The Infatuations

When someone is in love, or, more precisely, when a woman is in love and in the early stages of an affair, when it still has all the allure of the new and surprising, she is usually capable of taking an interest in anything that the object of her love is interested in or speaks about. She’s not just pretending as a way of pleasing him or winning him over or establishing a fragile stronghold, although there is an element of that, she really does pay attention and allow herself to be genuinely caught up in what he feels and transmits, be it enthusiasm, aversion, sympathy, fear, anxiety or even obsession. Not to mention accompanying him in his improvised lucubrations, which are what most bind and attract her because she is there at their birth and pushes them out into the world and watches them stretch and waver and stumble. She develops a sudden passion for things to which she had never before given a moment’s thought, she acquires unexpected dislikes, picks up on details that had previously passed her by unnoticed and that her senses would have continued to ignore until the end of her days, she focuses her energies on matters that affect her only vicariously or because she is under some sort of spell or influence, as if she had decided to live out her life on screen or on stage or inside a novel, in an alien fictional world that absorbs and amuses her more than her real life, which she puts temporarily on hold or relegates to second place, and takes a brief rest from it (there is nothing more tempting than to surrender yourself to someone else, even if only in your imagination, and to make his problems your own and to submerge yourself in his existence, which, because it is not yours, seems easier to bear). I’m possibly going too far in putting it like that, but initially we women do place ourselves at the service or at the disposal of the person we happen to love, and mostly we do this innocently, that is, not knowing that there will come a day, if we ever feel solid and established enough, when he will look at us with disappointment and perplexity as it dawns on him that, in fact, we care nothing for what once excited us, that we are bored by what he tells us, even though he hasn’t changed his topics of conversation, which are no less interesting than they used to be. It just means that we will have stopped struggling to maintain that initial enthusiasm and passion, but not that we were pretending or were being false from the very start. With Leopoldo there was never any crux moment, because I never felt the same wilful, ingenuous, unconditional love for him that I felt for Díaz-Varela, into whom I threw myself body and soul – albeit prudently and discreetly, so that he would barely notice – despite knowing beforehand that he could never reciprocate my love, that he, in turn, was at Luisa’s service and had, inevitably, been waiting a long time for his opportunity.

I borrowed the Balzac novella (yes, I do know French) because he had read it to me and talked to me about it, and how could I not be interested in something that had interested him, given that I was still in that early phase of falling in love when everything about him was a revelation. I did so out of curiosity too: I wanted to know what had happened to the Colonel, although I assumed he had not met with a happy end, that he had failed to recover wife, fortune or dignity, that he might perhaps have ended up yearning for his condition as corpse. I had never read anything by Balzac, he was another famous writer who, like so many others, I hadn’t so much as glanced at, because, paradoxical though it may seem, working in a publishing house prevents you from reading almost any of the truly great literature that has been written, the literature that time has sanctioned and miraculously authorized to endure beyond that briefest of moments, which grows ever briefer. I was also intrigued to know why Díaz-Varela had found it so fascinating and spent so much time over it, why it had led him into those thoughts, why he was using it as evidence that the dead are fine where they are and should never come back, even if their death was untimely and unjust, stupid, gratuitous and unfortunate, like that of Desvern, and even if there was no risk of them ever reappearing. It was as if he feared that, were his friend to be resurrected, were such a thing possible, he wanted to convince me or convince himself that any resurrection would be inopportune, a mistake, and even bad for both the living and for the dead man, as Balzac ironically dubbed the surviving and ghostly Chabert, and that it would even cause everyone unnecessary suffering, always assuming that the truly dead can still suffer. I also had the impression that Díaz-Varela was keen to endorse and accept the lawyer Derville’s pessimistic vision, his gloomy ideas about the infinite capacity of normal individuals (like you and me) for covetousness and crime, for placing their own miserly interests before any consideration of pity, affection or even fear. It was as if he wanted to find verification for this in a novel – not in a chronicle or in the annals or in a history book – and to find there persuasive arguments to prove that this was simply how humankind always was and had been, that there was no escaping this and that one should expect only the basest of deeds, betrayals and cruelties, the broken promises and deceptions that have sprung up and been committed in every time and place with no need for examples or models to imitate, although most such crimes remain secret, covered up, and were performed surreptitiously and never came to light, not even after a hundred years had passed, when no one can be bothered to find out what happened all that time ago. And although he hadn’t said as much, it was easy to deduce that he didn’t even believe that there were many exceptions, apart, perhaps, from a few unusually innocent beings, but, rather, that any seeming exceptions could usually be attributed to a lack of imagination or boldness or possibly the physical inability to carry out a robbery or a crime, or were the product of our own ignorance, our lack of knowledge as to what people had done or planned or ordered to be done and had very successfully concealed.

