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The day that Trinidad disappeared, Amalia had gone to the doctor’s with Gertrudis. She got back to Mirones late and Trinidad wasn’t there, dawn came and he hadn’t come, and around ten in the morning a taxi stopped in the alley and a fellow got out asking for Amalia: I want to talk to you alone, it was Pedro Flores. He had her get into the taxi and she what’s happened to my husband, and he he’s in jail. It’s your fault, Amalia shouted, and he looked at her as if she were mad, you fixed things for him to get into politics, and Pedro Flores me, in politics? He hadn’t got mixed up and he never would get mixed up in politics because he hated politics, ma’am, and instead that big nut of a Trinidad could have got him involved in a big mess last night. And he told her: they were coming back from a little party in Barranco and when they went by the Colombian Embassy Trinidad stop for a minute, I’ve got to get out, Pedro Flores thought he was going to urinate, but he got out of the taxi and started shouting scabs, long live APRA, Ví ctor Raú l, and when he started up in fright he saw that the cops were all over Trinidad. It’s your fault, Amalia was weeping, APRA is to blame, they’re going to beat him up. What was the matter with her, what are you talking about: Pedro Flores wasn’t an Aprista and Trinidad had never been an Aprista either, I know only too well because we’re cousins, they’d been raised together in Victoria, we were born in the same house, ma’am. That’s a lie, he was born in Pacasmayo, Amalia whimpered, and Pedro Flores who made you believe that story. And he swore to her: he was born in Lima and he’s never left it and he was never mixed up in politics, except that once they arrested him by mistake or for some reason during Odrí a’s revolution, and when he got out of jail he got the crazy idea of passing himself off as a northerner and an Aprista. She should go to the police station, tell them that he was drunk and half out of his mind, they’ll turn him loose. He left her in the alley and Señ ora Rosario went with her to Miraflores to weep to Don Fermí n. He wasn’t at the station house, Don Fermí n said after telephoning, she should come back tomorrow, he’d find out. But the following morning a boy came into the alley: Trinidad Ló pez was in San Juan de Dios, ma’am. At the hospital they sent Amalia and Señ ora Rosario from one ward to another, until an old nun with the stubble of a man’s beard ah yes, and began to counsel Amalia. She had to resign herself. God has taken your husband away, and while Amalia was weeping to Señ ora Rosario they told her that they’d found him early that morning by the hospital door, that he’d died of a stroke.

