He spent a while in Rio de Janeiro and then they went to live in Mexico City. There his daughter, Rosa, was born and he translated J.M.G. Arcimboldi’s The Endless Rose from the French for a Buenos Aires publishing house while listening to his beloved Edith speculate that Rosa’s name was an homage to the title of the novel and not, as he claimed, a tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. Then they went to live in Canada and then Nicaragua because both of them wanted their daughter to grow up in a revolutionary country.
In Managua, he was paid a pittance to teach Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, Lenin, but he also taught classes on Plato and Aristotle, Boetius and Abelard, and he realized something that in his heart he had always known: that the Whole is impossible, that knowledge is the classification of fragments. After that he taught a class on Mario Bunge that was attended by a single student.
A short while later Edith Lieberman got sick and they left for Brazil, where he would make more money and be able to afford the medical care that his wife needed. With his daughter on his shoulders he swam on the most beautiful beaches in the world while Edith Lieberman, who was more beautiful than the beaches, watched from the shore, barefoot in the sand, as if she knew things that he would never know and she would never tell him. He was active in a Trotskyist party in Rio de Janeiro. He translated Osman Lins and Osman Lins was his friend, though his translations never sold. He taught courses on the neo-Kantian philosophy of the Marburg School-Natorp, Cohen, Cassirer, Lieber-and on the thought of Sir William Hamilton (Glasgow, 1788-Edinburgh, 1856). He was with his wife until her death, at 3:45 a.m., while in the next bed a middle-aged Brazilian woman dreamed out loud about a crocodile, a mechanical crocodile chasing a girl over a hill of ashes.
After that he had to be father and mother to his daughter, but he didn’t know how and he ended up hiring a servant for the first time in his life: Rosinha, northeasterner, twenty-one, mother of two little girls who stayed behind in the village, and who was like a good fairy to his daughter. One night, though, he went to bed with Rosinha and as he was making love to her he thought that he was going crazy. Then he got himself into the usual hot water and had to leave Brazil with time enough only to pack the little they could take with them. At the airport his daughter and Rosinha cried and his friend Luiz Lima asked what’s wrong with these women, why are they crying.
After that he lived in Paris, his savings at a low ebb, and he had to work hanging posters or mopping the floors of office buildings while his daughter slept in a chambre de bonne on avenue Marcel Proust. But he didn’t give up and he strove and strove until he found a job at a high school and then a German university. Around this time he wrote a long essay on Macedonio Fernández and Felisberto Hernández, focusing on their importance as Latin American thinkers rather than their literary achievements. And on the first vacation he was able to permit himself he took his daughter to Egypt and they went sailing on the Nile.
His situation seemed to improve. Their next trip was to Greece and Turkey. He wrote about Rodolfo Wilcock and the phenomenon of exile in Latin America. He took part in a colloquium in the Netherlands and he bought a laptop computer. Finally he ended up at the University of Barcelona, where he taught a course on idiocy and self-awareness that was so popular that his contract was renewed for a second year. But he never finished the course. Around this time he received a letter from a friend in Mexico, Isabel Aguilar. She had been a student of his in Mexico City and at one time she was in love with him. Now she was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Santa Teresa and she offered him a job. She said that she was friendly with the head of the department, Professor Horacio Guerra, that for a month now there’d been a position available in the department, and that if he wanted it it was his. Amalfitano discussed it with his daughter, wrote to Professor Aguilar to thank her, and asked her to send him the contract as soon as possible.
6
The four policemen got up from their seats at a table at the back of Las Camelias, the bar across the street from the General Sepúlveda police station, when they saw Pedro Negrete and Gumaro coming toward them. The policemen were in tracksuits and Pedro Negrete and Gumaro were wearing suits and ties, though Gumaro’s suit and tie were cheap and wrinkled and Don Pedro’s were expensive. It was eleven in the morning and the four policemen had been at the bar since ten, eating ham-and-cheese sandwiches and drinking beer. Don Pedro instructed them not to get up and ordered a whiskey with water and ice. Gumaro sat next to Don Pedro and didn’t order anything. When the waitress brought Don Pedro the whiskey he asked what his boys owed. The policemen protested, no, no, Don Pedro, it’s on us, but Don Pedro said to the waitress: “Charge it to me, Clarita, and that’s an order.”
Ten minutes later Pedro Negrete called for another drink and encouraged the policemen to follow suit. The policemen said that one beer was enough for them, but this time they were paying.
“Out of the question,” said Don Pedro, “I’ve got it.”
The waitress brought another round of beers and another whiskey for Don Pedro.
“Aren’t you drinking?” asked Don Pedro.
“My stomach is funny today,” answered Gumaro in an spectral voice.
The policemen looked at Gumaro and Don Pedro and then they started to eat the peanuts that the waitress had left on the table.
“Young people today can’t hold their liquor,” said Pedro Negrete. “In my years in uniform I knew a cop who drank a bottle of tequila every morning before he went on his rounds. His name was Emilio López. Alcohol was the death of him in the end, of course. We never let him drive the patrol car, but he was a good guy, the kind of man you could trust.”
“He died of a burst liver,” said Gumaro.
“Well, those are the risks.”
“His liver was the size of a plum.”
Don Pedro Negrete ordered another whiskey. The policemen accepted another round of beers.
“Did you know General Sepúlveda, lads?”
“No,” said one of the policemen. The others shook their heads.
“You’re young, of course. Did you know him, Gumaro?”
“No,” said Gumaro with a sigh.
“Right after I joined the force I was assigned to guard his house. He lived on this very street, which was already named after him, General Sepúlveda at Colima. It was a big house, with a pool and tennis court. I was stationed at the door and my two buddies were in the street, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to and I just stood there thinking. Then it started to rain, only a drizzle, you could hardly see it, but to be safe I took shelter under a gazebo in the yard. Then the door to the house opened and General Sepúlveda himself appeared. He was wearing a burgundy robe and underneath it he was in pajamas, it was the first time I had seen him in person and I thought he must be at least ninety, though he was probably much younger. At first he didn’t notice I was there. He glanced out into the yard and up at the sky. He seemed worried about something. Maybe he was afraid the rain would ruin some of his flowers, but I don’t think so. When he saw me, he beckoned me over. At your service, mi general, I said. He didn’t say a word, just looked at me, and with a wave of his hand he signaled me to follow him into the house. Of course, as you can imagine, my orders were to stay outside, in case some asshole got past my buddies in the street, but mi general was a tough old son of a bitch and I obeyed without a murmur. As impressive as that house was from the outside, boys, on the inside it was stunning. It had everything. Paintings over six feet tall. It was more like a museum than a house, which pretty much sums it up. Of course, I couldn’t stop to get a good look because mi general was walking quickly and I had to follow close behind so I didn’t get lost in those endless hallways. At last we came to the kitchen and mi general stopped and asked if I wanted coffee. I said I would be delighted, of course, but since I saw that his hands were trembling I offered to make it myself and then the old man sighed, he said all right, go ahead, and he dropped into a chair. I remember that while I was making the coffee I heard him breathing behind me and for a moment I wondered whether something was wrong. Has anything like that ever happened to you, boys?”