ied about what happened to the family in my life. He was shouting at me like that, Moya, said Vega. And since my nerves were already shot after fifteen days in this country, after fifteen days in my brother’s house, fifteen days of signing documents and visiting offices, as though my nerves weren’t already disturbed enough I told him I didn’t care what he thought about me, that if there were really something I didn’t care about it’s his opinion of me, that I’d never worry about the opinion of someone who only has his mind on keys and locks and, worse, intends to strip me of money by selling my mother’s house, which is what I said to him, Moya, and I warned him that he couldn’t defraud me, that he’d have to pay every dollar coming to me from the sale of my mother’s house, said Vega. My brother is truly revolting, Moya, which is why I decided this morning to get away from his house, I decided to move to the Terraza Hotel this very morning, after leaving the lawyer’s office, I went to my brother’s house to recover my things and move to the Terraza Hotel, it’s what I should have done as soon as I came to this country, I don’t know how it could have occurred to me to accept my brother’s offer to stay at his house, with his wife and their two kids, I don’t know how the idea could have crossed my mind that I could stand living a month with people like that, only in a state of extreme perturbation could I accept the proposal to stay in my brother’s house, Moya, taking into account that I’ve lived alone the last eighteen years of my life, taking into account that since I managed to escape this country and my mother’s house I’ve always lived alone, said Vega. Luckily, Clara, my brother’s wife, wasn’t around when I recovered my things, lucky for her, I say, Moya, because thanks to my disturbed nerves I would have told her that I actually had nothing ingratiating to say to her, that the last fifteen days I spent in her house had been the worst fifteen days I could remember in my life, that I’ve never been immersed in an environment as miserable, as stupid, as foreign to my spirit, an environment that only served to keep me in a state of extremely anxiety, said Vega, everything was completely crude, the proper environment of a middle-class family in San Salvador, something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. My brother’s house is located in Escalon Norte, Moya, a horrible neighborhood beginning with its name, a neighborhood for middle-class arrivistes aspiring to live in the actual neighborhood of Escalon but who don’t have the money to buy a house in actual Escalon, so Escalon Norte was invented for these middle-class arrivistes like my brother, who as soon as they save enough money will buy themselves a house in Escalon, not in Escalon Norte that only has in common with actual Escalon the fact that both neighborhoods are built on the hillside leading up to the volcano, said Vega. It’s horrible how this city has grown, Moya, it’s already eaten up half the volcano, it has already eaten up nearly half the surrounding green area, people here have the tremendous vocation of termites, they consume everything, one only needs to travel a couple of kilometers from San Salvador to realize that sooner or later this whole country will be an immense filthy city surrounded by equally filthy desert, said Vega, the city as it is right now is one of the filthiest and most hostile cities, a city designed for animals, not human beings, a city that converted its historical center into a garbage dump, because since no one was interested in history, they figured the historical center was disposable and therefore they converted it into a garbage dump, really a citywide dump; it’s a revolting city, Moya, intended for dimwits and thieves, whose only preoccupation is to destroy whatever architecture minimally suggests the past in order to construct Esso gas stations and hamburger joints and pizzerias. Tremendous, Moya, said Vega, San Salvador is a grotesque, inane, stupid version of Los Angeles, populated by idiots who only want to seem like the idiots of Los Angeles, it’s a city demonstrating the congenital hypocrisy of its people, the hypocrisy they carry in their most intimate souls is that they want to become gringos, Moya, what they most desire is to become gringos, I swear, but they don’t accept that their most precious desire is to become gringos, because they’re hypocrites, Moya, and they’re capable of killing you if you criticize their revolting Pilsener, their revolting pupusas, their revolting San Salvador, their revolting country, they’re capable of killing you without blinking an eye, and yet they’re absolutely not interested in anything other than destroying their city and their country with infectious enthusiasm. It’s truly revolting, Moya, I assure you, I can’t stand this city, said Vega, it has all the miseries and filth of big cities and none of the virtues, all of the negatives of big cities and not a single basic positive, it’s a city in which you’re screwed if you don’t have a car, because the public transportation is the most incredible thing that can be imagined, the buses are designed to transport livestock, not human beings, people are treated like animals and no one protests, their