despair momentarily, because we believe we could have continued with them for much longer, with no foreseeable expiry date. That’s a mistake, albeit understandable. Continuity changes everything, and something we thought wonderful yesterday would have become a torment tomorrow. Our reaction to the death of someone close to us is similar to Macbeth’s reaction to the news that his wife, the Queen, has died. “She should have died hereafter,” he replies rather enigmatically, meaning: “She should have died at some point in the future, later on.” Or he could have meant, less ambiguously and more plainly: “She should have waited a little longer, she should have held on”; what he means is “not at this precise moment, but at the chosen moment”. And what would be the chosen moment? The moment never seems quite right, we always think that whatever pleases or brings us joy, whatever solaces or succours us, whatever drives us through the days, could have lasted a little longer, a year, a few months, a few weeks, a few hours, we always feel it is too soon for things or people to end, we never feel there is a right moment, one in which we ourselves would say: “Fine, that’s enough. That’s all over with and a good thing too. Anything that happens from now on will be worse, a deterioration, a diminution, a blot.” We never dare to go so far as to say: “That time is past, even if it was our time,” which is why the ending of things does not lie in our hands, because if it did, everything would continue indefinitely, becoming grubby and contaminated, and no living creature would ever die.’
He paused briefly to drink his beer, because talking always dries the throat, and, after an initial hesitation, he launched into his speech almost vehemently, as if seizing the opportunity to vent his feelings. He spoke fluently and eloquently, his English pronunciation was good and unaffected, what he said was interesting and his thoughts coherent, I wondered what he did for a living, but I couldn’t ask him without interrupting what he was saying and I didn’t want to do that. I was looking at his lips as he talked, staring at them, quite blatantly I fear, I was letting myself be lulled by his words and couldn’t take my eyes off the place out of which those words had emerged, as if he were all kissable mouth, the source of all abundance, from which everything flows, what persuades and what seduces us, what changes and charms us, what sucks us in and what convinces us. In the Bible somewhere it says: ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ I was puzzled to find myself so attracted to that man, even fascinated, a man I barely knew, and even more puzzled when I recalled that for Luisa, on the other hand, he was almost invisible and inaudible, because she had seen and heard him so often. How could that be? We believe that whoever we fall in love with should be desired by everyone. I didn’t want to say anything so as not to break the spell, but it occurred to me also that, if I said nothing, he might think I wasn’t paying attention, when the fact is I hung on his every word, everything that came from those lips interested me. I must be brief, though, I thought, so as not to distract him too much.
‘Yes, but how things end does lie in our hands if those hands are suicidal, not to mention murderous,’ I said. And I was on the point of adding: ‘Right here, right next door, your friend Desvern was cruelly cut down. It’s strange us sitting here in this clean and peaceful place, as if nothing had happened. If we had been here on that other day, we might perhaps have saved him. Although if he hadn’t died, we wouldn’t be together anywhere. We wouldn’t even have met.’
I was on the point of adding this, but I didn’t, because, among other reasons, he suddenly cast a rapid glance – he had his back to the street, I was facing it – at the spot where the stabbing had taken place, and I wondered if he might perhaps be thinking the same as me or something similar, at least as regards the first part of my thought. He ran his fingers through his slightly receding hair, which he wore combed backwards, like a