1

You’re reading the advertisement: an offer like this isn’t made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don’t even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. “Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French.” Youth … knowledge of French, preferably after living in France for a while … “Four thousand pesos a month, all meals, comfortable bedroom-study.” All that’s missing is your name. The advertisement should have two more words, in bigger, blacker type: Felipe Montero. Wanted, Felipe Montero, formerly on scholarship at the Sorbonne, historian full of useless facts, accustomed to digging among yellowed documents, part-time teacher in private schools, nine hundred pesos a month. But if you read that, you’d be suspicious, and take it as a joke. “Address, Donceles 815.” No telephone. Come in person.

You leave a tip, reach for your brief case, get up. You wonder if another young historian, in the same situation you are, has seen the same advertisement, has got ahead of you and taken the job already. You walk down to the corner, trying to forget this idea. As you wait for the bus, you run over the dates you must have on the tip of your tongue so that your sleepy pupils will respect you. The bus is coming now, and you’re staring at the tips of your black shoes. You’ve got to be prepared. You put your hand in your pocket, search among the coins, and finally take out thirty centavos. You’ve got to be prepared. You grab the handrail—the bus slows down but doesn’t stop—and jump aboard. Then you shove your way forward, pay the driver the thirty centavos, squeeze yourself in among the passengers already standing in the aisle, hang onto the overhead rail, press your brief case tighter under your left arm, and automatically put your left hand over the back pocket where you keep your billfold.

This day is just like any other day, and you don’t remember the advertisement until the next morning, when you sit down in the same café and order breakfast and open your newspaper. You come to the advertising section and there it is again: young historian. The job is still open. You reread the advertisement, lingering over the final words: four thousand pesos.

It’s surprising to know that anyone lives on Donceles Street. You always thought that nobody lived in the old center of the city. You walk slowly, trying to pick out the number 815 in that conglomeration of old colonial mansions, all of them converted into repair shops, jewelry shops, shoe stores, drugstores. The numbers have been changed, painted over, confused. A 13 next to a 200. An old plaque reading 47 over a scrawl in blurred charcoal: Now 924. You look up at the second stories. Up there, everything is the same as it was. The jukeboxes don’t disturb them. The mercury streetlights don’t shine in. The cheap merchandise on sale along the street doesn’t have any effect on that upper level; on the baroque harmony of the carved stones; on the battered stone saints with pigeons clustering on their shoulders; on the latticed balconies, the copper gutters, the sandstone gargoyles; on the greenish curtains that darken the long windows; on that window from which someone draws back when you look at it. You gaze at the fanciful vines carved over the doorway, then lower your eyes to the peeling wall and discover 815, formerly 69.

You rap vainly with the knocker, that copper head of a dog, so worn and smooth that it resembles the head of a canine foetus in a museum of natural science. It seems as if the dog is grinning at you and you let go of the cold metal. The door opens at the first light push of your fingers, but before going in you give a last look over your shoulder, frowning at the long line of stalled cars that growl, honk, and belch out the unhealthy fumes of their impatience. You try to retain some single image of that indifferent outside world.

You close the door behind you and peer into the darkness of a roofed alleyway. It must be a patio of some sort, because you can smell the mold, the dampness of the plants, the rotting roots, the thick drowsy aroma. There isn’t any light to guide you, and you’re searching in your coat pocket for the box of matches when a sharp, thin voice tells you, from a distance: “No, it isn’t necessary. Please. Walk thirteen steps forward and you’ll come to a stairway at your right. Come up, please. There are twenty-two steps. Count them.”

Thirteen. To the right. Twenty-two.

The dank smell of the plants is all around you as you count out your steps, first on the paving-stones, then on the creaking wood, spongy from the dampness. You count to twenty-two in a low voice and then stop, with the matchbox in your hand, and the brief case under your arm. You knock on a door that smells of old pine. There isn’t any knocker. Finally you push it open. Now you can feel a carpet under your feet, a thin carpet, badly laid. It makes you trip and almost fall. Then you notice the grayish filtered light that reveals some of the humps.

“Señora,” you say, because you seem to remember a woman’s voice. “Señora…”

“Now turn to the left. The first door. Please be so kind.”

You push the door open: you don’t expect any of them to be latched, you know they all open at a push. The scattered lights are braided in your eyelashes, as if you were seeing them through a silken net. All you can make out are the dozens of flickering lights. At last you can see that they’re votive lights, all set on brackets or hung between unevenly-spaced panels. They cast a faint glow on the silver objects, the crystal flasks, the gilt-framed mirrors. Then you see the bed in the shadows beyond, and the feeble movement of a hand that seems to be beckoning to you.

But you can’t see her face until you turn your back on that galaxy of religious lights. You stumble to the foot of the bed, and have to go around it in order to get to the head of it. A tiny figure is almost lost in its immensity. When you reach out your hand, you don’t touch another hand, you touch the ears and thick fur of a creature that’s chewing silently and steadily, looking up at you with its glowing red eyes. You smile and stroke the rabbit that’s crouched beside her hand. Finally you shake hands, and her cold fingers remain for a long while in your sweating palm.

“I’m Felipe Montero. I read your advertisement.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry, there aren’t any chairs.”

“That’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

“Good. Please let me see your profile. No, I can’t see it well enough. Turn toward the light. That’s right. Excellent.”

“I read your advertisement…”

“Yes, of course. Do you think you’re qualified? Avez-vous fait des études?”

“A Paris, madame.”

“Ah, oui, ça me fait plaisir, toujours, toujours, d’entendre … oui … vous savez … on était tellement habitué… et après…”

You move aside so that the light from the candles and the reflections from the silver and crystal show you the silk coif that must cover a head of very white hair, and that frames a face so old it’s almost childlike. Her whole body is covered by the sheets and the feather pillows and the high, tightly buttoned white collar, all except for her arms, which are wrapped in a shawl, and her pallid hands resting on her stomach. You can only stare at her face until a movement of the rabbit lets you glance furtively at the crusts and bits of bread scattered on the worn-out red silk of the pillows.

“I’ll come directly to the point. I don’t have many years ahead of me, Señor Montero, and therefore I decided to break a lifelong rule and place an advertisement in the newspaper.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.”

“Of course. So you accept.”

“Well, I’d like to know a little more.”

“Yes. You’re wondering.”

She sees you glance at the night table, the different-colored bottles, the glasses, the aluminum spoons, the row of pillboxes, the other glasses—all stained with whitish liquids—on the floor within reach of her hand. Then you notice that the bed is hardly raised above the level of the floor. Suddenly the rabbit jumps down and disappears in the shadows.

“I can offer you four thousand pesos.”

“Yes, that’s what the advertisement said today.”

“Ah, then it came out.”

“Yes, it came out.”

“It has to do with the memoirs of my husband, General Llorente. They must be put in order before I die. I want them to be published. I decided that a short time ago.”

“But the General himself? Wouldn’t he be able to…”

“He died sixty years ago, Señor. They’re his unfinished memoirs. They have to be completed before I die.”

“But…”

“I can tell you everything. You’ll learn to write in my husband’s own style. You’ll only have to arrange and read his manuscripts to become fascinated by his style … his clarity … his…”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Saga, Saga. Where are you? Ici, Saga!”

“Who?”

“My companion.”

“The rabbit?”

“Yes. She’ll come back.”

When you raise your eyes, which you’ve been keeping lowered, her lips are closed but you can hear her words again—“She’ll come back”—as if the old lady were pronouncing them at that instant. Her lips remain still. You look in back of you and you’re almost blinded by the gleam from the religious objects. When you look at her again you see that her eyes have opened very wide, and that they’re clear, liquid, enormous, almost the same color as the yellowish whites around them, so that only the black dots of the pupils mar that clarity. It’s lost a moment later in the heavy folds of her lowered eyelids, as if she wanted to protect that glance which is now hiding at the back of its dry cave.

“Then you’ll stay here. Your room is upstairs. It’s sunny there.”

“It might be better if I didn’t trouble you, Señora. I can go on living where I am and work on the manuscripts there.”

“My conditions are that you have to live here. There isn’t much time left.”

“I don’t know if…”

“Aura…”

The old woman moves for the first time since you entered her room. As she reaches out her hand again, you sense that agitated breathing beside you, and another hand reaches out to touch the Señora’s fingers. You look around and a girl is standing there, a girl whose whole body you can’t see because she’s standing so close to you and her arrival was so unexpected, without the slightest sound—not even those sounds that can’t be heard but are real anyway because they’re remembered immediately afterwards, because in spite of everything they’re louder than the silence that accompanies them.

“I told you she’d come back.”

“Who?”

“Aura. My companion. My niece.”

“Good afternoon.”

The girl nods and at the same instant the old lady imitates her gesture.

“This is Señor Montero. He’s going to live with us.”

You move a few steps so that the light from the candles won’t blind you. The girl keeps her eyes closed, her hands at her sides. She doesn’t look at you at first, then little by little she opens her eyes as if she were afraid of the light. Finally you can see that those eyes are sea green and that they surge, break to foam, grow calm again, then surge again like a wave. You look into them and tell yourself it isn’t true, because they’re beautiful green eyes just like all the beautiful green eyes you’ve ever known. But you can’t deceive yourself: those eyes do surge, do change, as if offering you a landscape that only you can see and desire.

“Yes. I’m going to live with you.”