Thursday, chez Miquel.
Homero, who was invited to dinner last night at Miquel’s, does not show up. I call him on the phone. He apologizes. He is a bit drunk and very tired, he tells me. He is staying for dinner at the house of Colombian friends who are hosting him, who have lived in Paris for some time. With Miquel, I talk again about the Archive. He tells me that he also assumed, when he heard that I was doing “research” there, that one of my motives would be to find out something about the kidnapping of my mother. I tell him that is not the case, but that of course I would like to learn as much as possible about that.
“Sure,” he says, “but you should clarify for the ‘chief’ that you will not use what you find for legal or judicial purposes—right?”
I tell him that I don’t know if they would believe me.
“Yes,” he answers. “You’re right, they’re not going to believe you.”
Phone call from Lucca, the small town in Tuscany where my sister Mónica settled a few months ago with her four children. She invites me to go visit them. A little later, a call from my mother in Guatemala: she insists that I go to Italy, and she offers to pay for my plane ticket to prevent me from using my wallet as a pretext not to go.
I am pleased to think that Mónica and her children are far away from Guatemala. Safe, I think. I cannot stop imagining that perhaps in the not-too-distant future I will go into exile again. And of course I worry how something like that could affect Pía’s future.
Friday. Five in the morning. Sleepless.
I had dinner last night with Alice Audouin, whom I had not seen for years. I talked to her about the Archive. She asked if working on something like that didn’t put me in physical danger. I answered—with a bit of exaggeration—that in a country like Guatemala everyone lives in constant physical danger. Alice said: “Ah, the danger, the dignity of danger, here we have lost it.”
I got back to Miquel’s house around midnight. I called B+ several times, both her home and her cell phones. She does not answer. In Guatemala it would be four in the afternoon.
Saturday.
I read Balzac, the short biography by Zweig. He says this about some manuscripts by Balzac: “One can see how the lines, which at first are neat and orderly, then swell up like the veins of an angry man.” Something similar could be seen in my writing, I think.
About Fouché, Napoleon’s minister of police, of whom Zweig also speaks in the work about Balzac: “He needed intrigue as much as nourishment.”
Lunch with Guillermo Escalón, the cameraman. It’s the birthday of his son Sebastián, who is thinking of going to live in Guatemala for a while.
“Why?” I ask him.
“I’m fed up with Paris,” he says. And also fed up with the magazine (by France’s National Scientific Research Center), where he has been working as a reporter for a few years).
I eat dinner alone at the Pick-Clops, near Miquel’s studio.
Then a very late, amorous call from B+. Alluding to a comment of mine about her habit of scolding me, she recites these verses by her beloved Sor Juana: Listen to me, if you can, with your eyes . . . / since my rough voice does not reach you, / hear me, deaf one, as I complain in silence.
“But I cannot see you,” I say.
“That does not matter, silly.” she answers. “It is not about that; you can see me in your imagination, no?”
I ask her what she is wearing.
Sunday.
First night of normal sleep since I arrived in Europe a week ago. A beautiful sunny day. Appointment with Claude to have lunch in Montmartre.
Vague memory of a dream with Roberto Lemus, who works in the Archive and is one of the possible kidnappers of my mother. He is a pallid man, medium height, with drooping shoulders, a round belly, and a certain intellectual air, which, in the dream, makes me think of Allen Ginsberg. He has light green eyes and big jug ears. He reads a newspaper aloud. He has a nasal, phlegmatic voice. (I must listen to the cassettes we recorded during the kidnapping negotiations; that voice could be the voice of the negotiator, I think when I wake up.)
Mónica calls me again on the phone. I confirm my travel plans to Italy next week. She will pick me up at Pisa airport with the landlady of the apartment where she lives.
