Luisa), he wished merely to arouse the flirtee’s curiosity or, if possible, to dazzle her, even if he was never going to see the dazzled party again. Díaz-Varela was amused by his friend’s puerile exhibitionism and allowed or even encouraged him to expatiate, as if he were unafraid of any competition or else had a definite, long-awaited goal of his own, which he did not doubt for a moment he would attain sooner or later, overcoming all eventualities or threats.
I didn’t stay long, well, I had no part to play at that meeting, which was improvised as far as Rico was concerned and probably customary as regards Díaz-Varela, who gave the impression of being a habitual, almost continuous presence in that house or in that life, that of Luisa the widow. It was the second time he had appeared in one day, as far as I knew, and that must have been the case almost every day, because when he arrived with Rico, the children had greeted him with a naturalness bordering on indifference, as if they took for granted his evening visit (his ‘dropping by’). Of course, they had already seen him that morning, and the three had made a brief journey together in the car. He seemed to be more involved in Luisa’s life than anyone else, more than her own family, because I knew she had at least one brother, she had mentioned him in the same sentence as Javier and the lawyer. And it seemed to me that this was how Luisa saw him, as an additional or adopted brother, someone who comes and goes, enters and leaves, someone who helps out with the children or with any other unforeseen event, on whom you can count for almost anything and without asking first and who you automatically go to for advice, who keeps you company without your even noticing, neither him nor his company, who offers his help spontaneously and for free, someone who doesn’t need to phone before coming round, and who slowly, imperceptibly, ends up sharing the whole territory and making himself indispensable. Someone whom one barely notices is there, but who would be missed immeasurably if he were to withdraw or disappear. That could happen with Díaz-Varela at any moment, because he wasn’t a devoted, unconditional brother who is never going to leave for good, but a friend of her dead husband, and friendship is not transferable. Although it can sometimes be usurped. Perhaps he was one of those bosom pals of whom, in a moment of weakness or dark foreboding, one asks a favour or from whom one exacts a promise:
‘If anything bad were to happen to me and I was no longer here,’ Deverne might have said one day, ‘I’m counting on you to take care of Luisa and the kids.’
‘What do you mean? What are you talking about? Why do you say that? You’re not ill, are you?’ Díaz-Varela would have replied, anxious and taken aback.
‘No, I don’t foresee any problems, nothing imminent or even impending, nothing concrete, my health’s fine. But for those of us who think about death and pause to observe the effect it has on the living, we can’t help but ask ourselves sometimes what will happen after our own death, how will it leave the people to whom we matter, how far will it affect them. I don’t mean the financial side of things, that’s more or less sorted out, but everything else. I imagine that the children will have a rough time of it for a while, and that Carolina’s memory of me will last for the rest of her life, growing ever vaguer and more diffuse, which means that she might begin to idealize me, because we can do what we like with the vague and the diffuse and manipulate it at will, transforming it into a lost paradise, into a golden age when everything was in its proper place and no one lacked for anything. But she’s too young really not to be able to let go of that eventually and to get on with her life and nurture other kinds of hopes, the hopes appropriate to each age as she reaches it. She’ll be a perfectly normal girl, with just an occasional trace of melancholy. She’ll tend to take refuge in my memory whenever she experiences an upset or things turn out badly, but that’s what we all do to a greater or lesser extent, seeking refuge in what once existed,