Night falls. A bus drops us at the corner of the Chapultepec movie house, just a short walk from where Arreola lives. When we arrive, he complains about our delay. José Emilio is about to leave. We convince him to stay awhile. Arreola is also about to leave. He has committed to attending the premier of Pirandello’s Henry IV at Bellas Artes. He assures us that the next day he’ll take the proofs to press. Our Cuadernos will appear very soon. He shows us a few sheets of stunning Dutch paper and gives us a lesson on watermarks. It’s obvious that he’s in a hurry to leave, but he agrees to sit for a moment to chat. He urges Carlos to submit material for a Cuaderno. José Emilio and I mention that he has a magnificent story. In unison we shout: “Fino acero de niebla!” Carlos bursts out laughing, covers his face with a cushion, and then promises vaguely that he’s revising something he’s about to finish. Arreola begins to talk about Pirandello, recalling the staging of his works when the great Italian companies toured Mexico; the best, according to him, was that of Mimi Agugli. He then turns to Louis Jouvet; he did not miss a single performance when his company was in Mexico, or in Paris, when he lived there. Theater is the genre that combines all literary perfections, he declares; he suddenly stands, marches around the room, and recites entire scenes while imitating all the characters from
Farce of the Chaste Susana by Diego Sánchez de Badajoz; later, he retracts, in no way is theater the most important genre, such a claim is an aberration; he then discusses poetry and thereafter takes out a volume of Proust and reads to us, in perfect French, the chapter in which Albertine is surprised while asleep. Suddenly, a young man, visibly irritated, who has been listening to him, and who has remained silent throughout our stay, stands and barks that if he and Arreola do not leave at once they’ll never make curtain time. We all go out into the street. Arreola and his companion get in a taxi, and the three of us — José Emilio, Carlos, and I — walk up the Paseo de la Reforma, turn right on Niza, and walk to a taquería next to the Insurgentes movie house, where we would often go at night to eat soup and sample the most delicious selection of tacos imaginable. While we eat, we return to the subject of literature, each of us reiterating our preferences. To the usual names, we add others: Alejo Carpentier and Juan Carlos Onetti, and, thanks to José Emilio, poets are also introduced: Quevedo, Garcilaso, López Velarde, Neruda, Vallejo, Huidobro, the Generation of ’27. José Emilio eats quickly and says goodbye; he has to turn in a translation the next day. Some writers we barely know approach our table to sit and chat. They’re obsessed with defining the topics our generation is obligated to address. They begin to enumerate their projects; they know what they must do for the next five years at least. We eat without paying too much attention to the ambitions of our newly arrived guests. Later, we discuss a fabulous book, James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., in which both biographer and biographee appear alternately as the remarkable characters they were, but they also prefigure traits belonging to Mr. Pickwick or, closer to home, to the comic strip character Don Reginito Burrón, which makes its reading even more enjoyable. We also discuss detective novels to avoid the formulaic and insipid conversation that dominates the table, and only out of politeness do we answer the questions that our acquaintances occasionally ask, without telling them that the only project that interests us is writing a satirical novel in which we would portray them as a bunch of grotesque and pompous idiots.