lieberman died Isabel was truly sad, but deep down she thought that her day might have come. At the time she was living in Mexico City with the militant macrobiotic Trotskyite and for a few weeks she went so far as to dream of getting on a plane and leaving for a new life in Brazil, with Rosa (whom she planned to care for as if she were her own daughter) and Amalfitano. But her timidity and indecisiveness were insurmountable obstacles and for one reason or another in the end she never traveled to Rio.

The letters, nevertheless, continued with even greater intensity than before. In them Isabel told Amalfitano things that she didn’t tell anyone else. When she separated from the Trotskyite he was her greatest source of support. Later, with the changes, they began to write less. Isabel fell in love with the truck driver and experienced a brief period of sexual fulfillment. It was for his sake that she went north, to Hermosillo, where she taught at the university. There she met Horacio Guerra, who at the time was putting together a new philosophy department at the University of Santa Teresa. When she broke up with the truck driver she didn’t think twice before accepting the offer that Horacio Guerra kept extending year after year.

The first months in Santa Teresa were lonely. At some point Isabel Aguilar dreamed of a more active social life, the kind that because of the truck driver (or because of her faculty mates, who despised the truck driver) she hadn’t had during her time in Hermosillo, but she soon discovered that in Santa Teresa the philosophy professors didn’t associate with anyone and that the professors from the other departments shunned the members of the philosophy department as if they had the plague. This loneliness and her sexual proclivities (warped by her daily contact with the truck driver) led her almost without realizing it into the arms of the soccer fiend mechanic. When she was able to break up with him at last, she felt even lonelier than ever and she resumed with new vigor her correspondence with her former professor. At the same time-Isabel Aguilar would have had to be very dense not to notice it-her friendship with Horacio Guerra, after the interregnum of the mechanic, became closer, and at some point she even went so far as to think that after all they didn’t make such a bad pair.

But Horacio Guerra, though far from avoiding Isabel’s presence, never seemed prepared to take the crucial step, to speak the precise words that would make Isabel, tired of sleeping with her intellectual inferiors, fall into his arms.

Sometimes Isabel Aguilar thought that all her problems could simply be attributed to the fact that she had no luck with men.

When Amalfitano arrived in Santa Teresa it was like a rebirth. For the first few days she was at his side almost constantly. She located a motel where he and Rosa could stay until they found a house. She helped them look for a house that was to Rosa’s liking. She drove them everywhere, like an absolutely loyal and selfless taxi driver. She took them to eat at local restaurants and showed them the city. To her surprise, Amalfitano and his daughter seemed not to appreciate any of her efforts. Rosa was in a perpetual bad mood and Amalfitano was lost in his own thoughts. One afternoon she decided that rather than being a help to the Amalfitanos, her presence had become an annoyance, and she stopped seeing them. She wasn’t capable, however, of distancing herself entirely, and on weekends they often got together. Isabel would pick up her car and arrive at the Amalfitano residence at the cocktail hour. Then they would go for a drive, never a very long one. Sometimes Isabel would take them to a place on the edge of town for a drink. Other times she saw Amalfitano alone, in the evenings, and they would go for a stroll or to the movies.

When Amalfitano called and said that he wanted to see her, Isabel thought they would make a date for the following Saturday, so her astonishment was great when he said he wanted to see her that very night.

“I’m in my pajamas,” said Isabel, accustomed to being the one who always visited Amalfitano.

“I’m coming to your house,” said Amalfitano. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I need to talk to someone and I can’t do it over the phone.”

Isabel downed the whiskey in a single gulp and then began to tidy up. She picked up some things in the living room, made the bed and straightened the bedroom, opened a few windows and aired out the house, closed the windows and sprayed a bit of Holiday Forever air freshener in the corners, then she splashed water on her face, put on a little makeup, and poured another whiskey.

10

By Thursday Pancho could have delivered a full report on Amalfitano, but he didn’t.

That morning he followed Rosa: he followed her along Avenida Sonora, followed her into a covered market where she did the shopping, and then followed her back to the house. It was noon before she appeared again. At twelve fifteen, one of the windows in the living room opened and he presumed that she was cleaning. Then he watched her go out into the yard, walk to the fence, bend down, and look for something. Then he watched her get up and head back to the house with surer steps. Muted pop music drifted on the breeze to the windows of his car. Then Rosa closed the window and all he could hear was the whisper of the sun falling on the pavement and the trees.

At four in the afternoon Rosa went out again.

He followed her on foot. Rosa walked at a good clip, in the same direction as always, toward Calle Sonora and then Avenida Revolución. She was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She had on low boots, with no heel.

11

Padilla’s next letter was torrential. He began by saying that one night, drunk and high on pills, he had somehow ended up at a used-book store on Calle Aribau and suddenly, as if the book had leaped into his hands, he found himself with an old copy of J.M.G. Arcimboldi’s The Endless Rose, translated by Amalfitano. Your name in that tattered and precious volume!

Arcimboldi, he said, had overnight become a fashionable author in Spain, where they were publishing or about to publish everything he’d written. Not a week went by without an article on the great French writer, or a profile of him. Even The Endless Rose (his third or fourth novel?)-a difficult and deceptive work despite its apparent simplicity, to the point that sometimes it seemed like a book for morons-was already in a second printing, when it had scarcely been out for a month. The new Spanish translation was by a writer from Navarra, suddenly revealed to be an expert-which he was, though he’d certainly kept it under wraps-on the Arcimboldean oeuvre. I prefer your translation, said Padilla, and every page that I reread makes me imagine you in that storm-tossed Buenos Aires, freighted with omens, where your innocence triumphed. Here Padilla gets it wrong again, thought Amalfitano, because even though the translation was for a Buenos Aires publishing house, he had done it while he was living in Mexico City. If I had translated Arcimboldi in Buenos Aires, he thought, I would be dead now.

