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V
With what admirable docility an organism which has not been violated by allopathic medicine reacts! A simple glass of cold cocoa dispelled my weariness. I felt comforted, ready to confront all the vicissitudes which life might put in my path. I had a moment of indecision. Would it not be best to hold fast to my routine and begin, immediately, my literary chores? Or could I consecrate that first evening of vacation completely to restorative idleness. My respectful hands caressed for several seconds Petroniusą book; I looked at it nostalgically and placed in on the bedside table.
 Before leaving I wanted to open the window so that the evening air might spill into the room. I resolutely grasped the catch, twisted it, and gave the requisite jerk. . . . I found myself flush with the window. Opening it was impossible.
This amusing incident evoked the memory of the time-honored eccentricities of my aunt Charlotte. She too owned property on the sea, in Necochea, and so much feared the effect of marine air on metal that she had had them build her house with false windows and, when she had no guests, swaddled everything in layers of paper from the handle of the phonograph to the chain-pull in the water closet. Obviously it was a congenital mania which extended even to the farthest and most discredited branches of the family. But I was decided that this window be opened--with carpentry tools if necessary--and that this foul air be refreshed. I felt already the onset of cephalgia.
I would have to speak with the owners of the hotel. I advanced cautiously through the darkness of the passages, where the air was as thick as in my room, and arrived at a staircase of grey cement. I hesitated between going down or up. I followed my first impulse: I went down. The air become even more unbreathable. I found myself in an astonishing basement: there was a sort of hall, with a reception desk and a file-case for keys; there was, beyond a glass door, a dining room in which comestibles, bottles of wine and cleaning instruments were gathered; on one wall an enormous mural presented a scene of mysterious pathos: in a room decorated with palms, in front of a broad window thrown completely open and through which the sun poured cascades of brilliance, a boy who seemed to be a small bell-hop was bending lithely over the bed on which lay a dead girl. I wondered who the unknown painter could have been: on the visage of the girl there glowed an angelic beauty and on that of the boy, summoned by faculties that seemed beyond the possibilities of the plastic arts, there were both great intelligence and pain. But perhaps I was wrong; I am no critic of painting (although all that is cultural, when it does not suffocate life, falls under my purview.)
I wanted to open the glass door; it was locked. . . Just then I heard several cries. It seemed to me they came from another floor. Grasped by an uncontrollable curiosity I went up running. I stopped, panting, on the landing; I heard the cries again, toward the left, toward the end of the corridor. Something, amorphous and quick, fled at my approach and brushed against my arm. Shivering (I had the sensation of having been charged by a phantasmagoric cat) I followed with my glance the shadow that drew away; the uncertain light coming through the opening in the wall held a revelation for me: the little curious one was Miguel, the boy I had met that afternoon on the beach! At the first opportunity I would admonish him. I made my way back to my room--at the extreme opposite end of this passage--but found it impossible not to hear the voices. Involuntarily I forced myself to recognize them. They were the voices from the beach. Emilia and Mary were insulting one another with a violence that crushed me! I barely listened. I moved away with a deep displeasure in my soul.
I returned to my room, still shut up, opened my medicine kit, resplendent with white cards and brown and green tubes, placed on a lovely slip of paper the ten drops of arsenic, and let them fall onto my tongue. There remained exactly a quarter of an hour until supper.
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