He was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, a well-known and controversial film and theatre critic and writer of short stories. He was what one would call a trendsetter: at twenty-one, he had become the literary editor of a magazine, and in a short time he and a few of his friends had made many enemies and admirers among the literary set. It seemed that now, in his later thirties, he had announced his retirement. Rumors were circulating that he was writing a novel.
…
He thought drama and film-Greek theatre, Shakespeare, Ibsen and Stoppard, as well as Laurel ad Hardy and the Marx Brothers. He loved Vincente Minnelli, John Ford and Howard Hawks. I registered these stories unconsciously and put them aside for later. Years later, when he gave me as a birthday present videotapes of The Pirate, Johnny Guitar and A Night at the Opera, I would remember that day on the steps of the university.
Vida asked me if I had heard about his latest stunt before he was expelled. He left before he could be expelled, another student corrected her. I had not heard anything about his departure, I said, including this stunt, as she put it. But after I heard the story for the first time, I was always eager to repeat it to any sympathetic listener. When I knew him-my magician-much later, I forced him to tell and retell it to me many times.
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