And while I sat at the kitchen table and drank down the quart of cola, waiting for the espresso pot to boil, the dreaded tape began to play in my head, the scene in which I leapt out of my chair and stampeded across Muñecón’s living room to the front door, which I swung open and didn’t close behind me, because the only thing I cared about was reaching the staircase and flying down it in leaps and bounds, with Mario Varela at my heels in hot pursuit so that he could smash in my face; this was the scene that would play in a loop in my head, over and over again all through the day, each time making me feel ashamed for my starring role and sending spasms of distress coursing through my spirit, distress I would be liberated from only after I called my uncle to apologize, an act of contrition I was not yet in any condition to carry out; I would let minutes, even hours, pass before I faced the consequences of that fateful brandy, which I never should have drunk, because everything started at that moment when I turned with glass in hand and heard Mario Varela say that Don Chente was suspected of having collaborated with the CIA at the end of the ’60s and then recount a putative episode on the shores of Lake Ilopango, where my doctor was signaling with lights at midnight to an imperialist agent who’d spent the night on a boat in the lake, all slander without a leg to stand on, the sort so typically used by the Communists against anybody who didn’t submit to their plans, and to which I responded with a clever strategy, that is, using flattery as a tactic, asking him — as if I were really fascinated by his story — about the kinds of signals the doctor was making to the CIA agent, what the goal of said signals was, and how they had found out about it, all the time delighting in the Communist’s stupidity because he didn’t realize that I was seething with rage and had no intention of letting him scheme against my doctor and get away with it. Then I told him, with feigned enthusiasm, that this was undoubtedly at a time when the country’s foremost minds were devoting themselves to establishing a Trotskyite party, and perhaps the incident on the lakeshore had been part of this effort rather than a confabulation with the CIA, to which Mario Varela reacted indignantly, as if I had now insulted him personally, shouting that nobody in El Salvador had ever tried to establish a Trotskyite party, that plague had always stayed far from our shores, and who, he asked, had poisoned me with that nonsense, a somewhat disproportionate reaction, to say the least, if we take into account that both young Iris and Muñecón were staring at him, the color drained from their faces, never imagining that I had pulled that out of my bag of tricks in a flash of inspiration, which I was not yet ready to let go of and which led me to say next that of course somebody had, my assertion was well documented in books and magazines, but each time the Trotskyites had tried to get organized, a well-aimed tip-off to the police had aborted their efforts. “You’re talking bullshit and defaming the Party,” Mario Varela snapped, flying into a rage. “You’re a goddamn fucking Trotskyite yourself.” Without losing my composure, remaining quiet yet inspired, I explained that this was not the case, that unfortunately I had been rendered incapable of being a Trotskyite due to an episode in my childhood that had marked me for life, and that I would now recount to them: from the age of ten to twelve, my best friend in our neighborhood in San Salvador was a dark-skinned boy named Eduardo, the son of a lawyer who lived next door and had a vicious and untamed boxer, whose name was none other than Trotsky, a dog they had to lock up in the servants’ quarters every time Eduardo’s friends came over; and I would never forget how I’d stand out in front of the house and call out for Eduardo through the window, and instead of my friend’s voice, I would be answered by Trotsky’s terrifying barks, behind which I could hear his mother ordering a maid, “Lock up Trotsky, Erasmito’s here!” My story worked wonders at relaxing Mario Varela, moving him from rage to bemusement, there he was laughing his head off about something that had not been very funny when I was a child, because, I continued, due to Eduardo’s sister’s or the maid’s carelessness, there were several times when we’d be playing soccer in the street in front of Eduardo’s house and said boxer would come tearing out of the house looking to sink his teeth into somebody’s flesh, so at the precise moment we’d hear the warning cry, “Trotsky’s out!” every single one of us would scramble up the nearest tree to get out of reach of the mad dog. It was because of this childhood experience that I had been rendered incapable for life of being a Trotskyite — as would be evidenced years later, whenever anybody talked about the great Soviet revolutionary leader and I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about the short rabid snout of my neighbor’s boxer — I explained to my listeners, because by now all three were laughing at my story, though I wondered if young Iris even knew who Trotsky was, which at that point didn’t really matter, because once Mario Varela had lowered his guard, and while I was pouring myself another brandy, I told them that even though I had been rendered incapable of being a Trotskyite, this did not invalidate the fact that El Salvador could use a Trotskyite party to capitalize on the energies of the intellectuals and, above all, to offer an ethical example that the Communists had been incapable of offering. Mario Varela sprang out of his chair and started telling me off, shaking his fat index finger in front of my face, daring me to give him one single instance when the Communists hadn’t risen to the demands of the historical moment, as if history and rising had anything to do with each other, I managed to think before his shouting and his accusatory index finger produced a fatal short circuit, blowing my last fuse, which I now rued as I was drinking my Coca-Cola and listening to the bubbling of the espresso maker in the kitchen. Because it was at that moment that I told him that I didn’t give a damn if the Communists had risen to the historical moment or not, that I didn’t know if history was a dwarf or a giant, but one thing I did know for sure was that the Communists abandoned their own people to the worst possible fates, as had been the case with Albertico, my cousin and the son of Muñecón — who looked at me now in dismay — whom the death squads had captured the very same day they had captured leaders of other revolutionary organizations, all part of the same raid, but only the Communists had been incapable of immediately denouncing Albertico’s capture or carrying out violent street protests that would have forced them to release him, whereas the other organizations had done precisely those things and their leaders had been released. “You’re accusing me of something, you sonofabitch. .” Mario Varela snapped, as a challenge not a question — we were now standing up, though face-to-face would be just a figure of speech because the guy was at least a head taller and twice as fat as me. “Settle down,” my uncle said in a conciliatory tone, perhaps fearing the first blow. “Things were much more complicated than that,” he added, patting me on the shoulder and leading me to the armchair where I sat down reluctantly, my nerves already frayed, and then he led Mario Varela to the sofa at the other end of the room, as if this were a ring and we were wrestlers who had just been separated from a clinch. “You’ve got a bad conscience, don’t you, you asshole!” I shouted at Mario Varela in my nastiest voice, my middle finger raised in a challenging gesture, to which he responded with fury, pushing Muñecón aside and hurtling toward my armchair, which I leapt out of, as I already said, rushing to the door that led to the staircase of the building and then out into the street, for although it is true that said Communist was tall and heavy enough to have smashed my face in with one blow, it is also true that I was twenty years younger, and he would have been hard put to catch up with me.