Plaza Garibaldi appears as the setting for a late-night meeting between Benno von Archimboldi and El Cerdo, also known as Héctor Enrique Almendro. The old writer’s choice to go out with a newly powerful government official turns the square into a point of contact between cultural life and political authority, while the hour and Archimboldi’s impending flight preserve the encounter’s air of transience.

The Night Meeting

After two in the morning, with Archimboldi’s flight scheduled for seven, El Cerdo takes him to Plaza Garibaldi. The square is quieter than its tourist reputation might suggest: most visitors have returned to their hotels, leaving drunks, night owls, people on their way to supper, and mariachi bands discussing the latest soccer match. Shadowy figures move along the streets leading into the plaza and sometimes stop to scrutinize the two men.

The surroundings register El Cerdo’s changed position. Since beginning work for the government, he has carried a pistol, which he fingers as they approach. Inside a bar, he orders pork tacos; Archimboldi drinks tequila, and El Cerdo has a beer. The scene brings together a celebrated but little-known-in-Mexico writer and an official whose access to power now seems to protect him in places where he once expected confrontation.

El Cerdo’s Position Between Culture and Power

As Archimboldi eats, El Cerdo reflects on how much his circumstances have changed. Less than ten years earlier, speaking German to a tall old man in the same bar might have provoked an insult or a fight, requiring him to apologize, explain himself, or buy a round of tequila. Now, he believes, his government position and the gun beneath his shirt give him an authority that even the drunks and dangerous figures around the plaza recognize.

The encounter also brings his competing ambitions into focus. El Cerdo considers seeking an embassy appointment in Europe, perhaps as an ambassador or cultural attaché. Such a post might let him return to writing: he imagines living in Italy or nearby and working in Tuscany and Rome on an essay about Piranesi’s imaginary prisons, which he would connect to the imaginary and iconographic versions of certain Mexican prisons. But leaving Mexico would also mean distance from political power, a separation he regards as costly. The bar’s casual meal thus unfolds alongside a calculation about whether cultural work can be recovered without surrendering the influence he has acquired.

The Missing Writer and the Chain of Contact

At the meeting, El Cerdo abruptly asks Archimboldi whether he was supposed to have disappeared. Archimboldi answers with a polite smile rather than an explanation. The question makes the square a threshold between an ordinary night out and the mystery surrounding the writer’s absence: he is physically present, yet the question of where he has been remains unresolved.

The account reaches the European critics through a chain of intermediaries. After Rodolfo Alatorre recounts what happened, the critics call El Cerdo, who confirms the story in general terms. El Cerdo and Alatorre have a mentor-and-younger-brother relationship: El Cerdo secured Alatorre a scholarship in Toulouse and could have offered him more prestigious opportunities. El Cerdo suspects that Archimboldi obtained his telephone number through his German editor, Mrs. Bubis. He knows her from a Berlin party where they were introduced, though that acquaintance does not explain how Archimboldi arranged the meeting.

Narrative Significance

Plaza Garibaldi is more than a backdrop for an encounter. Its reduced nighttime crowd, watchful figures, and El Cerdo’s concealed weapon place the meeting in a space where public visibility coexists with guarded movement. Within that setting, the characters’ positions are unequal but connected: Archimboldi carries the cultural prestige of a writer whose books have arrived late in Mexico, while El Cerdo has governmental authority, publishing experience, and ambitions he has not abandoned.

The scene’s central tension is left open. El Cerdo can ask whether Archimboldi has disappeared, but the writer offers no account; El Cerdo can imagine returning to literature, but cannot easily detach that desire from power. The square therefore concentrates the novel’s intersecting concerns with literary recognition, political influence, and the uncertain passage between public presence and disappearance.