Woes of the True Policeman

In response, he listed all the reasons why Padilla should persist at all costs with The God of Homosexuals. When you finish, he suggested with false casualness, you can come visit us. They say that the north of Mexico is delightful. This letter received no response. For a while Padilla remained silent.

12

Soon after this, Amalfitano began to feel watched. There were other times in his life when he’d had the same feeling: that of the prey in the woods who scents the hunter. But it was so long ago that he’d forgotten the instructions and advice received in his youth, the proper way to behave in a situation like the one that now, rather than presenting itself, was gradually creeping up on him.

II. AMALFITANO and PADILLA

1

Padilla said tell me, tell me about the dangers you’ve seen, and Amalfitano thought of an adolescent on horseback, himself, achingly beautiful, and then he thought of a black blanket, the blanket he wrapped around himself early in the morning at the detention camp, first he thought of its color, then its smell, and finally its texture, how nice it felt to cover his face with it and let his nose, his lips, his forehead, his bruised cheekbones, come into contact with the rough cloth. It was an electric blanket, he remembered happily, but there was nowhere to plug it in. And Padilla said my love, let my lips be like your black blanket, let me kiss those eyes that have seen so much. And Amalfitano felt happy to be with Padilla. He said: Joan, Joan, Joan, here I am at last emerging from the tunnel, all that time wasted, all those days lost, and he also thought: if only I’d met you sooner, but he didn’t say it, or rather he communicated it telepathically, so that Padilla couldn’t say you idiot, sooner? when? in a time outside of time, thought Amalfitano as Padilla kissed him softly on the back, in an ideal time, when to be awake was to dream, in a country where men love men, isn’t that the title of a novel? asked Padilla, yes, said Amalfitano, but I can’t think of the name of the author. And then, as if he were riding the night in successive waves, he returned to the black electric blanket, with its little tail and its stains, and over the shouting, shouting that announced an impending hurricane, Padilla’s voice rose like the captain of a sinking ship. This will end badly, thought Amalfitano, end badly, end badly, as Padilla’s cock sank smoothly into his old ass.

Then, as always, came the madness. Padilla introduced him to a fat, blue-eyed adolescent, the poet Pere Girau, a wonderful kid, said Padilla, you have to hear him read, he’s got a voice as rich and deep as Auden’s. And Amalfitano listened to Pere Girau read his poems and then they went out for a drive, out for drinks at the Killer Trucker and the Brothers Poyatos, and the three of them ended up in Padilla’s studio and in Padilla’s bed, and Amalfitano, consumed by doubt, thought that this wasn’t what he wanted, even though later he really did want it. But still, he would have liked a different kind of bond, spending evenings with Padilla discussing literature, for example, making time for intimacy and friendship.

And after the poet Pere Girau there were two others, classmates of Padilla, and Amalfitano’s surprise upon meeting them and discovering the purpose of their meeting was huge. This was no longer a matter of attending dramatic readings. He was ashamed, he blushed, he tried to be casual and cold but failed. And Padilla seemed to enjoy his distress, seemed to change and grow, become suddenly old and cynical (he had always been foulmouthed), while Amalfitano grew progressively younger, more dazed, shyer. An adolescent in a foreign land. Don’t worry, Óscar, they understand, they’ve been doing this since long before I popped your cherry, they like you, they say they’ve never had such a good-looking professor, they say it’s incredible, considering how old you are, they wonder what you’d like to do tonight, said Padilla, laughing, thoroughly pleased with himself, master of his actions and his emotions, before the disease, before his encounter with the god of homosexuals.

Tell me, tell me the dangerous things you’ve done in your life, said Padilla. The most dangerous was sleeping with you, thought Amalfitano, but he was careful not to say it.

2

Amalfitano thought, too, about the last time he made love with Padilla. Days before he left for Mexico, Padilla called. Trembling all over, Amalfitano agreed to what he imagined would be their last date. An hour later a taxi dropped him off at the port and Padilla, with his black jacket buttoned up to the neck, strode toward him.