Of course, continued Padilla, he, too, had succumbed to the fashion for Arcimboldi and in a week he’d devoured the three novels in Spanish translation, plus another three in the original French that he’d found at the Librería Apollinaire on Calle Córcega, plus the controversial novella or long short story Riquer, which he’d read in Juli Montaner’s Catalan translation and which seemed to him a kind of long-winded Borges. In Barcelona there are those who say, said Padilla, that Arcimboldi is the perfect blend of Thomas Bernhard and Stevenson (old R.L., you heard me right), but he placed him somewhere nearer the unlikely intersection of Aloysius Bertrand and Perec and (brace yourself) Gide and the Robbe-Grillet of Project for a Revolution in New York. In any case, French to the hilt. Finally, he said that he was starting to get sick of the flocks of Arcimboldi exegetes, whom he equated with donkeys, animals he had always pitied though he hadn’t seen one in the flesh until he was nineteen, in Gracia, the property of some Gypsies who moved like metropolitan shepherds from the grazing lands of one Barcelona neighborhood to another with the donkey, a monkey, and a barrel organ. Despite Buñuel and Dalí, I always loved Platero, it must be because we faggots get a kick out of all that Andalusian shit, he wrote, and these lines wounded Amalfitano deeply.

As he saw it, Padilla was a poet, an intellectual, a fighter, a gay free spirit who dispensed his favors liberally, an engaging companion, but never a faggot, a term he associated with cowardice and enforced loneliness. But it was true, he thought then, he and Padilla were faggots, and that was all there was to it, period.

With sadness, Amalfitano realized that he in fact wasn’t an authority on the work of Arcimboldi, though he had been the first to translate him into Spanish, more than seventeen years ago, when almost no one had heard of him. I should have kept translating him, he said to himself, and not wasted my time on Osman Lins, the concrete poets, and my atrocious Portuguese, but I struck out there too. And yet Padilla, Amalfitano realized, had overlooked something in his long letter (as had probably all the other Arcimboldians of Barcelona), a crucial feature of the French writer’s work: even if all his stories, no matter their style (and in this regard Arcimboldi was eclectic and seemed to subscribe to the maxim of De Kooning: style is a fraud), were mysteries, they were only solved through flight, or sometimes through bloodshed (real or imaginary) followed by endless flight, as if Arcimboldi’s characters, once the book had come to an end, literally leapt from the last page and kept fleeing.

Padilla’s letter ended with two pieces of news: his breakup with his SEAT boyfriend, and the imminent-though why it was so imminent he didn’t say-end to his job as a proofreader. If I keep proofreading, he said, I won’t enjoy reading anymore, and that’s the end, isn’t it? About The God of Homosexuals he had little or a lot to say, depending: it’s a waltz.

In his reply, which was as long as Padilla’s letter, Amalfitano entangled himself in a series of disquisitions on Arcimboldi that had little to do with what he really wanted to get across: the state of his soul. Don’t leave your proofreading job, he said in the postcript, I imagine you with no money in Barcelona and it scares me. Keep proofreading and keep writing.

Padilla’s reply was slow in coming and it seemed to have been written in a state of trance. Right off the bat he confessed that he had AIDS. I got the package, he said between jokes. Immediately after that he told Amalfitano to get tested. You might have it, he said, but if you do I promise that you didn’t get it from me. For a year now he had known that he was HIV-positive. Now he had developed the disease. That was all. Soon he would be dead. As far as everything else was concerned, he was no longer working and he had moved back in with his father, who had guessed or gotten some inkling of his son’s illness. Poor old man, said Padilla, he’s had to watch all the people he loves die. Here he rambled on about people like jinxes or dark clouds. The good news was that he had run into the baker from Gracia who used to come to the soirées at the studio near the university. Without asking for anything in return, the baker, having heard that Padilla was sick, had given him a bimonthly allowance, which was what he called it. It wasn’t enough for Padilla to rent an apartment and live alone, but it did cover most of his costs: books, drugs, rooms by the night, dinners at neighborhood restaurants. His prescriptions were paid for by social security. Paradise, as you can see, he said.

He had already been hospitalized once, two weeks in the contagious-disease ward where he shared a room with three junkies, down-and-out kids who hated faggots though they were all dying by giant steps. But I changed their minds, he said. He promised details in the next letter.

With The God of Homosexuals, he said, he was proceeding at a snail’s pace. The baker-“my dear Raguenau,” Padilla called him-is my only reader, a dubious privilege that fills him with joy. He had a new lover, a sixteen-year-old rent boy, infected with AIDS and marvelously oblivious, oh, to be him, sighed Padilla as the letter shook in Amalfitano’s hands. Not working for the publishing house was a fascinating feeling that he’d thought he’d lost. Living like a loafer again, I who was put on this earth solely to amuse myself. To amuse myself and make a nuisance of myself every once in a while.

The Barcelona days were glorious. The Mediterranean shone. Padilla was writing from the terrace of a bar on the Ramblas. People stroll by, he said, and here I sit drinking a double whiskey and I’m happy.

12

Near an assembly plant on the edge of town belonging to Don Gabriel Salazar, on a plot designated as a future industrial park, though it had yet to attract a tenant, another girl was found dead.

She was seventeen, a year older than Edelmira Sánchez. Her name was Alejandra Rosales and she was the mother of an infant son. The cause of death was the same. Her throat had been cut with a large knife, though no trace of blood was found at the scene (as in Parque México), which meant that there was no question that the crime had been committed elsewhere.

The body of Edelmira Sánchez had turned up on a Monday and her parents had reported her disappearance on Sunday morning. The last time she was seen was Saturday at dinnertime. The body of Alejandra Rosales turned up a week later, but the last time she was seen alive was on Saturday, just before Edelmira said goodbye to her parents. The only one who might have reported her disappearance was her mother-in-law, with whom she lived, but her mother-in-law thought that Alejandra had run off with a man and she had enough on her hands already taking care of her late son’s baby without trying to get to the police station to report the disappearance of a woman she hated and whom she wouldn’t have minded seeing dead.

According to the medical examiner, both were raped multiple times, presenting slight lacerations to the legs and back, bruising around the wrists (leading to the conclusion that both women had at some point been bound), a fatal slash or two to the neck (severing the carotid artery; in Alejandra’s case the cut was so deep that it almost decapitated her), contusions to the chest and arms, light bruising about the face. No traces of semen were found in either case.

In Chucho Peguero’s report it said that Alejandra occasionally worked as a prostitute and that on Saturday nights she often frequented La Hélice, a nightclub on Calle Amado Nervo. The night that she disappeared she was seen there by a witness, her friend Guadalupe Guillén. According to the latter, at about 8:00 p.m. Alejandra was on La Hélice’s dance floor, dancing a merengue. Guadalupe Guillén didn’t see her again for the rest of the night. No one saw her leave the club. Edelmira Sánchez, meanwhile, spent her Saturday nights at the New York, a club mainly for teenagers on Avenida Escandón, where she arrived at around 7:30 p.m. By midnight she was usually already on her way home with her boyfriend or her friends, because Edelmira didn’t have her own car. That Saturday night, Alejandra wasn’t seen at the New York, nor was Edelmira seen at La Hélice.

