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“It is a cypress from India,” says the professor who begs. He begs so he can buy the material needed to teach classes he has the right to teach. He’s not paid for his classes because the state believes that giving classes is a privilege, and whoever aspires to do so has to be registered on a list at the Ministry of the Interior. There, the candidates are analyzed rigorously, their thoughts are pried into, they are examined politically, and even their ancestors’ ideologies are dug up: the state can’t allow itself the luxury of leaving education in the hands of dangerous elements for reasons of security . Only when the candidate has been freed of guilt—if indeed, he has never participated in a demonstration, if he has been deaf and mute, if he has a friend or relative who is a soldier or policeman, if he has never signed any declaration, if he deserves the confidence of the ruling class—he will be able to speak in front of an attentive student audience desirous of acquiring the knowledge that will qualify them to fit into society. Even though many professors have died of hunger, they have died with dignity, confident that it’s a noble death, the one the state reserves for them, as essential pieces of an organization so vast, so complex, so perfect. In some cases, when it’s a matter of professors with recognized ability in their subject matter, they are allowed to beg in the plazas, so that they can provide for their needs, but they die of hunger anyway because the public is indifferent to their pleas: everybody considers it just and appropriate that a worthy and honest professor die of hunger. Sometimes I help him out by throwing him crusts from the window, ever since the day I saw him in the plaza fighting with the pigeons for bread, for which he was severely reprimanded. He opens his mouth under my window and I throw him wheat grains, bread crumbs, leftover biscuits and some raisins, depending on what I might have got that day at the office. He thanks me by giving me botany classes during the evening. No one knows that I’m the one who feeds him. —— 22 —— ...

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