Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

down into the void, and hidden safes. I even have one myself, but Iwon't tell you where. And there's my lifelong love of firearms, mostof which I sold in 1964, the year I was convinced I was going to die.I've practiced shooting in all sorts of places, including my office,where I fire at a metal box on the bookshelf opposite my desk. Myspecialty is the fast draw, like the hero in western movies who walksstraight ahead, then spins suddenly on his heel and fires. My otherpreference in the realm of weapons is the sword-cane. I own six ofthem, and they make me feel safer when I'm out walking.At the other end of the spectrum are statistics, which I hate withall my heart. It's impossible now to read a single page in a newspaperwithout finding at least a dozen of them, most of which are blatantlyfalse. I don't like acronyms, either~another, and typically American,scourge of our times. In fact, one of the reasons I so delight innineteenth-century texts is because they don't use initials, abbreviations,or acronyms.On the other hand, I'm very fond of snakes and rats. Except forthe last few years, I've always had pet rats, which I find unusuallylikable and fascinating. When I lived in Mexico City, I once managedto collect forty of them, but I finally had to drive them into themountains and get rid of them. Vivisection horrifies me, of course.When I was a student, I remember dissecting a live frog with a razorblade to see how its heart functioned, an absolutely gratuitous experimentfor which I still haven't forgiven myself. One of my nephews,an American neurologist well on his way to the Nobel Prize,actually suspended his research because of his aversion to that barbaricpractice. (Sometimes you just have to say shit to science.)Despite the apparent non sequitur, I love Russian literature.There seems to be a mysterious rapport between Spain and Russiawhich simply leaps over the countries in between, and which meantthat when I first arrived in Paris, I knew the Russians far better thanI knew Gide or Breton. I also have a taste for opera, which my fatherfirst introduced me to when I was thirteen. It started with the Italiansand ended with Wagner; in fact, I've actually plagiarized libretti