be like without me and I feel afraid. For the kids and for Luisa, not for anyone else, I can assure you, I don’t think I’m that important. I just want to be sure that you would be there to take care of them, at least initially. So that they would have someone as similar to me as possible to support them. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, you are the person who most resembles me. Even if only because we’ve known each other such a long time.’
Díaz-Varela would have thought for a moment, then given a half-sincere, certainly not wholly sincere, answer:
‘But do you realize what you would be getting me into? Do you realize how difficult it would be to become a non-husband without subsequently going on to become a real husband? In the kind of situation you described, it would be all too easy for the widow and the bachelor to believe that they mean rather more to each other, and who can blame them? Put someone in another person’s daily life, make him feel responsible and protective and with a duty to make himself indispensable to that other person, and you can imagine how things will end up. Always assuming they’re both reasonably attractive and there isn’t a vast age difference between them. It will come as no surprise to you if I say that Luisa is very attractive, and I can’t complain about my own success with the ladies. I don’t think I’ll ever marry, that’s not it, but if you were to die and I started going to your house on a daily basis, I find it very hard to believe that what should never have happened while you were alive wouldn’t happen once you were dead. Would you want to die knowing that? More than that, you would be encouraging it, procuring it, propelling us into it.’
Desvern would have remained silent for a few seconds, thinking, as if he had not considered that scenario before formulating his request. Then he would have given a rather paternalistic laugh and said:
‘You are incorrigibly vain and incorrigibly optimistic. That’s why you would make such a good handle to hold on to, such a good support. I don’t think what you describe would happen at all. Precisely because you’re too familiar a figure, like a cousin whom it would be impossible to see in any other way, with any other eyes,’ here he would have hesitated for a moment or pretended to, ‘any other eyes than mine, that is. Her view of you comes from me, it’s inherited, tainted. You’re an old friend of her husband, a friend of whom she has often heard me speak, as you can imagine, with a mixture of affection and mockery. Before Luisa met you, I had already told her what you were like, I had painted a picture of you for her. She has always seen you in that light and with those features, and there’s no changing them now, she had a complete portrait of you before you were even introduced. And I can’t deny that your entanglements and, how can I put it, your smugness, often made us laugh. I’m afraid you’re not someone she could take seriously. I’m sure you don’t mind me saying that. That’s one of your virtues, and it’s what you’ve always strived for, isn’t it, not to be taken too seriously. You’re not going to deny that, are you?’
Díaz-Varela would doubtless have felt slightly put out, but would have disguised the fact. No one likes to be told that he or she stands no chance with someone, even if that person is of no interest and has never been seen as a potential conquest. Many seductions have taken place, or at least begun, out of nothing more than pique or defiance, because of a bet or to prove someone wrong. Any genuine interest comes later. And it often does, provoked by the manoeuvring and the effort involved. But it’s not there at the beginning, certainly not before the dissuasive arguments or the challenge. Perhaps, at that moment, Díaz-Varela wanted Deverne to die so that he could prove to him that Luisa could take him seriously when there were no mediators, no go-betweens. Although, of course, how can you prove something to a dead man? How can you gain their acknowledgement, their recognition that they were wrong? They never tell us we were right when we need them