Instead of going to El Tular like I do almost every Sunday, I ask Magalí for permission to experiment with the paper blocks in her yard. At Magalí’s house, two men from Petén, Danilo Dubón and his assistant César, are repairing the thatched roof that the winter winds have damaged. Danilo, whom I met in Petexbatún several years ago, is a woodworker and builder of extraordinary integrity and taste. He has emigrated to the capital in search of employment as a master builder, and in one year he has become quite prosperous; he just bought land on the outskirts of the city and is starting to build his home.

While he and César replace the damaged thatched roof on the house, Pía helps me crumple pages of old newspapers—though she saves some of them, those she wants to keep because of a picture of a baby or a pet—and I glue them together in alternate rows on the spread-out sheets. In a few minutes we use up three or four newspapers and we have the first block, similar to the ones I saw in Miquel’s studio in Paris, so I consider the experiment a success.

At the end of the morning, I show the blocks that we have made to Danilo and César, submitting them to their judgment as builders. When they see them, they laugh. Danilo tries to compress a block with his hands, and the block resists. They now seem to grasp the possibilities.

“And that paper,” César tells me, “you can get everywhere.”

“It could work,” says Danilo. “Maybe with a little varnish on top, in case of rain, or fire.”

Fifth Sketchbook: Spanish Binding

Fifth Sketchbook: Spanish Binding

Something that is also saddening is doing things that one knows will leave no memory.

BORGES, quoted by BIOY

A few days ago, I learned something that still amuses me. They have a nickname for me at the Archive: “El Matrix.” I have to admit that I feel like un’oca in un clima d’aquile in that place. Is it possible that my discoveries there were directed, that is, foreseen? I wonder sometimes. “They let you see only what they want you to see, right?” B+ said to me one day. “So, what do you expect?” As in a Kafka parable, to enter the dusty labyrinth that is the Archive at La Isla, all I had to do was to ask permission. Inside: dark, damp room after dark, damp room, piled high with papers that have a patina of rat and bat droppings, teeming with more than a hundred anonymous heroes, in their lab coat uniforms, protected by masks and latex gloves, and surveilled by policemen, concentric circles of policemen, policemen who belonged to the same repressive forces whose crimes the archivists investigate.

Monday.