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I always loved Pauline. One of my earliest memories is of the day when Pauline and I were hiding under a leafy bower of laurel branches in a garden with two stone lions. Pauline said, “I like blue, I like grapes, I like ice, I like roses, I like white horses.” I knew then that my happiness had begun, for in those preferences I could identify myself with Pauline. We resembled each other so miraculously that in the book about the final union of souls with the soul of the world, she wrote in the margin: “Ours have already been united.” At that time ours meant her soul and mine.

To explain that similarity I argued that I was a hasty and imperfect copy, a rough draft of Pauline. I remember that I wrote in my notebook: “Every poem is a copy of Poetry and in each thing there is a prefiguration of God.” Then I thought: My resemblance to Pauline is what saves me. I saw (and even now I see) that my identification with her was the best influence on my life, a kind of sanctuary where I would be purged of my natural defects: apathy, negligence, vanity.

Life was a pleasant habit which led us to look upon our eventual marriage as something natural and certain. Pauline’s parents, unimpressed by the literary prestige that I prematurely won and lost, promised to give their consent when I received my doctorate. And many times we imagined an orderly future with enough time to work, to travel, and to love each other. We imagined it so vividly, we were convinced that it could not fail to come true.

Although we spoke of marriage, we did not regard each other as sweethearts. We had spent our whole childhood together, and we continued to treat each other with the shy reticence of children. I did not dare to play the role of a lover and tell her solemnly, “I love you.” But still I did love her, I was mad about her, and my startled and scrupulous eyes were dazzled by her perfection.

Pauline liked me to entertain friends. She always made the preparations, attended to the guests, and, secretly, pretended to be the mistress of the house. But I must confess that I did not enjoy those affairs. The party we gave to introduce Julius Montero to some writers was no exception.

The night before, Montero had visited me for the first time. He came in brandishing a voluminous manuscript which he, with an air of a tyrant, read to me in its entirety, secure in his belief that an unpublished literary work conferred on its author the right to usurp as much of another person’s time as he desired. Soon after he left I had already forgotten his swarthy, unshaven face. The only interesting thing about the story he read me—Montero urged me to tell him quite honestly whether it had too strong an impact—was that it seemed to be a vague attempt to imitate a number of completely different writers. The theme of the story was that if a certain melody issues from a relationship between the violin and the movements of the violinist, then the soul of each person issues from a definite relationship between movement and matter. The hero made a machine—a kind of frame, with pieces of wood and ropes—to produce souls. Then he died. There was a wake and a burial, but he was secretly alive in the frame. At the end of the story the frame appeared near a stereoscope and a Galena stone supported by a tripod in the room where a young girl had died.

When I managed to change the subject, Montero expressed a strange desire to meet some writers.

“Why don’t you come over tomorrow afternoon?” I suggested. “I’ll introduce you to some.”

He described himself as a savage and accepted the invitation. Perhaps my pleasure in seeing him leave was what induced me to accompany him to the street floor. When we left the elevator, Montero discovered the garden out in the courtyard. Sometimes, when seen through the glass door from the hall in the thin afternoon light, that tiny garden suggests the mysterious image of a forest at the bottom of a lake. At night the glow of lilac and orange lights changes it into a horrible candyland paradise. Montero saw it at night.

“To be frank with you,” he said, after taking a long look, “this is the most interesting thing I have seen here so far.”

The next day Pauline arrived early. By five that afternoon she had everything ready for the party. I showed her a Chinese figurine of jade which I had bought that morning in an antique shop. It was a wild horse with raised forefeet and a flowing mane. The shopkeeper had assured me that it symbolized passion.

Putting the little horse on a shelf of the bookcase, Pauline exclaimed, “It is beautiful, like a first love affair!” When I said I wanted her to have it, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me impulsively.

We drank a cup of tea together. I told her I had been offered a fellowship to study in London for two years. Suddenly we believed in an immediate marriage, the trip to England, our life there. We considered details of domestic economy: the almost enjoyable privations we would suffer; the distribution of hours of study, diversion, rest, and, perhaps, work; what Pauline would do while I attended classes; the clothes and books we would take. And then, after an interval of planning, we conceded that I would have to give up the scholarship. My examinations were only a week away, but already it was evident that Pauline’s parents wished to postpone our marriage.

The guests began to arrive. I was not happy. I found it hard to talk to anyone, and kept inventing excuses to leave the room. I was in no mood for conversation; and I discovered that my memory was vague and unpredictable. Uneasy, futile, miserable, I moved from one group to another, wishing that people would leave, waiting for my moments alone with Pauline, while I escorted her home.

She was standing by the window, talking to Montero. When I glanced at her, she looked up and turned her perfect face toward me. I felt that her love was an inviolable refuge where we two were alone. Now I desired fervently to tell her that I adored her, and I made up my mind to abandon, that very evening, the absurd and childish reticence that had kept me, until then, from declaring my love. But if only I could communicate my thought to her without speaking! Her face wore an expression of generous, ecstatic, and surprised gratitude.

I walked over to Pauline, and she asked me the name of the poem in which a man becomes so estranged from a woman that he does not even greet her when they meet in heaven. I knew that the poem was by Browning, and I remembered some of the verses. I spent the rest of the evening looking for it in the Oxford Edition. If I could not have Pauline to myself, then I preferred to look for something she wanted instead of talking to people who did not interest me; but my mind was not functioning clearly, and I wondered if my lack of success in finding the poem was a kind of omen. When I turned toward the window again, they were gone. Louis Albert Morgan, the pianist, must have noticed my concern.

“Pauline is just showing Montero around the apartment,” he said.

I shrugged my shoulders, tried to conceal my annoyance, and pretended to be interested in the Browning again. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Morgan entering my bedroom. I thought, “He has gone to find her.” He came out, followed by Pauline and Montero.

Finally someone went home; then, slowly and deliberately, the others left. The moment came when no one was there except Pauline, Montero, and me. As I had feared, Pauline said, “It’s very late. I have to go.”

“I’ll take you home, if I may,” Montero volunteered quickly.

“So will I,” I said.

I was speaking to Pauline, but I looked at Montero, and my eyes were filled with scorn and loathing.

When we came out of the elevator, I noticed that Pauline did not have the little Chinese horse I had given her.

“You’ve forgotten my present!” I said.

I went back to the apartment and returned with the figurine. I found them leaning against the glass door, looking at the garden. I took Pauline’s arm and tried to keep Montero from walking on the other side of her. I very pointedly left him out of the conversation.

He was not offended. When we said good night to Pauline, he insisted on walking home with me. On the way he spoke of literature, probably with sincerity and with a certain fervor. I said to myself, “He is the writer. I am just a tired man who is worried about a woman.” I pondered on the incongruity between his physical vigor and his literary weakness. I thought, “He is protected by a hard shell. My feelings do not reach him.” I looked with aversion at his clear eyes, his hairy moustache, his bull neck.

That week I scarcely saw Pauline. I studied a great deal. After my last examination I telephoned her. She congratulated me with unnatural vehemence, and said she would come to see me later that afternoon.

I took a nap, bathed slowly, and waited for Pauline while I leafed through a book about the Fausts of Muller and Lessing.

When I saw her I exclaimed, “You’ve changed!”

“Yes,” she said. “How well we know each other. You can tell what I am thinking even before I speak.”

Enraptured, we gazed into each other’s eyes.

“Thank you,” I said.

Nothing had ever touched me as much as that admission, by Pauline, of the deep conformity of our souls. I basked naively in the warmth of that compliment. I do not remember when I began to wonder (incredulously) whether Pauline’s words had another meaning. Before I had time to consider that possibility, she began a confused explanation.

Suddenly I heard her say, “… and that first afternoon we were already hopelessly in love.”

I wondered what she was talking about.

“He is very jealous,” Pauline continued. “He doesn’t object to our friendship, but I promised that I wouldn’t see you any more for a while.”

I was still waiting for the impossible clarification that would reassure me. I did not know whether Pauline was joking or serious. I did not know what sort of expression was on my face. Nor did I know then the extent of my grief.