Edelmira was almost certainly killed on Sunday, between noon and midnight. Alejandra, meanwhile, was held for longer: she was probably killed on Thursday or Friday, twenty-four hours before some children found her body near the assembly plant.

13

Gumaro guided Pancho’s first steps on the Santa Teresa police force. When they ran into each other at the station in the morning, he would say: come with me, let your buddies pick up the slack, I want to talk to you. And Pancho would drop whatever he was doing and go with him. Gumaro was nondescript in appearance, neither very tall nor very big, and he had a small head, like a lizard. It was hard to guess his age and he might have been older than everyone thought. To some people, he came across as none too impressive, too small and thin to be a policeman, but if they looked him in the eyes they could tell that he was no ordinary man.

Very late one night, at the bar La Estela, Pancho watched him closely for a while and discovered that he hardly ever blinked. He reported this to Gumaro and asked why he did things differently from ordinary mortals. Gumaro answered that when he closed his eyes it gave him a terrible pain in the head.

“So how do you sleep?” asked Pancho.

“I fall asleep with my eyes open and once I’m asleep I close them.”

He had no fixed address. He could be found at any of the Santa Teresa police stations and he never seemed to be busy, not even when he was performing his duties as Don Pedro Negrete’s driver. Everyone owed him favors, favors of all kinds, but he only took orders from Don Pedro.

He told Pancho that he was going to teach him how to be a policeman. It’s the best job in the world, said Gumaro, the only one in which you’re truly free or you know for a fact-without the shadow of a doubt-that you aren’t. Either way, it’s like living in a house of raw flesh, he said. Other times he said that there should be no police force, the army was enough.

He liked to talk. He especially liked to carry on one-sided conversations. He also liked to make jokes that only he laughed at. He didn’t have a wife or children. He felt sorry for children and avoided them, and women left him cold. Once a bartender who didn’t know him asked why he didn’t find himself a wife. Gumaro was surrounded by on-duty and off-duty officers and all of them fell silent, waiting to hear his reply, but he didn’t say anything, just kept drinking his Tecate as if nothing had happened, and ten minutes later the bartender came over again and said he was sorry.

“Sorry for what, pal,” asked Gumaro.

“For being rude, Sergeant,” said the bartender.

“You aren’t rude,” said Gumaro, “you’re a jackass, or just an ass.”

And that was it. He didn’t hold grudges and he didn’t have a temper.

Sometimes he stopped by the place where a crime had been committed. When he arrived everyone stood aside, even the judge or the medical examiner, with whom he was on first-name terms. Without saying a word, absorbed in his own thoughts, his hands buried in his pockets, he cast an eye over the victim, the victim’s effects, and what some policemen call the scene of the crime, and then he left as silently as he’d come and never returned.

No one knew where he lived. Some said that it was in Don Pedro Negrete’s basement, while others claimed that he didn’t have a place to call home and that he did sometimes sleep in the cells, empty or not, at the General Sepúlveda police station. Pancho was one of the few who knew from the start (in an extraordinary show of confidence on Gumaro’s part) that in fact he sometimes slept in Don Pedro’s basement, in a little room that had been fixed up especially for him, and sometimes in the cells at the station, but most nights, or days, he slept at a guesthouse in Colonia El Milagro, five blocks from Pancho’s apartment. The owner was a woman in her early fifties with a lawyer son who worked in Monterrey. She treated Gumaro like one of the family. Her husband was a policeman who had been killed in the line of duty. Her name was Felicidad Pérez and she was always asking Gumaro for little favors that he never granted.

Many times Pancho followed him from bar to bar until dawn.

Gumaro drank a lot, but he almost never showed the effects of alcohol. When he got drunk he would pull his chair over to the window and scrutinize the sky, saying:

“My brain needs air.”

This meant that he was elsewhere. Then he would start to talk about vampires.

“How many Dracula movies have you seen?” he asked Pancho.

“None, Gumaro.”

“Then you don’t know much about vampires,” said Gumaro.

Other times he talked about desert towns or villages or hamlets that only communicated among themselves, with no regard for borders or language. Towns that were one or two thousand years old and where scarcely fifty or one hundred people lived.

“What towns are those, Gumaro?” Pancho asked.

“Towns of vampires or white worms,” said Gumaro, “which amounts to the same thing. Godforsaken shitholes where the urge to kill runs as strong as the urge to live.”

Pancho imagined two or three cantinas, one grocery store, and courtyards paved in concrete, facing west. Like Villaviciosa.

“So where are these towns?” he asked.

“Here and there,” said Gumaro, “on either side of the border, like a renegade state inside Mexico and also the United States. An invisible state.”

Once, for work, Gumaro had to visit one of these towns. Of course, he didn’t know what it was at the time.

“You never know these things,” he told Pancho.

The road was dirt, but it wasn’t bad, though the last twenty miles were only a track through the rocks and the desert. They arrived at four in the afternoon. The town had thirty inhabitants and half of the houses were empty. With Gumaro were Sebastián Romero and Marco Antonio Guzmán, two veteran Santa Teresa policemen. They were going to arrest a Mexican who had wiped out his two Yankee partners in San Bernabé, Arizona. It was the San Bernabé police chief who had gotten the tip and he called Don Pedro Negrete and came to an arrangement. The Santa Teresa policemen would arrest the killer and then cross the border with him. The men from San Bernabé would be waiting on the other side, and they would receive the prisoner. Afterward, they would say that they had found the killer wandering in the desert, howling at the moon like a coyote, with everything happening on the American side, everything perfectly legal.

Guzmán got sick as soon as they arrived. He was shivering with fever and vomiting, so they left him in the backseat of the car, covered with a blanket and babbling about masked wrestlers. Then Gumaro and Romero went from house to house through the town, guided by an old woman with a limp, but they didn’t find anything. Either the information they had gotten from the San Bernabé police chief was no good or the killer had long since disappeared, because they didn’t find a single scrap of evidence that he had ever been there.

One of the strange things that Gumaro saw as they went back and forth, aware already that the search was useless, were the eyes of some of the animals. They were rubbed-out eyes, he said to Pancho. Eyes from the beyond. Fading into nothing. As if the donkeys and dogs were intelligent and their souls were bigger than human souls.