She almost didn’t mourn for Trinidad because on the day after the burial her aunt and Señ ora Rosario had to take her to the Maternity Hospital, the pains quite close together now, and early that morning Trinidad’s son was born dead. She was in the Maternity Hospital for five days, sharing a bed with a Negro woman who had given birth to twins and who tried to talk to her all the time. She answered her yes, fine, no. Señ ora Rosario and her aunt came to see her every day and brought her something to eat. She didn’t feel pain or grief, only fatigue, she ate listlessly, it was an effort for her to talk. On the fourth day Gertrudis came, why didn’t you let us know, Engineer Carrillo might think she’d quit work, it’s good you’ve got pull with Don Fermí n. Let the engineer think whatever he wanted to, Amalia thought. When she left the Maternity Hospital she went to the cemetery to bring some gladioli to Trinidad. The holy picture that Señ ora Rosario had put there was still by the grave and the letters that his cousin Pedro Flores had scratched on the plaster with a stick. She felt weak, empty, listless, if ever she got any money she would buy a stone and I’ll have them carve Trinidad Ló pez in gold letters. She began to talk to him slowly, why did you go now that everything was all set, to scold him, why did you make me believe so many lies, to tell him things, they took me to the Maternity Hospital, his son had died, maybe you’ve met him up there. She went back to Mirones remembering the blue coat that Trinidad said is my mark of elegance and how badly she sewed the buttons for him as they fell off again. The small room was padlocked, the landlord had come with a dealer and sold everything he found, leave her something to remember her husband by Señ ora Rosario had begged, but they refused and Amalia what do I care. Her aunt had taken in boarders in the little house in Limoncillo and didn’t have any room, but Señ ora Rosario made space for her in one of her two rooms, and Santiago what trouble did you get mixed up in, why did you have to hightail it out of Pucallpa? A week later Gertrudis Lama appeared in Mirones, why hadn’t she come back to the lab, how long do you think they’ll wait for you? But Amalia wouldn’t ever go back to the lab. And what was she going to do, then? Nothing, stay here until I’m kicked out, and Señ ora Rosario silly, I’m never going to kick you out. And why didn’t she want to go back to the lab? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going back, and she said it with such anger that Gertrudis Lama didn’t ask anymore. A terrible mix-up, he had to hide because of something to do with the truck, son, he didn’t even want to remember. Señ ora Rosario made her eat, counseled her, tried to make her forget. Amalia slept between the girls Celeste and Jesú s, and the youngest of Señ ora Rosario’s daughters complained that she talked about Trinidad and her child in the darkness. She helped Señ ora Rosario wash the clothes in a trough, hang them on the line, heat up the charcoal irons. She did it almost without paying attention, her mind blank, her hands weak. Night came, dawn came, evening came, Gertrudis came to visit her, her aunt came, she listened to them and said yes to everything and thanked them for the gifts they brought. Are you still thinking about Trinidad? Señ ora Rosario asked her every day, and she yes, about her little son, too. You’re like Trinidad, Señ ora Rosario told her, you lower your head, you don’t fight, she should forget about her troubles, you’re young, she could remake her life. Amalia never left Mirones, she was nothing but an old rag, she rarely washed or combed her hair, once when she looked at herself in a mirror she thought if Trinidad saw you he wouldn’t love you anymore. At night when Don Atanasio came home, she would shut herself up in his room to talk to him. He lived in a room with such a low ceiling that Amalia couldn’t stand, and on the floor were a mattress with the stuffing coming out and a thousand odds and ends. While they were chatting, Don Atanasio would take out his bottle and have a drink. Did he think that the informers had beaten Trinidad, Don Atanasio, that when they saw he was dying they dropped him by the door of San Juan de Dios? Sometimes Don Atanasio yes, that was probably what happened, and others no, they probably let him go and he didn’t feel well and went to the hospital on his own, and other times what does it matter to you now, he’s dead, think about yourself, forget about him.

HAD IT BEEN THAT FIRST YEAR, Zavalita, when you saw that San Marcos was a brothel and not the paradise you’d thought? What hadn’t you liked, son? Not that the classes began in June instead of April, not that the professors were as decrepit as the desks, he thinks, but his schoolmates’ lack of interest when the subject of books came up, the indolence in their eyes when it was politics. The peasants were a lot like our well-bred little boys, Ambrosio. The professors were probably paid miserable salaries, Aí da said, they probably worked in ministries, gave classes in private schools, who could ask anything better from them. You had to understand the students’ apathy, Jacobo said, the system made them that way: they needed to be stirred up, indoctrinated, organized. But where were the communists, where in the world were the Apristas? All in jail, all in exile? Those were backward-looking criticisms, Ambrosio, he didn’t realize it at the time and he liked San Marcos. What had become of the professor who in a whole year got through two chapters of the Synthesis of Logical Investigation published by the Revista de Occidente? Phenomenologically suspending the problem of rabies, putting in parentheses, as Husserl would have said, the grave situation created by the dogs of Lima: what sort of face would the supervisor have put on? What about the one who only gave spelling tests, the one who asked for Freud’s mistakes on his exam?

“You’re wrong, you have to read the obscurantists too, ” Santiago said.

“It would be nice to read them in their own language, ” Aí da said. “I’d like to know French, English, even German. ”

“Read everything, but with a critical sense, ” Jacobo said. “The progressives always seem bad to you and the decadents always good. That’s what I criticize in you. ”

“I’m only saying that The Making of a Hero bored me and that I liked The Castle, ” Santiago protested. “I’m not generalizing. ”

“The Ostrovsky translation is probably bad and the Kafka one good, don’t argue anymore, ” Aí da said.

