The Informers Read Free Page B

in colored aluminum.
FOR GABRIEL SANTORO, IN RECOGNITION OF TWENTY YEARS OF PEDAGOGICAL LABOR . . . CERTIFIES THAT DOCTOR GABRIEL SANTORO, BY VIRTUE OF HIS CIVIL MERITS . . . THE MAYORALTY OF GREATER BOGOTA, IN HOMAGE TO DOCTOR GABRIEL SANTORO . . .
    There, in that sort of sanctuary for sacred cows, the sacred cow who was my father spent his days. Yes, that was his reputation: my father knew it when they called him from city hall to offer him the speech at the Capitolio Nacional; that is, to ask him to deliver a few commonplaces in front of bored politicians. This peaceable professor--they would have thought--ticked all the right boxes for the event. My father didn't give them anything they expected.
    He did not speak about 1538. He did not speak about our illustrious founder, Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, whose pigeon-shit-covered statue he passed every time he went to have a coffee and brandy in the Cafe Pasaje. He did not speak about the twelve little huts or the Chorro de Quevedo, Quevedo's stream, the spot where the city had been founded, which my father used to say he could never mention without his mind being invaded by the image of a pissing poet. Contravening the commemorative tradition in Colombia (this country that has always liked to commemorate everything), my father did not make his speech a politicized version of our childhood history primers. He did not abide by the terms of the agreement; he betrayed the expectations of a couple hundred politicians, peaceful men who desired only to be swept along for a while by the inertia of optimism and then be freed promptly to go and spend the August 7 holiday with their families. I was there, of course. I heard the words spat out into mediocre microphones; I saw the faces of those listening to him, and noticed the moment when some of them stopped looking at the orator to look at one another: the imperturbable eyebrows, the stiff necks, the hands with their wedding rings straightening their ties. Afterward, they all commented on the courage it took to pronounce those words, the act of profound contrition, of intrepid honesty there was in each one of those sentences--all of which, I'm sure, held no importance for my father, who wanted only to dust off his rifles and take his best shots in the presence of a select audience. None of them, however, could recognize the value of that exemplary model of rhetoric: a valiant introduction, because he relinquished the chance to appeal to his audience's sympathies ("I'm not here to celebrate anything"), a narrative based on confrontation ("This city has been betrayed. Betrayed by all of you for almost half a millennium"), an elegant conclusion that began with the most elegant figure of classical oratory ("There once was a time when it was possible to speak of this city"). And then that final paragraph, which would later serve as a mine of epigraphs for various official publications and was repeated in all the newspapers the way they repeat Simon Bolivar's I shall go quietly down to my grave or Colonel, you must save our nation .
Somewhere in Plato we read: "Landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me, but the people of a city most certainly do." Citizens, I propose we learn from ours, I propose we undertake the political and moral reconstruction of Bogota. We shall achieve resurrection through our industry, our perseverance, our will. On her four hundred and fiftieth birthday, Bogota is a young city yet to be made. To forget this, citizens, is to endanger our own survival. Do not forget, citizens, nor let us forget.
    My father spoke about reconstruction and morals and perseverance, and he did so without blushing, because he focused less on what he said than on the device he used to say it. Later he would comment: "The last sentence is nonsense, but the alexandrine is pretty. It fits nicely there, don't you think?"
    The whole speech lasted sixteen minutes and twenty seconds--according to my stopwatch and not including the fervent