ve for my emotional equilibrium than these outings with my brother and his family, Moya, especially because my brother’s sons have all the necessary characteristics to finish off my tranquility, just remembering that pair of kids can unhinge me, a pair of kids particularly stupid and pernicious because they don’t do anything other than watch television, boys who don’t have anything in their heads other than the television series they watch every day, for whom life is nothing more than a television series, it’s truly horrible, Moya, I don’t know how I tolerated them for so long without losing my temper, I don’t know how I was able to withstand these stupid, pernicious boys for fifteen days, who disturbed my mood the moment they called me “uncle,” said Vega. No single living human being seems more intolerable than these boys, Moya, there’s nothing more unendurable than being with them, which is why it would never occur to me to live where there are children, said Vega, only the extreme state of my disturbed nerves produced by returning to this country explains why I accepted my brother’s invitation to live in his house during my monthlong stay, knowing that my brother had two boys who are nine and seven years old, two boys more irritating than any children I have ever known in my life, because for my brother’s sons I am not just any adult, for my brother’s sons I am Uncle Eddie, what an honor, Moya, my brother’s sons call me Uncle Eddie, there’s no way to stop these stupid, irritating, pernicious boys from calling me Uncle Eddie, it hasn’t helped at all that I’ve repeated time and time again that my name is Edgardo, that they should call me Edgardo because that is my name; it hasn’t helped that I ignore them, that I pretend not to have heard when these boys call me Uncle Eddie, they’ll never understand that my name is Edgardo, that it’s Edgardo and not Uncle Eddie is beyond the reach of their stupid, pernicious little heads that only understand the language of television series, said Vega. Never in my adult life has anyone called me Eddie, Moya, much less Uncle Eddie; if there’s anything I detest with intensity it’s this horrible custom of diminutives, only vile imbeciles would refer to each other with diminutives, only a vile imbecile would call me Eddie instead of Edgardo, which is what I said to my mother many years ago soon after adolescence, when I had just finished my courses at the school of the Marist Brothers, that’s where I knew you, said Vega, and it cost my mother the world to stop calling me Eddie, she understood that my name was Edgardo once I moved to Montreal and two years passed before I said a word to her, I didn’t have any communication with her. That’s the truth, Moya: stupidity cuts the heart of things in half, it doesn’t understand shades of gray, said Vega, which is why I’m content now that I won’t have to see or hear my brother’s sons anymore, the fact relaxes me that I won’t have to hear those irritating boys call me Uncle Eddie, I won’t have to respond to their foolish questions about the stupid, pernicious television series that supply their spiritual nourishment, nor will I have to accompany them on outings that only serve to disturb my nerves, said Vega. The worst of all the outings, Moya, the most infamous of these outings, the one that destroyed me almost completely, that left my nerves reduced to dust, was when my brother decided to take me to the port, it was his unfortunate bright idea that we’d go to the sea, to eat seafood and swim together with his wife and his two pernicious kids, because they supposed that a Salvadoran recently returned after many years abroad must long for a trip to the beach and would want to take advantage of the fact that the port is hardly thirty kilometers from San Salvador, my brother imagined that I would return with a robust desire to head to the port, said Vega. A revolting port, Moya; calling a port La Libertad in a country like this can only be the product of a doomed mind, to call a useless and abandoned port La Libertad is more than a joke, calling a ramshackle pier about to crumble into the water La Libertad clearly illustrates these people’s concept of liberty, Moya, it’s a depressing port, a really horrible place, which is what I said to my brother, how could he consider it a good time to visit a place so depressing, so brutally hot, where the sun beats down with vicious brutality, where the inhabitants typically have the expression of someone who’s always brutalized by the heat and sun, said Vega. My brother insisted that we stop at a restaurant called Punta Roca located on the beach some fifty meters from the ramshackle pier, a restaurant whose main attraction is its proximity to the sea and the ramshackle pier, which I tolerated only because it protected me from the brutalizing sun, and there was a breeze that hardly made a dent in that dense, brutal heat, said Vega. Once settled at the restaurant, Moya, with the pernicious boys ruining everything, my brother invited me to eat a conch