money.” Oddly enough, you feel an unbearable tingling in your groin, which then spreads throughout the body. But the origin of that sensation is not in the part of your body under threat, but here. Just here.’ – And he indicated the two sides of his groin with his two middle fingers. – ‘Not, you will notice, in the balls, but in the groin, which is quite a different matter, although people sometimes get confused and describe some frightening event as being “ball-shrivelling” or say “my heart leapt into my mouth or throat”’ – and he touched his throat with index finger and thumb – ‘but that’s only because the sensation spreads outwards and upwards from the groin. Anyway, as everyone has known since the weak wheel of the world first began to turn, given the nature of such an ambush or treacherous attack, there is no preventive action to be taken or, indeed, defence. I rest my case. Or would you like me to continue my enumeration? I can easily keep going at least as far as ten.’ – When Díaz-Varela did not respond, Rico assumed he had won the argument by sheer force of logic and, looking around him for the first time, he noticed me, the children and Luisa too, in a way, even though she had already been introduced to him. I think he really hadn’t properly taken us in before, otherwise he would, I think, have refrained from using the word ‘balls’, mainly because of the children. – ‘Now who have we here?’ he asked without the slightest hint of embarrassment.
I noticed that Díaz-Varela had suddenly gone very silent and serious, and for precisely the same reason that Luisa had taken three steps towards the sofa and sat down on it before even inviting the two men to do so, as if her legs had given way beneath her and she could no longer remain standing. She had gone from the spontaneous laughter of a moment before to an expression of grief, her gaze clouded and her skin pale. Yes, she must have been a very simple mechanism. She raised her hand to her forehead and lowered her eyes, and I feared that she might cry. There was no reason why Professor Rico should have known that her life had been destroyed by a knife that had stabbed and stabbed, perhaps his friend hadn’t told him – although that was strange, because one tends to recount other people’s misfortunes almost without thinking – or if Díaz-Varela had told him, he had quite forgotten about it: he had a (considerable) reputation for retaining information only about the remote past, on which he was a world authority, and for listening to accounts of more recent events politely, but with scant attention. Any crime, any event dating from the Middle Ages or the Golden Age was of far more importance to him than what had happened the day before yesterday.
Looking concerned, Díaz-Varela went over to Luisa, took her hands in his and said softly:
‘It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t worry. I’m so sorry. It hadn’t occurred to me where this nonsense might lead.’ And I thought I sensed in him an impulse to stroke her cheek, as one would when consoling a child for whom one would give one’s very life; in the end, though, he repressed that impulse.
If his murmured comment was audible to me, it was equally so to the Professor.
‘Whatever’s wrong? What did I say? It wasn’t the word “balls”, was it? Well, you are a thin-skinned lot. I could have used something far worse; after all, “balls” is a euphemism. Vulgar and graphic and overused, I agree, but a euphemism nonetheless.’
‘What does “thin-skinned” mean? What are “balls”?’ asked the little boy, who had noticed the Professor’s gesture of pointing towards his groin. Fortunately, everyone ignored him and his question went unanswered.
Luisa recovered at once and realized that she hadn’t yet introduced me. She could not, in fact, remember my surname, because although she gave the full names of the two men (‘Professor Francisco Rico, Javier Díaz-Varela’), she gave only my first name, as she did with the children, and then added my nickname by way of compensation (‘This is my new friend María; Miguel knew her as the Prudent Young Woman when we used to have breakfast most mornings in the same café, but today is the first time we’ve actually spoken’). I thought it only right that I should make up for