The Royal Alcázar of Seville and its Gardens become the setting of a final, uncanny return: after a funeral, the jester from the gardens gives the narrator a photograph of himself taken there. The image turns the Alcázar into a hinge between the novel’s earlier mystery and its ending, leading the narrator to recognize that the story reaches beyond its central couples to include Sheila and his own grief.

Setting and Recollection

The narrator’s photograph shows him seated in the small square before the Puerta de Marchena, within the gardens. Its precise location makes the image more than a record of his presence: it brings the Alcázar back into the last scene, where the narrator is attending the funeral of a young woman and wondering whether he might somehow be responsible for what happened.

The photograph is delivered outside the church of Santa Ana, not inside the gardens. The contrast draws the earlier place of the image into the narrator’s present mourning: he studies a captured moment from the Alcázar while standing in the square before the church.

The Jester’s Return

As the mourners begin to leave, the narrator spots the jester from the Alcázar gardens. The jester winks, signals for him to step away from the group, and takes photographs from the inside pocket of his jacket. He hands over one image—the narrator seated by the Puerta de Marchena—and firmly refuses the coins the narrator searches for to pay him, answering, «¡De nada, de nada!»

The encounter is brief and unexplained. Before the narrator can get a closer look, the jester and the rest of the funeral party have disappeared. The gardens are thus linked to an elusive figure who seems to carry an image from the narrator’s past into the scene of his present loss.

The Photograph and Recognition

The narrator studies the photograph for a long time. In it he sees a grieving primate, and finds no reconciliation in the face looking back at him. This recognition changes his understanding of the novel he has been writing: it is not essentially about Frank and Vera or Ana and José, but about Sheila and her solitaire letters, and about the narrator himself.

Turning the photograph over supplies its final meaning. Its reverse bears a statement that human beings may be the only living creatures in the universe with universal consciousness, and that preserving the planet’s habitats is therefore a cosmic responsibility. It warns that darkness may one day cover everything again, and that God’s spirit will no longer hover over the waters.

Narrative Significance

The gardens matter here through the photograph rather than through a renewed visit. Their small square preserves the narrator’s earlier likeness, while the funeral setting makes that likeness legible as an image of bereavement. The Alcázar thus connects a place associated with the uncanny jester to the narrator’s late recognition of what his story contains: not only other people’s relationships, but also Sheila’s absence and his own unappeased grief.