“I must go now,” said Pauline. “Julius is waiting for me downstairs. He didn’t want to come up.”

“Who?” I asked.

Suddenly, as if nothing had happened, I was afraid Pauline had discovered that I was an impostor, and that she knew our souls were not really united after all.

“Julius Montero,” she answered ingenuously.

Her reply could not have surprised me; but on that horrible afternoon nothing impressed me as much as those two words. For the first time in my life I felt that a breach had opened between us.

“Are you going to marry him?” I asked almost scornfully.

I do not remember what she said. I believe she invited me to the wedding.

Then I was alone. The whole thing was absurd. No person was more incompatible with Pauline (and with me) than Montero. Or was I mistaken? If Pauline loved that man, perhaps she and I had never been alike at all. And as I came to that realization I was aware that I had suspected the dreadful truth many times before.

I was very sad, but I do not believe I was jealous. Lying face downward on my bed, I stretched out my arm and my hand touched the book I had been reading a short while before. I flung it away in disgust.

I went out for a walk. I stopped to watch a group of children playing at the corner. That afternoon, I did not see how I could go on living.

I could not forget Pauline. As I preferred the painful moments of our separation to my subsequent loneliness, I went over them and examined them in minute detail and relived them. As a result of my brooding anxiety, I thought I discovered new interpretations for what had happened. So, for example, in Pauline’s voice telling me the name of her lover I found a tenderness that moved me deeply, at first. I thought that she was sorry for me, and her kindness was as touching as her love had been before. But then, after thinking it over, I decided that her tenderness was not meant for me but for the name she pronounced.

I accepted the fellowship, and quietly started to make preparations for the voyage. But the news got out. Pauline visited me the afternoon before I sailed.

I had felt alienated from her, but the moment I saw her I fell in love all over again. I realized that her visit was a clandestine one, although she did not say it. I grasped her hands. I trembled with gratitude.

“I shall always love you,” said Pauline. “Somehow, I shall always love you more than anyone else.”

Perhaps she thought she had committed an act of treason. She knew that I did not doubt her loyalty to Montero, but as if it troubled her to have spoken words that implied—if not for me, for an imaginary witness—a disloyal intention, she hastened to add, “Of course, what I feel for you doesn’t count now. I am in love with Julius.”

Nothing else mattered, she said. The past was a desert where she had waited for Montero. Of our love, or friendship, she had no memory.

There was not much to say after that. I was very angry, and pretended that I was busy. I took her down in the elevator. When I opened the door to the street, we saw that it was raining.

“I’ll get you a taxi,” I said.

But in a voice full of emotion Pauline shouted, “Good-bye, Darling!”

Then she ran across the street and was gone. I turned away sadly. When I looked around, I saw a man crouching in the garden. He stood up and pressed his face and hands against the glass door. It was Montero.

Streaks of lilac and orange-colored light were outlined against a green background of dark clumps of shrubbery. Montero’s face, pressed against the wet glass, looked whitish and deformed.

I thought of an aquarium, of a fish in an aquarium. Then, with futile bitterness, I told myself that Montero’s face suggested other monsters: the fish misshapen by the pressure of the water, living at the bottom of the sea.

I sailed the next morning. During the crossing I scarcely left my cabin. I wrote and studied constantly.

I wanted to forget Pauline. During my two years in England I avoided anything that could remind me of her, from encounters with other Argentines to the few dispatches from Buenos Aires published by the newspapers. It is true that she appeared to me in dreams with such persuasive and vivid reality that I wondered whether my soul was counteracting by night the privations I imposed on it during the day. I eluded the memory of her obstinately. By the end of the first year I succeeded in excluding her from my nights and, almost, in forgetting her.

The afternoon of my arrival from Europe I thought about Pauline again. I wondered whether the memories at my apartment would be too intense. When I opened the door I felt some emotion, and I paused respectfully to commemorate the past and the extremes of joy and sorrow I had known. Then I had a shameful revelation. I was not moved by the secret monuments of our love, suddenly bared in the depths of my memory: I was moved by the emphatic light streaming through the window, the light of Buenos Aires.

