“No, only two faint strips of color. Look closer. If I hadn’t pointed them out, you wouldn’t have noticed. The painting has always been like that, ever since it was made. Adriana took a long time to discover all its details, only after she saw the sea for the first time on her trip. Then she showed me ‘the couple,’ who were nothing new to me. She said, ‘Those who are in love must seek refuge somewhere.’ Then she started worrying because she was seeing bathers setting up beach umbrellas. Later, she was upset because, she said, tourists had discovered the beach. When her imagination had entirely filled the tempera painting with people, she started populating that oil painting over there, the one of a forest. During the day, she found woodcutters in it, at night, lost children.”

“Was she ever examined by a psychiatrist?”

“In all other respects she was completely normal.”

María Pizarro, the widow of Señor Candé, is Adriana Pizarro’s sister. She’s putting up some resistance to reliving all that happened with Adriana.

She won’t allow photographs, not even of the bedroom. We ask her for a picture of Adriana. She’ll allow us to see one but not reproduce it.

Did she see her dead? She’s the one who found her. The eyes, the mouth? “As if she hadn’t died.”

The daughter, who’s about seventeen, walks us back to the Citroën. The intransigent mother stands in the front hallway, the door ajar.

Speaking in a low voice, the girl says she’ll bring us a picture of her aunt and the photos from Europe.

The house that belonged to Juan Tiflis is no longer there, nor can the neighbors provide his wife’s current address. Only one fact can they agree upon unanimously: Despite everything, he left her penniless.

From the foundation the house once rested on now rises a structure of iron and cement. The construction company gives me the number of this future hotel’s owner, and he gives me the name of the notary who witnessed the deed of sale, and the notary gives me the address of Tiflis’s widow, which turns out to be the address of the house that’s been demolished. (Four trips, back and forth.)

At the philharmonic they were barely acquainted with Tiflis’s wife; she no longer visits the orphans’ home, nor does her name appear in the phone book, and the local electoral rolls are years out of date. (Four plus three: seven trips.)

Tiflis’s wife isn’t a suicide, I hope. At Missing Persons, I ask the police if they have any information about her. (Eight trips.)

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Señorita Candé on the phone. She can’t make it, she’ll do it another day, as soon as she can. Meanwhile, here’s a number to call: Tío Eduardo. Tío Eduardo is “special.”

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