‘All right, what’s up, what’s so damn urgent?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard the response from the other man, who had a resonant voice and very clear, correct diction, not one of those cod Madrid accents – people say that we
madrileños
separate and emphasize every syllable, and yet I’ve never heard anyone from my city speak like that, well, only in antiquated films and plays, or as a joke – but he barely elided his words, and so each was easily distinguishable when he wasn’t speaking in the whisper to which he aspired and of which his speech or tone of voice seemed incapable.
‘Apparently the guy’s started to blab. He’s not as silent as he was.’
‘Who? Canella?’ I heard Díaz-Varela’s question very clearly too, and I heard that name as someone might hear a terrifying curse – I remembered that name, I had read it on the Internet, in fact, I remembered the man’s whole name, Luis Felipe Vázquez Canella, as if it were a catchy title or a line of poetry – or as someone might hear sentence being pronounced on herself or on the person she most loves, telling herself that this is simply impossible, that this can’t be happening, she can’t be hearing what she’s hearing and what’s happened can’t have happened, as when our lover announces in that universal phrase, which is the same in all languages, ‘We need to talk, María,’ even addressing us by our name, which he barely uses otherwise, not even when his flattering mouth is breathing hard against
our neck, and then goes on to condemn us: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment, I can’t understand it myself’ or ‘I’ve met someone else’ or ‘You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit strange and distant lately’, all of which are preludes to misfortune. Or like someone hearing the doctor utter the name of an illness that has nothing to do with us, an illness that afflicts other people but not us, and yet, ridiculous though it may seem, this time, he’s saying that we have that illness, how can that be, there must be some mistake or else he didn’t say what I think he said, that sort of thing doesn’t happen to me, it just doesn’t, I’ve never been unlucky like that, and I’m not going to start being unlucky now.
I was startled too, filled by a momentary panic, and I almost stood back from the door so as not to hear any more, so that I could then persuade myself later on that I’d misheard or hadn’t actually heard anything. But once we’ve started, we always go on listening, the words fall or float out on to the air and no one can stop them. I wished they would just lower their voices, so that it wasn’t up to me to listen or not, I wished their talk would become muffled or entirely indistinct, and then I could have my doubts, and not have to trust my own ears.
‘Of course, who do you think?’ retorted the other man slightly scornfully and impatiently, as if now that he had given the alarm, he had the upper hand, the bearer of news always does, until he blurts out what he has to tell and hands it over and is left with nothing, and the person listening no longer needs him. The bearer’s dominant position is short-lived and lasts only for as long as he can still announce that he knows something, but has as yet said nothing.
‘And what’s he saying? Not that he can say much. I mean, what can he say? What can the wretch say? What does it matter what a madman says?’ Díaz-Varela kept nervously repeating the same thing over and over, to himself really, as if he were trying to exorcize a curse.
The visitor gabbled his response – he could hold it in no longer – and in doing so, his voice rose and fell erratically. I caught only fragments of his response, but of these quite a few.
‘… talking about the calls he got, the voice telling him things,’ he said; ‘… about the man in leather, meaning me,’ he said. ‘It’s no joke … it’s hardly a serious matter … but I’m going to have to mothball them, which is a shame because I really like them, I’ve been wearing them for years now … They didn’t find a mobile phone on him, I took care of that … so they’ll think it’s all in his imagination … They’re not going to believe him, I mean, the man’s a nutter … The danger would be if it was to occur to someone … not spontaneously, but with a bit of nudging … It’s unlikely, because if there’s one thing the world isn’t short of, it’s lazy sods … It’s been a while now … It’s what we expected, the fact that he refused to speak initially was a real bonus, it’s just that things now are as we thought they would be from the start … We had relaxed a bit, that’s all … At the time, in the heat of the moment … worse, but more credible … Anyway, I wanted you to know straight away, because it’s a change, and not a minor one either, although it doesn’t affect us at the moment and I don’t think it will … But I thought it best you should know.’
