h. Blessed be the light. And the Holy Cross. And the Lord of Truth. And the Holy Trinity. That comforts me enormously. But it also makes me want to urinate. I suddenly remember that, when I was little, every time I prayed I felt like going to the bathroom. The way some people pee when they hear the sound of water, I have to attend to my bladder when I pray. No sooner said than done. The Holy Trinity. Wee-wee starts to flow. I’m ashamed of myself. It’s going to stain my trousers. I look down at my lap, expecting a moist stain around my open fly. But nothing’s wrong, even though I’m sure I just urinated. Again I move my right hand with difficulty. I stick it in my fly. I don’t find my underpants or the opening that would allow me to touch my obscenely gray pubic hair, my wrinkled dick, my balls that have grown to elephant size. None of that. I find a diaper. No mistaking it. Satiny and waterproof, thick and cushioned. Someone’s put a diaper on me. I feel relief and shame. Relief because I know I can pee and shit as I please without worrying. Shame for the same reason: I’m being treated like a baby. Someone thinks I’m a helpless baby. Someone’s put a diaper on me and abandoned me in a wheelchair next to a line painted on the ground. If I poop, who’s going to smell my shit? Will someone come help me? That would be humiliating. I prefer to go on thinking I’ve been abandoned and no one will come for me. No one will change my diaper. I’ve been abandoned. The diaper forces me to repeat that. I am the abandoned child, the foundling. The orphan. Whose orphan? I’m tempted to move the wheels of my invalid’s chair. I’ve already explained why I don’t. I’m afraid of rolling. Falling. On my face. Toward the south. On my back. Toward the north. Not to the right. Better to the left. But that word disturbs me, I’ve already said so. I try to avoid it. Just as I avoid the idea of mud, the notion of having children, the need to speak English. But the little word overwhelms me. Left. If I let it in, I’ll let in all the others. Name. Mud. Children. Death. Language. I repeat it and I see myself, miraculously, in the precise spot where I am. Only now standing up. Now on foot. Now young. And accompanied. I’m on the line. I’m facing an armed group. Police. They wear short-sleeve khaki shirts. T-shirts underneath. Even so, the sweat from their chests and armpits stains their shirts. Americans. They stand on one side of the line. Behind me is an unarmed group. Wearing overalls. Shoes like mine. Straw hats. They have tired faces. Faces that show they’ve traveled a long way in arid places. They have dust on their eyelashes, ringing their mouths, in their moustaches. They look as if they’ve been buried alive. And brought back to life. Just saying that brings a name to mind with the same force as the polestar. Lazarus. I speak in his name. I argue. I defend. Shots ring out. The men of dust fall. Then people I should know and love surround me. They surround me to protect me from the bullets. They protect me but they rebuke me. Agitator. Who asked you? Don’t butt in. You’re placing us in danger. It’s not right. Go home. Accept things as they are. You’re endangering all of us. Your wife. Your children. Especially your brother. My brother? Why my brother? Why am I here if not to defend my brother? Look at him. He’s almost stopped breathing. He’s covered with dust. He’s just come out of the grave. His name’s Lazarus. That’s my brother. I defend him here, at the line. Lazarus. They laugh at me. You look like a fighting cock on your line. A well-pecked cock, more dead than alive. Your brother is the real cock. It’s his line, not yours. Don’t endanger him. Between us we’re going to wear you down until you give up. We’re going to show you that your display of bravery is useless. We’re going to move you off the line, you little rooster. We’re going to wear you down, you old bird. No matter what you do, the world won’t change. Those you call your brothers will keep coming. When their arms are wanted, they’ll cross the line and no one will bother them. Everyone will look the other way. But when they’re no longer needed, they’ll be rejected. They’ll be beaten up. They’ll be killed in the streets in broad daylight. They’ll be kicked out. The world won’t change. You won’t make it change. You’re a drop of water in an ocean of self-interest that rolls on in huge waves, with or without you. It’s your brother who moves the world. He’s the owner of the whole line, from sea to sea. He creates wealth. He draws water from stones. He makes the desert bloom. He makes bread from sand. He can change the world. Not you, you poor devil. Not you, you old fool with your diaper and your wheelchair, sitting on the very line where