Woes of the True Policeman Read Online Free PDF

had a drink together, but they weren’t friends. Guerra knew he was a glorified courtier— courtier , the term wounded and pleased him, filled him with pride and gloom, but it was the only one that fit the facts—and yet he believed that he, too, when the moment came, would be university president and that he would take under his wing another professor in circumstances similar to his own. For years now, too, he suspected that Pablo Negrete had been delegating to him only practical matters, resolving worldly matters without his counsel.
    He lived in a permanent state of agitation.
    At the time when Amalfitano met him, Horacio Guerra was a well-dressed man (this was a quality—like so many others—that he shared with the president, who over the years had become a dandy) among poorly or sloppily dressed professors and students. His manner was cordial, though he sometimes raised his voice excessively. His gestures for years now had tended to be peremptory. It was said that he was ill, but no one knew what was wrong with him. It was probably something do to with his nerves. He never missed a class. He lived in a fifteen-hundred-square-foot apartment in the center of Santa Teresa. He was still a bachelor. For a while now his students had been calling him by the nicer-sounding and more peaceable name of Horacio Tregua, Truce replacing War .

7
    After Amalfitano had sent out fifty job applications and pestered the few friends he had left, the only school to show an interest in his services was the University of Santa Teresa. For a full week Amalfitano debated whether to accept the job or to wait by the mailbox for a better offer. In terms of quality, the only worse options were a Guatemalan university and a Honduran one, though neither had even bothered to send him a written rejection. In fact, the only universities that had gotten back to him to say no were the European ones with which Amalfitano had had previous dealings. All that was left was the University of Santa Teresa, and after a week of thinking it over, sunk in a deepening depression, Amalfitano sent word that he would accept the position. He soon received a copy of the contract, all the papers and forms he would need to fill out for his work permit, and the date when he was expected in Santa Teresa.
    He lied to Rosa. He told her that his job was ending and that they had to leave. Rosa thought they would return to Italy, but she wasn’t unhappy to hear that they were going to Mexico.
    At night Amalfitano and his daughter talked about the trip. They made plans, studied maps of northern Mexico and the southern United States, decided which places they would visit on their first vacations, what kind of car they would buy (a used one, like in the movies, at one of those lots with a salesman in a blue suit, red tie, and snakeskin boots), the house they would rent, no more apartments, a little house with two or three bedrooms, a front yard, and a backyard where they could barbecue, though neither Amalfitano nor his daughter was entirely sure what barbecuing was: Rosa claimed it involved a grill set up in the backyard (next to the pool, if possible) where meat and even fish were grilled; Amalfitano thought that in Mexico it actually involved a pit—a pit out in the country, ideally—into which one shoveled hot coals, then a layer of earth, then slabs of goat, then another layer of earth, and finally more hot coals; the pieces of meat, according to Amalfitano, were wrapped in the leaves of some ancient tree, the name of which escaped him. Or in aluminum foil.
    Those last days in Barcelona, Amalfitano sat at his desk for hours, supposedly working but really doing nothing. He thought about Padilla, his daughter, his dead wife, random scenes from his youth and childhood. Rosa, meanwhile, was never at home, as if the moment she had to leave Barcelona she was seized by an irresistible urge to walk its streets, to see and commit to memory every inch of it. Usually she went out