Summary

In this story, the narrator is visiting a new town. He has been traveling for eight weeks and is estranged from his wife. He was reading in a bar in the new town when an older gentleman named Marcial told him, “You read so beautifully” (180). Marcial and the narrator struck up a conversation, and Marcial told him that he was on a year-long drinking binge following his wife’s death.

When the narrator left the bar, Marcial followed him home. The two men went to sit in a park near the narrator’s hotel. Marcial correctly guessed that the narrator was from the capital, then said he needed money, which the narrator told him he did not have. As they parted ways, Marcial showed the narrator a knife and confessed that he had originally been planning to rob him...