The afternoon of that same day I met briefly with the bishop for the first time, in my very own office, which was in fact his office, the head honcho came with the little guy with the big Mexican mustache to meet me and find out how the report was coming along, a tall robust man with a bearing that commanded respect, like the godfathers of La Cosa Nostra as well as the high ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Vatican, I understood at that moment that this bishop, of Italian descent, could very well play Marlon Brando’s role in The Godfather, perhaps with even more conviction, which gave me a positive impression, considering that my image of priests after years in a Salesian school was that they were a bunch of faggots, crows in cassocks, their eyes full of perversion, which didn’t correspond in the least to this stately silent man who asked few questions, preferring to stare inquisitorially at how my hands were moving, something that had never happened to me, to feel exposed through my hand movements—damn! — as if I were suddenly confessing all my sins through my hand movements. I explained to him that the report could be divided into four volumes, the first two containing the bulk of the aftermath of the massacres of villagers, the third containing the historical context, and the fourth consisting of a list of the massacres and their victims, and that in this way the one thousand one hundred pages would be more manageable for the reader, I specified, and although I, at that point, had only read carefully through half of the second volume, I could assure him that we were dealing with a text of the highest quality, I said, as if the purple-robed man had not long before reviewed everything that had landed on my desk — and at that moment I was especially discomfited by the attention he was paying to how my hands were moving, so I crossed my arms over my chest — a text that was precise in its analysis and with some very moving testimonies, fascinating, especially that richly expressive language, on a par with the best literature, I proclaimed, and I was about to pull out my notebook to regale the bishop’s ears and those of the little guy named Mynor with the sonorous sentences that had so excited me, but just as I was about to do so I realized that they might think that without authorization I was removing in my notebook information we had clearly agreed I would not take out of that office, so instead I returned to the pages of the report that were on my desk and read the first underlined sentence I found that said: Even at times I don’t know how resentment arises or who to take it out on at times. . The bishop stared at me, an indecipherable look in his eyes behind his glasses with tinted lenses and tortoise-shell frames, a look that made me afraid he might see me as a deluded literati seeking poetry where there were only brutal denunciations of crimes against humanity carried out by the army against the indigenous communities of his country, that he would think that I was a simple stylist who wasn’t paying any attention to the content of the report, so I abstained from reading any further sentences and instead began to talk about the structure and the table of contents, the psycho-social focus and the classification of the mental afflictions of the victims, but without the godfather shifting the object of his indecipherable gaze or saying a word, all of which made me extremely nervous, understandably so, for nobody likes to face an inquisitorial priest listening as if expecting a shameful confession, that’s how I felt, and I definitely would have revealed to him my frustration that the only good-looking chick I had met in the archbishop’s palace had refused to lend me her splendid ass if the little guy named Mynor had not mentioned that in a few moments they both had to welcome an important delegation from an international organization, and so, as if with the pealing of a bell, I was rescued from succumbing to the inevitable confession and also prevented me from talking to the little guy about the implications of the dirty trick that had been done to me and published that morning in that rag Siglo XX.
SIX
THAT SUNDAY I STAYED IN BED until ten in the morning, for moments dozing off, fantasizing about Pilar, but not managing to concentrate long enough to jack off properly because suddenly the name of Itzel would seep into my mind, a name without a face that awoke my prurience through strange sinuous mental pathways, and soon thereafter so did the name Fátima, the Toledan’s roommate, whom I would meet that afternoon when the three of us would go to eat ceviche and have a few beers, as Pilar and I had agreed on Friday, when I saw her at the end of the day in the courtyard of the archbishop’s palace and mentioned to her my brief meeting with the bishop — still impressed by the fact that the head honcho would focus in that particular way on my hand movements — as well as one testimony that seemed like the plot of a novel I had once read and that on that Sunday morning came back to me along with an urge to take it on and release all restraints on my imagination, for in fact no such novel existed, only the desire to write it, to turn the tragedy on its head, to turn myself into the suffering ghost of the civil registrar in a town called Totonicapán, an idiot whose foolish behavior led to them cutting off with a machete each and every one of his fingers, sliced off he saw his phalanges fall one by one as the soldiers kept him pinned to the ground after they had beaten him so hard they had broken who knows how many bones to teach him not to underestimate them and that dedication to one’s work had a limit and that this limit was the authority of the lieutenant, who now brandished the machete, letting fall one decisive blow that split the head of the civil registrar of Totonicapán longitudinally, as if it had been a coconut and they were at the beach and not in the battered living room of the civil registrar’s house, splattered with the blood and brains of the aforementioned, who had refused again and again the lieutenant’s request to turn over the village’s register of the dead, who knows why he behaved so foolishly, for the lieutenant urgently needed a list of the villagers who had died in the previous ten years so he could bring them back to life so they could vote for the party of General Ríos Montt, the criminal who had taken power through a coup d’êtat and now needed to legitimize himself through the votes of the living as well as the dead, so as to dispel any doubts, something the civil registrar of Totonicapán never understood, not even when the contingent of soldiers broke into his house and he knew his fate was sealed, not even when he felt the sharp blows that sliced off his phalanges did he admit that such a register was in his hands, even as they were being amputated, although the register did exist and he had hidden it under some firewood in his backyard, according to my version, because the testimony didn’t give many details, he had preferred to die rather than turn the register over to the lieutenant from the local garrison, for this is precisely what the novel would be about, the reasons why the civil registrar of Totonicapán had preferred to be tortured and murdered rather than hand over the death register to his executioners, a novel that would begin at the precise instant the lieutenant, with one stroke of the machete, split open the head of the civil registrar as if it had been a coconut from which he would remove the delicious white pulpy flesh, not the bloody palpitating brains, which may also seem appetizing to some palates, I must admit without any bias, the instant that blow fell the restless soul of the civil registrar would start to tell his story, always with the fingerless palms of his hands pressing together the two halves of his head to keep his brains in place, for I am not a total stranger to magical realism. The story would begin with the explanation that the soul of the registrar would remain in purgatory until somebody could enter him into the death register, which was very difficult to do given the fact that he alone knew where he had hidden it, which is why the story would center around the efforts of the civil registrar’s soul in purgatory to communicate to his friends so they could write him into the death register without the military finding out, and through this would be revealed the history and the significance of that register, which had been in the hands of his family for generations, a son and grandson of civil registrars dedicated to their profession, that is, a story of suspense and adventure that I should have begun cobbling together that Sunday morning while I was still lying under the sheets with my thoughts playing some kind of disorganized ping-pong game, if at the time I had been a novelist, needless to say, and not just a copyeditor of barbarous cruelties who dreamed of being what he was not.