On that occasion, however, I was sure that his front door would never open to me again, that once it had shut behind me and I had walked towards the lift, that apartment would remain closed to me, as if its owner had moved or gone into exile or died, one of those doors that you try not to walk past once you have been excluded, and if you do pass by it, by chance or because a detour would take too long and there is no way of avoiding it, you glance at it out of the corner of your eye with an anguished shudder – or perhaps simply the ghost of an old emotion – and quicken your step, in order not to become submerged in the memory of what was and is no longer. At night in my room, looking out at my dark, agitated trees, before closing my eyes to go to sleep, or not, I saw this quite clearly and said to myself: ‘Now I know I won’t see Javier again, and that’s just as well, even though I’m already missing the good times and the things I so enjoyed when I used to go there. That was over even before today. Tomorrow, I will begin the task of making all that happened cease to be a living creature and become instead a memory, even if, for some time, it remains a devouring one. Be patient, a day will come when that will cease too.’
However, after a week, or possibly less, something interrupted that process, when I was still struggling to get it started. I was leaving work with my boss, Eugeni, and my colleague Beatriz, slightly late because, as we all do when we apply ourselves to that slow task of forgetting and to not thinking about what we inevitably tend to think about, I was trying to spend as many hours as possible there, in company and with my mind occupied by things I didn’t much care about. As I was saying goodbye to them, near the café towards the top of Príncipe de Vergara, where I still had breakfast every morning and where I always, at some point, thought of my Perfect Couple, I immediately spotted, pacing up and down on the pavement opposite, a tall figure with his hands in his overcoat pockets, as if he had been hanging about there for some time and had got cold, as if he had arranged to meet someone who had not yet turned up. And although he wasn’t wearing a leather overcoat, but a rather old-fashioned camel-coloured and even, possibly, camel-skin coat, I recognized him at once. It couldn’t have been a coincidence, he was clearly waiting for me. ‘What’s he doing here?’ I wondered. ‘Javier must have sent him,’ and mixed up in that thought – as with everything connected to the latest version of Javier, the two-faced or unmasked version, if you like – were both irrational fear and foolish hope. ‘He’s sent him to find out if I’m still neutralized and appeased, or purely out of interest, to ask after me, to find out how I’m coping after all his revelations and his stories, but whatever the reason, he still hasn’t managed to dislodge me from his mind. Or perhaps it’s intended as a threat, a warning, and Ruibérriz is going to tell me what will happen if I don’t keep my peace until the end of time or if I start snooping around or going to see Dr Vidal; Javier is the kind of man who broods on things, that’s what he did after I eavesdropped on their conversation.’ And while I was thinking this, I was also wondering whether to avoid him and head off with Beatriz and accompany her wherever she happened to be going, or to follow my first instinct and stay there alone and allow him to approach. Succumbing once more to curiosity, I chose the latter path: I said my goodbyes and took seven or eight steps towards the bus stop, without looking at him. Only seven or eight, because he immediately crossed the road, dodging the cars, and stopped me, touching me lightly on the elbow, so as not to startle me, and when I turned round, I was confronted by his flashing teeth, a smile so broad that, as I had noticed on that first occasion, his top lip folded back to reveal its moist interior,