When I reached the end of the novel and the words spoken by Derville, of which Díaz-Varela had improvised a translation in Spanish, I noticed that he had made a mistake or had perhaps misunderstood, either unwittingly or, possibly, on purpose, to prove his point; perhaps he had chosen or opted to read something into the text that wasn’t there, so that his mistaken interpretation, whether deliberate or not, would reinforce what he was trying to endorse or emphasize, that is, the ruthlessness of men or, in this case, women. He had translated it thus: ‘I have seen women administer lethal drops to a legitimate child born of the marriage bed in order to bring about its death and thus benefit a love-child.’ When I heard that sentence, my blood froze, because it seems unimaginable that a mother could make such distinctions between her children, especially when those distinctions depended solely on who the father was, that she should have loved one and detested or only tolerated the other, still less that she could be capable of causing the death of the first-born in order to benefit her favourite child, by giving the former some sort of poisoned bait, perhaps in the shape of curative drops for a cough, thus taking advantage of the child’s blind faith in the person who had brought him into the world and who had fed and cared for and tended him throughout his whole existence. But that isn’t what the original said, it didn’t say: ‘J’ai vu des femmes donnant à l’enfant d’un premier lit des gouttes qui devaient amener sa mort …’, but ‘des goûts’, which doesn’t mean ‘drops’ but ‘tastes’, although you couldn’t translate it like that, because it would be ambiguous, to say the least, and lead to confusion. Díaz-Varela’s French was doubtless better than mine, he had, after all, studied at the Lycée, but I was tempted to think that a more accurate translation of what Balzac had written would be something like this: ‘I have seen women instil in a legitimate child born of the marriage bed certain tastes’ (or perhaps ‘inclinations’) ‘that would bring about its death and thus benefit a love-child.’ The meaning still wasn’t very clear even in that interpretation, nor was it easy to imagine what exactly Derville meant. To give or instil in a child tastes or inclinations that would bring about his death? Drink or opium or gambling or a tendency to criminal behaviour perhaps? A taste for luxury that he would be unable to give up and that would lead him to commit crimes in order to satisfy that taste? A morbid lust that would expose him to diseases or propel him into rape? A character so weak and fearful that the slightest setback would drive him to suicide? It was obscure and almost enigmatic. Whatever the true interpretation, what a long time it would take to produce that desired and carefully planned death, what a very slow process and what a large investment of time. And the mother’s level of perversity would be far greater than if she had simply given her child a few murderous drops disguised as something else, and which perhaps only an inquisitive, stubborn doctor would be able to detect. There is a difference between preparing someone for their early ruin and death and killing them outright, and we tend to believe that the latter is the graver and more reprehensible of the two, because we have a horror of violence and find direct intervention more shocking, or maybe it’s because there is then no room for doubts or excuses, the person carrying out or committing the act has no hiding place, and cannot say it was a mistake or an accident or a miscalculation or an error. A mother who had ruined her son’s life, who had intentionally spoiled or perverted her child, could always say, when faced by the unfortunate consequences: ‘That wasn’t what I intended at all. How stupid of me, how could I possibly have imagined that things would turn out this way? I did everything out of excessive love and with the best of intentions. I may have kept him wrapped in cotton wool for so long that I made a coward of him, I may have given in to his every whim and so twisted his mind that he turned into a despot, but my one thought was always his happiness. How blind I have been and how unthinkingly pernicious!’ And she could even come to believe this herself, whereas she couldn’t possibly think or tell herself such things if her child had died at her hands, because of something she had done and at an hour she herself had determined. Actually causing someone’s death is a very different matter, says the person not holding the weapon (and we, unwittingly, accept his reasoning), from, say, preparing the ground for it and waiting for it to come about or to happen of its own accord; as is desiring and ordering someone’s death, for the desire and the order sometimes become confused and can prove indistinguishable for those accustomed to having their desires satisfied as soon as they have been expressed or even implied, or to having their desires carried out as soon as they have been conceived. That is why the most powerful and most cunning of people never dirty their own hands or even their tongue, because that way they still have the option of saying, when they are at their smuggest, or when most troubled and wearied by their conscience: ‘I didn’t actually do it. Was I there, was I holding the gun, the spoon, the knife that finished him off? I wasn’t even there when he died.’





It was one night, after I came back from Díaz-Varela’s apartment feeling cheerful and in a good mood, that I began not to suspect so much as to wonder, and lying in bed looking out at my dark, agitated trees, I found myself wishing or, rather, fantasizing about the possibility that Luisa might die and thus leave the field open for me with Díaz-Varela, since she was doing nothing to occupy that field herself. He and I got on well, what he had to say interested me or at least it cost me no great effort to take an interest, and it was clear that he found my company pleasant and amusing, both in bed and out of it, and it is the latter that counts, or, while the former may be necessary, it’s still not enough without the latter, and I enjoyed both those advantages. In my vainer moments, I would think that, but for his long-held fixation, his cerebral passion – I didn’t dare to call it his long-held plan, because that would have implied suspicion, which I did not yet feel – he would not only have been perfectly content with me, I would also gradually have made myself indispensable to him. I sometimes had the feeling that he couldn’t let himself go with me, couldn’t entirely give himself, because he had decided in his head, a long time ago, that Luisa was the chosen one, and she had remained so with all the conviction that hopelessness brings with it, since there was not the remotest chance of his dream coming true, given that she was the wife of his best friend whom they both loved very much. Perhaps he had also made her the ideal excuse for never fully committing himself, instead jumping from one woman to another and letting none of those relationships become either very important or very lasting, because, as he lay awake with some woman in his arms, he was always looking out of the corner of his eye or over her shoulder (or should I say, over our shoulder, since I must include myself among the women thus embraced). When you want something for a long time, it’s very difficult to stop wanting it, I mean, to admit or to realize that you no longer desire it or that you would prefer something else. Waiting feeds and fosters that desire, waiting is accumulative as regards the thing awaited, it solidifies desire and turns it to stone, and then we resist acknowledging that we have wasted years expecting a signal, which, when it finally comes, no longer tempts us, or else we simply can’t be bothered to answer a belated call that we no longer trust, perhaps because it doesn’t now suit us to move. One grows accustomed to waiting for an opportunity that never comes, feeling deep down rather calm and safe and passive, unable quite to believe that it never will present itself.

But, alas, at the same time, no one entirely gives up on that hope, and that itch keeps us awake or prevents us from fully submerging ourselves in sleep. After all, the most unlikely things do happen, and that is something everyone feels, even those who know nothing of history or what happened in the previous world, or even what is happening in this world, which advances at the same hesitant pace as they do. Who hasn’t been witness to some unlikely event, which we often don’t even notice until someone points it out to us and puts it into words: the school dunce is made a minister and the layabout turns banker; the coarsest, ugliest boy in class enjoys a wild success with the best-looking women; while the most simple-minded student becomes a venerated writer and a candidate for the Nobel Prize, as may well be the case with Garay Fontina, for, who knows, perhaps the day will yet come when he gets that call from Stockholm; the most tedious and ordinary of fans manages to get close to her idol and ends up marrying him; the corrupt, thieving journalist passes himself off as a moralist and a champion of honesty; the most distant and pusillanimous of heirs, the very last on the list and the most disastrous, ascends to the throne; the most annoying, stuck-up, scornful woman is adored by the masses whom she crushes and humiliates from her leader’s podium and who should, by rights, loathe her; the greatest imbecile and the greatest rogue gain a landslide victory from a population mesmerized by baseness or perhaps driven by a suicidal desire to be deceived; the murderous politician, when the tables turn, is liberated and acclaimed as a hero and a patriot by the crowd who had, until then, concealed their own criminal tendencies; and an out-and-out yokel is appointed ambassador or President of the Republic or made prince consort if love is involved, and love tends always to be idiotic and foolish. We are all waiting or looking out for that golden opportunity, sometimes it depends solely on how much effort you invest in getting what you wish for, how much enthusiasm and patience you put into each objective, however megalomaniac and preposterous that might be. How could I help nurturing the idea that Díaz-Varela would one day be mine, either because he finally saw the light or because it didn’t work out with Luisa even though the opportunity had now arisen and he could doubtless count on his dead friend Deverne having given him permission, or even a commission, to take on the task? How could I help thinking that my turn would come, when even the ancient spectre of Colonel Chabert had believed for a moment that he would be able to rejoin the narrow world of the living and recover his fortune and the affections, even if only filial, of the terrified wife who felt so threatened by his resurrection? How could such thoughts not occur to me on certain hopeful, overexcited nights or on nights when I was feeling slightly emotionally tipsy, given that we are surrounded by people with zero talent who succeed in convincing their contemporaries that their talent is, in fact, boundless, or by fools and flatterers who successfully pretend, for half or more than half their lives, to be extremely intelligent and who are listened to as if they were oracles; when there are people with no gift at all for what they do and yet who, nonetheless, enjoy a brilliant career that is greeted by universal applause, at least until they depart this world and are plunged into instant oblivion; when there are uncouth boors who dictate what the polite classes should wear, and to whom the polite classes, for some mysterious reason, listen with rapt attention; when there are unpleasant, twisted, malicious men and women who rouse passions wherever they go; and when there is no shortage of lovers with grotesque pretensions seemingly doomed to defeat and mockery, who, however, triumph in the end against all the odds and against all reason. Anything is possible, anything can happen, and most of us know this, which is why few give up on their great task, though they may rest or momentarily lose sight of it, those, that is, who have set themselves a great task, and there are never so many that they risk swamping the world with their endless vigour and determination.

