The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Back in the present day, the rainy season has started in earnest. Antonio lies in his hammock considering what it might be like to live in the great Western cities of Paris, London, or Geneva. But mostly he thinks about snow, remembering what it was like when he was a child living in the mountains. He contemplates the “unforgivable extravagance” (62) of the characters in his book dirtying the fresh snow. One night as Antonio dives for crayfish, he hears someone shouting that a canoe is abreast of the town. He walks to the quay and sees settlers and the mayor, who sits fat and shirtless under a huge black umbrella, looking at the canoe tied to the quay. Inside is another dead man, a gold prospector named Napoleon Salinas. When he is fished out of the canoe, his gold-toothed smile “aroused no admiration” (66). Salinas is one of the people who had his rotten teeth “patched up with bits of gold” (66) rather than removed.

The mayor asks Antonio if the death is due to the cat again. Antonio, “his mind still on the crayfish” (67), looks at the dead man and affirms that

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