Status Updates From The Adventure of the Busts ...

‘—if this floating, glow-in-the-dark Eva wasn’t his—she could only be the real one. Dazzled, he followed her light like a moth, leaving behind the squalid shanties—crossing a dark wasteland—climbing a long embankment—chorus of crickets—her spectral apparition—Haloed in the strobes of frantically flashing headlights, she shone like a comet—his consciousness split like two halves of an apple—Was it a woman or a ghost?’

‘Ernesto! Ernesto! Eva became Evita. ‘I plunged single-mindedly into my strange artistic vocation. But the more I tried to lose myself in it—the more beleaguered I was by injustice. I will not stop for barking dogs—You know you’re riding, Sancho, when you hear the dogs bark. Ever since that day I have believed it cannot be hard to die for a cause you love. May it come as no surprise—Well? What are you waiting for?’

‘I don’t want them to be like us—raised to despise people w/ less money, less status—Treating people like things, & treating things like gods. Worshipping—English & American, & despising all things Latin American. It’s like saltpetre & sulphur—separate, nothing happens—together, you get gunpowder. If Hamlet would just stop navel-gazing, he’d realise the people of Denmark await him. What does Eva Perón mean to you?’

‘His deep-seated constipation—a faithful dog ever since he had started working at the company. No sooner was the post of head of procurement than his intestines, as if unbeknownst to their owner, had turned against him—tangled themselves into a perverse Gordian knot that he could only cut with—powerful laxatives. It was a problem of timing more than anything—Leaving the bathroom—the buoyant stride of a moon-walker—’

‘Then there were those who spoke of several souls—such as the Egyptians, who counted seven, distributed around the body; whilst Plato, always thrifty where material reality was concerned, cut them down to three—Descartes, on the other hand, went completely the other way. It was pretty obvious, though the answer lay not in anatomy, but in language. Why do you think they always talk about the “seat” of the soul?’

‘But what had he survived for if not to tell his story—to prevent it being repeated—lay the unquiet ghosts of the past to rest? I sometimes regret—that kidnappings in this country aren’t performed by the Mafia. At least w/ them you know where you are—we speak the same language. It isn’t your prostate I’m worried about, let alone your haemorrhoids—most efficient executives have them—makes them edgier, more aggressive’