Argument over the phone with B+ (on account of my being late for a date). I tell her she is out of it. She tells me that I do not understand anything. We agree that it is not advisable to talk any further for the time being, and I will call her later. Old story, I tell myself.

I have lunch at my parents’. I read in elPeriódico an open letter from Jaime Gonzales, where he justifies his departure from Guatemala and his “disappearance.” He says: “My death in those circumstances [the scandal surrounding the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen and the execution of their murderers—high-ranking police officers, under Gonzales’s command in a high-security Guatemalan prison] would have personally damaged me in the eyes of public opinion.” Jesuit logic?

Saturday, Puerto Viejo, Iztapa.

Visiting the T’s, overlooking the Chiquimulilla canal. Luxury home, Santa Fe–style, five-star service. But the extreme comfort, along with JL’s bonhomie and the company of B+, do not make me completely happy; they don’t even put me slightly at ease. (And what about them, how do I make them feel? I could ask myself this question. Have never done it.) Although it is not exactly about “feeling guilty for still having a bit of pure air to breathe [as Adorno used to say] in hell,” there is an element of that. Perhaps B+ is right, in what I call her prejudice against the use (however discreet or moderate) of possibly left-linked benzoylmethylecgonine, under the effects of which, and with a slightly trembling hand and a bitter taste in the mouth, I write these lines, stretched out under the blazing sun, by the canal, with the rolling, shimmering sea in the distance.

Sunday afternoon.

In the press: one of the police officers involved in the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen, who is now a protected witness, states that there are “evangelical death squads” composed of National Civil Police agents who belong to various religious sects.

“We are waging,” he says, “a battle against Evil. That is how extrajudicial executions are justified.”

Monday.

I leaf through my mother’s journal telling about her abduction, which I borrowed from her on Thursday. During the six months that she was held captive, my mother was allowed to keep a diary, but they took it away from her when they set her free. A few days after her return home, she started to write down her memories of the events in a hardbound journal, with a fabric cover decorated with very small roses against a bone-colored background. Tucked between the pages of the journal are three sheets of paper typed by my mother (who was a secretary in her youth and an excellent typist until recently). She left the work half-finished, but the first few pages are not without interest:

June 28, 1981. Janila K’ay (her ceramics store).