Around four o’clock I went to the corner store and bought a pound of coffee. At the bakery the clerk recognized me. He greeted me with noisy cordiality, and told me that for a long time—six months, at least—I had not honored him with my patronage. After those amenities I asked him timidly, foolishly, for a small loaf of bread. He asked the usual question, “White or dark?”

I replied, as usual, “White.”

I went home. The day was clear and very cold.

I thought about Pauline while I was making coffee. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, we would drink a cup of black coffee together.

Then, as if I were in a dream, I shifted abruptly from my affable and even-tempered indifference to the excitement, the madness that the sight of Pauline caused me to feel. When I saw her, I fell down on my knees, I buried my face in her hands and, for the first time, I gave vent to all my grief at having lost her.

It happened this way: I heard three knocks at the door. I wondered who it was; I remembered that my coffee would get cold; I opened the door with a certain irritation.

And then—I do not know how long all this took—Pauline asked me to follow her. I realized that she was correcting, by her forceful actions, the mistakes of our past relationship. It seems to me (but I tend to be inaccurate about that afternoon) that she corrected them with excessive determination. When she asked me to embrace her (“Embrace me!” she said. “Now!”), I was overjoyed. We looked into each other’s eyes and, like two rivers flowing together, our souls were united. Outside the rain pelted against the windows, on the roof. I interpreted the rain, which was the resurgence of the whole world, as a panic extension of our love.

But my emotion did not keep me from discovering that Montero had contaminated Pauline’s conversation. Sometimes when she spoke, I had the unpleasant impression that I was listening to my rival. I recognized the characteristic heaviness of the phrase, the candid and laborious attempts to find the right word; I recognized, painfully, the undeniable vulgarity.

With an effort, I was able to control myself. I looked at her face, her smile, her eyes. It was Pauline herself, intrinsic and perfect. Nothing had really changed her.

Then, as I contemplated her image in the shadowy recesses of the mirror, within the dark border of wreaths, garlands, and angels, she seemed different. It was as if I had discovered another version of Pauline, as if I saw her in a new way. I gave thanks for the separation that had interrupted my habit of seeing her, but had returned her to me more beautiful than ever.

“I must go,” said Pauline. “Julius is waiting for me.”

I perceived a strange mixture of scorn and anguish in her voice. I thought unhappily, “In the old days Pauline would not have been untrue to anyone.” When I looked up she was gone.

I waited for a moment; then I called her. I called her again. I went down to the entrance and ran along the street. She was nowhere in sight. I went back into the building, shivering. I said to myself, “The shower cooled things off.” But I noticed that the street was dry.

Returning to my apartment, I saw that it was nine o’clock. I did not feel like going out for dinner; I was afraid of meeting someone I knew. I made some coffee. I drank two or three cups and ate part of a piece of bread.

I did not even know when Pauline and I would see each other again. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to ask her to clear up some of my doubts (doubts were tormenting me, but I knew she could clear them up easily). Suddenly my ingratitude startled me. Fate was offering me every happiness and I was not satisfied. That afternoon had been the culmination of both our lives. That was what it meant to Pauline, and to me. That was the reason why I had not asked for any explanation. (To speak, to ask questions would have been, somehow, to differentiate ourselves.)

But waiting until the next day to see Pauline seemed impossible. With an intense feeling of relief I resolved to go to Montero’s house that very evening. Immediately afterward I changed my mind. I could not do that without first speaking to Pauline. I decided to look for a friend—Louis Albert Morgan seemed to be the logical one—and ask him to tell me what he knew about Pauline’s life during my absence from Buenos Aires.

Then it occurred to me that the best thing would be simply to go to bed and sleep. When I had rested I would see everything more clearly. And, besides, I was not in the mood to hear anyone speak disparagingly of Pauline. Going to bed was like being put into a torture chamber (perhaps I remembered my nights of insomnia, when merely to stay in bed was a way to pretend not to be awake). I turned out the light.

I would not dwell on Pauline’s actions any longer. I knew too little to understand the situation. Since I was unable to empty my mind and to stop thinking, I would take refuge in the memory of that afternoon.

