A Correspondence by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia

The first letter arrived on a Monday. When I returned from the office, I opened the gate and picked up the mail from the walkway. There wasn't much: a letter from the bank, a catalogue, a brochure for a vacation spot in Mexico, and an envelope with my address but no name printed above it, no return address, and postmarked in the city at the central station. I did not open the letter right away, because it was already past eight, and I was used to eating at seven. After hanging my jacket and hat and leaving my briefcase in the study, I put the mail alongside the newspaper on the kitchen table and prepared my dinner. As it happened, I became engrossed in an article about the future of the glass industry in Quetzaltenango and I ate my dinner without making it through the paper. So it wasn't until much later, when I was drinking tea in the study and clearing my desk, that I turned to the envelope.

It was already late, and I was beginning to feel sleepy. The only light in the room came from the desk lamp, a frosted globe with fine etchings that threw an amber glow across the room. I often spent two or three hours at the end of the day sitting behind the desk or in the leather armchair on the other side of the room. By eleven, the sound of the traffic on the highway would die away, and I would sit quietly, waiting for a dog to bark or looking into the corners of the study where the darkness prevented me from recognizing the books on the bookshelves. I sat in the leather armchair and opened the letter. As I cracked open the paper, I observed to myself that my eyelids were drooping and that it was time to go to bed. The moment I saw the typewritten pages my pulse quickened and my drowsiness faded.


Don't bother turning to the end of the letter; you won't find a signature. I know it will frustrate you. You'll make a list of people in your mind and make hypotheses. You'll skip ahead, skimming for evidence, and read the most insignificant details as clues. I suggest you not bother and imagine me instead: the color of my beard, the car I drive, the state of my handkerchiefs, the way I hold my fork, the pattern of my curtains-stripes, trellises, it doesn't matter. In a page or two you will begin to ask yourself why I can't speak to you in person. I'm not the only one who can't. There are others-many, I would guess-who are in the same situation. In the beginning, when everyone clamored for an answer, we were unavailable-occupied with love, or debt, or fear. And then years later, when everyone knew what had happened, we wrestled with confusion, or estrangement, or shame. And now, when everyone wants to forget, we realize that it is too late. We must go quietly, invisibly, in a way that will afflict no one, but with the kind of memories that instead of fading, grow louder and louder like the ringing of a bell between one's ears. It would not be enough to write these letters and then throw them away, or write them and send them to an address I picked at random out of the phonebook. If I had not known a judge, I would have found one for the purpose of writing to him. But I happen to know you. I write to ask whether you will reconsider a judgment that was passed a long time ago.

More than twenty-five years ago, I was a student of politics at the university. My parents always hoped that I would become a doctor, but I became interested in government, and in particular, politics. As you know, it was difficult at that time for an ordinary person, let alone a student of politics, to be unaware of the tension that boiled at the edges and threatened to blow the lid off of ordered society altogether. I studied politics, but increasingly became most interested in political history, and I am embarrassed to say that I had no clear opinions of my own about what was going on around me. On this point, my parents could offer no guidance; in fact, they seemed to be even more ignorant than I was.

I discovered that I would have to form my own opinions one evening during my first year at the university. I was having dinner at my parents' house, and my mother was in the uncomfortable position of having to cook and serve dinner by herself before joining my father and me at the table. When she finally sat down, she was frazzled and full of complaints about the maid, who had vanished unexpectedly the day before. My father was silent on the subject. "She must have run off with the guerrillas," I offered. "Ha!" my mother laughed. "The what?" I felt a dull surprise, a disorientation, as though I had tried to run through a screen door. "Well, I don't know any myself, but they say that the guerrillas are all over-not just up in the mountains, but here in the city, too. At the university they talk of nothing else. There are all kinds of student organizations and people are getting together, planning things, getting organized." My parents stopped eating and stared at me in silence. My father said, "Don't be ridiculous. No such thing exists." He calmly recommenced cutting his meat. I tried to say more, but my mother cut me off, saying, "I suppose that's why she took the emeralds your father gave me for our anniversary. Camouflage." She laughed to herself while my father chewed and raised his eyebrows at his plate.

But rumor of an organized movement seeped into every corner of campus: a thick fog that concealed its own doubtful outlines as well as it did the original nature and purpose of the university. Gradually, I grew to sympathize with it, or what I could make of it. I criticized the government for censoring the press, I mocked it for being a puppet in the hands of North American powers, and I resented it for having reverted to a set of policies that were irrelevant to my own life but that seemed to me, at the time, extremely significant.

The first two years did not feel uneventful at the time, but in retrospect I realize that they were. I was getting to know my field, befriending a few of the younger professors, and staking out my own intellectual ground. I began by studying the history of recent politics, and each semester took me further and further away from the present, so that by my third year I found myself focusing on the political history of the colonial period: material that could be examined with several centuries' hindsight. It was no coincidence that this kind of study of politics was as far removed from the actual, living politics of the country as conceivably possible. I wanted to remain sympathetic but uninvolved. Nonetheless, I knew that this distinction was apparent only to me. I was caught in the midst of something: a fish is more like a man than he is like the lake he lives in, but he is indistinguishable from it to someone standing on the shore. And if the lake were to be drained, the fish would go with it.

After my second year of university, things changed. One afternoon in October, I attended an economics class, and during the discussion the professor chose me, I believe at random, to comment on another student's argument. I explained why the argument was unsound, and concluded-convincingly-that the country would never become prosperous if its scholars and counselors sacrificed fundamental economic logic for the sake of idealism. The discussion moved on and I forgot all about my comment until after class, when I found the student I had responded to waiting for me outside of the classroom. Many months later, Claudia would confess to me that she hated my manner of arguing. "You don't get angry!" she cried. "Get angry, you must get angry. There is nothing more offensive to me than how you sit there, talking calmly, as if you don't care at all what I say." I told her that her anger always upset me. "Then why don't you shout?" she hollered. Claudia accused me of trying to make her more argumentative by failing to put a proper amount of passion into our arguments. "If you don't shout then I'm going to shout enough for both of us." And yet, that first time, I was sure that she liked me for how I responded. As soon as I walked out of the door, she pushed her face into mine and hissed, "Aren't you embarrassed?" I mumbled something of an apology and walked away. "You know what for," she said, more loudly, as she walked beside me. "For playing up to the professor at my expense-at the expense of the only student who tries to stand up to him. Sure, it's easy to insult my ideas when everyone else in the room agrees with you. Did you think for a second about how difficult it was for me to express a difference of opinion? You probably did, but you didn't care. You just wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear. You're ashamed; I know you are. Do you have anything to say for yourself?" I stopped walking and looked at her in silence for a moment. "I don't know," I said. For a moment I thought her anger would overwhelm me. I had a vision of her fists pounding into my stomach over and over again until I fell to the ground, her face purpling with rage and her wild hair suffocating me. But then Claudia began to laugh. She laughed hard and leaned on the wall to keep from falling. "You've never been yelled at like that before, have you?" she asked, in a different voice. I laughed lightly in response. "Well, you know what to do if you want more." She laughed again and handed me her books. I was forced to buy Claudia dinner to apologize, and by the time I dropped her off at home, after midnight, my impression of her had changed.

She may sound hard to you, but Claudia was in reality quite gentle. The day after I met her, I was walking to one of my classes and saw her again. She ran towards me with her jacket open and her neck and cheeks red with exertion. When she stopped in front of me, her hair collapsed all around her face. She grabbed my arms, squeezed her eyes together, and told me breathlessly that she needed my car. As she dragged me towards the parking lot she explained about the woman she'd met by the bus stop. "She missed the bus," Claudia cried. "And she's on her way to her brother's funeral with her children. And there won't be any more buses to Rabinal until the evening and then the funeral will be over." The woman stood by the bus station with a boy under each arm. She wore traditional dress, her head sash filthy, and both she and her children went barefoot. When she climbed into the car, her stolid face neither looked at me nor spoke. I drove them all the way to Rabinal from the capital with Claudia in the front seat. For several hours, the road wound through clusters of cement houses with aluminum roofs and then plunged into hills of overgrown jungle. Occasionally Claudia turned and said something to the woman, who stared out the window and blinked placidly in response. Her two children, both less than five years old, sat next to each other silently and gazed at me in the rearview mirror, resembling not so much two boys as their impassive ghosts.

