He looked at me hard for a few seconds that seemed to me very long, as if he were weighing me up, trying to decipher me, the way you look at people who don’t know they’re being looked at, and as if I weren’t there but on a TV screen and he could observe me at his leisure, unconcerned about how I would react to such an insistent, penetrating gaze, his expression was now anything but dreamy and myopic, as it usually was, instead it was piercing and intimidating. I stood firm (we were, after all, lovers, who had contemplated each other in silence and with barely a shred of modesty), I held his gaze and even returned his scrutiny, wearing what I hoped was an expression of puzzlement and incomprehension. Until I could stand it no longer and I lowered my gaze to his lips, the lips I had grown so used to gazing at ever since the day I first met him, regardless of whether he was talking or silent, the lips of which I never tired and which had never inspired fear in me, only attraction. They were my momentary refuge, and there was nothing odd about my resting my gaze on his lips, I did that so frequently it was normal, and there was no reason why it should reinforce his suspicions, I raised one finger and touched his lips, gently traced their outline with the tip of my finger, a long caress, I thought it might calm him, fill him with a sense of confidence and security, a wordless way of saying to him: ‘Nothing has changed, I’m still here, I still love you. Not that I’m telling you anything you don’t know already, you realized that a long time ago and you allow yourself to be loved by me, it’s nice to feel loved by someone who isn’t going to ask anything of you. I’ll withdraw whenever you decide that enough is enough, when you open the front door and watch me walk over to the lift, knowing that I won’t be back. When Luisa’s grief finally runs its course and your love is reciprocated, I will stand aside without a murmur, I know I’m a purely temporary feature in your life, another day and another, then no more. But don’t worry yourself now, it’s all right, I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t find out anything you would want to hide or keep to yourself, and if I did, it doesn’t matter, you’re safe with me, I’m not going to betray you, I’m not even sure I heard what I heard, or, rather, I don’t believe what I heard, I’m sure there must be some mistake, an explanation or even – who knows – a justification. Perhaps Desvern harmed you in some way, perhaps he had already tried to kill you, again through a third party, by sheer cunning, and then it was either you or him, perhaps you had no alternative, there wasn’t room in the world for both of you, and that makes it almost like self-defence. There’s no reason for you to fear me, I love you, I’m on your side, I’m not going to judge you. Besides, don’t forget, this is all pure imagination on your part, I don’t know anything.’
I didn’t actually think all this and certainly not as clearly, but that is what I tried to transmit to him through that fingertip lingering on his lips, and he let me stroke his lips, all the while fixing me with his eyes, trying to detect any signals that contradicted those I was intently giving out, for it was clear that he still didn’t trust me. That lack of trust would be difficult if not impossible to rectify, it would never go away entirely, it would diminish or increase, shrink or expand, but it would always be there.
‘He didn’t come to do me a favour,’ he answered. ‘This time, he came to ask a favour of me, that’s why he had to see me so urgently. Thanks for your offer, though.’
I knew this wasn’t true, they were both in the same tight spot, and it would be difficult for one to extricate the other, the most they could do was reassure each other and await events, trusting that nothing else would happen, that the tramp’s words would fall on deaf ears and that no one would bother to investigate further. Yes, that’s what they had done, calmed each other down and banished any feelings of panic.
‘My pleasure.’
Then he placed one hand on my shoulder, and it felt like a heavy weight, as if a great lump of meat had fallen on me. Díaz-Varela was not particularly big or strong, although he was reasonably tall, but nearly all men, or most, can dredge up strength from somewhere, at least they seem by comparison much stronger than us women, we are so easily frightened, all it takes is a single threatening or angry or immoderate gesture, the way they grab our wrist or embrace us too roughly or push us back violently on to the bed. I was glad that my shoulder was covered by my sweater, because that weight on my bare skin would, I thought, have made me shudder, it wasn’t something he usually did. He squeezed my shoulder slightly, without hurting me, as if he were going to offer me a piece of advice or confide in me, I imagined how that one hand would feel around my throat, just one, let alone two. I feared that, with a rapid movement, he might transfer his hand to my throat, he must have sensed my alarm, my tension, because he maintained that pressure on my shoulder or, as it seemed to me, increased it, he wanted to frighten me, to subjugate me, his right hand on my left shoulder, as if he were a father or a teacher and I were a child, a pupil – I felt very small, and that was doubtless his intention, to make me answer him honestly or, if not honestly, anxiously.
‘So you didn’t hear anything he said? You were asleep when he arrived, weren’t you? I came in to check before talking to him and you seemed to be deep asleep, you were asleep, weren’t you? What he had to tell me was very private, and he wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it. Even though you’re a complete stranger. There are some things one would feel ashamed to have anyone hear, it was hard enough for him to tell me, even though that’s why he came, and so he had no choice but to tell me if he wanted me to do him the favour he was asking. So you really didn’t hear anything? What woke you up then?’
