Enthused, I asked the professor a question and kept my eyes on C while listening to the answer. Sitting beside me, she returned my look and told me that this boring major wasn’t worth studying anymore. For some reason, her comment made all my enthusiasm vanish and the class itself turned gray, monothematic. In the middle of the classroom, surrounded by my classmates, the loneliness was palpable. As if it were a game, and I were the only one who wanted to play. As if I were somewhere else, far away, in a sunny city by the sea where the literature that’s taught isn’t a collection of themes, of structures, of forced characters, but is instead the part of us that we’re unable to see. I saw myself following Violeta to her city, sitting down in a classroom at the university she attended without permission to listen to how the professor and the students conducted their discussion — some of them standing, some bewildered by the succession of interpretations — between the outbursts of lachrymose laughter from one student who’d had the world that he’d read in some novel or other destroyed by the professor. A student was speaking with a hesitant voice but in the first person, quoting with precision and gesticulating, as if the coherence of his sentences might call into question the validity of his existence. When the professor looked directly at Violeta and said “don’t you think?” she could no longer stay silent, she got up from her seat and went out into the hallway.
I seemed to be there, and yet all the other seats were occupied by my actual classmates, dead-eyed, discussing whether to change the date of a quiz or the due date of an assignment. Apathetic, slumped in their chairs, seeming not to hear or see, but I applauded when Violeta left the classroom, and watched as the kid with the expressive hands went after her and — she described it this way herself — grabbed her arm, asking her name and what year she was. V didn’t pay him any mind, find out for yourself, she said, she came to these classes because she got a kick out of the ridiculous enthusiasm for literature; occasionally it was a good spectacle, when it wasn’t she’d go to the beach and take a nap. What I’m saying is that all of this came to an end when (my question in the middle of class) C confessed that she was sick of studying Literature at Universidad Católica. It’s sad.
I’ve been reading nonstop. Coincidences disturb me and stimulate me and give me faith (my pretentiousness is unbearable today). The question mark of Neutria, my doubt is illuminated the minute I start doing research for my thesis on Onetti. The Uruguayan invented a metropolis, Santa María, inspired by Faulkner. (García Márquez did too, but I ignored him.) I should read more Onetti, not just out of academic responsibility. (But why does the existence of Neutria matter to me, why does it matter if Violeta wrote a novel or a chronicle? Onetti himself has ceased to exist; I don’t recall seeing his face in any photo, I don’t know anything about his life except that he died. Onetti could have easily been the pseudonym, the heteronym, the alias of another writer; the literary identity of a journalist working in Santa María. No matter what, there will always be someone who empirically proves the impossible. Without a doubt, right now a detective or a visiting judge is trying to clear up the actual facts of Violeta Drago’s death: according to the file she was a maniac with pen and paper, but all paths inevitably lead to Neutria, to the fictional address, because in Santiago there’s no evidence and no suspects.) Saturday I almost dialed Alicia’s number to ask her about Violeta’s city. Sooner or later she’ll make me offer an opinion, a hypothesis about her friend’s death, because clearly she didn’t give me the notebooks for my own enjoyment. And here I am, seeing ulterior motives in Alicia. (But what’s wrong with that? Carlos has always enjoyed detective novels.)
On Thursday afternoon I told C about my anxiety. I was lying in bed, worn out. I didn’t want to see anybody I knew, the mere idea of picking up the phone made me want to puke. But I desperately needed to get out of my apartment and to speak. For a moment, I wished there were a place in Santiago where strangers could sit on benches and have conversations without having to interact in what we call social relations. A pretty little plaza with trees, streetlamps, and life. Where? Nowhere, dreaming, you knew it right away. As if La Cañada or La Alameda de las Delicias still existed, as if people still walked arm-in-arm, she said, as if we were of an age to go sit in the Plaza de Armas and watch the people go walking by. Then she told me about a place in Spain, Alicante, San Sebastián, like she was remembering it herself. A place where old people go to retire; there, facing the sea, they have set out hundreds of chairs, and when the weather is nice, they can sit down wherever they like to watch the waves come and go, to deliberately converse with anyone who is nearby. Imagine that in Chile such a place existed, a place called Neutria.
August 27th
3:10 A.M.
Before entering my room I sense an odor, a foul, rancid odor. How is it possible? My own body disturbs me, I can’t even begin to imagine the displeasure I provoke. Ah, please, forgive my indelicacy in these notes. As might be expected, I read and read all week long. I was hoping to give fate a chance, what chance! Look at me, reading the weekly horoscope — a habit I no doubt retain from afternoons spent with J — where it says that Thursday is a special day: love moves into the phase of compromise. Alicia is so far away, I cannot see her and yet I evoke her, even now. (Why don’t I just use her initials like I do with everyone else, why does she have the luck of being the woman whom I name while writing this diary, the only one not victim of my lethal capriciousness?)
The horrible thing is that reading doesn’t make me calm; I spent the afternoon thinking about Donoso, about Coronation and its protagonist who doesn’t live life, but just reflects on it. (Do I want to be him?) I regret getting drunk so easily, just because C is celebrating her birthday, I am going to reject Alicia’s invitation to dance. Too many questions await me back at my desk. Yesterday, coming back from playing soccer, E’s friend’s car turned a corner and, instead of asking them to drop me off, I let out an absurd laugh. A few blocks later, realizing we’d passed my address, they stopped. They asked me why I hadn’t said anything, I said I didn’t know.
I think about corruption, about indecency, and about the unfathomable. At C’s party, J was dancing, talking, and laughing — happy. I know I didn’t deserve — nor did she — an explanation (or even a greeting), but we were both waiting for one. That’s why, in these first days of spring, I take up the contradiction of writing this diary, revelation and concealment, the resplendent whiteness of the page and the hope that if I play enough soccer, if I write and write, I’ll be able to distance myself from the terror that after reading me, no one will ever want to see me. Give me shelter. I can’t go on.