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By Root 1025 0

pair of pajamas, a blue bathrobe, wool socks, and alpaca slippers—and since the tragedy he has never again uttered a complete sentence. He no longer goes to Mass, no longer reads the newspapers. When he is feeling well, the longtime boarders (once they discovered that every man in the world was a satyr, the owners of the Pensión Colonial took in only females or decrepit males whose sexual appetites had—as was obvious at first glance—dwindled away due to illness or old age) see him wandering like a ghost through the dark, centuries-old rooms, his eyes blank, unshaven, his hair unkempt and full of dandruff, or see him swaying slowly back and forth in his rocking chair, mute and dazed, for hours on end. He no longer eats either breakfast or lunch with the boarders, for (fear of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of others that haunts aristocrats even in the poorhouse) Don Sebastián is unable to lift his spoon to his mouth and his wife and daughter must feed him. When he is feeling poorly, the boarders do not see him: the venerable old man stays in bed, with the door of his room locked. But they hear him: they hear his bellows, his sighs, his moans or screams that shake the windowpanes. Newcomers to the Pensión Colonial are surprised to discover that during these crises, as the descendant of conquistadors howls, Doña Margarita and Señorita Rosa go on sweeping, tidying up, cooking, serving at table, and conversing as though nothing were happening. These boarders think them heartless, cold as ice, indifferent to the suffering of a husband, a father. To those curious and impertinent recent arrivals who, pointing to the closed door, dare to ask: “Is Don Sebastián feeling ill?” Señora Margarita’s answer is a grudging: “There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s remembering a bad scare he had, he’ll be over it soon.” And, in fact, two or three days later the crisis is over and Don Sebastián emerges from his room and is seen once again in the halls and rooms of the Pensión Bayer, pale and thin amid the spiderwebs, with a terrified look on his face.

What was this tragedy exactly? Where, when, how did it occur?

It all began with the arrival at the Pensión Colonial, twenty years before, of a young man with sad eyes dressed in the attire of a disciple of Our Lord of Miracles. He was a traveling salesman, born in Arequipa, suffering from chronic constipation, whose first name was that of a prophet and whose last name was that of a fish—Ezequiel Delfín (Dolphin)—and despite his youth he was taken in as a boarder because the physical signs of his spirituality (extreme emaciation, a deep pallor, delicate bones) and his evident religiosity—in addition to wearing a dark purple tie, breast-pocket handkerchief, and armband, he had a Bible hidden in his baggage, and a scapular peeked out of the folds of his garments—appeared to be a guarantee against any attempt on his part to sully the virtue of the pubescent girl.

And, in fact, in the beginning young Ezequiel Delfín brought nothing but satisfaction to the Bergua family. He had no appetite and nice manners, he paid his Pensión bills promptly, and was given to such charming gestures as bringing Doña Margarita bunches of violets from time to time, offering Don Sebastián a carnation for his buttonhole, and giving Rosa musical scores and a metronome on her birthday. His shyness, which prevented him from ever speaking to a person without having first been spoken to, and in such a case, of always speaking in a soft voice and with lowered eyes, never looking directly at the person, and his refined behavior and vocabulary greatly pleased the Berguas, who soon became very fond of their boarder, and perhaps in their heart of hearts (a family won over for life to the philosophy of the lesser evil) they began to entertain the notion of eventually promoting him to the elevated status of son-in-law.

Don Sebastián in particular became very attached to him: did he perhaps see in this well-bred traveling salesman that son that his diligent crippled wife had been unable to bear him? One afternoon in December he took