“Why don’t you please let Belencito Jojoa speak, Mr. Mayor?” Primavera said, irritated, rekindling the guests’ surprise at her.
“Belencito will speak,” the doctor said, “and we’ll all speak, all of us. Don’t get worked up.”
“Why don’t you let me recall my experience at the university first? It would serve as an introduction,” the professor persisted, vehemently, “and also as a warning to you, Justo Pastor. All these things happening around the Bolívar float oblige me to refresh your memory.”
He had noted Primavera’s blossoming interest in the discussion, and wanted to assert himself now, over the doctor and Belencito. And no-one could hold out against him any longer, his plea was so stubborn, but the woman lit another cigarette, with undeniable annoyance.
“I’ll just pop into the kitchen for a moment,” she said, and deserted them.
She seemed happy to make them all sad.
PART II
1
Arcaín Chivo himself used the word “catastrophic” to refer to the first course he taught at the university, in the early 1960s, that a well-supported student petition had forced him to give up. At least that subject, “The History of Colombia,” had served to strengthen his friendship with Doctor Proceso, revolving as it did around the menacing figure who shared their lives, the so-called Liberator, as they called him, and above all it had served to teach him a lesson. He remembered the catastrophe with visible dread and distress. The moral of the story, he said, was not to go plunging into the dark waters of Colombian independence with your students, because not just your career but your very life would be endangered.
So it was that from the post in history he moved on to one in philosophy, and only there did he manage to remain in peace, without anyone bothering about his existence. But, he wondered, what had actually happened with the history post? He didn’t have an answer, or rather he had a whole host.
It all began when the students complained to the vice-chancellor about the peculiar way Chivo sometimes delivered his classes: he lay on his side on the large desk, his head propped on one hand, face turned towards the class, like someone speaking lazily from bed, and, according to his detractors, curled up still further, head sunk onto his chest, observing a sombre silence, completely motionless, then suddenly raised his ruddy, smiling face and asked his students whether his pose reminded them of a young thought in its foetal stage. He did and said bizarre things like this (his students complained) without anyone being able to explain why or what for — a reproach? a provocation? — and then he jumped down off the desk and carried on with his class as if absolutely nothing had happened.
But it was not for this alone that the most fervent students got rid of him: to start with, he called Karl Marx “Saint Karl Marx.” He said that he did it knowing full well he was “surrounded” by Marxists. He had nothing against Saint Marx, he explained: on the contrary, Saint Karl was the basis for his interpretation of labour and the eternally unjust relationships between men — which is the same thing as saying life itself, he said — but then he’d go on to argue with Marx afresh and against the use made of his doctrine by totalitarian regimes, and he called him “Saint” again, as an element of irony, which nonetheless infuriated the potential Marxists who beset him. Doctor Proceso wondered why they were also incapable of tolerating a bit of sarcasm, when he found out about it.
The intolerance spilled over when Arcaín Chivo — who pained his students every morning by chalking a pun up on the board: Arcaín arts = insanity—started to study a text written by Karl Marx on Simón Bolívar:
“This is an article Saint Marx was commissioned to write by the worthy gentlemen of The New American Cyclopaedia. His study contains certain errors and inaccuracies that are not serious and do not damage the overall picture. For example, he confers upon foreign legions, above all the British, a decisive role in the independence struggles; but Sañudo can better explain what the role of the ‘foreign legions’ was: usually mercenaries who came only in search of gold, in the style of the Spanish conquistadors, and served the highest bidder; they changed sides depending which way the wind was blowing. The thing is, historians never agree on the details, kids. It’s impossible to expect such agreement. They agree, it is to be hoped, on the essence of events, if they are truthful historians. In the case at hand, Saint Karl Marx and José Rafael Sañudo are very much in agreement on the biographical picture they paint of this inimitable leader, Saint Simón Bolívar. They concur with the unavoidable truth, so suppressed by historians of various periods. What truth? That Bolívar is a lie, nothing more than that. And why? That’s the question to answer, my young friends. That’s the reason The New American Cyclopaedia proposed the study. Saint Karl had to think hard about our hero and research him even harder, and why not? This is Saint Karl Marx, señores. He wasn’t going to write for the sake of writing. Among his sources he had the testimonies of European officers who fought alongside Bolívar. Saint Karl did his utmost, no doubt; he was conscientious in what he did. And it doesn’t matter that he might have done it with the object of getting a few pennies so he could eat, because that great saint, who must have suffered hunger (so much unproductive time, I mean, spent sitting writing, without getting the smallest cash in return), also had to waste his time, otherwise devoted to philosophy and sociology, on the shadowy figure of a dictator of the Andes, thanks to an American encyclopaedia, the one which paid the best for the thought of the age, I suppose.”
“Dictator of the Andes”: the students stirred; a wave of dissenting voices ran around the lecture theatre for a moment.
The essay was included in a collection of the Selected Writings of Karl Marx, in English, but the professor had already translated and typed it up “with great affection,” as he would say in his defence, “for my enlightened students,” and he would explain that at the time he was not worried that none of the “enlightened” asked him for a copy.
“We’re going to read, boys and girls,” he had said to them, “we’re going to read in turn. That’s my way of making everyone do it; you are all free to think ‘my voice is better than yours.’ Appreciate the drastic summary, readable because it’s convincing, don’t be put off by the few pages to come, you’re not going to get worn out reading them.”
And he started to read, and had to carry on alone, because in open rebellion none of his students agreed to take over from him, to read how Marx describes Bolívar, from his birth in Caracas in 1783 to his death in Santa Marta forty-seven years later.
With the voice of a budding actor Arcaín Chivo took a firm, booming stand at certain points, and from time to time offered the pages, with a sweeping gesture, to his listeners, but no-one consented to go up on the stage.
“Señor Rodolfo Puelles, please read.”
“I don’t read, Professor.”