sometimes, he suggested I put my shoes back on once I’d taken off my tights, but only if I was wearing heels, a lot of men cling faithfully to certain classic images, and I can understand that – I have my own such images – and I’ve nothing against it, after all, it costs me nothing to please them and I even feel rather flattered to be conforming to a fantasy that has a certain prestige, and which has, rather commendably, endured now for a few generations. And so that near-complete lack of clothing – my skirt came to just above my knee when it was in its proper place and unwrinkled, but now it was crumpled and twisted and seemed far briefer – stopped me in my tracks and made me hesitate and wonder how I would behave if I genuinely thought I was alone in the apartment with Díaz-Varela, would I sashay forth from the bedroom with my breasts bare or would I cover them up? If you’re going to appear in front of someone else, you have to be very confident that your breasts haven’t grown slack, that they don’t give you away by swaying and bouncing too much (I’ve never understood how nudists of a certain age can be so relaxed about this); having a man see them in repose or from close to and in the heat of battle, so to speak, is quite a different matter from him seeing them full on and at a distance and with them bobbing about uncontrollably. I failed to reach a conclusion, because modesty immediately got the better of me. The prospect of revealing myself like that to a complete stranger seemed completely unacceptable, especially when the stranger in question was a shady character with no scruples. Although, as I was discovering, Díaz-Varela lacked scruples too, possibly to an even greater extent, but he was nonetheless someone who knew those parts of my body that were visible, and not just that, he was someone whom I still loved, for what I felt was a mixture of utter incredulity and basic, unreflecting repugnance; I was incapable of taking in – let alone analysing – what I believed I now knew, and I say ‘believed’ because I felt sure that I must have misheard, that this was some kind of misunderstanding, that I had entirely misinterpreted the conversation, that there was some explanation that would allow me to think later on: ‘How could I possibly have thought such a thing, how foolish and unfair I have been.’ And at the same time, I realized that I had, inevitably, already internalized and incorporated the facts that emerged from that conversation, that they were engraved on my brain until I received the denial I could not ask for without possibly exposing myself to grave danger. I had to pretend to have heard nothing, not just in order to avoid seeming, in his eyes, to be a spy and a busybody – insofar as I cared how he viewed me, which I still did, because no change is ever immediate and instantaneous, not even one brought about by a horrendous discovery – but because it was advisable and even, quite literally, vital. I felt afraid too, for myself, well, a little afraid, I couldn’t be very afraid, as I gauged the dimensions of what had happened and what it meant, it wasn’t easy to move from post-coital placidity or torpor to fearing the person with whom I had achieved that state. There was something improbable and unreal about the whole situation, like a dark, defamatory dream that weighs unbearably on our soul, I was incapable of suddenly seeing Díaz-Varela as a murderer who, having once crossed that line, having once transgressed, might well reoffend. He wasn’t really a murderer, I tried to think later on: he hadn’t held the knife or stabbed anyone, he had never even spoken to that homicidal gorrilla, Vázquez Canella, he hadn’t ordered him to do anything, he’d had no contact with him, indeed, from what I could gather, they had never exchanged a single word. Perhaps the plot hadn’t even been his idea, he might have told his troubles to Ruibérriz, who had then planned it all himself – eager to please, a fool, a hothead – and come to him when the deed was done, like someone turning up with an unexpected present: ‘See how I have smoothed the way for you, see how I have cleared