The nineteenth century was dying.  A tall man of middle age stretched his blond head above the crowd; the citizens of the capital were gathered as night was falling, helplessly watching the burning of the National Palace.
 
The flames, reflected in the gray eyes of the foreigner, were like the burning of a ship.  He was dressed elegantly, but barefoot.  His name was Justo Armas.
 
San Salvador was always a palimpsest, one of those codices whose thick parchment was incessantly scraped in order to write anew on its surface.
 
The earthquakes, the wars, and the epidemics, had continually changed this landscape where humanity was struggling to emerge.
 
Nothing now remained of the masonry aqueducts mounted on arches following the Roman model, which the Spanish had left and which had survived until the last earthquake.  Our first cathedral had been lost in the same way, along with the gates that had surrounded the Plaza de Armas, the house of the Aguilares, and the few important buildings of the city.
 
The very term “city” was an exaggeration, for the map of San Salvador covered only a few blocks.
 
Now it was the turn of the Palace, a grand and noble wooden building which had boasted of being the largest in Central America.
 
This time the destruction was not the work of nature.  The Minister of Government had declared that "a treacherous and mysterious criminal hand had committed this appalling and horrible crime. 
 
The crime was never solved (nor will we attempt to clear it up here), although rumors abounded.  But the foreigner with the gray eyes had been in the Plaza before the fire, and he saw a shadow that he seemed to recognize advancing furtively with a torch.  Only later when the evidence made the conclusion inescapable did he understand its evil purpose.
 
Don Justo had lost his country, his family, and his friends.  The ship on which he was traveling had been wrecked near Acajutla.  While the storm raged he clung to some wooden wreckage and prayed.  Amidst the tumult, he vowed that if he survived he would never again wear shoes.
 
He awoke in a beach cabin, where an old Indian woman was caring for him.  Some of his baggage was salvaged by local fishermen.
 
Don Justo never talked about his origin or his past.  He spoke correct Spanish, but with a German accent.  He had lived a different existence; he had possessed another name. 
 
From the port he arrived in Santa Tecla in a train drawn by a steam engine, and he covered the last stretch to the capital with a flesh and blood engine; that is, pulled by mules.
 
He checked in to one of the four hotels of the capital.  When they asked his name, he responded that he had none.  The clerk insisted.  It was necessary to give travelers' names to the press.  He stared around vaguely as if remembering someone, and signed Justo Armas.  He was known by that name until his death.
 
Don Justo attracted attention.  Although he was reserved by nature, people approached his curiously and sought his conversation.
 
He was affable, but melancholy.  He had known half of the world.
 
His courteous distinction quickly gained him sympathy, and he entered the most exclusive social circles with his bare feet.  He treated with equal courtesy a consul and a shoeshine boy--of whom, however, he had no need.
 
He founded a catering establishment for elegant social events, and he himself undertook the training of the waiters.  Among his goods that had been saved was a table service for banquets, including bohemian glassware and silver candelabra. 
 
Not long before this the first bambas (silver pesos) had been minted, for which coins of other countries that had circulated until then, Mexican pesos and Peruvian Soles, were melted down.  Don Justo's services, which were soon in considerable demand, were therefore paid with bambas--but also, when change was needed, with candles and with hens' eggs.
 
Don Justo watched the end-of-century festivities, which featured the four fireworks establishments of the city (which at that time had more fireworks shops than pharmacies).  He watched the construction of the new Palace, and saw the vigorous city of the new century that he observed with optimism for the future. 
 
Once on some occasion where he had attended with his staff and his table service, he listened to a recitation by Rubén Darío, and much admired those words that resembled a crystal glass or a candelabrum.
 
But the years passed, and don Justo grew old.
 
Don Justo became ill, and in vain were the laudanums and the balsam and the moss from Iceland.  The Arbizú family, with whom he had from the beginning maintained a close friendship, sent for a priest.
 
Don Justo talked fully, perhaps for the first time in his life.
 
Whether placed highly, of middle class or low, human beings had never seemed to him very different.  Formed from clay, were moved by the same passions, had the same defects and the same aspiration toward the heights.  The gaze of the Indian woman who had taken him in on the coast of Sonsonate was not very different from the gaze of his mother, the archduchess.  The pride of the policeman on the corner wasn't essentially different from the pride of the great writer.  The mystic of the musicians who interpreted Mozart in the palaces of Salzburg was the same as that of the Municipal Orchestra of a small city, and the love of beauty swelled in the soul of every human being.
 
The earth distributed its gifts everywhere, and if a mountain covered with snow was beautiful, so too was the Izalco volcano, burning like a perpetual firework.  Although beautiful objects and high cathedrals were admirable, the greatest beauty of the world was not in these but in the great human people, whatever their color, changing the world to make it conform to the measure of an idea.
 
Finally, don Justo spoke of his life in the court of Vienna, and of his friends.  He thought that if he had had a family, his children would be far away and would be excellent people loaded with honors. 
 
The priest left him in a thoughtful mood, and in a low voice told the few friends waiting anxiously in the anteroom that the dying man was a member of the Hapsburg family. 
 
Some wanted to identify him with the lost brother of Maximilian of Austria.  The only ones to know the secret, the Arbizú family passed it from fathers to sons to this day.
 
But someone came after the priest, slipping silently into the old man's bedroom.  Don Justo recognized him immediately.  It was the shadow that he had seen in the ship just before the shipwreck, the one that had come with a torch to set fire to the Palace in San Salvador.  He thought that he was in its presence for the third time, but reflected and understood that it had always been at his side, although it had adopted many distinct forms. 
 
The old man rose, and gazed from the window at the at the city which continued to grow "with eggs or with candles," a saying that still meant making an effort amid difficulties even though that form of payment had passed out of use.
 
The lights of morning were filling the Valley of Hammocks.
 
The shadow took him by the hand, and don Justo entered barefoot into Eternity.
 
 
Ricardo Lindo,  Arca de los olvidos,  Antología narrativa.   Vol. 30 in the Biblioteca Básica de Literatura Salvadoreña published by CONCULTURA, San Salvador, 1998.  Translated by John Lamperti.