Summary

In “The Saint,” the narrator ran into Margarito Duarte in Rome after 22 years (36). He looked old and worn, but the narrator started to see him “as he had been” (36). When he asked about the Saint’s whereabouts, Margarito informed him she was present and waiting. His words unnerved the speaker. Only he and “the tenor Rafael Ribero Silva” understood the Saint’s significance (36).

Decades prior, Margarito came to Rome from his village in the Colombian Andes (37). The narrator met him when Margarito visited the consulate with a “pine box” containing his dead daughter’s body (37). She had died at seven, a few years after his wife. When their cemetery was moved, Margarito “disinterred the bones of his dead,” discovering that his daughter’s body had not decayed (37). Convinced her preservation was a sign of her saintliness, he brought...