The Infatuations

‘So what’s all the urgency?’ I said as soon as Díaz-Varela opened the door to me, I didn’t even kiss him on the cheek, I just said hello as I went in, tried to avoid looking him in the eye, even preferring not to touch him. If I began by demanding an explanation, I might take the lead, so to speak, gain a certain advantage in managing the situation, whatever the situation was: he had arranged it, almost insisted on it, so how could I know? ‘I haven’t got that much time, it’s been a really exhausting day. Anyway, what it is you want to discuss?’

He was perfectly shaved and immaculately dressed, and didn’t look at all as if he had been waiting at home for a long time, especially with no guarantee that his wait would not prove to be in vain – something which, without one realizing it, always has a deleterious effect on one’s appearance – but, rather, as if he were about to go out. He must have been struggling with all that uncertainty and inaction by shaving over and over, combing his hair and then ruffling it up again, changing his shirt and trousers several times, putting his jacket on, then taking it off again, weighing up how he looked either with or without it, in the end, he had left it on as a warning to me perhaps that this encounter was not going to be like the others, that we would not necessarily end up in the bedroom, a move that we always pretended was unintentional. Anyway, he was wearing one more item of clothing than usual, although it’s easy enough – even unnecessary – to remove anything. Now I did look up and meet his gaze, which was, as usual, dreamy and myopic, calmer than during my previous visit or, rather, during the final moments of that visit, when things took a strange turn, and he placed his hand on my shoulder and made me feel that he could destroy me simply by that slow, steady pressure. After all that time, he still seemed very attractive to me, because the more elemental part of me had missed him – we are capable of missing anything in our lives, even something that has not had time to take root, even something pernicious – and my gaze went immediately to the usual place, I couldn’t help it. When that happens with someone, it’s a real curse. Being incapable of looking away, you feel controlled, obedient, almost humiliated.

‘Don’t be in such a hurry. Rest for a moment, breathe, have a drink, take a seat. What I want to discuss can’t be dispatched in a couple of sentences and while standing up. Come on, be patient, be generous. Have a seat.’

I sat down on the sofa we usually occupied when we were in the living room. But I kept my jacket on and perched on the edge of the sofa, as if my presence there were nonetheless still provisional and a favour to him. He seemed calm and, at the same time, very focused, the way many actors are just before they go on stage, that is, they put on an artificial calm, which they need if they are not to run away and go back home and watch television. There appeared to be none of that morning’s imperiousness and urgency, when he had phoned me at work and almost ordered me to come. He must have felt pleased and relieved that I was now there within his grasp, because in a way I had placed myself in his hands again, and not just in the figurative sense. But now I was free of that kind of fear, I had realized that he would never harm me, not with his own hands, not alone. But with someone else’s hands and when he was not present, when the deed was done and there was no choice and he could say, like someone taken by surprise: ‘There would have been a time for such a word, she should have died hereafter’ – yes, that was possible.

He went into the kitchen to get me a drink and poured one for himself. There was no sign of any other glasses, perhaps he had not allowed himself a single drop while he waited, so as to keep a clear head, maybe he had used the time to select and put in order what he was going to tell me, even memorizing part of it.

‘Right, I’m sitting down now. What is it you want to say?’

He sat beside me, too close, although I wouldn’t have thought that on any other day, it would have seemed perfectly normal or I might not even have noticed how much distance there was between us. I moved away a little, only a little, I didn’t want to give the impression that I was rejecting him, besides I wasn’t rejecting him physically, I realized that I still liked him to be close. He sipped his drink. He took out a cigarette, flicked his lighter on and off several times as if he were distracted or getting up the energy to do something, then, finally, lit the cigarette. He stroked his chin, which didn’t have its usual bluish tinge, so carefully had he shaved this time. That was the preamble, and then he spoke to me, in a serious tone, but forcing himself to smile every now and then – as if he were telling himself to do so every few minutes or had programmed himself to smile and kept belatedly remembering to activate the programme.

‘I know that you heard us, María, heard Ruibérriz and me. There’s no point in you denying it or trying to convince me that you didn’t, like the last time. It was an error on my part to talk like that with you in the apartment, while you were here, any woman who’s interested in a man is always curious about anything to do with him: his friends, his business dealings, his tastes, it doesn’t matter. Everything intrigues her, because she wants to know him better.’ – ‘He’s been turning it over in his mind, just as I foresaw,’ I thought. ‘He’ll have gone over every detail, every word, and reached that conclusion. At least he didn’t say “any woman in love with a man”, although that’s what he meant and, as it happens, it’s true. Or was true, I’m not sure, it can’t be true now. But two weeks ago it was, so he’s quite right really.’ – ‘It happened and there’s no going back. I accept that, I’m not going to deceive myself; you heard what you shouldn’t have heard, what neither you nor anyone else should have heard, but especially not you, otherwise we could have made a clean break from each other, without leaving a mark.’ – ‘He now bears the mark of his own fleur-de-lys,’ I thought. – ‘After hearing what you heard, you will have formed an idea, an image. Let’s have a look at that idea, it’s better than running away from it or pretending that it isn’t in your mind, that it doesn’t exist. You must be thinking the worst of me and I can’t blame you, it must have sounded dreadful. Repellent. I’m grateful that, despite everything, you agreed to come here, it must have made you feel really uncomfortable having to see me again.’

