It was hard for me to interrupt his speeches to redirect the conversation; in fact, a couple of times it got too late and he had to go before we’d even started the class. In any case, he paid me, of course.
I tried to help my ex-students with their complaint before the Ministry of Education, which offered them little or nothing. We wrote, among all of us, the Big Letter, the crucial missive that would demonstrate the importance of written communication, the power of words, but nothing happened. We had compiled testimonies, the opinions of politicians and of experts in education, but it was all to no avail. The situation was scandalous, and for a time it was in the news, but all of a sudden that silence set in, so suspicious and Chilean, which shrouded everything back then. Some of the students managed to enroll in other institutes, under conditions that were never advantageous, but the ones who had paid for the whole year never found a real solution. And neither did I, I should say: I was owed a month’s salary, but when I tried to join together with the other teachers, I had no luck. I got in touch with two, in fact, who chose not to complain, because they also worked at other institutes, and they didn’t want to come off as troublemakers.
In any case, I resolved to see the class through, meeting at that same bar on Avenida España every week. Of the thirty-five original students, ten of them continued with me through the rest of the semester, every Wednesday, and although a couple of times the thing degenerated, we spent most of those sessions working and discussing. One of those nights, after I had lost all hope, Pamela appeared and joined the group without comment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. We left together for the metro, and she handed me a five-thousand-peso bill. I told her that the class was free, that at most I would let the students buy me a beer and a sandwich during class. She said that she wanted to pay me anyway, and she wouldn’t take the money back. “Let’s go to your house, Professor,” she said to me then, using the formal usted. She always used usted with me and I almost don’t have to explain how absurd it was for her to do that, since she was ten years older. It was later than usual; I was in the habit of going home and eating a can of tuna before heading to the insurance office, but that night I didn’t have much leeway. I decided to risk it, and I brought her to the office. She sucked me off on the rug and then we had sex on Portillo’s desk, and luckily the phone didn’t ring. At three in the morning a taxi came, which I charged to the company. Before she left, she told me, with exquisite seriousness: “Pay me, Professor, it’s five thousand pesos.” It became, then, a routine: she came to classes and paid, but then, at the office or at my house, I paid her. And always, even in the middle of sex, she used usted with me.
“At least use the informal in bed,” I told her one night.
“I prefer to use usted, Professor,” she said, fixing her hair. “Just pretend I’m a hot Colombian.”
One evening when the rain was coming down in torrents, Juan Emilio arrived late. He brought with him a man who greeted me happily, then immediately started to pile a series of boxes next to my desk. It was hard for me to understand the situation, which Juan Emilio failed to explain except with a strange, condescending smirk.
“I hope these little gifts won’t bother you,” he said finally.
I reacted angrily, but too late. I’m sure he had never met anyone as poor as me; in fact, coming down to Plaza Italia must have been, for Juan Emilio, a kind of transgressive adventure in itself. But I wasn’t poor, far from it. I lived on very little, but in no way was I poor. I told him I couldn’t accept his charity, asked how he could he even think of such a thing, but as I was arguing Juan Emilio was opening the boxes and stocking the pantry, or that corner of my minuscule kitchen that served as a pantry. There really were a lot of boxes, and they held, among other delicacies, soy drinks, different kinds of Twinings tea, a sophisticated selection of cheeses, octopus and salmon carpaccio, some tins of caviar, several six-packs of imported beers, and two dozen bottles of wine. There was also an immense box of cleaning products, which in a certain way offended me, since he obviously thought they were necessary.
I thanked him for his good intentions and I told him again that I couldn’t accept his generosity. “It’s nothing to me,” he replied, which was undoubtedly true, and after refusing two more times, with less conviction, I finally accepted the gifts. Then there was a less than emphatic attempt on my part to begin the class. We vaguely discussed some stories by Onetti while we snacked on cheese and olives and some delicious Middle Eastern pastries. I tried, but I couldn’t hide the fact that I was hungry.
As he was leaving I started to tell him about what we would do the following Monday, but he stopped me. He ran his hand through his hair and lit a cigarette with a speed that was unusual for him, before telling me: “I’ve discovered that I don’t really like literature so much. I like to talk to you, to come here, to see how you live. But I haven’t really liked anything I’ve read.”
He pronounced these last phrases with a distasteful emphasis; I’m sure it was the same tone he used when he fired his employees. Something like: I’m afraid we’re going to have to find someone else. Only then did I understand that the merchandise was a kind of severance pay. Before taking his leave, he looked me straight in the eyes and leaned in for an unexpected and very long kiss on the lips.
I was frozen. It annoyed me that I hadn’t understood the plot. I felt stupid. The kiss didn’t upset me, it didn’t disgust me, but just in case, I took a long drink from a bottle of Syrah; I have no idea if it had a fruity expression or a pronounced acidity, but right at that moment it struck me as fitting.
At work the next night, since it was rumored that they were going to cut off the supply again, I collected some water, but I forgot to turn off the tap. I fell fast asleep, like never before, on the floor, and I woke up at seven in the morning, lying in water, the rug almost entirely drenched. My boss gave free rein to his well-trained sarcasm as he chastised me, but in the end he thought my ineptitude was so funny that he decided not to fire me. I understood, however, that it was the end.
More than once I had thought about staying in that office forever, answering that phone for the rest of my life. It wasn’t hard to imagine myself at forty or fifty years old, spending the night with my feet up on that same desk, reading the same books over and over. Up till then I had chosen not to think about anything too confusing or elaborate. I never seriously imagined the future, perhaps because I trusted in that thing they call good luck. When I decided to study literature, for example, the only thing I knew was that I liked to read. What sort of work I’d do, what kind of life I wanted: I don’t know if I ever thought about those things — it would have brought nothing but anxiety. And nevertheless, I guess that, as they say, I wanted to come out ahead, I wanted to thrive. The flood was a sign: I had to work in the field I’d studied. Or in other words, to be precise: I had to work with something at least slightly connected to what I had studied. I quit right then. At my good-bye dinner, Portillo gave me a book by Arturo Pérez Reverte, his favorite author.