of the museum’s most incongruous exhibits, and no visitor can fail to notice it, not because it’s pretty, but because it makes no sense at all.
‘It’s María Dolz, isn’t it? I’m right, aren’t I, it is Dolz?’ Díaz-Varela said once we had sat down on the terrace, as if keen to show off his retentive memory; after all, I alone had said my surname and then only hurriedly, slipping it in like an insert of no interest to any of the others present. I felt flattered by this gesture, but didn’t feel I was being courted.
‘You obviously have a good memory – and a good ear,’ I said, so as not to be impolite. ‘Yes, it’s Dolz, not Dols or Dolç with a cedilla.’ And I drew a cedilla in the air. ‘How’s Luisa?’
‘Oh, haven’t you seen her? I thought you had become friends.’
‘Well, yes, if you can be friends with someone for a day. I haven’t seen her since that one time in her house. We did get on very well, it’s true, and she spoke to me as if I were a friend, more out of need than anything, I think. But I haven’t seen her since. How is she?’ I asked again. ‘You must see her every day, I imagine.’
He seemed slightly put out by my response and remained silent for a few seconds. It occurred to me that perhaps all he wanted was to pump me for information, in the belief that she and I kept in touch, and that his encounter with me had now lost its purpose almost before it had begun, or, even more ironically, that he would be the one to give me news and information about her.
‘Not very good,’ he replied at last, ‘and I’m starting to get worried. I know it hasn’t been that long, of course, but she just can’t seem to pull herself together, she hasn’t progressed a millimetre, she can’t even raise her head, however fleetingly, and look about her and see how much she still has. Despite the death of her husband, she, nonetheless, has a lot going for her; I mean, at her age, she has a whole life ahead of her. Most widows get over their grief quite quickly, especially if they’re fairly young and have children to look after. But it’s not just the children, who soon cease to be children. If she were only able to imagine herself in a few years’ time, or even a year, she would see then how the image of Miguel, which, at the moment, haunts her incessantly, will fade and shrink with each passing day, and how her new love will allow her to remember him occasionally and with surprising serenity, always with sorrow, yes, but with hardly any sense of unease. Because she will experience new love, and her first marriage will eventually seem almost like a dream, a dim, flickering memory. What seems like a tragic anomaly today will be perceived as an inevitable and even desirable normality, given that it will have happened. Right now it seems to her unbelievable that Miguel should no longer exist, but a time will come when it will seem incomprehensible that he could ever be restored to life, that he could ever exist, when merely imagining a miraculous reappearance, a resurrection, a return, will seem to her intolerable, because she will already have assigned him a place in time, both him and his character frozen for ever, and she will not allow that fixed and finished portrait to be exposed once more to the changes that afflict everything that is still alive and therefore unpredictable. We tend to hope that, of the people and habits we cherish, no one will die and none will end, not realizing that the only thing that maintains those habits intact is their sudden withdrawal, with no possible alteration or evolution, before they can abandon us or we abandon them. Anything that lasts goes bad and putrefies, it bores us, turns against us, saturates and wearies us. How many people who once seemed vital to us are left by the wayside, how many relationships wear thin, become diluted for no apparent reason or certainly none of any weight. The only people who do not fail or let us down are those who are snatched from us, the only ones we don’t drop are those who abruptly disappear and so have no time to cause us pain or disappointment. When that happens, we