“If it was up to me,” said Gumaro, “I would have drawn my gun and shot all those animals.”

Before it got dark they left without the man they’d come to find and back in Santa Teresa Don Pedro Negrete was very upset because he owed the police chief of San Bernabé a favor.

Gumaro talked about towns of white worms and towns of buzzards, towns of coyotes and towns of tiny birds. And these were precisely the things, he said, that a true policeman needed to know about. Pancho thought he was crazy. At dawn they went to eat pozole at El Almira, owned by Doña Milagros Reina, who in her day had been one of Santa Teresa’s top whores. By this time Gumaro wasn’t talking about anything: not policemen, not towns of vampires, not white worms. He ate his pozole like a man near death and then he said that he had things to do and he vanished all of a sudden down some random street.

“Come sleep it off at my place,” Pancho offered many times, sorry to see him looking so pale and shaky. “Come and stay for a while until you feel better.”

But Gumaro always ignored him, and suddenly, before he had finished talking, he would vanish. Without saying goodbye, as if at that hour everyone was a stranger to him.

14

Padilla’s next letter seemed to have been written by a different person, someone who had just been operated on and was still under the effects of the anesthesia. It said that he had gone with Raguenau and a kid called Adrià to Tibidabo, the amusement park, and everything, absolutely everything, had been so beautiful that he was unable-on repeated occasions, on repeated and baffling occasions, on repeated and crystal clear occasions-to contain his tears. I cried, he said, like someone who finds true religion and sees it for what it is and knows that his salvation lies in it, but carries on regardless.

On the roller coaster, he said, as the lights of Barcelona and the endless darkness of the Mediterranean swam in and out of view, I had one of the most glorious erections of my life, my cock was rock hard, it swelled so big that my testicles and the shaft hurt, I was afraid to touch it, the bulge under my jeans throbbed, it beat like a racing heart, its length reached almost to my navel (my God, thought Amalfitano), good thing it happened where it did, in a public place, added Padilla, because it would have been more than any ass in the world could handle.

Then he said that Raguenau and the kid, who was apparently his nephew, had brought him to the pastry shop of another baker, an old friend of Raguenau’s, a guy in his seventies who presented them with an assortment of delicious cookies and cakes, nice relaxing conversation, and the music of Mompou. I’d like to live like that always, said Padilla, surrounded by people like that, sharing pleasures like those, though I know that if you scratch the surface you discover that it’s all just polite anguish, genteel anguish, or if you’re lucky, anguish chased by a good shot in the arm of Nolotil, but the friendship they offer me is real, and that should be enough, whatever the circumstances. About The God of Homosexuals he said nothing.

Around this time Amalfitano was too busy preparing his classes (combing American libraries and universities for the scattered and forgotten books of Jean-Marie Guyau) and all he could send was a postcard in which he explained clumsily how busy he was and inquired about the progress of the novel.

Padilla’s reply was long and cheerful, but hard to follow. I’m sure you’ve found a new love, he said, and I’m sure you’re enjoying yourself. Carry on! He reminded him of the Byrds song (was it the Byrds?), the one that goes if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with, and-strangely, if this was what he really believed-he didn’t ask for any information about Amalfitano’s new lover, I imagine, he said, that it’s probably one of your students. And yet in the next paragraph the tone of the letter changed dramatically and he implored him not to let his guard down. Don’t let anyone play you, he begged, anyone at all, even if he’s the hottest guy around and he does it better than anyone else, under no circumstances should you let yourself be taken advantage of. Then he rambled on about the loneliness that Amalfitano bore and the risks to which that loneliness exposed him. By the end, the letter recovered its cheerful tone (in fact, the lines about loneliness and the danger of being played were like a small anxiety attack enclosed within parentheses) and talked about the winter and the spring, the flower stands on the Ramblas and the rain, about glossy shades of gray and the black stones hidden in the walls of the Old City. In the postcript he sent his regards to Rosa (for the first time, since Padilla usually acted as if Rosa didn’t exist) and said that he had read Arcimboldi’s last novel, 105 pages, about a doctor who upon inheriting the ancestral home finds a collection of masks of human flesh. Each flask-in which the masks float in a viscous liquid that seems to swallow light-is numbered and after a brief search the doctor finds, in a thick book of accounts, a collection of explanatory verses, numbered in turn, which, as in New Impressions of Africa, cast spadefuls of clarity or spadefuls of coal dust on the origin and destiny of the masks.

Amalfitano’s response was feeble, to put it mildly. He talked about his daughter, about the vast skies of Sonora, about philosophers Padilla had never heard of, and about Professor Isabel Aguilar, who lived alone in a small apartment in the center of the city and who had been so good to them.

Padilla’s next letter, four pages typewritten on both sides, struck Amalfitano as melancholy in the extreme. He talked about his father and his father’s health, about the way he, as a boy, had noticed the fluctuations in his father’s health, about his clinical eye for his father’s aches and pains, spells of flu, attacks of weariness, bronchial infections, fits of depression. Then, of course, he didn’t do anything to help, didn’t even care that much. If my father had died when I was twelve I wouldn’t have shed a single tear. He talked about his house, about his father’s comings and goings, about his father’s ear (like a broken-down satellite dish) when it was he who was coming and going, about the dining room table, sturdy, made of solid wood, but soulless, as if its spirit had fled long ago, about the three chairs, one always unoccupied, off to one side, or perhaps stacked with books or clothing, about the sealed packages that his father opened in the kitchen, never the dining room, about the dirty lamp that hung too high, about the corners of the apartment or the ceiling that sometimes, on euphoric or drug-fueled nights, looked like eyes, but closed or dead eyes, as he always realized a second later despite the euphoria or the drugs, and as he realized now despite how much he would have liked to be wrong, eyes that didn’t open, eyes that didn’t blink, eyes that didn’t see. He also talked about the streets of his neighborhood, the little shops where he went to buy things when he was eight, the newsstands, the street that used to be called Avenida José Antonio, a street that was like the river of life and that he now remembered fondly, even the name José Antonio, which was so reviled but which in memory retained a trace of beauty and sadness, like the name of a bullfighter or a composer of boleros who dies young. A homosexual youth killed by the forces of Nature and Progress.

He also talked about his current situation. He had become friends with Adrià, Raguenau’s nephew, though no sex figured into the friendship: it was a kind of monastic love, he said, they held hands and talked about any old thing, sports or politics (Adrià’s boyfriend was an athlete and an active member of the Gay Coordinating Committee of Catalonia), art or literature. Sometimes, when Adrià begged him to, he read bits from The God of Homosexuals, and sometimes they wept together on the balcony, in each other’s arms, watching the sun set over Plaza Molina.

