Life is marvelous, I exclaimed to myself, about three hours later, marveling at the sight of the girl with Pilar, that very same Fátima about whom I knew so little until that moment and who was about to become the object not only of my attentions but also those of half a dozen indolent beasts drinking beer in the Modelo Cevichería, a kind of food kiosk with a few plastic chairs squeezed onto one side of the small plaza in front of the Conservatory, half a dozen beasts among whom I ought to include myself a bit shamefacedly and who were stupefied and drooling as they stared at the two girls crossing the street in front of the Conservatory and approaching down the plaza’s sidewalk toward the cevichería, I, possessed of the knowledge that they were Pilar and Fátima, while the others were simply aroused by the prospect of such gorgeous girls, apparently foreigners, coming to perfume that cevichería, where the main attraction was the Sunday soccer match between Mexico and Argentina on the television. Approach, dear ladies, your appearance serves the singular purpose of delighting these ridiculous potbellied men in their stupid shorts, I would have liked to say to them as a greeting, if those same potbellied man hadn’t had on their faces a certain threatening look and if their ears weren’t just a little too close to my words, attentive as they were to that pair of sweet things, who both gave me kisses on both of my cheeks, lighting up my day and darkening the lives of the potbellied men, who soon began to secrete a poisonous envy because the girls ignored them and sat down — so deliciously — very nearly one on each of my legs, an envy mitigated only by the soccer match between Mexico and Argentina though they could no longer concentrate on the game with the same intensity, every once in a while looking libidinously at the girls as they ordered their fish ceviches and beers in a pleasant exchange with the waiter. The first thing I knew about Fátima was that I wanted to lick her all over due to the appetizingly creamy texture and light rosy hue of her skin and her perfect curves pressed into a pair of red-denim jeans and an organdy blouse under which could be descried her seductive belly button as well as a little path of fuzz my eyes began to follow, descending, while she talked about her recent trip to a village in the highlands, where years ago half the population had been slaughtered — initiated by the army but with an enthusiasm that left no room for doubt — by the other half, their fellow citizens, one of the 422 massacres contained in the one thousand one hundred pages that awaited me on the bishop’s desk the following day, when I would continue my task of copyediting and correcting and about which I refused to think, wanting only to descend the peach-fuzz path that would carry me from Fátima’s belly button to her fleshy cave, where I wanted to take refuge from those potbellied spies, from the television sportscasters with diarrhea of the mouth, and from the sudden and unexpected memory of the hundreds of Indians I had strolled among a few hours earlier in Parque Central while I peacefully digested my breakfast and passed the time, enjoying the brilliant morning among these hundreds of Indians decked out in their Sunday dress of so many festive colors, among the most salient being that joyous cheerful red, as if red had nothing to do with blood and sorrow but was rather the emblem of happiness for these hundreds of domestic servants enjoying their day off in the large square surrounded by the cathedral, the presidential palace, and the old commercial arcades, a splendid and telling promenade because as I wandered around under that brilliant sky I realized that not one of those women with slanted eyes and toasted brown skin awoke my sexual appetite or my prurient interests, thanks to which I continued walking lightly and mincingly, my fantasies remaining dormant, attentive rather to the patterns on the textiles and the cut of those ethnic costumes whose colorful skirts prevented the exposure of even the tiniest patch of skin, the opposite of what was transpiring with Fátima’s flirtatious belly button, which was winking at me, luckily without the potbellied men realizing it, for they were fascinated by the battle of the Titans, as the sportscaster defined it with a howl that caught the attention of even the two girls, for whom soccer was, of course, boring, but who couldn’t detach themselves wholly from the reigning emotions, to the extent that Fátima even asked me who I was rooting for, Mexico or Argentina, and as my third eye had already detected some antipathy toward the Aztecs oozing out of said potbellied men, I immediately told her that all of Central America was rooting for Argentina against their giant criminal neighbor, spoken with enough emphasis to guarantee me safe conduct out of there flanked by two such girls as these.
