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the Carreras, the poet Pere Girau, and Padilla hurried up to the viewing area but they couldn’t see the Amalfitanos’ plane, though they did see a huge moon, and after a while, not knowing what to say to each other, each group went its own way.

9
    How Were the Carreras Affected by Amalfitano’s Departure?
    At first both of them were busy at their respective jobs, and in a way, especially for Antoni, Amalfitano’s departure was simply a relief, but after a few months, in the middle of an especially boring after-dinner hour, the two of them began to miss him. Gradually they realized that Amalfitano and his crazy stories were like the image of their own lost youth. They saw him as they saw themselves: young, poor, determined, brave, generous, invested in a perhaps ridiculous and feeble way with pride and nobility. By so often associating Amalfitano with defunct images of themselves, they ultimately stopped thinking about him. Only every so often, when a letter came from Rosa, were they reminded of the wandering queer, and then they would laugh, happy all of a sudden, remembering him with fleeting but sincere affection.
    How Was Jordi Carrera Affected by the Departure of Rosa Amalfitano?
    It was much harder for him than for his parents. Until Rosa left, it was as if Jordi lived at the North Pole. He and his friends and a few people who weren’t his friends and others he didn’t even know but saw in teen magazines, all lived in harmony—if not happily, since happiness was a sham—at the North Pole. They played basketball there, learned English, developed computer skills, bought lumberjack clothes, and assiduously attended movies and concerts. His parents often remarked to each other how inexpressive Jordi was, but this lack of expressiveness was his true self. Rosa’s absence changed everything. From one day to the next, Jordi found himself sailing at full speed over a vast sheet of ice to warmer seas. The North Pole receded in the distance and faded in significance and his ice sheet kept shrinking. He soon began to suffer from insomnia and nightmares.
    How Was Padilla Affected by Amalfitano’s Departure?
    Hardly at all. Padilla lived in a constant state of amorous self-expression and his feelings were extravagant but didn’t last for more than a day. In his own way, Padilla was a scientist who left no room for God in his laboratory. He agreed with Burroughs that love is nothing but a mixture of sentimentalism and sex and he found it everywhere, which meant that he was unable to mourn a lost love for more than twenty-four hours. Inside, he was strong and he accepted the shifts and fluctuations of the romantic object with a stoicism that, unlikely as it seemed, he shared with his father. Once, the poet Pere Girau asked how in the world, after a person had loved and fucked a Greek god, he could love and fuck people of inferior looks—ugly queers, if you can believe it, and the usual horrible rent boys. Padilla’s answer was that we loved beautiful people for the sake of convenience, that it was like a preference for known quantities, that the inner self was all that mattered, and that he could find beauty even in the shuffle of a donkey. And he wasn’t the only one. For example, he said, take the Apollonian poets of nineteenth-century France who sated themselves with stub-dicked boys from the Maghreb, youths who in no way fit the strict definition of classical beauty. Stub-dicked boys? said the poet Pere Girau incredulously, but I’m Apollonian, too, aren’t I, and I’d like to find someone to love who’s at least as good-looking as the son of a bitch who left me. Girau, said Padilla, I love people and my insides are bursting, and all you love is poetry.
    And Finally, How Was the Poet Pere Girau Affected by the Departure of Amalfitano?
    Not at all, though occasionally he remembered how much Amalfitano knew about Elizabethan verse, how well acquainted he was with the work of Marcel Schwob, how pleasant and