Hey Kathryn! I hope you are doing well.

I was doubting of whether to send you the story

or not but I had promised, so here it goes. I translated it the best I could I really lost it
at the end; I may have to redo it or throw it away. Its really bad, I think. I think its like
Cortzar said about his first stories: the disillusionment about each one, augmented the
will of the next (Im not happy with this one, Ill do better next time).

A Day of Fever
By Werner Solrzano

I must be lookin for something, something sacred I lost

But the river is wide and its too hard to cross
Billy Joel; Rivers of Dreams

Lucio Lpez traversed the small stone patio that led to a wide entry. One could hear, out
there, the purring of the motorcycles, the painful groaning of the buses laden with
passengers and his eyes registered the glittering of the sun over the roofs of the vehicles
which hastily passed by the apartments in which he lived. He would walk. He would walk
as he always did with the strap of his briefcase across his chest and with the wind playing
with his hair by the place where they sold food (right in the corner of the street); there,
the vapor of the arroz con leche, arroz con chocolate, atol de maz, barley and coffee mixed
itself gently with the smoke from the diesel and the cold air of the morning that had just
begun. He would elbow his way through the clients that surrounded the food, the majority
of which were in rolled-up shirt-sleeves, baseball caps and big backpacks where they
probably carried a shoulder bump interrupted his musings and the chocolate beverage
soiled his shirt. There where words of apology, some surprised looks and someone handed
to him some paper napkins. I think I caught something there. A bit cranky, he kept on
walking and while he mused he was two men at the same time: One of them was walking
towards the Public High School at El Rosario, while the other one was farther behind with

every step, among the mason workers that took breakfast at that time, reliving the scene in
various outcomes.
He was tired when he arrived at that semi-urban area where he had been working for about
ten years, teaching the same courses year after year, making the same canned questions. In
the classroom, the most bored person was the one who today would sit behind his big desk,
stuffed in a cardigan that the music teacher had lent to him in order to smother any joke,
nicknames or bullying (at least thats what he thought). He was comforted by the thought
that he always arrived before all of the students and in the restroom, with a fistful of wet
paper napkins, he tried to remove, as best he could, the brown stain. How well did he
remove it? He wouldnt know for sure until other person laid eyes on it and in order for
that to happen he had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. He placed the keys of the entrance
door back in his briefcase (a small astuce he had learned from Hctor Prez who did the
same thing with his car keys). Classes had been called off a couple of times because he had
forgotten the keys back in his apartment (these and other acts of carelessness made him
progressively lose favor in the eyes of the Principal and he just had let it be as he had
neglected this, that and that other thing). Instead of reviewing todays lesson, he decided to
go up to the rooftop and separate from the other chairs, one that had previously been a desk
and which negligence kept gathering up in a corner with the others in a small cemetery
under the heaviness of the sun during the summer and the rain during the winter. He sat
there for about half an hour; the wind kept blowing on his humid shirt. Up there, he felt
content, almost happy, thinking in the recent events: A bonus for the teachers of his salary
scale, the complete works of Stendhal (where part of that money would probably go) and
some movies he expected to see on the weekend, and of course: The World Cup next year.
The knocks that punished the door in the same paintless spot jarred him out of his selfabsorption. Now, what happened to you? and she burst into a metallic laughter. Although
later he had the cardigan in his hand with which he thought himself free of the students
jokes about the brown stain that began in the chest and then went down to cover almost the
whole stomach, he had to endure with a Pauline patience the jokes that started raining on
him from that first moment when he opened the door to the Secretary.

Since Independence Day was drawing near and flag-wagging was burning hot for the blue
and the white, the Civic Acts where done every day of the week at the school, culminating
in that glorious day after which all that zeal was extinguished not leaving a single burning
coal.
The laughing dealt a very heavy blow to his manly dignity and he wasnt the same during
the rest of the day.

