“The picture is the story of this house,” Ms. Martinez says, translating for Mr. Rivera, who stands in the doorway. “The older man is his teacher, who betrayed him by telling lies. The woman was another student. Mr. Rivera was her boyfriend. They lasted about three months. They broke up; she told her mother he would never be anything in life.”

That was what inspired Mr. Rivera to build this house, Ms. Martinez explains. “He wanted to do it in a certain spot, so that if she were to travel she would see it day in and day out and regret those words.”

Ah, yes, the 40-year-old cuts to the heart are the ones that hang you up the most.

Mr. Rivera was a poor child, one of 12, whose father was the superintendent of a sugar cane mill, Ms. Martinez continues. When he was in high school, he went on a field trip and saw a house being built in the shape of a boat, which made a big impression on him. This was an era when there was much talk of U.F.O.’s, or as they’re called here, O.V.N.I.’s, for Objeto Volador No Identificado.

The woman in the painting, whom Mr. Rivera declines to name, went to high school with him, and he sent her little love notes with pictures of flying saucers, promising that one day he would build a house shaped like that. Later, when they were studying at the Pontifical Catholic University in Ponce, Mr. Rivera and the young woman started going out.

“It ended because she wrote him a letter saying she did not want to continue the relationship, because she didn’t love him anymore,” Ms. Martinez says, translating for Mr. Rivera. “It was the mother who explained to him that her daughter had said that he would never amount to anything in life. He was shocked. He used to live on the 13th floor, and he wanted to throw himself off, but he held himself back and said, ‘No, I’m going to show her, this person, I’m going to work that much harder to show her who I am.’ ”

Ms. Martinez is translating matter of factly, although Mr. Rivera is speaking with emotion. “It motivated him more,” she says. “He just picked himself up and decided that someday she will hear about him.”