By the time we dropped them off in the center of Rabinal and started to make our way back to the city, dark had fallen and I had missed all my classes. Claudia looked exhausted but elated. I decided to mention what had been bothering me from the time we picked the woman up at the bus station. "Claudia, she wasn't going to a funeral, was she?" She was quiet for half a minute, and then asked why I doubted it. "Well, she wasn't wearing the kind of clothes you wear to a funeral. And she wasn't crying. She just wanted a ride, didn't she?"

Claudia spoke quietly. "They don't wear black like we do for funerals. And they don't grieve like we do either. You could see the pain all over her face."

The next day, something similar happened, and the day after that, another something. Claudia asked things of me-every day and always more. And I always wanted to give her what she demanded. I was not used to being asked for so much. If you were to press me now, I would not be able to tell you which qualities of Claudia's I found so compelling. She had a plain, somewhat round face, and wavy unkempt hair. Short in the legs, a bit wide in the hips, with a ferocious strength in her arms, she appeared as unremarkable clothed as naked. She could be very childish and petty when things did not go her way, and had an irritating way of asserting herself when others were trying to accommodate, while letting herself get run over by people whom she trusted unwisely. Perhaps she was not a very good judge of character, but I began to notice that when I was not with her, I felt left out of something. Surrounded by people on the street or in class, I nonetheless felt stranded, alone, far away from a place where people were expecting me and wondering what had happened to me. I would grow impatient, then anxious. With her, I awoke to find myself safely back where I was supposed to be.


*

I fell asleep in my chair after reading the letter for the third time, so that Tuesday morning I felt stiff and my neck ached. I dressed slowly and with some difficulty. When I had finally straightened my tie, I realized that I had forgotten to shave and so I was forced to remove both my shirt and tie and spend fifteen minutes with my neck craned painfully over the sink. This process at last concluded, I fried two eggs and made toast. I ate with more appetite than I usually did. Despite the discomfort caused by an awkward night's sleep, I was feeling surprisingly alert. I washed the breakfast dishes, left them to dry in the wooden rack beside the sink, and prepared my briefcase for work. On impulse, I walked into the study to glance again at the letter, which was sitting where I had left it on the armchair. I looked around the room and wondered when I had last opened the curtains in the study. Though I had lived in the house for decades, I could not remember ever once seeing them open. It suddenly seemed ridiculous to keep the room so dark. No doubt the tobacco and the odor of pages mildewed by humidity had been absorbed so thoroughly by every object in the house that I no longer noticed. I spent so much time in the study that I too probably smelled of smoke and mold. This thought prompted me to open the heavy green curtains that covered the sliding doors, and a pale, bitter light fell against me. As I looked down to avoid the glare, I noticed with surprise that the rug was filthy. I examined the pale, cloud-shaped stains with a sense of dismay. There was no doubt the room had been kept closed for too long.

After my eyes adjusted to the light, I opened the sliding door and stepped out onto the narrow concrete step. I couldn't remember having looked into the backyard before. It was completely unfamiliar to me. I saw about two meters of coarse crabgrass and then a whitewashed concrete wall blocked my view. At the top of the wall was a coil of barbed wire. I could barely see the upper story of a house on the other side of the wall. The second floor of the house had a wide balcony where a few desiccated palms sat partially obstructed by two long lines of laundry. When I looked to the right I noticed a laundry line in my yard as well; two of my shirts and a set of pajamas were hanging from it. For a single panicked moment, I couldn't understand how my clothes had come to be hanging there. With alarm, I imagined myself doing things in my own home-perhaps even outside of my home-that I later had no memory of, as though walking and acting in my sleep.

A moment later, of course, I realized that my clothing had been put there by the maid, who cleaned, washed, and prepared dinner for me during the day. I had turned on the step to leave the yard when I heard a door pulled open and saw the top half of a woman emerge onto the balcony of the neighboring house. She was wearing a towel and a pair of large sunglasses that hid half her face. Her long black hair was wet, and the drying fringes had begun to curl. The woman bent out of view for a moment and when she stood up again she no longer wore the towel. She switched the radio on and for a few moments stood, head cocked, as if getting her bearings. Then she turned away and, swinging back and forth gently to the music, took down the laundry. When her back was to me I stepped into the study. This had the confusing effect of bringing more of the woman into view, so that I could clearly see her buttocks swaying with the slow, rocking movement of her step. I closed the sliding door as quietly as possible, but felt unable to tear my glance from the gentle, irregular dance of the woman as she folded her laundry. After I had been standing in this way for at least a minute, an object flew towards me and crashed against the glass of the sliding door. My heart jumped, and I immediately thought someone on the balcony had caught me watching and thrown a rock at the window. But then I saw that the window was undamaged and that a bird no larger than my fist lay motionless on the concrete step. I crouched down and stared at it through the glass of the sliding door. The bird shuddered slightly and its eye gleamed. I watched, with my hand tensed on the handle of the sliding door. Once I began to pull it open, but then changed my mind and closed it again. When I stood up, the woman who had been on the balcony was gone.

On the way to the office, I began to feel well again. I sat in the back of the car, protected from the sunlight by the tinted windows and watching the city stir gradually into action. The man at the fruit stall by the end of the boulevard was taking a nap under his newspaper. Along the highway, rows of buses stopped to spew exhaust and discharge ordered streams of people in clothing that had been starched, pressed, then crumpled during the long journey into the city. The sign for a breakfast restaurant with a yoghurt theme advertised juices and pancakes in neon lettering. In its empty parking lot, plastic bags were swept up by the wind and constellated against the chain-link fence. By the time I arrived at my office, the weak sunlight and the mist had given way to a hot morning. Adela had prepared coffee that sat on my desk in a porcelain saucer. She had organized my desk and set a stack of files before the chair. I was not at all late-Adela was just coming in with the cream and sugar. She smiled at me, took my jacket, and left me to make my way through the morning paperwork.

*


There was another envelope marked only with my address when I returned to my house that evening. The letter was once again several typewritten pages. It began abruptly where it had left off the day before.



A few months later, Claudia moved in with me. My parents had bought me a house close to the university so that I would not have to make the long drive from their house to arrive in time for my classes. It was an unusual arrangement at the time; most young people lived with their parents until they were married. In my case, my parents could afford the house and they felt that I would benefit from the independence. But young people rarely lived together before getting married-it was bohemian, even indecent-and so I decided not to mention it. Claudia and I knew we would be married eventually, and in the meantime we began to feel that it was not enough to see each other during classes and after we had finished our work. Once Claudia moved in, the anxiety that I felt when she was not around subsided. Whenever she was absent, I knew for certain that I would see her again soon. We settled into a comfortable rhythm, leaving for school together, working at the library, and heading home together at night. My parents didn't ask any questions, and my contact with them dwindled to just the meeting each Sunday when they pulled together our closest family members for a long afternoon meal.

During this time, I began to shift from being obsessed with politics at the university to being involved in them. This shift happened almost without my noticing. At one point, Claudia asked me, "Why don't you come to the meetings with me?" I told her that the student meetings always seemed attended by people who actually knew what they were doing. She laughed. "If you went to them, you would know what you were doing, too." I expected that going to the meetings would make all the talk about the guerrillas and the government less remote, but I was mistaken. After going to more than a dozen meetings, those subjects seemed just as abstract as they always had. But perhaps this was my own fault for being too involved in my work. Whatever I was studying always became so absorbing that I thought of it constantly and related everything around me to it, almost to the point where the material ceased to be an interesting complement to my observations and instead became confusedly intertwined with them.

