here at midday tomorrow. Don’t worry about
the spelling, the typesetters will take care of that.”
Before getting up, as if to relieve an excess of
pressure, Varamo said he wasn’t sure that he could start working that night,
because he wasn’t feeling too well; maybe it would be better to sleep and start
the following day, when he’d be alert and fresh. “Excuses, excuses. Beware of
procrastination; it’s the bane of literature. You have to strike while the
iron’s hot.” “It’s just that my dinner didn’t agree with me.” “Really? What did
you eat? It wasn’t that ready-cooked trash, was it?” “No, it was fish; my mother
cooked it.” He didn’t tell them that it was one of those “small animals” that he
had been trying to embalm. “ Th at can’t have done
you any harm! Fish is healthy!” In spite of having urged him to lose no time,
the publishers started telling him a story that had circulated many years before
about widespread food poisoning: one of the powers that was coveting the canal,
before it was completed, came up with the sinister scheme of poisoning the
country’s entire population, or the urban population at least, with the aim of
using the subsequent chaos as a pretext for imposing a protectorate. Th e plan failed because an unknown investor bought
all the boxes of packaged food that were to be used for the poisoning and held
on to them. Before the publishers had finished telling the story, even in this
summary form, they were already pointing out that it was really a myth, even
though half the country was still convinced of its truth. And while they were at
it, they improvised a preliminary lesson to prepare Varamo for his writing
career, describing the elements that made up this myth, and, by extension, myths
in general. Th ere could be no more useful
knowledge for someone who really wanted to write. In the first place, thematic
plausibility: it was true that the world powers had their eyes on Panama, and
that supplying food to the many single men who had come to work on the canal was
problematic; it was also the case that the production of ready-cooked meals had
begun around that time, and that speculators had been buying up large quantities
of non-perishable goods. In other words, the fantasy’s raw material was the
truth. As for the narrative content of the myth, its effectiveness lay in the
way it targeted real fears and bridged the yawning gap between the public and
the private. Th e myth’s success consisted in
connecting an international political conspiracy with something as domestic as
food. And for the myth to survive beyond the phase of its initial propagation,
it had to explain the origin of something that was still current. Th e mere failure of a food-packaging company would
not have been enough, nor the way women had appeared unexpectedly in the country
and started cooking with fresh produce. But there was a phenomenon that called
for a mythical explanation: the female population had evolved to form an
inverted pyramid, confounding all demographic calculations . . . from this point
on the lesson was harder to follow, mainly because the three publishers got
carried away and started talking all at once, drawing diagrams on the table with
their fingers to show that at the vertex, that is, in the present, there was
just one woman left, and, along with her, a single man, but because the man was
the “unknown investor,” and because the words “invest” and “invert” differed by
a single letter (the myth being a linguistic construction), the pyramid inverted
itself . . . Varamo, who was utterly lost by this stage, kept nodding and
smiling idiotically. Meanwhile he was thinking that everything they had told him
was based on the presupposition that he was young, but he wasn’t: he was the
same age as they were, although he looked much younger, perhaps because of his
healthy lifestyle or not having children or his race or maybe his humility
(which wasn’t so much
the spelling, the typesetters will take care of that.”
Before getting up, as if to relieve an excess of
pressure, Varamo said he wasn’t sure that he could start working that night,
because he wasn’t feeling too well; maybe it would be better to sleep and start
the following day, when he’d be alert and fresh. “Excuses, excuses. Beware of
procrastination; it’s the bane of literature. You have to strike while the
iron’s hot.” “It’s just that my dinner didn’t agree with me.” “Really? What did
you eat? It wasn’t that ready-cooked trash, was it?” “No, it was fish; my mother
cooked it.” He didn’t tell them that it was one of those “small animals” that he
had been trying to embalm. “ Th at can’t have done
you any harm! Fish is healthy!” In spite of having urged him to lose no time,
the publishers started telling him a story that had circulated many years before
about widespread food poisoning: one of the powers that was coveting the canal,
before it was completed, came up with the sinister scheme of poisoning the
country’s entire population, or the urban population at least, with the aim of
using the subsequent chaos as a pretext for imposing a protectorate. Th e plan failed because an unknown investor bought
all the boxes of packaged food that were to be used for the poisoning and held
on to them. Before the publishers had finished telling the story, even in this
summary form, they were already pointing out that it was really a myth, even
though half the country was still convinced of its truth. And while they were at
it, they improvised a preliminary lesson to prepare Varamo for his writing
career, describing the elements that made up this myth, and, by extension, myths
in general. Th ere could be no more useful
knowledge for someone who really wanted to write. In the first place, thematic
plausibility: it was true that the world powers had their eyes on Panama, and
that supplying food to the many single men who had come to work on the canal was
problematic; it was also the case that the production of ready-cooked meals had
begun around that time, and that speculators had been buying up large quantities
of non-perishable goods. In other words, the fantasy’s raw material was the
truth. As for the narrative content of the myth, its effectiveness lay in the
way it targeted real fears and bridged the yawning gap between the public and
the private. Th e myth’s success consisted in
connecting an international political conspiracy with something as domestic as
food. And for the myth to survive beyond the phase of its initial propagation,
it had to explain the origin of something that was still current. Th e mere failure of a food-packaging company would
not have been enough, nor the way women had appeared unexpectedly in the country
and started cooking with fresh produce. But there was a phenomenon that called
for a mythical explanation: the female population had evolved to form an
inverted pyramid, confounding all demographic calculations . . . from this point
on the lesson was harder to follow, mainly because the three publishers got
carried away and started talking all at once, drawing diagrams on the table with
their fingers to show that at the vertex, that is, in the present, there was
just one woman left, and, along with her, a single man, but because the man was
the “unknown investor,” and because the words “invest” and “invert” differed by
a single letter (the myth being a linguistic construction), the pyramid inverted
itself . . . Varamo, who was utterly lost by this stage, kept nodding and
smiling idiotically. Meanwhile he was thinking that everything they had told him
was based on the presupposition that he was young, but he wasn’t: he was the
same age as they were, although he looked much younger, perhaps because of his
healthy lifestyle or not having children or his race or maybe his humility
(which wasn’t so much
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