There are dogs that will carry their quarry around for days. Though long dead, the prey seems to retain something vital for the hunter — if it didn’t, it would have been forgotten, as happens when there is nothing left of the victim but a sad tatter of hide. Sometimes I imagine a brief dialogue, a diminutive fable without lasting significance: the prey says, “Please, no,” and the hunter responds, “Yes” and carries out his plan. I don’t know where these sudden thoughts come from, though the situations to which they seem to allude are often fairly obvious. In the universal language of entreaty, “Please, no” is a last request, already denied, made when the end is near. In the real world, this “Please, no” is almost certainly the most-repeated final plea in history. I think the reason the hunter does not abandon his prey, even when it’s no more than a strip of leather, is that in it the scene of the “Please, no” lives on. On the vast plains, the steepest precipices, the solitary steppe, it’s always the same. As Delia and I walked along, I suddenly wondered who was leading whom. Some part of what she offered meant everything to me; this is sometimes summed up by the word “love,” though it’s also true that a word can mean many things at once, and that these meanings are usually different and contradictory. At the same time, as I said above, I never knew exactly what it was that I gave to her. It can also happen that the hunter needs to drag the remains of the victim around because it is the only thing that allows him to forget the nature that surrounds him, the blind and bestial world he cannot escape. With its compulsory passivity, the former prey condenses the details of the scene, bringing together all the qualities of their surroundings; the lifeless victim is thus the hunter’s talisman, an anti-heroic “trophy.” This interpretation may seem somewhat mystical, but I haven’t found one that describes the situation better. Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? Shedding light, sitting down to find an explanation that gives the question meaning. The definitive thing about magic is not that it proves the implausible can occur, and therefore that it exists, but that it attempts to show that the implausible relies on magic to announce that it is improbable. But sometimes the unforeseen does take us by surprise, not so much because it is unexpected, but because it is irrational. I’ve read many novels that try to present the supernatural as natural. A reality that had been concealed until that moment, lying in wait, reveals itself; nature is concerned only with hiding itself while characters submit to, are torn apart by, and retreat from its unfamiliar laws, and so on. The problem is that nature never alludes to itself, and the supernatural is the most innocent way it makes its presence felt. As we know, the prey gives life to the hunter.

Earlier, I mentioned the meaning loans tended to have for Delia. The ownership of a thing was a secondary quality, one that might have a negative or restrictive effect, though this could easily be resolved by lending it out. Within the community of workers, or the social order of the neighborhood, objects sometimes attained collective ownership. The “owner” of something became its guardian, to put it one way, and everyone knew that they could use it whenever they needed, if not immediately, then at least without complications. This was expressed in everyday life, in even the most minor details and mundane circumstances. And so, eventually owning everything, or the greatest possible number of things, continued to be a dream for many or most of the workers, who knew very well how society in general functioned, but for whom all that had long ago turned into a mirage they recognized as useless. I think that, by lending these objects out, the workers were able to increase their density; to the material existence and primary function these things had, say, “at first glance,” was added an unexpected relevance that was multiplied through their circulation and exchange: the objects became more useful the more often they changed hands. And this turned out to benefit the workers, whose own existence was lean and whose belongings, as we know, were few. Just as the prey gives life to the hunter, loans enhance the identity of objects. A hammer, for example, becomes more of a hammer the more often it is lent out. But the hunter gives nothing back; at least, not to the prey. If he does give something back, he does so in such an ambiguous way that only an arduous process of investigation and verification could confirm it. One of the most significant differences is that the hunter believes he is taking what belongs to him; he feels something like entitlement, which helps him spot, give chase, corner, and so on, and finally kill. Another fable, slightly longer than the last, might clarify this difference. In the community of workers, for example, “Please” sets their exchanges in motion; the prey says, “Please, no,” while the hunter, as always, resorts to the habitual language of his monosyllabic “Yes.”

I should say that I knew Delia would lend me life as soon as I laid eyes on her. I write this in a figurative, rather than a literal, sense. I was able to confirm this premonition; it is a fact that stays with me to this day, so long after the last time I saw her. I’m not referring to the enhancements that come with the circulation I just described, but rather to something more, a supplementary vitality, a fantasy made real that, in its realization, sets itself outside of time and above all other things, beyond what we take in with our eyes. I’ll give an example. Right now I’m holding my pencil over my notebook, under the light, and the shadow — a slim pointer — crosses the blank lines of the yellow paper. Just like this shadow, with the depth and nuance it adds while reducing the color where it falls, Delia exerted a similar influence, faint yet absolute, over me. It doesn’t matter whether she was aware of this or not — perhaps if she’d known, she might not have done it. In any event, though it may sound vague, I’ll say it just the same: Delia cast a benevolent shadow over me. Like the tip of the pencil on the page, which not only writes but also projects a restless shadow that leaves no trace, or at least no visible one, I believe there were things Delia did that were meant to last, “to leave a mark” on me, and others that went unnoticed at the time and reappeared later, or were forgotten, and so on. In the first place, as is always the case, there were the memories, which require no proof. I won’t say anything about their quality; there are few things less exact. On the other hand, to talk about all this would be to talk about the form it took, and all I would be able to salvage of that would be my own vacillation. At times like this, one tries to find those essential elements; obeying the law of memory, one focuses on the detail in an attempt to read the marrow hidden at its core, within its nucleus of wisdom. But only conventional elements can be salvaged this way, primarily physical details recovered in the form of faces, figures, limbs, and so on. What I mean is that, in order to salvage the past, to salvage that which is hidden behind things, we also need the concrete and mechanical objects and situations that give us life to this day; it is this past that sustains us, but it abandons us if we recover it exactly as it was. There is a lesson in this, to which we should submit ourselves with humility and patience. And all the more so in Delia’s case, who, as I’ve said, folded in on herself even as she made her presence felt. A weakness that was part of her constitution made her tremble like the leaves. Upon finding herself exposed, generally after reacting to something, Delia would close herself off inside a delicate silence tinged with anticipation, like the moment before a glass breaks or the hunter attacks. These things were more than just bodies and faces, though they were, of course, expressed through them, making them conventional supplements. Something similar happened when her friend found herself exposed, both when I found her rubbings and when the man on the train handed her the distorted portrait. A reaction that lasts the briefest of moments, and for this reason might seem inappropriate or the result of some kind of disruption, but which leaves an enduring mark.