Sometimes, though, all it takes is for a person to pour his energies into becoming something or into reaching a particular goal for him eventually to become that thing or reach that goal, even though, objectively speaking, everything is against him, and even though he wasn’t born for that or hasn’t received a call from God to follow that path, as people used to say, and this phenomenon is most apparent in conquests and in confrontations: someone may look as if he’s on a hiding to nothing with his enmity for or hatred of someone else, he may lack the power or the means to eliminate the other man, like a hare attacking a lion, and yet that person will often emerge victorious thanks to sheer tenacity and lack of scruples, by dint of stratagems and spleen and concentration, because his sole objective in life is to harm his enemy, to bleed him dry and undermine him and then finish him off, woe betide anyone who acquires an enemy with those characteristics, however weak and needy he may seem; if you don’t have the time or the will to direct the same passionate loathing at him and to respond with equal intensity, you will end up succumbing, because you can’t afford to be distracted when fighting a war, regardless of whether that war is open or hidden or secret, nor to underestimate your stubborn opponent, even if you believe him to be innocuous and incapable of harming you or inflicting so much as a scratch: the reality is that anyone can destroy us, just as anyone can conquer us, and that is our essential fragility. If someone sets out to destroy us, then it’s very difficult to avoid destruction, unless we drop everything and focus entirely on that struggle. The first requisite, however, is knowing that such a struggle exists, for we often don’t notice, the enemies most likely to succeed being of the crafty, silent, treacherous kind, who resemble one of those undeclared wars or a war in which the attacker remains invisible or disguises himself as an ally or a neutral force, I, for example, could launch an offensive against Luisa behind her back, one so oblique that she wouldn’t be aware of it because she wouldn’t even know that an enemy was stalking her. We might, entirely unwittingly and unintentionally, become an obstacle to someone, we might, quite unintentionally, be standing in the way or blocking someone else’s upward path, and that means no one is safe, we are all capable of becoming the object of someone’s hatred or of their violent ambitions, even the most wretched and inoffensive of us. Poor Luisa was both those things, but no one ever completely gives up hope and I was no different from anyone else. I knew what to expect from Díaz-Varela and I never deceived myself in that regard, and yet I still couldn’t help hoping for a stroke of luck or for some strange transformation to take place, for him to realize one day that he couldn’t live without me, or that he needed us both. That night, I saw that the only real and possible stroke of luck would be for Luisa to die, and that once the possibility of achieving his objective, his goal, his long-desired trophy, had disappeared, Díaz-Varela would have no option but to see me clearly at last and to seek refuge in me. We should never feel offended when someone makes do with our company for lack of a better companion.





If, when alone at night in my bedroom, I was capable of desiring or fantasizing about the death of Luisa, who had never harmed me and whom I had nothing against, who inspired my sympathy and pity and even a degree of affection, would the same thoughts not have occurred to Díaz-Varela, I wondered, and with far more reason, regarding his friend Desvern. We never, in principle, desire the death of those who are so close to us that they almost constitute our life, but sometimes we surprise ourselves by wondering what would happen if one of them disappeared. On occasions, that thought is provoked by fear and horror, by our excessive love for them and our panic at the idea of losing them: ‘What would I do without him, without her? What would become of me? I couldn’t carry on living, I would want to go with him.’ The mere idea makes us dizzy, and we usually drive the thought away at once, with a shudder and a saving sense of unreality, as when we shake off a persistent nightmare that doesn’t entirely end when we wake up. But on other occasions, the daydream is murky and impure. We never dare to desire anyone’s death, still less that of someone close to us, but we know intuitively that if a certain person were to have an accident or become ill towards the end of his life, it would in some way improve the universe or, which comes to the same thing, our own personal situation. ‘If he or she did not exist,’ we might think, ‘how different everything would be, what a weight would be lifted from me, there would be an end to penury and to my unbearable feeling of unease, I would no longer have to live in his shadow.’ ‘Luisa is the only impediment,’ I would think sometimes, ‘all that stands between me and Díaz-Varela is his obsession with her. If he were to lose her, if he were to be deprived of his mission, his goal …’ At the time, I didn’t force myself to refer to him only by his surname, he was still ‘Javier’ and that name was adored as being something always beyond my grasp. Yes, if even I found myself drifting into that kind of thinking, how could the same idea not have occurred to him as long as Deverne remained an obstacle? A part of Díaz-Varela must have longed every day for his bosom pal to die, to vanish, and that same part, or an even larger part perhaps, would have rejoiced at the news of his unexpected death by stabbing, a death with which he would have had nothing to do. ‘How unfortunate and how lucky,’ he would perhaps have thought when he found out. ‘How regrettable, how wonderful, what a terrible tragedy that Miguel should have been there at that precise moment, when the man launched into his homicidal attack; it could have happened to anyone, including me, and Miguel could have been somewhere else, why did it have to happen to him, how fortunate that he has been got rid of and thus left the field clear, a field I thought occupied for ever, and I did nothing to make it happen, not even by omission, negligence or by some chance act that one will curse retrospectively, perhaps because I didn’t keep him by my side for longer and didn’t stop him going to that place, although that would only have been possible had I seen him on that day, but I didn’t see or speak to him, I was going to call him later on to wish him a happy birthday, what a misfortune, what a blessing, what a stroke of luck and how dreadful, what a loss and what a gain. And I have no reason to reproach myself.’

