Which reminds me of a story from those years that may be worth telling. I met a girl at the Faculty. It was during my theater phase. She was a charming girl. She had finished her philosophy degree. She was very cultured and elegant. I was sleeping in a seat at the faculty theater (a precarious institution to say the least) and dreaming of my childhood or of aliens. She sat down beside me. The theater, of course, was empty: on the stage a pitiful troupe was rehearsing a play by Garcia Lorca. At some point I woke up, and she said to me: You're Auxilio Lacouture, aren't you, in such a friendly way that I liked her immediately. She had a slightly hoarse voice, and black, not very long hair, combed back. Then she said something funny or maybe I did, and we started laughing, quietly, so the director wouldn't hear us; he'd been a friend of mine in '68, but had since become a bad director and he knew it, which made him indiscriminately bitter. We left together and went out into the streets of Mexico City.

Her name was Elena and she bought me a coffee. She said she had a lot of things to tell me. She said she had been wanting to meet me for a long time. As we were leaving the faculty I realized she had a limp. Elena the philosopher. She had a Volkswagen and she took me to a café on Insurgentes Sur. I had never been there before. It was a lovely place, very expensive, but Elena had money and she really wanted to talk to me, although in the end I did all the talking. She listened and laughed and seemed happy, but she didn't say much. When we went our separate ways, I thought: What did she have to tell me, what did she want to talk about?

From then on we used to meet fairly regularly, in the theater or the corridors of the faculty, usually in the evening, as night was falling over the university, a time when some people don't know where to go or what to do with themselves. I would meet Elena and she would invite me for a drink or a meal in a restaurant on Insurgentes Sur. Once she invited me to her house in Coyoacán, a gorgeous house, tiny but gorgeous, very feminine and very intellec-tual, full of books about philosophy and theater, because Elena thought that philosophy and theater were closely related. She told me about that once, although I hardly understood a word she said. For me, theater is closer to poetry, but for her it's linked to philosophy-each to her own. And then all of a sudden she wasn't around. I don't know how much time went by. Months, maybe. Naturally I asked the faculty secretaries what had happened to Elena. Was she sick or traveling? Did they have any news of her? But no one could give me a convincing answer. One afternoon I decided to go to her house, but I got lost. I never get lost! Or at least not since September 1968. Before that, I did occasionally, not very often, lose my way in the labyrinth of Mexico City. But not after 1968. So there I was, searching for Elena's house, in vain, and I said to myself, There's something funny going on here, Auxilio, my girl, open your eyes and keep them peeled, or you might overlook the key to this story.

So I did. I opened my eyes and wandered around Coyoacán until eleven thirty at night, feeling more and more lost, more and more blind, as if poor Elena were dead or had never existed.

Some time went by. I quit being the theater's official hanger-on. I went back to the poets and my life took a new turn, there's not much point explaining why. All I know for sure is that I gave up helping my director friend from '68, not because I thought his directing was bad, although it was, but because I was bored, I needed a change of air, a change of scene, my spirit was hungry for a different kind of restlessness.

And one day, when I was least expecting it, I ran into Elena again. In the faculty cafeteria. There I was, conducting an impromptu survey of beauty in the student body, when suddenly I saw her, at a table off in a corner, and she seemed the same as ever at first, but as I approached, taking my time, I don't know why, stopping at each table on the way for a brief and rather awkward chat, I noticed that something had changed in her, although, for the moment, I couldn't identify what it was. When she saw me, and I'm certain of this, she greeted me with the same old warmth and friendliness. She was… I don't know how to put it. Maybe thinner, but no, she wasn't really any thinner. Maybe drawn, although she wasn't any more drawn than before. Maybe quieter, although after three minutes it was clear to me that she was no less talkative. Perhaps her eyelids were swollen. Perhaps her whole face was swollen, as if she were taking cortisone. But no. The evidence was there before my eyes: she was the same as ever.

We spent the evening and that whole night together. Starting in the cafeteria as it gradually emptied of students and professors, leaving only us in the end, and the cleaning lady, and the very nice, very sad middle-aged man behind the bar. Then we stood up to go (Isn't it dingy at this time of day, the cafeteria, she said; I didn't say what I thought at the time, but I can't see why I shouldn't now: to me, the cafeteria at that time of day was magnificent: shabby and majestic, indigent and absolutely free, shot through with the last rays of sunlight in the valley-that cafeteria was whispering to me, begging me to stay until the end and read a poem by Rimbaud, it was a cafeteria to weep for) and we got into her car and when we had already driven a fair way she said she was going to introduce me to an extraordinary guy, that's what she said, He's extraordinary, Auxilio, I want to you meet him and give me your opinion, although I realized straight away that my opinion wouldn't matter to her in the least. She also said, After I introduce him to you, you have to leave, I need to talk to him in private. And I said, Of course, Elena, naturally. You introduce him to me and then I'll go. A word to the wise is enough. Anyway I have things to do tonight. Like what, she asked. I have an appointment with some poets on the Avenida Bucareli, I said. And then we laughed like crazy and almost crashed the car, but all the while I was thinking, and the more I thought the clearer it became that Elena was not well, though I couldn't give any specific, objective reason for my assessment.

Meanwhile we had come to a place in the Zona Rosa, a kind of bar, I've forgotten its name, but it was in the Calle Varsovia and it specialized in wine and cheese. It was the first time I'd been to a place like that, such an expensive place, I mean, and I must admit a ravenous hunger possessed me all of a sudden, because although I'm as thin as a rake, put food in front of me and I'm liable to fall upon it like the Unrepentant Glutton of the Southern Cone, or the Emily Dickinson of Bulimia, especially if it's an assortment of cheeses to beggar belief and a variety of wines to set your head spinning. I don't know what showed on my face, but Elena took pity on me and said, Stay and eat with us, although she also elbowed me discreetly as if to say:

Sure, stay and eat with us, but then make yourself scarce. I stayed to eat and drink with them and tried about fifteen different cheeses and drank a bottle of Rioja and met the extraordinary man, an Italian who was passing through Mexico and who, back in Italy, was friends, so he said, with Giorgio Strehler, and he liked me, at least thinking back now I realize he must have, because the first time I said I had to go, he said, Stay, Auxilio, what's the hurry, and the second time he said, Don't go, woman of wonderful conversation (his exact words), the night is young, and the third time I said I had to go, he said, That's enough, what are you fussing about, have Elena and I offended you or something? And then Elena elbowed me again, under the table, and in a perfectly calm and steady voice said, Stay, Auxilio, I'll give you a lift to wherever you need to go later on, and I looked at them and nodded, radiant with wine and cheese, not knowing what to do, whether to go or to stay, whether Elena's offer was genuine or really an invitation to do the opposite. And faced with that dilemma I decided that the best thing to do was to keep quiet and listen. Which is what I did.