What about the little old man with a fat belly, blue eyes and long white hair who lectured on historical sources? He was so good that he made me want to go into History and not Psychology, Aí da said, and Jacobo yes, too bad he was a Hispanist and not an Indigenist. The classrooms, packed during the first days, were thinning out, by September only half the students attended and it wasn’t hard to find a seat in class anymore. They didn’t feel defrauded, it wasn’t that the professors didn’t know anything or didn’t want to teach, he thinks, they weren’t interested in learning either. Because they were poor and had to work, Aí da said, because they were contaminated with bourgeois formalism and only wanted to get their degrees, Jacobo said; because in order to get them you didn’t have to go to class or be interested or study: you only had to wait. Was he happy at San Marcos Skinny, did the great minds of Peru really teach there Skinny, why had he become so withdrawn Skinny? Yes he was papa, they really do papa, he wasn’t withdrawn papa. You came in and went out of the house like a ghost, Zavalita, you shut yourself up in your room and didn’t show your face to the family, you were like a bear, Señ ora Zoila said, and Sparky you were going to go cross-eyed from so much reading, and Teté why didn’t you ever go out with Popeye anymore, Superbrain. Because Jacobo and Aí da were enough, he thinks, because they were friendship which excluded, enriched and compensated for everything. There, he thinks, did I fuck myself up there?

They had registered for the same courses, they sat in the same row, they went together to the San Marcos or National libraries, it was hard for them to go their separate ways and home to sleep. They read the same books, saw the same movies, got all worked up over the same newspapers. When they left the university, at noon and in the afternoon, they would talk for hours in El Palermo on Colmena, argue for hours in the Hué rfanos pastry shop on Azá ngaro, talk for hours about the political news in a café and billiard parlor behind the Palace of Justice. Sometimes they would slip into a movie, sometimes go through bookstores, sometimes take long walks through the city as an adventure. Asexual, fraternal, the friendship also seemed eternal.

“The same things were important to us, we hated the same things, and we never agreed on anything, ” Santiago says. “That was great too. ”

“Why were you so bitter, then? ” Ambrosio asks. “Was it because of the girl? ”

“I never saw her alone, ” Santiago says. “I wasn’t bitter; a little worm in my stomach sometimes, nothing else. ”

“You wanted to make love to her and you couldn’t with the other one there, ” Ambrosio says. “I know what it’s like to be close to the woman you love and not be able to do anything. ”

“Did that happen to you with Amalia? ” Santiago asks.

“I saw a movie about it once, ” Ambrosio says.

The university reflected the country, Jacobo said, twenty years ago those professors were probably progressives and readers, then because they had to work at other things and because of the environment they became mediocre and bourgeois, and there, sticky and tiny at the mouth of his stomach: the little worm. It was the students’ fault too, Aí da said, they liked the system; and if everybody was to blame, was conforming the only thing left for us to do? Santiago asked, and Jacobo: the solution was university reform. A diminutive and acidy body in the underbrush of conversations, all of a sudden in the heat of the arguments, interfering, leading astray, distracting with flashes of melancholy or nostalgia. Parallel teaching chairs, cogovernment, popular universities, Jacobo said: everyone who was capable should come to teach, the students could get rid of bad professors, and since the people didn’t come to the university, the university should go to the people. Melancholy from those impossible dialogues alone with her that he yearned for, nostalgia for those strolls alone with her that he invented? But if the university was a reflection of the country San Marcos would never be in good shape as long as Peru was so badly off, Santiago said, and Aí da if what was wanted was to cure the disease at its roots there shouldn’t be any talk of university reform but of revolution. But they were students and their field of action was the university, Jacobo said, by working for reform they would be working for the revolution: you had to go through stages and not be pessimistic.

“You were jealous of your friend, ” Ambrosio says. “And jealousy is the worst kind of poison. ”

“Jacobo was probably going through the same thing I was, ” Santiago says. “But we both kept it hidden. ”

“He probably felt like getting rid of you with a magic look too so he could be alone with the girl. ” Ambrosio laughs.