I never woke up in his apartment, I never spent the night by his side or knew the joy of his face being the first thing I saw in the morning; but there was one occasion, or more than one, when I happened to fall asleep in his bed in the late evening or when it was getting dark, a brief but profound sleep after the satisfying exhaustion I experienced in that bed – whether it was equally satisfying for him I have no idea, one never knows if what another person tells you is true, you can only be sure of what comes from yourself, and even then. On that occasion – the last – I was vaguely aware of a doorbell ringing, I opened my eyes slightly, just for a moment, and saw him by my side, already completely dressed (he always got dressed at once, as if he wouldn’t allow himself even a minute of the weary, contented indolence that follows any amorous encounter); he was reading by the light of the bedside lamp, sitting as still as a photo, resting his back against the pillow, not watching me or taking any notice of me at all, and so I remained asleep. The doorbell rang again, more than once, longer and more insistently each time, but I didn’t stir or sit up, certain that it was nothing to do with me. I didn’t move or open my eyes again, even though I noticed, at the third or fourth ring, that Díaz-Varela was quickly and silently slipping sideways off the bed. It could only be something concerning him, not me, because no one knew I was there (there, in that bed, of all the possible places in the world). My consciousness, however, began to stir, albeit still without fully waking me from sleep. I had dozed off on the bedspread, half-naked or as undressed as he had decided I should be, and I noticed now that he had thrown a blanket over me so that I didn’t catch cold or perhaps so that he wouldn’t have to continue seeing my body, so that what he had just done with me would be less glaringly obvious, because he always remained completely unchanged after our amorous excesses, he behaved as if they hadn’t even happened, however noisy and flamboyant they might have been, he was exactly the same before and afterwards. I instinctively pulled the blanket up around me and that gesture drew me further into wakefulness, although I still kept my eyes closed, half-awake, vaguely listening out for him now that he had left the room and me.

The person must have been downstairs in the street, because I didn’t hear the apartment door open, just Díaz-Varela’s muffled voice answering the entryphone, I didn’t understand the words, only the tone, half-surprised and half-irritated, then resigned and reluctantly acquiescent, like someone unwillingly agreeing to something he finds really annoying or that he doesn’t want to get involved in. After a few seconds – or possibly a couple of minutes – the voice of the new arrival sounded louder and clearer, an angry male voice, Díaz-Varela had waited with the front door open so that his visitor wouldn’t have to ring that bell too, or perhaps he was hoping to deal with him right there and then, without even inviting him in.

‘Fancy having your mobile turned off,’ the man said reproachfully. ‘That’s why I’ve had to come traipsing all the way over here.’

‘Keep your voice down. Like I said, I’m not alone. I’ve got a bird with me, she’s sleeping now, but you wouldn’t want her to wake up and hear us. Besides, she knows the wife. Anyway, do you really expect me to have my mobile on all the time just in case you need to call me? Besides, why would you call me, we haven’t spoken in ages. This had better be important. Wait a moment.’

That was enough to jerk me completely awake. All it takes is for someone not to want us to hear something for us to do all we can to find out what that something is, not realizing that sometimes people conceal things from us for our own good, so as not to disappoint or involve us, so that life doesn’t seem as bad as it usually does. Díaz-Varela had tried to lower his voice when he answered, but had failed because he was feeling irritated or perhaps apprehensive, and I heard his words quite clearly. His final words, ‘Wait a moment’, made me think that he was going to come into the bedroom to check that I was still asleep, and so I lay very still and with my eyes tight shut, even though I was now completely awake. And that was what happened, I heard him come in and take four or five steps until he was level with my head on the pillow, from where he studied me for a few seconds, like someone carrying out an examination; the steps he took were cautious, but quite normal, as if he were alone in the room. When he left, however, his steps were far more wary; it seemed to me that, having made sure I was still sleeping deeply, he didn’t want to risk waking me. I heard him close the door very gently and, once outside, give the handle a tug just to be quite certain that there wasn’t the slightest crack through which his conversation might sneak in. The bedroom was next to the living room. There was no click, however, which meant the door was not properly closed. ‘A bird,’ I thought, half-amused, half-wounded; not ‘a friend’, not ‘a date’, certainly not ‘a girlfriend’. I was possibly not yet the first or the second and would never be the third, not even in the broadest, vaguest sense of that all-purpose word. He could have just said ‘a woman’. Or perhaps his companion was one of that large band of men with whom you can only use a particular vocabulary, their own, rather than the vocabulary you would normally use, the sort of man for whom you have to adapt your language so that they don’t feel alarmed or uncomfortable or inadequate. I didn’t take it personally at all, for most of the ‘blokes’ of this world, I would be just that, ‘a bird’.

Half-clothed as I was (I had kept my skirt on throughout), I immediately leapt off the bed, crept over to the door and put my ear to it. That way I caught only a murmur and the occasional word, for both men were too agitated to be able to keep their voices permanently lowered, however much they wanted to and however hard they tried. I decided to widen the crack that Díaz-Varela’s gentle tug from the outside had failed to eliminate; fortunately, no tell-tale creak betrayed me; and if they did become aware of my indiscreet presence, I could always say that I had heard voices and wanted to confirm that there was, indeed, a visitor, in which case I would have stayed in the bedroom, thus saving Díaz-Varela the bother of having to introduce me or explain my presence. Not that our sporadic encounters were clandestine, at least there had been no agreement between us to that effect, but I sensed that he probably hadn’t told anyone else about them, perhaps because I hadn’t either. Or maybe it was because we would both have doubtless concealed them from the same person, Luisa, although why I should do that, I have no idea, apart from a vague, incongruous respect for the plans that he was silently hatching, and for the idea that, if he succeeded in his plans, he and Luisa might one day become husband and wife. The minimal crack that barely deserved the name (the wood was slightly swollen, which was why the door didn’t quite close) allowed me to distinguish who was speaking when and, sometimes, to hear entire sentences, at others only fragments or almost nothing, depending on whether the men succeeded in talking in whispers, as was their intention. Contrary to their intention, however, their voices would immediately rise a notch, for they were clearly excited about something, if not somewhat alarmed or even frightened. If Díaz-Varela were to find me spying on them later (he might come and look in on me again, just in case), the more time passed, the more awkward it would be for me, although I could always say, by way of an excuse, that I had assumed he had closed the door simply in order not to wake me and not because he was talking to his visitor about some secret matter. He wouldn’t believe me, of course, but I would keep my cool, at least on the surface, unless he confronted me sharply or furiously, regardless of the consequences, and accused me of lying. And he would be right, too, because the truth is, I knew from the beginning that his conversation was not for my ears, not just for reasons of discretion, but because, as he had said, I knew ‘the wife’, and he used the Spanish word ‘mujer’ in the sense not of ‘woman’ but of ‘wife’, in this case, someone else’s wife, and for the moment, that someone could only be Desvern.