I was, when Claudia asked me to go to the meetings, reading "Rabinal-Achí," the ancient ballet-drama of the Maya Quiché. The truth is that I was having difficulty understanding or even envisioning the play, and I took some comfort from a part of the prologue in which Luis Cardoza y Aragón admits that he was profoundly bored the first time he saw the play reenacted in 1966. He points out that if he had been able to see it in Rabinal, performed by its inhabitants, the impression would have been different. "But of course," he wrote, "we cannot really connect, in any way, no matter how hard we try, with the mentality, the psychology, the sensibilities, the idiosyncrasies, of the people of Rabinal, of the Quiché prior to Spanish colonization." For months, I grappled with "Rabinal-Achí," and as this period coincided with the time when Claudia convinced me to attend the student meetings, I inevitably had the play in mind as I sat among the other students, listening to the arguments that arose each time, such that the meetings and the play became entangled and I formed the unavoidable impression that I, like Cardoza y Aragón, was watching a dull and terribly inexpressive modern rendition of the old drama.

The vacation passed and classes recommenced the next year. The meetings became more frequent; twice, sometimes three times a week, I found myself going with Claudia to the cramped classroom where the giant spider plants hung side by side against the frosted window. Claudia began to take on a more important role. There was some talk of sending her to teach classes in a rural village, and I, of course, said I would go with her. We were in our last year, and Claudia began to plan for our departure from the city when we graduated in the spring. I participated in the planning, but Claudia was in charge, and I deferred to her judgment-in large part because I was less informed than she. For example, once I had to ask Claudia if she knew what our future address would be. She looked at me suspiciously and asked me why I needed to know. I told her that I wanted to give my parents the address so that they could send a few boxes of books. For several seconds, Claudia stared at me, frowning. "You can't give your parents the address," she said slowly. I asked her why. She said that we weren't allowed to give anyone our address-it was too dangerous. "We're not retiring to our country estate, we're moving to a dirty patch of woods with no running water, no electricity, and absolutely no mail service. Even if there were mail service, there would be nothing to send in or out, because no one there can read anyway. Perhaps you forgot. That's why we're going." I thought about this. Claudia shook her head. "Have you been listening at the meetings at all?" We were standing in the kitchen. Claudia was in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and I had paused in the middle of chopping a green onion. The sound of the blood rushing in my ears surprised me. I put the knife down and went to open one of the cabinets over the stove and then closed it. Then I opened a drawer, closed it, and went to look in the pantry. "Would you stop that?" Claudia said. "What are you looking for?" "I think I cut myself," I said. "Let me see." "I'm looking for the bandages." Claudia stepped in my way. "Let me see your hand. Show me where you cut it." For several seconds, Claudia stood in front of me, waiting. I held my hand out towards her, palm upward, and turned it slowly. We both looked at it. There was no mark on it anywhere. Claudia turned away. "I have been listening," I said. "I'm going with you."

Then, at the beginning of our last semester, the nature of the meetings changed. There was no meeting called for two weeks. Sixteen days after the last meeting, I was sitting in the yard under the lemon tree, flipping through a few books, when I heard Claudia slam the front door. I lay quietly on the blanket, listening as she ran through the house, slamming doors and calling out my name. Finally she ran out into the yard, her hands trembling, her face discolored from crying, and she immediately tried to pull me to my feet. "Get up. Get inside," she cried. When she found me too slow to respond, she began flailing at me and pulling my clothes. "What, Claudia? What?" I said. "Get out of here-get inside-get inside now!" She succeeded in dragging me into the house. After she had locked the back door, pulled me into the bedroom, closed the curtains, and sat me on the bed, she told me what she had learned from a friend at the university. Ten days earlier, two students had been pursued at night by a car as they were leaving the university. After being chased through the network of roads around the campus, they had been cornered separately and shot. Their bodies had been found a couple of days later. The authorities made a statement accusing the armed guerrillas, but another student, who had seen them followed as they left, swore that the car had been a military vehicle. To me, the conclusion was clear. But Claudia did not see it the same way. "They're afraid of us," she said. "Finally." As she repeated this, her face, frozen in a grimace of combined horror and wrath, was bathed in a thick band of afternoon sun that came in from between the curtains. For a moment she seemed like a creature caught in the middle of a transformation. The right side of her, untouched by the light, remained alive-soft, rumpled, dark-but her left side had already turned to bronze. In a few moments the metal sheen on her hair and face would spread slowly across her nose and down her neck to her body, leaving her a lovely, rigid statue. I reached out and wiped her cheeks with my fingers. "Claudia," I said to her, speaking very softly, "who really cares if they're afraid of us?" She looked at me blankly. "It could have been you or me," I said. Claudia frowned, and a sharpness settled in her eyes. She pushed my hand away from her face. Looking down at the bedspread that we were sitting on, she began troubling a loose thread with her fingers. Then she spoke very quietly, almost absent-mindedly, as though commenting on the broken seam of the coverlet. "Coward." She turned away from the window and I lost the illusion of the bronze woman; with her face down and her forehead creased, she seemed very real-preoccupied but calm.


*


Adela had something to say to me on Wednesday. She came in to clear the coffee things and paused, smiling at me in her restrained way. I had hired her two years earlier because she was organized and disciplined and my experience with young women had taught me that this was rare. She spoke on the telephone with her mother once a day to make plans for dinner, and otherwise worked methodically and quietly from morning to afternoon. Her systematic and tidy way of approaching every task extended into her manner of movement and dress. I never saw her in anything other than a pair of low heels and a mid-length skirt. She wore cheap but pretty little earrings that matched her blouse. There was something comforting and simple about her appearance. When she moved through the office rooms, neatly stepping in and out with a quiet and economic step, I felt sure everything was running as efficiently and smoothly as possible.

"I don't know what you are doing with yourself this week," she said to me, still smiling, "but keep it up. Even if you tried to convince me that you had started exercising, I wouldn't believe it. Or maybe you've met someone? I wouldn't put it past you." With that she raised her eyebrows at me and walked out of the room. I shook my head. Adela was always teasing me in this way, and it was understood that I was supposed to ignore her comments and act tolerantly fed up. But she usually teased me by saying that I looked as though I hadn't slept enough. Adela was sometimes silly but she was perceptive.

Cheered by her comment, I walked over to the office window. My offices were located on the first floor of an old municipal building overlooking the central plaza. When it was warm, as it was on that Wednesday, Adela opened the wooden shutters and the windows. They knocked against the cabinets if there was a light breeze. The meter-thick stone wall made of the window a little balcony, and I leaned out against it towards the plaza. Renovation of the plaza had long been in the planning stage. A dry fountain splattered with pigeon excrement stood in the center. The stones were slowly being pushed out of place by coarse weeds, and the tiles surrounding the fountain were chipped and faded. The fountain was unfortunately shaped: too tall and narrow for the base, the center spout stood like an awkward white limb sticking out of a bunched-up pant leg. It was terribly hot, and the plaza was almost deserted. A lone man sat in the shadow of the skinny fountain, feeding a mass of pigeons that crowded, pecked, and circled anxiously.

"Adela," I said, turning from the window. After a moment she walked in from the other room. "Don't bother to prepare lunch. I am going out today."

Adela's eyes widened. "You're going out? Where will you eat?"

I responded with some annoyance. "There are plenty of places to have lunch."

"Yes, but you've never been to any of them."

I waved my hand at her.

"Fine. But just in case," she said gently, "if you don't find anything, lunch will still be here." After a look from me she retreated.

