Until that day she had lived so lonely in her desert without a sky, but suddenly that absent sky was filled with butterfly wings from Rio, sent to her as a gift by that stranger—though Pliny was the one who received the grateful kisses. Among the trapezes and the rows of seats, Charlotte’s large round hands thanked the heavens with joy a week later when a tall man in a violet blue suit came over to greet her.

After that brief encounter they met each other every day in a taxi, where Charlotte discovered that love was a game of Catch as Catch Can. Right away her boyfriend wanted to take her to a room for rent but didn’t manage to bring her anywhere but to a German pub, where an out-of-tune version of “The Blue Danube,” repeating like a broken record, ushered in their official courtship. She had to cut off her assignations abruptly to hurry off to her hotel room to feed Pliny: a sacred duty she fulfilled even up to the day of her engagement. A shadow came over the face of her bridegroom, imprisoned in a striped suit, as he said, “I’m done with being jealous.” “Of whom?” Charlotte asked. “Of Pliny.” Laughter briefly stopped them in the middle of their dance. It was cold outside that night, and inside the German pub they were warmed by the thick aromas of people, beer and fried food. Small metal vases, tall and incredibly narrow, stood at the center of every table, each one holding three dead flowers.

For her the days were now incredibly short; for him, however, they were endless. And suddenly, in a dark void, Pliny’s guilty eyes shone forth. The bridegroom thought dishearteningly that it was useless to lower his voice, adjusting it to sound like a priest performing Mass to bless his intentions of taking his bride to a room for rent. It seemed to him that his declarations were not convincing because he didn’t have enough time. And it was Pliny’s fault. It was Pliny who stole his bride, Pliny with whom she spent her time, lewdly teaching him in a nightshirt to ride a bicycle: every day she would leave, running across the city, to feed him.

In the Buenos Aires newspapers the farewell tour of the Edna Circus Company was announced, but each and every show was a farewell. Charlotte left the hotel early that morning to go shopping after finishing her breakfast and returned punctually at noon to feed Pliny. In the hotel hallway she tried to calm the beating of her heart, as if she had just swallowed a large pill without any water. She entered the bedroom, opened the door to the adjoining room; an extremely disorderly mess surrounded the overturned chairs, and Pliny, dead on the floor, seemed to have lost the ability to communicate. Now that he was dead, he who had never spoken needed to speak. Charlotte caressed him, and thick drops of blood left their mark on her hand. He had a deep wound in his chest. Without a doubt, someone had murdered him. Charlotte opened the door and screamed three times. Her boyfriend arrived, having come to see her, but she didn’t notice the new smile he wore like a bouquet of flowers on his face. One hand was bandaged, and he leaned on the door to look at the lifeless Pliny, with disbelief as if he were watching the most complicated acrobatics at the circus. Then he looked at his girlfriend but didn’t recognize her.