'I earn 130,000,' I said.

'I'll give you 129,000,' she replied. 'If you really want to work here, you'll make do with less than what you're getting from Felisberto.'

I nodded, and so I was hired. That was more than five years ago, but I can still vividly recall the moment. Dona Esmeralda asked me to get started at once. She wanted me to help her with the plans to buy flour and sugar and yeast and butter and eggs. During those long days and nights when we worked together before the bakery opened, she told me about her life. That's how I know all that I know about her. It was through her that I began to understand something about the city in which I live, and about the country that is mine.

Whether Dona Esmeralda was crazy or not, I can't say. On the other hand, I can certainly attest that she possessed an energy and determination that I had never before encountered. The people around her could collapse with fatigue, just from watching her at work in her theatre and bakery. Although she was then between eighty and ninety years old, she never rested. Many nights she didn't even bother to go home; she would simply curl up on some flour sacks, call goodnight to the bakers, and then get up again after half an hour, bursting with renewed energy, as if she had awakened from a long night's sleep. Sometimes, as we waited for the bread to rise, we would discuss when and what Dona Esmeralda actually ate. She was always scraping off the dough from around the edges of the dough blender with her fingers. No one had ever seen her eat anything else. On the other hand, she always had a bottle of cognac nearby. We suspected that it was from the bottle that she drew the strength she needed, but since we were simple people who had never had either the money or the opportunity to taste foreign distilled drinks, always celebrating instead with tontonto, we used to discuss whether her bottles might also contain something that kept a person young. Maybe Dona Esmeralda had a curandeiro who infused her drinks with magical powers.