After lunch, on a stroll along the walls surrounding Lucca, I speak with Mauro, Mónica’s eldest son, about Guatemala. Mauro is interested in knowing how things are over there. I tell him about the Salvadoran congressmen assassinated by policemen, then we talk about the scandal at the Ministry of Education (over the illicit transfer of funds to the Ministry of Public Works for the construction of a new airport), and about Rigoberta Menchú’s presidential run. Mauro asks a series of questions about how a country like Guatemala could change for the better. We come to the conclusion that, miracles aside, there’s nothing good to be expected, except perhaps a moral revolution (unlikely) or intervention by a higher power.

“Like that of the United States in Iraq?” Mauro asks, and we laugh.

I tell him that things are going to get worse long before they get better. I tell him that maybe the thing is not to think about how to change things, but how to get away from it all. That his destiny is not necessarily there, that maybe he should consider the possibility of living in another country.

“I would like to return,” he answers.

“Why not study political science?” I ask, not without irony.

He shakes his head doubtfully, and does not answer.

I talk to him about Haiti, “practically converted into a cemetery,” as a Spanish columnist recently said.

“Guatemala could end up that way too, if things do not change,” I say.

Mauro could very well have asked why I went back to Guatemala, which would be difficult to explain, but he did not ask.

That afternoon I travel back to Paris.

Saturday, chez Miquel in Paris.

Joubert, quoted by Du Bos: La bonhomie est une perfection.

Homero, who had agreed to call me last night to have dinner together (he goes back to Montreal tomorrow morning) does not call.

Late at night at Miquel’s, with his daughter Marcela, we watch Short Cuts by Altman.

Sunday.

Miquel’s exhibit, yesterday afternoon, a success.

The young bronze elephant is on display in a cobbled courtyard, in a private small palace belonging to a friend of Miquel’s, very close to YL’s gallery. People exclaim and smile when they see it, balanced on its straight trunk with its legs extended into the air and its little tail pointing up toward the sky. In the gallery, a display of large canvases with enormous skulls surrounded by burnt matches, open shells, and snails drying in the sun—still lifes, memento mori and vanitas, that simultaneously evoke the tradition whence they come while merrily distancing themselves from it.