*


I walked close to the inside edge of the sidewalk, in the shade of the trees that stretched over the walls and into the street. Under the jacarandas, the hot still air was stirred by a sweet and chilling dampness. The streets were quiet; I walked away from the plaza and through several side streets towards the Italian restaurant. From the outside, the restaurant was uninviting. I suppose at some point it must have been an office building. Then the offices closed, and the windows were shuttered and swallowed up by bougainvillea. The double glass doors looked in on what seemed to be an abandoned entryway. But as soon as you entered the building, the restaurant took on a different aspect. Walking in through the low foyer, you suddenly had the impression that you had ducked into a covered alleyway between two stone houses. The square awaited on the other side. To the right, a fruit vendor sat behind his cart swatting at flies. A bread vendor piled hot bread on his cart to the left. Further on you could see rows and rows of olive oil bottles through the glass windows of a storefront. A hat shop was visible across the square; a woman was trying on a pale yellow hat and looking at herself in a mirror. Buildings clustered around the square had their windows open. Through them you could see a woman carrying a baby, a baker kneading, a shoe repairman at his bench, a man grinding meat for sausages. The windows on the top floors were lined with flowerpots and the occasional line of laundry was stretched out from one window to another. In the center of the square, a little fountain spouted water that glittered in the bright sunlight. People bustled through the square, eating at the round metal tables, purchasing bread and vegetables, or tossing coins at the old accordion player, who sat in the far corner playing his instrument.

Of course, after only a moment, the true nature of the square became apparent. The bread and fruit stands were mere decorations; the lazy waiters leaned on them and poked carelessly at the unused food. The windows had been set into the wall and their scenes painted onto the surface. The shutters, never opened or closed, were covered with a thin film of dust and cobwebs. There was no sunlight, but a blue dome cleverly illuminated at its perimeter with bright lights. In fact, the fountain, the accordion player, and the food on the metal tables were the only genuine articles in the square. Everything else was only a half-hearted effort to create a brief illusion for the restaurant's patrons. When the illusion vanished, all that remained was the unpleasant contrast between the façade and the expectation excited in the visitor's mind by the momentary vision. Nonetheless, there was something appealing about the false Italian square. If you were able to revive the brief image of the square as it had first appeared, you realized that it was perfect; it was unchanging, utterly dependable: at any moment you could return to the restaurant and be assured that the Italian square remained just as you remembered it.

I walked in between the sagging carts and waited by the side of the room until a waiter led me to one of the tables at the far end. After ordering my food, I sat back to listen to the fountain and the accordion. Most of the other people sitting at the tables were couples. They were older than I had expected them to be. The accordion player was rendering a piece by Piazzola that sounded like a sharp, tremulous complaint. It seemed to me for a moment that the woman painted into the window of the hat shop had smiled at herself in the mirror. She turned and impulsively purchased the hat from the storekeeper, whom I could not see from where I was sitting. And in fact the hat suited her perfectly. As she flounced out of the shop, holding the pale yellow hat against her black hair and taking tiny, exaggerated steps, in time to the music, my foot began to tap lightly. She held her hand out to me and I followed, stepping around the fountain and holding her waist against mine. When the tango turned more clamorous she pulled herself free and laughingly dipped her hat into the water. Before I could stop her she was tossing the water onto my face, onto my suit, and all the while she was laughing.

"You like this tango?" The accordion player was standing near my table, smiling.

"Yes, thank you, it's very pleasant."

"I think it must bring back memories for you." He laughed. "For old men like us, what doesn't bring back memories?"

I nodded at him vaguely. "No, no memories. Just a lovely tango. Thank you."

He kept smiling, looking at me amicably. Then his eyes grew thoughtful and he looked more closely. "You look very familiar. I think we must know each other. Did you used to come here often?"

"No, I don't think so."

He squinted at me and reached out his hand tentatively. "Are you sure? I feel certain I know you."

"You must be mistaken. I'm sorry." I motioned for the waiter. When he reached me, I spoke to him apologetically. "I lost track of the time-I'm sorry. Would you be so kind as to wrap my lunch so that I can take it with me?" He nodded and moved away.

Though I was looking away from him, the accordion player showed no sign of leaving. In fact, his curiosity seemed to grow by the second. "It's just in back there, I've almost got it," he murmured, his hand outstretched cautiously, as if pushing aside the tissue paper surrounding something very fragile.

"Excuse me," I said to him, with some impatience. I had to step around him to get out of the corner and across the room to where the waiter stood by the cash register. He handed me my lunch in a brown paper bag. I had one last look at the faded Italian square before I stepped back out into the midday sun.



It was around that time that I began to see more of Pepe. I had not been in contact with him for many years. Pepe's father and my father were friends, and our parents were part of the same social circle. There were five families in all, and half a dozen boys of about the same age. So Pepe and I saw each other every other weekend, and on these occasions I was very friendly with the other boys. We also attended school together. I was always polite to the other boys in class, but we did not continue our friendship there. In fact, our interaction outside of the weekend gatherings was limited to the occasional polite greeting; sometimes, I must admit, I actually turned a different way or pretended not to notice them in order to avoid any awkwardness. When I went to college, Pepe went to work with his father, who was an investor. The family gatherings petered out and I lost touch with Pepe completely.

During the fall that Claudia and I were attending meetings, I ran into Pepe again. I was in a bookstore downtown, looking for a novel. I had been having trouble sleeping and Claudia suggested I read something to distract myself before going to bed. When I turned the corner of a shelf, half-engrossed in a book, I bumped into someone. The book fell to the floor. I looked up, and it was Pepe. For a moment, I had the urge to pick up the book and walk away without saying anything, but then the moment passed. A broad smile spread across his face and I saw that times had changed. Pepe embraced me warmly. I forgot about the book, and Pepe and I went to get a drink. He told me about doing investment work with his father, and I told him about Claudia and the university.

I found that Pepe and I had more in common than I thought. Or perhaps it was not that we had things in common, but we felt comfortable with the same things. I remember that spending time with Pepe caused me to contemplate for the first time how unlike my family Claudia's was. Pepe's family, on the other hand, was very similar to mine. There was something about the way we conducted ourselves in the world that was in common and different from Claudia's way. Perhaps, I thought, it came down to the simple fact that Pepe and I had the same manners. Whenever Claudia and I ate at a restaurant, she had a habit of thanking the waiter for anything, no matter how small: if he placed silverware, took an empty glass, or made room for a plate, she made a point of interrupting our conversation to thank him, leaving me with the awkward choice of remaining rudely silent or thanking him as well. But I didn't think it was necessary to thank the waiter for everything-in fact, it probably annoyed him. Pepe seemed to understand this, or he naturally acted the same way I did. As we sat and talked that first time, the waiter brought our coffee, arranged milk and sugar, and brought spoons; the whole while Pepe and I conversed, uninterrupted.

The second time I got together with Pepe, I was a little late returning home. Claudia was waiting for me at the window. She ran to open the door and clasped my cheeks in her hands. "Where have you been?" she cried. I told her. "Don't do that to me," she said. "I get so worried about you. You can't come home late. I've been absolutely crazy." She clung to my hand and pulled me near her. As she rested her head on my shoulder, she released a sigh that felt like a tiny balloon deflating in my hand. I was surprised by this extreme show of affection, and I realized that she was feeling more anxiety than she expressed. For days, I was consumed with comforting Claudia, and she gradually returned to normal. When Pepe called again, I had forgotten all about him. "You need to get out of your house for a while," he remonstrated. I tried to make an excuse, but he continued to press me. "Claudia gets upset when I go out," I confessed. She was standing a few feet away, stirring hot chocolate over the stove. Without looking up, she waved her hand dismissively. "Don't exaggerate," she said, "I don't care if you go out. Go out, please. Maybe I'll get some work done."