Raguenau, meanwhile, he had slept with. He gave a step-by-step account of the proceedings. Raguenau’s bedroom, awash in Caribbean blue and ebony, African masks and porcelain dolls (what a combination! thought Amalfitano). The timid nakedness of Raguenau, a touch ashamed, his belly too big, his legs too skinny, his chest hairless and flabby. His own nakedness reflected in a mirror, still acceptable, less muscle mass, maybe, but acceptable, more Greco than Caravaggio. The shyness of Raguenau curled up in his arms, the room dark. Raguenau’s voice saying that this was enough, he didn’t need to do anything else, this was wonderful, perfect, feeling himself being held and then falling asleep. Raguenau’s smile, sensed in the darkness. The phosphorescent red condoms. Raguenau’s trembling upon being penetrated with no need for Vaseline, ointment, saliva, or any other kind of lubricant. Raguenau’s legs: now tensed, now seeking his legs, toes seeking his toes. His penis in Raguenau’s ass and Raguenau’s half-erect penis caught in his left hand and Raguenau moaning, begging him to let go of his cock or at least not to squeeze too hard. His laugh of joy, unexpected, pure, like a flare in the dark room, and Raguenau’s lips issuing a faint protest. The speed of his hips, their thrust unimpaired, his hands caressing Raguenau’s body and at the same time dangling him over the abyss. The baker’s fear. His hands grabbing Raguenau’s body and rescuing it from the abyss. Raguenau’s moans, his panting growing louder and louder, like a man being hacked to pieces. Raguenau’s voice, barely a thread, saying slower, slower. His crippled soul. But don’t misinterpret me, said Padilla. That was what he said: don’t misinterpret me, the way you’ve always done, don’t misinterpret me. Raguenau’s innocent sleep and his own insomnia. His steps echoing through the whole house, from the bathroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room. Rageunau’s books. The Aldo Ferri armchair and the vaguely Brancusi lamp. The dawn that finds him naked and reading.

15

The clinic in Tijuana where Amalfitano took the AIDS test had a window that looked out onto a vacant lot. There, amid the rubble and the trash, under a blazing sun, was a stocky little man with a giant mustache who seemed to be the enterprising type and who was carefully assembling a kind of tent from a collection of sheets of cardboard. He looked like the red-bearded pirate from the Donald Duck cartoons, except that his skin and hair were very dark.

After Padilla let him know that he had the antibodies, Amalfitano decided to be tested, but in Tijuana rather than Santa Teresa, so there would be no chance of running into some university acquaintance. He told Isabel Aguilar and she decided to drive him there. They set out very early and made their way across a plain where everything was a deep yellow color, even the clouds and the stunted bushes scattered along the highway.

“At this time of day it’s all like that,” said Isabel, “the color of chicken broth. Then the earth shakes itself awake and the yellow vanishes.”

They had breakfast in Cananea and then they continued on to Santa Ana, Caborca, Sonoyta, and San Luis, where they exited the state of Sonora and entered Baja California North. Along the way Isabel told him about a Texan who had once been in love with her. He was a kind of art dealer, introduced to her by an art professor. This happened after she had ended her relationship with the mechanic. The dealer looked like a boor in his cowboy boots, string tie, and Stetson, but he knew a fair bit about contemporary American art. The only problem was that she had taken a dislike to him, spooked as she was by her previous relationships.

“Once,” said Isabel, “he came to my house and invited me to a Larry Rivers show in San Antonio. I just stood there looking at him and I thought: this guy wants to sleep with me and he can’t figure out how to say so. I don’t know why I said yes. I had no intention of sleeping with him, or at least I didn’t plan to make it easy for him, and the idea of a car trip to San Antonio wasn’t tempting, either, but suddenly something made me want to go, I felt like seeing the Larry Rivers and even the hours on the road seemed appealing, the meals along the way, the motel where we planned to stay in San Antonio, the excruciatingly monotonous scenery, the weariness of travel. So I packed some clothes, a volume of Nietzsche, and my toothbrush and off we went. Before we crossed the border I realized that the Texan had no interest in getting me into bed. What he wanted was someone to talk to (strangely enough, he had taken a liking to me). Basically, I realized that he was a pretty lonely guy and sometimes that got to him. The trip was very nice, not much to report, luckily things were clear from the start. When we got to San Antonio we checked into a motel on the edge of town, into separate rooms, ate fairly well at a Chinese restaurant, and then we went to the show. Well, it turns out that this was the opening and the press was there, a couple of TV cameras, lights, drinks, local celebrities, and-in a corner, surrounded by people-Larry Rivers himself. I didn’t recognize him, but the Texan said: that’s Larry over there, let’s go say hi. So we went up to him and shook hands. It’s an honor, Mr. Rivers, said the Texan, I do believe you’re a genius. And then he introduced me: Miss Isabel Aguilar, professor of philosophy at the University of Santa Teresa. Larry Rivers looked him up and down, from the Stetson to the boots, and at first he didn’t say anything but then he asked where Santa Teresa was, Texas or California? and I shook his hand, not saying a word, a little bit shy, and I said Mexico, the state of Sonora. Larry Rivers looked at me and said wonderful, Sonora, wonderful. And that was it, we said goodbye very politely and we moved on to the other end of the gallery, the Texan wanted to talk about the paintings, I was thirsty but I wanted to talk about the paintings, too, we spent a while drinking wine and eating caviar and smoked salmon canapés, and drinking wine, the two of us growing more enthusiastic about the show by the minute, and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I found myself alone, sitting at a table full of empty glasses and sweating like a mare after a wild gallop. I don’t have heart trouble, but suddenly I was afraid I’d have a heart attack, a stroke, whatever. I made my way to the restroom as best I could, and spent a while splashing off my face. It was a strange experience, the cold water never came into contact with my skin, the layer of sweat was so thick-even solid, you might say-that it blocked it. My chest burned as if someone had stuck a red-hot bar between my breasts. For a moment I was sure that someone had put some drug in my drink, but what drug? I don’t know. I can’t remember how much time I spent in the restroom. When I came out there were hardly any people in the gallery. A very beautiful woman, a Scandinavian blonde, maybe thirty-eight, was standing next to Larry Rivers and talking nonstop. I was amazed that Larry Rivers and a few of his friends were still there. The Scandinavian woman dominated the conversation, talking and gesticulating, but the strangest thing of all was that she seemed to be reciting something, a long poem that she illustrated with her hands, hands that were surely soft and elegant. Larry Rivers watched her carefully, his eyes half-closed, as if he were seeing the blond woman’s story, a story about tiny people in constant motion. Jesus, I thought, that’s nice. I would have loved to join them, but my shyness-or sense of propriety, I guess-prevented me. The Texan was nowhere to be found. Before I left, the Larry Rivers group smiled at me. On my way out, I bought the catalogue and took a taxi back to the motel. I went to the Texan’s room, but he wasn’t there. The next day, at the reception desk, I was told that he had left the previous night, and that before he left he had paid for everything, including my room and my breakfast that morning at the motel restaurant. I thought about eating all there was to eat, even eggs and ham, which I hate, but all I could get down was the coffee. What had caused the Texan to leave so rudely? I never found out. Luckily I had my credit cards with me. At two that afternoon I got on a plane to Hermosillo and from there I took a taxi to Santa Teresa.

