may be the occasional backward step, depending on how things go or on the occasional stroke of bad luck, but that’s all. The dead only have the energy that the living give them, and if that energy is withdrawn … Luisa will free herself from Miguel, to a far greater degree than she can even imagine right now, and he knew that very well. More than that, he decided to make things easier for her, insofar as he could, and that was partly why he asked me that favour. Only partly. There was, of course, a weightier reason.’
‘What is this favour you keep talking about? What favour?’ I couldn’t help my impatience, I had the feeling that he wanted to draw me in through curiosity.
‘I’m coming to that, because that’s the cause of all this,’ he said. ‘Listen carefully. Months before his death, Miguel experienced a general feeling of lassitude, not significant or serious enough to merit seeing a doctor, he wasn’t worried and was in good health. Soon afterwards, he noticed another trivial symptom, slightly blurred vision in one eye, but he thought it was a temporary thing and delayed visiting an ophthalmologist. When he did, when the blurred vision didn’t clear up on its own, the ophthalmologist made a thorough examination and came up with a very gloomy diagnosis: a large intraocular melanoma, and sent him to a consultant for further tests. The consultant checked him over, gave him a CAT scan, a full-body MRI scan, as well as an extensive array of other tests. His diagnosis was even worse: generalized metastasis throughout the body, or as Miguel told me the doctor told him in his cold, aseptic jargon: “a very advanced metastatic melanoma”, even though Miguel was almost asymptomatic at the time and had no other ailments.’
‘So,’ I thought, ‘Desvern couldn’t have said to Javier, as I had once imagined he might: “No, I don’t foresee any problems, nothing imminent or even impending, nothing concrete, my health’s fine”, quite the contrary. At least that’s what Javier is saying now.’ That evening, I was still calling him Javier, although that would soon change, but at the time, I had not yet decided to think of him and refer to him by his surname alone, in order to distance myself from our past proximity or to at least allow myself that illusion.
‘Right, and what does all this mean exactly, apart, obviously, from it being very bad news?’ I asked, trying to give a note of scepticism or incredulity to my question: ‘Go on, go on, keep talking, but I’m not going to swallow this last-minute story of yours that easily, I have a pretty good idea where you’re going with this.’ But at the same time, I was already intrigued by what he had started to tell me, regardless of whether it was true or not. Díaz-Varela often amused me and always interested me. And so I added, speaking now with genuine, credulous concern: ‘But can that happen, can you have such a serious illness with almost no symptoms? Well, I know you can, of course, but that serious? And completely out of the blue like that? And so advanced? It makes you shudder to think of it, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, it can happen and it happened to Miguel. But don’t worry, that particular form of melanoma is, fortunately, very infrequent and very rare. Nothing like that will happen to you. Or to Luisa or to me or to Professor Rico, that would be too much of a coincidence.’ – He had noticed my instantaneous fear of illness. He waited for his baseless prediction to take effect and reassure me as if I were a child, he waited a few seconds before going on. – ‘Miguel didn’t say a word to me about this until he had all the facts, and he didn’t even tell Luisa about the early stages, when there was as yet nothing to fear: not even that he had an appointment with an ophthalmologist, nor that his vision was slightly blurred, because the last thing he wanted was to worry her unnecessarily, and she’s very easily worried. And he certainly didn’t tell her about what followed. In fact, he didn’t tell anyone anything, with one exception. After the consultant’s diagnosis, he knew his illness was terminal, but the consultant didn’t give him all the information, not in detail, or perhaps he tried to play it down, or perhaps Miguel didn’t even ask, I don’t know, he