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When I was little there was a boy I liked. I don't know why
I liked him, but I did. I was eight and so was he. He was called James
Crawford. I think he was a very shy boy. He would speak only to other boys and
kept his distance from the girls. He had dark hair and brown eyes. He always
wore short pants, even when the other boys began to wear trousers. The first
time I talked to him—this I remembered just a little while ago—I called him
Jimmy instead of James. No one called him that. Only me. The two of us were
eight years old. His face was very serious. What was my excuse for talking to
him? I think he left something on the desk, maybe an eraser or a pencil, I
can't remember now, and I said: Jimmy, you forgot your eraser. I do remember
smiling. I do remember why I called him Jimmy and not James or Jim. Out of
fondness. Because it made me happy. Because I liked Jimmy and I thought he was
very handsome.

The next day Espinoza went to the crafts market first thing
in the morning- The vendors and craftspeople were just beginning to set up
their stalls and the cobblestoned street was still clean. His heart was beating
faster than normal. Rebeca was arranging her rugs on a folding table and she
smiled when she saw him. Some vendors were standing around drinking coffee or
soda and chatting from stall to stall. Behind the stalls, on the sidewalk,
under the old arches and the awnings of some of the more traditional stores,
men were milling around arguing over wholesale batches of pottery that were
guaranteed to sell in Tucson or Phoenix. Espinoza said hello to Rebeca and
helped her set out the last rugs. Then he asked whether she'd like to have
breakfast with him and the girl said she couldn't and anyway she'd already had
breakfast at home. Refusing to give up, Espinoza asked where her brother was.

"At school," said Rebeca.

"So who helps you bring everything here?"

"My mother," said Rebeca.

For a while, Espinoza was silent, his eyes on the ground,
not knowing whether to buy another rug from her or leave without a word.

"Have lunch with me," he said finally.

"All right," said the girl.

When Espinoza got back to the hotel he found Pelletier
reading Archimboldi. Seen from the distance, Pelletier's face, and in fact not
just his face but his whole body, radiated an enviable calm. When he got a
little closer he saw that the book wasn't
Saint
Thomas
but rather
The Blind Woman,
and
he asked Pelletier whether he'd had the patience to reread the other book from
start to finish. Pelletier looked up at him and didn't answer. He said instead
that it was surprising, or that it would never cease to surprise him, the way
Archimboldi depicted pain and shame.

“Delicately," said Espinoza.

“That's right," said Pelletier. "Delicately."

In Santa Teresa, in that horrible city, said Norton's
letter, I thought about Jimmy, but mostly I thought about me, about what I was
like at eight, and at first the ideas leaped, the images leaped, it was as if
there were an earthquake in my head, I couldn't focus clearly or precisely on
any single memory, but when I finally could it was worse, I saw myself saying
Jimmy, I saw my smile, Jimmy Crawford's serious face, the flock of children,
their backs, the sudden swell of them in the calm waters of the schoolyard, I
saw my lips announcing to the boy that he'd forgotten something, I saw the
eraser, or maybe it was a pencil, I saw the way my eyes looked then, saw them
with the eyes I have now, and I heard my cry I once more, the timbre of my
voice, the extreme politeness of a girl of eight who shouts after a boy of
eight to remind him not to forget his eraser and yet can't call him by his
name, James, or Crawford, the way we do in school, and opts, consciously or
unconsciously, for the diminutive Jimmy, which indicates fondness, a verbal
fondness, a personal fondness, since only she, in that world-encompassing
instant, calls him that, a name that somehow casts in a new light the fondness
or solicitude implicit in the gesture of warning him he's forgotten something,
don't forget your eraser, or your pencil, though in the end it's simply an
expression, verbally poor or verbally rich, of happiness.