I tried to protest, but somewhat half-heartedly; I saw that he was determined to tackle the subject and leave me no way out, to speak clearly about that murder-by-delegation. He couldn’t be absolutely sure that I knew, but he was nevertheless ready to make his confession or something similar. Or maybe he was going to put me in the picture, explain the circumstances, justify himself somehow or other, tell me what I would possibly prefer not to know. If I knew the details, that would make it even harder for me to ignore the facts or to take no action, as, in a way, and without exactly meaning to, I had successfully managed to do until that evening, although without ruling out a different future reaction, tomorrow might change me and bring with it an unrecognizable ‘I’: I had stayed still and let the days pass, which is the best way to allow things in the real world to dissolve or break down, although they remain forever in our thoughts and in our knowledge, solid and putrid and stinking to high heaven. But that is bearable and we can live with it. Who doesn’t carry something of that nature around with them?

‘Javier, let’s not talk about it. I’ve already told you that I didn’t hear anything, and I’m really not as interested in you as you imagine …’

He stopped me with a wave of his hand (‘Don’t give me that,’ said the hand, ‘no p-ssyfooting around, please’) and wouldn’t let me continue speaking. He smiled slightly condescendingly, or perhaps it was self-irony, at finding himself in that entirely avoidable situation, because of his own carelessness.

‘Don’t go on. Don’t take me for a fool. Although I was certainly very stupid. I should have taken Ruibérriz outside as soon as he turned up. Of course you heard us: when you came into the living room, you claimed that you didn’t know anyone else was here, but you had put on your bra to cover yourself, at least minimally, in front of a stranger, not because it was cold or for some other roundabout reason, and you were already blushing when you opened the bedroom door. You weren’t embarrassed by what you found, you had embarrassed yourself beforehand with what you were going to do, namely reveal yourself in a state of near-undress to an undesirable individual you had never seen before; but you had heard him speak, and not about just anything, not about football or the weather.’ – ‘So he did notice what I feared he would notice,’ I thought fleetingly. ‘All my forward planning, my little schemes, my ingenuous precautions were in vain.’ – ‘The look of surprise on your face was quite convincing, but not entirely. The real giveaway, though, was that, all of a sudden, you were afraid of me. I had left you there in bed, quiet and trusting, even affectionate and contented, I thought. You had fallen peacefully asleep and when you woke up and were once again alone with me, suddenly you were afraid. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? We always notice when we instil fear in someone. Perhaps women don’t, or is it that you so rarely do instil fear that you’re unfamiliar with the feeling, except with children, of course; you can terrorize them easily enough. I don’t like it at all, although there are lots of men who love it and even seek it out, it gives them a sense of power, of being in command, a momentary, false sense of invulnerability. It makes me really uncomfortable having someone see me as a threat. A physical threat, I mean. You women have other ways of making us afraid. Your demands. Your obstinacy, which is often merely blindness. Your indignation, the kind of moral fury that grips you, sometimes for no reason at all. You must have been feeling that about me for two weeks now. I don’t blame you either. That’s perfectly understandable in your case, you had a reason to feel like that. And not an entirely mistaken reason either. Well, only half-mistaken.’ – He paused and raised a hand to his chin, which he stroked distractedly (for the first time, he looked away), as if he really were pondering or genuinely wondering what he would say next. – ‘What I don’t understand is why you appeared, why you came out of the bedroom, why you exposed yourself to having what is now happening happen. If you had stayed still, if you had waited for me in bed, I would have assumed that you hadn’t heard us, that you knew nothing, that everything was just as it had been before, in general and between you and me. Although I would probably have noticed your fear anyway, sooner or later, that day or today. Once a fear has been born, it’s there and you can’t hide it.’

He paused, took another drink, lit another cigarette, got to his feet, walked around the room a couple of times and ended up standing behind me. When he first stood up, I was startled, I jumped, and he noticed, of course, and when he remained for a few seconds without moving, his hands near my head, I turned round at once, as if I didn’t want to lose sight of him or to have him at my back. Then he made a gesture with his open hand, as if to indicate an obvious truth (‘You see?’ said the hand. ‘You don’t like not knowing where I am. A few weeks ago it wouldn’t have worried you in the least if I had walked around you like this; you wouldn’t even have noticed’). The truth is, there was no reason for me to feel startled or anxious, not really. Díaz-Varela was talking in a calm, civilized manner, without getting angry or worked up, without even telling me off or demanding an explanation for my indiscreet behaviour. Perhaps that was the most striking thing, him talking to me about a serious crime in that matter-of-fact way, about a murder committed indirectly by him or at his instigation, in a not yet remote, but almost recent past, murder not being something that one usually talks about calmly, at least it didn’t use to be: when such a thing was revealed or acknowledged, there were no cool explanations or dissertations or conversations, no analysis, but horror and anger, outrage, screams and vehement accusations, or people would grab a rope and hang the self-confessed murderer from a tree, and he or she, in turn, would try to flee and kill again if necessary. ‘What a strange age we live in,’ I thought. ‘We allow people to talk about anything and to be listened to, regardless of what they have done, and not just in order to defend themselves, but as if the story of their atrocities were itself of interest.’ And another thought came to me that I myself found odd: ‘That is our essential fragility. But it is not in my power to rebel against it, because I, too, belong to this age, and I am a mere pawn.’





As Díaz-Varela had said right at the start, there was no point in me continuing to deny all knowledge. He had already gone far enough (‘It was an error on my part’, ‘I should have taken Ruibérriz outside’, ‘You had a not entirely mistaken reason to feel alarmed, well, a half-mistaken reason’), so far that I was left with no alternative but to ask him what the devil he was talking about, if, that is, I maintained my pose of innocence. Even if I insisted on pretending that this was all entirely new to me and that I had no idea what he was talking about, that wouldn’t let me off the hook either: it was up to me to demand to be told the story and to hear it through to the end, from the beginning this time. It would be best to admit that I knew, thus avoiding having to repeat myself or possibly having to come up with some extravagant lie. The whole thing was going to be most unpleasant, but then it was a thoroughly unpleasant business. The less time he took to tell his story the better. Or perhaps it would turn out to be not a story but a disquisition. I wanted to leave, but didn’t dare so much as try, I didn’t even move.

