ed with horror, here they exhibit with pride. It’s incredible, Moya. They call it “The Flintstones” because the so-called heroes of the fatherland surely weren’t anything other than cavemen, like the idiots now wasting state funds by ordering the construction of monuments and sculptures that only serve to reveal their total degradation of taste, said Vega; the so-called heroes of the fatherland had to have been cavemen, and from them was passed down the congenital imbecility that’s characterized the people of this country, only the fact that the so-called heroes of the fatherland were cavemen could explain the general monstrousness prevailing in this country. Let me buy you one last whisky, Moya, offered Vega, one more before you leave, while I drink my last mineral water, and I’ll ask Tolín to return my CD of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor, because people have already begun to arrive: the clientele who have surely come to reserve tables for the so-called artistic event tonight. By seven I want to be back at my hotel, to lock myself in to enjoy my room and a frugal dinner, said Vega. Nothing’s more pleasant than lying in bed, calmly reading, without the sound of televisions nearby, without the enervating shouts of my brother’s wife and their pernicious children; there’s nothing more comforting than locking myself in to read, think, and rest. Just the idea of being safe from my brother’s nightly invitations to “go party” I find stimulating, Moya, nothing’s more horrible than being forced to choose between my brother’s invitations to “go party” and the prospect of spending the night flanked by three television sets cranked to top volume on different channels. Only one night did I accept my brother’s invitation to “go party,” said Vega, a unique unrepeatable night that I spent so that it would never again occur to me to accept my brother’s repeated invitation to “go party.” My brother’s primary pleasure is to “go party” at night, Moya, he and his friends’ primary pleasure consists of hanging out in a bar drinking huge quantities of diarrhea-inducing beer until they reach complete imbecility; later they enter a discotheque where they jump around like primates; and, finally, they visit a sordid brothel. These are the three stages of “partying” at night, this ritual they maintain with gusto, it’s their supreme diversion: first they dumb themselves all the way down with beer, then they jump around sweating to savage noise in the thick air of a discotheque, and finally they drool with lust in a seedy brothel, said Vega. At least these were the three rigorous stages of partying on the night my brother took me with them. Only the disturbance produced in me by the noise of the television sets, by the chitchat of my brother’s wife, and by the shouts of the pair of stupid, pernicious boys could explain why I accepted my brother’s invitation to “go party” that night, knowing all along that no invitation coming from my brother would lack a disturbing vulgarity. I will repent for the rest of my life having accepted this invitation to “go party” that night, Moya, I suffered the worst anxiety imaginable, I wasted practically all my emotional capital, said Vega. It was my brother, a friend of his called Juancho, and me. First we were at a bar called The Barbed-Wire Fence, a lurid place, enough to make your hair stand on end, it’s a shack plagued with gigantic screens in every corner, truly an aberration: a place where you can only drink diarrhea-inducing beer surrounded by screens on which different singers are projected, each singer more abominable than the last, interpreting those foolish and strident melodies. And my brother’s friend, Moya, this Juancho, a guy with negroid features, talked up a storm; he’s a negroid who owns a hardware store, he swears to have downed all the alcohol in the world and gone to bed with every woman who ever crossed his path, said Vega. El Negroid exaggerated more and was more mythomaniacal than you could imagine, Moya, a machine of talking and telling stories about himself, a talking doll who drinks beer after beer while narrating about his delirious sexual prowess. I wasn’t prepared for this: stuck with my glass of mineral water, I was forced to listen with one ear to the verbosity of El Negroid and with the other to the strident voice of some disheveled girl gyrating on the screens. But El Negroid imposed himself against their wailing and as he drank more beer, his stories about his drinking binges and sexual adventures became more and more obscene. A really repulsive negroid, Moya. And foolish like few are: time and again he insisted that I should drink a beer, that it wasn’t possible to spend the whole night drinking mineral water. I don’t know how many times I explained that I don’t drink beer, Moya, much less this revolting, diarrhea-inducing Pilsener they drink, my colitis only permitted me to have a couple of drinks, preferably whisky, but in this bar called The Barbed-Wire Fence they didn’t sell anything other than this revolting, diarrhea-inducing beer. In El Negroid’s peanut brain, in the center of his little head, there wasn’t room for the idea that