Perhaps I did not think this then, but only afterwards, when I finally went to bed much, much later that night or, rather, that morning, but the germ of those thoughts did surface then, during that urgent, absurd visit to the Ladies' toilet, sometimes such thoughts come to us in a flash and we put them off because we haven't time to consider them at that precise moment, and then we recover them afterwards and develop them at our leisure and in a spirit of false calm; and yet it could be said that such a flash is already the thought, concentrated or almost unacknowledged (or perhaps it is a kind of prescient prescience).
'I would have recognised Luisa's legs out of sixteen or twenty-one other pairs of legs, even though I haven't seen them for a while now and they seem sometimes to fade and become muddled with other legs in the here and now that will certainly prove transient and will, in time, be forgotten,' I thought. 'I might also be able to pick out those of Clare Bayes, my former lover in Oxford, but it's years since I've seen them and they might have changed, they might be scarred or she could be lame in one of them like Alan Marriott or they might have become puffy and swollen or there might be only one of them, just as there were only three on the dog whose fourth leg was not cut off by the gypsy Jane - I have constantly to remind myself of that, that she did not cut it off, because whenever I recall her and the dog, that, initially, is what I always believe and what always assails me, for the hypothesis, the invented story with its horrific couple and horrible conjunction of ideas is more vivid to me than the true story with its train station and its drunken Oxford United fans - the young florist who was there when Clare Bayes used to visit me with her strange collection of purchases, with her constant need for fragments of eternity or her expansive notion of time about which there was always something utilitarian, I can say that now without feeling hurt by the word or the fact, for that was in another country and who knows, who knew, what might have happened to the wench (and that other country is once again this one), all it takes is a car accident and that can happen to anyone, the amputation would come later and then she would have to use the spacious, deserted toilet for the disabled. But it's hard to imagine Clare Bayes without a leg, because both were so very striking, with their feet always shod in Italian shoes or else barefoot, she took them off when indoors, a kick, one for each shoe, would send them flying, and later we would have to hunt for them.' I thought all this as I stood before the closed cubicles with their eight pairs of shining shoes peeping out from beneath the doors, and also before I went to sleep weighed down by the terrible unease I took with me to bed; I must have done both things — relived the scene in the Ladies' toilet and recalled the story, so furled in mists, which my mother used to tell me - in order to drive from my mind everything that happened later and to ease the pinprick pressing into my chest. And I even managed to go on to think: 'On the other hand, I wouldn't recognise Pérez Nuix's legs, not yet, if that word "yet" has any intention or meaning.'
What I said next was quite unnecessary, it was clear that the disappeared couple were not there and that I should hurry off to look for them elsewhere, I still could not believe that they had left altogether, but neither could I risk angering Tupra, still less Manoia, 'Don't linger or delay', that had been Tupra's recommendation or instruction, and the order had been 'Bring her back here'. But I did linger a little, although only a little. I suppose the sight of those eight doors and those sixteen legs was too much of a temptation for me to abandon it as soon as I had discovered it, without even spending the necessary seconds looking at it in order at least to fix and retain it in my memory, like someone memorising a vital phone number or learning a few lines of poetry ('Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange to see meanings that once clung together, floating away in every direction. And being dead is hard work . . .' Or these lines: 'And indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair. . .'; and a little later comes the question that no one asks before acting or before speaking: 'Do I dare disturb the universe?', because everyone dares to do just that, to disturb the universe and to trouble it, with their small, quick tongues and their ill-intentioned steps, 'So how should I presume?'). Perhaps it attracted me because of that childhood reminiscence - there must be some reason why an image described to us but never seen, should remain with us our entire life — or perhaps there was in it also a prosaic element to do with secretions and humours, to use Sir Peter Wheeler's words after I had spoken out in praise of Beryl's unusual and very sexual smell and of her magnificent and amply displayed inner thighs that had so exasperated and maddened the same wretched attaché who had now slipped away with the person who had, that night, been placed in my extremely careless care.
