more or less recovered and happy, he is exultant, there they are married, and with not a thought for Deverne or for me, I barely left so much as a trace. It’s in my power to ruin that marriage right now, and to ruin the life he has built as a usurper, yes, that’s the word, “usurper”. I would simply have to get up, go over to their table and say: “Well, well, so you finally got what you wanted, you removed the obstacle without her ever suspecting a thing.” I wouldn’t have to say anything more or give any further explanations or tell the whole story, I would turn on my heel and leave. Those hints would be all it would take to sow the seeds of uncertainty in Luisa’s mind and for her to demand to know what it meant. Yes, it’s so easy to introduce doubt into someone’s mind.’
And no sooner had I thought this – although I spent many minutes thinking it, repeating it over and over as if it were a tune I couldn’t get out of my head, and silently getting myself all fired up, with my eyes fixed on them, I don’t know how they didn’t notice, how they didn’t feel burned or pierced by them, my eyes were like hot coals or like needles – no sooner had I thought this than I stood up, again unwittingly and unthinkingly, just as I had when I reached out my hand to touch his lips, and still clutching my napkin, I said to the much-fêted-conman’s girlfriend, who was the only one still aware of my existence and who might, therefore, miss me if I was gone for long:
‘Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.’
I really had no idea what my intentions were or else those intentions changed several times at great speed while I took the steps – one, two, three – that separated my table from theirs. I know that into my head came this fleeting idea, which would take much longer to put into words, while I walked without realizing – four, five – that I was still clutching my soiled and crumpled napkin: ‘She hardly knows me and, after all this time, there’s no reason why she should recognize me until I introduce myself and tell her my name; as far as she’s concerned, I’ll be a complete stranger coming over to their table. He, on the other hand, knows me well and will recognize me instantly, yet, in theory, in Luisa’s eyes, he has even less reason to remember me. In theory, he and I have only ever seen each other on one occasion, when we happened to meet at her house, one evening, over two years ago, and when we barely exchanged a word. He’ll have to pretend he doesn’t know who I am, if he didn’t, it would look very strange. And so it’s also in my power to unmask him in that respect too, we women can usually tell at once if the woman who comes over to say hello to the man we’re with has had a relationship with him in the past. Unless the two ex-lovers can pretend to perfection and not give themselves away. And unless we’re mistaken, for it’s also true that some of us tend to attribute to our partners a whole host of past lovers, often quite wrongly.’
As I advanced – six, seven, eight, skirting round the odd table and avoiding the pell-mell Chinese waiters, it wasn’t a straightforward trajectory – I could see them better, and they looked very calm and happy, immersed in their conversation, pretty much oblivious to anyone else but them. At one point, I felt for Luisa something resembling happiness or perhaps acceptance or was it relief? The last time I had seen her, all those months ago, I had felt real pity for her. She had spoken to me about the hatred she could not feel for the gorrilla: ‘No, hating him serves no purpose, it doesn’t console or give me strength,’ she had said. And about the hatred she couldn’t have felt either for some newly arrived, abstract hit man, had he been the one hired to kill Deverne. ‘But I could hate the instigators,’ she had added, and then read me part of the definition of ‘envidia’ or ‘envy’ in Covarrubias, dated 1611, regretting that she couldn’t even blame the death of her husband on that: ‘Unfortunately, this poison is often engendered