Rosaura A Las Diez

“You dream a lot! And what difference does it make if you dream or don’t dream if all the time you’re asleep? Besides, this is the first time I’ve heard that dreaming is bad for you. We all dream.”

Mrs. Milagros’s assumption that Camilo is misrepresenting his own medical needs is an early example of The Faulty Nature of Presuppositions. This episode foreshadows the later revelation that Camilo’s dreams are in fact day terrors that distort his understanding of reality.

“The one most affected by the pink notes and the mystery surrounding them was Miss Eufrasia. The poor thing belongs to the group of ladies who, if they had their way, would castrate everyone so people couldn’t think about ‘things like that,’ as Matilda put it, and so have lots of company in their celibacy. The letters ended up making her sick.”

The insults that Mrs. Milagros aims at Eufrasia are frequently based on her romantic status as an unmarried older woman. This is one of many examples throughout the book of how gender and sexuality dictate how characters treat one another and how social pressure is applied to conform to romantic ideals.

“From that moment on, my martyrdom became more severe. Because more weeks passed, other letters arrived, and I who knew, had to pretend that I knew nothing. I, who knew the fiery content of those pink envelopes, had to prolong the farce of carrying them to his night table as if they were innocent letters that didn’t soil my hands or turn me into a go-between for his amorous correspondence.”

Just as Mrs. Milagros likens Camilo to a martyr in other passages, she likens herself to a martyr here. This hyperbole is followed by other hyperbolic language: calling the letters “fiery” and imagining that they are so immoral that they “soil” her. Such obvious exaggerations indicate that Mrs. Milagros is intentionally warping her story to control the inspector’s impression of her.

“It’s too bad, the way people are. They can’t get along among themselves, but when it comes to dragging someone over the coals they’re all in perfect agreement, and in such a congenial way that you’d think they were the greatest of friends.” 

One of Mrs. Milagros’s many generalizing statements, the landlady implies that she is above the immoral behaviors that she observes in others. These hypocritical moralizing statements indicate that Mrs. Milagros is an unreliable narrator, a fact that’s reinforced by the novel’s structure incorporating several testimonies.

“They talked for an hour, if you can call it talking to sit around stupidly discussing, like a couple of children, whether Googoo paints better than Sensen, or whether Sensen is better than Renwar.”

The satiric misspelling of Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Renoir’s names in this sentence is intended to emphasize Mrs. Milagros’s disregard for Camilo’s interest in art. Though it is unclear whether Mrs. Milagros is intentionally mispronouncing these names for dramatic effect or genuinely does not know the names of the artists, it is abundantly clear that she does not place much worth in this crucial aspect of Camilo’s identity.

“As Camilo told me all this, I thought: Just look at the castles this man built all because some woman showed some interest in him, some sign of friendliness and so much the worse since he’s alone. Men like to make a big thing out of a simple gesture. Right away they think a girl is crazy over them.”

This is another one of Mrs. Milagros’s generalizing claims, this time about gender roles in romantic settings. The idea of Camilo building Rosa a castle evokes traditional ideals of chivalric romance, though in this case, Mrs. Milagros sees Camilo’s chivalry as foolish and misplaced. Even cast in the light of a romantic hero, Camilo is underestimated by those around him.

“Did you say that Rosa’s portrait wasn’t found among Camilo’s things? A pity, because it was a genuine work of art.”

Here, the word “genuine” takes on ironic meaning in retrospect since it is later revealed that Camilo is not a genuine artist at all. The Mrs. Milagros holds the painting in high regard is further confirmation that she is not well-versed in art, and this is a blind spot in her testimony.

“Camilo was stupefied, his spirits sagging; he had no strength in his body left to even blink. It seemed to him that half an hour went by, but it was more likely ten minutes. The house was submerged in a deadly silence, as if it were at the bottom of the sea […] Fantastic ideas crossed his mind. Rosa has died, he thought. They’ve locked me in. They’re trying to kill me.”

The use of imagery related to drowning in this moment points towards Camilo’s mental health crisis, though Mrs. Milagros does not realize this as she says it. Camilo will later use similar imagery to describe his experience of all-consuming dreams, rendering the idea of drowning shorthand for his psychological condition.

