It took me many hours on end to read through the entire story that I have chosen to only recount very briefly in the previous chapter. The servants knocked on my door several times and yelled for me throughout the house, but I could not separate my eyes from those pages that held the answer to the mystery of my life for even an instant. Just once, when I was running out of daylight, did I myself open the door, and went to light a small candle stub in the kitchen. I found poor Paula there, and she offered me something to eat. I told her that I was not hungry, that I did not feel like eating, that I wanted to die, that I wanted to be left alone … and I do not know how many other things like this, all of which she listened to with her small mouth wide open in amazement.
“Jesus! What’s wrong with you? You’re as pale as a corpse, and your eyes are bulging out of their sockets,” she said to me at once, but I did not give her an answer.
When I had finished reading it all the way through, I hid the manuscript against my chest, carefully buttoning my jacket over it.
Then I placed the others in the box, put the box in the coffer, and said to myself:
“I cannot stay a single moment longer under this roof. I know where I must go, and I must go there this very night.”
The front door of the house would be bolted with lock and key, and everyone was already asleep in the house. I climbed up and out the window, and a moment later I found myself on the other side, in the neighboring house. The manner in which I left reminded me, through a natural association of thoughts, of my friend Luis.
“Hes dead. . . . I will never see him again. Everyone I love dies!” I thought sadly.
I was in a long, thin, dark passageway. I felt my way along until I entered a silent patio, similar to the one in Doña Teresa’s house. I saw a light coming from a wide open window in one of the rooms, and I went up to it to see if there was someone inside keeping vigil who might impede my exit out to the street through the front door of that house, which I knew quite well was only closed with a latch and a crossbar. But as soon as I looked inside the room, I let out a scream of surprise and happiness. Yes, my good readers, of happiness, despite everything I have just been telling you.
In a small bedstead similar to mine, on a soft and clean bed, with sheets and covers that were whiter than snow, lying on his back, with his blond hair spread out on the laced pillowcase, his face lit up and his eyes glassy from a high fever, was my poor friend Luis, in person! His lips were moving. Random, unconnected words reached my ears.
“Fire! Grandmother! Here I am!” he was saying in his feverish state.
At the head of the bed where the sick boy was lying, the lay sister Doña Martina was sitting in an armchair, dressed in the habit of the third order of St. Francis. She was completely asleep, with her head slumped forward on her chest. She held her golden denarius in one hand, and a white, cotton handkerchief in the other. Her beloved chihuahua, round and gleaming due to its plumpness, was also sleeping, sprawled out on its stomach at her feet with its snout resting on its front paws. But the scream that I had unintentionally let out made it lift its head. After looking round in every direction, it began to bark in that annoying manner that only those little dogs of its race can. How I wanted to strangle it at that point! I have heard that Bazán—the famous thief from my country who became an upright man and died honorably after being included in one of the exonerations decreed by General Belzu1—used to give the following advice to anyone who wanted to avoid being robbed: “Sleep with a light burning and raise a chihuahua.” The light is to make people think that there is always someone keeping vigil, as was my case that night. And just one chihuahua, with its piercing barks, can stir up an entire neighborhood more effectively than a pack of hounds.
The lay sister started, waking up with a fright. She stood up and, because of her fear, saw an entire gang of criminals at the window instead of one harmless boy. This was very much to my advantage, because she did not have the strength nor the courage to yell for help, as I had feared.
“Its me … Juanito, Doña Teresas «foundling waif». Do not be frightened, your Excellency, my lady Doña Martina,” I said to her, taking the most prudent action, which was to make myself known.
“Oh, dear Jesus! What a fright you’ve given me, you evil vagabond!” she answered, quieting her chihuahua and running to open the door for me. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong with the lady Marquesa? Has she gotten worse from her ailments? Why are you here?” she asked me at once.
“There’s nothing wrong at the house, Doña Martina. . . . I have come through the window in the passageway, just to see my friend,” I answered.
“Oh, my son!” she replied, moved. “This wicked boy has brought me so much anguish! May God have mercy on him and make him a saint! I love him as if I were his mother, in spite of all his pranks and of all the bad things that he says to everyone about me without any reason to. I had been mourning and crying inconsolably for him, but this morning two charitable individuals brought him here, wrapped up in a blanket. The locksmith Alejo, who had found him still breathing among some dead that he had gone to bury, had him sent to me. I have done everything that I could for him since then, until the Reverend Aragonese Father came to treat him. He says that his wound is very serious … that it’ll be a miracle if he lives. I have a holy candle burning over there for Our Lady of Mercy, and I have been praying for him without rest, even though I am an unworthy sinner. The Gringo is dead. … He doesn’t have a father any more! I hope he was a Christian, like he said he was, so that he will be welcomed into the holy glory of our God! Poor boy!”
As she was saying this, the good, the excellent lady—I have never referred to her again in any way but this—was frequently drying her eyes with the handkerchief. I was also moved, as she was. I wanted to fall on my friend, to embrace him in my arms. But she stopped me, pulling me back by the collar of my jacket. She pushed me hard to one side, and exclaimed with an anger that was not restrained by her usual devout prudishness:
“You’re going to kill him, you evil child! The Aragonese Father says that he shouldn’t talk or move. . . . Get out of here!”
“I will do everything that your Excellency wishes me to, my lady,” I answered. “But I am also a poor orphan, and I would like to ask you a favor.”
“What do you want now?”
“To kiss your Excellency’s hands. . . . I also have said a thousand things which I regret in my heart.”
She looked at me, touched. Then she took my head in both of her hands and kissed me on the forehead, which did me a lot of good at the time.
Doña Martina was still a young woman, under thirty years of age, and quite becoming—like the majority of the criollo women in my country, of which Doña Teresa was one of the rare exceptions. The awful education of the time had made her a murmurer and a zealot, but she had a heart of gold. What can you expect? What could a girl become who was only taught to say the rosary, who was told stories about ghosts, who they refused to teach how to write, who they forced to confess with Father Arredondo, and in whom they implanted the belief that every man who did not wear the a cowled habit was an agent of the Devil? Some time later, a Porteño officer from Rondeau’s army2 married her. He cured her of her defects and never regretted having her as his companion.
After kissing her hands like I wanted to, I left and closed the door carefully behind me. The exit that would lead me out to the street only had—as I have said before—a latch and a crossbar. It took me only a minute to lift the first and slide the second, without making any noise. I was finally free!