Since she has no reaction to my polite acknowledgment, I tell her our first step is to figure out who the two faces belonged to. From the police we can expect nothing and our colleagues have said they don’t remember anything.

I ask her to make copies of the photos and tell her we’re going to show them to everybody, “the waiter, the three aviators, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée, my tía Constanza, Carlos Gardel, Marcela’s boyfriend.”

She shoots me a warning glance.

I think I did it on purpose, the mention of a boyfriend, to see if she has one. I’m going to be working with her for two months, who knows what might happen . . .

Half an hour later I’m watching Omicron: The Fiery Creature from Planet Ultra.

•

Afterward I meet up with Julia.

She greets me with a sheaf of pages torn from school notebooks that she flings at me as if to separate herself from contact with them.

I glimpse what this is about and feign surprise, adopting an expression of tender reconciliation as I gather up the pages without looking at them. It doesn’t work. She’s boiling over.

I let her indulge in her anger and pick up the top page. “Topic: Death.” I rifle through the rest. The handwriting changes, the topic remains the same.

I read: “Bobby’s death. I cried a lot, a lot. We buried him under a tree and I take him food and water.”

(No mention of who Bobby was, but it must have been the family dog, and the student imagines he’s still alive or some part of him is.)

Another: “A truck had its wheel stuck in the acequia. The man with the iron bar was working hard to lift the axle. He let go of the lever, took a few steps back, fell backward as if he were sitting down into a chair, and stayed like that with his back against the wall. He was very pale and they told us to get away from there.”

(This one has no concept of death but recognizes the sight of a dead man.)

Another: “The padre cura says there are three kinds of dead people: those in Paradise, those in Purgatory, and those in Hell, where it’s very hot, even more than here in summertime and more than in Africa. I think I’m going to like Paradise: It’s like recess. It would also be nice if it were like Africa and there were a pool to swim in.”

Another: “Death must be a lady who lives near my house. She has a lot of filthy cats. She’s old, she’s dirty, and she’s bad. That’s why she lives alone. Nobody loves her.”

(Death is a person.)

Disappointed, I stop reading. Still, I’m rather grateful and say, “You decided to help me—”

“I’ll lose my job! When the inspector sees what I asked them to write.”

I’m annoyed. “Why would he have to see this?’