to Fernanda to think that their correspondence was an exchange of fantasies. Jose Arcadia, who left the seminary as soon as he reached Rome, continued
nourishing the legend of theology and canon law so as not to
jeopardize the fabulous inheritance of which his mother''s
delirious letters spoke and which would rescue him from the
misery and sordidness he shared with two friends in a Trastevere garret. When he received Fernanda''s last letter, dictated by the foreboding of imminent death, he put the leftovers of his false splendor into a suitcase and crossed the ocean in the hold of a ship where immigrants were crammed
together like cattle in a slaughterhouse, eating cold macaroni
and wormy cheese. Before he read Fernanda''s will, which was
nothing but a detailed and tardy recapitulation of her misfortunes, the broken-down furniture and the weeds on the porch had indicated that he had fallen into a trap from which he
would never escape, exiled forever from the diamond light
and timeless air of the Roman spring. During the crushing
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insomnia brought on by his asthma he would measure and
remeasure the depth of his misfortune as he went through the
shadowy house where the senile fussing of Ursula had instilled a .fear of the world in him. In order to be sure that she would not lose him in the shadows, she had assigned him a