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By Root 1030 0

án had just lost consciousness and was slowly bleeding to death in the darkness; and the impulsive young man might have crept down to the street and disappeared forever. But, like so many famous men in history, a strange caprice was his undoing. Once his victim had ceased to resist him, Ezequiel Delfín threw the knife down and instead of getting dressed got undressed. As naked as the day he was born, he opened the door, crossed the hall, entered Doña Margarita Bergua’s room, and without further explanation flung himself on her bed with the unmistakable intention of fornicating with her. Why her? Why try to rape a lady of admittedly noble ancestry, but also in her fifties, with one leg shorter than the other, short and dumpy and, in a word, according to any known aesthetic criteria, undeniably and irredeemably ugly? Why not have attempted, rather, to pluck the forbidden fruit of the adolescent pianist, who, besides being a virgin, had vim, vigor, and vitality, raven hair, and alabaster skin? Why not try to steal into the secret seraglio of the nursing students from Huanuco, who were in their twenties and probably had firm, delectable flesh? It was these humiliating circumstances that led the Judiciary to accept the argument of the attorney for the defense that Ezequiel Delfín was mentally unbalanced and commit him to Larco Herrera instead of sending him to prison.

On receiving the unexpected amorous visit from the young man, Señora Margarita Bergua realized that something very serious was happening. She was a realistic woman and had no illusions as to her charms. “Even in my dreams, nobody tried to rape me, so I knew immediately that that stark-naked man was either utterly mad or a criminal,” she declared. And so she defended herself like an enraged lioness: in her testimony she swore by the Virgin Mary that the impetuous intruder had been incapable of inflicting so much as a kiss upon her—and in addition to keeping her honor from being outraged, she had saved her husband’s life. For as she fought off the pervert with tooth and nail, elbow and knee, she let out screams and shouts (real ones, in her case) that awoke her daughter and the other boarders. Rosa, the judge from Ancachs, the parish priest from Cajatambo, and the student nurses from Huanuco managed between them to overpower the exhibitionist and tie him up, and then all of them ran to look for Don Sebastián: was he still alive?

It took them nearly an hour to get an ambulance to take him to Arzobispo Loayza Hospital, and it was nearly three hours before the police arrived to rescue Lucho Abril Marroquín from the clutches of the young pianist, who, beside herself with fury (because of the wounds inflicted upon her father? because of the offense to her mother’s honor? because perhaps—a human soul with turbid flesh and poisonous secret recesses—of the affront to herself?), was trying to scratch his eyes out and drink his blood. At the police station, the young medical detail man, recovering his usual gentle manner and soft-spoken voice, blushing out of sheer timidity as he spoke, roundly denied the evidence. The Berguas and the boarders were slandering him: he had never attacked anyone, he had never attempted to rape any woman, certainly not a cripple like Margarita Bergua, a lady who, because of her many kindnesses and thoughtful attentions, was—after, naturally, his own wife, that young woman with Italian eyes and musical knees and elbows who came from the country of love and song—the person whom he loved and respected more than anyone else in this world. His serenity, his courtesy, his meekness, the splendid character references given him by his superiors and co-workers at the Bayer Laboratories, the lily-whiteness of his police record, made the guardians of law and order hesitate. Could it be that (fathomless magic spell of deceptive appearances) all this was a plot cooked up by the wife and daughter of the victim and the other boarders against this sensitive young man? The fourth power of the state looked upon this hypothesis with favor and ordered the record to