I told Claudia that I would return by five in the afternoon and went to meet Pepe at the Bar Banana. At five, Pepe suggested that we go down the street to La Condesa, and I agreed. La Condesa was packed, and it took us almost thirty-five minutes to get drinks. So it was past seven when I parked the car in front of the house. Claudia was sitting on the doorstep resting her chin on her knees and wearing one of my sweaters. When I got out of the car she ran up to me and threw her arms around me. "I'm sorry," I said to her. She kissed me all over and scolded me and kissed me again. For days she would not let me out of her sight.

Whenever Pepe and I got together, we talked about general topics, and he often asked me about Claudia. I spoke to him openly and without embarrassment because I soon realized he didn't really understand my relationship with Claudia at all. Usually he would ask me a question and then let me talk, nodding me on, and the few comments he made seemed so inapt that I wondered whether he actually listened to me. Once, I remember, Pepe asked me whether I thought Claudia was right for me. "I can't imagine life without her," I said. Pepe nodded. "It's just that she seems to make you nervous." "You mean the meetings and all that-oh yes, certainly." "No," Pepe said, "I mean her." I laughed. "I never know what to expect with her. She surprised me from the beginning. But that's what I like about her." We were sitting at an outdoor restaurant at the time, and Pepe was serving us wine. He filled my glass and then his own and took a sip. "I think we should get some pastries," Pepe said thoughtfully. I did not respond, but remained quiet for some time. "No, she doesn't make me nervous at all," I said. Pepe smiled and raised his glass. "Who?" he asked. There are some friendships that arise because both people are in circumstances where they want not so much to be understood as to have an opportunity to speak. Under these circumstances, a listener's lack of insight is not disappointing. On the contrary, there is even something pleasurable in knowing that one is safe from the unsettling penetration of an astute friend. I developed this kind of friendship with Pepe. And so I felt completely easy talking to him. I can't remember what Pepe talked to me about. It is the nature of these friendships that one absorbs very little of the other person's thoughts and conversation.


*


Thursday afternoon was unusually hot. Adela had opened the windows in our rooms. I was finding it difficult to concentrate on my work. The plaza was completely deserted, and only a very few cars made their way cautiously around the perimeter as if their tires were in danger of melting. Adela had turned off the lights in the rooms to keep the air from getting too warm. As I sat in my leather desk chair with a sheaf of papers in front of me on the olive desk mat, a powerful drowsiness came over me. I felt an irrational desire to remove my shoes and socks so that my feet, which were feeling sweaty and swollen, could rest on the cool tile floor under the desk. Moving the papers to one side, I rested my forehead on the desk mat, crushing my nose slightly and letting my arms hang between my legs. It seemed that I blinked for only a moment. When I opened my eyes, I was disgusted to find a pool of spit on the desk mat. I stood up, eyeing the easy chair in the corner that I sometimes sat in to read, and found that I had, in fact, removed my shoes already. For a moment I paused, frowning, certain that I had thought about removing my shoes and socks but decided it would be inappropriate. Now that they were off, however, it was certainly too delicious to feel the cold tiles. I walked over to the easy chair and rested my head against the side. The list of things I had to do that afternoon flashed briefly through my mind, but I quickly let each item evaporate-there was nothing that could not be done on Friday. When my eyes were closed and I felt settled in the chair, a wave of relief washed over me. I was in a corner away from the sun; I felt only a light, cloudy sleepiness and none of the abrupt exhaustion that had left me pressed so uncomfortably face down on the desk. I had been resting this way for only a few moments when I suddenly began to feel uncontrollably irritated by my belt. My collar, too, was cutting unpleasantly into my neck. The door was closed. Adela would not disturb me and I would stay safely in my room. There was no reason not to remove my belt. I stood somewhat groggily and removed my belt, un-tucked my shirt, and opened my collar. The moment I opened my collar I felt that I would go crazy if I did not remove the shirt altogether. The sleeves felt unbelievably constricting-all the cloth had bunched up under my arms when I slid into the chair. I removed the shirt, put it and the belt on the side table, and happily dropped back into the armchair wearing only my pants and my undershirt. It seemed to me at that moment that there could be no greater pleasure than to sit this way, in relative comfort, and take a short nap while the sun was at its strongest. I rested my head against the side of the armchair once again and closed my eyes.

I had been snoozing this way for a few minutes when I suddenly had a thought: in the sitting room, there was a round leather footstool sitting between the two armchairs near the far wall that separated the sitting room from Adela's office. As soon as I had thought of the footstool, my legs and feet began to feel itchy with discomfort. I sighed, and tried to rearrange myself so that I would forget about the footstool, but it was no use.

Rising heavily, I walked barefooted across the room. I opened the door very quietly so that Adela would not hear me. The door to her office was closed. I would simply walk across the sitting room quietly, take the footstool, and return to my office. I began to tiptoe across the room, but stopped halfway. Why was it that I could hear nothing from Adela's room? The walls were thick, and I ordinarily never heard Adela, but the quiet seemed unnatural. I stood still on the carpet in the center of the room and strained to hear. Suddenly I heard the voice of a man coming from Adela's office. It began quite abruptly. I could not distinguish any words, but there was no mistaking the low, muted rumble. Tiptoeing carefully, I crossed the room and pressed my ear against the wall. The voice continued. Even with my ear against the wall, I was unable to make out what he was saying, but the voice began to have an unpleasant effect on me. He was speaking monotonously-there was no urgency in his tone-but something about it set me on edge. I began to feel a gnawing in my stomach, and as I struggled unsuccessfully to identify either the speaker or the cause of my dislike for him, I felt the anxiety building in my tightening chest. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that I knew the voice. But I could not place it at all. And as the minutes went by and my anxiety rose, I could not even seem to pinpoint what disturbed me about the sound of his voice. I crouched as close as possible to the door and pressed my ear against the wall. In the minutes that followed-I do not know how many they were-I pushed my memory to its limit.

It often happens that I am struck by an emotion for which I cannot immediately recall a cause. For example, I will be pausing on a corner and crossing a street, and I will sense in the back of my mind a certain unidentifiable unpleasantness, a bitter atmosphere, but I will be unable to remember what has caused it. I will poke around in my memory and dispel the unpleasant fog until I remember: ah yes, when I was walking in the morning I ran into an acquaintance, who waved from across the street and called me by name. And after a few minutes of conversation, I asked him how his wife was doing, only to remember as the question was rolling off my tongue that his wife had left him six months earlier with their accountant. And after his face closed in and he answered that he didn't know, I was left with the sourness between us that is certain to remain with me until, after resurfacing again and again in my mind, it can finally begin to lose its rancidness and fade to become yet another flavorless image from this morning, or yesterday, or last month. But often the shadow cast by the incident-either bitter or sweet-will be long, and one will feel the anonymous emotion trickling to the front of one's mind again and again, unbidden.

The man in Adela's room had such an effect. The disturbing emotion conjured by his voice was deeply familiar, and this made my inability to identify him all the more distressing. For several moments, I was adrift: without a name or reference or memory to anchor the man's voice, I could only float helplessly in the various emotions provoked by it. Had I been able to say, Ah yes-it's the director of the Society For Historic Preservation, who always comes to pester me for donations, then I would have been able to address the unpleasant feeling and put it to rest at once. As it was, I could only flounder through the emotions that swept through me for some clue that would lead me to their origin. First and foremost, I felt a near terror of confrontation. The last thing I wanted was to speak to the man face to face. But I also felt a curious kind of embarrassment, as though something deeply shameful to both of us had occurred and we were both eager to put it to rest. At the same time, I felt suspicious. I knew, clearer than I knew anything, that he had no reason to be in Adela's office. It was, in fact, impossible that he should be in Adela's office. As this was the one thing I knew for certain, I pursued it in my mind, but succeeded only in causing myself greater anxiety: knowing that he should not be in Adela's office but that he indubitably was in her office began to fill me with irrational fear. Would there be a consequence to his being in Adela's office? I could not remember. And then, a strange unrelated sentiment that seemed to streak through the others like a flash of silver on a gray horizon: a kind of excitement, almost elation, at hearing him. Yet upon closer examination, this feeling was not caused by the man, but by knowing that the man and I were separated sturdily by the thick wall between the two rooms. I struggled to make sense of the kaleidoscopic emotions; I could only conclude that the man was familiar but damaging to me and that my sole consolation came from knowing some separation, however slim, remained between us. At this moment, when my desperate clawing through my memory had reached its most frenzied point, the man stopped speaking, quite suddenly. I held my breath. For several minutes, silence. I thought I would hear Adela speak, or, if I were very lucky, the sound of the door opening and closing as he left the room. (Would he leave at last?) But I heard nothing. Then, unexpectedly, Adela's chair creaked, and I heard her sharp heels on the floor. She was walking in the direction of the sitting room! I stood up quickly, my heart pounding, and flattened myself against the wall. There was no time to get behind the door. Adela was approaching the door, she was reaching the door, she had opened it.

She stepped briskly into the room, then stopped for a moment and turned around slowly. She looked at me with amazement and then a guarded concern. I remembered at that moment that I was barefoot and in my undershirt. But I could not be bothered to care. I gestured to Adela wildly so that she would close the door. After several moments of shocked silence, she walked back and shut it quietly. "Is he gone?" I whispered. She stared at me, seemingly without comprehending. "What are you talking about?" she whispered, looking openly worried. "The man who was talking to you. . . is he gone?" For what seemed like several minutes, Adela looked at me in astonishment. Finally, she shifted her feet, as if bracing herself for a sudden tremor, and said, "There was no one here. I was taking down the notes you dictated. There are more than a dozen letters to be transcribed and sent by this afternoon." As soon as Adela spoke, the memory of my anxiety seemed to vanish. All I could think of was my ridiculous state of disarray: what would Adela think, finding me barefoot and shirtless in the sitting room? It was not even appropriate for a young woman to see a man of my age in such a state of undress. "I'm sorry Adela, it is terribly hot. I had to take off my shirt for fear of suffocation." After a moment, she nodded slightly. "Would you please bring me some water? I will be back in my room. Dressed, of course. Please excuse me." I padded lightly back into my room and after several seconds I heard Adela's clicking heels as she left the sitting room and headed down the hall for some fresh water.



In early December, three of the organizers from Claudia's group went missing. They were last seen on campus, separately, though it is possible that they had come together unseen at some point later in the day. At first, their families and friends expected them to reappear. But after one week and then two weeks went by, it became increasingly clear that the students were either captive somewhere or dead. The group responded as it had before: the meetings became more clandestine and more determined than ever.

When I next saw Pepe, in mid-December, I complained to him about the meetings. "Does Claudia know?" he asked. "She knows," I said. "Why do you go then, if you don't want to be there?" I protested that Claudia could not go by herself. "Well, why does she have to go?" I thought about how to answer him. "Claudia is the type who will always love a cause more than a person. She feels for me as much as she's capable of feeling for anyone." "Is that it?" Pepe murmured. "I must meet her," he said confidently, as if meeting her would make it possible to change her. I thought it was a good idea. "I can go to your house the next time we get together," Pepe said. I reflected that Claudia would respond badly to Pepe if it were just the three of us. "She's better in groups," I said to him. "Why don't you come to the next meeting? It's the only occasion that she goes out for nowadays." The moment I finished speaking, I blushed with embarrassment. "Forgive me for being so thoughtless," I said. "I'm so used to disregarding my own safety that I seem to have forgotten that I can't do the same for everyone else. We'll find some other way for you to meet each other." But Pepe responded with a sympathy that I had not known him capable of. "Please," he said quietly, as if ashamed. "You and I are friends. We've been friends since childhood and now we're even closer. If you can go to look after Claudia, why can't I go to look after you?" He spoke with such sincerity that I could not bring myself to argue. We agreed that he would attend the next meeting, and I gave him the instructions that he would need to join us.

I'm not sure why I decided not to tell Claudia that Pepe was going to be at the meeting. Mostly likely when I arrived home all thoughts of Pepe vanished, as usual, and when I next thought of him, both he and his attendance at the meeting seemed so insignificant that I felt they weren't worth mentioning. But then again, I wasn't entirely sure how Claudia would react to Pepe. There was still the chance that Pepe would decide not to show up, and so it seemed silly to upset her in advance only to discover that Pepe had not appeared.

We arrived late that day. On the way to the designated meeting place, we stopped at a light near a large intersection. There were two children on the street, putting on a little performance and begging for change. The younger child sat on the shoulders of his brother, wearing an oversized mask of an American president that covered his whole head. They were wearing, between them, a baggy, dirt-smudged suit that flapped awkwardly as the older child staggered around under the weight of his brother. The little boy wearing the mask was juggling what looked to be painted eggs. Together, the pair presented a pathetic and hilarious image: a bedraggled politician, drunkenly juggling his last possessions on the streets of a tiny country whose name he had probably been unable to pronounce correctly before his fall from grace. As they stumbled towards us, Claudia and I were both watching with our mouths half-open, half-smiling. Suddenly, one of the eggs tumbled out of the child's hand and onto our windshield. The glass cracked instantly and a maze of opaque lines streaked across the pane.

When I had assured that the glass was only cracked and not broken, I stepped out of the car. I had expected the children to be long gone, but they stood by the side of the road: two separate and tiny people in oversized clothes, giving the impression that the politician had been the victim of a powerful spell. They looked at me blankly. One of them gestured towards the car and asked for the egg. Speechlessly, I leaned over the car and found it still embedded in the windshield. When I had picked it out carefully, I discovered that it was made of polished stone-marble perhaps-and quite heavy. I handed the egg back to the top half of the politician, who was holding his head upside-down at his side, and then both he and his other half ran away and into the traffic. By this time, we had caused a major traffic jam with the car, and Claudia was in tears. I climbed back into the car and by sticking my head out of the side window was able to drive slowly out of the intersection.

When we finally arrived at the meeting, which was taking place in the storeroom of a roadside restaurant, the opening announcements were well under way. Everyone turned to look at us when we walked in. I saw Pepe sitting by himself on the other side of the room and nodded to him. He nodded slightly and smiled. Claudia and I took our places at the back of the room between two shelves. I usually found it difficult to keep my mind on the meeting, especially when an argument ensued and everyone spent hours elaborating and clarifying their opinions. That day was no exception. I was particularly distracted by the series of events that had caused our minor accident at the intersection. It reminded me of something, some memory, but I was unable to recall it. The announcements were concluded; the room began to grow very warm. We were not allowed to open the windows in the storeroom. In fact, they were covered carefully with both shutters and thick curtains. A single phosphorescent bulb in the center of the ceiling cast a raw, surgical glow over us. As I watched the young man who was speaking, I tried to stay awake by concentrating on the memory that was eluding me. I had an odd sensation about the memory: before knowing what it was, I sensed the feelings associated with it. A sense of confused indignation and uneasiness seemed to spring from the memory, which I could not yet identify from the grab-bag of images that presented themselves to me. I sifted through them unhurriedly, trying to match the strange emotions with their source. The young man's speech seemed to reach a concluding point. A young woman next to him spoke. They were taking a vote. I looked at Claudia and raised my hand when she did. I glanced across the room and noticed that Pepe had moved. He was standing by the door. I observed too that he did not vote.