Difficult viewing and reading, on my laptop, of the CDs with the National Police Yearly Reports that I have brought with me. Thus far, I have not been able to find the reports on the Identification Bureau prepared by Benedicto Tun. Surprise. On the cover of the Yearly Report from 1964, instead of the usual plain cover with no art, a small graphic discovery: a representation in perspective, with a single vanishing point, of a large, open tome. On the bottom edge of the tome, police handcuffs. Above the book, looming over it, a bat with outstretched wings. The caption, “Yearly Report,” in Gothic characters. The effect is sinister.
I show it to Miquel and notice with satisfaction his slight startled jump.
“Man, that is even a little bit scary.” He leans toward the screen. “That bat was lovingly made.”
“Yes. There are those who love their job,” I say.
Monday.
Before getting out of bed, I read the Stendhal by Zweig.
Another splendid day, with a little less heat than yesterday.
A revelation in the shower: it’s not so much that I am bothered by the erudition of others—Miquel’s, Guillermo’s, or Homero’s—in their different “fields of knowledge,” as much as by the awareness of the immensity of my own overall ignorance, the horizons of which, as I acquire new knowledge, or glimpses of knowledge, seem wider each day.
Tuesday.
When I open my eyes, “the dregs of my dreams are lost.” At night, while I tossed and turned in bed unable to fall asleep, my thoughts went to the CDs from the Archive, which I believe came into my hands thanks to Galíndez. I have found copies of several files after 1970, which I am not supposed to see. When I showed Miquel the image of the bat, I mentioned this.
“Those documents,” I said. “I prefer to not even open them.”
“But why not?” he replies. “Maybe they gave them to you because they want you to see them.”
I have dinner with Gustavo Guerrero, the editor at Gallimard. He proposes that I write something for the Nouvelle Revue Française about Borges by Bioy, which I consider to be a secretly complex, unique, magnificent book. This, following our conversation about an article that came out a few days ago in El Mundo, where Bioy’s integrity and that of the editors of the book is questioned: “Let us remember,” the article says, “that Bioy never wanted to publish those diaries, and they are being published by others, who may or may not have manipulated the writer’s private mischief.”
I dream about a traffic violation. By mistake, I drive in the wrong direction in front of the barracks of the Fortress of the Honor Guard, on Avenida de la Reforma. Two soldiers standing at the door aim at me with old rifles. I fear they might shoot, but they allow me to turn around and drive away.
Wednesday.
Last night I dined with Marcos Cisneros, the Colombian editor and Homero’s friend. It seems to me that he has not yet read Borges by Bioy, although during our telephone conversation that afternoon he told me that to him it seemed “an excellent book.”
I return late, quite drunk. I call B+ several times; I do not find her.
I wake up out of sorts. I can’t remember any dreams.
At noon, Miquel tells me about the bronze elephant, part of his exhibition opening next Saturday. It is a young elephant with its legs up in the air, balanced on the tip of its trunk. It’s a “comical” piece, about four meters high and weighing about fifteen hundred kilos.
At the last minute, Miquel’s Paris dealer, Yvon Lambert, does not want to exhibit it in his gallery, out of fear that the floor may not be able to bear so much weight. Furthermore, the insurer refuses to cover the risks. Miquel decides to go to the gallery, to propose a solution. I go with him.
YL welcomes Miquel into his office and greets
him effusively. However, during the visit Miquel spends his time insulting YL, without YL ever taking the hint.
“This used to be a nice gallery,” Miquel tells YL, “but it seems that each year it gets smaller. Have you moved the partitions?”
YL acknowledges that he has reduced the space of the main showroom in order to add another room. To change the subject, YL asks Miquel about one of his female friends, who used to live in Paris and now lives in Spain.
“What?” Miquel says to him. “You’re into girls now?”
YL’s assistant shows Miquel a copy of the catalog for his exhibition, which she just received from the printer. The color reproduction leaves something to be desired. But Miquel focuses on the new gallery logo, which appears on the cover.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It reminds me of the shirt designer’s logo.”
And so on, until we say goodbye—and by then YL’s mood no longer seems as good as it did at the beginning.
In the afternoon, travel to Italy.
Thursday. In Lucca.
