Eladio spent the winter hours with his head bent, looking down at the tiles in the hallway. Angelina had disappeared. He wasn’t sure if the girlfriend with whom he had been photographed at the zoo one memorable day spent touring Buenos Aires was a dream. Angelina had leaned on his arm that day because she was tired; she was wearing a new dress. He had no other memory. And when he walked across the hall he would stop, looking out the corner of his eye, to stand next to the nude statue. Was that how a woman’s body was? When she took a bath in the morning, perhaps naked, Angelina must have been three times prettier, three times plumper.

In those moments when Eladio’s mind furrowed through the hallways where his lost girlfriend Angelina walked, he invariably heard the sounds of invisible burglars making the dogs bark, and he would check every corner of the deserted house to test every one of the shutters, which multiplied throughout the house.

One day Eladio Rada will die, and at the moment of dying, on his deathbed in the hospital, with his eyes gazing blankly at sections of the ceiling, he will rise to check the house’s shutters and doors where angels come into view.

The Lost Passport

“I certify that Miss Claude Vildrac, single, whose profession is . . . , who can read and write, whose photograph, right thumbprint and signature appear on the reverse side of this document, born April 15, 1922 . . . in the town of . . . in the Federal Capital of Buenos Aires, the Argentine Republic . . . measures 4 feet 6 inches, and has white skin, blond hair, a straight nose, medium-sized mouth and medium-sized ears.”

Looking at the passport, Claude traced the contours of her face with both hands, thinking: “I must not lose this passport. I am Claude Vildrac, and I am fourteen years old. I must not forget who I am. If I lose this passport, then no one will know who I am, including me. I must not lose this passport. If I do lose it, I will have to stay on this boat forever, until the years wear it down and ready it for a shipwreck. Old ships are sure to sink at some point, so I’ll be forced to die by drowning, my hair loose and wet, with my photograph in the newspapers as ‘the girl who lost her passport.’”

“I have to make it to Liverpool, where my aunt who wears her hat high on the top of her head is waiting for me. My Aunt Mabel has a big house with five dogs, three Great Danes and two greyhounds. A photograph of a white Greyhound arrived with one of Mabel’s brief letters: ‘This is my beautiful Lightning,’ a difficult name for a dog, who you have to call many times before he responds. My Aunt Mabel has a flower garden and owns a textile mill. I don’t want to arrive in Liverpool too soon though, because the days on board are all vacation days and I want to spend many days running around freely on deck—alone, alone, alone, without anyone looking after me.”