They came to the building, a solid, Trujillo-era construction which had once been luxury offices but now housed Haitians, prostitutes, and Céspedes. Céspedes had bought the apartment in the seventies when a gallery owner who had managed to hang his paintings in the houses of the Balaguerist petit bourgeoisie had paid him in dollars. In this open space, which in the fifties had housed desks, granite floors, and wide windows, Céspedes had painted almost his entire oeuvre. When they opened the door a stench of shit and rot hit them, turning Argenis’s stomach. Though it wasn’t necessary, the old man told him where to find the light switch. There was trash everywhere – cans of beans, bottles full of cigarette butts, egg cartons. I should have drunk more before coming, thought Argenis. Céspedes pulled him by his shirtsleeve to the far end of the studio. There the air was clearer and the music from a colmado rose from the street. There were several enormous pieces leaning against a wall. The old man felt his way to them with both hands and pushed them to the floor in order to show Argenis what was behind. They were creatures of his new darkness: the darkness inside him had replaced the solar white. Shadows of satyrs, claws, and hens, amorphous blobs, and finally, a depiction of Saturn devouring his son that Céspedes had extracted like a tumor from the back of his memory. Close up, the painting was abstract, but from far away you could recognize the watery forms of Goya’s masterwork.

“Saturn ate his children so they wouldn’t destroy him,” the old man said, raising his voice above the dembow from the colmado. “Saturn was a son of a bitch, like Balaguer.” Between each sentence he sucked so hard on his cigarette that a centimeter of paper burned off with each drag. “Jupiter’s mom hid him on an island and when he came of age, he castrated his father,” he continued. “His virility gone, Saturn turned into a mortal and was crowned a king on Earth. His reign is known as the Golden Age.” His tone was sarcastic. “There were no thieves, no murderers, and wealth was divided up equally.” The old man gave the finger to heaven and shouted, “Saturn, son of a fucking bitch!”

Niurka’s little cell phone started ringing again. It was his father. He’d rather smell Céspedes’s shit than get hit with José Alfredo’s offers of progression. He thought of Niurka’s breast, of the job with Mar. He thought of the buccaneers he had painted in Sosúa on scholarship. He would have liked to show them to his teacher. He went over to the old man and grabbed his wrist, saying, “Maestro, I want to show you one of my works.” Céspedes was silent. Argenis closed his eyes to see it better, and began to tell him: