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When they stopped kicking him they were
sunk for a few seconds in the strangest calm of their lives. It was as if
they'd finally had the menage a trois they'd so often dreamed of.

Pelletier felt as if he had come. Espinoza
felt the same, to a slightly different degree. Norton, who was staring at them
without seeing them in the dark, seemed to have experienced multiple orgasms. A
few cars were passing by on

St.
George's Road

, but the three of them were invisible
to anyone traveling in a vehicle at that hour. There wasn't a single star in
the sky. And yet the night was clear: they could see everything in great
detail, even the outlines of the smallest things, as if an angel had suddenly
clapped night-vision goggles on their eyes. Their skin felt smooth, extremely
soft to the touch, although in fact the three of them were sweating. For a
moment Espinoza and Pelletier thought they'd killed the Pakistani. A similar
idea seemed to be passing through Norton's mind, because she bent over the
cabbie and felt for his pulse. To move, to kneel down, hurt her as if the bones
of her legs were dislocated.

A group of people came from Garden Row
singing a song. They were laughing. Three men and two women. Without moving,
Norton, Pelletier, and Espinoza turned their heads toward them and waited. The
group began to walk in their direction.

"The cab," said Pelletier,
"they want the cab."

Only at that moment did they realize the
interior light of the cab was still on.

"Let's go," said Espinoza.

Pelletier took Norton by the shoulders and
helped her up. Espinoza had gotten behind the wheel and was urging them to
hurry. Pelletier pushed Norton into the backseat and then got in himself. The
group from Garden Row headed straight toward the spot where the driver lay.

"He's alive, he's breathing,"
said Norton.

Espinoza started the car and they drove
away. On the other side of the
Thames
, on a
little street near Old Marylebone, they left the cab and walked for a while.
They wanted to talk to Norton, explain what had happened, but she wouldn't even
let them take her home.

 

The next day, as they ate a big breakfast
at the hotel, they searched the papers for news about the Pakistani cabbie, but
he wasn't mentioned anywhere. After breakfast they went out to get the
tabloids. They didn't find anything there either.

They called Norton, who didn't seem as
angry as she had the night before. They said they had to see her that
afternoon. There was something important they needed to tell her. Norton said
she had something "important to tell them, too. To kill time they went out
for a walk around the neighborhood. For a few minutes they entertained
themselves by watching the ambulances coming in and out of
Middlesex
Hospital
,
imagining that each sick or hurt person who went in looked like the Pakistani
they'd beaten so badly, until they got bored and went for a walk, their minds
calmer, along Charing Cross toward the
Strand
.
They confided in each other, as is natural. They shared their innermost
feelings. What worried them most was that the police would come after them and
catch them in the end.

"Before I got out of the cab,"
confessed Espinoza, "I wiped my fingerprints away with a
handkerchief."

"I know," said Pelletier,
"I saw you do it and I did the same. I wiped my fingerprints away, and
Liz's, too."

More calmly each time, they went over and
over the concatenation of events that had driven them, finally, to give the
cabbie a beating. Pritchard, no question about it. And the Gorgon, that
innocent and mortal Medusa, set apart from her immortal sisters. And the veiled
or not so veiled threat. And nerves. And the rudeness of that ignorant wretch.
They wished they had a radio so they could hear the latest news. They talked
about what they'd felt as they rained blows on the fallen body. A combination
of sleepiness and sexual desire. Desire to fuck the poor bastard? Not at all!
More as if they were fucking themselves. As if they were digging into
themselves. With long nails and empty hands. Though if your fingernails are
long enough your hands are never really empty. But in this dreamlike state,
they dug and dug, rending fabric and ripping veins and puncturing vital organs.
What were they looking for? They didn't know. Nor, at that stage, did they
care.

In the afternoon they saw Norton and they
told her everything they knew or feared about Pritchard. The Gorgon, the death
of the Gorgon. The exploding woman. She let them talk until they ran out of
words. Then she soothed them. Pritchard couldn't hurt a fly, she said. They
thought of Anthony Perkins, who claimed he wouldn't hurt a fly and look what
happened, but they were content not to argue and they accepted her arguments,
unconvinced. Then Norton sat down and said that the thing that couldn't be
explained was what had happened the night before.

As if to divert blame, they asked her
whether she'd heard anything about the Pakistani. Norton said she had. There'd
been something on a local television station. A group of friends, probably the
people they saw coming from Garden Row, had found the driver's body and called
the police. He had four broken ribs, a concussion, a broken nose, and he'd lost
all his top teeth. Now he was in the hospital.

"It was my fault," said
Espinoza. "His insults made me lose control."

"It would be best if we didn't see
each other for a while," said Norton, "I have to think this
over."

Pelletier agreed, but Espinoza kept
blaming himself: it seemed fair that Norton should stop seeing him but not that
she should stop seeing Pelletier.

"Stop talking nonsense,"
Pelletier said to him in a low voice, and only then did Espinoza realize that
what he was saying was, in fact, stupid.

That night they both flew home.

When he got back to
Madrid
, Espinoza had a minor breakdown. In
the cab home he started to cry, discreetly, covering his eyes with his hand,
but the driver saw him crying and asked him if anything was wrong, whether he
felt ill.

"I feel all right," said
Espinoza, "I'm just a little on edge."

"Are you from here?" asked the
driver.

"Yes," said Espinoza, "I
was born in
Madrid
."

For a while neither of them said anything.
Then the driver renewed his attack and asked whether he was interested in
soccer. Espinoza said no, he'd never been interested in soccer or any other
sport. And he added, as if not to put an abrupt end to the conversation, that
the night before he had almost killed a man.

"Really," said the driver.

