Granted, it is true that the devil himself cannot predict what people will remember, or why they remember it. I for one have never believed there is such a thing as a collective memory – which may be one way humans protect themselves. The phrase ‘the good old days’ does not mean that bad things happened less frequently in the past, only – fortunately – that people simply forget they happened. Obviously that view is not universally accepted. I, for example, would characterize myself as a person who prefers to remember the bad things. I might even argue for the past as ‘the bad old days,’ if it were not for the fact I consider the present as horrible as the past. I remember so many catastrophes, so many cynical and cruel faces, so many inhumane actions, that for me memory is a glaring light illuminating a sordid museum of shame. How often have I sat for hours in some dark corner of my studio, driven to despair by reading an account of some crime in the newspaper. Even so, it is not always in accounts of crimes that we find the most reprehensible acts of humankind; to a degree, criminals are the most decent and least offensive people among us. I do not make this statement because I myself killed another human being; it is my profound and honest conviction. Is a certain individual a menace to society? Then eliminate him and let that be an end to it. That is what I could call a good deed. Think how much worse it would be for society if that person were allowed to continue distilling his poison; think how pointless it would be if instead of eliminating him you attempted to forestall him by means of anonymous letters, or slander, or other loathsome measures. As for myself, I frankly confess that I now regret not having used my time to better advantage when I was a free man, that is, for not having done away with six or seven individuals I could name.

It is a terrible world; that truism demands no demonstration. Nonetheless, I will offer a single example as proof. Some years ago I read that in one of the concentration camps when a former pianist complained of hunger he was forced to eat a rat – a live rat.

However, that is not the subject I want to discuss now. If the opportunity arises, I will have more to say on the subject of the rat.

No, it is not because of vanity that I am telling this story. I might be willing to concede some degree of pride or arrogance. But why do I have this mania to explain everything that happens? When I began this account I had determined not to offer explanations of any kind. I wanted to tell the story of my crime: that and nothing more. Anyone who was not interested did not have to read it. Although I would be very suspicious of that person, because it is precisely people who always demand explanations who are the most curious, and I am sure that none of them would miss the chance to read to the very end the story of a crime.

I could withhold the reasons that motivated me to write these confessional pages, but since I have no desire to be considered an eccentric, I will tell the truth, which is simple enough anyway: I thought that what I wrote might be read by a great many people now that I am a celebrity, and although I do not have many illusions about humanity in general and the readers of these pages in particular, I am animated by the faint hope that someone will understand me – even if it is only one person.

‘Why,’ someone will surely ask, ‘such a faint hope if the book will be read by so many people?’ This is typical of the kinds of questions I consider absolutely pointless; nevertheless, I must be prepared for them, because people constantly ask pointless questions, questions the most superficial analysis reveals to be unnecessary. I could speak until I dropped, yelling at the top of my lungs before an assembly of a hundred thousand Russians: not one would understand me. Do you see what I am saying?

There was one person who could have understood me. But she was the very person I killed.

In the annual spring art show I had exhibited a painting entitled Motherhood. It was painted in the style typical of many of my earlier works: as the critics say in their unbearable jargon, it was solid, soundly architectural. In short, it has all the qualities those charlatans always saw in my canvases, including a ‘profoundly cerebral je ne sais quoi.’ In the upper left-hand corner of the canvas was a remote scene framed in a tiny window: an empty beach and a solitary woman looking at the sea. She was staring into the distance as if expecting something, perhaps some faint and faraway summons. In my mind that scene suggested the most wistful and absolute loneliness.

No one seemed to notice the scene: their eyes passed over it as if it were something trivial, mere embellishment. With the exception of a single person, no one seemed to comprehend that the scene was an essential component of the painting. It was the day of the opening. A young woman I had never seen before stood for a long time before my painting, apparently ignoring the large figure of a woman in the foreground, a woman watching her child at play. Instead, she stared at the scene of the window, and as she did, I was sure that she was totally isolated from the world: she neither saw nor heard the people walking by or pausing to view my canvas.

I watched her nervously the whole time. Then she disappeared in the crowd, while I struggled between a crippling fear and an agonizing desire to call to her. Fear? Of what? Perhaps the same fear you feel when you bet every penny you own on one spin of the wheel. After she was gone I felt irritable, miserable; I was convinced I would never see her again now that she was lost among the millions of anonymous inhabitants of Buenos Aires.

I went home that night feeling nervous, discontent, dejected.

I went back every day until the show closed, stationing myself close enough to see everyone who stopped before my painting. But she never returned.

Throughout the months that followed I thought only of her and of the possibility that I might see her again. And in a way I painted only for her. It was as if the tiny scene of the window had begun to expand, to swallow up that canvas and all the rest of my work.

I recognized her immediately; I could have picked her out of any crowd. I was filled with indescribable emotion. I had thought about her for so many months, imagined so many things, that when I saw her I did not know what to do.

In fact I had often thought about this moment, planning in minute detail what I would do in the event I met her. I think I have said that I am very shy; that is why I had thought and thought about a chance meeting, and about how to take advantage of it. The greatest difficulty in such imagined meetings is how to begin a conversation. I know a lot of men who have no difficulty in striking up a conversation with a strange woman. I confess that at one time I envied them greatly, because, although I was never a womanizer – or perhaps precisely for that reason – there were times I regretted not being able to communicate with a woman, that is, on those rare occasions when it seems impossible to accept the idea that she will never be a part of your life. Unfortunately, I was condemned never to be part of any woman’s life.