‘All right, what’s up, what’s so damn urgent?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard the response from the other man, who had a resonant voice and very clear, correct diction, not one of those cod Madrid accents – people say that we madrileños separate and emphasize every syllable, and yet I’ve never heard anyone from my city speak like that, well, only in antiquated films and plays, or as a joke – but he barely elided his words, and so each was easily distinguishable when he wasn’t speaking in the whisper to which he aspired and of which his speech or tone of voice seemed incapable.

‘Apparently the guy’s started to blab. He’s not as silent as he was.’

‘Who? Canella?’ I heard Díaz-Varela’s question very clearly too, and I heard that name as someone might hear a terrifying curse – I remembered that name, I had read it on the Internet, in fact, I remembered the man’s whole name, Luis Felipe Vázquez Canella, as if it were a catchy title or a line of poetry – or as someone might hear sentence being pronounced on herself or on the person she most loves, telling herself that this is simply impossible, that this can’t be happening, she can’t be hearing what she’s hearing and what’s happened can’t have happened, as when our lover announces in that universal phrase, which is the same in all languages, ‘We need to talk, María,’ even addressing us by our name, which he barely uses otherwise, not even when his flattering mouth is breathing hard against our neck, and then goes on to condemn us: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment, I can’t understand it myself’ or ‘I’ve met someone else’ or ‘You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit strange and distant lately’, all of which are preludes to misfortune. Or like someone hearing the doctor utter the name of an illness that has nothing to do with us, an illness that afflicts other people but not us, and yet, ridiculous though it may seem, this time, he’s saying that we have that illness, how can that be, there must be some mistake or else he didn’t say what I think he said, that sort of thing doesn’t happen to me, it just doesn’t, I’ve never been unlucky like that, and I’m not going to start being unlucky now.

I was startled too, filled by a momentary panic, and I almost stood back from the door so as not to hear any more, so that I could then persuade myself later on that I’d misheard or hadn’t actually heard anything. But once we’ve started, we always go on listening, the words fall or float out on to the air and no one can stop them. I wished they would just lower their voices, so that it wasn’t up to me to listen or not, I wished their talk would become muffled or entirely indistinct, and then I could have my doubts, and not have to trust my own ears.

‘Of course, who do you think?’ retorted the other man slightly scornfully and impatiently, as if now that he had given the alarm, he had the upper hand, the bearer of news always does, until he blurts out what he has to tell and hands it over and is left with nothing, and the person listening no longer needs him. The bearer’s dominant position is short-lived and lasts only for as long as he can still announce that he knows something, but has as yet said nothing.

‘And what’s he saying? Not that he can say much. I mean, what can he say? What can the wretch say? What does it matter what a madman says?’ Díaz-Varela kept nervously repeating the same thing over and over, to himself really, as if he were trying to exorcize a curse.

The visitor gabbled his response – he could hold it in no longer – and in doing so, his voice rose and fell erratically. I caught only fragments of his response, but of these quite a few.

‘… talking about the calls he got, the voice telling him things,’ he said; ‘… about the man in leather, meaning me,’ he said. ‘It’s no joke … it’s hardly a serious matter … but I’m going to have to mothball them, which is a shame because I really like them, I’ve been wearing them for years now … They didn’t find a mobile phone on him, I took care of that … so they’ll think it’s all in his imagination … They’re not going to believe him, I mean, the man’s a nutter … The danger would be if it was to occur to someone … not spontaneously, but with a bit of nudging … It’s unlikely, because if there’s one thing the world isn’t short of, it’s lazy sods … It’s been a while now … It’s what we expected, the fact that he refused to speak initially was a real bonus, it’s just that things now are as we thought they would be from the start … We had relaxed a bit, that’s all … At the time, in the heat of the moment … worse, but more credible … Anyway, I wanted you to know straight away, because it’s a change, and not a minor one either, although it doesn’t affect us at the moment and I don’t think it will … But I thought it best you should know.’

‘No, you’re right, Ruibérriz, it isn’t a minor change,’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard that unusual surname clearly, Díaz-Varela being too upset to moderate his voice, incapable now of whispering. ‘He may be a nutter, but he’s saying that someone persuaded him, in person and via telephone calls, or else put the idea in his head. He’s sharing out the blame, or broadening it, and you’re the next link and I’m right behind you, damn it. What if they show him a photo of you and he picks you out. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? You’re on their files, aren’t you? And, as you yourself say, you’ve been wearing those leather coats all your life, that’s how people recognize you, that and your T-shirts in summer, which, by the way, you’re far too old for. At first, you told me that you wouldn’t go, that you wouldn’t be seen, that if he needed a bit of a push, you’d send a third party to feed him a little more poison and show him a face he could trust. You said there would always be at least two steps between you and him, not one, that the third party wouldn’t even know of my existence. Now it turns out there’s only you between me and him, and he could easily identify you. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? Go on, tell me the truth, this is no time to pull punches, I’d rather know where I stand.’

