but no longer does. Nevertheless, it would help her to have some living person who could take my place, insofar as that’s possible, someone she could talk to. Having a father-figure close by, someone she saw often and was used to. And I can’t think of anyone who could fulfil the role of substitute father better than you. I worry less about Nicolás; he’s very young and is sure to forget me. But it would still be useful if you could be around to sort out his problems, because he’s the kind of boy who’ll attract quite a few problems. It’s Luisa who will feel most lost and vulnerable. Obviously, she might marry again, but I don’t think that’s very likely, nor, of course, that she would remarry in haste, and the older she gets, the more difficult remarriage will become. I imagine that once she has got over her initial despair and grief, both of which last a long time, she probably couldn’t be bothered with the whole process, you know, meeting someone new, giving him a potted version of her life story, allowing herself to be courted or accepting someone’s advances, being encouraging and interested, showing herself in the best possible light, explaining herself and listening to the other person explaining himself, overcoming any residual distrust, getting used to someone else and having that other person get used to her, overlooking any little things she might dislike. She would find all that really tedious, well, who wouldn’t? It’s a tiring business, and there’s inevitably something repetitious and stale about the whole process, I know I wouldn’t want to go through all that at my age. It might not seem so, but it takes a lot of hard work before you can finally settle down again with someone. I find it difficult to imagine her feeling the slightest curiosity or interest, because she’s not by nature restless or discontented. If she were, after some time had passed following my death, she might start to see some advantage or compensation in that loss. Without thinking of it as such, of course, but she would. Bringing one story to an end and starting over again, if you have to, isn’t in the long run such a bad thing. Even if you were happy with what has just ended. I’ve known inconsolable widows and widowers who, for a long time, thought they would never get back on their feet again. And yet, later, once they’ve recovered and found another partner, they have a sense that he or she is the real one, the best one, and they’re secretly glad that their former partner disappeared, leaving the field clear for this new relationship they’ve built. That is the awful power of the present, which crushes the past more easily as the past recedes, and falsifies it too without the past getting a chance to speak, protest, contradict or refute anything. Not to mention the husbands or wives who daren’t or don’t know how to leave their partner or who feel that they couldn’t possibly inflict such pain on them: they secretly want the other person to die, preferring their death to having to confront the problem and find some sensible solution. It’s absurd, but that’s how it is: it’s not that they don’t wish them ill and are eager to preserve them from all ills by dint of their personal sacrifice and enforced silence (because in order to be rid of them, they do wish them ill – the worst and most irreversible of all ills) it’s just that they aren’t prepared to be the cause of those ills, they don’t want to feel responsible for someone else’s unhappiness, not even for the unhappiness of the person whose mere existence by their side is a torment to them, the tie that binds and which they could cut if they were brave. But, since they are not brave, they fantasize or dream about something as radical as another person’s death. “It would be an easy solution and an enormous relief,” they think, “and I would have nothing to do with it, I wouldn’t have to cause him any pain or sadness, he wouldn’t have to suffer because of me, it could be an accident, a devastating illness, a misfortune in which I would play no part; on the contrary, in the eyes of the world and in my own eyes too, I would be the victim, both victim and beneficiary. And I would be