16

Padilla’s next letter talked about a girl he had met at the hospital and it went off on a long and rather sinister tangent. I promised to tell you how, when I was in the hospital, I settled my dispute with my roommates, he said. Those upstanding young men, rudderless sons of the proletariat (also called lumpen proletariat, thought Amalfitano, who deep down was still a Marxist), treated me the way the Arabs treated the Jews in 1948, so I decided to act, make a show of force, sow fear.

One night, he said, I waited until the whole ward was in the arms of Morpheus and then I got up. Moving stealthily (like a ballerina on the moon, said Padilla) and dragging his IV pole, he headed to the nearest bed (where the most threatening-also the most handsome-boy lay), closed the curtains, and began to strangle him. With one hand he covered his mouth, and with the other, which held the catheter, he throttled him until he gasped for air. When the sleeper woke and opened his eyes and tried to get away, it was futile. Padilla had him at his mercy and he tortured him a little more, then made him swear that the fun was over. The other two woke up and through the curtain they could see the shadow of Padilla on top of their friend. They probably thought I was raping him, said Padilla, but they were so scared that nobody said a word. In any case, the next day the mocking, contemptuous glances had been replaced by looks of fear.

The girl he met was the sister of the guy he had tried to strangle. One afternoon she brought him a present. A huge, juicy-looking yellow pear speckled with brown. The girl sat down next to his bed and asked why he had hurt her brother. The three junkies, remembered Padilla, were smoking in a corner, by the window, while the girl talked to him. Padilla’s answer was: to clear the air. So even the terminally ill aren’t allowed to fuck with you? asked the girl. Actually, I love it when they fuck with me, said Padilla, and then he asked her where she’d learned a technical term like that. The girl raised her eyebrows. Terminally ill, said Padilla. The girl laughed and said at the hospital, of course.

They became friends.

Two weeks after he was discharged he ran into her at a bar near the Urquinaona metro station. Her name was Elisa and she sold heroin in small quantities. She said that her oldest brother was dead and her other brother, the one in the next bed, didn’t have long to live. Padilla tried to cheer her up, citing statistics, survival rates, the introduction of new drugs, but he soon realized it was useless.

Her name was Elisa and her turf was Nou Barris, where she lived, though she bought the drugs in El Raval. Padilla went with her a few times. The dealer’s name was Kemal and he was black. In other circumstances Padilla would have tried to screw him, but sex wasn’t something he cared much about just then. He was more interested in listening and watching. Listening and watching: new sensations that might not offer much comfort but that did slow his despair and make it more deliberate, allowing him to take a more objective view of something that at the same time he realized could not be viewed objectively. Elisa was eighteen and lived with her parents. She had a boyfriend, also an addict, and once a month she saw a married man who helped her out financially.

The letter ended with a description of the girl. Of average height; very thin; too-big tits; olive skin; big almond-shaped eyes fringed with long, dreamy lashes; almost nonexistent lips; a pleasant voice, though trained or grown accustomed to shouting and cursing; well-proportioned hands with long, elegant fingers; fingernails nevertheless chewed and crooked, badly crooked; eyebrows darker than her hair; smooth, strong, flat belly. On the subject of her belly: once, he said, he brought her home to sleep. They shared his bed. Aren’t you afraid that in the middle of the night I’ll fuck you and infect you? No, said Elisa. Which led Padilla to the conclusion, logical after all, that she was HIV positive too. For a while, before they fell asleep, they made out. Unenthusiastically, or in what you might call a friendly way, explained Padilla. The next morning they had breakfast with his father. My father, said Padilla, tried to not show how surprised and happy he was, but he couldn’t help himself.

On the subject of his health he had only vague things to say. His lungs were weak, but why they were so weak he didn’t explain. He ate well, his appetite was good.

Amalfitano wrote back instantly. He told him about his day trip to Tijuana to be tested, he urged him to speak frankly about his illness (I want to know exactly what kind of shape you’re in, I need to know, Joan), he beseeched him to work without pause on his novel, to the extent possible. He didn’t tell him that he had already received his test results and that they were negative. He didn’t tell him that he had been dreaming of leaving everything and flying to Barcelona to take care of him.

17

Padilla’s next letter was written on the back of a reproduction of a Larry Rivers painting: Portrait of Miss Oregon II, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 66 x 108 inches, private collection, and for a moment Amalfitano was unable to read, astonished, asking himself whether in a previous letter he had told Padilla about the trip to Tijuana and Isabel’s story of her trip to San Antonio to visit the Larry Rivers show. The answer was no, Padilla didn’t even know Isabel existed, so the apparition of Larry Rivers had to be pure coincidence. Coincidence or a trick of fate (Amalfitano remembered a time when he believed that nothing happened by chance, everything happened for some reason, but when was that time? he couldn’t remember, all he could remember was that at some point this was what he believed), something that must hold some meaning, some larger truth, a sign of the terrible state of grace in which Padilla found himself, an emergency exit overlooked until now, or a message intended specifically for Amalfitano, a message perhaps signaling that he should have faith, that things that seemed to have come to a halt were still in motion, things that seemed like ruined statues were mending themselves and recovering.