They come to pick me up at the airport, which is about forty minutes from Lucca: Mónica and the Luccan couple—Mr. Rino and Mrs. Angela—who rent her the apartment where she has settled with her children. They are an older couple. As we leave the parking garage, Mr. Rino, who drives a compact Mercedes, has difficulty paying the electronic ticket, and says to his wife: “Ma cosa vuoi? Sono un vecchietto.”
We get lost on the way. We stop to ask for directions in a cozy restaurant, so we decide to have dinner there. It is nine thirty at night. At dinner I learn that Mr. Rino, sixty-six, is retired. He was a tailor. Angela, his wife, treats Mónica with great affection. It seems to me that she has extended her vocation as an Italian mother—she has a daughter already married and no longer living there.
They both evince enormous ignorance about the world in general, an ignorance similar to that which I encountered about fifteen years ago in our Italian relatives from Piedmont—great-uncles, cousins twice removed. When they hear Mónica and me speak Spanish, Mr. Rino expresses amazement. “La vostra lingua è veramente una lingua latina,” he says.
I explain that “Guatemalan” is, except for the accent and some regionalisms, the same language as Spanish.
“But you,” he says, “are not Spanish. The Spaniards killed so many Indians and committed so many atrocities.”
“Yes,” I say. “And they brought the Spanish language to America. We are the heirs to those Spaniards, at least in part.
“Is that so?” he exclaims, a little surprised.
“It is clear,” I say, “that we [I look at Mónica, to indicate her as an example] are not Maya, okay? We have some Maya in us, but our names are European, and we have Italian blood on our father’s side. But we are also descendants of the conquistadors. We are also the bad guys!” I laugh.
Mrs. Angela and Mr. Rino seem dismayed.
We arrive in Lucca at midnight. Mónica’s apartment is small but comfortable. The children seem happy. The two older ones have received scholarships for higher education, and they have already been offered jobs. The little ones learn Italian.
In the morning I discover, outside the window in the dining room, a nice view over a large medieval garden with big trees, where yellow-legged birds flutter above the dark foliage.
Friday.
Last night, I had a cocaine dream, with Carter Coleman, Bret Easton Ellis, Alejandro D—my old friend from Cobán—and JL. A clear substance that, upon making contact with the palm of my hand, turns into small ice cubes. Banal conversation with Alejandro (about something that happened in Cobán). He seemed a bit conflicted. He said that he no longer wants the drug and yet takes it in large quantities.
After lunch, on a stroll along the walls surrounding Lucca, I speak with Mauro, Mónica’s eldest son, about Guatemala. Mauro is interested in knowing how things are over there. I tell him about the Salvadoran congressmen assassinated by policemen, then we talk about the scandal at the Ministry of Education (over the illicit transfer of funds to the Ministry of Public Works for the construction of a new airport), and about Rigoberta Menchú’s presidential run. Mauro asks a series of questions about how a country like Guatemala could change for the better. We come to the conclusion that, miracles aside, there’s nothing good to be expected, except perhaps a moral revolution (unlikely) or intervention by a higher power.
“Like that of the United States in Iraq?” Mauro asks, and we laugh.
I tell him that things are going to get worse long before they get better. I tell him that maybe the thing is not to think about how to change things, but how to get away from it all. That his destiny is not necessarily there, that maybe he should consider the possibility of living in another country.
“I would like to return,” he answers.
“Why not study political science?” I ask, not without irony.
He shakes his head doubtfully, and does not answer.
I talk to him about Haiti, “practically converted into a cemetery,” as a Spanish columnist recently said.
“Guatemala could end up that way too, if things do not change,” I say.
Mauro could very well have asked why I went back to Guatemala, which would be difficult to explain, but he did not ask.
That afternoon I travel back to Paris.
Saturday, chez Miquel in Paris.
Joubert, quoted by Du Bos: La bonhomie est une perfection.
Homero, who had agreed to call me last night to have dinner together (he goes back to Montreal tomorrow morning) does not call.
Late at night at Miquel’s, with his daughter Marcela, we watch Short Cuts by Altman.
