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Despite everything, they had a pleasant day. Rosa and
Rafael swam in the pool and then joined Amalfitano and Professor Perez, who
were watching them from one of the tables. After that they all bought sodas and
went out to walk around. In some places the mountain dropped straight down, and
in the depths or on the cliff sides there were big gashes with
different-colored rock showing through, or rock that looked different colors in
the sun as it fled westward, lutites and andesites sandwiched between sandstone
formations, vertical outcrops of tuff and great trays of basaltic rock. Here
and there, a
Sonora
cactus dangled from the mountainside. And farther away there were more
mountains and then tiny valleys and more mountains, finally giving way to an
expanse veiled in haze, in mist, like a cloud cemetery, behind which were
Chihuahua and New Mexico and Texas. Sitting on rocks and surveying this view,
they ate in silence. Rosa and Rafael spoke only to exchange sandwiches.
Professor Perez seemed lost in her own thoughts. And Amalfitano felt tired and
overwhelmed by the landscape, a landscape that seemed best suited to the young
or the old, imbecilic or insensitive or evil and old who meant to impose
impossible tasks on themselves and others until they breathed their last.

That night Amalfitano was up until very late. The first
thing he did when he got home was go out into the backyard to see whether
Dieste's book was still there. On the ride home Professor Perez had tried to be
nice and start a conversation in which all four of them could participate, but
her son fell asleep as soon as they began the descent and soon afterward
Rosa
did, too, with her head against the window. It
wasn't long before Amalfitano followed his daughter's example. He dreamed of a
woman's voice, not Professor Perez's but a Frenchwoman's, talking to him about
signs and numbers and something Amalfitano didn't understand, something the
voice in the dream called "history broken down" or "history'
taken apart and put back together," although clearly the reassembled
history became something else, a scribble in the margin, a clever footnote, a
laugh slow to fade that leaped from an andesite rock to a rhyolite and then a
tufa, and from that collection of prehistoric rocks there arose a kind of
quicksilver, the American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of
wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails
and whose sails are pain. And then Amalfitano switched dreams and stopped
hearing voices, which must have meant he was sleeping deeply, and he dreamed he
was moving toward a woman, a woman who was only a pair of legs at the end of a
dark hallway and then he heard someone laugh at his snoring, Professor Perez's
son, and he thought: good. As they were driving into Santa Teresa on the
westbound highway, crowded at that time of day with dilapidated trucks and
small pickups on their way back from the city market or from cities in
Arizona
, he woke up. Not
only had he slept with his mouth open, but he had drooled on the collar of his
shirt. Good, he thought, excellent. When he looked in satisfaction at Professor
Perez, he detected an air of sadness about her. Out of sight of their
respective children, she lightly stroked Amalfitano's leg as he turned his head
and looked at a taco stand where a couple of policemen with guns on their hips
were drinking beer and talking and watching the red and black dusk, like a
thick chili whose last simmer was fading in the west. When they got home it was
dark but the shadow of Dieste's book hanging from the clothesline was clearer,
steadier, more reasonable, thought Amalfitano, than anything they'd seen on the
outskirts of Santa Teresa or in the city itself, images with no handhold,
images freighted with all the orphanhood in the world, fragments, fragments.

That night he waited, dreading the voice. He tried to
prepare for a class, but he soon realized it was a pointless task to prepare
for something he knew backward and forward. He thought that if he drew on the
blank piece of paper in front of him, the basic geometric figures would appear
again. So he drew a face and erased it and then immersed himself in the memory
of the obliterated face. He remembered (but fleetingly, as one members a
lightning bolt) Ramon Lull and his fantastic machine. Fantastic in its
uselessness. When he looked at the blank sheet again he had written the
following names in three columns:

For a while, Amalfitano read and reread the names,
horizontally and vertically, from the center outward, from bottom to top,
skipping and at random, and then he laughed and thought that the whole thing
was a truism, in other words a proposition too obvious to formulate. Then he
drank a glass of tap water, water from the mountains of Sonora, and as he
waited for the water to make its way down his throat he stopped shaking, an
imperceptible shaking that only he could feel, and he began to think about the
Sierra Madre aquifers running toward the city in the middle of the endless
night, and he also thought about the aquifers rising from their hiding places
closer to Santa Teresa, and about the water that coated teeth with a smooth
ocher film. And when he'd drunk the whole glass of water he looked out the
window and saw the long shadow, the coffinlike shadow, cast by Dieste's book
hanging in the yard.

But the voice returned, and this time it asked him, begged
him, to be a man, not a queer. Queer? asked Amalfitano. Yes, queer, faggot,
cock-sucker, said the voice. Ho-mo-sex-u-al, said the voice. In the next breath
it asked him whether he happened to be one of those. One of what? asked
Amalfitano, terrified. A ho-mo-sex-u-al, said the voice. And before Amalfitano
could answer, it hastened to make clear that it was speaking figuratively, that
it had nothing against faggots or queers, in fact it felt boundless admiration
for certain poets who had professed such sexual leanings, not to mention
certain painters and government clerks. Government clerks? asked Amalfitano.
Yes, yes, yes,
 
said the voice young
government clerks with short life spans. Clerks who stained official documents
with senseless tears. Dead by their own hand. Then the voice was silent and
Amalfitano remained sitting in his office. Much later, maybe a quarter of an
hour later, maybe the next night, the voice said: let's say I'm your
grandfather, your father's father, and let's say that as your grandfather I can
ask you a personal question. You're free to answer or not, but I can ask the
question. My grandfather? said Amalfitano. Yes, your grandfather, said the
voice, you can call me
nono.
And my question for you is: are you a
queer, are you going to go running out of this room, are you a ho-mo-sex-u-al,
are you going to go wake up your
daughter? No, said Amalfitano. I'm
listening. Tell me what you have to say.

And the voice said: are you a queer? are you? and
Amalfitano said no and shook his head, too. I'm not going to run away. You
won't be seeing my back or the soles of my shoes. Assuming you see at all. And
the voice, said: see? as in
see?
to tell the truth, I can't. Not much,
anyway. It's enough work just keeping one foot in. Where? asked Amalfitano. At
your house, I suppose, said the voice. This is my house, said Amalfitano. Yes,
I realize, said the voice, now why don't we relax. I'm relaxed, said
Amalfitano, I'm here in my house. And he wondered: why is it telling me to
relax? And the voice said: I think this is the first day of what I hope will be
a long and mutually beneficial relationship. But if it's going to work out,
it's absolutely crucial that we stay calm. Calm is the one thing that will
never let us down. And Amalfitano said: everything else lets us down? And the
voice: yes, that's right, it's hard to admit, I mean it's hard to have to admit
it to you, but that's the honest-to-God truth. Ethics lets us down? The sense
of duty lets us down? Honesty lets us down? Curiosity lets us down? Love lets
us down? Bravery lets us down? Art lets us down? That's right, said the voice,
everything lets us down, everything. Or lets you down, which isn't the same
thing but for our purposes it might as well be, except calm, calm is the one
thing that never lets us down, though that's no guarantee of anything, I have
to tell you. You're wrong, said Amalfitano, bravery never lets us down. And
neither does our love for our children. Oh no? said the voice. No, said
Amalfitano, suddenly feeling calm.

And then, in a whisper, like everything he had said so far,
he asked whether calm was therefore the opposite of madness. And the voice
said: no, absolutely not, if you're worried that you've lost your mind, don't
worry, you haven't, all you're doing is having a casual conversation. So I
haven't lost my mind, said Amalfitano. No, absolutely not, said the voice. So
you're my grandfather, said Amalfitano. Call me pops, said the voice. So
everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best.
Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.

There is no friendship, said the voice, there is no love,
there is no epic, there is no lyric poetry that isn't the gurgle or chuckle of
egoists, the murmur of cheats, the babble of traitors, the burble of social
climbers, the warble of faggots. What is it you have against homosexuals?
whispered Amalfitano. Nothing, said the voice. I'm speaking figuratively, said
the voice. Are we in Santa Teresa? asked the voice. Is this city part of the
state of
Sonora
?
A pretty significant part of it, in fact? Yes, said Amalfitano. Well, there you
go, said the voice. It's one thing to be a social climber, say, for example,
said Amalfitano, tugging at his hair as if in slow motion, and something very
different to be a faggot. I'm speaking figuratively, said the voice. I'm talking
so you understand me. I'm talking like I'm in the studio of a ho-mo-sex-u-al
painter, with you there behind me. I'm talking from a studio where the chaos is
just a mask or the faint stink of anesthesia. I'm talking from a studio with
the lights out, where the sinew of the will detaches itself from the rest of
the body the way the snake tongue detaches itself from the body and slithers
away, self-mutilated, amid the rubbish. I'm talking from the perspective of the
simple things in life. You teach philosophy?
 
