lvador to hear that detestable music interpreted by guys disguising themselves as Latin Americans, which is what I said to Tolín, said Vega. Once was enough to cure me of any interest in this so-called artistic event that they present at this bar, the vile rock group was enough. Leafing through newspapers and watching television in my brother’s house has been enough to give me an idea of the wasteland I’m in, Moya, it’s a pit, a super-deep well, and the self-proclaimed artists and their works are nothing more than something of a pathetic farce: they believe in ideals, but their ignorance and mediocrity are such that they believe they are ideal artists. But they’re vulgar, mediocre simulators, Moya. It’s truly revolting, said Vega, this country where there are no artists, only simulators, where the only creators are half-assed imitators. I don’t know what you’re doing here, Moya, if you’re dedicating yourself to literature, as you say, you ought to look elsewhere. This country is nowhere, I can assure you as someone who was born here, I regularly receive the world’s leading art periodicals, I read with care the sections on culture and art in the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, which is why I can assure you that this country is nothing, at least artistically, no one knows anything about it, it interests no one, no one born here matters in the world of art because the world of art is not the world of politics or crime, said Vega. You’ve got to get yourself out of here, Moya, set sail, relocate to a country that exists, it’s the only way you’ll write something worthwhile, instead of your famished little stories they publish and applaud you for, that’s good for nothing, Moya, pure provincial groveling, you need to write something worth it, and here you won’t do it, I’m sure. I’ve already told you: this place is at odds with art and any manifestation of the spirit; its only vocation is commerce and business, which is why everyone wants to be a business administrator, to better manage their commercial and business dealings, this is why everyone bows at the feet of the military, because they learned to be effective businessmen and establish business connections with them from the beginning thanks to the war, said Vega. It’s an illiterate culture, Moya, a culture that denies itself the written word, without any vocation of record or historical memory, without any perception of the past, it’s a “gadfly culture” whose only horizon is the present, the immediate, a culture with the memory of a gadfly, crashing every two seconds against the same window glass because after two seconds it’s already forgotten that the glass existed. It is a miserable culture, Moya, for which the written word doesn’t have the least importance, it jumped from the most atrocious illiteracy to fascinate itself with the stupidity of television, a fatal jump, Moya, this culture, jumping over the written word, cleanly and simply sailing above the centuries in which humanity developed thanks to the written word, said Vega. But the truth is, Moya, beyond this cultural misery, since I feel affection for you, I’ll tell you what you should value if you really want to be a writer: if you really have talent, the will, and the discipline required to create a work of art, I say this to you seriously, Moya, with your famished little stories you’re not going to go anywhere, it’s not possible at your age to continue publishing your famished little stories that go absolutely unnoticed, that no one knows or reads, your famished little stories don’t exist, Moya, only for your neighborhood friends. Those famished little stories about sex and violence aren’t worth it, I say this to you with affection, Moya, you’d be better off staying in journalism or in another discipline; but at your age, to be publishing these famished stories is a pity, said Vega, no matter how much sex and violence you put into them, there’s no way these famished little stories will transcend. Don’t waste your time, Moya, this isn’t a country of writers, it’s impossible for this country to produce writers of quality; it’s not possible for writers who are worth it to emerge in this country where no one is interested in literature, art, or any manifestation of the spirit. Just look at the well-known cases, the provincial legends, and you’ll see that they’re about average writers, without universal appeal, always more preoccupied with ideology than literature; you don’t have to wear yourself out, Moya, just compare this country’s writers with those of neighboring countries and you realize that the local legends are second-rate: Salarrué, unlike Asturias, is more interested in these backwaters, in outdated esoterics, than literature, he dedicated himself more to becoming a saint of the people than writing a vast and universal work; Roque Dalton, as opposed to Rubén Darío, seems like a fanatical communist whose best attribute was being assassinated by his own comrades, a fanatical communist who wrote some decent poetry, but who, in his ideological obstinacy, wrote the most shameful, hair-raisingly horrible pro-communist poems, a fanatic and crusader for communism whose life and work was more enthusiastically kneeled before than Castro’s; for him, the ideal society was a dictatorship like Castro’s, Dalton was a blockhead who died in his fight to establish a government like Castro’s in these lands, assassinated by his own comrades who until then were Castro supporters, said Vega. It’s truly sad, Moya, truly a calamity, proof that the disgrace in which these people live contaminates even their best minds with ideological fanaticism, irrefutable proof that ideological fanaticism belongs to those living in disgrace. Now night is falling, Moya, the best hour of the day if it weren’t for these miserable mosquitoes that will soon appear to make our lives miserable, these miserable mosquitoes haven’t let me be since I came to this country, Moya, there hasn’t been a night in which a squadron of miserable mosquitoes hasn’t come to wake me up and fry my nerves, nothing has fried my nerves more than being woken up in the middle of the night by these miserable mosquitoes with their desperate hum, their insidious, desperate hum that’s turned all of my nights since I returned to this country into a nightmare, Moya, there hasn’t been a night in which I haven’t had to wake up and turn on the bedroom light in my brother’s house to defend myself against these miserable mosquitoes, capable of frying my nerves with their insidious, desperate hum like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, said Vega. I’m tremendously anxious to know if in the hotel room, as in the room in my brother’s house, a squadron of mosquitoes will also appear in the middle of the night to disrupt my dreams, to fry my nerves, to force me to turn on the lights and put me in a state of alert to detect their hum and then attack them with my open palm. Although in my brother’s house, I’m sure the mosquitoes got in because the servant never followed my instructions to close the door and windows of my room after six in the evening, she was sluggish and destructive and never complied with this or any other instruction I gave her: she was a busty, potbellied, hugely backsided woman capable of destroying whatever garment or object fell into her hands, a sluggish destructive automaton who tore the buttons off most of my shirts and stained a few other of my favorite garments, ironing my pants in such a way that I wouldn’t be able to wear them again without blushing. What a disgraceful human being, Moya, this sluggish servant of my brother; Tina is what they call her, someone who although she wears a uniform every time, after she says goodbye she is a filthy, stinking, petty little thief, she forced me to always take my valuables with me, a filthy deformity, who always kept part of the change when I sent her to buy something from the store, a potbellied woman whose legs are covered in welts from mosquito bites, she has a pudgy face showing all the tortillas and fat she stuffs herself with; she’s a woman who is always chewing a tortilla, Moya; she couldn’t live if she didn’t have a piece of tortilla in her snout: a true slug, she is a species of animal compatible only with my brother’s wife. That deformity and that freak make a hair-raising pair, said Vega. And more surprising, Moya, what left me with my mouth hanging open, what was inconceivable, was my brother’s comment that this potbellied slug had “nice legs,” that’s what he said when she left for the night, Moya, almost with excitement, that her filthy legs covered in welts and with muck lodged in the pores were “nice legs”—can you imagine? — those legs deformed by welts and filth seemed to my brother like “nice legs.” It’s enough to make you vomit, Moya, to ask what the hell makes the people of this country so dimwitted, with tastes so despicable. I don’t have the least doubt that all the experiences I’ve lived these past fifteen days could be synthesized into a single phrase: