Woes of the True Policeman

if she knew things that I would never know and that she would never tell me, I who was left a widower one night, one plastic night of shattered windows, one night at a quarter to four as I sat at the bedside of Edith Lieberman, Chilean, Jew, French teacher, and in the next bed a Brazilian woman dreamed of a crocodile, a windup crocodile that chased a girl through mountains of ashes, I who had to carry on, father and mother now to my daughter, but who didn’t know how to do it and who heaped suffering upon suffering, I who hired a servant for the first time in my life, Rosinha, northeasterner, twenty-one, mother of two little girls left behind in the village, my daughter’s good fairy, I who one night after listening to Rosinha’s tales of woe slept with her and probably brought her only misfortune, I who translated Osman Lins and was Osman Lins’s friend though my translations never sold, I who in Rio met the nicest leftists on the planet, I who—for their sake, for my own sake, for the love of art, out of a sense of defiance, out of a fucked-up sense of obligation, out of a sense of conviction, for no reason, for fun—got mixed up in the old trouble and had to leave Brazil with time enough only to pack the little we could take with us, I who in the Rio airport watched my daughter cry and Rosinha cry and Moreira say what’s wrong with these women and Luiz Lima say write us as soon as you arrive and the people coming and going through the airport lounges and the ghost of Edith Lieberman up higher than the Christ of Corcovado, I who at the same time could see nothing, not the people coming and going, not my friends, not Rosinha, not my daughter, not the silent and smiling ghost of Edith Lieberman that we were leaving behind, I who arrived in Paris with no job and scarcely any money, I who worked hanging posters and sweeping offices while my daughter slept in our chambre de bonne on the rue des Eaux, I who strove and strove until I got a job at a high school, I who found work at a German university, I who took my daughter on trips to Greece and Turkey, I who took my daughter on a trip down the Nile, always the two of us, with friends who came close but couldn’t reach the secret heart of our affection, I who found work at a Dutch university and taught a seminar on Felisberto Hernández that got me noticed and even made me a little bit famous, I who wrote for the weekly So Much the Worse , published by French anarchists and Latin American leftists and I who discovered how nice it was to be a dissident in a civilized country, I who discovered the first signs of age (or exhaustion), long present in my body but previously ignored, I who went to live in Italy and work in Italy and travel in Italy, land of my grandparents, I who wrote about Rodolfo Wilcock, beloved son of Marcel Schwob, I who took part in conferences and colloquia all over Europe, flying from place to place like a corporate honcho, sleeping in five-star hotels and dining in Michelin-starred restaurants, all in order to talk about literature, about the people who made literature, I who finally washed up at the University of Barcelona, where I threw myself into my work with earnestness and zeal, I who discovered my homosexuality at the same time that the Russians discovered their passion for capitalism, I who was discovered by Joan Padilla the way a continent is discovered, I who was swept away and rediscovered pleasure and paid the price, I who am the source of mockery, disgrace of the halls of academe, labeled a filthy South American, faggot sudaca , corruptor of minors, queen of the Southern Cone, I who now sit in my flat writing letters, beseeching friends, seeking a job at some university, and time goes by, days, weeks, and no one gets back to me, as if everyone had suddenly stopped existing, as if in these times of crisis literature professors weren’t needed anywhere, I who’ve done so many things and believed in so many things and who is now meant to believe that he’s nothing but a dirty old man and that no one will give me a job, no one cares …

6
    Horacio Guerra, professor of literature and official historian of Santa Teresa, distinguished polymath according to some friends from Mexico City, where he went every four months to soak up ideas , was, like Amalfitano, fifty years old, though unlike the latter he was beginning to enjoy a certain reputation—earned, God only knew, by the sweat of his own brow.
    Born of humble stock, he had