‘All right, I did hear you. But I didn’t hear everything you said, not all the time. Enough though for me to feel afraid of you, what else would you expect? Anyway, now you know, you couldn’t have been entirely sure before, but now you can. What are you going to do about it? Is that why you made me come here, to confirm your suspicions? You were pretty sure already, we could simply have let things run their course and not left any more “marks”, to use your word. As you see, I haven’t done anything yet, I haven’t told anyone, not even Luisa. She, I imagine, would be the last to be told. It’s often those who are most affected by something, those who are closest, who least want to know: children don’t want to know what their parents did, just as parents don’t want to know what their children have done … To impose a revelation on someone …’ I paused, unsure as to how to end the sentence, and so I cut things short, simplified: ‘That’s too great a responsibility. For someone like me.’ – ‘So I am the Prudent Young Woman after all,’ I thought. ‘That’s how Desvern thought of me.’ – ‘You certainly have no reason to feel afraid of me. You should have allowed me to stand aside, to exit from your life silently and discreetly, more or less as I entered it and as I have remained, if I have remained. There was never any reason why we should see each other again. For me, each time was the last, I never assumed there would be a next time. It was always until further notice, until further orders from you, because you were always the instigator, the one who took the initiative. There’s still time for you simply to let me go, I really don’t know why I’m here at all, actually.’

He took a few steps, moved away from his position at my back, but rather than sitting down again beside me, he remained standing, taking refuge this time behind an armchair opposite me. And the truth is I kept my eyes trained on him at all times. I watched his hands and watched his lips, both because they would speak and because that was what I always did, they were my magnet. Then he took off his jacket and, as usual, hung it over the back of the chair. Afterwards, he slowly rolled up his shirtsleeves and although that was normal too – he always had his sleeves rolled up when he was at home, indeed that was the only day I had ever seen him with his cuffs buttoned and then not for long – that gesture now put me even more on my guard, because it’s so often a prelude to action, to some physical effort, and there was none in prospect. When he had finished rolling up his sleeves, he leaned on the back of the armchair, as if about to make a speech. For a few seconds, he stood observing me very intently in a manner I had seen before and yet the same thing happened as on that other occasion: I looked away, feeling troubled by those eyes fixed on mine, by that gaze, which was neither transparent nor penetrating, but perhaps hazy and enveloping or merely indecipherable, and tempered at any rate by his myopia (he was wearing lenses), it was as if those almond eyes were saying to me: ‘Why don’t you understand?’ not impatiently, but regretfully. And his posture was no different from what it had been on other evenings, when he had spoken to me about Colonel Chabert or about something else that had occurred to him or that he had noticed, and I would listen to whatever it was with pleasure. ‘On other late afternoons or evenings,’ I thought, ‘the twilight hour, which is doubtless the worst time for Luisa as it is for most people, the hardest time of day to bear, on those evenings when he and I would meet’ – I realized at once that I was thinking in the past tense, as if we had already said goodbye and each already belonged to the other’s day before yesterday; but I continued anyway: ‘On those evenings Javier didn’t go to her house, didn’t visit or distract her or keep her company or lend her a hand, he probably needed to have a rest sometimes – every ten or twelve days – from the persistent sadness of the woman he loved so constantly and for whom he waited with such inexhaustible patience; he would have needed to draw energy from somewhere, from me, from another close relationship, from someone else, so that he could carry that renewed energy back to her. Perhaps I had helped her a little in that way, indirectly, without intending to or imagining that I was, not that it bothered me. Who would he draw that energy from now, if I was no longer at his side? He’ll have no problem replacing me, I’m sure of that.’ And as I thought this, I returned to the present tense.

‘I don’t want to leave any mark on you that has no reason to exist, that has no basis in reality, or has its basis only in what happened, but not in any possible motives or intentions, still less in the original conception, the starting point. Let’s have a look at what you imagine to have happened, at the set of circumstances or story you have constructed for yourself: I ordered Miguel to be killed, making sure to keep myself at a safe distance. I drew up a plan that was not without risks (above all the risk that it might not work), but that left me beyond suspicion. I didn’t go anywhere near the scene of the crime, I wasn’t there, his death had nothing to do with me and it would be quite impossible to connect me with some barmy beggar with whom I had never exchanged so much as a single word. I left it to other people to find out what his problems were and to direct and manipulate his fragile mind. Miguel’s death looked like a tragic accident, a piece of terrible bad luck. Why didn’t I just get a hit man in? That would, apparently, have been far simpler and safer. Nowadays, they’re flown in from all over the world, from Eastern Europe and South America, and they’re not that expensive either: a return ticket, a few meals and three thousand euros or less, or possibly more, depending, but let’s say three thousand if you don’t want to hire a bodger or a greenhorn. They do their job and then leave, and by the time the police have begun their investigations, the killer has already checked in at the airport or is on the plane home. The snag is that there are no guarantees they won’t do the same thing again, that they won’t come back to Spain on another job or that they might like it here and stay. Some who have used their services have proved very careless, even giving a recommendation to a friend or colleague (very sotto voce needless to say), recommending either the killer himself or the intermediary who, very lazily, summons the same hit man back to Spain. Anyone who chooses that option is never entirely clean. The more frequently these hit men visit the country, the more likely they are to get caught, and the more likely they are to remember you or your frontman, and thus establish a link that cannot easily be broken, because there are people who can’t bear to be left idle and can’t resist taking on a little extra work. And if they get caught, they blab. Even those who are on the payroll of some mafia boss and live here permanently, and there are quite a few in Spain, presumably because there’s plenty for them to do here. The code of silence isn’t much respected any more, if at all. There’s no sense of camaraderie, no sense of belonging: if one of them gets caught, tough, let him sort himself out, it was his fault for getting nabbed. He’s expendable, and the organizations accept no responsibility, they’ve taken the necessary measures so that they don’t get tarnished or tainted, and the hit men work more and more in the dark and only ever meet one person, if that: a voice at the other end of a telephone, with the photos of the victims being sent via a mobile. And so those who are arrested respond in kind. Nowadays, all anyone cares about is saving his own skin or getting his sentence reduced. They confess whatever they need to confess and that’s that, the main thing being not to spend too long in prison. The more time they spend behind bars, trapped and easily locatable, the greater the risk that their own mafia boss will do them in, well, they’re useless to him now, a dead weight, a liability. And since they have little to reveal about the mafia they work for, they try other ways of gaining brownie points: “I did a job for a well-known businessman some years ago, or perhaps he was a politician or a banker. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. If I try very hard to remember, who knows what I might come up with?” More than one businessman has ended up in prison for that very reason. And the odd Valencian politician too, well, you know what show-offs they are, they don’t even understand the meaning of the word “discretion”.’

‘How does Javier know all this?’ I wondered as I listened to him. And I recalled the one real conversation I’d had with Luisa, when she appeared to be au fait with these practices too, she had spoken about them and even used certain expressions very similar to those used by her suitor: ‘They bring in a hit man, he does his job, they pay him and he leaves, all in the space of one or two days, and the police never find these killers …’ At the time, I assumed she must have read about it in the newspapers or heard Deverne talk about it, he was, after all, a businessman. But perhaps she had heard Díaz-Varela mention it. They disagreed, though, as to the efficacy of such a method, which he thought unworkable or too problematic, and he sounded far better informed than she. Luisa had added: ‘If something like that had happened, I couldn’t even hate that abstract hit man very much … But I could hate the instigators, that would give me the chance to suspect people right, left and centre, a competitor or someone who felt resentful or hard done by, because every businessman creates victims either accidentally or deliberately, even among close colleagues, as I read again the other day in Covarrubias.’ Then she had picked up the fat green tome and read out part of the definition of ‘envidia’ – or ‘envy’ – written in 1611 no less, when both Shakespeare and Cervantes were still alive, four hundred years ago, and yet it was still valid, it’s distressing to think that some things never change in essence, although it’s also oddly comforting to know that something can still persist without moving a millimetre or changing a word: ‘Unfortunately, this poison is often engendered in the breasts of those who are and who we believe to be our closest friends …’ Javier was recounting this case to me or confessing, but only as a hypothesis, and presumably in order to deny it; I assumed that he was describing what I imagined to have happened, the conclusion I had drawn after hearing him and Ruibérriz talking, so that he could immediately refute it. ‘Perhaps he’s going to deceive me with the truth,’ I thought for the first but not the only time. ‘Perhaps he’s telling me the truth now so that it will seem like a lie. An apparent or genuine lie.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I found out. When you want to know something, there are always ways of finding out. You weigh up the pros and cons, then do some research.’ He gave a very quick response to my question and then fell silent. I thought he was about to add something else, for example, how he had found out. But he didn’t. I had a sense that he was irritated by my interruption, that I had caused him momentarily to lose impetus, or, possibly, the thread of his argument. Perhaps he was more nervous than he seemed. He took a few steps around the room and sat down on the armchair on which he had hung his jacket and on which he had been leaning. He was still there before me, but now he was on the same level. He placed another cigarette between his lips, but without lighting it, and when he began talking again, it bobbed up and down. It didn’t conceal his mouth, but, rather, emphasized it. ‘So using a hit man may, at first, seem like a good way of removing someone. Yet it turns out that there are always risks involved in contacting such people, however careful you are and even if you do so through a third party. Or a fourth or fifth party; in fact, the longer the chain, the more links it has, and the easier it is for one of those links to break, for something to go wrong. In a way, the best thing would be for the person inciting the murder to deal directly with the person carrying it out, with no need for intermediaries. But, of course, no paymaster, no businessman or politician would dare to reveal himself like that, thus laying himself open to blackmail. The fact is that there is no safe method, no appropriate way of ordering or asking for such a thing. Besides which, such an arrangement would inevitably arouse unnecessary suspicions. If it appeared that a man like Miguel had been the victim of some settling of scores or an arranged murder, the police would start looking in all directions, investigating rivals and competitors, then colleagues, anyone with whom he had done business or had dealings, employees who had been dismissed or taken early retirement, and lastly his wife and his friends. It’s far more sensible, far cleaner, if a murder doesn’t look like a murder, if the explanation for the tragedy appears so crystal-clear that there’s no need to question anyone. Or only the person who did the killing.’





Despite knowing that any further interruption might irritate him, I decided to intervene again. Or, rather, I didn’t decide, my tongue simply got the better of me and I couldn’t hold back.

‘You mean the person who did the killing but who knows nothing, not even that it wasn’t his decision, that someone else planted the idea in his head and incited him to murder. The person who very nearly killed the wrong man. I read about it in the press; how, shortly before, he had attacked the chauffeur and might easily have stabbed him, thus ruining your plans; I suppose you had to call him to order: “Look, it’s not him, it’s the other guy who sometimes picks up the car; the man you hit isn’t to blame, he’s just a dogsbody.” The person who did the killing but can’t explain himself or is too ashamed to tell the police, or, rather, the media and everyone else, that his daughters are prostitutes and so prefers to say nothing. The poor madman who refuses to make a statement and doesn’t point the finger at anyone, until, that is, a couple of weeks ago, when he gave you the most almighty fright.’

