2666

Part 2 of 2666 focuses on Óscar Amalfitano, a Chilean professor of philosophy working at the University of Santa Teresa, who met with the critics during the previous section of the novel. This part of 2666 takes place before the previous section.

Amalfitano thinks about his life with his daughter, Rosa. He is a single parent after his wife, Lola, leaves him. She feels compelled to seek out “her favorite poet” (165), with whom she had a sexual relationship before she met Amalfitano. She is accompanied by Inmaculada, or Imma. During her journey, Lola sends letters back to Amalfitano, describing her journey and her overall good experiences. She and Imma are poor and need to earn money however they can. Lola describes the night she met the poet. At the time, there was a famous gay philosopher in Barcelona: Everyone assumed that the poet and the philosopher were in a sexual relationship, but Lola had sex with the poet at a party. She became obsessed with the poet, but he eventually disappeared. Lola arrives at the mental healthcare facility in San Sebastian in the Basque country, where the poet is being treated. The staff prevents Lola from entering. They will not allow her to visit the poet, who Lola believes is being held against his will. Lola and Imma reconvene, successfully pretending that they are a poet and a reporter, respectively. During the meeting, they also meet the doctor who is treating the poet. He claims to have written a biography about the life of the poet, but he can only publish it when the poet dies. Lola speaks to the poet. She tells him that the philosopher died recently of AIDS. She tells the poet that she loves him; he does not respond.

Lola returns the following day. This time, they are told that the poet needs to rest, so cannot meet them. Imma departs on her own journey. Lola lingers around the mental healthcare facility. Living on her meager savings, she takes a taxi to the mental healthcare facility. Her driver is a man named Larrazábal. Lola has sex with Larrazábal in a cemetery, and he tries to give her money. After she is kicked out of the lodging house where she is staying, Lola wanders the area. She sleeps where she can and struggles to find food. She returns to the cemetery to sleep. There, she meets Larrazábal with another woman. He gives her money, which she uses to return to the mental healthcare facility. The poet has refused to meet her again. From afar, she watches him interact sexually with the other male patients. In her next letter, Lola describes her relationship with Larrazábal. She declines his offer to marry her. Amalfitano chooses to believe that Larrazábal is a good person. For some time, Lola lives and works in Lourdes, but her letters to Amalfitano stop.

Five years pass without Amalfitano hearing from Lola. Unexpectedly, she writes to him from Paris. She has a job cleaning office buildings; Amalfitano pictures her, sitting at the desk after hours, smoking a cigarette as she types her letter. Two years later, Lola returns to the house she shared with Amalfitano and Rosa, but they have moved. She tries to track them down, though she does not recognize Amalfitano when she finally locates him. Amalfitano invites her back to his house, where they talk. Lola reveals to Amalfitano that she has contracted AIDS and will likely die soon. She has another child, a young son named Benoit. She wishes to speak to Lola before she dies. After a short stay with Lola and Amalfitano, Lola disappears again. Amalfitano never hears from Lola again.

Amalfitano accepts a job in Santa Teresa. He moves to Mexico with Lola and meets the various faculty members (who, in later years, welcome the critics to the town). By this time, the city is already in the grip of a spate of murders. Many young women have been killed, but Amalfitano did not know this before arriving. One day, he finds Rafael Dieste's Testimonio geométrico in his book collection. He cannot imagine how it came to be in his possession, especially after he packed all his books while moving. The geometry described in the book influences Amalfitano, but he does not know how to think about the random thoughts, shapes, and diagrams that pop into his head. He decides to hang the book on the clothesline, where he will be able to observe the way it “survives the assault of nature” (191). He continues to draw his strange geometric patterns and diagrams, almost unconsciously sketching the shapes and labeling them with the names of intellectuals. Rosa, now a teenager, observes the book hanging on the clothesline. Amalfitano wonders why he brought his daughter to this “cursed city.” He recalls his own father, who loved boxing and was intolerant of gay people. Amalfitano pays close attention to how the weather changes the book, leaving it hanging outside for days, weeks, and months. He thinks about his meetings with Dean Guerra and Guerra’s son, Marco.

Amalfitano notices “the voice” inside his head. The voice talks to him, and he wonders whose voice it could be, whether he is hallucinating or the voice belongs to a spirit or a ghost. Amalfitano begins to spend more time with Professor Perez, a colleague, and her son, Rafael. Together with Rosa, they take trips around Santa Teresa. During the trip, Professor Perez engages Amalfitano romantically, but he struggles to pay attention to her. He kisses her hand. While she drives back to the city, Amalfitano falls asleep and experiences a strange dream.

Later that night, he draws up a table of the names of intellectuals and divides them into groups. The voice speaks to him again, claiming to be his grandfather and, later, his father. The voice talks scathingly about gay individuals and insists that Amalfitano remain calm. In the following days, Amalfitano randomly encounters Marco, the son of Dean Guerra. The pair goes out drinking, and Marco describes his hatred for gay people. Occasionally, he says, he goes to bars and pretends to be gay to start a fight. Sometimes he wins, and sometimes he loses these fights. Marco takes Amalfitano to a bar where they drink Los Suicidas mezcal. Eventually, they are forced to leave.

Amalfitano reads another mysterious book, which describes the history of “telepathy” among the Araucanía people, an Indigenous group from Chile. Their gift for telepathy, the book claims, was destroyed by the arrival of colonial powers, as was their language, which was written in triangles and the movements of trees. He thinks about the recent dark history of his native Chile. Meeting Marco again, Amalfitano attends a dinner at the rector’s house. He thinks about the book describing the Araucanía’s telepathic powers. In a dream, he sees the former President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, speaking to him about the nature of life, which he says is “supply + demand + magic” (228).