There was a silence, perhaps that man Ruibérriz was wondering whether or not to tell the truth, as Díaz-Varela had asked him to, and if he was, that meant he did have a record and his photo would be on file. I was afraid that the pause might have been sparked by some noise I had made without realizing it, my foot on a creaking floorboard perhaps, I didn’t think so, but fear will not allow us to discount anything, not even something that doesn’t exist. I imagined the two of them standing motionless, holding their breath for a moment, suspiciously pricking up their ears, looking out of the corner of their eye at the bedroom, making a gesture with one hand, a gesture meaning ‘Hang on, she’s woken up.’ And suddenly I felt afraid of them, those two men frightened me; I tried to believe that Javier on his own wouldn’t frighten me: I had just been to bed with him, I had embraced and kissed him with all the love I dared show him, that is, with a great deal of repressed, disguised love, I let it show in tiny details that he probably wouldn’t even notice, the last thing I wanted was to frighten him, to scare him off prematurely, to drive him away – although that time would come, I was sure of it. Now I noticed that any feelings of repressed love had vanished – love, in any of its forms, is incompatible with fear; or else those feelings were deferred until a better moment, that of denial and forgetting, but I knew that neither of those things was possible. And so I stepped away from the door in case he should come back into the room to see if I was still asleep, and to check that I had not been an ear-witness to their conversation. I lay down on the bed, adopted what I thought was a convincing posture and waited, I couldn’t hear anything now, I missed Ruibérriz’s reply, which he must have given sooner or later. I stayed there for one minute, two, then three, but no one came, nothing happened, and so I screwed up my courage and got off the bed, went over to the false crack in the door, still half-undressed as he had left me, still with my skirt on. The temptation to listen is irresistible, even if we realize that it will do us no good. Especially when the process of knowing has already begun.

The voices were less audible now, just a murmur, as if they had calmed down after the initial shock. Perhaps before that, they had both been standing up and now had sat down for a moment; people talk more quietly when they’re sitting down.

‘So what do you think we should do?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say at last. He wanted to bring the discussion to a close.

‘We don’t have to do anything,’ answered Ruibérriz, raising his voice, perhaps because he was giving the orders now and felt, momentarily, in charge again. It sounded to me like he was summing up, he would leave soon, perhaps he had already picked up his coat and draped it over his arm, always assuming he had taken it off, for his was an untimely, lightning visit, Díaz-Varela probably hadn’t even offered him a glass of water. ‘This information doesn’t point to anyone, it doesn’t concern us, neither you nor I has anything to do with it, any interference from me would be counter-productive. Just forget you know about it. Nothing is going to change, nothing has changed. If there’s any other news, I’ll find out, but there’s no reason why there should be. They’ll probably make a note of his claim, file it away and do nothing. How are they going to investigate what he says if there’s no trace of that mobile phone, if it doesn’t exist? Canella never even knew the number, apparently he’s given them four or five different numbers, he’s not sure what it was, which is perfectly normal, since they’re all invented or dreamed up by him. He was given the phone but never told the number, that’s what we agreed and that’s what happened. So what’s new? The guy claims he heard voices talking about his daughters and telling him who was to blame. Like lots of other nutcases. There’s nothing so very odd about him hearing those voices through a mobile phone rather than in his head or coming down from the sky, they’ll just assume he’s a loony showing off. Even losers, even madmen, know about the latest trends, and these days, anyone who doesn’t have a mobile phone is an idiot. Just let it go. Don’t get too alarmed about it, because that’s not going to help either.’

‘And what about the man in the leather coat? You yourself were alarmed about that, Ruibérriz. That’s why you came running to tell me. Now you’re saying there’s no need to worry. So which is it to be?’

‘To be honest, it did freak me out a bit. There we were, happily convinced that he wouldn’t make a statement or say a word. It caught me by surprise, I just wasn’t expecting it. But telling you about it now has made me realize that it’ll be fine. And if he did get a couple of visits from a man in a leather coat, so what? Practically speaking, it’s tantamount to him saying he’s been visited by the Virgin of Fatima. Like I said, I’m only wanted in Mexico, and the warrant there has probably lapsed by now, not that I’m planning to fly over and check: a youthful misdemeanour, it happened years ago. And I didn’t wear these leather coats then.’ Ruibérriz knew he was in the wrong, that he should never have allowed himself to be seen by the gorrilla. Perhaps that was why he was trying to play down the importance of the news he himself had brought.

‘Well, you’d better get rid of the coats you’ve got, starting with that one. Burn it or shred it. We don’t want some smart-arse linking you with what happened. You may not have a record here, but you’re still known to a few cops. Let’s just hope the murder squad doesn’t swap information with other crime squads, although that seems unlikely, no one in Spain seems to swap information with anyone else. Each department keeps pretty much to itself, so I’d be surprised if they did.’ Díaz-Varela was trying to be optimistic now and to reassure himself. They sounded like normal people, as much the bumbling amateur as I would have been, people who are unaccustomed to crime or not fully convinced that they’ve committed, or from what I could gather, commissioned one.

I wanted to see that man Ruibérriz, who must have been about to leave; I wanted to see his face and see that famous leather coat before he destroyed it. I decided to leave the bedroom and was on the verge of getting dressed. But if I did that, Díaz-Varela might suspect that I’d been aware for a while that there was someone else in the apartment and had perhaps been listening or spying, at least during the few seconds it would have taken me to pull on the rest of my clothes. If, on the other hand, I burst into the living room as I was, I would give the impression that I had just woken up and had no idea that anyone else was there. I would have heard nothing, convinced that he and I were, as usual, still alone, with no witness to our occasional evening conjunctions. I was simply going to look for him, having discovered that he had left the bed while I was sleeping. It would be best if I presented myself in that state of half-undress, with no show of caution and making a normal amount of noise, like an innocent unaware of anything.