Díaz-Varela gave a faint smile, which was, how can I put it, cordial and pleasant. It wasn’t cynical or paternalistic or mocking, it wasn’t disagreeable, not even in that sombre context. It was as if he were merely acknowledging that my reaction was as he had expected, that everything was following the path he had foreseen. He flicked his lighter on and off a couple of times but still did not light his cigarette. I, on other hand, lit one of my own. He continued talking with his cigarette between his lips, it would end up getting stuck to one lip, probably his top lip, the one I liked to touch. He appeared unperturbed by my interruption.

‘Yes, that was an unexpected stroke of luck, his adamant refusal to make a statement. I hadn’t been counting on being so lucky. I had simply thought that, in his delirium, he would give a confused account of events, a garbled version, from which the police would glean only that he had been seized by some kind of angry fit, the product of a sick, absurd fixation and a few imaginary voices. After all, what could Miguel possibly have to do with a prostitution ring and the white-slave trade? But it was even better when he refused to say a word. That way there wasn’t the slightest risk that he would involve third parties, however phantasmagorical; nor that he would mention strange calls to a mobile phone that either didn’t exist or couldn’t be found and that had never been registered in his name, a voice whispering in his ear, pointing the finger at Miguel, persuading him that Miguel was the cause of his daughters’ misfortune. I understand that the police tracked the daughters down, but that they refused to go and see their father. Apparently, they’d had no contact with him for several years, had never got on with him, found him utterly impossible and had washed their hands of him; the beggar had, therefore, been alone in the world for some time. And while the girls did, it seems, work as prostitutes, they did so of their own free will, assuming, of course, that the will can remain intact in the face of necessity; let’s just say that, given the various forms of slavery available to them, they chose prostitution and they’re not doing too badly, they have no complaints. I understand that, although they’re not high-ranking whores, only medium-ranking ones, they get by all right and are not, at least, at the bottom of the heap. Their father wanted nothing more to do with them, nor they with him; he had probably always been a very angry man. And doubtless, afterwards, in his solitude, in his increasingly unstable mental state, he remembered them as children rather than as young women, more as promises than disappointments, and convinced himself that they had been forced into prostitution. He didn’t erase the fact, but perhaps he did expunge the reasons and the circumstances, replacing them with others that he found more acceptable, albeit more enraging, but then rage gives energy and life. I don’t know, maybe he needed to keep those children safely stored away in his imagination, they would have been all he could salvage from the past, those two figures, the best memory from the best times. I don’t know who or what he was before he became a beggar; why bother trying to find out; all such stories are sad ones, you only have to think about the person those men, or even worse, those women had once been, when they still had no inkling of the wretched future awaiting them, it’s always painful to glimpse someone’s oblivious past life. All I know is that he had been a widower for years, and perhaps that was the beginning of the slippery slope. There was no point looking into his background, I forbade Ruibérriz to tell me anything he happened to uncover, I already had a bad conscience about using Canella as a tool, but silenced my conscience with the idea that at least he would be better off wherever they put him, wherever he is now, than in the clapped-out old car he used to sleep in. He would be better looked after and better cared for, and, besides, he clearly was a danger to society. It’s best for everyone that he’s no longer living on the streets.’ – ‘He had a bad conscience?’ I thought. ‘What a joke. In the middle of what he’s telling me, and which I pretty much knew already, he’s trying to present himself not as some heartless creature, but as a man with scruples. That’s probably normal, I imagine most killers try to do the same thing, especially when they’re found out; at least those who aren’t hit men, those who kill once and never again, or so they hope, or else they think of it as an exception, almost like a terrible accident in which they find themselves caught up against their will (like a parenthesis, in a way, after which they can simply carry on): “No, I didn’t want it to happen. It was a moment of blindness, of panic, the dead man forced me to do it really. If he hadn’t kept going on and on and taken things too far, if he had been more understanding, if he hadn’t kept pressuring me or eclipsing me, if he had just disappeared … It really grieves me, you know.” Yes, it must be unbearable knowing what you have done, and you’re bound, therefore, to lose yourself slightly. And yes, he’s right, it is painful to catch a glimpse of someone’s oblivious past life, for example that of poor Desvern, whose luck ran out on the morning of his birthday, poor man, while he was having breakfast with Luisa and I was enjoying watching them from a distance, as on any other innocuous morning. Yes, what a joke,’ I thought again, and noticed that I was blushing. But I remained silent, said nothing, kept my indignation to myself, the indignation he so feared in women, and realized, just in time, that I had, at some point in his speech (but when?), lost any notion that what Díaz-Varela was telling me was still a hypothesis, or a gloss on my deductions based on what I had heard, and therefore, according to him, a fiction. His narrative or retelling had started out that way, as a mere illustration of my conjectures, a verbalization of my suspicions, and had, as far as I was concerned, imperceptibly taken on an air or aura of truth, I had started listening to it as if it were an out-and-out confession and was true. There was still the possibility that it wasn’t, according to him, of course (I would never know more than what he told me, and so I would never know anything for sure; yes, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it, that after all these centuries of practice, after so many incredible advances and inventions, we still have no way of knowing when someone is lying; naturally, this both benefits and prejudices all of us equally, and may be our one remaining redoubt of freedom). I wondered why he had allowed that, why he had tried to give the ring of truth to something that would, inevitably, be denied later on. After his last words, I found it hard to wait for that probable, previously announced negation (he had begun by saying: ‘I don’t want to leave any mark on you that has no reason to exist’); and yet that was what would happen, I couldn’t leave now: I must hear the worst, keep waiting, be patient. These thoughts swept through my mind like a gust of wind, because he didn’t stop speaking, but only paused for a second. ‘Anyway, his unexpected silence was like a blessing, like a confirmation that I had been right about my dangerous plan, and it was very dangerous, you know: that man Canella could have remained immune to my intrigues, or he could have become convinced that Miguel was to blame for his daughters’ moral perdition, but then taken it no further, and there would have been no consequences whatsoever.’

Once again, my tongue ran away with me, after I had reined it in only a moment before, a fat lot of good that had done me. I tried to make my words sound more like a reminder than an accusation or a reproach, although they were doubtless both those things (however, I didn’t want to irritate him too much).

‘But you were the ones who provided him with a knife, weren’t you? And not just any knife, but one that was particularly dangerous and harmful, not to mention illegal. That had its consequences, didn’t it?’

Díaz-Varela looked at me in surprise for a moment, and for the first time he seemed uncertain. He said nothing, perhaps he was rapidly trying to recall whether he had talked to Ruibérriz about the knife while I was spying on them. In the two weeks that had passed since then, he must have reconstructed every detail of what they had said on that occasion, he must have gauged precisely what and how much I had found out – doubtless with the collaboration of his friend, whom he would have informed of the mishap; suddenly I felt very troubled by the idea that Ruibérriz should know about my indiscretion, given the way he had looked at me – even though he was unaware then that I had only joined the conversation belatedly and, at times, had caught only fragments. He would have decided to imagine the worst and taken it for granted that I had heard everything, hence Javier’s decision to phone me and neutralize me with the truth or with something that appeared to be the truth or a partial truth. And yet he hadn’t noticed that they had mentioned the weapon, still less that they had bought it and given it to the gorrilla. I myself wasn’t quite sure and thought perhaps that they hadn’t, but I only became aware of this when I saw his puzzlement, the sudden wave of uncertainty that assailed him about his recollections and his meticulous recapitulations of what had been said. It was quite possible that I had deduced this fact and then taken it as read. He could no longer be sure, he must have asked himself quickly if I knew more than I should know, and how I knew. This gave me time to realize that, while I had used the second-person plural several times, to include Ruibérriz and his anonymous envoy (I had said: ‘But you were the ones who provided him with a knife, weren’t you?’), he spoke always in the first-person singular (he had said: ‘I had been right about my dangerous plans’), as if he were taking sole responsibility for the crime, as if it were a matter for him alone, even though the manipulation of the actual killer had required the assistance of at least two accomplices, those who had done the work without him having to intervene personally or become involved. He had stayed well away from the dirt and gore, from the gorrilla and his stabbings, from the mobile phone and the asphalt, from the body of his best friend lying in a puddle of blood. He’d had no contact with any of that; and so when it came to telling someone about it, it was strange that he didn’t take advantage of that non-participation, quite the contrary. That he didn’t distribute the blame among the other participants, which is always a sure way of reducing one’s own culpability, even though it’s clear who pulled the strings and who wrote the plot and who gave the order. Conspirators have known this since time immemorial, as have spontaneous, leaderless mobs, urged on by anonymous instigators who do not stand out and to whom no one can put a name: there’s nothing like sharing round the guilt if you want to emerge from a murky situation smelling of roses.





His uncertainty did not last long and he soon regained his composure. Having scanned his memory and found no very clear evidence there, he must have thought that, basically, regardless of what I knew or didn’t know, I was entirely dependent on him now, as one always is on the person doing the telling, for he is the one who decides where to begin and where to end, what to reveal and suggest and keep silent about, when to tell the truth and when to lie or whether to combine the two so that neither is recognizable, or whether to deceive with the truth, as I had initially suspected he was trying to do with me; no, it’s not that difficult, you just have to present your story in such a way that it seems unbelievable or so hard to believe that your listener ends up rejecting it. Unlikely truths are useful and life is full of them, far more than the very worst of novels, no novel would ever dare give houseroom to the infinite number of chances and coincidences that can occur in a single lifetime, let alone all those that have already occurred and continue to occur. It’s quite shameful the way reality imposes no limits on itself.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that did have consequences, but might equally well not have had any, Canella was free to reject the knife or to take it and then throw it away or sell it. Or to hang on to it, but not use it. It was possible, too, that he might have lost it or had it stolen beforehand; among beggars, a knife is a prized possession, because every beggar feels under threat and defenceless. In short, providing someone with a motive and a weapon is absolutely no guarantee that he’s going to use either of them. My plans were very dangerous even once they had been carried out. The man very nearly killed the wrong person. About a month before. Yes, of course, it was necessary to lecture him and badger him and generally clarify matters, a blunder like that was all we needed. Of course, that wouldn’t have happened with a hit man, but as I said, they bring problems too, if not in the short term, then in the long term. I preferred to risk failure, for the plan to fail, rather than end up being found out.’ – He stopped, as if he regretted having spoken that last sentence, or, perhaps regretted having spoken it just then, maybe it wasn’t the right moment; anyone telling a preprepared, pre-planned story usually decides beforehand what should come first and what should come later, and takes great pains not to violate or change that order. He took a sip of his drink, rolled up his already rolled-up sleeves with a familiar, mechanical gesture, then, finally, lit his cigarette. He smoked a very light German brand made by Reemtsma, a company whose owner was once kidnapped, and for whom the biggest ransom in the history of his country was paid – an enormous sum. He went on to write a book about the experience; I read the English translation at work and we considered publishing it in Spain, but, in the end, Eugeni judged it to be too depressing and turned it down. I imagine Díaz-Varela will still be smoking the same brand of cigarettes now unless he’s given up, which I doubt, he isn’t the kind of person to bow to social pressures, just like his friend Rico, who does and says whatever he wants wherever he is and doesn’t care a fig for the consequences (I sometimes wonder if he knows what Díaz-Varela did, or if he even suspects: it’s unlikely, I got the impression that he wasn’t very interested in or even aware of what was near at hand and contemporary). Díaz-Varela seemed uncertain as to whether to continue along the same path. He did so, very briefly, perhaps so as not to draw attention to his feelings of regret with too brusque a change of direction. – ‘Strange though it may seem in a case of homicide, killing Miguel was much less important than not getting found out or caught. I mean that it wouldn’t have been worth making sure that he died then, on that day or thereabouts, if, on the other hand, I ran the slightest risk of being exposed or coming under suspicion, even if that were to happen thirty years from now. I couldn’t possibly allow that, and if there were the remotest possibility of that happening, it would have been better for him to remain alive and for me to abandon the plan and renounce his death for the time being. I should just say in passing that I did not choose the day; the gorrilla did that. Once my task was over, everything was in his hands. It would have been in extremely bad taste for me to choose Miguel’s birthday of all days. That was pure chance, no one could possibly know when Canella would decide to do it or if he ever would. But I’ll explain all that to you later. Let’s go back to your idea, to your view of the situation; you’ll have had plenty of time to take stock over the last two weeks.’

