Joaquín Font, psychiatric hospital La Fortaleza, Tlalnepantla, Mexico City, March 1983. Now that I'm surrounded by penniless lunatics, hardly anyone comes to see me. And yet my psychiatrist tells me I'm getting a little better every day. My psychiatrist is called José Manuel, which I think is a nice name. When I tell him so he laughs. It's a very romantic name, I say, a name that would make any girl fall in love with you. It's a shame he's almost never here when my daughter comes to visit, because visiting days are Saturday and Sunday, and those are the days my psychiatrist doesn't work, except for one Saturday and Sunday each month when he's on duty. If you could see my daughter, I tell him, you'd fall in love with her. Oh, Don Joaquín, he says. But I persist: if you saw her you'd drop at her feet like a wounded bird, José Manuel, and you'd suddenly understand all kinds of things that you don't understand right now. Like what, for example? he says, trying to sound as if he's not paying attention, as if he's politely indifferent, but I know deep down he's very interested. Like what, for example? Then I opt for silence. Sometimes silence is best. Descending into the catacombs of Mexico City again to pray in silence. The courtyards of this jail are perfect for silence. Rectangular and hexagonal, as if designed by the great Garábito, they all converge on the big courtyard, an expanse the size of three soccer fields, bordered by a nameless street where the Tlalnepantla bus goes by, full of workers and people with nothing better to do than stare wide-eyed at the madmen roaming the courtyard in the uniform of La Fortaleza, or half naked, or in their shabby street clothes, these last being the recent arrivals who haven't been able to find themselves uniforms, let alone uniforms in the proper size, since very few here wear uniforms that fit. This big courtyard is the natural abode of silence, although the first time I saw it I thought the noise and clamor of the lunatics might become unbearable and it took me a while to get up the courage to set foot on that steppe. But soon I realized that if there was a place anywhere in La Fortaleza where sound bounded away like a frightened rabbit, it was the big courtyard protected by a tall fence from the nameless street, while the people outside drove right by, safe inside their vehicles, since real pedestrians were rare, although sometimes the confused family member of some lunatic or people who preferred not to enter by the main door would stop outside the fence for just a minute, and then go on their way. At the far end of the courtyard, near the buildings, are the tables where the lunatics usually spend a few minutes visiting with their families, who bring them bananas or apples or oranges. In any case, they don't stay there long, because when the sun is out it's unbearably hot and when the wind blows, the madmen who never get visitors shelter under the eaves. When my daughter comes to visit I tell her we should stay in the visitors' hall or go out into one of the hexagonal courtyards, although I know that she finds the visitors' hall and the small courtyards unsettling and sinister. But things happen in the big courtyard that I don't want my daughter to see (a sign, according to my psychiatrist, that I'm definitely on the road to recovery), as well as other things that for now I'd rather keep to myself. Anyway, I have to tread carefully and never let down my guard. The other day (a month ago), my daughter told me that Ulises Lima had disappeared. I know, I said. How do you know? she said. Oh dear. I read it in the paper, I said. But it wasn't in any of the papers! she said. Well then, I must have dreamed it, I said. What I didn't say was that a lunatic from the big courtyard had told me about it two weeks ago. A lunatic whose real name I don't even know. Everyone calls him Chucho or Chuchito (his name is probably Jesús, but I prefer to avoid all religious references, which are beside the point and only poison the silence of the big courtyard), this Chucho or Chuchito came up to me, as he often does, since in the courtyard we all approach each other and retreat, those of us who are doped up and those who are well on the way to recovery, and when he passed me he whispered: Ulises has disappeared. The next day I saw him again (maybe I was unconsciously seeking him out), and I walked toward him, my steps very slow, very patient, so slow that sometimes the people going by in buses on the street may get the idea that we don't move, but we do, I have no doubt that we do, and when he saw me his lips began to tremble, as if just seeing me triggered some urgent message, and as he passed me I heard the same words again: Ulises has disappeared. And only then did I realize that he meant Ulises Lima, the young visceral realist poet whom I'd seen for the last time behind the wheel of my shiny Ford Impala in the first minutes of 1976, and I realized that black clouds had begun to cover the sky again, that above Mexico's white clouds the black clouds drifted, impossibly heavy and terrifyingly imperious, and that I had to be careful and take refuge in pretense and silence.