So he had decided to ask me straight out, pointlessly, or perhaps not: he could work out or deduce whether or not I was lying by the way I answered, or so he thought. But that’s all it would be, a deduction, an imagination, a supposition, a conviction; it’s extraordinary how, after so many centuries of ceaseless talking, we still don’t know when people are telling us the truth. ‘Yes,’ they say, and that could always mean ‘No’. ‘No,’ they say, and that could always mean ‘Yes’. Not even science or all the infinite technological advances we have made can help us to know one way or the other, not with any certainty. And nevertheless, he could not resist asking me directly, what use was it to him if I answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’? What use to Deverne had been the professions of affection over the years by one of his best friends, if not the best friend? The last thing you imagine is that your friend is going to kill you, even if from a distance and without being there to witness it, without intervening or soiling so much as a finger, in such a way that he can occasionally think afterwards, in his happy or exultant days: ‘I didn’t really do it, it was nothing to do with me.’
‘No, don’t worry, I didn’t hear anything. I slept really deeply, but not for long. Besides, you had closed the door, so I wouldn’t have been able to hear you anyway.’
The hand on my shoulder continued to squeeze, slightly harder I thought, almost imperceptibly so, as if, without my noticing, he wanted to drive me very slowly down into the floor. Or perhaps he wasn’t squeezing and it was just that, as the weight and pressure continued, so the feeling of oppression intensified. I gently lifted my shoulder, delicately, timidly, not brusquely at all, as though to indicate to him that I would prefer my shoulder to be free of that lump of meat, there was something vaguely humiliating about that unaccustomed contact: ‘Feel my strength,’ it seemed to be saying. Or ‘Imagine what I might be capable of.’ He ignored that slight movement – perhaps it was too slight – and returning to his last question, which I had not yet answered, asked again:
‘What woke you up then? If you thought I was the only person here, why did you put your bra on before coming out? You must have heard the sound of o
ur voices, which means that you must have heard some of what we said.’
I had to keep calm and continue denying that I had heard anything. The more suspicious he was, the firmer I had to be in my denials. But I had to deny it without a hint of vehemence or emphasis. What did I care about some deal he was doing with a guy I’d never even heard him mention before, that was my main weapon if I was to convince him or at least fend off his certainty for a while longer; why would I spy on him, what did I care what happened outside that bedroom or indeed inside it when I wasn’t there, surely he must know that our relationship wasn’t only transient, it was confined to and circumscribed by those occasional meetings in his apartment, in one or two of its rooms, what did any of the rest matter to me, his comings and goings, his past, his friendships, his plans, his entourage, his whole life, I wasn’t part of that, nor would I be ‘hereafter’, henceforth or later on, our days were numbered and that final number was never far away. And yet, although this was all true in essence, it wasn’t absolutely true: I had felt curious, I had woken up when I heard a key word – perhaps ‘bird’ or ‘know’ or ‘wife’ or probably the combination of all three – I had got up from the bed, pressed my ear to the door, opened it a tiny crack so that I could hear better, I had felt glad when he and Ruibérriz had proved incapable of moderating their voices, of keeping to a whisper, overcome by their own agitation. I started wondering why I had done that, and immediately began to regret it: why did I have to know what I now knew, why did I do it, why was it no longer possible for me to put my arms about his waist and draw him to me, it would have been so easy to remove his hand from my shoulder with that one movement, which would have seemed utterly natural and simple a few minutes before; why could I not force him to embrace me without further delay or hesitation, there were his beloved lips, which, as usual, I wanted to kiss, only I didn’t dare to now, or else there was something about them that simultaneously repelled and attracted me, or the thing that repelled me lay not in his lips – poor, innocent lips – but in him. I still loved him and yet was afraid of him, I still loved him and yet my knowledge of what he had done disgusted me, not him, but that knowledge.
‘You do ask some strange questions,’ I said breezily. ‘How should I know what woke me up, a bad dream, lying in an awkward position, knowing that I could be spending my time with you, I don’t know, what does it matter? And why should I care what that man told you, I didn’t even know he was here. And the reason I put my bra on was because it’s not the same being seen lying down and close to or in short bursts as being seen standing up and walking around the house like a model for Victoria’s Secret, except, of course, that they’re always wearing lingerie. Do I have to explain everything to you?’
‘What do you mean?’
He seemed genuinely bewildered and uncomprehending, and this – this shift in interest, this distraction – gave me a slight, momentary advantage, soon, I thought, he would stop asking me devious questions and then I could leave, I needed to shake off that hand and get out of there. Although my former self, which was still hanging around – it hadn’t yet been substituted or replaced, or cancelled or exiled, that couldn’t possibly happen so very quickly – was in no hurry to leave: each time I left, I never knew when I would return or if I ever would.
‘You men are so dense sometimes,’ I said firmly, for some such clichéd comment seemed to me advisable in order to change the subject and guide the conversation into more vulgar territory, which also tends to be safer and more conducive to confidences and a lowering of guards. – ‘There are certain parts of the female anatomy that we women deem to be past it by the time we’re twenty-five or thirty, let alone ten years later. We compare ourselves with ourselves as we were, remembering each year that passes. And that’s why we prefer not to expose those areas in too unseemly or full-frontal a manner. Well, that’s my view, but there are plenty of women who don’t give a damn, the beaches are packed with brutal, catastrophic displays of flesh, among them women who’ve had a couple of those rock-hard implants put in, thinking that they will solve the problem. Frankly, they set my teeth on edge.’ I laughed briefly at my choice of phrase, and added another: ‘They really give me the creeps.’