you were a brave young man long ago. A man of the left. A brave young man of the left. A brave young man of the left with bright eyes. You aren’t your brother. You have no name. You scream. You howl again. You see. You hear. You scream. You do it because you discover that it gives you strength, lets you move your crippled arms a little. Who are you? The nocturnal chorus attacks and insults me, and I wish I knew who I was so I could answer them: I am not No One, I am Someone. I click my teeth for joy. Now I know. The label in my jacket. It says there who I am. That’s where my name is. My wife always wrote my name on the label in my jackets. You go to those meetings, she’d say, and you take off your jacket and talk in your shirtsleeves. Afterward, no one knows whose jacket is whose. And you come home in shirtsleeves. You get a chill. But in fact you haven’t got the money to buy another jacket. Let me write your name on the label on the inside pocket, next to your heart. My name. My heart. Her. I remember her. First I remembered my real brothers. I quickly forgot my phony brother. But I remembered them in fragments, in a half-light. I should remember her whole, as she was, loving and loyal. She was a beautiful woman, strong and good, like a rock, but she smelled like a bakery. She smelled of bread. She tasted like lettuce. She was strong and blessed and fresh. She protected me. She held me in her arms. She gave me courage. She would write my name on the jacket label next to my heart. “So you don’t lose it, next to your heart.” Now I raise my painful hand to that place, my empty hand, the good hand of my body split in half. I find nothing. There’s no patch. No name. No heart. No label. They ripped it out, I scream to myself. They ripped out my name. They stripped me of my heart. They abandoned me without a name in the middle of the night at the line. I hate them. I must hate them. But I prefer to love her. She, too, is absent, like me. But if that’s true, why don’t we find each other? If we’re both absent, we should meet. I hunger for her, for her company, her sex, her voice, her youth, and her old age. Why aren’t you with me, Camelia? I stop. I look at the stars. I look at the night. I’m shocked. The world returns to me. The earth throbs and it summons me. I spoke the name of the woman I love. That was enough for the world to return to life. I spoke the first name in my solitude, a woman’s name, a name I adore. I say and think all that and in my head the doors of a memory of water open. It’s a response to the dryness that surrounds me. I smell dry earth. A stony place. Mesquite. Cactus. Thorns. Thirst. I smell an absence of rain, a distant storm. The only thing that rains is Camelia’s name. Camelia. It rains on my head. It’s a flower, a drop, gold. I caress that name with my eyes. I let it roll through my closed eyelids. I capture it between my lips. I savor it. I swallow it. Camelia. Her name. I bless it. And I curse it. Why weren’t the others like her? Why were the others ungrateful, greedy, cruel? I detest Camelia’s name because it opens the door to the names I don’t want to remember. I feel shame when I think that. I can’t reject Camelia’s name. It’s like murdering her and killing myself. Then I realize that the woman’s name demands a sacrifice of me. It pulls me out of myself. Until the moment when I said the name Camelia, I’d been talking only of myself. I don’t know my own name and don’t need it. If I talk to myself I don’t need a name. My name is for others. I talk to myself and don’t need to name myself. Other people are other people. I am not “Julio,” “Héctor,” “Jorge,” or “Carlos.” My dialogue with myself is internal, integral, unbroken. The thinnest scalpel could not separate the two voices of the “I” that is the “I” speaking with myself. The others are the others. The rest. Superfluous. But I say “Camelia,” and Camelia answers me. Now I’m not talking to myself. Now you’re talking to me. And if you’re talking to me, I have to talk to the others. I must name the rest. Now I have to name everything so as to be able to name her. She says, Name all of them so you can name me. I do name her: Camelia. I remember her: my wife. I have to remember them: my children. My resistance is enormous. It’s monstrous. I don’t want to give them their names. We’d rather be alone, Camelia and I. Why did we have them? Why did we have them baptized, confirmed; why did we praise them, kiss them, make sacrifices to bring them up? So that one day they’d say to me, Why weren’t you like your brother, our uncle? Why did you have to be poor and wretched? Why did you wear yourself out fighting for lost causes? How can you expect us to respect you? Why did you have to be poor and wretched?