They ate at a cheap restaurant near the market, while
Rebeca's little brother watched the cart that was used each morning to
transport the rugs and folding table. Espinoza asked Rebeca whether it wasn't
possible to leave the cart unguarded so the boy could eat with them, but Rebeca
told him not to worry. If the cart was left unguarded then someone would
probably take it. From the window of the restaurant Espinoza could see the boy
on top of the heap of rugs like a bird, scanning the horizon.

"I'll take him something," he said, "what
does your brother like?" "Ice cream," said Rebeca, "but
they don't have ice cream here." For a few seconds Espinoza considered
going out to find ice cream somewhere else, but he gave up the idea for fear
the girl would be gone by the time he got back. She asked him what
Spain
was like.
"Different," said Espinoza, thinking about the ice cream.
"Different from
Mexico
?"
she asked.

"No," said Espinoza, "different in different
places, diverse." Suddenly it occurred to Espinoza to take the boy a
sandwich. "They're called
tortas
in
Mexico
," said Rebeca,
"and my brother likes ham."

She was like a princess or an ambassadress, thought
Espinoza. He asked the waitress to bring him a ham sandwich and a soda. The
waitress asked him how he wanted the sandwich.

"Tell her you want it with everything," said
Rebeca. "With everything," said Espinoza.

Later he went outside with the sandwich and the soda and
handed them to the boy, who was still perched atop the cart. At first the boy
shook his head and said he wasn't hungry. Espinoza saw that there were three
slightly bigger boys on the corner watching them, holding back laughter.

"If you're not hungry, just drink the soda and keep
the sandwich," he said, "or give it to the dogs."

When he sat back down with Rebeca he felt good. In fact, he
felt replete.

"This won't work," he said, "it isn't right.
Next time, the three of us will eat together."

Rebeca looked him in the eye, her fork halted in the air,
and then a half smile appeared on her face and she conveyed the food to her
mouth.

•

At the hotel, stretched out on a deck chair beside the
empty pool, Pelletier was reading, and Espinoza knew, even before he saw the
title, that it wasn't
Saint Thomas
or
The Blind Woman,
but another book by Archimboldi. When he sat
down next to Pelletier he could see it was
Lethaea,
not one of his
favorites, although to judge by Pelletier's face, the rereading was fruitful
and thoroughly enjoyable. When he sat down in the next deck chair he asked
Pelletier what he'd done all day.

"I read," answered Pelletier, who in turn asked
him the same question.

“Not much," said Espinoza.

That night, as they ate together at the hotel restaurant,
Espinoza told him he'd bought some souvenirs, including something for
Pelletier. Pelletier was happy to hear it and asked what kind of souvenir
Espinoza had bought for him.

An Indian rug," said Espinoza.

•

When I reached London after an exhausting trip, said Norton
in her letter, I started to think about Jimmy Crawford, or maybe I started to
think about him as I was waiting for the New York-London flight, but either way
Jimmy Crawford and my eight-year-old voice calling after him were already with
me at the moment when I found the keys to my flat and turned on the light and
left my bags on the floor in the hall. I went into the kitchen and made tea.
Then I showered and went to bed. I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to
sleep, so I took a sleeping pill. I remember I started to leaf through a
magazine, I remember I thought about the two of you, wandering that horrible
city, I remember I thought about the hotel. In my room at the hotel there were
two very odd mirrors that frightened me the last few days. When I felt myself
dropping off, I barely had the strength to reach out and turn off the light.

I had no dreams at all. When I woke up I didn't know where
I was, but the feeling lasted just a second or two, because straightaway I
recognized the usual street noises. Everything's over, I thought. I feel
rested, I'm home, I have lots to do. When I sat up in bed, though, all I did
was start to cry like a fool, for no apparent reason. All day I was like that.
At moments I wished I hadn't left Santa Teresa, that I'd stayed there with you
until the end. More than once I felt the urge to rush to the airport and catch
the first plane to
Mexico
.
These urges were followed by other, more destructive ones: to set fire to my
apartment, slit my wrists, never return to the university, and live on the
streets forever after.

