Sometimes, though, all it takes is for a person to pour his energies into becoming something or into reaching a particular goal for him eventually to become that thing or reach that goal, even though, objectively speaking, everything is against him, and even though he wasn’t born for that or hasn’t received a call from God to follow that path, as people used to say, and this phenomenon is most apparent in conquests and in confrontations: someone may look as if he’s on a hiding to nothing with his enmity for or hatred of someone else, he
may lack the power or the means to eliminate the other man, like a hare attacking a lion, and yet that person will often emerge victorious thanks to sheer tenacity and lack of scruples, by dint of stratagems and spleen and concentration, because his sole objective in life is to harm his enemy, to bleed him dry and undermine him and then finish him off, woe betide anyone who acquires an enemy with those characteristics, however weak and needy he may seem; if you don’t have the time or the will to direct the same passionate loathing at him and to respond with equal intensity, you will end up succumbing, because you can’t afford to be distracted when fighting a war, regardless of whether that war is open or hidden or secret, nor to underestimate your stubborn opponent, even if you believe him to be innocuous and incapable of harming you or inflicting so much as a scratch: the reality is that anyone can destroy us, just as anyone can conquer us, and that is our essential fragility. If someone sets out to destroy us, then it’s very difficult to avoid destruction, unless we drop everything and focus entirely on that struggle. The first requisite, however, is knowing that such a struggle exists, for we often don’t notice, the enemies most likely to succeed being of the crafty, silent, treacherous kind, who resemble one of those undeclared wars or a war in which the attacker remains invisible or disguises himself as an ally or a neutral force, I, for example, could launch an offensive against Luisa behind her back, one so oblique that she wouldn’t be aware of it because she wouldn’t even know that an enemy was stalking her. We might, entirely unwittingly and unintentionally, become an obstacle to someone, we might, quite unintentionally, be standing in the way or blocking someone else’s upward path, and that means no one is safe, we are all capable of becoming the object of someone’s hatred or of their violent ambitions, even the most wretched and inoffensive of us. Poor Luisa was both those things, but no one ever completely
gives up hope and I was no different from anyone else. I knew what to expect from Díaz-Varela and I never deceived myself in that regard, and yet I still couldn’t help hoping for a stroke of luck or for some strange transformation to take place, for him to realize one day that he couldn’t live without me, or that he needed us both. That night, I saw that the only real and possible stroke of luck would be for Luisa to die, and that once the possibility of achieving his objective, his goal, his long-desired trophy, had disappeared, Díaz-Varela would have no option but to see me clearly at last and to seek refuge in me. We should never feel offended when someone makes do with our company for lack of a better companion.
If, when alone at night in my bedroom, I was capable of desiring or fantasizing about the death of Luisa, who had never harmed me and whom I had nothing against, who inspired my sympathy and pity and even a degree of affection, would the same thoughts not have occurred to Díaz-Varela, I wondered, and with far more reason, regarding his friend Desvern. We never, in principle, desire the death of those who are so close to us that they almost constitute our life, but sometimes we surprise ourselves by wondering what would happen if one of them disappeared. On occasions, that thought is provoked by fear and horror, by our excessive love for them and our panic at the idea of losing them: ‘What would I do without him, without her? What would become of me? I couldn’t carry on living, I would want to go with him.’ The mere idea makes us dizzy, and we usually drive the thought away at once, with a shudder and a saving sense of unreality, as when we shake off a persistent nightmare that doesn’t entirely end when we wake up. But on other occasions, the daydream is murky and impure. We never dare to desire anyone’s death, still less that of someone close to us, but we know intuitively that if a certain person were to have an accident or become ill towards the end of his life, it would in some way improve the universe or, which comes to the same thing, our own personal situation. ‘If he or she did not exist,’ we might think, ‘how different everything would be, what a weight