That's right," said Espinoza, "I
almost killed him."

"How's that?" asked the driver.

It was in a rage," said Espinoza.

"Abroad?" asked the driver.

Yes," said Espinoza, laughing for the
first time, "far from here, and The man had a strange job, too."

Pelletier, meanwhile, neither had
a breakdown nor talked to the
driver who brought
him back to his apartment. When he got home he took
a shower and made himself some pasta with olive oil and
cheese.

 

Then he checked his e-mail, answered a few
messages, and went to bed with a novel by a young French author, nothing of
great significance but amusing, and a journal of literary studies. A little
while later he was asleep and he had the following extremely strange dream: he
was married to Norton and they lived in a big house, near a cliff from which
one could see a beach full of people in bathing suits lying in the sun or
swimming, though never getting too far from shore.

The days were short. From his window he
watched an almost unending succession of sunrises and sunsets. From time to
time Norton would approach the room he was in and say something to him, but she
never crossed the threshold. The people on the beach were always there.
Sometimes he had the impression that at night they didn't go home, or that they
all left together when it was dark, returning in a long procession before the
sun came up. Other times, if he closed his eyes, he could soar over the beach
like a seagull and see the bathers from up close. They came in every shape and
size, although most were adults, in their thirties, forties, fifties, and all
gave the impression of being focused on foolish activities, like rubbing oil on
themselves, eating sandwiches, listening with more politeness than interest to
the conversation of friends, relatives, or towel mates. Sometimes, however, the
bathers would get up circumspectly and gaze at the horizon, even if for only a
second or two. It was a calm horizon, cloudless, of a transparent blue.

When Pelletier opened his eyes he thought
about the bathers' behavior. It was clear they were waiting for something, but
you couldn't say if
there was
anything desperate in their waiting. Every once in a while they'd simply look
more alert, their eyes scanning the horizon for a second or two, and then they
would once again become part of the flow of time on the beach, fluidly, without
a moment of hesitation. Absorbed in watching the bathers, Pelletier forgot about
Norton, trusting, perhaps, in her presence in the house, a presence evidenced
by the noises that occasionally drifted from within, from the rooms that had no
windows or windows that overlooked the fields or the mountains, not the sea or
the crowded beach. He slept, or so he discovered deep into the dream, sitting
in a chair, near his desk and the window. And he didn't seem to do much
sleeping. Even when the sun set he tried to stay awake as long as possible,
with his eyes fixed on the beach, now a black canvas or the bottom of a well,
watching for any light, the trace of a flashlight, the flickering flame of a
bonfire. He lost all notion of time. He vaguely remembered a confusing scene,
at once embarrassing and exciting. The papers he had on the table were manuscripts
by Archimboldi, or at least that was what he'd been told when he bought them,
although when he looked through them he realized that they were written in
French, not German. Next to him was a phone that never rang. The days grew
hotter and hotter.

One morning, near midday, he saw the
bathers halt their activities and turn to watch the horizon, all at once, in
the usual way. Nothing happened. But then, for the first time, the bathers
turned around and began to leave the beach. Some headed along a dirt road
between two hills. Others struck off cross-country, clinging to bushes and
stones. A few moved toward the cliff and Pelletier couldn't see them but he
knew they were beginning a slow climb. All that was left on the beach was a
mass, a dark form projecting from a yellow pit. For an instant Pelletier
wondered whether he should go down to the beach and bury the mass at the bottom
of the hole, taking all necessary precautions. But just imagining how far he
would have to walk to get to the beach made him sweat, and he kept sweating
more and more, as if once you turned the spigot you couldn't turn it off.

And then he spied a
tremor in the sea, as if the water were sweating too, or as if it
were about to boil. A barely perceptible simmer that spilled into ripples,
building into waves that came to die on the beach. And then Pelletier felt
dizzy and a hum of bees came from outside. And when the hum faded, a silence
that was even worse fell over the house and everywhere around. And Pelletier
shouted Norton's name and called to her, but no one answered his calls, as if
the silence had swallowed up his cries for help. And then Pelletier began to
weep and he watched as what was left of a statue emerged from the bottom of the
metallic sea. A formless chunk of stone, gigantic, eroded by time and water,
though a hand, a wrist, part of a forearm could still be made out with total
clarity. And this statue came out of the sea and rose above the beach and it
was horrific and at the same time very beautiful.

Fo
r a few days, Pelletier and
Espinoza were, quite independently, filled with remorse by the business with
the Pakistani driver, which circled in their guilty consciences like a ghost or
an electric charge.

Espinoza wondered whether his behavior
didn't reveal what he truly was, in other words a violent, xenophobic
reactionary. Pelletier's guilt, on the other hand, was driven by having kicked
the Pakistani when he was already on the ground, which was frankly
unsportsmanlike. What need was there for that? he asked himself. The cabbie had
already got what he deserved and there was no need to heap violence on
violence.

One night the two of them talked on the
phone for a long time. They expressed their respective fears. They comforted
each other. But after a few minutes they were again lamenting what had
happened, even though deep inside they were convinced that it was the Pakistani
who was the real reactionary and misogynist, the violent one, the intolerant
and offensive one, that the Pakistani had asked for it a thousand times over.
The truth is that at moments like these, if the Pakistani had materialized
before them, they probably would have killed him.

For a long time they forgot their weekly
trips to
London
.
They forgot Pritchard and the Gorgon. They forgot Archimboldi, whose renown
continued to grow while their backs were turned. They forgot their papers,
which they wrote in a perfunctory and uninspired way and which were really the
work of their acolytes or of assistant professors from their respective
departments recruited for the Archimboldian cause on the basis of vague
promises of tenure-track positions or higher pay.