stopped me with a wave of his hand (‘Don’t give me that,’ said the hand, ‘no pussyfooting 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,