The very idea! Only you could think of putting on a womans

sweater and in front of those boys! Thats true. She was right. He should have known
better. He knew. He didnt think. Or perhaps it was due to the fatigue he felt when he
woke up that morning but which had been dogging his steps for several days now and that
came upon him all the more after the humiliation. He had been called to step up to the
platform that had been built that year.
That year, the National Team had agonizingly pulled off a victory against Mexico in the
United States and was in its first World Cup. The national fire thus lit in the spirit of the
Principal, he ordered to build a platform, or rather: he built a platform himself, because
although he had named a special commission for furnishing whatever things were needed
for the Civic Acts (made up, mainly, of the senior students), it was he who did almost all
the work. He even stayed a couple of afternoons taking apart and rebuilding the mediocre
job the commission had done. They did it mediocrely, as if it were for who knows whom
and not for the Fatherland! he thundered that from the microphone the next day,
although, normally, every time he said Fatherland, his voice would break. This national
zeal, this jingoism started to get on Lucio Lopezs nerves. Lpez, help me to get the wood
in for building the altar for the Fatherland. Lucio found his speeches on Monday hard to
endure, since they continued to evolve into more flowery and long odes. O, sons of this
Fatherland! and almost in tears he quoted Luis Cardoza y Aragn: My magical and
tanned Guatemala, side-view bird, huddling up over the Pacific Ocean; its eye is the lake
of Petn (this last phrase was invariably pronounced shaking his index finger up in the
air). He was also fond of quoting Miguel ngel Asturias poem: Fatherland of perfect
birds, the Quetzal lives when free and caged in, it dies! Naturally, the Popol Vuh was
mandatory reading that year and the next one, or should I say: mandatory study? since he
forced Funes (the Spanish teacher) to devote a whole term to its study, leaving aside the

topics of the functions of the language and of course: The English Renaissance, the English
theater and William Shakespeare.
Now, talking one day with Funes about these excesses, he burped (he said it with his cup
of coffee in his hand; two spoonful of sugar, two of cream, thank you): Moderation is not
nauseating. By that time, certain complaints had reached the Principals ears about his
patriotism and consequently he had given charge to Elsa, the secretary, to inform him, as
soon as possible of any act of treason against the Fatherland. The next morning, Lucio
was called to the Principals office.
He came into the small office where, recently, the tanned keys of the marimba never
stopped playing in a tape recorder. A flag of Guatemala filled all the space behind his desk
and one of the walls was completely covered with patriotic poems and songs: India
bonita, Maanitas chapinas, Si yo fuera Presidente, Luna de Xelaj. Lucio, halfway listening to the Principals sermon wondered whether the punishment consisted of
having to listen to all of that nonsense or if something else was coming. When he walked
back home (since he always walked), he saw (not without a strange feeling in his chest)
how some of the cars that sped by him carried small waving flags.
Not surprisingly, the next day, when he had finished his speech, the Principal called him to
step up on the platform. Lucio had been leaning on one of the columns that surrounded the
patio, facing the backs of all of the students.
Centeno was the one who began the whole thing, Mr. Lpez; I saw him. Yes, Mr. Lpez; I
was right behind him; afterward everyone laughed, even the Principal. We support you,
Mr. Lpez; we can go with the Principal and tell him it was Centeno. It was cold comfort.
What was the use now? That wouldnt counter the speech he had given jerkily (and about
which, frankly, he didnt remember anything) and the snowball of hearsays and gossiping
that would circulate shortly thereafter (Mr. Lpez dressed like a woman) and which he
wouldnt be able to completely dissipate. He had laid himself open to ridicule and he
would also be fired.

II
Silvia Oliva, with whom I used to work in a rural project in Santa Rosa had told me on one
occasion that at night, the bodys defenses dropped. It had been a long day and both
volunteers and missionaries formed a ring around a bonfire. She said it there because I had
already began to show symptoms of flu after working like a Trojan all day. Funes, who had
accompanied us that year, began telling us stories and I fancied him to be (perhaps due to
the fever that was beginning to invade my body) a Machiguenga Story Teller. I felt
enraptured to prehistoric times when, in a forest glade, that character charmed and seduced.
As a boy I had been a shirker as a student, with a proclivity to daydreaming and in me, as
an adult, remained the aftertaste of those innumerable times in which I had left that
classroom (right in the middle of the explanation of an algorithm or a chemical formula
which I didnt have the slightest interest in), those four walls and the school (which for me,
had something of a jail) to other latitudes, to other people, to other stories. That night,
because of the fever, my imagination was stirred and I was looking at Funes with a spear,
Funes in loincloth, Funes with face and body painting telling stories around the fire,
weaving with his fingers my nightmares (in spite of the ibuprofen and whatever else the
doctors who were volunteering in Guatemala injected me).
Dressed and defeated, I fell flat on my bed. My body began to ache and I supposed I was
going to experience a night like that other one (without much fever, it was difficult for me
to carry myself back completely to that experience in Santa Rosa). I had a light and
horrible sleep while the fever, implacably, was wearing me out. When I wasnt having
nightmares, I kept an unbearable watch in which the body and living itself was felt like a
burden. It was ridiculous to read in such a state, but I stood up after working away in my
mind on unimportant things and took a book at random. Basic Notions of Philosophy by
Gervasio Accomazzi. I think the fever was responsible for my focusing in the most
unimportant details.