someone might not drink that filth, said Vega. It was repulsive, Moya, once again he told me his delirious sexual adventures with all the prostitutes in all the brothels in San Salvador. But what truly preoccupied me, Moya, were the four guys at the next table, they were the most sinister people I’ve ever seen in my life, Moya, four psychopaths with crime and torture stamped on their faces drinking beer at the next table, these were guys you really need to be careful of, so bloodthirsty it seemed that to turn to look at them for just a second constitutes a tremendous risk, said Vega. I warned El Negroid to lower his voice, that these lovely guys to the side were already watching him with creepy grins. I feared a tragedy, Moya, these psychopaths evidently carried fragmentation grenades they anxiously hoped to throw under the table of a trio of guys like us, I was sure at this instant that these criminals stroked fragmentation grenades that at any moment they would throw under our table, because for these psychopath ex-soldiers, ex-guerillas, fragmentation grenades have become their favorite toys, not a day passes in which one of these so-called demobilized guys doesn’t throw a frag grenade at a group of people bothering him, truthfully these criminal ex-soldiers and ex-guerrillas really carry fragmentation grenades hoping for the least opportunity to throw them at guys like El Negroid who wouldn’t stop shouting about his most unusual sexual adventures, said Vega. I warned him time and time again to lower his voice, Moya, and he calmed down for a second, whirling to look at these psychopaths about to throw fragmentation grenades at us the way they do every day in bars and dance halls, and in the streets, where they settle their differences with grenades, like kids, where these so-called demobilized guys have fun with their fragmentation grenades, throwing them while laughing at imbeciles like El Negroid, said Vega. Luckily we rushed out of the bar for a discotheque called Rococó, in the second stage of what my brother and his friends denoted “partying.” It was a dark hall, with blinding lights pulsing vividly from the ceiling and where the air hardly circulated, a hall that thumped with infernal noise and in the center of which there was a dance floor surrounded by seats and tables practically encrusted to the floor. An overwhelming place, Moya, especially made for the deranged and deaf who enjoy darkness and dense air. I immediately began to sweat, to feel my temples palpitate as if my blood pressure had increased out of control and my head were about to burst, said Vega. And after we made it to the bar to order the drink that came with the cover charge, in the middle of a desperate scramble, while we looked for a table, I realized that El Negroid hadn’t stopped talking for a single minute, that his voice strenuously fought to be heard over the shocking noise threatening to demolish the hall. I drank my shot of whisky, hoping it might help ease my palpating head, but it only served to make me sweat more profusely, accentuating my sensation of claustrophobia. I can’t stand these enclosed, dark, noisy, asphyxiating places, Moya, and least of all next to El Negroid almost shouting as he repeated the same story about his extraordinary sexual adventures, said Vega. My resistance to nervousness was giving in. A dozen pairs of people jumped around on the dance floor and their silhouettes could hardly be distinguished thanks to the extravagant lights and the pulsing, blinding flashes from the ceiling. My brother commented that the discotheque was pretty empty, it wasn’t a good night, there were hardly any single girls; El Negroid hurried to recount each and every one of the times he’d picked up goodlooking girls at this place, each and every one of the times that, after dancing at the discotheque, he’d directed them to a motel to make love, to tell the truth every time he’d gone to this discotheque he’d managed to pick up a girl, El Negroid shouted, said Vega. I started to feel dizzy, Moya, like I needed air, I said this to my brother, that I was feeling sort of bad, that this place wasn’t doing anything good for me, it’d be better if we went somewhere that wasn’t so distressing. I had to shout so my brother would hear me, I almost tore out my throat to make myself heard between the thumping, deafening noise and El Negroid’s shouts. My brother asked me to hold on a while, to see if more girls showed up, it’d be a waste to leave the discotheque so early, he said, but I was becoming despondent, I feared that at any moment everything would start to spin on me and I’d suffer a breakdown, so I told my brother not to worry, I’d head home in a taxi, El Negroid and he could stay as late as they wanted. So then my brother came out and said that I couldn’t abandon them like that, that’s what he said, Moya, “abandon them,” that if I arrived home alone, his wife would suspect the worst, that I should wait for them for no more than five minutes, I could go rest for a while in the car, and then we’d visit a less claustrophobic place. And so I did, Vega said. But when my brother gave me the keys to the car I warned him