“He was my best friend, ” Santiago says. “I hated him, but at the same time I loved and admired him. ”

“You shouldn’t be such a skeptic, ” Jacobo said. “That business of all or nothing is typically bourgeois. ”

“I’m not a skeptic, ” Santiago said. “But we talk and talk and here we are in the same place. ”

“That’s right, up till now we haven’t gone beyond theory, ” Aí da said. “We ought to do something else besides talk. ”

“We can’t do it alone, ” Jacobo said. “First we have to make contact with the progressives at the university. ”

“We’ve been there two months and we haven’t found a single one, ” Santiago said. “I’m beginning to believe they don’t exist. ”

“They have to be careful and it’s logical, ” Jacobo said. “They’ll turn up sooner or later. ”

And in fact, stealthily, suspiciously, mysteriously, little by little, they had been turning up, like furtive shadows: they were in the first year of Letters, right? Between classes they would usually sit on a bench in the courtyard of the Faculty, it seemed they were taking up a collection, or walking around the fountain in Law, to buy mattresses for the students in jail, and sometimes there they exchanged words with students from other faculties or other classes, who were being held in the cells of the penitentiary sleeping on the floor, and in those quick fleeting dialogues, behind the mistrust, opening a path through the suspicion, hadn’t anyone told them about the collection before? they noticed or seemed to notice a subtle exploration of their way of thinking, it wasn’t a matter of anything political, a discreet sounding, just a humanitarian act, vague indications that they were getting ready for something that would come, and even simple Christian charity, or a secret call so that they could show in the same coded way that they could be trusted: could they maybe give just one sol? They would appear alone and slippery in the courtyards of San Marcos, they would come over to chat with them for a few moments about ambiguous things, they would disappear for several days and suddenly reappear, cordial and evasive, the same cautious smiling expression on the same Indian, half-breed, Chinese, black faces, and the same ambivalent words in their provincial accents, with the same threadbare and faded suits and the same old shoes and sometimes a magazine or newspaper or book under their arm. What were they studying, where did they come from, what were their names, where did they live? Like a bald bolt of lightning in the cloudy sky, that boy in Law had been one of those who had shut themselves up in San Marcos during Odrí a’s revolution, a quick confidence suddenly tore through the gray conversations, and he had been imprisoned and had gone on a hunger strike in jail, and lighted them up and made them feverish, and he had only been let out a month ago, and those revelations and discoveries, and that one had been a delegate from Economics when the Federated Centers and the University Federation still functioned, awoke in them an anxious excitation, before the police had destroyed the student organizations by putting their leaders in jail, a fierce curiosity.

“You come home late so you won’t have to eat with us and when you do us the honor you don’t open your mouth, ” Señ ora Zoila said. “Did they cut off your tongue in San Marcos? ”

“He spoke against Odrí a and against the Communists, ” Jacobo said. “An Aprista, wouldn’t you say? ”

“He plays silent in order to make himself more interesting, ” Sparky said. “Geniuses don’t waste their time talking to ignoramuses, isn’t that right, Superbrain? ”

“How many children does young Teté have? ” Ambrosio asks. “And how many have you got, son? ”

“A Trotskyite more likely, because he had good things to say about Lechí n, ” Aí da said. “Don’t they say that Lechí n is a Trotskyite? ”

“Teté two and me none, ” Santiago says. “I didn’t want to be a father, but maybe I’ll decide to one of these days. The way we’re going, what difference does it make? ”

“And besides, you go around like a sleepwalker with the eyes of a slaughtered lamb, ” Teté said. “Have you fallen in love with some girl at San Marcos? ”

“When I get home I see the lamp on your night table still on, ” Don Fermí n said. “It’s fine for you to read, but you ought to be a little sociable, Skinny. ”

“Yes, with a girl in braids who goes barefoot and speaks only Quechua, ” Santiago said. “Are you interested? ”

“The old black woman used to say that every child comes with his loaf of bread under his arm, ” Ambrosio says. “If it was up to me, I’d have a lot of them, I’ll say that. The old black woman, my mama, may she rest in peace. ”

“I’m a little tired when I get home. That’s why I go to my room, papa, ” Santiago said. “Why don’t I stay and talk to you all? Don’t you think I’m crazy? ”

“That’s what happens to me for having spoken to you, you’re a stubborn mule, ” Teté said.