I read, with total attention and nausea: Third Edition; notably

corrected and expanded and I noticed the ostentatious adverb. I wasnt getting anything
from the reading of it, but nonetheless I soldiered on and wondered about what profit I had
obtained from studying this book in High School and learning about categorical syllogisms.
John is a mechanic. Mechanics soil their hands. Therefore, John soils his hands. Two

things equal to a third one, are equal to one another. What one says about the whole can be
affirmed about a part of it; what one denies of a whole can also be denied of the part. Then
it said: It would be necessary for the dedicated student to come up with other examples.
Gaius is a man; all men are mortal, therefore Gaius is mortal. However, that particular
night there was something strange in the example he had created, bovinely following the
instruction of the book. All of a sudden it wasnt so abstract and so distant. It wasnt Gaius
but Lucio the one who was mortal.
Around two a.m. his pain and discomfort were syncopated groanings that stayed in his
room, but never crying. He got some relief from groaning and he stretched out his had to
take a pillow and try, in that way, to avoid the questions of the neighbors the next day and
their advices and recommendations. What happened to you? Were you the one who was
groaning last night? Are you feeling okay? Fig leaves. Two tablespoons of honey with
some drops of honey. You know what? Salt gargles three times a day; thats how I got rid
of a flu once. It wasnt that he disliked those attentions, it was perhaps that one had to
receive the person prior to receiving the advice and of course the intention also had a part to
play in that transaction.
He left the oneiric world with some memories of the dreams he had had, since the complete
dreams belonged to the now irretrievable memory and one could only speak then of the
memory of the dreams, of the few strings he could pull in the waking hours.
you know, he stood there saying that he really had come to see me because of the
eternity. I suggested to him that perhaps a religious man would be in a better position to
state his opinion on such topics. No, it turns out that he wasnt a religious person; he hadnt
gone to mass in years, he was chronically bored by the homilies and he had one or two
things to say about religion. He said he had experienced loneliness countless times and the
ways of despair were not unknown to him. He had a funny way of talking, like using
adverbs and adjectives you wouldnt normally use. After I quickly confirmed that he was
beginning to come down with a common cold I mean, he had all the symptoms after
that, he began to talk here in my clinic about loneliness, about how the loneliness of
humanity had dawned on him, he talked about eternity. He gave the impression of being
lost, like lost at sea and wanting to latch onto something or someone and apparently he had

chosen me for that purpose. At that time, I had my clinic in a rundown area, downtown. I
dont know exactly why I had the courage to talk to him, just like that, with the prescription
in my hand and standing at the door that led to an empty hall. He began asking me if I
didnt think that a religious man (like a priest, for example) would be more fit for this kind
of topics. He took a prescription and began scribbling on it. When he saw that I took a
prescription and began writing on it, he protested immediately: I dont want drugs. But we
werent going to prescribe him drugs, but a book that talked about the meaning of life. I
also gave him a booklet that spoke straightforwardly about that subject. I added that, if he
would like, we could speak next week about it. He agreed and came in at the time we had
agreed upon. He began saying that he was very dissatisfied with what he had read.
However, he added that he was feeling better. A distant cousin had come from afar with
whom he would like to open up a promising business. Anyway, with these new projects he
had less time for his musings, he was thinking about retiring and thanks anyway for the
literature (he placed them on my desk) and for your generous and selfless interest, so on
and so forth.
The humming of the city was soft at that time, at three in the afternoon. That morning he
had decided to open the windows of the clinic and to it came some of the voices of the
children that ran the pigeons in the patio of the Cathedral. From the place where he stood
he could take a good look at them. It was such a pity. He was doing so well! If only the
fever had lasted twenty-four hour more! The dishonest idea of provoking him a medical
crisis crossed him mind. If, between two ills, one had to choose the more benign, he would
have preferred to provoke him a medical crisis to make him face, even against his will, his
existential crisis (that one and the ones that would follow) instead of aborting them as he
was doing with this one. This came to his mind: What a broad country the soul is, as Arthur
Schnitzler said!
He will stammer a little when he goes back to his chair and sits in front of Lucio. He will
not know what to say, at first. The texture of his voice will change, but he will charge on
anyway, determined to not leave him alone, to not concede him the rest of metaphysic
frivolity (as Frankl put it), not without first gazing up to the sky where there is a cloud and
two small birds that fly across it.