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