“Not crazy, just a little strange, ” Don Fermí n said. “Now that we’re alone, Skinny, you can talk frankly to me. Is something bothering you? ”

“That one just might belong to the Party, ” Jacobo said. “His interpretation of what’s going on in Bolivia was very Marxist. ”

“Nothing, papa, ” Santiago said. “Nothing’s wrong with me, I give you my word. ”

“Pancras had a son in Huacho years and years ago and his woman ran off on him one day and he never saw her again, ” Ambrosio says. “Ever since then he’s been trying to find that son. He doesn’t want to die without knowing if he turned out as ugly as he is. ”

“That one doesn’t come over to sound us out but to be with you, ” Santiago said. “He only talks to you, and all those little smiles. You’ve made a conquest, Aí da. ”

“What a dirty mind you’ve got, you’re such a bourgeois, ” Aí da said.

“I can understand it because I’ve spent days too thinking about Amalita Hortensia, ” Ambrosio says. “Wondering what she’s like, who she looks like. ”

“Do you think that only happens to the bourgeoisie? ” Santiago asked. “That revolutionaries don’t ever think about women? ”

“There you are, now you’re mad because I called you a bourgeois, ” Aí da said. “Don’t be so sensitive, don’t be so bourgeois. Agh, I let it slip again. ”

“Let’s go have some coffee, ” Jacobo said. “Come on, Moscow gold is paying for it. ”

Were they solitary rebels, were they active in some underground organization, could one of them be an informer? They didn’t go around together, they rarely appeared at the same time, they didn’t know each other or they made people think they didn’t know each other. Sometimes it was as if they were going to reveal something important, but they would stop on the threshold of revelation, and their hints and allusions, their threadbare suits and their calculated manners aroused restlessness in them, doubts, an admiration held back by mistrust or fear. Their casual faces began to appear in the café s where they went after class, was he a messenger, was he exploring the terrain? their humble silhouettes as they sat down at the tables where they were, then let’s show them that there was no reason to pretend with them, and there, outside San Marcos, there are two informers in our class Aí da said, instead of waiting for a trap, we found them out and they couldn’t deny it Jacobo said, the dialogues began to be less ethereal, they excused themselves alleging that as lawyers they would go up the ladder, Santiago said, sometimes taking on a boldly political tone, the fools didn’t even know how to lie Aí da said. The chats would begin with some anecdote, the dangerous ones were not the ones who let themselves be found out said Washington, or joke or story or inquiry, but the small-fry informers who don’t appear on police lists, and then, timid, accidental, the questions came, what was the atmosphere like in the first year? was there restlessness, were the kids concerned about problems? was there a majority interested in setting up the Federated Centers again? more and more sibylline, serpentine, what did they think of the Bolivian revolution? the conversation would slip, and Guatemala, what did they think about that? toward the international situation. Animated, excited, they gave their opinions without lowering their voices, let the informers hear them, let them arrest them, and Aí da became stimulated, she was the most enthusiastic he thinks, she let herself be won over by her own emotions, the most daring he thinks, the first boldly to shift the conversation from Bolivia and Guatemala to Peru: we were living under a military dictatorship, and her nighttime eyes glowed, even if the Bolivian revolution was only liberal, and her nose grew thinner, even if Guatemala hadn’t even gotten as far as a democratic-bourgeois revolution, and her temples throbbed more rapidly, they were better off than Peru, and a lock of her hair danced, governed by a stinking general, and it bounced on her forehead as she spoke, and by a pack of thieves, and her small fists pounded on the table. Uncomfortable, restless, alarmed, the furtive shadows interrupted Aí da, changed the subject, or got up and left.