Sunday.
Miquel’s exhibit, yesterday afternoon, a success.
The young bronze elephant is on display in a cobbled courtyard, in a private small palace belonging to a friend of Miquel’s, very close to YL’s gallery. People exclaim and smile when they see it, balanced on its straight trunk with its legs extended into the air and its little tail pointing up toward the sky. In the gallery, a display of large canvases with enormous skulls surrounded by burnt matches, open shells, and snails drying in the sun—still lifes, memento mori and vanitas, that simultaneously evoke the tradition whence they come while merrily distancing themselves from it.
In the evening, dinner at Maxim’s. I talk for a while with Castor Siebel, octogenarian art critic, an old friend of Miquel’s. I am surprised by his good memory; he remembers my full name, and the only time that we met before, about ten years ago, with Miquel, in a brasserie. He asks me where I live now. “Don’t you feel threatened,” he asks later, “living in Guatemala?” I tell him that saying yes would be an exaggeration but saying no would not be the exact truth.
On a recommendation from Miquel, I read the first chapters of Zweig’s Fouché, “inventor of the political police,” and often cited by Tun in the Yearly Reports.
In the afternoon, in his studio, Miquel shows me the experiments he is working on with materials and paint for his project for the dome of the Palace of Nations, home of the United Nations Office in Geneva. It is a seascape with a surface area of about one thousand square meters. “The dome is huge,” he says, “like a bullring, but upside down.” He also shows me pieces for a stage set that he might soon create for Peter Brook. They are something like large pillows made with balls of newspaper pasted with a little diluted glue onto undulating sheets. Viewed from the side, they are reminiscent of the cross section of flat, striated muscle fiber of a cactus leaf.
“This,” he tells me, “could be used to make beds and other furniture, and perhaps even homes for poor people.” I think of teaching the technique to Pía after returning to Guatemala.
Almost at dawn, back from the party at Maxim’s, I call B+. She scolds me when she realizes what time it is in Paris, and that I’m “too cheerful.” I tell her she is exaggerating. In the end, we agree that she will pick me up at the airport on Tuesday. The flight, I tell her, will arrive almost at midnight. She compl
ains about the late hour but assures me that she will be there.
I read De Quincey, Essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language, and through him I come to Salvator Rosa, the “bandit painter and satirical author from the seventeenth century” (possibly our ancestor?) beloved by the English romantics, who wrote:
“Our wealth must be spiritual, and we must content ourselves with small sips while others choke on prosperity.”
Monday.
Last night, with Miquel, we saw Notes from the Underground, a curious and interesting adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s story transplanted to Los Angeles. We spoke once again of the expedition project to El Golea (Algeria), to look for the blockhouse with the frescoes by François Augiéras.
I have a dream about an experiment with “Barceló blocks.” In the dream, Pía and I build a great pyramid in a vacant lot in Guatemala City, where I return tomorrow.
Tuesday. Seven thirty in the morning (before leaving for the airport).
Yesterday, Guillermo Escalón took me to visit Jacobo Rodríguez Padilla, a Guatemalan artist who is eighty-five, exiled in Paris since the fifties, shortly after the overthrow of Arbenz and the Revolutionary Government. Tiny studio apartment: the antithesis, one could say, of Miquel’s studio. He has some very curious canvases, part surrealist and part naïve. A vague palette that allows for all colors. He showed us several very small sculptures that I liked a lot, especially one made of alabaster that made me think of an ancient Chinese work. The artist is small, very thin, and seems exceedingly fragile, like a little bird, one could say. He told me that Guillermo has told him about the project at the Archive that I have been working on. Jacobo asked several questions. I told him about the Identification Bureau. He immediately mentioned Benedicto Tun.
“Could he have been related to Francisco Tun, the painter, or not?” he asked in jest, and then, he added, in seriousness: “That man was feared. He knew a lot. He was considered a technician or a scientist more than a policeman. But we were not sure it was advisable to keep such a person at his post, after the Revolution. In any case, he stayed there.”
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