Since my last visit to Cartagena, a pair of aerial fig roots, previously just hints, were dangling near the statue of the eighteenth-century actor, Isidoro Máiquez.

“I’ve been away too long,” I thought as I brushed sun-dried leaves from the statue’s base and looked up at his Shakespearean pose.

Máiquez, although famous, is interesting to me as the father-in-law of Manuel Tamayo-y-Baus, author of “Un drama nuevo”, the object of my student’s study. My student, a young woman by the name of Analia is, in turn, the object of my secret desires.

I settled into a café chair facing the plaza, ordered a coffee and flicked open the binder of notes I made on her thesis.