Last night, again, a terrifying nightmare. In the dream, I am at my parents’, in the bedroom that we used to call “Grandpa’s room.” I am awake but lying in bed in the dark. I hear noises and get up to investigate. I walk without turning the lights on, then continue toward the living room and dining room, where the noises are coming from. When I enter, I stop, frightened. A little man, evidently a thief, is leaning on the other side of the table, his back to me; he is searching for something in the cabinet with the glassware. I switch on the lights; the little man turns. He has the face of Mark Rich, a painter (I believe, ultimately, a frustrated one) whom I met in Morocco and who later became a friend in New York but whom I have not heard from in over twenty years. It is him! I think—but a lot thinner, and as if in miniature. He seems to be furious, his nose reminiscent of a bat’s. I look around me, in search of a blunt object with which to attack him or defend myself. He takes a big flower vase that sits on top of the cabinet where he is snooping around and makes as if to hurl it at me. I let out an inarticulate noise, half scream, half moan, that barely comes out of my mouth. I wake up drenched in sweat. I get up to assure myself that I am all alone in the apartment, then check the main door to make sure it is locked.

I call the chief again. He answers his cell phone and tells me he cannot speak much. He is at the Archive with an “archive guru” who is giving a lecture for the researchers of the Project. The chief sounds very excited. The workshop ends next Monday, and Tuesday there will be a general meeting with the directors and consultants for the Project. He proposes that I start visiting the Archive again on Wednesday morning.

I take a look at elPeriódico. More news from Philip Alston: “Rapporteur’s findings point to social cleansing,” states the headline on the front page. Among other statistics, it mentions that, in the year 2006, a total of 5,533 violent deaths were recorded in Guatemala, with only 5 percent of them, approximately, investigated by the authorities, and that sixty-four human rights advocates have been murdered in Guatemala in the last five years.

Another interesting news item:

Jaime Gonzales, the police-doctor, flew from Costa Rica to Venezuela last week on COPA Flight 223, the day after tendering his resignation, and just hours after visiting the police officers detained in connection with the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen at El Boquerón prison—but no record of his arrival at the Simón Bolívar International Airport has been found. In other words: the deputy chief of the National Civil Police has managed to vanish.

Tuesday.