Eventually, she could no longer move, and there was no point in pretending that she could go back to the hotel, although I telephoned the manager and told him that she had the flu. Her mother had died of the flu and maybe it was bad luck to use that excuse. I borrowed books from the Cultura Inglesa library for her on the history of the royal family and its present members. I made the mistake one day of bringing home for her a biography of Gladstone. She told me sourly that she had no interest in Gladstone.

That summer I began to teach at Instituto San Martín for the first time, having been recommended by the English Department of the university, which wanted to get rid of me, and I made my first acquaintance with Señor and Señora Sanmartín. I worked three hours each on Tuesday and Thursday. I knew that they liked me and that I would get more work when the real school term began. They wanted me to sit in on other teachers’ classes and report back to them on their performance and command of English. One of the teachers, a young woman called Ana who had studied in North America, made basic mistakes as she taught English, but the children all listened to her. I told Señora Sanmartín that she was remarkably good. I could not think of what else to say.

For the last two years of my mother’s life, I was the breadwinner. She managed to move slowly and painfully from the bedroom to her perch in the hall, close to the telephone. She sat in her chair all day, she slept sometimes, she read her books and some magazines which neighbors gave her. She ate heartily, and this led me to believe that she would live forever. I was not happy. I found her difficult. I hated being asked where I was going every time I got ready to go out the door. I knew that I could never abandon her now, and she could live for another twenty years. In the evenings I sat away from her. I lay on my bed with a book or I stayed in the dining room or the kitchen. And then I would come out and find her asleep, and I would feel sorry for her.

I do not remember when teaching began to bore me; in those first two years I was interested. I taught beginners and I loved controlling what they knew, making them repeat things, learn new words, form questions. I also did some private classes, and I was often tired when I came home to find my mother alert, like a bird waiting to be fed, in her chair, complaining that she had been alone all day and now she was looking forward to a little company. I managed the money now, aware that if I got sick we would both have nothing. We had no savings, nothing to fall back on.