In those imagined meetings I had analyzed several possibilities. I know the kind of person I am, and I know that because of my confusion and shyness I am totally lost in any unexpected or unplanned situation. As a result, I had prepared a number of logical, or at least possible, courses of action. (It is not logical that a close friend would send you an insulting anonymous letter, but we all know it is possible.)

The girl, I could assume, was in the habit of visiting art exhibits. If I saw her there, I could stop beside her and, without too much awkwardness, start a conversation about one of the paintings.

After examining this possibility in detail, I abandoned it. I never go to art exhibits. For a painter, this may seem a bizarre attitude, but there is a logical explanation, and I am sure that if I decide to give it, everyone will agree that I am right. Well, I may exaggerate when I say ‘everyone.’ No, I know I exaggerate. Experience has taught me that what seems clear and evident to me is never so to my fellow human beings. I have been burned so many times that now before I justify or explain anything, I mull it over a very long time; almost inevitably, I end up withdrawing into myself and not opening my mouth at all. That is why until today I had not decided to tell the story of my crime. Even at this moment, I still do not know whether it is worth the effort to try to explain this quirk of mine about art exhibits; I am afraid, however, that if I do not explain you will think that it is some kind of phobia, when in fact I have a very sound reason for my reluctance.

Actually, in this case there is more than one reason. Before I go on, I should say that I detest sects, brotherhoods, guilds, groups in general, any assemblage of morons congregating for reasons of profession, tastes, or similar manias. All these cliques have numbers of grotesque characteristics in common: repetition of type, their jargon, their arrogant conviction that they are better than everyone else.

I can see that I am complicating the problem, but I see no way to simplify it. Besides, anyone who wants to stop reading this account may do so now. He should know immediately that he has my unqualified permission.

What do I mean when I say ‘repetition of type’? You have undoubtedly noticed how disagreeable it is to be with someone who has a tic in one eye, or whose lip is constantly twitching. Well, can you imagine a club of such people? Such extreme examples are not necessary, however. Merely think of a large family, in which certain traits, certain gestures, certain intonations of voice, are commonplace. I once had the experience of falling in love with a woman (without, of course, declaring it) and then fleeing in terror when faced with meeting her sisters. And something truly horrendous happened to me on a different occasion. I had admired certain traits in a woman I knew, but when I met one of her sisters I was depressed and ashamed for days: the very traits I had found so desirable seemed exaggerated and distorted in the sister, slightly caricatured, but not greatly. If they had been greatly exaggerated they would have been different traits, while in fact they were magnified just enough to seem ridiculous. The vaguely distorted vision of the first woman that I saw in her sister, besides the impression I described, made me feel ashamed, as if in some way I were partly to blame for the slightly ridiculous view I now had of the woman I had so admired.

Perhaps I see these things because I am a painter. I have noticed that other people seem oblivious of family peculiarities. I should add that I have a similar reaction to painters who imitate great masters, those miserable daubers who paint in the manner of Picasso, for example.

Then there is the jargon, another of their characteristics that I cannot tolerate. Choose any example you like: psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, journalism. I have no favorites; I find them all repugnant. I offer the first example that comes to mind: psychoanalysis. Dr. Prato is a very talented man, and I believed he was a friend, a true friend. I suffered a terrible disillusionment when people began to persecute me and he took the part of the swine who were doing it. But let’s not go into that. One day, almost as soon as I arrived at his office, Prato told me he had to go out, and invited me to go with him.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘To a cocktail the Society is giving,’ he replied.

‘What Society?’ I asked with veiled irony, because if there is anything that galls me, it is the way they all use the definite article: the Society, they say, when they mean the Society of Psychoanalysts; the Party, for the Communist Party; the Seventh, for Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Prato looked at me, mildly surprised, but I gazed back with absolute innocence.

‘Why, the Society of Psychoanalysts, Castel,’ he answered, drilling me with those penetrating eyes Freudians consider necessary to their profession, and also looking as if he were asking himself, ‘What new kind of madness is this guy up to now?’

I remembered having read something about a meeting or symposium to be presided over by a Dr. Bernard, or Bertrand. Certain that it was not that meeting, I asked him if that was where we were going. He glanced at me with a scornful smile.

‘Those charlatans,’ he commented. ‘Ours is the only internationally recognized psychoanalytic society.’

He sat down again at his desk, shuffled through some papers in a drawer, and finally handed me a letter written in English. I looked at it for the sake of courtesy.

‘I can’t read English,’ I explained.

‘This is a letter from Chicago. It vouches for the fact that we are the only society of psychoanalysts in all Argentina.’

My face registered admiration and profound respect.

So we left the office and drove to the cocktail party, where we found a mob of people. Some I knew by name, like Dr. Goldenberg, who had recently made quite a name for himself: in the course of treating a female patient, they had both ended up in a mental institution. He had just been released. I observed him closely, but he seemed no worse than the others. In fact he may even have been more placid, perhaps the result of his recent seclusion. The way he praised my paintings, I knew that he despised them.

More than any other, however, I detest groups of painters. Partly, of course, because painting is what I know best, and we all know that we have greater reason to detest the things we know well. But I have still another reason: THE CRITICS. They are a plague I have never understood. If I were a great surgeon, and some fellow who had never held a scalpel in his hand, who was not a doctor, and who had never so much as put a splint on a cat’s paw, tried to point out where I had gone wrong in my operation, what would people think? It is the same with painting. What is amazing is that people do not realize it is the same, and although they would laugh at the pretensions of the man who criticizes the surgeon, they listen with nauseating respect to the charlatans who comment on art. There might be some excuse for listening to the opinions of a critic who once painted, even if only mediocre works. But that is just as absurd; because what could be reasonable about a mediocre painter giving advice to a good one?