SEVEN
SUCH A NOVELTY IT WAS WHEN I finally met the Spaniard who had planned and executed half of the one thousand one hundred pages I so intrepidly continued to correct, the Basque named Joseba so loved and admired by everybody in the archbishop’s palace, according to what my friend Erick and the little guy named Mynor told me when they introduced him to me, a Basque and by profession a psychiatrist, for that was the only way to comprehend how he would have gotten involved with such enthusiasm and attention to detail in that morass of suffering that anybody in his right mind would have run away from without the slightest hesitation, as I gave him to understand once we were alone in my office going over the corrections I’d made to his text, which was already so clean and clear, only a psychiatrist from the Basque countries could have immersed himself for months in studying with such dedication the testimonies of hundreds of victims traumatized by the orgy of blood and dust, which they had come out of alive only by chance, I told Joseba with outright admiration, and then I read out loud and as if in passing a few sentences I had copied down in my notebook and that were highlighted on the pages I was leafing through on my desk, sentences like, Then he got frightened and went crazy completely or That is my brother, he’s gone crazy from all the fear he has had; his wife died from fear also, or, It’s not just hearsay because I saw how his murder was, or this that impressed me so much, Because I don’t want for them to kill the people in front of me, sentences that proved the extent of mental perturbation of the survivors and the danger that such a state of mind posed for people working with them, which wasn’t Joseba’s case, who to all appearances exuded not only health but also a striking spirit, was tall and strong, with an upright bearing, just as I imagined those knights-errant who came to conquer the indigenous peoples of this land, an amusing idea I couldn’t help but mention, as an aside, when he asked me my impressions of his work, and I repeated that he had done a superb job, impeccable, after which the history of this country would never be the same, not a chance, and taking advantage of an interstice I said to him: what a paradox, that someone so fitting the archetype of the Spanish conquistador should dedicate himself with such devotion to recovering the indigenous peoples’ massacred memories, no offense intended, I clarified, because Joseba shifted uneasily in his chair in front of my desk, so modest, discomfited by my adulation, rubbing his stubbly chin. I am very impressed by the combination of objectivity and courageous humanitarianism in your text, I exclaimed with an almost feminine flair, as if I had been Fátima, which wasn’t all that gratuitous since the previous afternoon she had not stopped praising Joseba as we walked toward her house in Zone 2, and so much praise could only infuse my fantasy with the most tenacious suspicions, for although this Joseba fellow was married, I would not have been surprised if he had shed the pellucid armor of a loyal knight-errant in order to enjoy the favors of said compatriot and admirer, thus it was not so very unusual that while discussing his work behind the closed doors of my office I began to fantasize that Fátima had gone up to the door and locked it, then started getting it on with him, Dulcinea herself, passionately making out with the much-admired knight as she unbuttoned his fly and extracted his lance, which she then caressed in her hands and then in her mouth and soon thereafter frenetically inserted into herself, mounting the knight who would in his alarm lose all sense of decorum, still sitting in that chair with that tasty panting morsel pounding herself against him, his gaze lost in the tall bare walls, trying not to notice the crucifix, alone and contemplative from its great height, worried that Mynor or Erick would knock on the door and discover him in such a trance or that I would suddenly appear and not only catch him with his hands in the pot but berate him for using my office to fornicate with the girl of my dreams, a betrayal capable of unleashing in me a rage that began at that very moment to inflame me against not so much the Spaniard, who was meticulously describing the methodology he used for his psychosocial research, but my own fantasies, so foolishly bent on imagining Fátima galloping on top of Joseba, instead of imagining me galloping on top of her, which would have been preferable from any and all points of view. It was the sudden irruption — after a quick perfunctory knock — into my office, which really was his office, of the Sicilian, the head capo, that shook me out of my rapture and brought me back to the scene where we were greeting each other, and he asked Joseba to accompany him to Mynor’s office, where the three of them would meet to hatch a conspiracy I was fortunately not included in, I told myself, thank God, for I already had quite enough with the one thousand one hundred pages without also getting involved in Vatican intrigues, though I cannot fail to admit that merely seeing that I was unexpectedly excluded from the circle of power, in which my friend Erick would undoubtedly be included, made me feel a certain amount of resentment, as if the priest had been suspicious of me ever since he watched how my hands moved, as if my work weren’t important enough and my opinions about the report didn’t count. “Hey, let’s have lunch together,” the hidalgo said, with a wink, before leaving with the bishop, conscious perhaps of the marginalization I had been subjected to, probably afraid of the possibility that I would express my resentment by