This was the point at which I should have gone back downstairs. But I had my own needs. Dria was waiting, with her eager, presumably downy loins. She was ready, and my body knew what ready meant. I made for the stairs.

The second floor was pitch-black. I crept across the thick carpets, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I felt someone watching me and spun around to find a noblewoman, painted in somber colors, staring down at me from a gilded frame. In one hand, she held a black squirrel, in the other, a small brown nut.

I hurried away from her and toward a door that I hoped would lead to the stairs. But this was, instead, a second kitchen, with a vast counter, upon which the remains of our dinner lay about, congealing.

Then I heard a voice and ducked down, behind a wall of pans.

“Who’s there?” Madelina said. “Is there someone there? Señora?”

A second voice, faint, petulant, nakedly frightened, said, “Is someone there, tía?”

“Silence,” Madelina said. Her footsteps carried her past the counter. She latched the swinging door shut. I could see the hem of her dark gown and the plump calves beneath. She lifted something from the counter, with a grunt. “Now,” she said. “Turn around. All the way. Do it, little lamb. Do it, or you won’t get any. Hold still. Hold still, little lamb.”

The only sound during all this was a moist stroking I couldn’t quite place. Skin was touching skin, but it sounded medicinal, not sexual. Madelina finished whatever she was doing and I heard her approach the counter. The next sound was unmistakable: a brisk, metallic hiss. She was sharpening a knife.

I didn’t know what to do. Was Madelina going to kill her victim? Who was her victim? Was I hearing and seeing things? Or perhaps I was dreaming—this was all an odd, pickled dream.

The sharpening stopped, and Madelina rasped, “Who’s there? Who is that I hear?”

I froze. What would I do if she came any closer? Could I successfully flee her? I was faster than her, sure, but my socks would slip on the wood floor. She would set upon me with her very sharp knife and carve snow angels into my thorax. I was an intruder, after all, a Jew who had groped the family daughter in the pantry. The family would close ranks. I had drunk too much liquor and gone berserk, after Adrianna refused to perform oral sex on my Jew horn. The tabloids would get a hold of the story. A JEW BERSERK ON CHRISTMAS EVE! Full-color photos of my carcass and the heroic Madelina in her spattered nightgown. My friends would tell investigators, not implausibly, “He always was kind of high-strung.”