One night she dreamed of a crocodile walking on water that was streaming down walls. The crocodile was in a remote region of Africa. Although with the internet and low-cost flights, nothing was really remote now, in her dream the world was unbounded and mysterious. The images must come from her childhood, she thought. But she immediately discounted that supposition: the place where she’d been raised had been nothing like that humid dream environment with its unidentifiable smell, which was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just new. Like when she was in Havana, although the smell there had been disgusting. And she wasn’t really sure if that remote region of Africa wasn’t in fact a remote region of Brazil, but that was just because some thin, unprepossessing Brazilians were staying in the hotel. They all wore white Lacoste polo shirts with tiny crocodile logos.

Late one cold night when a cierzo was blowing she dreamed of gales and tinny voices shouting. That dry north wind squeezed her muscles and bones, making her joints squeak like chalk on a board, forming eddies in her blood, lifting her up, making her disappear behind a screen of minute droplets of red rain. Her dislocated body and the sounds of the city faded into the manager, who was walking across the lobby in the nude without ever reaching his goal: the front desk. Everyone was looking at him, but at the same time it was as if nothing unusual were happening, even if it would have been a good idea for him to put some clothes on before the Abyssinian delegation arrived.

When she woke she was certain she’d dreamed someone else’s dream. Maybe the manager’s. She checked and found that he’d stayed overnight in the hotel. What did they have in common? He usually left work at half past eight in the evening. He lived in a housing complex and they often chatted because there were certain groups of sales reps who, given the chance, would empty the chafing dishes before they could prepare more food. He used to warn her and La Burgos before that happened, and always added in some piece of gossip. “Have you heard the latest?” She’d laugh from a sense of duty, but also because the manager was a good guy.

Another night she dreamed of a woman who called a radio station to unburden herself. Her son had just died of cancer. In addition to the host, the program had a chorus, who made light of the tragedy. The woman wanted the chorus to forgive her, and there was a perverse link between allowing herself to be humiliated and being pardoned. She was disturbed by how neatly it all fitted together, so different to the usual logic of dreams. When she woke, she wrote down the scene as though it were a play.