Summary of the first part: Professor Luceno attends a debate on “the 70s in the USA”, ready to defend the legacy of President Nixon. His ex, Clarisa, also participates in the company of her new boyfriend, the exiled Chinese philosopher, although leftist, Lin Fua. Shortly after the event begins, the news goes viral that Lin Fua is a plagiarist, that the victim of his plagiarism has just died – it is not known without poisoning – and that Clarisa may be involved.
Although no one shared the news out loud, the audience and speakers were stunned. Lin Fua was not only accused of plagiarism – a crime that recurrently appeared among famous philosophers and writers – but also of homicide. Would Lin Fua proceed with his presentation? In the order of speakers, he was first.
The opening of the debate was a singular honor. The media used to cover that speech – which was continued by the presentation – and withdraw. A few newspapers and news channels may have remained with the rest of the event, but without reproducing it in its entirety. The inaugural speech, within the modest proportions of a university event, was relevant in academic circles and in interested sections of the media. If Lin Fua didn’t open, it was Mario Piopokov’s turn.
The possibility that the most widespread segment of the Congress would end up in Piopokov terrified Professor Luceno. The respective international stations would reproduce the Russian Putinist’s conspiracy theory: the denial of the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. On the other hand, without admitting it to himself, Luceno could not allow Clarissa to be implicated in the accusation against Lin Fua. Because? I didn’t have the slightest idea.
Lin Fua had taken the blow with his face embalmed in wax. He smiled impassively like an equeco. It looked like Mao sending fifty million Chinese to their deaths without moving a facial muscle. Professor Luceno made a gesture to Clarisa that they had made when they were not yet a couple, but they were already seeing each other furtively. Clarisa recognized him in the air and they left the premises.
The surroundings of the Universidad del Ande building were a wasteland of snow. The feet sank, like on the Mar del Plata moon walk, but in aggressive humidity and cold. Without proper footwear – he had not imagined going out for a walk – Luceno’s socks felt wet like a hair shirt. Clarisa did wear her suede boots, covered, and the unalterable elegance of her being.
– Were you with that Grafo guy? -asked Luceno, panting with effort and anguish, with an unhealthy vapor, small deformed clouds of speech.
And he added embarrassed, not knowing what word to use:
-… When we were… (couple? boyfriends? man and woman?).
The relationship had lasted two and a half years. Luceno could not find a definition. Every option seemed ridiculous to him. He left it like that.
The steam came out of Clarisa’s mouth like the mist of a perfume. She nodded with her head down, she was embarrassed by the facts, not by the definitions.
“It’s no longer important,” Luceno lied, his heart gangrenous. Did you steal the book from him before he published it and pass it on to Lin Fua? Did you poison him?
Another of those black birds took flight. The mountains watched them like Condorito: demanding an explanation.
“I had something with him,” Clarisa explained, “with Grafo.” I read your manuscript. Lin Fua lied to me right. It’s not that I told him about it: it just came up. Before Grafo published it, yes. I never imagined that Lin Fua…
-But when Lin Fua published Plato’s Parable… Didn’t you realize that…?
“No, no, no,” Clarisa cried.
He was more adorable than ever.
“At that time I was going out with both of them,” Clarisa confessed.
“Besides me,” Luceno remained silent. It didn’t count for her.
-Lin Fua gave me a box of those lily chocolates… But I ate them too…
Professor Luceno reviewed Grafo’s history, illnesses and addictions.
-Some of the medications Grafo was taking, in combination with the chocolates, may have killed him. But when did you see it, how?
-I said goodbye to Grafo before coming here. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. But when I decided to travel with Lin Fua, Lin allowed me to say goodbye to Grafo. Put an end point.
-And you invited him the chocolates.
-He was very sweet. He didn’t eat them right away. He selected six. The six most saccharine. That’s how he was.
-Six of how many? Luceno asked stupidly.
-Of twelve. I hadn’t eaten any yet. I ate them on the way back.
-Did he eat six of twelve chocolates for you?
The joke occurred to him: he deserved death. But he said:
-Why are you looking for those boyfriends?
Clarisa shrugged her shoulders, as if Luceno were her father.
“Lin can’t have given me six poisoned chocolates…” Clarisa said to herself in a whisper.
“It is a minimal risk for a culture three times a thousand years old,” Luceno responded in vain. It could go wrong. It could turn out well. A shot in the dark. You had told him everything about Grafo. Even his book.
Professor Luceno returned to the cloister in the company of Clarisa. He required Lin Fua’s attention, while Clarissa slipped into the shared room, to dry her suede boots and fix her hair. Professor Luceno felt his feet were numb, helpless; but I had to address that matter.
“I will witness that Clarisa was with me this summer,” Luceno said in his shoddy English.
Lin’s eyes widened as if she were a Westerner.
-Plagiarism is appealable. But she will be cleared of suspicion. And you are relatively safe from suspicion of homicide. In return, pull yourself together and give the opening lecture.
Lin let a few seconds pass and nodded with his oriental ambiguity.
“If we are lucky and there are no witnesses of Clarisa with Grafo… they both hid it…” Luceno stated. You may not even have to pick up your book from bookstores.
Lin’s inaugural address infatuated the media: He practically accused Trump of being a sorcerer with supernatural powers. The rationalist journalists bought their nonsense as if, like their ancestors, gunpowder had been discovered.
Finally It was determined that Grafo had died from an overdose of one of the anti-depression medications, which he took to cope with the withdrawal syndrome due to abandoning drugs.. There was no way Lin could have gotten a glimpse of his materials. The book fell from the top of the ranking, but it was not necessary to remove it from circulation. It was soon learned that Clarisa was pregnant with Lin. Shortly after, they separated.
In his small house in the town of Haedo, in Greater Buenos Aires, a few months after having given that speech in defense of Nixon at the Universidad del Ande, which almost no one attended and which the media did not even review, Professor Luceno reflected on the fact that without the precedent of the Sino-North American entente, produced by Nixon himself and Kissinger, he would never have come up with the strategy to save Clarisa and put an end to the Russian’s presentation. Piopokov’s nonsense had been even more forgotten than his own presentation.
From his posterity, Nixon had once again come to the rescue of a world in perpetual disorder.
