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though I had no choice but to wait until the old man had finished writing, put his fountain pen back into the pocket of his guayabera, and told me he’d see me next Wednesday at the same time to continue the treatment, that we had made a lot of progress but still needed a couple of sessions before he would be able to tell me anything about it. “You need a lot of patience and trust,” he said, standing up to accompany me to the elevator, while I swallowed all my questions, which were actually only one: what had I told him?

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    I THOUGHT ABOUT IT INCESSANTLY , I told myself that it was ridiculous, the events were too fresh, too recent, I wouldn’t be able to avoid opening my big trap while I was there, on that table, hypnotized and at the mercy of Don Chente’s questions, which is why I should call him the day before and tell him any lie whatsoever to get out of showing up at his apartment, that’s what I thought, but Tuesday night came and I still hadn’t summoned the courage to call him, as if I were paralyzed and without any willpower of my own, truly bewildered in the wake of the events that had swallowed up both my weekend and my sense of sanity; I had the impression that the fact that I’d been hypnotized was somehow connected to my outrageous behavior, as if the session with Don Chente, the contents of which I didn’t remember, had expanded the shadowy realms inside me, realms I hadn’t known even existed. That’s why, on Wednesday afternoon, my inertia unchecked and in a vulnerable and defenseless state of mind, I arrived punctually at Don Chente’s apartment, resigned to the possibility that I would tell him things that would be shameful for me to admit.
    The thing is, going crazy happens in a matter of seconds, as I found out that Friday afternoon when I received a phone call from a stranger who didn’t utter a word, who only breathed into the mouthpiece for about twenty seconds at the most, long enough for me to suspect that it was that two-bit actor Eva had slept with, and I was about to tell him off, but he hung up before I could, all of which perturbed me even more, needless to say, because that call was proof that Eva was still seeing him, in spite of her protests to the contrary, and also because I suddenly saw myself as the odd man out, the ugly duckling—I didn’t even know Antolín’s last name much less his telephone number so I could call him back. By the time Eva returned home half an hour later, I had left behind my initial perturbation and was now in an extremely agitated state of mind, because time only makes bad get worse, as I realized on that occasion when I exploded, went berserk, shouted at her that my role in life wasn’t to take calls from an imbecile who didn’t even have the courage to speak to me, that she was an inveterate liar and had most likely just come from having her pussy pummeled by that two-bit actor, and if she got pregnant again she shouldn’t even think of telling me. To my surprise, however, instead of breaking down in tears or becoming hysterical, Eva told me in a consummately detached tone of voice that I should stop acting like a moron, she had not seen Antolín again, but he had taken it into his head to pursue her by telephone, at the office and at home, and she was as put out by it as I was, because that two-bit actor’s pursuit of her was affecting her at work; the guy seemed impervious to reason, determined to prove to her that he was suffering because he loved her and was desperate to see her alone, even if it was only one last time, that’s how truly screwed up the poor guy was. And it became evident that only the devil himself knows the pathways taken by our self-esteem: instead of feeling pity for the scorned Romeo, I was flooded with hatred and a yearning for vengeance, feelings that were in all respects irrational if what I supposedly wanted was to be rid of Eva, to let her live her own life without interfering in mine, in separate countries