Multiple Choice

(7) I remember the fear I felt in restaurants when the old man started to harass the waiters. My only moment of freedom was when he came down with some kind of stomach illness and had to be hospitalized in Puerto Montt. Those days I was fairly happy, but maybe only for a few hours, parked close to downtown, eating cheese empanadas while I listened to Los Angeles Negros and Los Prisioneros and the rain fell. And in Cañete. I was also happy in Cañete, but now I can’t remember why.

(8) The old man paid me well, I have to admit. Afterward he went to travel around Europe and the United States, and we lost contact. Then one day he called me to ask if I knew anyone who could ghostwrite his autobiography for him. I told him I could do it myself, that I’d become a writer. It wasn’t true, but I needed the money. He believed me.

(9) We agreed on a rate per word; the only thing he cared about was that the book was fat. I started to write his story. We met every morning and I listened to him. He was so presumptuous, such a poor observer, so arrogant, but I listened to him and took plenty of notes. “The Spanish are friendly,” he might say to me, for example. “The Spanish from where?” I asked him. “What do you mean from where, asshole? The Spanish from Spain,” he replied.

(10) I also had to interview his children, a man and a woman more or less my age, who had helpless faces and claimed to love and admire the old man, as did his ex-wife, a woman who always held a rosary in her right hand and who talked up a storm. It was clear they were lying, and I couldn’t understand why they collaborated. Later, I learned that my boss had doubled their monthly allowances.

(11) One time I asked him, without any mean intention, if he thought the money had changed him. “You really ask some idiotic questions, kid. Of course it did,” he replied. “Money changes everyone.” Later I asked him for his opinion on Pinochet, which I already knew, I only wanted to make sure. It was 1987, one year after the assassination attempt, a year before the referendum. I warned him that Chilean public opinion about Pinochet was going to change in the coming years whether he won or lost the referendum, and that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come off as a fervent supporter of the dictator. “Let it be very clear in my book that I think Pinochet saved Chile, and that I want those mongoloids who tried to kill him to rot in hell,” he answered.

(12) I asked him what he thought about Don Francisco. “Don Francisco was always my inspiration,” he replied. “Don Francisco has traveled all over the world,” I told him. “But no one invites Pinochet anywhere.” I don’t know why I said that to him. He sat there thinking. I warmed to the subject, and added that Don Francisco had shown us the Chile that Pinochet destroyed. “Go fuck your sister,” he replied.

(13) I said nothing; I was used to that kind of humiliation. At the end of the day, I was only a ghostwriter. I worked for two more months and finished the book. Three hundred fifty-nine pages. I’m ashamed to confess that I was proud of some passages, that they struck me as well written, even eloquent. The book was garbage, but at least there were some parts that were, to my mind, inspired, and some elegant, almost baroque turns of phrase. He paid for a printing of five hundred copies. My Journey Through the World and My Nation was the title he chose.

(14) I thought I would never see him again. For fifteen years I heard nothing from him, until one day he called me out of the blue. I asked him how he’d gotten my number. “A man has his ways,” he said. He told me he was sick and could die soon, and he wanted to correct some things in the book for a second edition. I asked him if the first one had sold out. “I still have about a hundred books,” he said, “but that’s not enough.” “What is it you want to correct?” I asked him. “Just the grammatical errors,” answered that old piece of shit.

A) None

B) All

C) Any

D) A

E) B

66.

(1) I have six children: four boys and two girls. One of the girls is a lesbian, but I love her anyway because she’s a good person. If I classify my children according to those terms, four are good and two are bad. One hundred percent of the girls: good. The boys: fifty percent bad.

(2) Classified according to their ages: The oldest is forty-five years old and the youngest twenty-nine. According to their mothers: Eleonora (two boys and the two girls), Silvana (one), Daniela (the youngest).

(3) I suggested names for all my children, but I only managed to get my way in two of the six cases.

(4) Children of mine with moles on their faces: three. With a cleft chin: two. Long eyelashes: two.

(5) Four of my children came to see me in the hospital when they removed my left kidney. The other two didn’t, but they called.

(6) Percentage of my children who have at some point said to me I hate you: 33.3.