that I would wait five minutes, not a second more, and that he should remember my profound sense of punctuality, that if he didn’t appear exactly in five minutes I would leave the keys with the doorman of the discotheque and take off in a taxi. I hate unpunctual people, Moya, there’s nothing worse than unpunctuality, it’s impossible to have any sort of dealings with late people, nothing more noxious and irritating than people who are not on time. If you hadn’t come at five this evening on the dot, Moya, I assure you I wouldn’t have waited for you, although I love being at this place between five and seven in the evening to drink my two whiskeys, but even if I had to sacrifice that moment of calm, I wouldn’t have waited for you, because the fact that you were late would have been enough to completely disrupt the possibility of having a constructive chat, Moya, your lateness would have totally changed my perception of you, I would have immediately placed you in the category of the most undesirable people, in the category of unpunctual people, said Vega. So once out of the discotheque, walking along the parking lot in the open air, I felt better, although my bewilderment would take a while to disappear. I got into the car, in the seat next to the driver’s seat, put away the key, and leaned the seat back. The discotheque was located almost at the end of Paseo Escalón, in the mall. The issue was that after two minutes had passed and I began to relax thanks to the silence of the parking lot and the panoramic view of the city one has from there, suddenly I suffered an intense anxiety attack, as though I were about to be assaulted, I suffered a shocking attack of anxiety that forced me to get up and head out in search of the thugs who might be preparing to attack me, said Vega, a shocking anxiety attack as though the danger were a few steps away, stalking me, ready to transform itself into thugs plotting to make my brother’s car their own, this latest Toyota Corolla model that my brother cared for more than himself. It was a sudden panic, Moya, an absolute panic, paralyzing, because thugs in this country kill even without a motive, for the pure pleasure of the crime, they kill even if you don’t resist, even if you give them all they ask for, every day they kill without any other reason than the pleasure of killing, said Vega. This was the case of Mrs. Trabanino, the one always on the news. It was tremendous, Moya: a thug surprised her when she parked in the garage of her house and later forced himself into the living room so he could shoot her in front of her two small daughters. Tremendous, Moya, the thug killed her purely for pleasure in front of her little girls, he didn’t rob anything, he only wanted to kill. It was a horrible case, Moya. I wouldn’t have paid it so much attention but my brother’s wife spent three days just talking about Mrs. Trabanino’s case, three days ruining my meals with the same harangues about the assassination of Mrs. Trabanino, three days being outraged and venturing hypotheses about what caused the crime when actually, it turned out that my brother’s wife was morbidly fascinated, it turned out Mrs. Trabanino was someone from the newspaper society pages that she rummages through with so much delight; morbid fascination is why this freak my brother married didn’t stop talking about the assassination of Mrs. Trabanino; she hasn’t stopped being paranoid about the extreme criminality raging in this country, said Vega, which is why the five minutes inside my brother’s car seemed to me like an eternity, Moya, the last three minutes of which the panic preying on me was horrific, a trying experience, something I don’t wish on anyone: to remain trapped in a Toyota Corolla waiting for a group of thugs to assassinate you before they steal your car, because they can’t rob without killing, because to kill is what produces true pleasure in them, not so much to rob, as was demonstrated in the case of Mrs. Trabanino, said Vega; I was about to rush out of the car, such was my panic, to take shelter in the doorway of the discotheque’s entrance, but I immediately realized that if I left the car, I ran more of a risk of being riddled with bullets, which is why I remained inside, shivering, with a horrible accelerated heartbeat, crouching in the seat, trying to make myself sleep, counting every second, profoundly hating my brother and El Negroid, the two who were guilty of making me suffer like this, said Vega. What taste the people of this country have for living in fear, Moya, such a morbid taste for living terrorized lives, what a perverted taste for the terror of the war turned into the terror of delinquency these people have, a pathological, morbid vice to make terror their permanent way of life. Luckily my brother and El Negroid soon arrived. They got in the car laughing, saying who knows what about whichever woman, to the point that they dared claim it was my fault that they hadn’t been able to pick up a pair of chicks who were entering the discotheque just then. So then we threaded our way toward the third stage of what my brother and his friends called “partying,” toward the neighborhood