“Let me drink. How grateful I’d be, if you would make me a present of the rest of this bottle! I’ll need it after meeting you like this. It’s going to make me think of too many things. I love life!... Better than anything ... and I’m not afraid of misfortune nor poverty, if I can only go on living ... but I’m afraid of memories, and whiskey kills them ... or else it takes the sting out of them.... Let me drink ... don’t refuse!”
And as Robledo remained silent, Elena took possession of the bottle and filled her glass twice in succession, but now she drank slowly, enjoying each drop that crossed her palate. And as she drank she pointed out the girl who was still smoking and coughing.
“They’re all like that here ... morphine, cocaine, all that kind of thing is what they go in for. But I’m old-fashioned. Drugs make me sick. This is the only thing for me!”
And her hands lovingly caressed the neck of the whiskey bottle. A strange lucidity animated her face more and more as she drank. But, at finding herself the undisputed owner of the whiskey, she wanted to be alone to enjoy it quietly, and she said to Robledo,
“Go away now, and forget me. If you want to give me something, I’ll be grateful of course. But if you don’t I’ll be content with the bottle. That’s a princely gift ... go away Robledo ... you don’t belong here.”
But he paid no attention to her words. He still wanted to prod her memory, to draw from it another episode of her mysterious past.
“And Canterac?... Did you ever meet Captain Canterac again?”
But the name was even less effective in bringing her memory to life than the others he had mentioned. To help her out he recalled the park made in her honor on the banks of the Rio Negro.
“That was a unique party! I remember.... But other men have done even more extravagant things for me than that ... still it was an original idea.... Poor captain! I saw him a great many times afterward. I think he’s a general now. What did you say his name was?”
She went on talking about what she remembered of him but Robledo discovered that she was confusing Canterac with some other officer whom she had known. She was making one person of two whom she had met in different periods of her life.