would be lifted from me, there would be an end to penury and to my unbearable feeling of unease, I would no longer have to live in his shadow.’ ‘Luisa is the only impediment,’ I would think sometimes, ‘all that stands between me and Díaz-Varela is his obsession with her. If he were to lose her, if he were to be deprived of his mission, his goal …’ At the time, I didn’t force myself to refer to him only by his surname, he was still ‘Javier’ and that name was adored as being something always beyond my grasp. Yes, if even I found myself drifting into that kind of thinking, how could the same idea not have occurred to him as long as Deverne remained an obstacle? A part of Díaz-Varela must have longed every day for his bosom pal to die, to vanish, and that same part, or an even larger part perhaps, would have rejoiced at the news of his unexpected death by stabbing, a death with which he would have had nothing to do. ‘How unfortunate and how lucky,’ he would perhaps have thought when he found out. ‘How regrettable, how wonderful, what a terrible tragedy that Miguel should have been there at that precise moment, when the man launched into his homicidal attack; it could have happened to anyone, including me, and Miguel could have been somewhere else, why did it have to happen to him, how fortunate that he has been got rid of and thus left the field clear, a field I thought occupied for ever, and I did nothing to make it happen, not even by omission, negligence or by some chance act that one will curse retrospectively, perhaps because I didn’t keep him by my side for longer and didn’t stop him going to that place, although that would only have been possible had I seen him on that day, but I didn’t see or speak to him, I was going to call him later on to wish him a happy birthday, what a misfortune, what a blessing, what a stroke of luck and how dreadful, what a loss and what a gain. And I have no reason to reproach myself.’
I never woke up in his apartment, I never spent the night by his
side or knew the joy of his face being the first thing I saw in the morning; but there was one occasion, or more than one, when I happened to fall asleep in his bed in the late evening or when it was getting dark, a brief but profound sleep after the satisfying exhaustion I experienced in that bed – whether it was equally satisfying for him I have no idea, one never knows if what another person tells you is true, you can only be sure of what comes from yourself, and even then. On that occasion – the last – I was vaguely aware of a doorbell ringing, I opened my eyes slightly, just for a moment, and saw him by my side, already completely dressed (he always got dressed at once, as if he wouldn’t allow himself even a minute of the weary, contented indolence that follows any amorous encounter); he was reading by the light of the bedside lamp, sitting as still as a photo, resting his back against the pillow, not watching me or taking any notice of me at all, and so I remained asleep. The doorbell rang again, more than once, longer and more insistently each time, but I didn’t stir or sit up, certain that it was nothing to do with me. I didn’t move or open my eyes again, even though I noticed, at the third or fourth ring, that Díaz-Varela was quickly and silently slipping sideways off the bed. It could only be something concerning him, not me, because no one knew I was there (there, in that bed, of all the possible places in the world). My consciousness, however, began to stir, albeit still without fully waking me from sleep. I had dozed off on the bedspread, half-naked or as undressed as he had decided I should be, and I noticed now that he had thrown a blanket over me so that I didn’t catch cold or perhaps so that he wouldn’t have to continue seeing my body, so that what he had just done with me would be less glaringly obvious, because he always remained completely unchanged after our amorous excesses, he behaved as if they hadn’t even happened, however noisy and flamboyant they might have been, he was exactly
the same before and afterwards. I instinctively pulled the blanket up around me and that gesture drew me further into wakefulness, although I still kept my eyes closed, half-awake, vaguely listening out for him now that he had left the room and me.
The person must have been downstairs in the street, because I didn’t hear the apartment door open, just Díaz-Varela’s muffled voice answering the entryphone, I didn’t understand the words, only the tone, half-surprised and half-irritated, then resigned and reluctantly acquiescent, like someone unwillingly agreeing to something he finds really annoying or that he doesn’t want to get involved in. After a few seconds – or possibly a couple of minutes – the voice of the new arrival sounded louder and clearer, an angry male voice, Díaz-Varela had waited with the front door open so that his visitor wouldn’t have to ring that bell too, or perhaps he was hoping to deal with him right there and then, without even inviting him in.
‘Fancy having your mobile turned off,’ the man said reproachfully. ‘That’s why I’ve had to come traipsing all the way over here.’
‘Keep your voice down. Like I said, I’m not alone. I’ve got a bird with me, she’s sleeping now, but you wouldn’t want her to wake up and hear us. Besides, she knows the wife. Anyway, do you really expect me to have my mobile on all the time just in case you need to call me? Besides, why
would
you call me, we haven’t spoken in ages. This had better be important. Wait a moment.’