I would continue to love Pauline’s face even if I had found something strange and unnatural in her behavior. Her face was the same as always, the pure and marvelous face that had loved me before Montero made his abominable appearance in our lives. I said to myself, “There is a fidelity in faces that souls perhaps do not share.”

Or had I been mistaken all along? Was I in love with a blind projection of my preferences and dislikes? Had I never really known Pauline?

I selected one image from that afternoon—Pauline standing in front of the dark, smooth depths of the mirror—and tried to evoke it. When I could see the image, I had a sudden revelation: my doubts were caused by the fact that I was forgetting Pauline. I had tried to concentrate on the contemplation of her image. But imagination and memory are capricious faculties: I could see her tousled hair, a fold of her dress, the vague semidarkness around her, but not Pauline.

Many images, animated by spontaneous energy, passed before my closed eyes. And then I made a discovery. The small horse of jade could be seen on Pauline’s right, in a corner of the mirror, like something on the dark edge of an abyss.

At first I was not surprised; but after a few minutes I remembered that the figurine was not in my apartment. I had given it to Pauline two years ago.

I told myself that it was simply a superimposition of anachronous memories (the older one, of the horse; the more recent one, of Pauline). That explained it; my fears evaporated, and I should have gone to sleep. But then I had an outrageous, and in the light of what I was to learn later, a pathetic thought. “If I don’t go to sleep soon,” I reflected, “I’ll look haggard tomorrow and Pauline won’t find me interesting.”

Soon I realized that my memory of the figurine in the bedroom mirror was completely inaccurate. I had never put it in the bedroom. The only place in my apartment it had ever been was in the living room (on the bookshelf or in Pauline’s hands or in my own).

Terrified, I tried to conjure up those memories again. The mirror reappeared, outlined by angels and garlands of wood, with Pauline in the center and the little horse at the right side. I was not sure whether it reflected the room. Perhaps it did, but in a vague and summary way. On the other hand, the little horse was rearing splendidly on the shelf of the bookcase, which filled the whole background. A new person was hovering in the darkness at one side; I did not recognize him immediately. Then, with only slight interest, I noticed that I was that person.

I saw Pauline’s face, in its totality. It seemed to be projected to me by the extreme intensity of her beauty and her despair. When I awoke I was crying.

It was impossible to judge how long I had been sleeping. But my dream was no invention. It was an unconscious continuation of my imaginings, and reproduced the scenes of the afternoon faithfully.

I looked at my watch. It was five o’clock. I would get up early and, even at the risk of making Pauline angry, go to her house. That decision, however, did not relieve my anguish perceptibly.

I got up at seven-thirty, took a long bath, and dressed slowly.

I did not know where Pauline lived. The janitor at my building let me borrow his telephone book and city directory. Neither listed Montero’s address. I looked for Pauline’s name; it was not listed either. Then I discovered that someone else was living at Montero’s former residence. I thought I would ask Pauline’s parents for the address.

I had not seen them for a long time, not since I found out that Pauline loved Montero. Now, to explain, I would have to tell them how much I had suffered. I did not have the courage.

I decided to talk to Louis Albert Morgan. I could not go to his house before eleven. I wandered through the streets in a daze, pausing to speculate on the shape of a molding, or pondering on the meaning of a word heard at random. I remember that at Independence Square a woman, with her shoes in one hand and a book in the other, was walking up and down on the damp grass in her bare feet.

Morgan received me in bed, drinking from an enormous bowl which he held with both hands. I caught a glimpse of a whitish liquid with a piece of bread floating on the surface.

“Where does Montero live?” I asked.

He had finished drinking the milk, and was fishing bits of bread from the bottom of the cup.

“Montero is in jail,” he replied.

I could not conceal my amazement.

“What?” Morgan continued. “Didn’t you know?”

He undoubtedly imagined that I knew everything except that one detail, but because he liked to talk he told me the whole story. I thought that I was going to faint, that I had fallen suddenly into a pit; and there, too, I heard the ceremonious, implacable, and precise voice that related incomprehensible facts with the monstrous and unquestioning conviction that they were already known to me.