And so I said unnecessarily, partly because I could not resist the minor or venial vice of making an impromptu joke, raising my voice as if I were some person in authority, police or governmental or lay, and addressing myself to the eight users of the cubicles, whose feet had something choreographic about them, as if they had paused momentarily in mid-dance, and as soon as they heard my incongruous, male voice, I saw seven pairs of legs instinctively and simultaneously press together or close, I mean each pair on its own account, the only legs that did not change position being the bare-legged pair with the ankles unencumbered by any item of clothing, their owner must be foreign and, possibly, given their perfectly depilated state, a compatriot of mine. There was a slight, not very penetrating odour of secretions and humours in that place (not, curiously and fortunately, of urine), doubtless sexual and, to me, unusual, mixed up with various female colognes and perfumes, women tending to be cleaner than men, although not always (and then they are as slovenly and dirty as the SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb, luckily she was only a fictitious character and so poor Nin would not, in reality, have been able to take her as his lover), and I found the whole scene not at all unpleasing. And so I said this, which was completely irrelevant to the search I was engaged upon, and I acknowledge that I said it purely in jest and for fun: 'Forgive the intrusion, my dear ladies,' it seemed to me that addressing them thus would calm them down, despite the fright I had given them; 'but we're hoping to apprehend a particularly skilful pickpocket.' 'A particularly skilful pickpocket', those were the ludicrous words I came out with, and as soon as I said them, I was struck by how antiquated they sounded, like something out of the 1930's or even Dickens (a pickpocket), but any mention of a maniac or a terrorist (still less of a hidden bomb) would have sown panic and the women would have rushed out, without pulling up their tights or trousers and would have risked staining them with some drop, and I had no desire to put them in such a humiliating position or to cause them any public embarrassment, even if they and I were the only witnesses. 'I'm sure he's not here,' I added with as much circumspection and neutrality as I could muster, films are invaluable to those of us who, from the moment we first sat down in that darkened auditorium, used them as a kind of apprenticeship, 'but I would just ask you to confirm to me that there is, in fact, no man hidden in any of the cubicles. I can see two pairs of trousers from here and the legs wearing them are not entirely . . .' I did not continue, for I was, I'm afraid, about to say something like 'unequivocal'. 'I would be extremely grateful if you would be so kind as to answer me, one by one, and I will then leave at once.'
I imagine that a real policeman would have waited until they came out to make certain, but I, of course, was not a real policeman, nor was I, in fact, in pursuit of a pickpocket. I heard one or two involuntary titters behind me, in the area by the mirrors, women, generally speaking, are more prepared to see the funny side of things that have a funny side, especially if they are matters that can be taken lightly and as if they were already done and dusted and can thus be retold without fear of incurring any further consequences (not, at least, as regards the original events, of course, but retelling anything almost always brings consequences of its own). After a couple of seconds of what was, doubtless, some bewilderment, the fema
le voices gradually responded from behind their doors, some more submissively than others, and only one angrily; but given that people now meekly allow themselves to be frisked at any airport or public building, and obediently take off their shoes or even get undressed at the orders of some grim-faced customs officer, it is little wonder that they should accept importunate demands and interruptions and impertinent questions even while engaged in the most private of occupations. 