The glass reflects me and it occurs to me that my inner image has left my body, which looks no different on the outside, and wants to slip inside the niche. But it hasn’t gone beyond the glass, it’s still there on the surface, an intermediate zone between inside and outside.

I become aware that contemplation of the tomb has absorbed me.

I react, wondering what will happen, and I also remember Marcela.

I think I’m going to go soon, and first I have to say something to him, I’ve always spoken to him, when I was small I’d ask for things. I can’t think of what to ask for this time so I try to soothe him. “Soon Mamá will come, with Mauricio. They’ll bring fresh flowers,” and before I turn toward the exit we gaze at each other, Papá and I, through the glass.

As I’m boarding the bus I bump into an elderly lady and put her at some risk of falling. A few people spring to her aid with an exaggerated air of protection and I hear murmurs of reproach and hostility. I could beg her pardon, but there’s no reason to, I did it accidentally, unintentionally, as everyone should assume.

When the lady is settled in her seat—more than one has been offered her—she turns toward me with some piteous words.

I stare at her, not sternly but in sadness, and she abandons her question.

Possessed by the demon of summer, flies buzz around me and brush against my skin, and the world is harsh and violent.

•

The house is quiet, as if it were night, but the familiar souls are absent.

I go upstairs and pause in front of the open door of Mamá’s bedroom, as fresh and neat as the bedroom of a teenage girl. The sun shines through pink curtains and the green branch of a tree shelters the window from outside.

I go to my bedroom, which has few charms but watches over the end of all my daytimes and welcomes and supports my times for rest.

The canary’s trilling pulls me back from the quiet life of objects and invites me to the courtyard, where my mother’s hands bring vitality to various planters filled with greenery whose names she knows and whose diseases she foresees and cures.

I pause for a moment in front of the nail, then go back to the pleasant shade of the house where all indicators appear to confirm Mamá’s certainty that today’s lunch will unite her with both her sons.

•

Later she comes back and they are all there, Tía Constanza, too, and I can see they’ve all dressed in their best for the visit to the cemetery, maybe they also went to church.