There again, it seemed he had a loathing for children. A glum severity came over his face on finding even a single one of them in the house, like that poor dimwit – the mother smiled – of the caillou, bijou. Oh! ‘her’ Gonzalo! It was quite obvious that the arsenal of glory had refused to take care of him. In him, Plautus wouldn’t find his character, perhaps Molière. The poor mother, without wishing it, saw once again the distant figures of Le Misanthrope and L’Avare, all lace and frills to the knees, in the old book, in two columns, of her adolescent mornings, of her so fervid wakenings: when the circle of the small oil lamp, on the table, was the orb of thought and clarity in the security of the silence. In the old book, smelling of old French ink, with bonnets, lace and Maître Corbeau.fn8 It was clear. After salvaged victories, the printers of funereal glory no longer had enough of their mortuary wood-cuts for a veteran’s verses without hendecasyllables: funerary lamps and phrases and flames and perennis ardee: all used up for the wood-cuts, on the covers of cadaverous poems. Never, never would he, Gonzalo, have used his dead comrades for such glorious poetizing, his brother, a distant smile! The name, the desperate memory, closed up inside him.

The haberdashers had no frills at any price that they could sell him, nor caballero braid, nor ribbon, nor buckles, for his quiet existence. The hidalgo kept away from salons, from the opinions of patriotic ladies. To weak tea, if that were not enough, he preferred the solitary Recoleta road. After such regrettable observations, serious people began indeed to form the view that he should be avoided. And one fine day, indeed, having completed his courses in humanities, and in engineering, his native city of Pastrufazio couldn’t wait to be rid of him.

But these considerations lay beyond his mother’s love, as also her language: in the misery of her dull days she had never taken part in the conversations, in the tinkling conglomerations of fine society.

She thought sweetly of this elder son of hers, seeing him as a child again, intent and studious. And now already hunched, bored of wandering the footpaths. She returned, from the terrace, into the main room. The flies were back, now that the storm was over, buzzing over the table: where the newspapers lay, with new events, that had given way to others. And likewise from year to year, from day to day; for the whole succession of years, of days. And the pages, soon, turned yellow. When the flies ceased their merry-go-round, for a moment, and even the fat green fly, for an instant; then in the fleeting cosmos of that unexpected suspension she could hear the woodworm more distinctly crunching, crunching laboriously, in short spurts, in the old walnut secrétaire that she could no longer unlock. The key had lost its play over successive attempts, or, perhaps, in the painful shadows of memory. The portrait must be there … the portraits … the mother-of-pearl cufflinks … two letters, perhaps, as well … the last ones! … her work scissors, the black lace fan … The one they’d given her in the marshes, a farewell present from colleagues, from the few girls she had taught … several of them excited, all wanting a kiss from her … but she had no shortage, por suerte, of spare scissors: three pairs, in fact.