'No', 'Of course not', 'Are you mad? Get out of here', 'No, sir, there's no one else in here', came the answers, and only one departed from the norm of these simple denials: the woman who was apparently wearing neither tights nor knickers, the one who had not pressed her legs together when she heard my male voice, slowly pushed open the door, which emitted a feint creak, and, looking straight at me from where she sat, said: 'You come and see.' That's what she said. (English doesn't distinguish between formal and informal 'you', between 'usted' and 'tu', but in her mind she must have been using the latter.) The phrase was too short and too unproblematic for me to be able to tell whether or not she had an accent, the 'k' sound of 'come' was perhaps not sufficiently aspirated, which would mean, therefore, that she was a stranger to England and even to the Commonwealth or to any of the other former British colonies, but I couldn't really pay close enough attention, I was in no state to make fine phonetic judgements, for I found the sight of her distinctly troubling, which was why the scene lasted almost as short a time as the phrase itself, I myself hurriedly closed the door, although not as hurriedly as, on that other morning, I had opened the door to the office shared by Pérez Nuix and Mulryan and found Pérez Nuix bare from the waist up and drying herself, I did not close it with brio or with gusto, I closed it rather as I had my colleague's door, after only a few seconds' delay, in one resolute movement, but nevertheless still looking and memorising the image, it lasted twelve seconds, seconds which I counted only later in my memory, the scene in the Ladies' toilet did not, I think, last even that long, for I promptly pushed the door shut as I stammered — although it was probably not my voice that stammered, but my thoughts: 'I can see well enough, thank you very much'; and it was true, I could see well enough that she was there alone and seated, she was not one of those prissy women who avoid sitting down on the actual seat and who urinate hovering above it so to speak -only a short distance above, but nonetheless poised in the air — any contact with the seats in public toilets fills them with disgust or revulsion, after all, they don't know who might have been there before them and there are all kinds of grubby, slovenly, dirty people in the world, not to say poisonous ones too, indeed, however chic a place may be, there is contagion everywhere and a great deal of grime. This woman was evidently not the prudent sort, given that she clearly didn't even bother with underwear: her knickers had not remained at garter level or barely been pulled down at all, there simply were no knickers, as I confirmed or discovered when she revealed her whole figure to my now elevated eyes, her thighs were as unencumbered with clothes as were her ankles, her tight skirt pulled up to groin- and hip-level and, therefore, wrinkled (not that there was a great deal of fabric, it would doubtless be on the short side), a straight white tube skirt, her shoes, with their slender but sturdy heels, were the same colour, like the summer shoes women wore in the 1950's, which was, generally speaking, the best and prettiest decade for female fashion, but they, like the skirt, were unexpected in London and worn outside of the season to which they were best suited, I saw, too, a yellow shape or smudge beneath which there was no bra, a blouse with a rounded neck and almost imaginary sleeves - sleeves like stumps, the upper part would cover only the tops of her arms, and the lower part, or so I deduced, would barely cover her armpits — most troubling of all were her strong, sturdy and very - very - bare thighs, not heavy, but compact and dense, as if the whole surface were filled to bursting, with not an ounce of excess fat, but making the most of every millimetre of skin, which was as taut as a tight wrapping, thighs which quite properly grew wider as they advanced up to her hips and groin and towards the dark triangle that I could see (at least I think I could), they looked vaguely Central American those hips or perhaps they, too, were reminiscent of the 1950's when curves were fashionable, or perhaps it was her mass of curly hair and the enormous earrings - huge hoop earrings - that lent her a tropical air which need not necessarily have been authentic, despite the golden colour of her bare skin — it could never have been British skin, nor from many places in the Commonwealth - it might just be a choice she had made, a disguise chosen for a long night at the disco, just as De la Garza imagined he had got himself up as a black rapper, but had succeeded only in looking like some kind of alternative bullfighter or some absurd Goya torero.
