Woes of the True Policeman

After that he lived in Paris, his savings at a low ebb, and he had to work hanging posters or mopping the floors of office buildings while his daughter slept in a chambre de bonne on avenue Marcel Proust. But he didn’t give up and he strove and strove until he found a job at a high school and then a German university. Around this time he wrote a long essay on Macedonio Fernández and Felisberto Hernández, focusing on their importance as Latin American thinkers rather than their literary achievements. And on the first vacation he was able to permit himself he took his daughter to Egypt and they went sailing on the Nile.

His situation seemed to improve. Their next trip was to Greece and Turkey. He wrote about Rodolfo Wilcock and the phenomenon of exile in Latin America. He took part in a colloquium in the Netherlands and he bought a laptop computer. Finally he ended up at the University of Barcelona, where he taught a course on idiocy and self-awareness that was so popular that his contract was renewed for a second year. But he never finished the course. Around this time he received a letter from a friend in Mexico, Isabel Aguilar. She had been a student of his in Mexico City and at one time she was in love with him. Now she was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Santa Teresa and she offered him a job. She said that she was friendly with the head of the department, Professor Horacio Guerra, that for a month now there’d been a position available in the department, and that if he wanted it it was his. Amalfitano discussed it with his daughter, wrote to Professor Aguilar to thank her, and asked her to send him the contract as soon as possible.

6

The four policemen got up from their seats at a table at the back of Las Camelias, the bar across the street from the General Sepúlveda police station, when they saw Pedro Negrete and Gumaro coming toward them. The policemen were in tracksuits and Pedro Negrete and Gumaro were wearing suits and ties, though Gumaro’s suit and tie were cheap and wrinkled and Don Pedro’s were expensive. It was eleven in the morning and the four policemen had been at the bar since ten, eating ham-and-cheese sandwiches and drinking beer. Don Pedro instructed them not to get up and ordered a whiskey with water and ice. Gumaro sat next to Don Pedro and didn’t order anything. When the waitress brought Don Pedro the whiskey he asked what his boys owed. The policemen protested, no, no, Don Pedro, it’s on us, but Don Pedro said to the waitress: “Charge it to me, Clarita, and that’s an order.”

Ten minutes later Pedro Negrete called for another drink and encouraged the policemen to follow suit. The policemen said that one beer was enough for them, but this time they were paying.

“Out of the question,” said Don Pedro, “I’ve got it.”

The waitress brought another round of beers and another whiskey for Don Pedro.

“Aren’t you drinking?” asked Don Pedro.

“My stomach is funny today,” answered Gumaro in an spectral voice.

The policemen looked at Gumaro and Don Pedro and then they started to eat the peanuts that the waitress had left on the table.

“Young people today can’t hold their liquor,” said Pedro Negrete. “In my years in uniform I knew a cop who drank a bottle of tequila every morning before he went on his rounds. His name was Emilio López. Alcohol was the death of him in the end, of course. We never let him drive the patrol car, but he was a good guy, the kind of man you could trust.”

“He died of a burst liver,” said Gumaro.

“Well, those are the risks.”

“His liver was the size of a plum.”

Don Pedro Negrete ordered another whiskey. The policemen accepted another round of beers.

“Did you know General Sepúlveda, lads?”

“No,” said one of the policemen. The others shook their heads.

“You’re young, of course. Did you know him, Gumaro?”

“No,” said Gumaro with a sigh.