“He does fall in love easily, poor thing,” said Fermín. “He’ll have a dreadful time during his stay on this planet.”

“Those who aren’t able to fall in love suffer all the more,” Alicia let drop.

“I think the medication is affecting your cerebellum, Alicia. If you start picking up a guitar and singing Sunday-school songs, I’ll have to ask the medicine man to reduce your dosage to that of baby aspirin.”

“Don’t take away the only good thing I’ve got.”

“What a fiend you can be, Mother of God.”

The virtues of vice were underestimated. Alicia missed her glasses of white wine, her imported cigarettes, and her space for solitude. The medication kept her sufficiently dazed to allow the days to go by in the warm company of those good people who had conspired to save her life and seemed more anxious about her survival than she herself was. Sometimes, when she was submerged in that chemical balm, she told herself that the best thing would be to touch bottom and remain there in a never-ending stupor. But sooner or later she would wake up again and remember that only people who have settled all their debts deserve to die.

More than once she had woken up in the dim room to find Fermín sitting in a chair opposite her, looking thoughtful.

“What time is it, Fermín?”

“Your time: the witching hour.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I’ve never been one for naps. What I go for is insomnia elevated to an art form. I’ll catch up on sleep when I die.” Fermín gazed at her with a mixture of tenderness and suspicion that exasperated her.

“Haven’t you forgiven me yet, Fermín?”

“Remind me what it is I must forgive you for. I’m vaguely confused.”

Alicia sighed. “That I let you believe I’d died that night during the war. That I let you live with the guilt of thinking that you’d failed me and my parents. That when I returned to Barcelona, and you recognized me in the train station, I pretended not to know you and allowed you to think you were going mad or seeing ghosts.”

“Ah, that.” Fermín gave her a caustic smile, but his eyes shone with tears in the candlelight.

“Are you going to forgive me, then?”

“I’ll take it into consideration.”

“I need you to forgive me. I don’t want to die carrying this burden.”

They gazed mutely at one another.

“You’re a lousy actress.”

“I’m a great actress. The trouble is that with all the junk the doctor is prescribing, I keep forgetting my lines.”

“I don’t feel at all sorry for you, you know.”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, Fermín. Not you, nor anyone else.”

“You’d rather they were afraid of you.”

Alicia smiled, baring her teeth.

“Well, I’m not scared of you either,” he declared.

“That’s because you don’t know me well enough.”

“I liked you better before, when you played the part of a poor dying damsel.”