I wanted to keep quiet and allow him to talk until he grew tired or had finished, but again I couldn’t help myself, my mind had picked up on two or three things he had said, and they were buzzing too loudly inside my head for me to remain silent about them all. ‘Now he’s talking about homicide rather than outright murder, how can that be if he isn’t pretending any more?’ I thought. ‘From the gorrilla’s point of view, it would be the former, and from Luisa’s point of view too, and from that of the police and of any witnesses, and from that of the newspaper readers who came upon the news one morning and were horrified to see that such a crime was possible in what everyone considered to be one of Madrid’s safest districts, and then they forgot all about it because the story was dropped and because, once their imaginations had been satisfied, that other man’s misfortune made them feel that they themselves were out of danger: “It didn’t happen to me,” they said to themselves, “and something like that is hardly going to happen twice.” But not from Javier’s point of view, no, he sees it as a murder, he knows it makes no difference that there were defects in his plan or an element of chance, or that his calculations might not work out, he’s too intelligent to be deceived by that. And why had he said “then” and “for the time being”? – “making sure that he died then” he had said and “renounce his death for the time being” – as if he could have postponed it or left it for later on, that is, for “hereafter”, in the certain knowledge that the time would come. He had also said: “It would have been in extremely bad taste,” as if it wasn’t in bad enough taste to have given orders for a friend to be killed.’ I was left with the last point, as always happens, even if it wasn’t the most urgent one, although it was, perhaps, the most offensive.

‘In extremely bad taste?’ I repeated. ‘What are you saying, Javier? Do you really believe that changes the main issue in any way? You’re telling me about a murder.’ – And I took the opportunity to give the act its proper name. – ‘Do you think that fixing on one date or another can actually add to or subtract from the seriousness of what happened? That it can add good taste or subtract a little bad taste? I don’t understand you. Well, I don’t really expect to understand any of this, I don’t even know why I’m listening to you.’ – And now it was my turn to feel upset and to light a second cigarette and take a sip of my drink; I swallowed too quickly, before I had expelled the first mouthful of smoke, and almost choked.