said the voice. You teach Wittgenstein? said the voice. And have you
asked yourself whether your hand is a hand? said the voice. I've asked myself,
said Amalfitano. But now you have more important things to ask yourself, am I
right? said the voice. No, said Amalfitano. For example, why not go to a
nursery and buy seeds and plants and maybe even a little tree to plant in the
middle of your backyard? said the voice. Yes, said Amalfitano. I've thought
about my possible and conceivable yard and the plants and tools I need to buy.
And you've also thought about your daughter, said the voice, and about the
murders committed daily in this city, and about Baudelaire's faggoty (I'm
sorry) clouds, but you haven't thought seriously about whether your hand is
really a hand. That isn't true, said Amalfitano, I have thought about it, I
have. If you had thought about it, said the voice, you'd be dancing to the tune
of a different piper. And Amalfitano was silent and he felt that the silence
was a kind of eugenics. He looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. He
heard someone starting a car. The engine took a while to turn over. He got up
and went over to the window. The cars parked in front of the house were empty.
He looked behind him and then put his hand on the doorknob. The voice said: be
careful, but it said it as if it were very far away, at the bottom of a ravine
revealing glimpses of volcanic rock, rhyolites, andesites, streaks of silver
and gold, petrified puddles covered with tiny little eggs, while red-tailed
hawks soared above in the sky, which was purple like the skin of an Indian
woman beaten to death. Amalfitano went out onto the porch. To the left, some
thirty feet from his house, the lights of a black car came on and its engine
started. When it passed the yard the driver leaned out and looked at Amalfitano
without stopping. He was a fat man with very black hair, dressed in a cheap
suit with no tie. When he was gone, Amalfitano came back into the house. I
didn't like the looks of him, said the voice the minute Amalfitano was through
the door. And then: you'll have to be careful, my friend, things here seem to
be coming to a head.

So who are you and how did you get here? asked Amalfitano.
There's no point going into it, said the voice. No point? asked Amalfitano,
laughing in a whisper, like a fly. There's no point, said the voice. Can I ask
you a question? said Amalfitano. Go ahead, said the voice. Are you really the
ghost of my grandfather? The things you come up with, said the voice. Of course
not, I'm the spirit of your father. Your grandfather's spirit doesn't remember
you anymore. But I'm your father and I'll never forget you. Do you understand?
Yes, said Amalfitano. Do you understand that you have nothing to fear from me?
Yes, said Amalfitano. Do something useful, then check that all the doors and
windows are shut tight and go to sleep. Something useful like what? asked
Amalfitano. For example, wash the dishes, said the voice. And Amalfitano lit a
cigarette and began to do what the voice had suggested. You wash and I'll talk,
said the voice. All is calm, said the voice. There's no bad blood between us.
The headache, if you have a headache, will go away soon, and so will the
buzzing in your ears, the racing pulse, the rapid heartbeat. You'll relax, you'll
think some and relax, said the voice, while you do something useful for your
daughter and yourself. Understood, whispered Amalfitano. Good, said the voice,
this is like an endoscopy, but painless. Got it, whispered Amalfitano. And he
scrubbed the plates and the pot with the remains of pasta and tomato sauce and
the forks and the glasses and the stove and the table where they'd eaten,
smoking one cigarette after another and also taking occasional gulps of water
straight from the faucet. And at five in the morning he took the dirty clothes
out of the bathroom hamper and went out into the backyard and put the clothes
in the washing machine and pushed the button for a normal wash and looked at
Dieste's book hanging motionless and then he went back into the living room and
his eyes, like the eyes of an addict, sought out something else to clean or
tidy or wash, but he couldn't find anything and he sat down, whispering yes or
no or I don't remember or maybe. Everything is fine, said the voice. It's all a
question of getting used to it. Without making a fuss. Without sweating and
flailing around.