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The woman said nothing. Then she left the room and returned immediately with a pen and paper.
"Let's go outside," she said.
We went out together, and the sun was rising.
"Take a deep breath," she said. "Let this new morning enter your lungs and course through your veins. From what I can see, your loss yesterday was not an accident."
I didn't answer.
"You also didn't really understand the story you told me, about the sign in the church," she went on. "You saw only the sadness of the procession at the end. You forgot the happy moments you spent inside. You forgot the feeling that heaven had descended on you and how good it was to be experiencing all of that with your..."
She stopped and smiled.
"...childhood friend," she said, winking. "Jesus said, 'Let the dead bury the dead' because he knew that there is no such thing as death. Life existed before we were born and will continue to exist after we leave this world."
My eyes filled with tears.
"It's the same with love," she went on. "It existed before and will go on forever."
"You seem to know everything about my life," I said.
"All love stories have much in common. I went through the same thing at one point in my life. But that's not what I remember. What I remember is that love returned in the form of another man, new hopes, and new dreams."
She held out the pen and paper to me.
"Write down everything you're feeling. Take it out of your soul, put it on the paper, and then throw it away. Legend says that the River Piedra is so cold that anything that falls into it--leaves, insects, the feathers of birds--is turned to stone. Maybe it would be a good idea to toss your suffering into its waters."
I took the pages. She kissed me, and said I could come back for lunch if I wanted to.
"Don't forget!" she shouted as she walked away. "Love perseveres. It's men who change."
I smiled, and she waved good-bye.
I looked out at the river for some time. And I cried until there were no more tears.
Then I began to write.
Epilogue
I WROTE FOR AN ENTIRE DAY, AND then another, and another. Every morning, I went to the bank of the River Piedra. Every afternoon, the woman came, took me by the arm, and led me back to the old convent.
She washed my clothes, made me dinner, chatted about trivial things, and sent me to bed.
One morning, when I had almost finished the manuscript, I heard the sound of a car. My heart leaped, but I didn't want to believe it. I felt free again, ready to return to the world and be a part of it once again.
The worst had passed, although the sadness remained.
But my heart was right. Even without raising my eyes from my work, I felt his presence and heard his footsteps.
"Pilar," he said, sitting down next to me.
I went on writing, without answering. I couldn't pull my thoughts together. My heart was jumping, trying to free itself from my breast and run to him. But I wouldn't allow it.
He sat there looking at the river, while I went on writing. The entire morning passed that way--without a word--and I recalled the silence of a night near a well when I'd suddenly realized that I loved him.
When my hand could write no longer, I stopped. Then he spoke.
"It was dark when I came up out of the cavern. I couldn't find you, so I went to Zaragoza. I even went to Soria. I looked everywhere for you. Then I decided to return to the monastery at Piedra to see if there was any sign of you, and I met a woman. She showed me where you were, and she said you had been waiting for me."
