Pages 31–32

Two brand new characters walk into a ghost's guest room

Previously, we briefly returned to the present day where our narrator was scooped out of one ghost’s guest room by, presumably, another ghost to go stay in her guest room instead. Honestly, it’s not as bad a call as it sounds like: the first guest room was haunted by the spirit of a man who was hanged in that room and his screams from beyond the grave kept waking up the narrator in the middle of the night.

Wanna know more about the hanged guy? Wanna know just barely more about the hanged guy?

Pages 31–32

We flash back to the past again, to a time when the man who was hanged in that room – Toribio Aldrete – is getting sued. I think. Between me not knowing legal terminology and this being a translated work about another country’s legal system as it was nearly a century ago… this isn’t my most confident summary today. And this one doesn’t even have ghosts in it.

Fulgor Sedano, an administrator “qualitied to initiate and pursue civil disputes”, informs Toribio Aldrete that he is accused of usufruct, which is roughly the point where I realized this week’s summary was going to be rough. Googling wtf usufruct is, we get the legal right accorded to a person or party that confers the temporary right to use and derive income or benefit from someone else's property. So it seems probably that this is some Pedro Páramo nonsense, since all we really know about him is he becomes a nightmare landlord over the course of this novel.

Fulgor Sedano working for (or against? idk?) Pedro Páramo is, perhaps, implied by Toribio Aldrete’s reaction: