The Book of Murder - By Guillermo Martinez & Sonia Soto Page 0,53
he worked for the Ministry of Culture. I had exaggerated my disbelief: he worked now? For the government? He smiled a little uncomfortably but then tried to return to the ways of the past. That was just it, he defended himself, it wasn’t work. It was almost a pension, given to him by the long-suffering taxpayers, the wonderful Peronist people of Argentina. After all, he was only following Duchamp’s dictum that the artist should make use of anything—inheritances, grants, private patronage (“And why not the Ministry of Culture?” he said with a wry look)—so as not to have to live by the sweat of his brow.
No, it couldn’t be him. But then another thing I’d heard him say in that distant past now came back to me: you shouldn’t write about what has been, but about what might have been. For the first time in years I felt I had a subject. There had been something providential about the fire of the night before, and the small item in the paper, the modest mystery of the furniture stores, was speaking to me secretly. I left the bar and, a little euphoric, went into a stationery shop and bought a thick hardcover notebook to take with me on the trip. After all, I’d have the mornings free in Salinas so I’d be able to do some writing: maybe I could get a new novel going. I went up to the flat to collect my bag. As soon as I opened the door I saw the red light on the answering machine blinking menacingly, as if it were a remotely activated weapon that could still hurt me. I pressed the button and heard Luciana’s voice. She sounded bewildered, desperate, her speech halting, as if she were having trouble threading sentences together. She’d spoken to her sister the night before and told her everything, but she’d sensed that Valentina didn’t—wouldn’t—believe her. She asked me, begged me, if I hadn’t yet left, to ring her. I looked at the clock and picked up my bag. I decided that her call had arrived too late, and I’d already set off for the airport.
Ten
As the plane soared over the river, reducing the city to a model, I felt, with the sudden lightness of flying, a weight lifting from me. Luciana’s story, the conversation with Kloster, even the fire, all appeared small and harmless now too, fading, disappearing into the distance as I left the city behind. I thought of Victorian novels in which the hero or heroine who has fallen in love inappropriately is sent abroad by the parents, a journey that never produces the desired result, only serving to test the strength of love across time and distance. But in my case I had to admit that something was subsiding, as if I really had escaped. When, an hour later, I caught sight for the first time of the small town, rising miraculously out of white desert, the buildings set out like dominoes on the cracked, dazzling expanse of salt flats, I genuinely felt I was a thousand miles away.
I submitted to the pleasant welcoming ritual. The dean and one of the professors from the literature department came to meet me at the airport. For my benefit, they took the scenic route back, along the Gran Salina. As we got into town, which looked like an abandoned film set with all the shops closed and streets deserted, they warned me that the siesta lasted until five. They dropped me off at the hotel and came back to collect me a couple of hours later to take me to my first class.
It was meant to be a series of postgraduate seminars, with me giving my usual course on avant-garde literature, but they probably hadn’t been able to recruit enough postgrad students so there were some undergraduates as well, there simply to listen. Amongst them, in the second row, I noticed a girl with large, earnest eyes, whom I couldn’t help staring at slightly longer than I should. It was a long time since I’d given a class to a whole roomful of students, but thankfully as soon as I picked up the chalk I was transformed: the words flowed and the eloquence I had thought lost for ever returned like a dog that still knew its master. As I reeled off statements, refutations, examples, I felt almost breathless with the euphoria of teaching. Certain theologians maintain that the act of praying can in itself lead to