cocktail, he said there wasn’t a greater joy than returning to this country to enjoy a conch cocktail and an ice-cold Pilsener, he said this to me, Moya, as if I hadn’t told him that this revolting beer gave me diarrhea, as if I hadn’t said that I didn’t have any desire to eat conch, for the clean and simple reason that it revolted me, there’s nothing more repugnant than those mollusks twisting under lime juice, Moya, it seemed to me inconceivable that someone could eat something so revolting, Moya, only one time did I try those creatures more than twenty years ago, and that was enough to confirm that these filthy creatures tasted like excrement, nothing seems more like eating excrement than eating conch, Moya, the taste of it I uniquely associate with the taste of excrement, it’s something nauseating, a truly nauseating act that could only occur to people brutalized by the heat and sun of the coast, which is what I said to my brother, that I didn’t have the least interest in eating something as nauseating as a conch cocktail, that for nothing in the world would I decide to put in my mouth a living creature that tasted like excrement, said Vega. My brother got especially annoying, Moya, because I told him that conch seemed to me more nauseating than pupusas, that conch and pupusas were the typical snacks of this country only confirmed my idea that the people here have dull palates. You can’t imagine how I suffered on this outing, Moya, you can’t imagine the grade of desperation that came on thanks to the sultry brutalizing sun and heat, nor can you imagine the level of my nervous irritation at this port under the brutal sun and heat, nor the agitation I suffered in this restaurant accosted by those pernicious kids and the presence of my brother chewing these nauseating conches with their taste of excrement and the sight of the ramshackle pier there in the distance, said Vega. The worst was when my brother proposed we take a dip, he said it like that, we should take a dip now that the tide was low, jumping into the sea would reanimate me, the force of the waves would do me good, there’s nothing more healthy than bathing in the sea under the sun; he would lend me a bathing suit, it would cheer me up, is how he said it. It’s incredible, Moya, that my brother thought that I could be ridiculed in this way, said Vega, that I could feel pleasure going out almost nude under the brutal sun and cover myself with dirty sand and salt water, that I would enthusiastically go out and roll around in the waves and the filthy sand. I’ve never seen more horrible beaches than those in this country, Moya, I’ve never seen dirtier sand than on these beaches, and the port of La Libertad without a single doubt has the most abominable beaches with sand so filthy, one would need to be exceptionally shameless to roll around in it, only the most shameless could feel some pleasure rolling around in the filthy sand of these abominable beaches, which is what I said to my brother, that for nothing in the world would I go out and brutalize myself under this sun, and cover myself in filthy sand, stay there sticky with the malodorous water of this abominable beach, said Vega. Now I’m calm because I won’t have any more of these outings, Moya, my brother won’t have the audacity to invite me on an outing again, to invite me to return to those places that Salvadorans living abroad miss with a feeling that reveals their congenital stupidity, although to tell the truth the primary instigator of these outings was my brother’s wife, Clara, about whom I haven’t said anything to you, Moya, nothing is more repulsive to describe than this human being, this is the first time I encountered someone of such a nature, a freak whose entire intellect is limited to the newspaper’s society pages and Mexican soap operas, an ex-employee of a chain of clothing stores, no one knows how she hooked my madman of a brother and convinced him to fund this gruesome thing she calls a home, said Vega. You wouldn’t believe it, Moya, how this freak rummages through the society pages of the newspapers, spends every morning of every day microscopically combing the society pages of those newspapers with extreme emotion; it’s her principal entertainment, the only thing that gives meaning to her life: knowing about tea parties, birthdays and anniversaries, engagements and weddings, the births and deaths of people whom she will never know, because she was only a clerk at a chain of clothing stores lucky enough to meet a lunatic dedicated to keys and locks, said Vega. It’s incredible, Moya, this little ex-clerk spends all her time talking about society events, knows each and every thing about the society people, she passionately enjoys what happens to them thanks to meticulously memorizing the newspaper society pages. I’ve never seen a freak of this nature before, Moya, I swear to you, I never imagined I’d encounter someone whose greatest ambition in life is to appear in the newspaper’s society pages, I never imagined someone who called me