daily life is spent treated like animals, the only way they’re actually used to traveling by bus is if they’re being treated like animals. It’s incredible, Moya, the bus drivers have been pathological criminals since birth, criminals converted into salaried bus drivers, said Vega, they’re guys who were no doubt torturers and participated in massacres during the civil war and now they’re recycled as bus drivers; the moment you arrive here, to get on a bus is to realize you’ve put your life in the hands of a criminal who drives as fast as possible, who doesn’t respect stop signs or red lights or any sort of traffic signals, a lunatic whose sole goal is to end up with the highest number of lives in his hands in the shortest possible time, said Vega. It’s terrifying, Moya, an experience that’s not recommended for cardiac patients; no one in their right mind could travel every day on a bus in this city, one would have to be permanently and sadistically degraded in spirit to travel every day with these recycled criminals who drive the buses, I swear to you, Moya, I made two trips by bus, soon after I arrived in this city, and it was enough for me to understand that repeating the experience would wreck my nerves in a flash, it was enough for me to understand the level of degradation bus drivers subject the majority of the city to on a daily basis, said Vega. You, Moya, because you have a car, you don’t know what I’m saying, surely you’ve never needed to travel by bus, it never would occur to you to get on a bus, even if your car were broken down it would never occur to you to get on a bus, you would prefer to pay for a taxi or ask some friend to drive you where you want to go. The people in this city are divided into those who have a car and those who travel by bus, this is the most emphatic division, the most radical, said Vega, your income level or the area where you live doesn’t matter much, what is important is if you have a car or travel by bus, it’s truly an infamy, Moya. Luckily, now that I’m at the Terraza Hotel I won’t need to deal with my brother anymore, or his wife, Clara, or their offspring, those boys that don’t do anything except watch television, it’s really incredible, Moya, that pair of kids spending their lives in front of the television, because I want to make it clear that my brother has three televisions in his house, you wouldn’t believe it, three televisions they often turn on at the same time to different channels, a true hell this place is, Moya, I’m thankful to have left that house of lunatics this morning, they only spend their time watching television: the one television that mortifies me most is in the dining room in front of the table, it’s situated in such a way that there’s no way to avoid it at dinner time when you’re trying to eat; the other television is in the kids’ room, and the largest, with a gigantic screen and a VCR, is in the master bedroom. It’s horrible, Moya, hair-raising if you think about it; a family that in its free moments at home doesn’t do anything except watch television, said Vega, not a single book exists there, my brother doesn’t have a single book in his house, not even a reproduction of a painting, not even a recording of serious music, nothing that has anything to do with art or good taste can be found in this house, nothing that has anything to do with cultivating the spirit, nothing that has anything to do with the development of intelligence, it’s incredible, on the walls they hang only diplomas and stupid family photos, and on their bookshelves, instead of books, there are only those idiotic little trinkets that they search out whenever there’s a sale of knockoff jewelry, said Vega. Really I don’t know how I could have lasted fifteen days at that place, Moya, I don’t know how I could have lasted fifteen nights in a row in a house where three televisions simultaneously droned, where not a single record exists with minimally decent music, we’re not talking about classical, but minimally decent music, Moya, it’s abominable the musical taste of these two, it’s abominable their total absence of taste in everything having to do with art or any manifestation of the spirit, said Vega, they only listen to revolting music, tacky, sentimental music interpreted by singers warbling out of tune from beginning to end, and still my brother had the gall to ask me why I wasn’t going to return to live in this country, it’s incredible, Moya, that the possibility that I could return to live in this country even occurred to him at any point. I almost vomited, Moya, I almost vomited from revulsion when he said that, since I’m an art history professor and nowhere in this country do they teach art history, maybe I would have many opportunities to teach art history here, he said this to me, Moya, he said it seriously, that if I stayed in San Salvador I would probably become a highly coveted professor because there would be no competition in teaching art history, all the jobs would be mine: the universities would fight over me to be their top art-history professor, and maybe in a few months I would be able to establish my own art-history academy and then, why not, in a little while I could found my own university specializing in art. This is what