Lisandro Morales, pulquería La Saeta Mexicana, near La Villa, Mexico City DF, January 1980. When Arturo Belano's book finally came out, Belano was already a phantom author and I was about to become a phantom publisher. I knew it would happen. There are writers who are jinxes, bad luck, and you'd better steer clear of them whether you believe in bad luck or not. Even if you're a positivist or a Marxist, you have to avoid those people like the plague. And I say this from the bottom of my heart: you have to trust your instincts. I knew I was playing with fire by publishing that boy's book. I got burned and I'm not complaining, but it's never a bad idea to reflect a little on what went wrong, since other people's stories can always be of service to somebody else. Now I drink a lot, I spend the day at the bar, I park my car far from where I live, and when I get home I take a look around just so no collection agent can take me by surprise.

At night I can't sleep and I drink more. I have well-founded suspicions that a hired killer is after me. Maybe two. I was already a widower before the disaster, thank God, so at least I have the consolation of having spared my poor wife this ordeal, this journey through the shadows that awaits all editors in the end. And even if some nights I can't help asking why this had to happen to me, to me of all people, deep down I've accepted my fate. Being alone makes us stronger. So said Nietzsche (I published a paperback edition of his selected quotes in 1969, when the terrible crime of Tlatelolco was still smoldering, and incidentally, it was a huge success) or maybe Flores Magón. We published a small militant biography of him by a law student that didn't do too badly.

Being alone makes us stronger. That's the honest truth. But it's cold comfort, since even if I wanted company no one will come near me anymore. Not that bastard Vargas Pardo, who works for another house now, though with a lesser title than when he worked for me, and not a single one of all those literary types who basked in my reflected glory back in the day. No one wants to walk alongside a moving target. No one wants to walk alongside a man who already bears the stink of carrion. At least now I know what I only intuited before: there's a hired killer after every publisher. This killer may be distinguished, he may be illiterate, but he's in the pay of the darkest interests. And sometimes-oh, the cosmic irony-those interests, so vain and foolish, are our own.

I don't bear Vargas Pardo any grudge. Sometimes I even remember him with a certain fondness. And deep down I don't believe the people who tell me that my company went under because of the magazine that I so blithely placed in his hands. I know my bad luck came from elsewhere. Of course, Vargas Pardo played a part in my downfall with his criminal naïveté, but in the end it wasn't his fault. He thought he was doing the right thing, and I don't blame him. Sometimes, when I've had too much to drink, I find myself cursing him, him and all those literary types who've forgotten me, and the hired killers waiting for me in the dark, and even the typesetters, lost in glory or anonymity, but then I relax and I can't help laughing. You have to live your life, that's all there is to it. A drunk I met the other day on my way out of the bar La Mala Senda told me so. Literature is crap.

Joaquín Font, El Reposo Mental Health Clinic, Camino Desierto de los Leones, on the outskirts of Mexico City DF, April 1980. Two months ago, Álvaro Damián came to see me and said he had something to tell me. Tell me, then, I said, have a seat and let's hear it. The prize is finished, he said. What prize? I said. The Laura Damián prize for young poets, he said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I played along with him. And why is that, Álvaro, I said, why is that? Because I've run out of money, he said, I've lost everything.

Easy come, easy go, I would have liked to say (I've always been a staunch anticapitalist), but I didn't say anything because the poor man looked tired and his face was so sad.

We talked for a long time. I think we talked about the weather and the nice views from the asylum. He would say: it looks like it'll be hot today. I would say: yes. Then we'd sit there in silence, or I'd sing to myself and he'd be silent, until all at once he'd say (for example): look, a butterfly. And I would say: yes, there are quite a lot of them. And after we'd gone on like that for a while, talking or reading the paper together (although that particular day we didn't read the paper), Álvaro Damián said: I had to tell you. And I said: what did you have to tell me, Álvaro? And he said: that the Laura Damián prize was finished. I would've liked to ask him why, why he felt the need to tell me in particular, but then I thought that many people, especially here, had many things to tell me, and although the urge to share was something I couldn't quite understand, I accepted it completely, since there was no harm in listening.

And then Álvaro Damián left and twenty days later my daughter came to visit me, and she said Dad, I shouldn't tell you this but I think it's best that you know. And I said: tell, tell, I'm all ears. And she said: Álvaro Damián shot himself in the head. And I said: how could Álvarito do such a terrible thing? And she said: business was going badly for him, he was ruined, he'd already lost practically everything he had. And I said: but he could have come to live at the asylum with me. And my daughter laughed and said things weren't that easy. And when she left I began to think about Álvaro Damián and the Laura Damián prize, which was finished, and the madmen of El Reposo, where no one has a place to lay his head, and about the month of April, not so much cruel as disastrous, and that's when I knew beyond a doubt that everything was about to go from bad to worse.

12

Heimito Künst, in bed in his attic apartment on the Stuckgasse, Vienna, May 1980. I was in jail with my good friend Ulises in Beersheba, where the Jews make their atomic bombs. I knew everything, but I didn't know anything. I watched, what else could I do? I watched from the rocks, sunburned, until I was so hungry and thirsty I couldn't stand it and then I dragged myself to the desert café and ordered a Coca-Cola and a hamburger made of ground beef, although hamburgers made only of beef are no good, I know that and so does everybody else in the world.

One day I drank five Coca-Colas and suddenly I felt sick, as if the sun had filtered down into my Cokes and I'd drunk it without realizing. I had a fever. I couldn't stand it, but I did stand it. I hid behind a yellow rock and waited for the sun to go down and then I curled up in a ball and fell asleep. I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don't have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions. My burns still stung. When I woke up the sun hadn't risen yet. I looked for the scorpions before they could hide under the rocks. I couldn't find a single one! All the more reason to stay awake and worry. And that's what I did. But then I had to go because I needed to eat and drink. So I got up, I'd been on my knees, and headed for the desert café, but the waiter wouldn't bring me anything.

Why won't you bring me what I order? I asked him. Isn't my money good, as good as anybody else's money? He pretended not to hear me, and maybe he couldn't hear me, that was what I thought. Maybe I'd lost my voice after keeping watch in the desert for so long among the rocks and the scorpions, and now I wasn't really talking, although I thought I was. But then whose voice were my ears hearing if not mine? I thought. How can I have been struck dumb and still hear myself? I thought. Then they told me to leave. Somebody spat at my feet. They tried to provoke me. But I'm not easily provoked. I have experience. I refused to listen to what they were saying to me. If you won't sell me meat then an Arab will, I said, and I left the café, taking my time.