“Your papa said that San Marcos was bad for you, ” Ambrosio says. “That you stopped loving him because of the university. ”

“You gave Washington a hard time, ” Jacobo said. “If he belongs to the Party he has to be careful. Don’t talk so strongly about Odrí a in front of him, you could get him in trouble. ”

“Did my father tell you that I’d stopped loving him? ” Santiago asks.

“Do you think Washington left because of that? ” Aí da asked.

“It was the thing he was most worried about in life, ” Ambrosio says. “Finding out why you’d stopped loving him, son. ”

He was in the third year of Law, he was a white and jovial little Andean who spoke without taking on the solemn, esoteric, archepiscopal air of the others, he was the first one whose name they learned: Washington. Always dressed in light gray, always with his merry canine teeth showing, with his jokes he imposed on the conversation in El Palermo, in the café -poolroom, or in the courtyard of Economics a personal climate which didn’t come out in the hermetic or stereotyped dialogues they had with the others. But in spite of his communicative appearance, he also knew how to be impenetrable. He’d been the first to change from a furtive shadow into a being of flesh and blood. Into an acquaintance, he thinks, almost into a friend.

“Why did he think that? ” Santiago asks. “What else did my father tell you? ”

“Why don’t we organize a study group? ” Washington asked casually.

They stopped thinking, breathing, their eyes fastened on him.

“A study group? ” Aí da asked very slowly. “To study what? ”

“Not me, son, ” Ambrosio says. “He’d be talking to your mama, your brother and sister, friends, and I’d listen to them while I was driving the car. ”

“Marxism, ” Washington said in a natural way. “They don’t teach it at the university and it might be useful to us as a part of our general culture, don’t you think? ”

“You knew my father better than I, ” Santiago says. “Tell me what other things he used to say about me. ”

“It would be most interesting, ” Jacobo said. “Let’s organize the group. ”

“How could I know him better than you, ” Ambrosio says. “What a thing to say, child. ”

“The problem is getting hold of books, ” Aí da said. “In secondhand bookstores the only thing you can find is some back number of Cultura Sovié tica. ”

“I know he talked to you about me, ” Santiago says. “But never mind, don’t tell me anything if you don’t want to. ”

“You can get them, but we have to be careful, ” Washington said. “Studying Marxism is enough to make yourself liable to be put on file as a Communist. Well, you people know that better than I. ”

That was how the Marxist study groups had been born, that was how they’d begun, without noticing it, to become active, to sink into the prestigious, yearned-for underground status. That was how they had discovered the tumble-down bookstore on the Jiró n Chota and the old Spaniard with dark glasses and a snowy goatee who had copies of Siglo XX and Lautaro in his back room, that was how they had bought, thumbed through avidly that book which brought the discussions of the group to a fever pitch for many weeks, that book with answers for everything: Elements of Philosophy, he thinks. He thinks: Georges Politzer. That was how they had met Hé ctor, another furtive shadow until then, and had found out that the skinny, laconic giraffe was studying Economics and earned his living as a radio announcer. They’d decided to meet twice a week, they’d discussed the place for a long time, they’d finally chosen Hé ctor’s boardinghouse on Jesú s Marí a where they would go from then on and for months, every Thursday and Saturday afternoon, feeling themselves followed and spied on, looking suspiciously about the neighborhood before going in. They would get there around three, Hé ctor’s room was old and large, with two wide windows that faced the street, on the third floor of the boardinghouse run by a deaf woman who would come up sometimes to roar at them do you want some tea? Aí da installed herself on the bed, the negation of negation he thinks, Hé ctor on the floor, the qualitative leaps he thinks, Santiago in the only chair, the unity of opposites he thinks, Jacobo on a windowsill, Marx put the dialectics that Hegel had standing on its head back on its feet he thinks, and Washington always standing. He thinks: in order to grow and he laughed. Every time a different person would review a chapter from Politzer’s book, the reviews were followed by discussions, they met for two, three, or even four hours, they left by twos, leaving the room full of smoke and ardor. Later on the three of them would meet again and in some park, some street, some café, could Washington belong to the Party? Aí da asked, they kept on talking, could Hé ctor be in the Party? Jacobo asked, supposing so, could the Party exist? Santiago asked, how was self-criticism done? and fervently arguing. That was how they had used the first year, that was how he’d spent the summer, not going to the beach a single time he thinks, that was how he’d begun the second year.

