Early this morning I saw two boys in the yard imitating turtledoves. One was sitting astride a plank of wood, on the top of the wall, one leg on either side. The other had climbed into the avocado tree. He was collecting up avocadoes and throwing them over to the first, who caught them with the skill of a juggler and put them away into a bag. Then all of a sudden the one who was up in the tree, partly hidden by the leaves (I could only see his face and shoulders) raised his hands and cupped them to his mouth, and made a cooing sound. The other laughed, and copied him – it was like the birds themselves were right there, one on the wall and another on the highest branches of the avocado tree, the vigour of their song exorcising the last of the shadows. This episode reminded me of José Buchmann. When I saw him arrive in this house he sported the extraordinary moustache of a nineteenth-century gentleman, a dark suit of old-fashioned cut, as though he were a foreigner to all things. But now when I see him, as I do every other day, he comes into the house wearing a silk shirt, patterned in many colours, with the broad laugh and happy insolence of people native to this place. If I hadn’t seen the two boys, if I’d only heard them, I would have sworn that there were turtledoves out there in the humid early morning. Looking at the past, considering it from where I am now, as I might look at a large screen in front of me, I can see that José Buchmann is not José Buchmann, but a foreigner imitating José Buchmann. But if I close my eyes to the past, and see him now, as though I’d never set eyes on him before, I simply would have to believe in him – this man has been José Buchmann all his life.