feared that I might never see him again and that was all that mattered to me: if he saw me again, it might be harder for him to keep to his decision, I could try, I could give him an inkling of what the future would be like without me, persuade him by my presence to reverse his decision. I thought this and realized at once how idiotic it was: such moments are unpleasant, when we don’t even feel ashamed to realize how idiotic we are, but abandon ourselves to our idiocy anyway, fully aware of what we are doing and knowing that soon we will be saying to ourselves: ‘I knew it, I was sure of it. How stupid can you get?’ And that reaction, which came to me as surely as iron to magnet, was even more inconsistent and idiotic, given that I had already half-decided to break off with him if he ever got back in touch. He had arranged to have his best friend murdered and that was too much for my awakened conscience. Now, however, I discovered that it wasn’t too much, at least not yet, or that my conscience had grown murky or else simply fell asleep if I let my attention wander for an instant, and that made me think precisely those words: ‘God, I’m stupid!’
Díaz-Varela was, at any rate, not used to me putting any obstacles in the way when he suggested that we meet, apart from my work, that is, and there are few tasks that cannot be left until the following day, at least in the world of publishing. Leopoldo was never an obstacle for as long as that relationship lasted, he was in the same position as I was vis-à-vis Díaz-Varela, or perhaps in an even worse position, because I had to make a real effort to enjoy being with him, whereas it never felt to me that Díaz-Varela had to make such an effort of will when he was with me, although that may have been a mere illusion on my part, for who ever really knows what anyone else feels. With Leopoldo, I was the one who decided when we could and couldn’t see each other and for how long; for him, I was always a woman absorbed in an inexhaustible string of activities about which I didn’t even talk to him, he must have imagined my small, unhurried world as being a barely sustainable maelstrom, so rarely did I make time for him, so burdened with work did I seem. He lasted for as long as Díaz-Varela did in my life: as often occurs when you have two relationships on the go at once, the one cannot survive without the other, however different or even opposed they might be. Lovers often end their adulterous affair when the married party divorces or is widowed, as if they were suddenly terrified of finding themselves face to face or didn’t know how to continue without all the usual impediments, how to live or how to develop what had, until then, been a circumscribed love, comfortably condemned to not manifesting itself in public, possibly never even leaving one room; we often discover that what began purely by chance needs always to cleave to that way of being, with any attempt at change being experienced and rejected by both parties as an imposture or a falsification. Leopoldo never knew about Díaz-Varela, I never so much as mentioned his existence, why should I, it was none of his business. We parted on good terms, I didn’t wound him deeply, and he still phones me from time to time, but we don’t talk for long, we bore each other and after the first three sentences find we have nothing else to say. His was merely a brief hope cut short, a hope that was inevitably tenuous and somewhat sceptical, because an absence of enthusiasm is not something that can be easily concealed and is obvious even to the most optimistic of lovers. That, at least, is what I think, that I barely hurt him at all, that he never knew. Not that I’m going to bother finding out now, what does it matter, or, rather, what does it matter to me? Díaz-Varela certainly wouldn’t take the trouble to find out how much harm he had done me or if he had wounded me: I had, after all, always been sceptical about our relationship, I couldn’t even say that I ever had any hopes