RAFUD: due to lack of merit from the actions requested, cancel the order to capture . . .

ROGUE: report criminal records on . . .

Crimes:

DABUB: prosecuted for homicide

DAFUF: for threats

DEHOH: for fraud

DEGOG: for abduction

DIBIB: attempted murder

DOXEX: infanticide

General:

GADRO: known thief

GECHE: curly black hair

GISBI: well dressed

GISMA: dresses poorly

GISET: sex worker

GULGA: thin body

KABAB: proceed actively to their capture

KIFUZ: criminal was captured

VERAP: substitute will arrive

VIVAR: proceed tomorrow without fail

VOMIF: went today to . . .

VUMAG: sailed today for . . .

ZAHOH: for having venereal disease

ZAJUN: expel him from the country the way he came in

ZAGAB: you are no bother

ZEGUC: look closely

ZUVIV: it is not possible to meet your request

Lunch break.

While I eat lunch at El Altuna with Lucía Morán, I get a call from the chief:

“Where are you?”

“Having lunch.”

“Are you inside, or outside [of the Archive]?”

“Outside, but nearby,” I say.

“Very good. What I want to tell you would best be said in person, but I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow and I will not be back for ten days. A problem has come up. You have to suspend your visits. Do not return to the Archive, please,” he tells me.

“Agreed. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“I’ll call you when I get back. Bye.”

I hang up and, through the window, I see a trio of schoolgirls in uniform, leaving the high school across the street. They roll up their checkered skirts at the waist, giving them two or three turns and making them into miniskirts—quite provocative.

“What happened?” Lucía asks.

I stop looking out the window. I have the fleeting thought that perhaps it is a lucky thing not to have to return to the Archive.

“They just suspended me,” I say.

“Why?”

“In ten, maybe eleven days, I’ll find out.”

I have not stopped wondering what the reason could be for my suspension. Could it have to do with the pages torn from the Yearly Reports? Or was it my request to see the action radiograms? Or perhaps, though less likely, was it the “unfriendly” question that I asked Dr. Novales at his lecture series in the Ciudad Vieja? In any case, my interest in the Archive as novelistic material, which was beginning to fade, has now been reawakened because of this call.

Second Sketchbook: Don Quixote

Second Sketchbook: Don Quixote

Such is the spirit of the human heart: where it finds the most resistance, it is there that it tends to put the most effort.

Friday.

First visit to the General Archives of Central America (whose long gray exterior walls are impregnated with the smell of urine from countless incontinent citizens), in search of more Yearly Reports by the National Police, while my “suspension” lasts.

Me: Visitor number 13.