That was enough to jerk me completely awake. All it takes is for someone not to want us to hear something for us to do all we can to find out what that something is, not realizing that sometimes people conceal things from us for our own good, so as not to disappoint or involve us, so that life doesn’t seem as bad as it usually does. Díaz-Varela had tried to lower his voice when he answered, but had failed because he was feeling irritated or perhaps apprehensive, and I heard
his words quite clearly. His final words, ‘Wait a moment’, made me think that he was going to come into the bedroom to check that I was still asleep, and so I lay very still and with my eyes tight shut, even though I was now completely awake. And that was what happened, I heard him come in and take four or five steps until he was level with my head on the pillow, from where he studied me for a few seconds, like someone carrying out an examination; the steps he took were cautious, but quite normal, as if he were alone in the room. When he left, however, his steps were far more wary; it seemed to me that, having made sure I was still sleeping deeply, he didn’t want to risk waking me. I heard him close the door very gently and, once outside, give the handle a tug just to be quite certain that there wasn’t the slightest crack through which his conversation might sneak in. The bedroom was next to the living room. There was no click, however, which meant the door was not properly closed. ‘A bird,’ I thought, half-amused, half-wounded; not ‘a friend’, not ‘a date’, certainly not ‘a girlfriend’. I was possibly not yet the first or the second and would never be the third, not even in the broadest, vaguest sense of that all-purpose word. He could have just said ‘a woman’. Or perhaps his companion was one of that large band of men with whom you can only use a particular vocabulary, their own, rather than the vocabulary you would normally use, the sort of man for whom you have to adapt your language so that they don’t feel alarmed or uncomfortable or inadequate. I didn’t take it personally at all, for most of the ‘blokes’ of this world, I would be just that, ‘a bird’.
Half-clothed as I was (I had kept my skirt on throughout), I immediately leapt off the bed, crept over to the door and put my ear to it. That way I caught only a murmur and the occasional word, for both men were too agitated to be able to keep their voices permanently lowered, however much they wanted to and however hard they tried.
I decided to widen the crack that Díaz-Varela’s gentle tug from the outside had failed to eliminate; fortunately, no tell-tale creak betrayed me; and if they did become aware of my indiscreet presence, I could always say that I had heard voices and wanted to confirm that there was, indeed, a visitor, in which case I would have stayed in the bedroom, thus saving Díaz-Varela the bother of having to introduce me or explain my presence. Not that our sporadic encounters were clandestine, at least there had been no agreement between us to that effect, but I sensed that he probably hadn’t told anyone else about them, perhaps because I hadn’t either. Or maybe it was because we would both have doubtless concealed them from the same person, Luisa, although why I should do that, I have no idea, apart from a vague, incongruous respect for the plans that he was silently hatching, and for the idea that, if he succeeded in his plans, he and Luisa might one day become husband and wife. The minimal crack that barely deserved the name (the wood was slightly swollen, which was why the door didn’t quite close) allowed me to distinguish who was speaking when and, sometimes, to hear entire sentences, at others only fragments or almost nothing, depending on whether the men succeeded in talking in whispers, as was their intention. Contrary to their intention, however, their voices would immediately rise a notch, for they were clearly excited about something, if not somewhat alarmed or even frightened. If Díaz-Varela were to find me spying on them later (he might come and look in on me again, just in case), the more time passed, the more awkward it would be for me, although I could always say, by way of an excuse, that I had assumed he had closed the door simply in order not to wake me and not because he was talking to his visitor about some secret matter. He wouldn’t believe me, of course, but I would keep my cool, at least on the surface, unless he confronted me sharply or furiously, regardless
of the consequences, and accused me of lying. And he would be right, too, because the truth is, I knew from the beginning that his conversation was not for my ears, not just for reasons of discretion, but because, as he had said, I knew ‘the wife’, and he used the Spanish word ‘
mujer
’ in the sense not of ‘woman’ but of ‘wife’, in this case, someone else’s wife, and for the moment, that someone could only be Desvern.