‘I see,’ he said and he laughed briefly too, which was a good sign. ‘I wouldn’t say that any parts of your anatomy were past it, they look pretty good to me.’
‘He’s feeling calmer,’ I thought, ‘less worried and suspicious, because after the fright he’s had, he needs to feel that. But later on, when he’s alone, he’ll convince himself again that I know what I shouldn’t know, what no one but Ruibérriz should know. He’ll ponder my attitude, remember my premature blush as I came out of the bedroom and my subsequent feigned ignorance, he’ll think that after all that passionate sex, the normal thing would be for me not to care how I look, bra or no bra, sex does, after all, relax you and make you drop your defences; he’ll cease to believe the explanation that he finds acceptable now because of its surprise value and because it would never have occurred to him that some women could be so perennially self-conscious about their appearance, about what they cover up and what they reveal, even how loudly they pant or moan, that they never entirely lose their modesty, even when very aroused. He’ll turn it over in his mind again and won’t know quite what to do, whether to distance me slowly and naturally or abruptly sever all contact or carry on as if nothing had happened in order to keep a close eye on me, to control me, to make a daily calculation as to how likely I am to betray him, that’s a very stressful situation to be in, ceaselessly having to interpret someone, someone who has us in their power and who could destroy us or blackmail us, no one can stand such anxiety for very long, and so we try to remedy it as best we can, by lying, intimidating, deceiving, bribing, coming to some arrangement, removing the person, the latter being both the most certain route in the long run – the most definitive – and the most dangerous in the moment, as well as the most difficult both now and later, and, in a sense, the most enduring, for you are linked to the dead person forever after, and liable to have him or her appear to you alive in your dreams, so that it seems as if you didn’t do the deed, and then you feel a great sense of relief because you didn’t kill her or else feel so horrified or threatened that you plan to do it all over again; you run the risk that the dead person will haunt your pillow every night with her smiling or frowning face, her eyes wide open, eyes that were closed either centuries ago or only the day before yesterday, that she will whisper curses or pleas in that unmistakable voice that no one else hears any more, and the task will seem to you never-ending and exhausting, an endless undertaking, not knowing what each morning will bring. But all those things will come later, when Díaz-Varela goes over in his mind what happened or what he fears might have happened. He might find some excuse to send me to Ruibérriz so that he can sound me out, pump me for information, rather, I hope, than to do anything more alarming, and leave it to that intermediary to blur or weaken the link, because I’m not going to be able to live in peace from now on either. But that moment is not now, and time will tell, I need to make the most of the fact that I’ve distracted him from his fears and made him laugh, and get out of here as quickly as possible.’
‘Thanks for the compliment, you’re not usually so lavish with them,’ I said. And with no physical effort, but with considerable mental effort, I leaned towards him and gently kissed him on the lips with my closed, dry lips – I was thirsty – and rather as my finger had before, my mouth caressed his, that’s how it was I think. That’s all.
Then he raised his hand and liberated my shoulder and removed that odious weight, and with that same hand that had almost caused me pain – that, at least, is how it w
as beginning to feel – he stroked my cheek, again as if I were a child and he had the power to punish or reward me, as he chose, with a single gesture. I very nearly reared back from that caress, there was a difference now between me touching him and him touching me, fortunately, though, I restrained myself and allowed him to caress my cheek. And when I left his apartment a few minutes later, I wondered, as I always did, if I would ever go back there. Except that this time, I did not think this with only mingled hope and desire, but with a mixture of feelings, perhaps repugnance or fear, or was it, rather, desolation?
III
In all unequal relationships, those lacking a name or explicit recognition, there is usually one person who takes the initiative, who phones to suggest meeting up, while the other person has just two possibilities or ways of reaching the same goal of not fading away or vanishing, even though he or she believes that, whatever happens, this is sure to be his or her final fate. One way is simply to wait and do nothing, trusting that eventually the other person will miss you, that your silence and absence will become unexpectedly unbearable or even worrying, because we all very quickly grow accustomed to what is given to us or what is there. The second way is to try, subtly, to infiltrate the daily life of that other person, to persist without insisting, to make a space for yourself, to phone, not in order to suggest getting together – that is still forbidden – but to ask a question, some advice or a favour, to let him know what has been going on in your life – the most efficient and most drastic way of involving someone else – or offering information; being present, acting as a reminder to him of your existence, humming and buzzing away in the distance, creating a habit that imperceptibly, almost stealthily, installs itself in his life, until one day the other person, missing your, by now, customary phone call, feels almost affronted – or experiences something bordering on abandonment – and, overcome by impatience, invents some absurd excuse, awkwardly picks up the phone and finds himself dialling your number.