I remember that I put the handkerchief in a pocket of my blazer. Later Quima would say that Iñaki handled the sword like an expert and the fight went his way from the start. But that's not what I would've said. They were evenly matched at first. Iñaki's swings were on the timid side. All he did was clash swords with his adversary, and he kept backing farther away, out of fear or because he was sizing up the other guy. In contrast, his opponent's blows were increasingly confident. At some point he took a thrust at Iñaki, the first of the fight, gripping the sword and lunging with his right foot and right arm, and the tip of his sword almost touched the seam of Iñaki's pants. It was then that Iñaki seemed to wake from the foolish dream he was in and plunge into another dream where the danger was real. From that moment on, his steps became much more nimble and he moved more quickly, always backing away, although not in a straight line but in circles, so that sometimes I'd see him from the front, other times from the side, and other times from behind. What were the rest of the spectators doing all this time? Quima was sitting on the sand behind me, and every once in a while she would cheer Iñaki on. Piña, meantime, was standing, quite far from where the swordsmen were circling, and his face looked like the face of someone who was used to this kind of thing and also the face of someone who was sleeping.

In a brief moment of lucidity, I was sure that we'd all gone crazy. But then that moment of lucidity was displaced by a supersecond of super-lucidity (if I can put it that way), in which I realized that this scene was the logical outcome of our ridiculous lives. It wasn't a punishment but a new wrinkle. It gave us a glimpse of ourselves in our common humanity. It wasn't proof of our idle guilt but a sign of our miraculous and pointless innocence. But that's not it. That's not it. We were still and they were in motion and the sand on the beach was moving, not because of the wind but because of what they were doing and what we were doing, which was nothing, which was watching, and all of that together was the wrinkle, the moment of superlucidity. Then, nothing. My memory has always been mediocre, no better than a reporter needs to do his job. Iñaki attacked the other guy, the other guy attacked Iñaki, I realized they might go on like this for hours, until the swords were heavy in their hands, I got out a cigarette, I didn't have a light, I looked in all my pockets, I got up and went over to Quima, only to learn that she'd quit a long time ago, a year or an eternity. For a moment I considered going to ask Piña for a light, but that seemed excessive. I sat next to Quima and watched the duelers. They were still moving in circles but they were slowing down. I also got the impression that they were talking to each other, but the sound of the waves drowned out their voices. I said to Quima that I thought it was all a farce. You're absolutely wrong, she answered. Then she said that she thought it was very romantic. Strange woman, that Quima. I wanted a cigarette more than before. In the distance, Piña was sitting in the sand like us now, and a trail of cobalt blue smoke issued from his lips. I couldn't take it anymore. I got up and went over to him, going the long way around, to keep out of range of the duelers. A woman was watching us from a hill. She was leaning on the hood of a car and shading her eyes with her hands. I thought she was looking at the sea, but then I realized that she was watching us, of course.

Piña offered me his lighter without a word. I looked at his face: he was crying. I'd felt like talking but now when I saw him I suddenly didn't feel like it. So I went back over to Quima and looked up again at the woman alone on top of the hill and I also watched Iñaki and his opponent, who instead of crossing swords were just pacing and eyeing each other now. When I let myself drop down beside Quima my body made a sound like a sack of sand. Then I saw Iñaki's sword raised higher than prudence or musketeer movies would advise and I saw his opponent's sword advance until its point was a fraction of an inch from Iñaki's heart, and I think, though it can't be, that I saw Iñaki turn pale and I heard Quima say my God, or something like that, and I saw Piña flick his cigarette far away, toward the hill, and I saw that there was no one on the hill anymore, not the woman or the car, and then the other guy abruptly drew back the point of his sword and Iñaki stepped forward and struck him with the flat of his blade on the shoulder, in revenge for the fright he'd given him, I think, and Quima sighed and I sighed and blew smoke rings into the tainted air of that hideous beach and the wind whipped the rings away instantly, before there was time for anything, and Iñaki and his opponent kept going at it like two stupid children.

23

Iñaki Echevarne, Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granada del Penedés, Barcelona, July 1994. For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.

Aurelio Baca, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.

Pere Ordóñez, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. In years past, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) joined the public fray to subvert it, reform it, set it on fire, revolutionize it. The writers of Spain (and of Latin America) were generally from well-to-do families or families of a certain social standing. As soon as they took up the pen, they rejected or chafed at that standing: to write was to renounce, to forsake, sometimes to commit suicide. It meant going against the family. Today, to an ever more alarming degree, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) come from lower-class families, the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat, and they tend to use writing as a means to move a few rungs up the social ladder, as a way to make a place for themselves while being very careful not to overstep any bounds. I'm not saying they're uneducated. They're as well educated as the writers who came before them. Or nearly so. I'm not saying they don't work hard. They work much harder than those earlier writers! But they're also much more vulgar. And they act like businessmen or gangsters. And they don't renounce anything, or they renounce what's easily renounced, and they're very careful not to make enemies, or to choose their enemies from among the defenseless. They are driven to suicide not for the sake of ideas but by rage and madness. Little by little, the doors inexorably open to them. And so literature is what it is. Everything that begins as comedy inevitably ends as comedy.