Sartre, in Nausea: “I believe that is the risk of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you have expectations, and you exceed the limits of truth.”

Wittgenstein: “But is this not the unilateral consideration of tragedy that it only shows that an encounter can determine our entire life?”

Schnitzler: “Every truth has its moment—its revelation—which tends to be short, such that, like existence itself, it is the glow, or just a spark, between nothing or between the lie that precedes it and the one that follows, between the moment that seems paradoxical and the moment that begins to seem trivial.”

Wednesday.

Upon returning from Río Dulce, this time by land (my mother’s chauffeur came to pick us up), we stop by La Isla, which is at the beginning of the highway that links the capital with the Atlantic coast, to pick up the CD with the Yearly Report from the Archive Recovery Project that the chief said he would leave for me with one of the guards. This way I will avoid crossing the city from one end to the other twice tomorrow.

It is almost nighttime when we arrive at La Isla, and in order to get to the Archive we have to go through two security checkpoints. Armed guards are everywhere. My mother, whom I had not sufficiently warned about these circumstances, looks at me with alarm, and I think she is impressed when they let us in after I talk to the guards. Further down, at the gate to the Archive, the guard on duty, after confirming my identity, hands me an envelope with the CD promised by the chief, and, in addition, a small cardboard box with four CDs, on which I read in longhand: National Police Yearly Report. I seem to recognize Luis Galíndez’s handwriting from the envelope he gave me with the elimination list from the military archives.

“This is also for you,” the guard tells me.

As we leave:

“Do you work here?” Pía asks.

I laugh, and say sometimes.

“Are you a policeman?”

“No.”

“So then?”

“I investigate them,” I answer and laugh again.

“Why?” Pía insists.

“It’s part of my job.”

“You investigate them?”

After thinking about it for a moment, I improvise:

“I want to make sure they are behaving.”

Pía stops asking. Out of the corner of my eye I see my mother, who stares at the darkness outside the car, smiling faintly in silence.

Fourth Sketchbook: Leather Cover, No Branding, No Name

Fourth Sketchbook: Leather Cover, No Branding, No Name

Easter Sunday, in Paris, chez Miquel Barceló.