Then the memory appeared before me, as if summoned. It was something that had occurred more than a decade earlier and that even then had probably remained in my mind for no more than a few hours. Nonetheless, the memory now came to me vividly, and as I recalled its details, the emotions they were charged with released their full power, as if they had been grains of pepper packed long ago, air-tight, that were now being crushed before my face.

I could have been no more than eleven when the first few family gatherings with my parents and the parents of the other boys took place. On the third or fourth meeting, we met at my house. After dinner, the adults sat in the living room, and all of the children went to my room. There was one older girl-she might have been sixteen or seventeen-who always ended up looking after two toddlers. Most of the time, she kept them apart from us boys or else stayed with the adults if the toddlers had been left at home. But that night she came along with us. Everyone politely inspected the things in my room. We played some music. After a while we simply sat around, talking and joking about things. At one point, when we were getting sleepy, Pepe said he had a very funny game to show everyone. He asked me if I would volunteer to help.

Pepe followed me to my parents' room, where Pepe chose one of my father's striped shirts in the wardrobe. We stood in front of the mirror, and Pepe had me hold the shirt against my chest, backwards, as if I were going to button it in the back. Then he went to stand behind me, slipped his arms under mine, and pulled the sleeves onto his arms. With the shirt pulled tight against me, it looked as though Pepe's arms were mine. He poked my cheek. We both doubled over, giggling, at what looked like me poking myself.

Back in my room, Pepe pulled my hair, rubbed my belly, and made all sorts of ridiculous movements, which made everyone in the room wild with laughter. "Talk about something," he whispered to me. Flushed and excited, I began to talk about whatever occurred to me. For some reason, perhaps because we were wearing my father's shirt, I took on the persona of some stiff, older man. Pepe accordingly crossed his arms, waved his finger reprovingly, and fiddled compulsively with the shirt collar. At some point, I later supposed, the joke probably began to wear thin. The laughter grew reluctant, as if everyone had suddenly become very tired. But I didn't notice. I kept talking, and my monologue became more outrageous and more exaggerated. The room went completely silent, but still I could not contain my excitement. I was sure that if I spoke animatedly enough, their great, spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter would resurge.

Miraculously, it did. People looked up, and suddenly giggled. One boy snickered, then laughed into his hand. The children looked me in the eye with curiosity. Then the older girl, standing near the back of the room, spoke softly. "Stop that, Pepe." For some reason, the other children in the room seemed to think this an invitation to laugh louder. "Pepe, stop it," she repeated, more firmly. I faltered, and my monologue derailed. I could not think what had upset her. The baby she was holding started to whimper and cry. I stopped speaking altogether, and the room settled into a low murmur of snickering laughter. The girl walked up to us and tore off my shirt. "Help me take them back to their mother," she said, handing me the crying baby. "I get lost in this huge house of yours." I took the baby and followed her out. Pepe shrugged at me, and I left him and the rest of the boys alone in my room.

The memory had set me on edge. Inadvertently, I glanced at Pepe, to dispel the unpleasant recollection with the image of how I now knew him. He was gazing across the room with a look of bored and contented vacancy. I turned to Claudia. Her eyes were on the speaker and she was wearing a look of grim concentration. I knew she wouldn't like it, but I leaned over anyway and gave her a little kiss on the cheek to make myself feel better. Surprised, she blinked at me and gave me a flicker of a smile. It was at that moment, when I was still leaning in and watching the unexpected smile, that the meeting ended. The door burst open. There were shouts and screams, which seemed to come from very far away, and the sound of automatic gunfire. A streak of sunlight filled the room, and I turned to see people yanking the curtains and shutters off of the windows. Tables and chairs were overturned. Claudia and I were frozen-we had both instinctively crouched near the ground. I threw myself over her and pressed us both against the floor. For several minutes, I saw nothing and only heard the shots being fired and the commotion of those who were trying to get away.

When the gunfire stopped, we stayed on the ground. I could feel Claudia trembling underneath me. Someone near the windows was howling, "Ay, ay, ay . . . ." There were two short bursts of fire and the wailing stopped. When someone grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me up, I did not resist. I released Claudia, who was similarly dragged upright, and stood as I was instructed to. Claudia began to cry silently, and I glanced around the room. About half of the people who had been at the meeting were standing as we were. Most of them were staring down at the ground. Of the other half, perhaps only four or five had gotten away through the window. The rest lay in various positions around the room: entangled in their chairs, slumped in what had been crouching positions beneath the tables, or sprawled against the wall by the windows. The soldiers stood stiffly around the room, pointing their weapons at those of us who were standing. For some reason, they struck me as very small. Only their weapons seemed disproportionately huge. Their faces were calm, and I had the momentary impression that they had nothing to do with the shooting, but had only rushed in afterwards to guard us. There were two men walking around the room, surveying the damage, inspecting the members of the meeting who were standing, and occasionally speaking to each other in low voices. One of them, a man in uniform, was clearly the one in charge of the soldiers. The other one was Pepe.

We were in the storeroom for only a few minutes more. I had the sense for years afterwards that I had not actually been at the meeting, but simply watched the brief series of events during and after the meeting through a crack in one of the windows. In trying to recall what I felt, I drew a complete blank. The only real sensation I could identify was the sense of stifling heat and anxiety that simmered in me during the meeting as I recalled what had happened in my room that night, years ago, with the other children. That feeling of stuffiness, the dry smell of flour and cardboard that was released as the storeroom grew warmer, was the only memory that truly assured me that I had been present at the meeting.

But of course I was not at the window but there, in the room, watching as people were led away one by one. The man in uniform and Pepe walked up to each of the standing members of the meeting, and Pepe said something briefly in the man's ear. As they approached us, I realized that he was telling the man each person's name. The man nodded, as if adding the name to some internal register, and then moved on to the next person. As he was left behind, the person who had just been named was taken away by a soldier. They reached Claudia before they reached me. Pepe leaned in towards the older man and said her name, very firmly and distinctly. He nodded, and they moved on to me. A soldier who had been standing in front of Claudia walked up to her and pulled her towards the door. She turned to look at me over her shoulder, and I met her gaze. I felt it move into me, forcefully, as if something had plunged into my stomach. I struggled to decipher the expression in her eyes, but understood nothing. Then she turned her head and stumbled out the door of the storeroom.

Pepe looked at me with his familiar, detached expression. He leaned in towards the older man, but did not say my name. Instead, he said, "This one is different. He's here against his will." The older man looked at him questioningly, as if to ask how such a thing could be possible. "Out of devotion to the woman, purely. He has no mind for politics. On his own, he's quite useless." There was a pause, during which both men seemed to assess me. The older man appeared less to be doubting Pepe than wondering how it was possible for me to exist. He seemed disgusted. Pepe leaned towards me slightly. "Am I wrong?" he asked me quietly. They both waited, Pepe with interest, the officer with barely-concealed repugnance. I said nothing. After a long pause, the officer motioned to a soldier nearby and said, "Make sure he gets in his car." Then they moved on to the next man.

Escorted by the soldier, I walked out to the car. I could see no military vehicles or other evidence outside the restaurant of what was going on within. The soldier's face was motionless as I unlocked the car and got into the driver's seat. I sat there for a little while behind the shattered windshield. I was looking up at the soldier questioningly, waiting for his instructions. After a few moments, he blinked and gave me a grim smile, as if apologizing that he could not go with me. Then he waved his gun in the direction of the road. I started the car and rolled up the hill, out of the restaurant's driveway and onto the main road.

