47 pages • 1 hour read
Marco DeneviRosaura A Las Diez
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Conversation With the Accused”
Part 3, Pages 145-152 Summary
Part 3 takes the form of a dialogue between Camilo and the police inspector. Whereas before the inspector’s questions went unrecorded, here they are. The conversation starts with a focus on Camilo’s profession. Camilo reveals that he was introduced to the job by his father, who made him an apprentice at a young age. Although his father was a full-fledged painter, Camilo claims only to be a restorer of work done by others. Furthermore, he expresses a dislike for modern art because it does not serve a true purpose. He admits that he made the portrait of Mrs. Milagros and her daughters by painting on top of a photograph of them and that he also specializes in mimicking the painting styles of the masters. The inspector is surprised that Camilo has such an open disdain for his own work.
Camilo goes on to reveal that his father was very cruel and that his mother passed away when he was a toddler. This meant that the truest family he ever knew was the Milagros family. He says that just as he never left La Madrileña for another boarding house, he has only ever frequented one bar in town, where he sits at the same seat every time. He says that although he always thought he was happy sitting in the bar, he realizes that he was actually extremely sad and lonely and that he craved companionship.
Part 3, Pages 153-163 Summary
The inspector accuses Camilo of forging documents, telling him that Rosa’s identification card that lists her as Marta is false. Camilo does not admit to forging the identity card, much to the inspector’s frustration. Even more confusingly, he asserts that Rosa never existed at all and that the story of the affair he told Mrs. Milagros was a complete fabrication; he never met the daughter of a client or fell in love with her. He says that the woman whom he married and who later wound up murdered simply “appeared” in his life after the lie had been told to the residents of La Madrileña.
Camilo explains that he has always tended to have intense, all-consuming dreams. The dreams are so intense that the line between when he is dreaming and when he is not can become blurred. He dreams about arguing with Mrs. Milagros but not being able to respond to her, and after his father died, he began to dream that his father was resurrected and returned to torment him. One day, he dreamed of Rosa, whose image was inspired by a portrait he was restoring. The daydream was triggered by seeing Matilda kissing another man the prior day (Camilo is visibly jealous of this man). He began to make his own dream manifest in the physical world by writing letters from Rosa and sending them to himself. He also painted the picture of Rosa and bought blonde hair from a store to pass off as hers. The inspector contends that all of these actions were a performance for the other residents of La Madrileña, whom Camilo knew would inevitably discover Rosa’s existence.
Part 3, Pages 164-172 Summary
Camilo admits that he had grown sick of being unnoticed and underestimated by Mrs. Milagros and her daughters. He resented that the daughters didn’t believe him capable of having a romantic or sexual life. The inspector then posits that he was most upset by Matilda’s lack of attention and says that the two must be in love with one another, based on the fact that Matilda herself had come to the inspector professing to love Camilo. Camilo is shocked by this revelation and even more shocked that Matilda refused to believe Rosa was either young or beautiful because she was jealous.
Camilo planned to neatly end the ruse of Rosa’s existence with her final letter, but bafflingly, Réguel claimed to have seen Rosa out in public, even though Camilo had fabricated her. Camilo began to worry that somehow, just as his father had been brought to life in his dreams, he had dreamt of Rosa so powerfully that she came to life. Once the woman who looked like Rosa arrived at La Madrileña, everything became hazy for Camilo. In the car ride after the wedding, he vaguely remembers asking the driver not to take them to the Hotel Wien, and Rosa suggested the specific neighborhood where the Hotel Half Moon was located. Once in their room, Rosa taunted Camilo about his crush on Matilda, and Camilo began to strangle her. In the middle of doing so, however, he “woke up” and ran away before actually killing her. When he left the room, he came face to face with “the Turk,” the hotel owner with a large scar. When they returned with the police officer, Rosa was dead, strangled on the bed.
Part 3 Analysis
During Camilo’s conversation with the police inspector, the book’s concern with mental health and psychology comes into clear focus as Camilo reveals that he is plagued with Fantasies That Bleed Into Reality. Rosa is the embodiment of this psychological torment, the amalgamation of all his fantasies invested into one “real” person. He tells the inspector of Rosa, “I dreamed to the point where my dream seemed to be reality. It involved a total absorption of my senses. I dreamed Rosa in body and soul. I had her there, alive, before me—her face, her gaze, her movements, her voice. All of her” (161). In this framework, Rosa is a passive object, formed entirely by the active mind of Camilo, the artist. However, Camilo fears his own creation and is tormented by the idea that she might become real, even as he makes her more and more real through the letters and the painting. She is an artwork that takes on a life of its own, a manifestation of his tumultuous inner world.
Running parallel to his fear of Rosa is the disdain that Camilo feels for his own work as a painter. In his extended philosophical musings about the nature of painting, two key quotes summarize his thoughts: “All modern painting is phony. It has to be. Because if it weren’t, it would disappear,” and, “Now, all of a sudden, I discover that I hate it” (149, 151). While these two quotes apply to the field of painting at large, they also apply to Camilo’s individual output as an artist and his feelings about himself. Camilo owns his “phoniness,” admitting to the inspector that he only paints portraits on top of preexisting photographs or forgeries that imitate the works of English masters. His self-hatred is also made manifest in his continuous self-flagellation: “I’m a man without character […] the only thing I’m good for is dreaming” (161). He seeks to resolve these negative self-images, which are internalizations of things said by others (like Mrs. Milagros), by creating Rosa. However, since Rosa is an extension of himself, he ends up despising her just like his artwork.
As this information is revealed through the format of a dialogue, the inspector experiences confusion, inquisition, and revelation. This is the only section of the book in which the inspector’s voice is heard, and he functions as a corollary for the reader, who is also interrogating Camilo from beyond the book’s confines. His questions are succinct, piercing through the winding tale that Camilo tells straight to the heart of the mystery: “So the whole story of Rosa that you passed around at La Madrileña was pure fantasy?” (154). Though Camilo may respond indirectly to these crucial questions, the inspector’s focus on ascertaining the truth is meant to help readers gain clarity themselves. In this way, a rapport is cultivated between the reader and the inspector, who share the same goal of solving the mysterious events at La Madrileña.
A rapport also develops between the inspector and Camilo despite the conversation’s contentious setting of a police interrogation. The inspector takes an interest in Camilo’s experience (or at least claims to for his investigation), saying “Now this is something I’ve always been interested in. I’ve always loved painting” (145). For Camilo, whose pervasive loneliness is the centerpiece of his life experience, as is evidenced by his story about sitting alone at the bar, this kindness from a stranger is appealing. He admits things to the inspector that he won’t even admit to those he considers family: his expertise in forgery, his struggles with mental illness, and his failed attempt to strangle Marta (Rosa) on the hotel bed. Such honesty from Camilo, despite his indirect ways of speaking, suggests that he trusts the inspector in a way he doesn’t trust others. This friendliness is suggested by the title of the section, which uses the word “conversation” rather than “interrogation” to describe the interaction between the two men.
