Woes of the True Policeman

Amalfitano answered the letter that same night, in his room, lying on his unmade bed, as his daughter devoured another video in the living room. In broad strokes he described his life in Santa Teresa, his work, how receptive his students were, I don’t know whether I’ve ever seen kids so interested in literature, interested, in fact, in everything that was happening in the world, all continents and all races. He didn’t say anything about his new lover, whose name was Castillo, or about how badly he was getting along with his daughter lately. He ended the letter by telling Padilla that he missed him. Though it may seem strange to you (or maybe not), I miss you. In a postcript he said that of course he remembered the man with the gold cigarette case, the one who always wore leather, and he asked why he had killed himself. In a second postcript he said that it was wonderful that Padilla was writing a novel, keep it up, keep it up.

Padilla’s response was quick to arrive. It was concise and monothematic. My novel, he said, will be like an emission of stroboscopic light, with lots of characters (though rudimentary or sketched arbitrarily and at random) and lots of violence and lots of wolf moons and dog moons and lots of erect and well-greased cocks, lots of hard cocks and lots of howling.

Amalfitano’s response, on university letterhead and written between classes on the electric typewriter in his cubicle, tried to be judicious. Too many characters could turn any novel into a collection of stories. Hard cocks, with glorious exceptions, were hardly ever literary. Howls were literary, but the place for them, their natural medium, was generally poetry, not prose. That way lies danger, he warned, and a few lines later he insisted on hearing the circumstances surrounding the painter’s suicide. Otherwise, he assured Padilla once again that he missed him and wished him the best. About his new life in Santa Teresa he said practically nothing.

The next news he had from Padilla was a postcard of the port of Barcelona. This is where we saw each other for the last time, he said. The last time ever, I think sometimes. And he disclosed the title of his novel: The God of Homosexuals.

Amalfitano returned the ball. On a postcard of Santa Teresa depicting the statue of General Sepúlveda, hero of the Revolution, he allowed that the title struck him as the right choice. It was a sad title, certainly, but the right choice. And who was this god of homosexuals? Not the goddess of love or the god of beauty, but some other god — which one? As to whether they would see each other again, he left that in the hands of the god of travelers.

Padilla’s response was swift and lengthy: the leather-wearing painter had had seemingly no reason to kill himself. He was in New York for a solo show of his work at the prestigious Gina Randall Gallery, you’ve probably never heard of her, but she’s known to the cognoscenti as one of the most powerful art dealers in Babylon. So, ruling out any financial or artistic motives (in that order, insisted Padilla), what remained were sentimental or carnal ones, but the painter was famous for his indifference to a nice pair of hips and to spoken or unspoken romantic sentiments, which meant that this possibility also had to be discarded. And if the explanation wasn’t money, art, or romance, what else could drive a man to suicide? Clearly: boredom or illness, the culprit must have been one or the other, you choose. Regarding the identity of the god of homosexuals, Padilla was categorical: he’s the god of beggars, the god who sleeps on the ground, in subway entrances, the god of insomniacs, the god of those who have always lost. Here he talked (confusedly) about Belisarius and Narses, two Byzantine generals, the former young and beautiful, the latter old and a eunuch, but both of them perfectly suited to the Emperor’s military needs, and he talked about the wages of Byzantium. He’s a helpless god, ugly and resplendent, a god who loves but whose love is terrible and always, but always, turns against him.

The wages of Chile, remembered Amalfitano, and he also thought: fuck, he’s describing the god of poets, the god of the poor, the god of the Comte de Lautréamont and Rimbaud.

The novel is moving along, said Padilla in the postcript, but the proofreading work was killing him. Too many hours comparing originals and proofs, soon he would probably need glasses. This last bit of news saddened Amalfitano. The only glasses that suited Padilla’s face were sunglasses, and then only because of the unsettling effect produced when Padilla removed them with a flourish at once provocative and endearing.