The fact is, though, that far from being half-dressed, I was half- or almost-naked, and ‘the rest of my clothes’ meant everything apart from my skirt, because that was all I was wearing, Díaz-Varela preferring to see me with it pulled up or preferring to pull it up himself during our labours, but for reasons of pleasure or comfort, he always removed my other garments; well, sometimes, he suggested I put my shoes back on once I’d taken off my tights, but only if I was wearing heels, a lot of men cling faithfully to certain classic images, and I can understand that – I have my own such images – and I’ve nothing against it, after all, it costs me nothing to please them and I even feel rather flattered to be conforming to a fantasy that has a certain prestige, and which has, rather commendably, endured now for a few generations. And so that near-complete lack of clothing – my skirt came to just above my knee when it was in its proper place and unwrinkled, but now it was crumpled and twisted and seemed far briefer – stopped me in my tracks and made me hesitate and wonder how I would behave if I genuinely thought I was alone in the apartment with Díaz-Varela, would I sashay forth from the bedroom with my breasts bare or would I cover them up? If you’re going to appear in front of someone else, you have to be very confident that your breasts haven’t grown slack, that they don’t give you away by swaying and bouncing too much (I’ve never understood how nudists of a certain age can be so relaxed about this); having a man see them in repose or from close to and in the heat of battle, so to speak, is quite a different matter from him seeing them full on and at a distance and with them bobbing about uncontrollably. I failed to reach a conclusion, because modesty immediately got the better of me. The prospect of revealing myself like that to a complete stranger seemed completely unacceptable, especially when the stranger in question was a shady character with no scruples. Although, as I was discovering, Díaz-Varela lacked scruples too, possibly to an even greater extent, but he was nonetheless someone who knew those parts of my body that were visible, and not just that, he was someone whom I still loved, for what I felt was a mixture of utter incredulity and basic, unreflecting repugnance; I was incapable of taking in – let alone analysing – what I believed I now knew, and I say ‘believed’ because I felt sure that I must have misheard, that this was some kind of misunderstanding, that I had entirely misinterpreted the conversation, that there was some explanation that would allow me to think later on: ‘How could I possibly have thought such a thing, how foolish and unfair I have been.’ And at the same time, I realized that I had, inevitably, already internalized and incorporated the facts that emerged from that conversation, that they were engraved on my brain until I received the denial I could not ask for without possibly exposing myself to grave danger. I had to pretend to have heard nothing, not just in order to avoid seeming, in his eyes, to be a spy and a busybody – insofar as I cared how he viewed me, which I still did, because no change is ever immediate and instantaneous, not even one brought about by a horrendous discovery – but because it was advisable and even, quite literally, vital. I felt afraid too, for myself, well, a little afraid, I couldn’t be very afraid, as I gauged the dimensions of what had happened and what it meant, it wasn’t easy to move from post-coital placidity or torpor to fearing the person with whom I had achieved that state. There was something improbable and unreal about the whole situation, like a dark, defamatory dream that weighs unbearably on our soul, I was incapable of suddenly seeing Díaz-Varela as a murderer who, having once crossed that line, having once transgressed, might well reoffend. He wasn’t really a murderer, I tried to think later on: he hadn’t held the knife or stabbed anyone, he had never even spoken to that homicidal gorrilla, Vázquez Canella, he hadn’t ordered him to do anything, he’d had no contact with him, indeed, from what I could gather, they had never exchanged a single word. Perhaps the plot hadn’t even been his idea, he might have told his troubles to Ruibérriz, who had then planned it all himself – eager to please, a fool, a hothead – and come to him when the deed was done, like someone turning up with an unexpected present: ‘See how I have smoothed the way for you, see how I have cleared the field, now it is all within your grasp.’ Even that man Ruibérriz had not been the actual executioner, he hadn’t held the weapon or given precise instructions to anyone: he had, at least initially and as I understood it, been a third party, and had merely poisoned the crazed mind of the beggar, trusting in the latter’s eventual violent reaction or response, which might or might not happen; if it was a premeditated crime, much had been left strangely to chance. To what extent had they been sure that he would act, to what extent were they responsible? Unless they had given him instructions or orders and put pressure on him and provided him with that butterfly knife with its seven-centimetre blade, every centimetre of which enters the flesh; after all, given that, in theory, such knives are banned, it can’t be easy to buy one nor would it be affordable to someone who exists solely on tips and sleeps in a clapped-out car. They had obviously given him a mobile phone so that they could phone him, not so that he could make any calls himself – perhaps he had no one to phone, his daughters’ whereabouts were unknown or they may deliberately have kept their distance, avoiding their angry, puritanical, unhinged father like the plague – but to persuade him, like someone whispering in his ear, people forget that what is said to us on the phone comes not from far away, but from very near, which is why what we are told over the phone is so much more persuasive than the same words spoken by someone face to face, for such an interlocutor will not, or only in very rare cases, brush our ear with his lips. Generally speaking, this argument doesn’t work at all, on the contrary, it’s merely an aggravating factor, but it helped momentarily to reassure me and make me feel less threatened, not in principle and not then, not in Díaz-Varela’s apartment, in his bedroom, in his bed: he had not actually stained his hands with blood, with the blood of his best friend, that man I had become so fond of, at a distance and over the years, when we breakfasted in the same café.

Then there was this other man, whose face I wanted to see, who was the reason I was prepared to emerge from the bedroom half-naked, before he left and I lost sight of him for ever. He might prove to be the far more dangerous of the two and might not be at all amused to see me or for me to preserve an image of him for ever afterwards; with him I might really be exposing myself to danger and might read in his eyes the following words: ‘I won’t forget your face; I can easily find out your name and where you live.’ He might be tempted to get rid of me.

But I had to hurry, I could hesitate no longer, and so I put on my bra and my shoes – I had taken these off again, rubbing the heels against the bottom end of the bed, where they had fallen to the floor just before I fell asleep. The bra was enough, I might have put it on anyway, even if there hadn’t been an intruder, aware that it would be more flattering once I was standing up and in movement: even to Díaz-Varela, who had just seen me with nothing on. It was a size smaller than I normally wear, a very old trick which always works on romantic dates, it gives a bit of uplift to your breasts, makes them look fuller, not that I’ve ever had any problems with mine, so far anyway. It’s a small enticement and never fails, when you go on a date with a preconceived idea of what that date will involve, along with other less predictable things. The bra might even make me look more striking – well, more attractive perhaps – in the stranger’s eyes, but it also helped me feel more protected, less embarrassed.

I prepared to open the door, I had already put my shoes on, not worrying if the heels made a noise on the wooden floor, it was a way of warning them, if they were listening acutely enough and not too absorbed in their own problems. I had to watch my expression, which should be one of complete surprise when I saw that man Ruibérriz, but I hadn’t yet decided what my initial response should be, I would probably turn on my heel in alarm and rush back into the bedroom and not reappear until I had put on the slightly, or sufficiently, low-cut V-neck sweater I had chosen to wear that day. And I would probably cover my bust with my hands, or would that seem overly modest? It’s never easy to put yourself in a non-existent situation, I can’t understand how so many people spend their whole life pretending, because it’s impossible to keep every factor in mind, down to the last, unreal detail, when there are no details and they have all been made up.





I took a deep breath and opened the door, ready to play my part, and I knew then that I was already blushing, even before Ruibérriz had entered my field of vision, because I knew he was about to see me in a bra and tight skirt and I found it embarrassing to appear like that before a stranger who had already made the worst possible impression on me. Perhaps all that heat came, in part, from what I had just overheard, from the mixture of indignation and horror that my encircling sense of incredulity did nothing to diminish; I was, at any rate, extremely upset and troubled, filled by confused feelings and thoughts.

