Rosaura A Las Diez

In Part 5, testimony is not offered to the police inspector as with every part of the novel. Instead, the testimony is given to Marta’s aunt in the form of a letter. With such a drastically different audience and context, this account of events may be perceived as more transparent and honest; though Marta may seek to impress her aunt, she has no reason to protect herself in the way that other witnesses do while speaking to the police. As such, the letter functions as the book’s final unveiling of the truth, the traditional “reveal” that takes place at the end of most mystery novels.

After many passages in which other characters portray “Rosa” according to their romantic ideals, the true Rosa (Marta) reveals herself to be quite different than how anyone else had imagined her. Satiric misspellings throughout the letter convey that Marta is not as affluent or educated as the others—Réguel in particular—assume she is. These misspellings also evoke a letter presented in its “raw” form, unedited for the eyes of readers. Coupled with Marta’s frequently crass way of speaking about things—“I went along with it for the money. I knew how to shake it out of him” (190-91)—these details help carve out Marta’s distinctive voice and bring readers closer to the unsanitized truth. Rather than a romantic heroine who takes fate into her own hands to be with Camilo, Marta is an impoverished, uneducated woman who has been forced into sex work. Her only chance at safety is to assume Rosa’s identity.

Another aspect of Marta that is far more nuanced than any of the other characters conceived is the issue of her victimhood. In the letter, her desperation and terror are put in the plainest terms: “I was hungry, cold, afraid, everything” (187). Having been abandoned by her aunt and having no resources of her own, she is exploited and subjected to human trafficking and sexual abuse. The severity of her circumstances makes Camilo’s story of a girl trapped in a mansion with a strict father seem like a fairytale. Even Mrs. Milagros, who suspected that Rosa was subjected to domestic abuse, did not even begin to consider that “Rosa” (Marta) might have a much darker reality. Throughout her story, Marta is abused not only by her aunt (who pimps her out to Camilo) but by her trusted friend Iris, by the hotel owner and the Minister, by Camilo (who sees her as a sex object), and by society at large, which views her as worthless.

This undeniable victimhood, however, is complicated by the way Marta victimizes others. Her bruises are evidence of the Minister’s assault, but they are also evidence of Iris’s self-defense against Marta. After being held hostage, Marta attacks Iris with an unnerving sense of relish: “I squashed her for what she was, a filthy bug, until she was a mess” (189). Though she attacks out of fear for her life, Marta speaks of the incident in terms that dehumanize Iris and perpetuate the same cycles of violence that she has been victimized by. In addition, she extorts Camilo ruthlessly, knowing that she has been able to get large amounts of money from him in the past. Her description of Camilo’s body is also cruel: “When he undressed, with his hat on right up until the last, with those short, skinny little child’s legs, and his small pink little chest with the fuzz of hair on it, a huge laugh came roaring up out of my stomach” (190). In these ways, Marta goes beyond being a purely innocent victim, as Mrs. Milagros and Réguel imagine her to be, and shows herself to be petty and cruel, someone who inflicts harm in whatever ways she can. These complexities are the final proof of The Faulty Nature of Presuppositions, with the book’s grand reveal solving not only the mystery of the murder but also the mystery of how each witness oversimplified Rosa’s story and character altogether.