In “William in the Window” (William en la Ventana) a short story by Samanta Schweblin published in the book El buen mal (2025), an Argentine writer travels to Shanghai to participate in an international writers’ residency. From her small apartment in a skyscraper overlooking Zhongshan Park, she makes frequent calls to Andrés, her partner, who has remained in Buenos Aires facing a serious illness. He supports her in her creative process, listens with interest to the progress of the novel she is writing—the story of a mother whose young daughter violently rejects her when she returns from work—and tells her details of his daily life, including caring for her sister’s twins. Through these conversations, a quiet tension is perceived: the fear of death, distance, and the fragility of the bond in the face of the inevitable.
At the residence, the writer meets other colleagues, including Mega, a young Indian author, Gonçalo, a seductive Portuguese man, and above all Denyse, an older, refined, and sensitive Irish writer who soon becomes a trusted figure. Denyse successfully published a first novel based on the childhood of her Serbian maid, but since then she has been unable to write with the same fluidity. One day, the protagonist finds her in the elevator with a swollen face: William, her cat, has been poisoned. Although the animal begins to recover, Denyse reveals that she could not go on without him, even though he is technically her husband’s cat. That bond—discreet, intense—becomes central to her life.
The protagonist shares with Andrés what is happening in Shanghai. He looks for information about Denyse and sends her a photo of her house in Ireland: William appears in a window, upright, majestic, his gaze fixed on an invisible point. That image remains etched in her mind, as a symbol of something that resists, that observes without moving. As her novel progresses and Andrés tells her that he is awaiting the results of new tests, her anxiety grows. During an excursion to a nearby village, the writer confesses her deepest fear to Denyse: that if Andrés dies, she too could die. Denyse listens without alarm. She asks her what she likes most about him. The answer is a small, everyday detail: the mark her partner leaves every morning on the bathroom tiles when he leans against them to urinate. It is a silent, unnoticed trace that for her sums up the tenderness of a shared life.
Shortly after, Denyse organizes an impromptu birthday dinner in her room. She invites all the writers to bring their own stools, tableware, and whatever they want to drink. The protagonist promises to bring the cake. The scene, intimate and simple, serves as a respite. William is already feeling better. Everyone talks and shares. Even so, the feeling of finitude persists. The protagonist does not forget that Andrés is far away, sick, and that what unites them may not withstand the passage of time.
The story ends with this gentle tension, sustained by the memory of small gestures: a mark on a tile, a cat in the window. Life goes on there, in the imperceptible, in the bonds that are built from the most fragile things.
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