He would have been about three or four and he was paying his obligatory Sunday visit to Renata and Emilio’s house, where his grandmother was still a servant. His brother Ernesto was Don Emilio’s favorite, and his father’s, too. José Alfredo had prepared some questions about recent Dominican history – the April Revolution, the Mirabal sisters, Orlando Martínez – which Ernesto answered eloquently, to the delight of Don Emilio. Meanwhile, Argenis slipped away to his grandmother’s room, a dark, damp room whose only light entered through a square foot of window that looked out onto the street and was covered by a Persian blind.

There, on top of a little table lit by a candle, coconut and sweet-potato candies and bottles of carbonated beverages sat in front of a picture of Archangel San Miguel, who presided over the table with his sword, his scale, and a headful of blond ringlets. Beneath the angel’s feet lay a black man with horns and claws who seemed to be part of the very earth, which was also black and aflame. The angel was about to split the head of that man with his sword, an eternal threat that would never come to pass.

Hypnotized by the atmosphere of that cave of unpainted walls, of mirrors under the bed, of sharpened corks that floated in a gourd bowl full of water, of colorful handkerchiefs tied to a chair, of bottles filled with herbs, of woven threads under the pillow, of sandals laid out in the shape of a cross, of bitter smells, half-smoked cigars, bells, and plastic saints, Argenis had reached for the sweets and a bottle of soda. The candies were rancid and the soda was warm. He returned the half-nibbled candy to its place and took a second sip to unstick the burnt sugar from his molars. Consuelo entered unannounced and dragged him out to the patio by one ear. “Damned boy! That belongs to Belié.” “Don’t tell Papi, Mamina,” he begged his grandmother, with crumbs of coconut still stuck to his lips. She felt sorry for him and hugged him to her small breasts that smelled of pine-tar soap. The old candy and the soda began to take effect and Argenis got an attack of cramps. They laid him down in the room that had first been Milito’s and then Niurka’s before she left on scholarship for Spain.

In the eighties, Niurka would return every other year with the nurses from the psychiatric hospital where she worked, and on these trips they would rent the house of Tony Catrain, José Alfredo’s best friend, in Las Terrenas. It was a three-bedroom, alpine-style cabin on the idyllic and solitary Playa Bonita. His dad would drive him and Ernesto there to see their aunt while Etelvina remained at work in the capital, thus giving José Alfredo space to enjoy the Spanish women who sunbathed in the nude in front of the house by day, and went with him into the dark water by night, none of them checking if the children had already gone to bed.