But in
England
at least, women who live on the streets are often subjected to terrible
humiliations, I just read an article about it in some magazine or other. In
England
these
street women are gang-raped, beaten, and it isn't unusual for them to be found
dead outside hospitals. The people who do these things to them aren't, as I
might have thought at eighteen, the police or gangs of neo-Nazi thugs, but
other street people, which makes it seem somehow even worse. Feeling confused,
I went out, hoping to cheer up and thinking I might call some friend to meet
for dinner. How I don't know, but suddenly I found myself in front of a gallery
hosting a retrospective of the work of Edwin Johns, the artist who cut off his
right hand to display it in a self-portrait.

•

On his next visit, Espinoza managed to persuade the girl to
let him take her home. They left the cart safe in the back room of the
restaurant where they'd eaten before, among empty bottles and stacks of canned
chiles and meat, after Espinoza paid a meager rent to a fat woman in an old
factory worker's apron. Then they put the rugs and scrapes in the backseat of
the car and the three of them squeezed up in front. The boy was happy and
Espinoza told him he could decide where they went to eat that day. They ended
up at a McDonald's in the city center.

The girl's house was in one of the neighborhoods to the
west, the area where most crimes were committed, according to what he'd read in
the papers, but the neighborhood and the street where Rebeca lived just seemed
like a poor neighborhood and a poor street, there was nothing ominous about
them. He left the car parked in front of the house. There was a tiny garden in
front, with three planter boxes made of cane and wire, full of pots of flowers
and plants. Rebeca told her brother to stay outside and watch the car. The
house was built of wood and when anyone walked on the floorboards they made a
hollow sound, as if a drain ran underneath, or as if there was a secret room
below.

Contrary to Espinoza's expectations, Rebeca's mother
greeted him in a friendly way and offered him a soda. Then she herself
introduced the rest of her children. Rebeca had two brothers and three sisters,
although the oldest didn't live at home anymore because she'd gotten married.
One of the sisters was just like Rebeca but younger. Her name was Cristina and
everyone said she was the smartest in the family. Once a reasonable amount of
time had passed, Espinoza asked Rebeca to go for a walk with him around the
neighborhood. As they left they saw the boy up on the roof of the car. He was
reading a comic book and had something in his mouth, probably candy. When they
got back from the walk the boy was still there, although he wasn't reading
anymore and his candy was gone.

•

When he returned to the hotel Pelletier was reading
Saint Thomas
again.
when he sat down beside him Pelletier looked up from the book and said there
were still things he didn't understand and probably never would. Espinoza
laughed and said nothing.

"Amalfitano was here today," said Pelletier.

In his opinion, the Chilean professor's nerves were shot.
Pelletier had mvited him to take a dip in the pool. Since he didn't have
bathing trunks had picked up a pair for him at the reception desk. Everything
seemed to be going fine. But when Amalfitano got in the pool, he froze, as if
he'd suddenly seen the devil. Then he sank. Before he went under, Pelletier
remembered, he covered his mouth with both hands. In any
case, he made
no attempt to swim. Fortunately, Pelletier was there and it
 
was easy to dive down and bring him back up
to the surface. Then they each had a whiskey, and Amalfitano explained that it
had been a long
 
time since he’d
swam.

"We talked about Archimboldi," said Pelletier.

Then Amalfitano got dressed, returned the swimming trunks,
and left.

"And what did you do?" asked Espinoza.

"I showered, got dressed, came down to eat, and kept
reading."

For an instant, said Norton in her letter, I felt like a
derelict dazzled by the sudden lights of a theater. I wasn't in the best state
of mind to go into a gallery, but the name Edwin Johns drew me like a magnet. I
went up to the gallery door, which was glass, and inside I saw many people and I
saw waiters dressed in white who could scarcely move, balancing trays laden
with glasses of champagne or red wine. I decided to wait and went back across
the street. Little by little the gallery emptied and the moment came when I
thought I could go in and at least see part of the retrospective.