This is what Morgan told me: Suspecting that Pauline would come to visit me the day before I left for Europe, Montero hid in the garden. He saw her come out; he followed her; he overtook her in the street. When a crowd began to gather, he forced her to get into a taxi. They drove around all night along the shore and out by the lakes, and early the next morning he shot her to death in a hotel in the suburbs. That had not happened yesterday; it had happened the night before I left for Europe; it had happened two years ago.

In life’s most terrible moments we tend to fall into a kind of protective irresponsibility. Instead of thinking about what is happening to us, we focus our attention on trivialities.

At that moment I asked Morgan, “Do you remember the last party I gave before I went to Europe?”

Morgan said that he did.

“When you noticed I was concerned, and you went to my bedroom to call Pauline, what was Montero doing?” I asked.

“Nothing,” replied Morgan briskly. “Nothing. Oh, now I remember. He was looking at himself in the mirror.”

I went back to my apartment. In the entrance hall I met the janitor. Affecting indifference, I asked if he knew that Miss Pauline had died.

“Why, of course!” he said. “It was in all the papers. The police even came here to question me.” The man looked at me curiously. “Are you all right? Do you want me to help you upstairs?” he asked.

I said no, and hurried up to my apartment. I have a vague memory of struggling with the key; of picking up some letters under the door; and of throwing myself face down on my bed.

Later, I was standing in front of the mirror thinking, “I am sure that Pauline visited me last night. She died knowing that her marriage to Montero had been a mistake—an atrocious mistake—and that we were the truth. She came back from death to complete her destiny, our destiny.” I remembered a sentence that Pauline had written in a book years ago: “Ours have already been united.” I kept thinking, “Last night it finally happened, at the moment when I made love to her.” Then I told myself, “I am unworthy of her. I have doubted, I have been jealous. She came back from death to love me.”

Pauline had pardoned me. Never before had we loved each other so much. Never before had we been so close to each other.

I was still under the spell of that sad and triumphant intoxication of love when I wondered—or rather, when my brain, accustomed to the habit of proposing alternatives, wondered—whether there was another explanation for the visit of the previous night. Then, like a thunderbolt, the truth came to me.

Now I wish I could find that I am mistaken again. Unfortunately, as always happens when the truth comes out, my horrible explanation clarifies the things that seemed mysterious. They, in turn, confirm the truth.

Our wretched love did not draw Pauline from her grave. There was no ghost of Pauline. What I embraced was a monstrous ghost of my rival’s jealousy.

The key to it all is found in Pauline’s visit to me the night before I sailed for Europe. Montero followed her and waited for her in the garden. He quarreled with her all night long, and because he did not believe her explanations—but how could he have doubted her integrity?—he killed her the next morning.

I imagined him in jail, brooding about her visit to me, picturing it to himself with the cruel obstinacy of his jealousy.

The image that entered my apartment was a projection of Montero’s hideous imagination. The reason I did not discover it then was that I was so touched and happy that I desired only to follow Pauline’s bidding. And yet there were several clues. One was the rain. During the visit of the real Pauline—the night before I sailed—I did not hear the rain. Montero, in the garden, felt it directly on his body. When he imagined us, he thought that we had heard it. That is why I heard the rain last night. And then I found that the street was dry.

The figurine is another clue. I had it in my apartment for just one day: the day of my party. But for Montero it was like a symbol of the place. That is why it appeared last night.

I did not recognize myself in the mirror because Montero did not imagine me clearly. Nor did he imagine the bedroom with precision. He did not really know Pauline. The image projected by Montero behaved in a way that was unlike Pauline and, what is more, it even talked like him.

The fantasy Montero invented is his torment. My torment is more real. It is the certainty that Pauline did not come back to me because she was disenchanted in her love. It is the certainty that she never really loved me at all. It is the certainty that Montero knew about aspects of her life that I have heard others mention obliquely. It is the certainty that when I embraced her—in the supposed moment of the union of our souls—I obeyed a request from Pauline that she never made to me, one that my rival had heard many times.