He read gratefully. Padilla talked about a Rauschenberg show (but if it was a Rauschenberg show why had he sent a Larry Rivers postcard?) at a gallery in the heart of Barcelona, about the hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, about young poets whom he, Padilla, hadn’t seen for ages, about a long walk to Plaza Cataluña and then down the Ramblas to the port, and then the streets became a labyrinth and Padilla and his poet friends (renegades who wrote indiscriminately in Spanish and Catalan and who were all homosexuals and who had no love for critics in either Spanish or Catalan) vanished with open eyes into a secret night, an iron night, said Padilla.

Then, by way of a postcript or curious side note, on a half sheet of paper and in tiny handwriting, Padilla talked about a trip to Girona to visit the parents of one of the poets, and about the nearly empty train that transported them through the “Catalan countryside,” and about a North African who was reading a book backwards, prompting the poet from Girona, polite but exceedingly nosy, to ask whether it was the Koran, and the North African’s answer was yes, the sura of mercy or compassion or charity (Padilla couldn’t remember which), which led the poet from Girona to ask whether the mercy (or compassion or charity) preached there applied to Christians, too, and again the North African’s answer was yes, certainly, of course, absolutely, all human beings, and he spoke with such warmth that the poet from Girona was emboldened to ask whether it also applied to atheists and homosexuals, and this time the North African answered frankly that he didn’t know, he supposed so, since atheists and faggots were human beings, weren’t they? but that in all sincerity he didn’t know the answer, maybe yes, maybe no. And then the North African asked the poet from Girona what he believed. And the poet from Girona, preemptively offended, tacitly humiliated, answered haughtily that he believed in what he could see from the windows of the train: woods, gardens, houses, roads, cars, bicycles, tractors-progress, in short. To which the North African replied that progress wasn’t really so important. Which made the poet from Girona exclaim that if it weren’t for progress neither he nor the North African would be having this comfortable chat in a half-empty train. To which the North African replied that reality was an illusion and that at this very moment they might just as well be talking in a Bedouin tent in the desert. Which, after it made him smile, made the poet from Girona say that they might be talking in the desert or they might be fucking. To which the North African replied that if the poet from Girona were a woman, he would definitely take her to his harem, but since the poet from Girona seemed to be only a faggot dog and he was only a poor immigrant, that possibility or illusion was barred. Which made the poet from Girona say that in that case the sura of mercy meant less than a bicycle, and that he should watch what he said since the tip of a bike seat had been known to give more than a few people a poke in the ass. To which the North African replied that this would be in the poet’s world, not his own, where martyrs always walked with their faces held high. Which made the poet from Girona say that all the Moors he had known were either rent boys or thieves. To which the North African replied that he couldn’t be responsible for the kinds of friends a faggot pig might have. Which made the poet from Girona say: go ahead, call me a faggot and a pig, but I bet you won’t let me blow you right here. To which the North African replied that the flesh was weak and that he might as well get used to torture. Which made the poet from Girona say: unzip your pants and let me suck you off, darling. To which the North African replied that he’d sooner die. Which made the Girona poet ask: will I be saved? will I be saved too? To which the Maghrebi replied that he didn’t know, he honestly didn’t know.

I would have liked, said Padilla in conclusion, to take him to a hotel, he was a North African open to the poetry of the world, and I’m sure he’d never been buggered.

Amalfitano’s reply was written on the back of a Frida Kahlo postcard (The Two Fridas, 1939) and he said that on Padilla’s advice, though he actually couldn’t remember whether Padilla had suggested this explicitly, he had begun to look for Arcimboldi’s novels. Naturally, his search was restricted to the Mexico City bookstores that received new releases from Spain, and the International Bookstore of Tijuana, which carried hardly any books in French, but where he had been assured they could be found. He had also written to the French Bookstore in Mexico City, though it had been a while and he hadn’t heard back. Maybe, he ventured, the French Bookstore has gone out of business and it will be years yet before word reaches Santa Teresa. About the Larry Rivers postcard he chose to say nothing.

Padilla’s next letter arrived two days later, not long enough afterward to be a response to Amalfitano’s letter. It was, along general lines, a synopsis of the novel that Padilla was writing, though for a synopsis, thought Amalfitano, it was rather vague. It was as if something-during the two-day trip to Girona or in his previous postcard or in the Girona home cooking he’d eaten-hadn’t agreed with him. He seemed drunk or drugged. Even his writing (the letter was handwritten) was agitated, at points almost illegible.

He talked about the novel in general (randomly citing Emilia Pardo Bazán, Clarín, and a Spanish Romantic novelist who had drowned himself in a river in one of the Baltic states) and about The God of Homosexuals in particular. He mentioned an Argentinean bishop or archbishop who had proposed moving the entire non-heterosexual population of Argentina to the pampa, where, lacking the power or opportunity to pervert the rest of the citizens, they would set about building their own nation, with its own laws and traditions. The wise archbishop had even given his project a name. It was called Argentina 2, but it might just as well have been called Faggotlandia.

He talked about his ambitions: to be the Aimé Césaire of homosexuals (his handwriting in this paragraph was shaky, as if he were writing with his left hand), he said that some nights he heard the tom-tom beat of his passion, but he didn’t know for sure whether it was really the beat of his passion or of his youth slipping through his fingers, maybe, he added, it’s just the beat of poetry, the beat that comes to us all without exception at some mysterious hour, easily missed but absolutely free.

The God of Homosexuals, he said, would take shape first in dreams and then along deserted streets, the kind visited only by those who dream waking dreams. Its body, its face: a hybrid of the Hulk and the Terminator, a terrible and repulsive colossus. From this monster they (the homosexuals) expected endless bounty, not the republic on the pampa or in the Patagonia of the Argentinean archbishop, but a republic on another planet, a thousand light-years from earth.

The letter ended abruptly, as if his pen had run out of ink, but he sent kisses to Amalfitano and his daughter.

18

Padilla’s next letter talked about Elisa. It said that one night when he got home he found the girl outside his building waiting for him. She was sick, with bruises on her neck, a slight fever, and not much interest in sleeping. We got in bed together, he said, it was very late and we tried to make love, but her general lowness was matched by my own despondency, my fever, my shivers. At first they just masturbated on opposite sides of the bed, gazing into each other’s eyes, saying nothing for a long time. The result was that neither of them could come and sleep fled them both for good. Wide-awake, said Padilla, we talked until dawn, and only then were we finally able to fall asleep.

