First Episode 

It was around six months ago that I met Cuca.  

I live in a secluded neighborhood in a house with no balcony. If I ever want to look onto the street, which isn’t often, I usually lean out of a beautiful window like those found in modern chalets.    

In one of those throwaway glances towards the alley, my eyes hit upon the nape of Cuca’s neck for the first time. It was a gorgeous nape brushed with a mix of powders: moondust, coty rose, and sky river water. Affixed to it and extending downward in a curve was the most elegant hair I’d ever contemplated in my life. 

She was fashionably dressed in a jade green suit that revealed shapely arms and unshapely legs. The shoes and tights that adorned her extremities were a dead straw yellow that evoked the feet of canaries. 

She stood quietly on the sidewalk, her back to my window, listening to a neighbor’s story about a dressmaker and some fabric. 

Out of nowhere, I burst out laughing like a madwoman; I had heard Cuca’s voice, and it sounded like a human voice emanating from a wooden larynx.  

When I managed to regain my self-control, I stayed silent to savor her words: she spoke like your average middle class 20-year-old.  

Then, for no reason whatsoever, I abandoned my post and ran towards her. Grabbing her by the shoulders I forced her to turn around, looked her in the face and said “I want to see your eyes!” 

She let out a scream, a tiny bird-like scream, and fixed her pupils on mine – algae-filled, reptilian, discolored pupils, made of a far off glass, a glass extracted  from the greenest, iciest night stars.  

Second episode 

Needless to say, I had to explain to Cuca my literary obsessions and the abnormal impulsivity of my nature, which sets me somewhat apart from the accepted norms of social interaction. From then on we were cordial, if not intimate friends.  

She came over daily, and on more than one occasion her breezy chit-chat cured me of the heavy sediment of anguish that spreads horizontally over my life.  

Nevertheless, a sort of inexplicable suspicion kept me from ever going to her house; a strange uneasiness made me avoid being alone with her: whenever she visited, my sister Irene, whom I had secretly asked, would turn up on some pretext or other and keep us company.   

I don’t think I’ve ever scrutinized another woman so closely. 

No. Cuca was unlike any other human being: underneath her skin, a greyish mystery wandered, like the slow, hushed, silent footsteps of a ghost.   

Otherwise, why would my eyes, once indifferent, now spend hour upon hour tenaciously inspecting the cold lily-white of her neck, the red almond of her nails, the golden foam of her hair, the warm yellow porcelain of her nose, and, above all, the green glass of her eyes? 

Why, when she said the same things as every other woman, did her voice sound like it emanated from a box, and why did its opaque timbre startle me as it echoed off the walls of my study?  

Third Episode 

Just two months after I first approached her, I gathered up the courage to go to her house, and even then I only went because I had heard she was throwing a party and would be surrounded by people.  

I knew from my sister that her home, which was almost next door to mine, had been remodeled. It had a grey facade and big balconies with blinds that Cuca would stand behind every afternoon to watch her admirers pass by. 

It was about 10pm when I arrived at her doorstep. A long humid corridor led to a foyer. There, a khaki lamp cast a melancholy light over the austere furniture. 

Across from the foyer, a spacious salon opened up like a bloody cave: a plush carpet, the color of a decapitated chicken’s neck, covered the entire room, swallowing the murmur of human feet; large armchairs, upholstered in maroon and black velvet with embossed tulips, stretched out their dead arms in a mute, generous invitation; in a corner a black, glossy, inscrutable piano sat still as a purple Manila shawl flowed down its back; on the low hanging chandelier, five crimson lamps – iridescent open wounds like irritated eyelids– swayed every now and then in the strong breeze from an open balcony.  

All those excessive arteries were wrapped, hugged, compounded by senseless curtains that hung over the wide doors.  

Nestled up against my sister Irene in that room, and without saying a word, I watched Cuca mingle.  

She walked back and forth, and whenever she was out of sight, her tiny wooden voice gave away her whereabouts, half lost in some group of friends.  

Around her figure, immaterial in a loose-fitting white suit, swarmed a cloud of men dressed in black. 

How many hours did she spend dancing, and with how many men? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven…an infinite number of interchangeable men circling around a single waist.  

As she brushed past me more than once, I could see up close the spindle motion of her body lodged into the spindle motion of the young man leading her. 

But it was only at dawn, after she’d passed me for the hundredth time, that I was seized by a suspicion so agonizing that it almost impaired my judgement. 

I suddenly thought: if I were to touch Cuca’s left arm, the one rigidly placed on her companion’s shoulder at this very moment, the flesh wouldn’t sink in; and if I were to tap it with my thumb and forefinger, as you would a crystal glass, I’m sure I would hear the precise, clean, clear sound of porcelain. 

Fourth Episode 

I slept very badly that night; a cacophony of outlandish dreams and terrifying visions paraded through my feverish brain.  

When I opened my eyes, I flung myself at the drapes, pulling them open violently: I couldn’t stand the darkness in my room. 