‘Of course you understand, María,’ he said hastily, ‘and that’s why you’re listening, to convince yourself, to check that you’ve got the story right. You’ve told it to yourself over and over, all day and all night for the last two weeks. You’ve realized that my desires override all other considerations, all restraints and all scruples. And all loyalties too. I have been absolutely clear for some time now that I want to spend what remains of my life with Luisa. There is only one woman for me and that woman is Luisa and I know that you can’t just trust to luck, to things happening of their own accord, you can’t assume that all obstacles and barriers will suddenly fall away as if by magic. You have to set to work. The world is full of lazy people and pessimists who never achieve anything because they don’t apply themselves, and then have the nerve to complain and feel frustrated and direct their resentment outwards: that’s what most people are like, idle fools, who are defeated right from the start by the way they live their lives and by themselves. I’ve remained single all these years; yes, I’ve had some very enjoyable affairs, to distract me while I was waiting. Waiting, initially, for someone who had a weakness for me and I for her. Then … For me that’s the only way of understanding a particular term that everyone here bandies about quite happily, but which clearly can’t be quite that straightforward because it doesn’t exist in many languages, only in Italian and Spanish, as far as I know, but then again, I don’t know that many languages. Perhaps in German too, although I can’t be sure: el enamoramiento – the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I’m referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, though not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning … We find a lot of people funny, people who amuse and charm us and inspire affection and even tenderness, or who please us, captivate us, and can even make us momentarily mad, we enjoy their body and their company or both those things, as is the case for me with you and as I’ve experienced before with other women, on other occasions, although only a few. Some become essential to us, the force of habit is very strong and ends up replacing or even supplanting almost everything. It can supplant love, for example, but not that state of being in love, it’s important to distinguish between the two things, they’re easily confused, but they’re not the same … It’s very rare to have a weakness, a genuine weakness for someone, and for that someone to provoke in us that feeling of weakness. That’s the determining factor, they break down our objectivity and disarm us in perpetuity, so that we cave in over every dispute, which is what happened with Colonel Chabert when confronted by his wife, when he saw her alone again, I told you about that novella, you read it. It happens with children, they say, and I can quite believe that, but it must be a different feeling, they’re such vulnerable beings from the moment they’re born, from the very first instant, and our weakness for them must have its roots in their absolute defencelessness, and, it would seem, that feeling continues … Generally speaking, though, people don’t experience such feelings for another adult, nor do they hope to. They don’t wait, they’re impatient, prosaic, perhaps they don’t even want to experience that feeling because it seems inconceivable, and so they get together with or get married to the first likely person they meet, which is not so very odd, in fact, it’s always been the norm. Some people think that being in love or infatuated is a modern invention that appears only in novels. Be that as it may, it nevertheless exists, the invention, the word, and our capacity for such a feeling.’ – Díaz-Varela had left the odd phrase unfinished or hanging in the air, he had hesitated, been tempted to make digressions of his digressions, but stopped himself; he didn’t want to speechify, despite his natural tendency to do so, but to tell me something. He had leaned forward and was sitting almost on the edge of the armchair now, his elbows on his knees and his hands together; his tone had grown vehement within the usually cold, expository, almost didactic limits he imposed on such speeches. And, as always happened when he spoke at length, I could not take my eyes off his face or his lips, which moved quickly as he uttered the words. Not that I wasn’t interested in what he was saying, I had always been interested, all the more so now that he was confessing to me what he had done and why and how, or, rather, what he, quite rightly, believed that I believed. But even if I hadn’t been interested, I would have continued listening to him indefinitely, listening and looking. He switched on another light, the lamp beside him (he sometimes sat reading in that armchair), because night had fallen and the one light that was on was not enough. I could see him better, I could see his rather long eyelashes and his somewhat dreamy expression, which was dreamy even then. His face showed no signs of anxiety or embarrassment at what he was telling me. He did not, for the moment, find it difficult. I had to remind myself how odious his overriding calm was in those circumstances, because the truth is I did not find him odious. – ‘You know that you would do anything for that person,’ he went on, ‘that you will help or support her no matter what, even if that involves undertaking some horrible enterprise (say, she wants someone bumping off, you’ll assume she has her reasons and that there’s no alternative), and that you will do whatever she asks of you. Such a person doesn’t merely charm you, in the usual sense of the word, rather, you feel intensely drawn or bound to them, and that feeling is much stronger and longer-lasting. As we all know, such unconditionality has little to do with reason, or indeed with causes. It’s really very odd, because the effect is huge and yet there are no real causes, at least not usually, or none that can be put into words. It seems to me that it’s a lot to do with making a decision, but a decision that is entirely arbitrary … But that’s another story.’ – Again he had been tempted into speechifying, and was forcing himself to resist. He was trying to get to the point, and my feeling was that, if he was still taking his time, he was not doing so unwillingly and unwittingly, but had an end in mind, perhaps he was trying to draw me in and gradually accustom me to the facts. Occasionally, I would stop and think: ‘We are talking about a murder, after all, not something ordinary, and yet here I am listening to him instead of hanging him from a tree.’ And I was immediately reminded of Athos’s response to d’Artagnan’s horrified reaction: ‘Yes, a murder, nothing more.’ And yet I thought this less and less. – ‘Almost no one can answer the questions that others ask about them, about anyone: “Why did he fall in love with her? What did he see in her?” Especially when that person is deemed unbearable, which is not, I think, the case with Luisa; but then who am I to say, precisely for the reasons I’ve just set out. But not even you, María, to look no further, would be able to explain why you’ve been so attracted to me during the short time we’ve known each other, despite all my defects and despite knowing, from the start, that my real interest lay elsewhere, that I had a long-held, ineluctable objective, that you and I would go no further than we have done. You wouldn’t be able to come up with an explanation, I mean, apart from mumbling a few vague, airy-fairy, highly subjective phrases, as arguable as they are unarguable, unarguable for you (how could anyone argue with you?), but highly arguable for other people.’ – ‘It’s true, I wouldn’t be able to explain,’ I thought. ‘Like a fool. What could I say, that I liked looking at him and kissing him, going to bed with him, that I enjoyed the anxiety of not knowing whether we would end up in bed or not, enjoyed listening to him. He’s right, they’re idiotic reasons that would convince no one, or would sound idiotic to someone who doesn’t share our feelings or has never experienced anything similar. As Javier said, they aren’t even reasons, they’re probably more akin to a leap of faith than anything else; although perhaps they do constitute causes. And the effect is huge, he’s right there. Irresistible.’ I must have blushed slightly, or perhaps even shifted uneasily on the sofa, out of discomfort and embarrassment. It bothered me that he should have spoken about me openly like that, that he should have referred to my feelings for him when I had always been so discreet and sparing in what I said, had never pestered him with pleas or declarations, or with subtle comments that invited some reciprocal expression of affection, I had never made him feel the least responsibility or obligation or need to respond, not once; nor had I harboured any hopes that the situation would change, or only in the solitude of my bedroom, looking out at the trees, far from him and in secret, like someone fantasizing to herself as sleep steals over her, but everyone has a right to do that, to imagine the impossible as wakefulness finally wanes, why not, and as the day closes. It troubled me that he should have included me in all that, he could have kept it to himself; he wouldn’t have said it innocently, he had something in mind, he didn’t just let it slip. Again I felt like getting up and going, and leaving that beloved, dreaded apartment for good, never to return; but now I knew that I would not leave until he had finished, until he had told me his whole truth or his whole lie, or his truth and his lie together, no, I would not leave just yet. Díaz-Varela noticed my flushed cheeks and my unease, or whatever it was, because he quickly added, like someone trying to pour oil on troubled waters: ‘Not that I’m suggesting you’re in love with me or that you’d do absolutely anything for me, nor that you feel intensely drawn to me, not at all. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. I know that you’re very far from having such feelings, that there’s no comparison between what you feel for me after only a brief acquaintance and what I’ve felt for Luisa for years now. I know that I’m just a diversion, an amusement. As you are for me, unless I’m much mistaken, there’s barely any difference. I only mention it as proof that even the most transient and trivial of infatuations lack any real cause, and that’s even truer of feelings that go far deeper, infinitely deeper than that.’