The Rector was working in his office. He appeared to be very glad to see me. We sat down beside one another on separate sofa chairs, and talked a little on the award, the Doctor Honoris Causa, the University was going to give me. A reporter from Channel Five was taking a movie, as was a University Staff. “This is the rector of the University,” he said “and the poet who is going to get the Honoris Causa! Oh how do you do, this is history in the making?” he said. We booth stood up by a table, and a person came in with juice for us. The University committee, he told us—my wife and I, and the Channel Five reporter and a few other University Staff in the Rector’s office, “The poet is a very good man I believe,” he said, “and has re-freshened our Wanka heritage, here in the Central Region of Peru—and the committee unanimously has approved his Doctor Honoris Causa.”
A few weeks later, he had taken us out for a late afternoon lunch. Myself, wife and a female university staff member. “They stole 200,000 soles,” he told me, “we could have used that for the professors.” He said. He had taken the university culprits to court, and the judge said, “It was already dismissed.” Case closed. I think he did right though, although it didn’t do any good. Of course the great thing is in such an affair—in Peru anyways—is not to get killed over such dealings, and he seemed a little unwell about the matter.
It was a very cheerful afternoon. We talked for a long while on this and that. But like all Peruvians, he wanted to go to the United States.
#884 (3-5-2012)
For JP
