Benedicto Tun, who was the son of an Indian father and mother, created the Identification Bureau in 1922.

Thursday.

The chief again gave me an appointment at the offices of the Human Rights Ombudsman. And again, he was a no-show. I talk to him on the phone, I tell him that first of all I would like to know the reason for my suspension. He tells me he cannot go into details over the phone, but that the day they suspended me there was a general meeting, and “someone” said that I asked to see a box with radiograms of actions from the 1970s. Revealing these documents to me right away (the day they were found) would have violated, apparently, some confidentiality rule. The chief says he cannot explain anything else to me by phone, but not to worry, that it’s just a misunderstanding, that I will be able to go back to the Archive. We agree on a new appointment for next week.

Friday.

I return to visit the General Archive of Central America. I leaf through more National Police Yearly Reports. I ask for photocopies, which will not be delivered to me until Monday. I also request a university thesis on the police, which they will also let me read on Monday.

From the press:

“Today another agent sought for the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities.”

Afternoon. Francisco Marroquín University Library.

Voltaire: The need to talk, the difficulty of having nothing to say, and the desire to be witty are three things capable of making the greatest man ridiculous.

Saturday.

The phone stared ringing at about two o’clock in the morning. I got up to answer, but there was no one on the line. This happened again at least five times. I figure it was a mistake, perhaps mistaken programming from some wake-up call service. Aside from that, a quiet Saturday. Pía and I had lunch at my parents’. We spent the afternoon at María Marta’s, the second of my sisters. I tried to read a bit while Pía watched a movie (The Pacifier). We had pizza delivered at home.

“Every text is ambiguous,” I say out loud, half asleep. I believe it.

Monday.

Telephone call from Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m invited to a roundtable of “international writers”—among them, my friend Homero Jaramillo.

Benedicto Tun has not called, as he said he would, once he had organized the papers from his father that he wanted to show me.

I read “A Defense of Ardor” by Zagajewski, the Polish writer that Homero recommended to me a few days ago in an email. He seems all right to me, but he does not quite convince me, as Dr. Aguado would say. It is true that I do not know many of the authors that he quotes, and that diminishes my reading.