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