worry too much about Richard. He’d find a way to persuade Roberto to send him abroad to study, to London for instance, a city where he’d find enough new and exciting things to make him forget the past. On the other hand, he really was worried, and consumed with curiosity, as to what would happen to the two other characters in the story. As the music little by little intoxicated him, a whirlwind of unanswered questions circled around and around in his mind, growing fainter and fainter, spaced farther and farther apart: Would Red Antúnez desert his reckless, foolhardy spouse that very night? Might he have done so already? Or would he say nothing, and giving proof of what might be either exceptional nobility or exceptional stupidity, stay with that deceitful girl whom he had so persistently pursued? Would there be a great public scandal, or would a chaste veil of dissimulation and pride trampled underfoot forever hide this tragedy of San Isidro?
Three .
I saw Pedro Camacho again a few days after the typewriter episode. It was 7:30 a.m., and after getting the first newscast of the day ready to go on the air, I was heading for the Bransa to have my morning café con leche . As I passed by the little window of the concierge’s cubicle at Radio Central, I spied my Remington. I could hear its heavy keys hitting the platen, but I couldn’t see anybody sitting behind it. I stuck my head through the window and saw that it was Pedro Camacho who was typing away. An office had been set up for him in the concierge’s cubbyhole. In this tiny room, with a low ceiling and walls badly damaged by the dampness and by the ravages of time and desecrated by countless graffiti, there was now a monumental wooden desk, so dilapidated that it was about to fall apart, but nonetheless as imposing as the enormous typewriter rumbling away on it. The outsize dimensions of the desk and the Remington literally swallowed up the little runt. He had put a couple of cushions on the seat of his chair, but even so, his face came up no higher than the keyboard, so that he was typing away with his hands at eye level, thus causing him to appear to be boxing. He was so totally absorbed in his work that he didn’t even notice my presence, despite the fact that I was leaning right over him. His pop-eyes were riveted on the paper as he pecked at the keys with his two forefingers, biting his tongue. He was wearing the same black suit as on the first day, and had taken off neither his suit coat nor his little bow tie. At the sight of him, with his long hair and his attire mindful of a nineteenth-century poet, sitting there rigid and dead-serious, concentrating all his attention on what he was typing so furiously, in front of that desk and that typewriter that were far too big for him, in this den that was much too small for the three of them, I couldn’t quite decide whether the whole scene was pitiful or wildly funny.
“You’re certainly an early riser, Señor Camacho,” I greeted him, stepping halfway into the room.
Without even looking up from the paper, he merely indicated, with a peremptory jerk of his head, that I should either shut up or wait, or both. I chose the latter course, and as he finished his sentence, I noted that the desktop was littered with typed pages, and the floor strewn with discarded pages he’d wadded up into a ball and tossed there because no one had thought to provide him with a wastebasket. A few moments later his hands fell away from the keyboard, he looked up at me, rose to his feet, ceremoniously held out his right hand, and answered my greeting with a maxim: “Clock time means nothing where art is concerned. Good morning, my friend.”
I didn’t ask if he was suffering from claustrophobia in this tiny cubbyhole, since I was certain he would have answered me that discomfort was propitious to art. Instead, I invited him to come with me to have coffee. He consulted a prehistoric artifact clumsily sliding back and forth on
Three .
I saw Pedro Camacho again a few days after the typewriter episode. It was 7:30 a.m., and after getting the first newscast of the day ready to go on the air, I was heading for the Bransa to have my morning café con leche . As I passed by the little window of the concierge’s cubicle at Radio Central, I spied my Remington. I could hear its heavy keys hitting the platen, but I couldn’t see anybody sitting behind it. I stuck my head through the window and saw that it was Pedro Camacho who was typing away. An office had been set up for him in the concierge’s cubbyhole. In this tiny room, with a low ceiling and walls badly damaged by the dampness and by the ravages of time and desecrated by countless graffiti, there was now a monumental wooden desk, so dilapidated that it was about to fall apart, but nonetheless as imposing as the enormous typewriter rumbling away on it. The outsize dimensions of the desk and the Remington literally swallowed up the little runt. He had put a couple of cushions on the seat of his chair, but even so, his face came up no higher than the keyboard, so that he was typing away with his hands at eye level, thus causing him to appear to be boxing. He was so totally absorbed in his work that he didn’t even notice my presence, despite the fact that I was leaning right over him. His pop-eyes were riveted on the paper as he pecked at the keys with his two forefingers, biting his tongue. He was wearing the same black suit as on the first day, and had taken off neither his suit coat nor his little bow tie. At the sight of him, with his long hair and his attire mindful of a nineteenth-century poet, sitting there rigid and dead-serious, concentrating all his attention on what he was typing so furiously, in front of that desk and that typewriter that were far too big for him, in this den that was much too small for the three of them, I couldn’t quite decide whether the whole scene was pitiful or wildly funny.
“You’re certainly an early riser, Señor Camacho,” I greeted him, stepping halfway into the room.
Without even looking up from the paper, he merely indicated, with a peremptory jerk of his head, that I should either shut up or wait, or both. I chose the latter course, and as he finished his sentence, I noted that the desktop was littered with typed pages, and the floor strewn with discarded pages he’d wadded up into a ball and tossed there because no one had thought to provide him with a wastebasket. A few moments later his hands fell away from the keyboard, he looked up at me, rose to his feet, ceremoniously held out his right hand, and answered my greeting with a maxim: “Clock time means nothing where art is concerned. Good morning, my friend.”
I didn’t ask if he was suffering from claustrophobia in this tiny cubbyhole, since I was certain he would have answered me that discomfort was propitious to art. Instead, I invited him to come with me to have coffee. He consulted a prehistoric artifact clumsily sliding back and forth on
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