marking up the text, something that of course never even crossed my mind, as I let him know a few hours later when we were in the Imery Restaurant, located on the other side of Parque Central, a rather dark place where the menu du jour was consumed by dozens of office workers, low-level politicians, one or another academic from the institutes of higher learning in the vicinity, as well as the staff of the archbishop’s palace, among whom Joseba and I could be counted, sitting at a corner table, where I readied myself to hear delicious secrets straight from the mouth of the gallant knight about the palace intrigues he had participated in that morning and about all the other intrigues related to the report that my friend Erick had failed to reveal to me, but as the minutes went by and we turned our attention to the main course, I ascertained that the Basque psychiatrist responded with monosyllables and evasions to my enthusiastic questions, as if prudence and caution were essential components of his nature, I thought at first, as if the heads of that religious institution had taken vows of silence that required absolute discretion even toward a trusted employee like myself, or, I then thought, as if they had discussed at that morning’s meeting to which I had not been invited how much they could trust me and their conclusions were reflected in the Spaniard’s polite negatives in response to my questioning, then I frankly grew concerned, on the verge of descending along a paranoid spiral that would in no way help my digestion and that I instantly tried to avoid by shifting the gist of the conversation, insisting instead on digging into my table companion’s private life, knowing for a fact that prudence and caution were fundamental components of his character and that he would never reveal anything about his political activities in Bilbao, would never mention anything about his past and present as an ETA sympathizer, which could be smelled from a mile away, and talked only in generalities about how well one drank and ate in that city full of always crowded and welcoming bars, of shipyards, and of the shells of abandoned factories along the length of the river. But to my surprise, perhaps once he saw that the table next to ours had remained empty, Joseba suddenly changed the vague and nonchalant tone of his discourse and began to tell me, with a conspiratorial air copied from my friend Erick, that the missing text of the second volume of said report was extremely sensitive, a detailed analysis of how the army’s intelligence services operated, he said, almost in a whisper, uncertain if any of the other diners could hear us, that at the meeting I had not been invited to that morning they had talked precisely about that analysis of the military intelligence services and had agreed that this text would not be incorporated into the report until the very last minute when it was about to be sent to the printers, not only for reasons of security but also because my friend Erick needed the maximum amount of time to finalize it, considering the fact that he was the lead investigator into the activities of the military intelligence organizations as well as the coordinator of all the other parts of the report, Joseba made clear, as if I were not already fully aware of the responsibilities of the person who had hired me, and the only new thing I now learned from his conspiratorial whisperings was that those people really didn’t trust me, and that neither my friend Erick nor the little guy with the Mexican mustache had had the courage to tell me so but instead had sent the gallant Spanish knight to me to break the news that I probably wouldn’t see or correct the report’s chapter about the military intelligence services because of a problem with the deadline. I was just about to react to such a dirty trick with the stentorian indignation it deserved without caring at that moment about the waitress who had arrived with our next course, when that cunning fox, perhaps intuiting the imminent arrival of a squall, asked me as if in passing if I knew what The Archive was, with as much candor as if he were mentioning a child’s bookshelf or the drawer he keeps his puzzles in, a question that couldn’t fail to cause me the greatest astonishment, so much so that it took me a few seconds to react, stunned by my interlocutor’s imprudence, for nobody talked about The Archive in public, much less in a restaurant just a few blocks from the presidential palace in whose chambers The Archive had its headquarters, a restaurant where more than a few officials and specialists from that sinister office undoubtedly ate on a daily basis, an office Joseba had named so light-heartedly and that I never would have named in the same way, or in any way, because suddenly I was in the grips of a panic attack, stoked by a furtive glance from the waitress before she pushed the swinging doors that led into the kitchen, a glance that in other circumstances I would have interpreted as natural feminine interest in the good looks of the hidalgo caballero, but which at that moment brought on instead a panic attack that paralyzed me, bathed me in sweat, surely made my blood pressure shoot sky high, because The Archive was in fact the office of military intelligence where the political crimes mentioned in the report had been planned and ordered, the report that lay on my desk and was written by none other than the Spanish gentleman who sat there with his mouth hanging open, at that moment waiting with such composure for me to begin to blab on about the unmentionable office, something that was not about to happen, because when I managed to overcome my stupefaction, when finally I was able t