he said to me, Moya, without laughing, I assure you that he wasn’t making fun of me; he was talking seriously, lamenting that in the business of keys and locks there already exists sufficient competition, unlike in art history where the road is wide open for me. Luckily I’ve left that house, Moya, I feel as if I’ve rid myself of a weight on my shoulders, you don’t know how good it feels not to have to talk with my brother and his wife anymore; but I want to tell you that my brother and his wife aren’t the exception, Moya, imbecility isn’t an attribute exclusive to them, some of their friends are even worse, I assure you, like this gynecologist to whom the brilliant idea also occurred that I should found a university of art; he’s a gynecologist who evidently already has his own university, where they don’t teach gynecology but business administration and other similar careers, a gynecologist in whose hands I wouldn’t want to be if I were a woman, said Vega. Doctors are the most corrupt people I have encountered in this country, Moya, they’re so corrupt that you cannot feel anything less than indignation and revulsion for them, in no other country are doctors so corrupt, so capable of killing you while stealing as much of your money as possible, Moya, doctors in this country are the most immoral people that exist, I speak from my own experience, no one is more appalling, more vomitous than this country’s doctors, I have never seen anyone more savage and ravenous than the doctors here, said Vega. A week ago I had an appointment at which I was prescribed something for the nervous colitis that had been exacerbated by my mother’s death, by my stay in this country, by staying at my brother’s house, this colitis that’s been with me ever since I can remember, Moya, but which is exacerbated when I am forced to confront disagreeable situations, colitis for which I only need some medication, but the doctor figured he’d encountered a gold mine that day, his eyes shone like you can’t imagine, Moya, the most unbridled greed sparkled in his eyes; he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm at having encountered a sucker to exploit in the most merciless way, it’s incredible, a doctor here in a white coat with his hands recently washed is evil incarnate. He asked me to submit to thousands of examinations, making a face of compunction, as if my case were very grave, he said without the least reserve that I was about to suffer a peritonitis, and in the middle of his rehashed terminology he said that probably if the examination results were positive I’d need to consider the possibility of surgical intervention, he told me this, Moya. You can imagine that I didn’t return for another consultation, said Vega, that I just limited myself to taking a stronger dose of my regular medication. Which is why I said who knows what type of gynecologist this friend of my brother was really, who knows how many women he disgraced, how many children died thanks to his imbecility, he had to have been a miserable gynecologist if it occurred to him to found a university instead of simply working in his office, said Vega, although in this country, founding a university seems as easy as opening a doctor’s office; I don’t believe there exists anywhere else where there are so many private universities, the most private universities per square kilometer, the largest quantity of private universities per inhabitant, it’s incredible, Moya, that just here in San Salvador there are more than forty private universities, you can imagine, a city with hardly a million and a half inhabitants has almost fifty private universities, it’s truly an aberration, because almost all of these universities aren’t anything more than businesses to defraud incautious people, it’s the denial itself of knowledge, take for example that in no other country is higher education so thoroughly demolished at a level as low as this, said Vega. The more private the university, the more imbecility and treachery there is among those graduating: that is the rule, Moya, clear evidence that knowledge interests no one in this country, people are only interested in having a degree, obtaining their degree is the goal, to get a degree in business administration that lands them a job, although they understand nothing; they’re not interested in learning anything, there’s no one to teach them anything, the professors are a bunch of starving cats who were only interested in obtaining their degree so they could give classes to the next bunch of cats hoping to obtain their degree, it’s truly a calamity, Moya, said Vega. And the most calamitous of all, what’s a tremendous disgrace, is the University of El Salvador, the autonomous university, the only university maintained by the state, the supposedly governing principle of higher education, the oldest and at one time (various decades ago) the most prestigious university in the country. I couldn’t believe it, Moya, the morning I decided to visit the campus of the University of El Salvador, I couldn’t imagine anything so disgraceful, it seemed like a refugee camp in Africa: crumbling buildings, a ton of overcrowded, infested wooden constructions, and defecation in the hallways of buildings that were still standing,