Music box

"On the other hand, all the versions agreed that Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman had seen each other for the first time on the national holiday in October during a charity bazaar at which she was in charge of singing out the raffle numbers. Bayardo San Roman came to the bazaar and went straight to the booth run by the languid raffler, who was in mourning, and he asked her the price of the music box inlaid with mother-of-pearl that must have been the major attraction of the fair. She answered him that it was not for sale but was to be raffled off. "So much the better," he said. "That makes it easier and cheaper besides." She confessed to me that he'd managed to impress her, but for reasons opposite those of love. "I detested conceited men, and I'd never seen one so stuck-up," she told me, recalling that day. "Besides, I thought he was a Jew." Her annoyance was greater when she sang out the raffle number for the music box, to the anxiety of all, and indeed, it had been won by Bayardo San Roman. She couldn't imagine that he, just to impress her, had bought all the tickets in the raffle. That night, when she returned home, Angela Vicario found the music box there, gift-wrapped and tied with an organdy bow. "I never did find out how he knew that it was my birthday," she told me. It was hard for her to convince her parents that she hadn't given Bayardo San Roman any reason to send her a gift like that, and even worse, in such a visible way that it hadn't gone unnoticed by anyone."