We buried her on a warm spring day beside my father in the family vault. Mr. Walters conducted the service in English. A large number came from the English community. They politely shook my hand and left me alone with my aunt and uncles and some cousins in the front pew. Jorge and his parents came; Señor and Señora Sanmartín; some neighbors. I wrote to Aunt Matilda, but I did not post the letter until the funeral was over. My aunt and uncles came back with me to the apartment; they told me that they would have the lease of the apartment put in my name and it was mine for the rest of my life. I could not wait for them to leave. Mr. Walters and his wife had invited me for supper and made up a bed so that I would stay the night with them. The community was slowly disappearing, they said, people were always being left alone. They knew what it was like. But I was young, Mr. Walters said, and Argentina was my home. In the morning I went back to work. I did not go to the apartment until I had finished my day. I kept the door of my mother’s bedroom closed and I did not go in there. I would wait for a while, I thought, wait until I was ready.

I BROKE THE spell when I brought the first man into the apartment. For the months after she died, and right through that summer, I felt as though someone had numbed all of my nerves. I felt nothing, no desire, no hunger, no thirst, no tiredness even, just an ability to face each day calmly, expecting nothing.

I gave my mother’s clothes away. In the wardrobe in her bedroom I found five hundred dollars in cash in an old flattened handbag. I put the notes, which seemed too small to be worth that much money, into the inside pocket of the jacket of the suit which I had worn at her funeral and had not worn since, and then I changed most of it, and slowly spent it. I taught fewer hours in the summer. I slept late, I had a shower, walked a while in these few streets, I had another shower, I cooked my dinner, I went out again, to the cinema, or wandered around some more. I spoke to nobody. I would have loved to go to a beach but I never managed it; I worked a few hours each afternoon, and everything was too crowded on weekends. I remember feeling content, easy with myself, not happy exactly, but like someone who has recovered from something, whose needs are small. I believed then that I would always be like that.