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altar to Nuestra Señora del Socorro, the Lady of Perpetual Succor.
    â€œYou are very courageous to undertake this voyage, Señora Inés. Where will your husband be waiting?” Manuel Martín asked.
    â€œIn truth, I do not know, Maestro.”
    â€œWhat! He will not be waiting in Nueva Granada?”
    â€œThe last letter he sent came from a place they call Coro, in Venezuela, but that was some while ago, and it may be that he is no longer there.”
    â€œThe Americas are a territory larger than all the rest of the known world. It will not be easy to find your husband.”
    â€œThen I shall look until I find him.”
    â€œAnd how will you do that, señora?”
    â€œThe usual way, by asking.”
    â€œThen I wish you luck. This is the first time I have carried women. I beseech you, you and your niece, to be prudent,” the maestro added.
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    â€œYou are both young, and not at all bad looking. You must know what I am referring to. After a week at sea, the men begin to long for female companionship, and as you two are right here onboard, the temptation will be very strong. And another thing. Sailors believe that women aboard ship attract storms and other misfortunes. For your well-being, and my peace of mind, I would prefer that you and your niece have no dealings with my men.”
    The maestro was a stocky Galician with broad shoulders and short legs, a prominent nose, little rodent eyes, and skin weathered like saddle leather by the salt and wind of his years at sea. He had signed on as a cabin boy when he was thirteen, and could count on the fingers of one hand the years that he had spent on terra firma. His rough appearance contrasted with the gentleness of his manners and the goodness of his heart, which would be evident later when he came to my aid at a moment of great need.
    It is a shame that I did not yet know how to write, otherwise I would have begun to take notes. Although I did not suspect that my life would be worth telling about, that voyage should have been noted down in detail, since so few people have crossed the salty ocean expanse: lead-colored water teeming with secret life, neverending, terrifying, all foam, wind, and solitude. In this relation, written many years after the events it describes, I hope to be as meticulous as possible, but memory is always capricious, the fruit of all one has lived, desired, and fantasized. The line that divides reality from imagination is very thin, and at my age is no longer interesting, for now everything is subjective. Memory is also colored by vanity. Even with Death sitting in a chair near my table, waiting, I still am influenced by vanity, not just when I rouge my cheeks if visitors are coming, but when I am writing my story. Is there anything more vain than an autobiography?
    I had never seen the ocean, and had thought of it as a very wide river, never imagining that I would not be able to see the other shore. I refrained from making comments, in order not to give evidence of my ignorance, and I hid the fear that froze my bones when the ship sailed into open waters and began to pitch and heave. There were seven of us passengers, and all of them, except for Constanza, who had a very strong stomach, were almost immediately seasick. So great was my misery that on the second day I begged Maestro Martín to allow me to take a boat and row back to Spain. He burst out laughing and forced a pint of rum down my throat, which had the virtue of transporting me to another world for thirty hours, at the end of which I revived, sunken cheeked and green. It was only then that I could sip the broth my sweet niece spooned into my mouth.
    We had left terra firma behind, and were sailing through dark waters beneath an infinite sky, without shelter of any sort. I could not imagine how the pilot could know where he was in that never-changing vastness, with nothing to guide him but his astrolabe and the stars