The story begins with the lines «I am dying now, but I still have many things to say», and proceeds to describe, after a brief mention of joining the priesthood, how Father Urrutia entered the Chilean literary world under the wing of a famous, albeit fictitious, tacitly homosexual literary critic by the name of Farewell. At Farewell’s estate he encounters the critic’s close friend Pablo Neruda and later begins to publish literary criticism and poetry.