HOW ADMIRABLY AND OBEDIENTLY A BODY not tainted by allopathic medicine responds! With just a simple glass of cold cocoa my fatigue vanished. I felt emboldened, ready to face any and all vicissitudes that life might send my way. I had a brief moment of doubt. Wouldn’t it be better to use routine as my ally and begin my literary endeavors right then and there? Or could I wholly devote this first afternoon of vacation to restorative leisure? For an instant, my respectful hands caressed the Petronius. I gazed at it nostalgically, and then set it on the bedside table.
Before leaving I tried to open the window so that the afternoon air would sweep through my room. Resolutely, I grasped the handle. I turned it and gave the requisite tug … I threw myself against the window. It was impossible to open.
This amusing incident brought to mind my Aunt Carlota’s well-known eccentricities. She also owned a beachside property, in Necochea, and she was so afraid of the effect that the sea air might have on metal objects that she had ordered the house built with false windows and, when there were no guests, she would wrap everything in rolls of paper, from the handle on the phonograph to the chain in the water closet. From the looks of it, this was a sort of family mania that had extended out to the furthest and least reputable of our line. But I was determined that they would open the window for me—using tools, if necessary—in order to refresh the air that was fouling my room. Already, I felt a headache coming on.
I had to speak with the hotel owners. Groping my way along the darkened hallways, where the air was as dense as it was in my room, I advanced until I came to a gray concrete staircase. I wavered between going up or down. Following my first impulse, I went down. The air became even more suffocating. I found myself in a curious basement. There was a kind of foyer, with a counter and a cabinet for keys. A room on the other side of a glass door was stocked with canned foods, bottles of wine, and cleaning products. On one of the walls, an enormous fresco displayed a mysteriously moving scene: in a room decorated with palms, in front of a large, wide-open window through which flooded a splendid sunlight, a boy, who looked like a small page, leaned gently toward a dead girl laid out on a bed. I wondered who the anonymous painter might be. The girl’s face shone with an angelic beauty, while the boy’s face, owing to powers that seemed unrelated to the art of painting, revealed vast measures of both intelligence and pain. But perhaps I was mistaken; I am not an art critic (although everything cultural, when it doesn’t stifle my life, falls within my purview).
I tried to open the glass door, but it was locked. At that moment I heard shouts. They seemed to be coming from another floor. Moved by an uncontrollable curiosity, I ran up the stairs. I paused on the landing, gasping for breath. I heard the screams again, coming from the left side at the end of the hallway. Cautiously, I crept forward. Something swift and amorphous fled past, brushing against my arm. Trembling (I felt as if I’d just been charged by a phantasmagorical cat), I followed the fleeing shadow with my eyes. The uncertain light from the staircase window provided me with a revelation: the little snoop was Miguel, the boy I had met that afternoon on the beach! I would be certain to reprimand him at the first opportunity. I set out toward my room at the other end of the hall, but by now it was impossible not to hear the voices. Reluctantly, I strained to place them. They were the voices from the beach. Emilia and Mary were insulting one another with a shocking ferocity! I could scarcely bear to listen to them. I retreated, profoundly unsettled.
I returned to my room (still shut tight), and opened my medicine kit, which gleamed with white labels and brown and green vials. I put the ten drops of arsenic onto a clean sheet of paper, and let them fall onto my tongue. It was exactly fifteen minutes until dinnertime.