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was the port of Singapore, swarming with bicycles and with people in cone-shaped hats, and strange-looking houses in the background. Vapors from the heat of a hazy dawn woke me. Through the strips of the Venetian blinds, the first rays of the sun drew on the floor a yellow staircase that climbed obliquely up the fringes of Nena’s bedspread.
    I had no desire to get up. I knew that I was again about to begin a day identical to the others: cod-liver oil, bread with butter and jam, coffee with milk, the morning lost in waiting for dinner, and finally the interminable hours after dinner, my Latin, Mama dozing in the living room, Nena singing “Banana Boat” to herself in her
pied-à-terre
dragging Belafonte behind her. All this until that afternoon when Nena crossed the garden at a run, stood under the living room window, called, “Mama! Mama!” and made that statement. It was a Saturday afternoon. I remember the day because Saturdaymorning the grocer came, stopped the delivery van in front of the main gate, and unloaded what Mama had ordered by telephone. That particular morning he had also brought the caramel puddings that Nena adored. I would have liked them, too, but I tried to control myself because they hurt the cavity in my molar and I had to wait until September to go to the dentist because Aunt Yvonne was coming for a week in September and she would take care of it. Can you imagine for one moment Mama being willing to take me down to the city? I was concentrating on studying
Jupiter-Jovis
, which had an infamous declension, even though it fortunately lacked the plural, and so at first I took no notice of the statement. Besides, Nena often came to bother me or to distract Mama with sentences like, “Hurry, quick, Belafonte hurt himself!” or “Mama, when I’m grown up can I make my hair blue like Aunt Yvonne’s?” And if you consented to listen to her, heaven help you—she would begin to be impertinent and wouldn’t stop. The best thing was to discourage her from the beginning by pretending not to hear. So that time it took me perhaps a minute to realize what she had said. I had my head in my hands and was desperately repeating the ablative. Nena’s statement seemed like more of her usual nonsense. But all of a sudden I felt a blast of heat rise to my forehead. Then I began to shake, and I realized that my hands were trembling on the Minerva of my Latin grammar, which had closed by itself.
    I don’t know how long I remained motionless, with my hands inert on the book, unable to stand up. It seemed that a glass bell had descended over the house and plunged it into silence. From my table I could see Mama, who had got up from the armchair and was leaning on the windowsill, very pale. The handkerchief had fallen to the floor. She supported herself on the windowsill as if she were about to fall, and I saw her move her mouth as she talked to Nena, but by a strange magic I heard nothing. Her slowly moving lips looked like the mouth of a fish in the agony of death. Then I made asudden movement, the little table my knee had bumped groaned on the floor, and it was as if I had pushed a button—the sound returned around me, I heard again the concert of the cicadas in the garden, the whistle of a train in the distance, the buzzing of a bee which attacked the screen, and Mama’s inexpressive voice, automatic and distant, saying, “Come into the house now, love. It’s too hot. You need to take a nap. You can’t stay out there in that humidity—it’s not good for children.”
    It was a strange afternoon. Nena resigned herself without raising objections to rest on the divan, something that had never happened before, and when she woke up she stayed quietly in the kitchen drawing pictures. That day I wasn’t able to study Latin no matter how hard I tried. I forced myself to concentrate on the adjectives with three endings and I repeated them stubbornly, but my mind was far away. It ran as if crazed after that statement