“I remember the clock in the dining room struck ten. Ten strokes that sounded to me like the tolling of a bell for the dead. At that precise moment the front doorbell rang. It sounded weak and lifeless, but it rang for a long time, as if it were never going to stop. It was like the moan of some dying person calling for help. (As you can see, that night everything had a morbid tinge for me.) The sound made us all jump. Why did it have that effect?”

Just as Réguel and Eufrasia seek to convince the inspector that they had some prophetic notion of Rosa’s death before it happened, Mrs. Milagros imbues the moment of Rosa’s arrival with imagery related to death. Whether or not she actually experienced events this way is for readers to interpret.

“She looked at me with her eyes wide open, gaze fixed, as if I were telling her a fairytale and she was waiting to hear the end. She hadn’t touched her coffee.” 

Though Mrs. Milagros intends the simile in this observation as pure fiction (to her mind, Rosa could not possibly think of her story as a fairytale), it actually reveals the truth of Rosa’s (Marta’s) ignorance. As with many of Mrs. Milagros’s observations, she is engaging in a form of verbal irony where she minimizes the significance of things that are actually essential to solving the case.

“You know what sleep is like during the siesta. It’s different from the sleep you have at night. Sleeping at night is like dying. You lose all awareness of yourself. But the siesta is different. You sleep, but you know you’re sleeping; you still feel alive, and you still feel time passing. You can even tell when you’re going to wake up.”

Mrs. Milagros’s description of the siesta contributes to the theme of Fantasies That Bleed Into Reality. During her naps, she experiences an altered state of consciousness that echoes Camilo’s descriptions of his disorienting dreams.

“When I think that I am, after a certain fashion, and especially for you, I won’t say the principal figure in this whole affair, nor will I say the protagonist, but certainly a deuteragonist who, at certain times, monopolizes the entire dramatic interest; or if you wish, the seeing Coryphaeus in the midst of heroes blinded by destiny. In other words, the Tathagata…What? The Tathagata? Tathagata is one of the other names of Buddha Siddartha. It means ‘He who has reached the truth.’ And Buddha means ‘The enlightened one.’ And Siddartha: ‘He who fulfilled his purpose.’”

Though he feigns humility in the opening lines of this quotation, it is clear that Réguel means the opposite of what he says. He does indeed see himself as a protagonist, as is confirmed by comparing himself to the Buddha. This egocentrism characterizes the entirety of Réguel’s testimony.

“I had the opportunity to psychoanalyze her. Naturally without her being aware of the fact […] I subjected her to careful questionings, and from her replies I constructed an entire map of her psyche, including that dark continent of her subconscious.”

Réguel’s self-proclaimed psychoanalysis invokes the idea of Freud and Freudian theory, an indirect reference that is repeated throughout the novel. By imagining himself as a Freud-like figure, Réguel claims power over Rosa, whom he idealizes at the same time that he demeans her.

“Camilo hated Rosa because, by appealing to his manhood, she obliged him to discover that he wasn’t a man, since he couldn’t return her feelings. And he hated her with a fresh, fresh, hatred.”

Réguel’s narrative about Rosa and Camilo hinges on his own perception of gender dynamics, suggesting that his account of others is actually a reflection of himself. This claim, delivered to the inspector as though it were objective fact relevant to the case, is highly subjective, making Réguel another unreliable narrator.

“The lighted car looks like an aquarium, and the passengers inside, with their noses pressed to the windows—do you get the picture?—look like fish, gazing out with the same expression, with the same blinking of the eyes that you get from fishes in a fishbowl.”

In this metaphor, Réguel describes himself as a blinking fish, bewildered by the world outside its aquarium. This is an out-of-character self-description for Réguel, who imagines himself to be superior in intellect to the vast majority of people. Réguel manages to maintain his self-superiority by being aware of his status as a fish in the fishbowl, whereas the other fish are not.

“The moment came for the newlyweds to leave. My heart froze. Rosa alone with Camilo. Rosa at the mercy of the minotaur. At the very last instant before they left, when some imbecile suggested that they turn the lights out, she had time to look at me. She looked at me steadily then. And I understood. Vergiss mich nicht, she was saying to me.”