I reached my hands towards the sun and warmed them for a long while. Did I need a doctor? What was happening to me? Was it possible that my imagination, as rampant as it was, had brought me to these extremes? 

After having breakfast, chatting with my friends and checking on my birds, I calmed down a little. But why, then, did I put my hand on a canary and keep it there to make sure that it was actually a living, warm-blooded animal, and why did I grip the wires of its cage to feel that they were just the opposite, lifeless and cold? 

Oh, I’m incorrigible! What good did those few peaceful hours do? After taking a siesta I felt agitated again; a curiosity, now fierce, took complete hold of me. Yes, yes: I felt an irresistible need to touch her left arm with the sensitive forefinger of my right hand, and see, see with my open, wide-open eyes, the flesh sink in and then, elastic, human, alive, spring back to its natural tension.  

Finally  – perhaps, perhaps not – at sunset, the time when Cuca would go out onto her balcony, I resolved to approach her. 

I hesitated a moment as I left the house and looked up at the sky: big leaden clouds, heavy and low, hung their swollen udders over the city’s chimneys, while the horizon shrouded the elongated rows of houses in a pitiful color, the dirty ochre of a bad painter’s palate.  

It took all my strength to find my way back to Cuca; from nearby I saw her chatting, lightheartedly as usual, with another girl her age.  

She was in a rather stylized position. Her elbows rested on the balcony railing and her chin was propped up by her left arm, which was also rigid this time. From my vantage point, I could take my time to study her whole arm: no hair had taken root in it, no tiny blemish darkened it, no faint freckle enlivened it, no slight epidermic mishap made it more human.  

So, devouring her arm out of the corner of my eye, I saw the faded ochre of the afternoon die on her skin and the newborn night bounce off its perfect surface.  

Countless times, while I focused on her arm, my forefinger reached out to touch it, and countless times an unknown force held it back midway. 

But as the nocturnal shadows thickened, images from the previous night’s dream assailed me and a fear, growing in intensity by the minute, gripped me once more until, driven by a supreme volitional force, my hand abruptly decided to touch her arm. A shiver ran from the marrow of my bones to my brain’s cerebellum, making my skin crawl all over, and at the risk of seeming crazy, I gave up and ran away from her house.  

Fifth Episode 

I didn’t want to see her again. I was planning to move. I only went out when I knew I wouldn’t see her. I shut the window of my study so I wouldn’t hear her piano and nobody was allowed to mention her to me; the mere mention of her name upset me.  

No one in my house suspected the true reason for my behavior. Would those closest to me be alarmed, perchance, by my unbelievable manias and ridiculous feelings? 

My sister Irene disobeyed me, and from her I learned, against my wishes, what was going on in Cuca’s house.   

That’s how I found out that a poet was in love with her and had given her one of his books, flattering her in his dedication, and that she – a rather prosaic sort – had placed the dedication in a pretty frame and left the book in the attic; that instead of going to the hairdresser twice a month, she now went every week; that she was making a lovely undergarment the same color as her eyes and as insubstantial as her thoughts; that she drank iced chocolate during meals to gain the two kilos necessary for perfectly proportioned shoulders; that she had thrown out one of her boyfriends because he had given her an ordinary box of candy; that she’d had a new row of eyelashes removed; that she had changed her preferred type of admirer – yesterday’s handsome, herculean bachelors replaced by today’s languid, elegant rhymers – and so forth. Hearing these things, against my will, was good for me because it took the sting out of the dark, mysterious feeling this strange creature had always produced in me.     

Sixth and Last Episode 

And just this morning, the most bizarre thing happened.  

I’m still horrified: I can still feel my heartbreaking scream and heartbroken silence ringing in my ears. I can still see people crowding around, at first, and running away later, directionless, through those streets, in between bucking horses. 

I hadn’t seen Cuca in three months, and hadn't thought of her in one month, when just this morning at 10 o’clock I spotted her crossing Corrientes street where it intersects with Callao, as she approached me to say hello. 

She had been shopping, and had the latest fashion magazine in her hand and the most exquisite bag hanging from her arm.  

We walked two or three blocks towards the avenue, and for the first time since I met her she gave me the impression she was a human being like any other, wrapped in a black coat, if I remember correctly, with a black felt headdress that obscured her eyes.   

After chatting about this and that, I don’t know how it happened.  

The fact of the matter is that Cuca, saying her goodbyes, tried to cross the street when a car ran her over; I saw her roll under the wheels and instinctively covered my eyes with my hands to save them from that horrible sight. 

But, a moment later, I ran up to her to help her, and right then I saw what I’m still seeing, a truly dreadful thing. No, there’s no blood, not on the ground, not on Cuca’s clothes, not a single drop of blood.  

The head, cut off by the car’s wheels, has landed two meters from the torso, and the porcelain face preserves its unaltered beauty against the black asphalt: the cold green-crystal eyes gaze calmly at the blue sky; the thin painted lips smile their usual happy smile, and from her severed neck, no more than an atrocious stump, a yellowish, rowdy, volatile, thick stream of sawdust spews out. 

(Original story published in La Nación, 11 April 1926)