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I am very interested in botany. It could be said that I’m self-taught: I have my room filled with leaves of different shapes, colours, denticulation, and palmation. The leaves are so plentiful that they’ve started to climb up the walls, soaking up the lime from them. Beautiful spear-shaped leaves that point down toward the floor, others with deep, even scallops; acicular ones, like crystal needles. If I walk, the floor creaks, because the fallen ones are dry. Every day I break some, but this doesn’t create a problem: in the streets you can find millions of them, that is, before cars pulverize them or students use them as projectiles against the soldiers. The other day I witnessed a struggle between students and soldiers. Afterwards, a policeman pulled me aside to give a statement. He wanted me to testify how it happened that a banana leaf thrown by a young lad hit a corporal in the face, and when it grazed his eye, it caused the eye to tear a bit. The young fellow was violently repressed by the other soldiers, who threw him on the ground and sprayed him with gasoline. After he was soaked, each soldier, in turn, would go up to him and throw a match at him. He burned for a few minutes. Then he became ashes. After all, the corporal had a red eye, and on this account the judge was very worried. “Somebody must be punished for this,” he said. “This cannot remain unpunished. What will His Worship, the President, say if we don’t punish anybody?” I refused to testify on the pretext that I had a cold: I know many witnesses who’ve been jailed after testifying, because nobody could be found guilty. Nobody dares let an offence to an authority go unpunished. The only thing I regret is that one of these days I will have to give up my leaf collection. That was the advice given to me by a lawyer friend of mine, knowledgeable about the subject. Since students have acquired the very dangerous habit of confronting soldiers with fallen leaves, the government has come to consider the leaves as offensive weapons against the security of the state. Even though my behaviour is —— 4 —— 1 ...

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