the degradation of taste. I don’t know any culture, Moya — hear me well and consider that my specialty consists of studying cultures — I don’t know any culture like this that has been carried to such levels of degraded taste, I don’t know any other culture that has made the degradation of taste a virtue, no culture in contemporary history has made the degradation of taste its ideal, its most prized virtue, said Vega. You can see it the moment you board the plane to come here. It’s a trip I don’t recommend to anyone suffering from a nervous condition; just making the trip disturbs the nerves, Moya; it is a trip that after a while drove me to an uncontrollable nervous crisis. I’ve never had a similar experience, Moya. I boarded the plane in New York after hurriedly traveling from Montreal, without imagining that when we stopped in Washington the aircraft would fill with louts with criminal faces shadowed by their sombreros, these men wearing sombreros with criminals faces fortunately had been disarmed of machetes and daggers by security; some daggers I’m sure made it through, though without security I’m sure they would have been armed with a butcher’s shop of machetes inside that aircraft. You have no idea what happened on this trip, Moya. They assigned me a middle seat between one of these men in a sombrero and some chubby woman in an apron, said Vega, a man in a sombrero who compulsively picked his nose, smearing his snot wherever he could, and this chubby woman who sweated profusely, wiping her sweat with her apron or with a towel that she carried rolled around her neck. During takeoff they maintained their distance: Fuckface in the sombrero enraptured by his snot and Fatty squeezing out her towel. It was the only moment of tranquility I had on the flight, the only moment of peace and quiet, Moya, because once we were in the air, with the plane at cruising altitude and the stewardesses serving the first round of drinks, my companions in the seats on either side started talking to me at almost the same time, shouting more than talking, first with me and later between themselves and then again with me; they practically drenched me in saliva, Moya, jabbing me with their elbows, in a sort of hysterical confession about what had happened to them during their last few years in Washington, a hysterical confession of incidents in the lives of two Salvadoran immigrants in Washington, the adventures of Fuckface in the sombrero, who didn’t stop compulsively picking his nose, and Fatty, who occasionally rubbed me with her nasty towel soaked with her no less filthy sweat. It was horrible, Moya, because the more they spoke, the more their enthusiasm grew, and the more intensely they exuded their putrid odors, ceaselessly relating to me incidents and adventures I didn’t have the least interest in hearing, said Vega. It was a macabre preamble of what waited for me once I arrived in San Salvador, a hair-raising voyage in which Fuckface in the sombrero vociferously told me he was headed to a tiny little town called Polorós, he’d worked as a gardener in Washington and it had been three years since he had returned to El Salvador, meanwhile Fatty replied that she was from Osicala, that she worked as a maid in Washington and hadn’t returned to El Salvador in five years. The worst was when they were served the first drink, Moya, never have I seen people so easily lose their grip, I’ve never seen people go so crazy without warning after one drink: they started to spit on the floor of the cabin, not stopping their shouting, spitting and accompanying their shouts with the most obscene gestures, with the most obscene laughter; meanwhile Fuckface in the sombrero shamelessly smeared his boogers even on the little window and Fatty brandished her towel like an assault weapon. There was a moment in which I thought my nerves would explode, said Vega, and so I stood up to go to the bathroom; then I discovered that scenes similar to the one occurring in my row were taking place in most parts of the cabin. It was horrible, Moya, a horrific experience, the worst flight of my life, seven hours passed in that cabin replete with men wearing sombreros who seemed recently escaped from some insane asylum, seven hours stuck between drooling characters shouting and crying in gibberish because they were about to return to this pit, seven hours, between people completely smashed with alcohol, anticipating the imminent arrival at their so-called homeland. I swear, Moya, I’ve never even seen a scene in a film similar to this, in no novel have I read anything like this flight spent sitting between these lunatics, their lunacy exacerbated by a couple of drinks and proximity to their birthplace, said Vega. It was truly hair-raising, a spectacle I could only escape for a few moments when I took refuge in the bathroom, but soon enough the bathrooms turned revolting thanks to spit, the vomit, urine, and other excretions; soon enough the bathrooms became unbreathable spaces because people urinated in the sinks, Moya, I’m sure these drooling men in sombreros with their criminal looks, excited about their imminent return to this filthy pit of a country, urinated in the sinks, only that they urinated in the sinks could explain the stench that soon made it impossible for me to take refuge in the bathrooms. And that’s not all, Moya, I still can’t believe the instant that the sweaty, chubby woman, with her towel rolled around her neck and her apron in disarray, stood up, spat on the floor, and began to shriek, shaking her glass in a way that splashed me with liquor, shouting that some atrocious liquor called Muñeco was ten times better than this whisky, rabidly insisting that the atrocious liquor Muñeco, which is better suited to combat foot fungus, was much better than the so-called faggy whisky they were drinking, she was insulting the stewardesses because they would no longer serve her another shot of this “faggy” whisky; and suddenly Fatty, who every second sweated more copiously and now threateningly brandished her soaked towel, looked like someone who was about to vomit, said Vega. She left in a huge rush, and I took refuge in the extra cargo compartment next to the bathroom entrance, with my nerves on end, ranting against the fact that