Réguel’s metaphor likening Camilo to the Minotaur, a bloodthirsty mythological monster, necessarily places himself in the role of Theseus, the hero who defeats the Minotaur. The clarity with which he interprets Rosa’s gaze is an essential instance of a faulty presupposition, where Réguel confidently assumes that he knows what is happening but has no concrete evidence for his assumptions. The German phrase he uses translates to “forget me not.”

“Then I began to laugh, to laugh hysterically, because the tall slender boy had the voice of a woman.”

Réguel’s testimony ends with the implication that the hotel owner’s associate, the Minister, is genderqueer (the novel never fully clarifies this implication, and so it is left for readers to interpret the precise meaning). Réguel’s laughter at this realization has a malicious effect, confirming the ambient hostility toward gender nonconformity that has been present throughout the book.

“All modern painting is phony. It has to be. Because if it weren’t, it would disappear. Ah, but the farce—ha, ha!—the farce can’t last forever.”

Camilo’s philosophical thoughts about the nature of modern art have a double meaning since he too has carried out a farce that inevitably ended. When Camilo speaks of the phoniness of modern art, therefore, he is also speaking about his own phoniness. The interjection of his laughter adds an erratic effect to these observations, alluding to his psychological instability, which will become more evident later on.

“I don’t know what you have lying in the morgue. I’m talking about Rosa. Rosa is purely an invention, a creation of mine. Rosa belongs to me completely. I gave birth to her, I gave her life, shape, face, name. I was able to make her disappear.”

Camilo’s revelatory declaration that Rosa was originally a figment of his imagination recalls the figure of Doctor Frankenstein creating his monster, as the painter claims her existence entirely for himself. The use of the pronoun “what” as opposed to “who” to describe her body further objectifies Rosa, indicating that he is entirely unconcerned with her humanity, real or imaginary.

“Waking for me is like coming up from the bottom of the sea, like rising slowly to the surface from some oceanic abyss, covered with lichen, dripping with green seaweed, spongy and viscid.”

The imagery of drowning returns, this time in Camilo’s description of his psychological condition. Evocative, grotesque adjectives create an immersive effect, bringing the reader closer to Camilo’s experience and generating empathy and repulsion for him at the same time.

“And then Rosa’s face approaching me. Rosa’s face, growing larger, falling on me. But it’s a dream. Ha, ha. It’s a dream. I’m Camilo Canegato. But Rosa is a dream. Rosa, go away! Rosa, disappear! But Rosa stayed there, Rosa prevailed, Rosa persisted, over days and nights, through shouts and weeping, voices, calls. How much time had passed since Mrs. Milagros stood up, upset the chair, and shouted ‘Rosa!’? Centuries, centuries. And through it all, Rosa unharmed, Rosa intact, Rosa eternal…”

During Camilo’s altered state of consciousness, sentence fragments convey that he is losing his grip on reality. His conviction that “centuries” have passed since Rosa came to La Madrileña, despite the brevity of this passage, suggests a psychological experience that readers do not have full access to.

“If, when I woke up, there was a body in the bed, I’m not guilty. The guilt belongs to the person who, knowing that I was dreaming, knowing that Rosa was a dream, wanted to take the place of that dream, and accepted the name, the face, and the soul of Rosa.”

Camilo describes Marta’s impersonation of Rosa as a fully conscious, deliberate decision, suggesting that she is to blame for her own death at the same time that he distances himself from any blame. This line of thinking is complicated by the letter Marta sends to her aunt, in which she reveals that she is bewildered by the welcome she received at La Madrileña, highlighting the state of duress she was under when seeking out Camilo’s help.

“Miss Eufrasia, who has not read Matthew but who has read Hugo Wast, says, raising her finger like a prophetess, ‘The rock cast aside by the architects may well prove to be the keystone of the building.’”

The final, most essential quote from Eufrasia’s testimony is a multilayered allusion, as the inspector’s narration indicates. The first layer, which Eufrasia herself does not appreciate, is a reference to the biblical Book of Matthew 21:42, in which Jesus says “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The second layer is a reference to the writings of Hugo Wast, an Argentinian novelist who was also the country’s Minister of Justice and Public Instruction between 1943 and 1944. Wast was a controversial Catholic nationalist and antisemite.