The meeting place was on the outskirts of the city, so it took me nearly forty minutes to reach the center. It seemed too much of an effort, or perhaps it simply did not occur to me, to lean my head out of the window as I drove home. Everything before me was distorted by the opaque fissures in the glass. The lights doubled; the road split absurdly in opposite, impossible directions; the buildings hung in the air, their lower halves missing, like torn photographs. On a highway near the center of the city, a police officer stopped me. I pulled over by the side of the road and waited for him to approach. He looked critically at the car and then down at me through the car door window. "What are you driving around with a broken windshield for?" he asked. I told him that I was just trying to get home. "It just happened," I said. "Just a minute ago, the whole thing shattered." "You can't drive around like that," he said. "There's an auto shop around the corner. Drop it off there before you cause another accident." Just to make sure, he followed me around the corner and watched me give my keys to the attendant. After leaving my name and address on a tag for the keys, I walked to the corner and looked at the bus schedules to find one that would take me home.

I decided to stay in the same house. After a couple of years I put Claudia's things away in one of the rooms. I could not bring myself to get rid of them, nor could I see my way to selling the house. I finished my degree at the university. In fact, I went on to get two other degrees. By the time I was in my late twenties I had a secure job with a good salary. I had a few acquaintances at work, but I did not cultivate any friendships. I went out with women once in a while, but I didn't have any serious relationships and I never got married. The weekend meetings with my parents continued. Occasionally I went on short trips with them for a long weekend or a week at a time. I don't believe I ever saw Pepe again, but I can't be sure; there are often times, to this day, when I feel certain that I have caught a glimpse of him in a crowd. I'm sure this kind of life sounds dull, but it hasn't been. I think perhaps the few years with Claudia contained, in a concentrated form, enough excitement and anxiety to fill a lifetime. This must be the case, as I find that I spend much of my time thinking about those years and reliving small segments of them over and over in my mind, as if extracting a tiny drop of their concentrated substance to last over several days.


*


It was past midnight when I finished reading. I carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Then I lifted myself out of the old leather armchair and walked over to the desk. The four letters were there, in their envelopes, stacked neatly. I sat in the desk chair and opened the middle drawer, which held pens, clips, stamps, envelopes, and boxes of writing paper. I selected a gray paper and took my good pen out of its case. After testing the pen and reordering the paper several times, I sat for a few minutes, gazing at the impression left in the cracked leather armchair. Then I began to write.



I have taken your advice, and imagined you, little by little, as some person, known but unknown, who moves through his life in an ordinary way. I have imagined an address, and a house, and a conventional set of clothes, and a neatly-trimmed beard and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

In the first letter you sent me, you asked me to reconsider a judgment. After reading all four of your letters, I am not certain which judgment you mean. That of your parents? Of the children you knew when you were young? That of Claudia? If so, which? Was it her first impression of you or her last that really counted? Or is it the judgment of Pepe, of the officer who was in the storeroom, that really matters to you? Do you mean to ask whether their judgment was fair? Or do you mean to ask whether they could have been avoided?

But what else could you have done? You had to form your own opinions; you had to be a student; you had to fall in love with Claudia. Once you had fallen in love with her, you had to follow her. Once you had followed her, you had to defend yourself from her. When Pepe said to you, "Am I wrong?" it didn't occur to you to contradict him because he wasn't wrong. You would never have been there if it hadn't been for Claudia, and you were there against your will. In fact, you could not know where they were taking Claudia. Perhaps it was not immediately apparent what you would gain by following her, once more. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of your mind, you had the idea that you might do her more good if you were released.

Of course, Pepe was not really asking whether you were there against your will. If you remember, the way he looked you straight in the eye and paused, he was really asking, "Do you want to go with Claudia?" And in this sense, too, you answered truthfully. The difficulty lies in all the other times, prior to that day, that you did not. How many times did the question come to mind? Each time you replied "yes" when you meant "no." Of all the hundreds of times the question arose, you answered honestly only once.

Of course, the question looked quite different that day in the storeroom. When Pepe said to you, "Am I wrong?" you were not thinking of Claudia's face as she was pushed through the door. You were thinking about the face of the student who had fallen by the windows and rolled onto a sack of flour. The sack, cut through by bullets, had released a thick cloud that rose and settled on his skin and clothes. You were thinking of his face: a white mask punctured by the red opening of his mouth.

And then again, you were not thinking of Claudia's face as she was pushed out the door because that was not the last time that you saw her. Or heard her, in any case. Are you forgetting that as Pepe spoke to the officer, you heard her voice from behind the door through which she had just vanished? It was Claudia's voice-she did not say anything-it was simply a cry. So that when Pepe asked, "Am I wrong?" the sound of Claudia's cry was still ringing in your ears. In fact, hearing her as you stared at the student on the ground, you could not help confusing the two in your mind.


*


I had just paused to wipe the perspiration from my forehead when I heard the phone in the corridor ring. It rang twice, three times: a shrill, distant sound muffled by the heavy door of the study. I decided to leave the call unanswered. It rang on, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen times. Finally, at the twenty-fifth ring, I lost my patience and threw my pen down. I stood heavily, pushing the desk chair back, and walked across the study. When I reached the door, the phone was still ringing. I walked out under the stairs and around the corner to the little table where the phone sat next to a vase of plastic flowers. It was ringing for the thirty-eighth time when I lifted the receiver. "Yes," I said, the impatience coming out in my voice. There was an uncertain pause, and then a man's voice: "May I speak with Claudia?" I was silent. The man on the other end of the line waited. Then he spoke again. "Excuse me, can you hear me? Is Claudia..." I interrupted him. "Claudia isn't here." I hung up.

I took my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my face carefully. Then I folded it and replaced it in my pocket. I stood in the corridor and looked at the phone. It was a white phone with buttons and a small light illuminating the time, which was digitally displayed in the center. After several minutes, I walked back to the study, turned off the light, and went to bed.

*


The next day Adela had not made the coffee. I sat in my chair and waited pointedly for her to arrive with it. When she finally walked in, she was so startled that she almost dropped the tray. "You're here so early," she exclaimed. I pointed at the coffee tray. She jumped back into motion, carrying the tray to the desk and serving me coffee before she turned to leave the room. When she had reached the door, she paused and turned. "It's no good coming in early if you're not going to get anything done. You should go back home and go to sleep." I waved my hand at her and she walked away across the sitting room. It promised to be another unbearably hot day. Taking my coffee with me, I walked to the windows and opened the shutters slowly. A line of children in uniform was making its way across the square. They must have been in about the fourth grade-all of them girls, all of them wearing pleated blue skirts and white blouses. Their teacher was already out of sight as they wound around the fountain and over the uneven stones. For the most part, they walked with impressive coordination, in pairs, holding hands.

As I watched them, one little girl shook her hand free of her classmate's and stepped out of line. She glanced ahead for a moment, to make certain that the teacher had not seen her, and then ran over to the fountain. She squatted down close to the ground so that her skirt dragged and her cap tilted forward precariously. The line of children left the square, and she remained, inspecting closely whatever it was she had found. She poked it delicately with a stick.

I heard Adela's heels on the tiles as she walked back into the room. "Leave the coffee things," I said to her, without turning. The little girl lifted what she had found very carefully with the tip of the stick. She held it up and slowly straightened herself, holding her cap with the other hand the whole while. Then she turned towards the fountain as if preparing to drop her find in its base. As she could not reach over the lip of the fountain's base, she released her hat and unsteadily tried to push herself up onto the ledge. Still holding the stick, she rested her stomach on the edge of the fountain and for several moments teetered like a spoon balanced on the edge of a bowl. "The fountain is empty," I said quietly. "Yes, they'll never fill it," I heard Adela say. "Will you sign this, please?" I turned away from the window and walked to the table. Adela held out the letter and I signed it without reading it. She nodded crisply and clattered out of the room, carrying the mail and a set of tapes for dictation. When she had left the room, I returned to the window. The square was deserted; the girl was gone. The fountain looked the same as it had before. I closed the shutters to keep out the oppressive sunlight and walked back to the desk. After pouring myself another cup of coffee, I sat down to begin the day's paperwork.