“I’m sorry.”

“Everyone is sorry.”

“Did you get to the doctor?”

“No.”

“And the baby?”

“It was a girl. She was stillborn.”

“I’m very sorry, Ariadna. Perhaps we’d better stop for a while and call the doctor to give you something.”

“No. I don’t want to stop now.”

“All right. What happened next?”

“David . . .”

“Relax, take your time.”

“David took the corpse in his arms and started to whine like a wounded animal. The little girl’s skin was bluish. She looked like a broken doll. I wanted to get up and hug them both, but I was very weak. At dawn, when it was beginning to get light, David took the baby, looked at me for the last time, and asked to be forgiven. Then he left the house. I dragged myself over to the window. I saw him go down the steps in the rocks to the jetty. The wooden boat was moored at the very end. He got into it with the girl’s body wrapped in a few rags and started to row out to sea, looking toward me the whole time. I raised a hand, hoping he’d see me, hoping he’d come back. He went on rowing until he stopped about a hundred meters from the coast. The sun was peering over the sea by now, making it look like a lake of fire. I saw David’s figure stand up and take something from the bottom of the boat. He proceeded to hit the keel, again and again. It only took a couple of minutes to sink. David stayed there, motionless, with the baby in his arms, staring at me until the sea swallowed them both forever.”

“What did you do then?”

“I’d lost a lot of blood and was very weak. I spent a couple of days with a fever, thinking that everything had been a nightmare and that any moment now David would come back in through the door. After that, when I was able to get up and walk, I started going down to the beach every day. To wait.”

“To wait?”

“For them to return. You must think I was as mad as David.”

“No. I don’t think that at all.”

“The peasants who came every day with their cart had seen me there. They came over to ask me whether I was all right and gave me something to eat. They said I didn’t look well and offered to take me to the hospital in San Feliu. It must have been them who alerted the Civil Guard. One of their patrols found me asleep on the beach and took me to the hospital. I was suffering from hypothermia, pneumonia, and an internal hemorrhage that would have killed me within twelve hours if I hadn’t been taken to the hospital. I didn’t tell them who I was, but it didn’t take them long to find out. There were search warrants with my picture in all the police stations and Civil Guard barracks. I was admitted to a hospital and spent two weeks there.”