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would bring. And the fact that I was completely anonymous? I was aware—no doubt about it—that nobody remembered me, that the world actedas if I had not been born. Less visible than an Indian or a nigger, much less visible than one of those tramps sleeping in the street. At least people don’t walk on one of those; they side step the smell from the shit glued to their unwashed asses. They take them into account. But not even that, for me. People I have known for years stumble against me, push me. If I’m lucky, they’ll apologize: Oh, so sorry, they say, without the faintest show of familiarity, never able to tell who I am. One day, in front of our home, my own father gave me a shove. Not only did he not recognize me, on top of that he insulted me: “Why the fuck don’t you watch where you’re going?” Blaming me for his clumsiness.
    I still had not fully understood that this semivisibility, my esteemed Doctor, could in other circumstances constitute an advantage. I would be able to circulate among people and find out each one of their secrets, follow my closest relatives, schoolmates, colleagues, and never be noticed. Later, when I had gained access to the state archives, to medical files, school report cards, confidential memos from insurance agents, not to speak of the inexhaustible documents of the Department of Traffic Accidents, it would have been easy to humble someone like Enriqueta, to add her to my collection.
    But I was as defenseless as any child of six. More defenseless, because I had no knickknack to sell, no rhyme to recite, no cute song to trill. There was not in me even one smile with which to coax some dessert out of a mother or to blackmail an uncle into taking me to the movies. How was I to know how unusual it was to remember each intense face so well, each pimple and pore on each cheek, each soft or blustery mustache? I believed—and you know, Doctor, I may still believe—that all children have a similar talent. It may be that I had to preserve and develop mine because, unlike other children, I had no other skill with which to replace that natural aptitude everyone is born with.
    For several months, I waited for the opportunity to render Enriqueta some unheard-of service: to gallop to the rescue, to save her from some ogre—someone like you, Doctor—who wanted to steal her face. And as such an occasion did not present itself, I decided to bribe her with a gift. Not an easy thing to do. I did not receive an allowance. When I asked for it, my father would assure methat it had already been given to me and that I was trying to cheat him. He had instantly contrived for himself some sort of ice-cold memory. That’s how it always was with me: not only did people refuse to see me, but when I protested, they would cram me into their invented reminiscences so as to quickly get rid of me. I was inserted, over and over, into a past that they convinced themselves existed but that I had never lived. I was condemned, therefore, to manufacture the gift by myself.
    I chose to send her some drawings, one each day. Double mistake. The first: I was unable to cross two lines in the right place, unable to close a wavering circle, unable to paint the colors of the rainbow without seeing them run like tears. A justifiable awkwardness. My hand anticipated instinctively what my eyes would discover someday: that only a photo does not lie. Or some photos, at least, Doctor. But that was not all. The drawings themselves were deceitful. Enriqueta was frivolous, cruel, merciless, but I pictured her as magnificent and benign, generous as a smiling sun. As if by merely describing her in this way, Malaveri, she would magically be converted into that person. Many years would pass before I realized that this sort of procedure, which plastic surgeons have perfected in order to capture people’s souls, was of no use to me. Did I also want to impose upon a skin that did not deserve it the forgery of a beautiful mask? I had not