My gaze was fleeting, but not veiled, it was not an English gaze or a modern-day Spanish one as it had apparently been on the morning when I found myself confronted by Pérez Nuix and her towel, she had been naked from the waist up, and this young woman — well, she seemed young to me, about thirty-five I reckoned - was naked from the waist down, I felt for a moment as if I had completed a jigsaw puzzle, but one of a rather Cubist bent, as if the two pieces were not an entirely harmonious fit (they were so different), and, besides, only their naked halves matched, not their clothed halves. And so my gaze lasted no time at all, but during that no-time-at-all my gaze was a truly searching one, I did not pretend that she was standing up, with her skirt pulled down, and that I did not know, therefore, whether she was wearing anything underneath or not. She too looked back at me when she spoke. Not defiantly, not coquettishly and not, of course, salaciously, not reproachfully or sarcastically, but with an amused expression on her face and, needless to say, without a flicker of embarrassment, as if she didn't mind in the least being seen in that rather inelegant position if she could manage to make a little joke of it and to discomfit or trouble me (although that last effect was purely incidental, she could not easily have predicted it without first having seen my face, I could have been a thug who might have responded by taking two steps forward), she more than any of the other women must have picked up on the comical, silly side of my explanation or question, addressed simultaneously, to eight women, no less, protected or hidden away, who, with an incredulous start, doubtless all stopped what they were doing, I was sure that as soon as my voice rang out all liquid ceased flowing into the eight toilet bowls, a collective retentive reflex reaction, a shutter, an eyelid, a contraction of the same controlling muscle, and this, fortunately, would have been equally unavoidable for the woman who continued to sit there with her legs imperturbably akimbo in that first moment and in those that followed - one, two, three, four; and five, that was how long it took for the door to creak open and for her four provocative words to be spoken, 'You come and see' — and in the moments that followed - five, six, seven, eight; and nine; or ten, that must have been how long they lasted, my shock, my photographic memorisation of the image, my grateful response and my resolute movement to close the door - and in those ten seconds I also had time to see the most troubling thing of all, a drop of blood fallen on the floor of the cubicle, or, rather, two, except that the second smaller drop lay, like a lentil, on her left shoe, it wouldn't be a problem, the shoes were so smooth and gleaming that, even though they were white, they looked like patent leather or like porcelain, it would be easy enough to remove that tiny stain from such a polished surface, always assuming she realised it was there.
I immediately thought what almost any man would have thought, for we tend to know almost nothing about menstruation - at most, we have seen the traces left behind on a bedspread or a sheet, I, at least, have always tried to know nothing beyond that — we don't even know if a drop or more than a drop can fall unnoticed onto the floor, if the woman is standing up and wearing a skirt but no knickers, and doesn't have easy access to sanitary towels or something similar, cottonwool balls, Kleenex, absorbent paper, or even blotting paper -no, that's ridiculous, idiotic, that was stiff and pink, I haven't seen it since I was a child, since the days when
my mother used to tell me that story -I knew nothing about such matters despite having been married for many years which, now that they were over, seemed far fewer, just as I had never seen Luisa sitting down to urinate in the way that this unknown woman had shown herself to me, there are some things that do not necessarily come with cohabitation, or perhaps one's upbringing, at least my upbringing and that of Luisa, imposes natural, unspoken limits on familiarity, and always shies away from any form of slovenliness, and prevents one from becoming the idle and indifferent witness of things to which one should not be a witness.
Comendador — my former schoolfriend, who subsequently went so badly astray - had also immediately assumed it must be the result of the sudden onset of menstruation when he saw the blood of that young woman on the wooden floor and on the sheets and on her long T-shirt, the blood of the drug-dealer Cuesta's temporary girlfriend whom Comendador believed had died after she stumbled and tripped and hit her head hard on a wall - it had made a sound like wood being chopped - and he had discovered a gash on her head as she lay unconscious, or, as he thought, dead. And, later, he had doubted that he had seen anything at all and had even admitted the possibility that he had mistaken for blood what had perhaps been only brandy or wine or even a dark stain on the floorboards. I was currently experiencing a feeling of unease or a sense of a problem in the making because of another man so like Comendador that there were moments when they seemed to me to be one and the same, Incompara was his name, and there was something about those two surnames that automatically made me think of them both, or which my personal sense of language linked together: Incompara, Comendador; Comendador, Incompara, as if, I don't know, as if they were of the same calibre or somehow analogous, equally commendable and comparable (well, certainly as regards going about the world with aplomb and brio and making a big splash).