This morning I did not and I could not cry. It was as though my father had done all the crying that could be done. Against my will, I continued to review his terrible collapse. What could it mean, I wondered, in a grown man? And would it happen again? Once he had broken the rules of a man’s behavior, would he cry as often as I did?

I was startled at the sound of someone’s boots on the gravel path at the side of the Hotel and before I could get to my feet, Gonzales, the gardener, was standing before me. He had always frightened me, for no reason that I could discover. He had the mildest of pink mouths under a thin, romantic mustache, and large bovine eyes beneath a low, protuberant brow. I disliked the way in the kitchen, in the summer time, he would steal up on me in his sneakers and put a soft finger on the back of my neck so suddenly that goose-flesh covered me and my heart pranced in surprise.

“What do I see?” he said, laughing, showing his teeth which were so small that the gum was visible above them. “What is the matter with Señorita Marburg? You tell Gonzales your troubles, honey.”

He sat down on the step and put his arm around me. There was a strong assorted odor about him of something oily and something acrid, of garlic and of bootleg beer. He put his lips close to my ear, lifting up the edge of my tarn. “Tell, Gonzales, honey.”

Too frightened to move or to cry out, I trembled in his embrace as he continued his unwelcome consolations. “There, there. If you don’t watch out your face will freeze that way, sweetheart. Don’t you want to tell your Uncle Jesus what’s the trouble?”

“Is your name Jesus?” I asked him, my admiration for a moment making me forget both my misery and his rank smell.

He said “Yes,” softly, like a lover, and hugged me closer to him. “If I was my own master like your daddy, I would make a lot of Novenas. But me, Jesus, I don’t have the time.”