The two men were standing up and both of them immediately glanced round, they obviously hadn’t heard me putting on my shoes or anything. In Díaz-Varela’s eyes I noted an immediate coldness or mistrust, censure and even severity. In Ruibérriz’s I saw only surprise and a flicker of male appreciation, which is easy enough to spot and which he doubtless made no effort to conceal, for some men’s eyes are very quick to make such evaluations, a reflex action they can’t avoid, they’re even capable of ogling the bare thighs of a woman who has been involved in a car accident and is still lying, all bloody, on the road, or of staring at the hint of cleavage revealed by the woman who crouches down to help them if they happen to be the injured party, it’s beyond their will to control or perhaps it has nothing to do with will at all, it’s a way of being in the world that will last until the day they die, and before closing their eyes for ever, their gaze will linger appreciatively on the nurse’s knee, even if she’s wearing lumpy white tights.

Instinctively, and feeling genuinely embarrassed, I covered myself with my hands, but what I didn’t do was turn on my heel and disappear at once, because I felt that I should say something, give voice to my embarrassment and shock. This proved less spontaneous.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said to Díaz-Varela, ‘I didn’t know anyone was here. Forgive me, I’ll go and put something on.’

‘It’s all right, I was just leaving,’ said Ruibérriz, holding out his hand to me.

‘Ruibérriz, a friend,’ Díaz-Varela said, introducing me in stark, awkward fashion: ‘This is María.’ Like Luisa, he failed to give my surname, but he possibly did so consciously, to provide me with a minimum of protection.

‘Ruibérriz de Torres,’ added the introducee, ‘delighted to meet you.’ He was clearly keen to highlight that ‘de’ with its hypothetically noble connotations, and continued to hold out his hand.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, rapidly shaking his hand – his eyes flew straight to the one breast left momentarily uncovered – then hurried back into the bedroom, leaving the door open to make it clear that I intended rejoining them, the visitor would hardly leave without saying goodbye to someone he could still see. I picked up my sweater, put it on – aware that his gaze was fixed on my figure, as I stood, sideways on to him, to get dressed – and then returned to the living room. Ruibérriz de Torres was wearing a scarf around his neck – a mere adornment, he had not perhaps removed it all the time he had been there – and draped over his shoulders was the famous leather coat, which hung about him like a cape, in vaguely theatrical, carnivalesque fashion. It was long and black, like the coats worn by members of the SS or perhaps by the Gestapo in films about the Nazis, he was the kind of man who preferred the quick and easy route to attracting attention, even at the risk of causing revulsion, and now, if he did as Díaz-Varela said, he would have to renounce his overcoat. My first thought was: ‘How could Díaz-Varela have placed his trust in someone who was so visibly a rogue?’ It was written all over his face and physique, his mannerisms and his manner, a single glance was all it took to detect his essential self. He was over fifty, and yet everything about him oozed youthfulness: his attractive hair combed back so that it formed a wave on either side of his slightly broad, bulbous, but entirely orthodox forehead, with streaks or blocks of grey hair, the colour of quicksilver, that failed to make him look any more respectable because they looked artificial, as if he’d had highlights put in; his athletic trunk, slightly convex as tends to be the case with those who try, at all costs, to avoid acquiring a belly and so take pains to cultivate their pectorals instead; his broad smile that revealed flashing teeth; his upper lip that folded back to reveal its moist inside, thus emphasizing his overwhelmingly salacious nature. He had a straight, pointed nose with a very prominent central bone, indeed, he looked more like a citizen of Rome than of Madrid and reminded me of that actor, Vittorio Gassman, not in his noble old age, but when he used to play crooks. Yes, it was obvious to anyone that he was an amiable fraud. He folded his arms so that each hand rested on the opposite biceps muscle – he tensed them briefly, a purely reflex action – as if he were stroking or measuring them, as if he wanted to draw attention to them even though they were now covered by his overcoat, a sterile gesture. I could easily imagine him in a T-shirt, and even wearing high boots, a cheap imitation of a frustrated polo player who had never been allowed on a horse. Yes, it was strange that Díaz-Varela should have chosen him as his accomplice in such a secret and delicate enterprise, an enterprise that soils all those involved: that of causing someone’s death, one ‘who should have died hereafter’, perhaps tomorrow or if not tomorrow then the day after, but not now. Therein lies the problem, because we all die, and in the end, it makes little difference – deep down – if you cause someone’s turn to come earlier than expected by murdering them, the problem lies in when, but who knows which is the right or appropriate time, what does ‘hereafter’ or ‘at some point from now on’ mean, when ‘now’ is, by its very nature, always changing, what does ‘at another time’ mean if there is only one continuous, indivisible time that is eternally snapping at our heels, impatient and aimless, stumbling on as if powerless to stop and as if time itself were ignorant of its purpose. And why do things happen when they happen, why this date and not the previous day or the next, what is so special or decisive about this moment, what marks it out and who chooses it, and how can anyone say what Macbeth went on to say – I had looked it up after Díaz-Varela had quoted the lines to me – because what he goes on to say is this: ‘There would have been a time for such a word,’ that is, for the fact or phrase that he has just heard from the lips of his attendant Seyton, the bringer of relief or of misfortune: ‘The queen, my lord, is dead.’ As is so often the case, Shakespeare’s editors are unable to agree on the meaning of Macbeth’s famously ambiguous and mysterious lines. What did he mean by ‘hereafter’? ‘She could have died at a more appropriate time’? ‘She could have chosen a better moment, because this doesn’t suit me at all’? Perhaps ‘a more opportune, peaceful time, when she could have been properly honoured, when I could have stopped and mourned as I should the loss of the woman who shared so much with me, ambition and murder, hope and power and fear’? Macbeth has a moment, that’s all, before he launches into his ten most famous lines, into the extraordinary soliloquy that so many people round the world have learned by heart and which begins: ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow …’ And when he has finished – although who knows if he has finished speaking or if he would have added something more had he not been interrupted – the messenger arrives demanding his attention, for he brings Macbeth the terrible and supernatural news that Birnam Wood is on the move and advancing on the high hill of Dunsinane, where he is encamped, and this means that he will be defeated. And if he is defeated, he will be killed, and once he is dead, they will cut off his head and display it like a trophy, sightless and separated from the body that still supports it now, while he is speaking. ‘She should have died later on, when I wasn’t alive to hear the news, or to see or to dream anything; when I was no longer in time and incapable, therefore, of understanding.’