Am I a normal man? I don’t make much noise. I like many things. I live my life. I wonder why we are alive.

I think about death, I resist it, I prefer to live. But I think about it.

Many people don’t. They take it for granted that a great deal of future remains to them.

At the table, the silverware is doing its work. Mine too. Mamá is on the alert, keeping an eye on me.

I feel quite down, and it’s very hot.

After lunch I have a siesta.

I wake up at twenty to five. I don’t think I’ll turn the story in. Marcela will be waiting for me with the photos. She’ll get tired, she’ll leave. Though I could let her know.

I’d rather go to the movies. There’s no sci-fi anywhere so I see Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago divides his feelings and his body between two women. This appears to be fine. The two ladies approve; they fall in love with him and speak no word against him. For me, in the same situation, there would be no mercy: I am the common man.

I buy a newspaper and look for articles about the upcoming fight. The weighing-in: 63.3 and 62.4 kilos. I study the police blotter. Suicides, zero. Attempts, zero. Arsonist arrested. Turns out to be a member of the Marcos Paz Volunteer Fire Brigade. He confesses, explains that he set fire to a number of things in order “to enable the volunteer fire brigade to demonstrate its courage and skill.”

A dissatisfied man: There are firemen but no fires.

Governments should be formed exclusively of genuinely dissatisfied people. The kind who won’t resign themselves to anything, who will always demand that everything be improved.

There can be fire without firemen; that’s how it was for millions of years. But a fireman without a fire to put out must feel that his condition is absurd. If he’s a normal man, it must cause him anguish.

He’s like me. I, too, am oppressed by what I don’t do. But I don’t do it.

•

At the stadium, I don’t sit with my colleagues. I’m one among many in the bellowing stands.

I shout and curse. When blood spurts from an eyebrow laid open by an uppercut I yell for the eye to be smashed, and that I’ll spit on the corpse of the man who holds back, the man who doesn’t fight hard enough. I clamor for violence and destruction.

This is normal: My belligerence is collective and my atrocities mingle in the air with everyone else’s.

I give vent. One night a week. On other days, outside the stadium, you can’t incite anyone to kill his fellow man or let off steam about everything that offends and diminishes you.

•

On Sunday I manage to elude Julia; on Monday I cannot elude the boss.

No sooner is he informed of my presence in the editorial offices than he sends his secretary to tell me I shouldn’t even think about turning the story in, it’s far too late now.