Mónica calls me again on the phone. I confirm my travel plans to Italy next week. She will pick me up at Pisa airport with the landlady of the apartment where she lives.

Difficult viewing and reading, on my laptop, of the CDs with the National Police Yearly Reports that I have brought with me. Thus far, I have not been able to find the reports on the Identification Bureau prepared by Benedicto Tun. Surprise. On the cover of the Yearly Report from 1964, instead of the usual plain cover with no art, a small graphic discovery: a representation in perspective, with a single vanishing point, of a large, open tome. On the bottom edge of the tome, police handcuffs. Above the book, looming over it, a bat with outstretched wings. The caption, “Yearly Report,” in Gothic characters. The effect is sinister.

I show it to Miquel and notice with satisfaction his slight startled jump.

“Man, that is even a little bit scary.” He leans toward the screen. “That bat was lovingly made.”

“Yes. There are those who love their job,” I say.

Monday.

Before getting out of bed, I read the Stendhal by Zweig.

Another splendid day, with a little less heat than yesterday.

A revelation in the shower: it’s not so much that I am bothered by the erudition of others—Miquel’s, Guillermo’s, or Homero’s—in their different “fields of knowledge,” as much as by the awareness of the immensity of my own overall ignorance, the horizons of which, as I acquire new knowledge, or glimpses of knowledge, seem wider each day.

Tuesday.

When I open my eyes, “the dregs of my dreams are lost.” At night, while I tossed and turned in bed unable to fall asleep, my thoughts went to the CDs from the Archive, which I believe came into my hands thanks to Galíndez. I have found copies of several files after 1970, which I am not supposed to see. When I showed Miquel the image of the bat, I mentioned this.

“Those documents,” I said. “I prefer to not even open them.”

“But why not?” he replies. “Maybe they gave them to you because they want you to see them.”

I have dinner with Gustavo Guerrero, the editor at Gallimard. He proposes that I write something for the Nouvelle Revue Française about Borges by Bioy, which I consider to be a secretly complex, unique, magnificent book. This, following our conversation about an article that came out a few days ago in El Mundo, where Bioy’s integrity and that of the editors of the book is questioned: “Let us remember,” the article says, “that Bioy never wanted to publish those diaries, and they are being published by others, who may or may not have manipulated the writer’s private mischief.”