Had it been that second year, Zavalita, when you saw that it wasn’t enough to learn about Marxism, that you had to believe? What had probably fucked you up was that lack of faith, Zavalita. A lack of faith in God, child? In order to believe in anything, Ambrosio. The idea of God, the idea of a “pure spirit” who created the universe didn’t make sense, Politzer said, a God outside space and time was something that could not exist. You were going around with a face that wasn’t your usual face, Santiago. You had to take part in idealistic mysticism and consequently not admit any scientific control, Politzer said, in order to believe in a God who existed outside time, that is, who didn’t exist in any given moment, and who existed outside space, that is, who didn’t exist in any given place. The worst thing was to have doubts, Ambrosio, and the wonderful thing was to close your eyes and say God exists or God doesn’t exist and believe it. He’d realized that sometimes he was playing tricks in the group, Aí da: he said I believe or I agree and deep down he had doubts. Materialists, supported by the conclusions of science, Politzer said, affirmed that matter existed in space and in a given moment (in time). Clenching your fists, grinding your teeth, Ambrosio, APRA is the solution, religion is the solution, Communism is the solution, and believing it. Then life would become organized all by itself and you wouldn’t feel empty anymore, Ambrosio. He didn’t believe in priests, son, and he hadn’t gone to mass since he was a child, but he did believe in religion and in God, didn’t everybody have to believe in something? Consequently the universe could not have been created, Politzer concluded, since it had been necessary for God to be able to create the world in a moment which had never been a moment (since time did not exist for God) and it would have been necessary too for the world to have come out of nothingness: and did that worry you so much, Zavalita? Aí da would ask. And Jacobo: if it was necessary in any case to start believing in something, it was better to believe that God doesn’t exist than that he does. Santiago also preferred that, Aí da, he wanted to be convinced that what Politzer said was right, Jacobo. What got him all upset was having doubts, Aí da, not being able to be sure, Jacobo. Petit-bourgeois agnosticism, Zavalita, disguised idealism, Zavalita. Didn’t Aí da have any doubts, did Jacobo believe right down to the last letter what Politzer was saying? Doubts were fatal, Aí da said, they paralyze you and you can’t do anything, and Jacobo spending your life digging around, would that be right? torturing yourself, would that be a lie? instead of acting? The world would never change, Zavalita. In order to act you have to believe in something, Aí da said, and believing in God hasn’t helped change anything, and Jacobo: better to believe in Marxism, which can change things, Zavalita. Inculcate the workers with methodical doubt? Washington said, peasants with the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason? Hé ctor said. He thinks: you thought not, Zavalita. Closing your eyes, Marxism rests on science, clenching your fists, religion on ignorance, sinking your feet into the earth, God doesn’t exist, grinding your teeth, the motive force of history was the class struggle, hardening your muscles, when it freed itself of bourgeois exploitation, breathing deeply, the proletariat would free humanity, and attacking: and set up a world without classes. You couldn’t, Zavalita, he thinks. He thinks: you were, you are, you always will be, you’ll die a petit bourgeois. Were nursing bottles, private school, family, neighborhood stronger? he thinks. You used to go to mass, to confession and communion on first Fridays, you prayed and even then a lie, I don’t believe. You went to the deaf woman’s boardinghouse, quantitative changes, as they accumulated, produced a qualitative change, and you yes yes, the greatest materialist thinker before Marx was Diderot, yes yes, and suddenly the little worm: a lie, I don’t believe.