IN THE FLICKERING CANDLELIGHT, I WAS struck by Miguel’s waxy complexion, intense gaze and rodent-like face. I registered a dizzy sensation that felt both unusual and unpleasant: I had lost my composure. Indeed, ensconced in the dim light of the trunk room, Miguel seemed determined to defend his mystery. My nervous imagination produced images of cornered animals, small and fierce.
The boy looked me straight in the eye. Instinctively, I avoided his obstinate expression and, feigning calm, I busied myself inspecting the trunks, the nightstand, the rickety cot, the walls. I lingered on the photograph of the soccer team; I had a brilliant idea.
“I see, my little friend, that you are also a Western Railway fan.”
Not a flicker of simpatico illuminated Miguel’s face.
“Have you ever been to the Quilmes Athletic Club?” I added. “Did you see the spot where Eliseo Brown’s ball tore through the fence?”
Now Miguel smiled. Nevertheless, my knowledge of “the annals of soccer” had reached its limit. My next move in our dialogue would astutely combine the tactics of retreat and attack.
“Where did you spend the afternoon?” I asked casually. “You’re not afraid of the storm?”
I remembered the abandoned sailboat, and thinking that we might speak in nautical terms, I consulted my memories of Conrad. Miguel answered abruptly:
“I went to Paulino Rocha’s house.”
“Who is Paulino Rocha?”
Miguel was surprised.
“The pharmacist,” he explained.
I had regained my composure. I continued the interrogation.
“And what were you doing in the pharmacist’s house?”
“I went to ask him to teach me how to preserve seaweed.”
From beneath his cot, he pulled out a can of naphtha, with the rim crudely cut off. He tipped it toward me; some red and green strips floated in the liquid.
I now saw clearly into the soul of my small interlocutor. Little boys are the very incarnation of possibility. Miguel dabbled as a fisherman, a philatelist, a naturalist. A web of circumstances would determine—perhaps I would determine—if he would follow the easy meanderings of a collector or sportsman, or if he would venture out into the limitless avenues of science.
But I couldn’t permit myself these musings, fertile and opportune though they may have been; I had to forge ahead, tirelessly, with my investigation.
“Did you love Mary a great deal?”
I understood as soon as I had formed the question that I had made a mistake. Miguel looked intensely at the tin of naphtha, at the dark liquid, the seaweed. Once again he was defending his mystery.
It was too late to retreat. I tried to ascertain what the boy knew of the deceased’s relationships, of Atuel and Emilia. My investigations in that direction got me nowhere. Likewise, his contribution to my knowledge of Esteban and Andrea was not particularly generous.
I lowered my eyes. Suddenly, I found myself staring at bloodstains on the floor. I moved two trunks slightly apart. A strangled cry rang out and I felt a sharp pain on my face—that boy’s fingernails must have been poisoned; I still bear the scars. I was alone. On the floor, between the two trunks, was an enormous white bird, bathed in blood.