my mother had died the day before and I was obliged to return to a country I detested above all else, a country inhabited by drooling freaks with criminal features accustomed to urinating in the sinks of airplanes in flight, inhabited by sweating fat women gone mad who waited for the least provocation to throw up all over their neighbors in airplanes in flight. You can imagine, Moya, that I left the plane in an absolutely disturbed state, it had been my season in hell; reaching the airport corridors had become my greatest desire for the last few hours, the arrival at Comalapa Airport was my salvation, the possibility of returning to some semblance of normalcy, the possibility of reaching somewhere else, someplace different from those seven hours locked in an airplane cabin with sinister beings who smeared boogers on the little windows or tried to shake out a towel drenched in sweat, said Vega. Imagine my surprise, Moya, when upon arriving at immigration I found myself among hundreds of similar individuals to those who were on my plane, that I encountered furious masses exactly like those on my flight, hundreds of men wearing sombreros and chubby women with aprons arriving from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and who knows what other cities, an immense swirling throng that turned immigration into overwhelming chaos. I was worried I would break down at any moment, said Vega, which is why I tried to leave that ball of confusion, I made my best effort to open a path through these sinister masses, concentrating all my energy to open a path through the asphyxiating masses and arrive at a bathroom where I could take refuge, where I could gather my forces, and so for half an hour I locked myself in a toilet stall, victim of an attack of distress, to the point of shattering, sweating out the shakes, saying there was no turning back, I was already in this place in which I had sworn I would never set foot again. I still feel chills down my spine just remembering it, Moya. I left the toilet stall exhausted, washed my face in the sink, frenetically rubbed my face in front of the mirror, convincing myself that things wouldn’t be so totally horrible, repeating to myself that I came only for my mother’s funeral, to take the steps necessary to qualify for my share of the inheritance, that there was nothing to fear because I was a Canadian citizen, my passport was with me in my jacket pocket, my best protection against all of this. I supposed that the crowd had by now been removed from immigration, said Vega, so I made one last effort to confront the immigration official, a brown and blubber-lipped dwarf, who took my passport without even looking at me, consulted his computer, stamped the country’s seal, and said “Pass.” But I wasn’t fated to free myself so easily from that throng of men in sombreros and chubby ladies. I saw going down the escalator toward customs — it was horrible, Moya — that here was the same pandemonium I’d encountered in immigration, and worse still, hundreds of individuals swirled between the walls and the conveyor belts where the luggage emerged, hundreds of individuals feverishly throwing elbows and spitting wads as they grabbed their enormous boxes filled with the most random merchandise, hundreds of people gone mad accumulating more and more boxes as though this baggage pickup area were a chaotic and asphyxiating market. I don’t know how I managed to rescue my suitcase, Moya, but it didn’t matter, because I had to wait hours until every one of these characters with their dozens of boxes passed the minutest possible inspection by the customs official, a vermin with glasses and a mustache who managed to entertain himself for the longest possible time inspecting every box, a vermin whose mission was to raise everyone’s feverishness to delirious levels, who evidently took pleasure in increasing the stress of those hundreds of people anxious for their boxes replete with the most useless crap to pass as quickly as possible through inspection, these people had done thankless or ignominious jobs over the past few years to save the money that would let them buy these enormous quantities of crap to bring as gifts to their relatives, who now waited drooling and greedy on the other side of the glass door, said Vega. And when at last I managed to pass through this glass door leading to the street, I came out on top of another sticky throng, a hair-raising mass of people in whose faces only the desire for grabbing these boxes shone, these boxes filled with useless crap. The tropics are horrific, Moya, they convert men into putrid beings who live by their most basic instincts, like those people against whom I was forced to rub up against leaving the terminal area to look for a taxi. No experience is more abhorrent than leaving the Comalapa Airport, Moya, no experience has made me hate these tropics with such intensity as the departure from the terminal area of the Comalapa Airport: it’s not just the multitudes, Moya, it’s the shock of passing from a bearable climate inside the airport to this blistering, brutal hell of the tropical coast, the withering breath of heat that transformed me in an instant to a sweaty animal. Once I managed to open a path through the masses, drooling with greed before their boxes of useless crap, I was suddenly assaulted by a flock of taxi drivers, who marked their territory with shoves, fighting over me like vultures, uniformed taxi drivers with sky-blue guayaberas and dark sunglasses trying to snatch my suitcase, said Vega. I’d never seen guys whose faces were so clearly marked with betrayal, Moya, I’d never seen faces so grim as those of the taxi drivers. But I had no alternative; the trip was so improvised that I hadn’t even phoned my brother to inform him what flight I was arriving on. I told the taxi driver to take me to the funeral home, quickly, my mother had died the day before, they were waiting for me before they buried her. And as he traveled the forty kilometers separating San Salvador from Comalapa Airport, the way that the wind entered the window allowed me to compose myself and attain a certain peace of mind; I had a hint of a certain definition that in these fifteen days I have been able to fully confirm: the Salvadoran is the