So Padilla began to talk about the first thing that came into his head, and all of a sudden he found himself telling the story of Leopoldo María Panero, his poems, his madness, what he imagined his life must be like at the Mondragón asylum. The next thing he realized, the girl was kneeling over him or curled around his legs or tying him to the bedposts or asking him to tie her up, said Padilla, or the two of them were sitting on the rug, naked, or they were talking for the first time about death in an innocent, idiotic, desperate, brave way, making plans and promising each other that they would carry them out. Of course, we didn’t end up making love, said Padilla, at least technically we didn’t.

The problem, said Padilla further on, is that the next day I was sober again (if you could say that what had happened the night before took place in a state of drunkenness), but not Elisa, who all through breakfast couldn’t stop going over the things they’d talked about, remembering bits of everything that Padilla had told her, sometimes priding herself on her incredible memory, since their late-night conversation hadn’t exactly been a model of coherence, and also, when he got like that, admitted Padilla, he talked in bursts, too fast, confusedly, it was a coprolalic kind of thing, so that whoever he was talking to (and Padilla himself) tended to miss more than half of what he was saying, but Elisa, apparently, remembered everything: names, book titles, the petty intrigues and small excesses of a (literary) life long gone.

So the breakfast in question had been very strange.

Suddenly I had a vision of myself. But as a woman. Which (as you know) is something I’ve never wished for. But there I was, on the other side of the table, a woman with very thin lips, sick, young, poor, unkempt. A woman with the look of someone near death. I’m surprised I didn’t kick her out of the house on the spot, said Padilla, clearly not quite persuaded, clearly a little scared. About his novel he said nothing.

Amalfitano’s response was brief and epigrammatically ambiguous: he began by saying that Padilla’s friendship with Elisa must have some meaning that they had yet to understand, and he ended with an ominous list of the daily problems he faced, both in the philosophy department and at home, in his father-daughter dealings with Rosa, who was distancing herself from him more and more.

As had become habitual, Padilla didn’t wait for Amalfitano’s response to send him another letter.

He talked again about Elisa.

For three days he had lost sight of her. On the fourth, when he was finally beginning to forget that strange mnemotechnical epiphany, he found her outside his building at a similar time of night and in similar circumstances. Again they slept together. Again they masturbated (this time they both came). Again they talked.

The girl, said Padilla, had come up with a plan to cure herself. The plan was to hitchhike from Barcelona to the Mondragón asylum. When she told him this, Padilla burst out laughing. But she kept talking. This time it was dark and the only light filtered in the window from the skylight in the inner courtyard. She spoke, said Padilla, in a monotone, but it wasn’t a monotone, it was full of inflection, but it lacked inflection, it was contaminated by the slang of Barcelona’s blue-collar neighborhoods, but at the same time it was the voice of a young lady from Sarriá. You, thought Amalfitano, have read too much Gombrowicz.

The rest of the letter continued at great length on the same subject. The dark room. Elisa’s voice describing an impossible trip. Padilla’s questions: why did she think she would be cured by traveling? what did she expect from Leopoldo María Panero and the Mondragón asylum? The urge to laugh, and Padilla’s laughter and teasing. Sleeping with a faggot is messing with your head. Elisa’s laughter, which for a fraction of a second seemed to light up the room and then shoot like backwards lightning through the window joints, upward, toward the courtyard skylight and the stars.

But the letter ended on a less than festive note. Elisa is here with me, said the last paragraph, when I went out this afternoon she stayed here, in bed, my father and I talked about taking her to the hospital but she refused, we made her some chicken broth, she drank it, and then she fell asleep.

19

Padilla’s next letter, the first that Amalfitano didn’t answer right away, talked about the pilgrimage to San Sebastián and the terms on which it would be conducted, terms dictated by the wavering voice of Elisa, who, he reported, was in the hospital now and with whom it was best not to argue, at least until she recovered. At the hospital, he said, I’ve gotten to see her family again, the junkie brother I tried to strangle, her mother, who’s a saint, assorted aunts and cousins. Once Raguenau had come with him, and another time Adrià, both of them worried about the interest Padilla had taken in the girl. His friends, he said, advised him to stop visiting her, stop taking care of her, start taking care of himself. But Padilla ignored them and spent a night or two at the foot of Elisa’s bed. She asked him to talk to her about Panero. When Raguenau and Adrià heard this they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But Padilla took it seriously and told Elisa everything he knew about Panero, which wasn’t much, actually; the rest he made up. And when he couldn’t think what else to make up he brought volumes of Panero’s poetry to the hospital and read them to Elisa.

At first she didn’t understand them.

I think, said Padilla, that she understands even less about these things than I realized at first.

But he was undaunted and he devised a method (or something resembling a method) of reading. It was simple. He decided to read Panero’s poems aloud in chronological order. He began with the first book and ended with the last and after each poem he offered a brief commentary that didn’t pretend to explain the whole poem, which was impossible, according to Padilla, but rather a single line, an image, a metaphor. This way, Elisa understood and retained at least a fragment of each poem. Soon, wrote Padilla, Elisa was reading Panero’s books on her own and her comprehension of them (but the word comprehension conveys none of the desperation and communion of her reading) was luminous.

When she was discharged, Padilla-in a rather crepuscular gesture, thought Amalfitano-presented her with all the books he had loaned her and left. He didn’t expect to see her again and for a few days he was happy about it. Raguenau and Adrià took him out to the movies and the theater. He went out on his own again. He got back to work, though unenthusiastically, on The God of Homosexuals. Very late one night, coming home drunk and high, he found her sitting outside his building, waiting for him.

According to Padilla, Elisa was death.

Amalfitano’s response was a five-page letter, hastily written between classes, in which he begged him to listen to the baker and his nephew, and in which, with perhaps exaggerated optimism, he related the giant steps that science was taking in its fight against AIDS. According to some doctors in California, he claimed, the disease was steps away from becoming simply another chronic ailment, something that didn’t necessarily mean a death sentence.

About the latest developments in Santa Teresa he chose to remain silent.

Padilla’s response arrived shortly afterward, too soon to be a reply to Amalfitano’s letter.

It was written on the back of an airmail postcard from Barcelona and it said that his life had taken a radical turn. Elisa is living with me now, he said, and my father is beside himself with joy. Of course, Elisa and I are like brother and sister. Some nights we masturbate side by side. But really, it doesn’t happen very often. I do the shopping. Elisa cooks and deals heroin in her old neighborhood. We live in the most delightful holding pattern. At night we sit on the couch and watch TV, my father, Elisa, and me. Something’s going to happen soon. I’ll keep you posted.