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it makes me uncomfortable to wear it, you’ll just have to tell me the story without ceremony. Agreed?”
    â€œAgreed,” he said.

CHAPTER 2
    T he nuns would never approve of what I was doing. Not even Mother Luisa Magdalena, my friend and protector, would understand my friendship with Manuel. That Sunday was not the first I had spent with him. I had seen him two or three times before the end of the previous school year and then several more after my summer vacation. We usually met at the Prado Museum, which I was used to visiting every Sunday. He would wait for me at the entrance, smoking and reading the paper next to the statue of Velázquez.
    I had told him about my Sunday visits to the museum when I wrote to him after our chance encounter. “Most Sundays I go to the Prado around eleven o’clock,” I wrote, perfectly aware of what I was insinuating.
    The first time I saw him there I was wearing a new, plum-colored wool cape. On my way to the museum, I wavered between being sure he’d be there and fearing he might not have taken my veiled hint; I felt different–more mature, more womanly. I know I was giving off a different air because of the way men looked and smiled at me. Some didn’t hold back even if they were in the company of a woman. Instead, the surreptitious exchanges seemed to add to their excitement. They flirted with me while they continued talking or hugging the women they were with. I was shocked by how experienced they seemed in their duplicity. I thought about my father. All week I had been distressed by the revelation of his infidelity. His ghost and the ghost of my mother had taken new life in my mind, as if every conversation and gesture of theirs stored in my memory were suddenly infused with new meaning. I was so mortified to have gained this knowledge now, when it could do no good, that I kept imagining I was living those memories anew, except that now I was scolding them, warning them of the price we would all have to pay for their marital crisis. And even though to a certain extent it helped me to appease the impotence I felt for having been an ignorant spectator to the drama, my effort to relive the past was choking me with all the words I wished I could have said to avert the tragedy. I felt hurt, tense. Perhaps that’s why I told Manuel about it.
    When I saw him, waiting for me by the Velázquez statue, I felt flushed. He walked over to greet me as if it were the most natural thing in the world. We had a long talk while we strolled through the gardens on Paseo del Prado. Queen Juana’s jealousy must have been like my mother’s, I said. He looked at me. He would have to tell me the whole story, he said. It was long and complex, it would last through many Sundays. After the summer vacation, I said. Once the school year started again, there would be no lack of Sundays.
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    I FOLLOWED HIM DOWNSTAIRS. HIS APARTMENT WAS LOCATED IN Malasaña, one of Madrid’s older neighborhoods. San Bernardo was one of the only wide streets in the area. Farther ahead it gave out to the Gran Vía. To get to his apartment one had to go up a narrow set of stairs, past a wrought iron entryway. Manuel had told me that the buildings on either side had once been part of a palace that belonged to one of his ancestors. He said he divided his time between that apartment and his aunt’s house. She needed his company as much as he needed his solitude.
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    THE BUILDING’S AGE EXPLAINED THE BIZARRE PARTITIONS THAT its current inhabitants had installed to make better use of the high ceilings. Manuel’s apartment, for instance, must have once been a huge salon with very high ceilings, but now it was a split-level. The door, entryway, bedroom, and bathroom were on the lower level, which was sodark it needed artificial light even in the daytime. From there, going up another short staircase and a trapdoor one came out onto a bright, well-ventilated room that