The lace of one black boot came untied, and one of the furious skirt’s feet tripped over the other. Once again a shock of laughter and loose hair, and the black voice howled as a dark well emerged on the floor: “I’m going to kill you!” And like thunder that shatters glass came the sound of a porcelain jug falling to the ground, the liquid inside bursting out, spilling densely, slowly, silently, a deep silence—the kind that precedes the cry of a child being beaten.

Slowly, a head split in two was sketched upon the glass, a head sprouting bloody curls, tied in bows. The red stain spread wider. Through a crack in the glass, large thick drops, like rigid toy soldiers, fell like rain onto the patio tiles. A vast silence took over, as if the whole house had moved to the countryside; the chairs sat in a silent circle where visitors had been the day before.

The hoop skirt was flying once again around the lifeless head: “Celestina, Celestina!” And an iron bar thumped with the rhythm of a jump rope.

The doors opened with slow, creaking moans, and all the feet that entered turned into knees. The skylight was the green of those cologne bottles that undulate like pleated skirts. You could no longer see a single foot, and the black hoop skirt had become a kneeling saint, bowed lower than anyone else on the glass.

Celestina was singing “The Chimes of Normandy” and running with Leonor behind the trees in the plaza, around the statue of San Martín. She wore a sailor dress and had a horrible fear of dying while crossing the street.

Esperanza in Flores

One, two, three, four, five, it was already very late. The kerosene lamp sputtered in the night, calming her the way a mother soothes a child who doesn’t want to go to bed, and Esperanza was wide awake at midnight after spending the day falling asleep in the corners of the house. One, two, three, four, five black horses had pulled the funeral coach that carried her husband, covered in flowers, to La Chacarita cemetery, and since that day countless visitors had come to the house. Her friends had wanted to take her out for a Sunday stroll because she looked pale. One, two, three, Esperanza had let them beg her to go, and finally she made her way to the Plaza Flores, where she sat on a bench with the two neighbor ladies, the shopkeeper’s sisters. One, two, three, four, five, a man unbuckled his pants behind a tree, and Esperanza stared at the sky through the branches. “Esperanza, you can’t go on like this. Esperanza, you can’t go on like this, you’re going to get sick. You have to accept God’s will,” her friends told her.

One, two, three knocks at the front door. Esperanza was intent on her knitting and said, “Who is it?” Florián slowly walked in with sleepy eyes. “Florián, at this hour?” Not thirty minutes earlier, Florián had been asleep in his sister’s bed when his mother woke him, yanking him out of bed: they were expecting visitors and there weren’t enough beds. Except on Sundays and holidays, the visitors always came at night, when the radio played the kind of music they liked.