Count the present days until today arrives (YERMA)

(Before we parted that morning, K had assured me (laughing a little) that nothing that had happened last night at Bernarda's hotel had been a "set-up," and that our own men on duty—don't ask me which ones—had repelled the attempted break-in to Bernarda's room: "It seems they're clear about what they want now. They no longer seem to be vaguely musing about stolen files with stickers and secrecy warnings or imaginary, hysterical, electronic top-secret information. Somehow, they've made sure of the physical existence of the Antonina dossier." --- Even so, the city police were there at her hotel that morning, a patrol full of suspicious foreign journalists sniffing out anecdotal obscurities for their bosses, and naturally, Bernarda was terrified --- there were bullet holes of various calibers in the walls of the building and in the walls near the pool, as well as shards of glass from the bar. No bodies, however. --- After providing explanations to the police authority, Bernarda came to me fainted, as expected, and K's instructions were that I widen as much as possible the crack opened in her sensitivity by her susceptible state, so that we could gain a 'precious inch of intimate terrain' within her, in the malleable adhesion of her trust in people --- Hugged to me like a child on the sofa in the hotel reception, Bernarda was a rapid flow of blood accelerated by the shock of a sudden frightening revelation --- after long minutes of convulsive crying, however, her body gave way to an overwhelming nervous exhaustion, and the relentless light radiating from my eyes probably had a calming and hypnotic effect on her; I felt I could easily get any concession out of her at that moment, speaking like a mysterious friend who knew more than anyone imagined about what "happened" --- K also hoped that the apocryphal "Julián" I had under my arm would help us when it came to staging a good argument with Bernarda, to explain why she should accept the $200,000 for Antonina's "book" --- Throughout the day, however, we couldn't go up to her room because of the experts' work, whose tendency was to draw confused conclusions about an inexplicable robbery attempt, since the shooting outside had started even before the "ninja mountaineer in a ski mask" managed to break through the window. --- "If we really want to know what happened," I told Bernarda, "we have to get our own experts to check everything." --- "I'm scared to death, Yerma. It's something impossible to know about Antonina. Some unfinished business about her strange life reaching me through this obscure book, now that I've appropriated her small funeral estate. And what an enigmatic book! Yesterday, before the scare, I was reading it and sensing between the lines a kind of phantom COMMAND signed with a highly confidential imprimatur, like a figure behind the author. Then, suddenly...