‘No, you’re right, Ruibérriz, it isn’t a minor change,’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard that unusual surname clearly, Díaz-Varela being too upset to moderate his voice, incapable now of whispering. ‘He may be a nutter, but he’s saying that someone persuaded him, in person and via telephone calls, or else put the idea in his head. He’s sharing out the blame, or broadening it, and you’re the next link and I’m right behind you, damn it. What if they show him a photo of you and he picks you out. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? You’re on their files, aren’t you? And, as you yourself say, you’ve been wearing
those leather coats all your life, that’s how people recognize you, that and your T-shirts in summer, which, by the way, you’re far too old for. At first, you told me that you wouldn’t go, that you wouldn’t be seen, that if he needed a bit of a push, you’d send a third party to feed him a little more poison and show him a face he could trust. You said there would always be at least two steps between you and him, not one, that the third party wouldn’t even know of my existence. Now it turns out there’s only you between me and him, and he could easily identify you. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? Go on, tell me the truth, this is no time to pull punches, I’d rather know where I stand.’
There was a silence, perhaps that man Ruibérriz was wondering whether or not to tell the truth, as Díaz-Varela had asked him to, and if he was, that meant he did have a record and his photo would be on file. I was afraid that the pause might have been sparked by some noise I had made without realizing it, my foot on a creaking floorboard perhaps, I didn’t think so, but fear will not allow us to discount anything, not even something that doesn’t exist. I imagined the two of them standing motionless, holding their breath for a moment, suspiciously pricking up their ears, looking out of the corner of their eye at the bedroom, making a gesture with one hand, a gesture meaning ‘Hang on, she’s woken up.’ And suddenly I felt afraid of them, those two men frightened me; I tried to believe that Javier on his own wouldn’t frighten me: I had just been to bed with him, I had embraced and kissed him with all the love I dared show him, that is, with a great deal of repressed, disguised love, I let it show in tiny details that he probably wouldn’t even notice, the last thing I wanted was to frighten him, to scare him off prematurely, to drive him away – although that time would come, I was sure of it. Now I noticed that any feelings of repressed love had vanished – love, in any of its forms, is incompatible with fear; or else those feelings were deferred until a better moment,
that of denial and forgetting, but I knew that neither of those things was possible. And so I stepped away from the door in case he should come back into the room to see if I was still asleep, and to check that I had not been an ear-witness to their conversation. I lay down on the bed, adopted what I thought was a convincing posture and waited, I couldn’t hear anything now, I missed Ruibérriz’s reply, which he must have given sooner or later. I stayed there for one minute, two, then three, but no one came, nothing happened, and so I screwed up my courage and got off the bed, went over to the false crack in the door, still half-undressed as he had left me, still with my skirt on. The temptation to listen is irresistible, even if we realize that it will do us no good. Especially when the process of knowing has already begun.
The voices were less audible now, just a murmur, as if they had calmed down after the initial shock. Perhaps before that, they had both been standing up and now had sat down for a moment; people talk more quietly when they’re sitting down.
‘So what do you think we should do?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say at last. He wanted to bring the discussion to a close.
‘We don’t have to do anything,’ answered Ruibérriz, raising his voice, perhaps because he was giving the orders now and felt, momentarily, in charge again. It sounded to me like he was summing up, he would leave soon, perhaps he had already picked up his coat and draped it over his arm, always assuming he had taken it off, for his was an untimely, lightning visit, Díaz-Varela probably hadn’t even offered him a glass of water. ‘This information doesn’t point to anyone, it doesn’t concern us, neither you nor I has anything to do with it, any interference from me would be counter-productive. Just forget you know about it. Nothing is going to change, nothing has changed. If there’s any other news, I’ll find out, but there’s no reason why there should be. They’ll probably make a note of his claim, file
it away and do nothing. How are they going to investigate what he says if there’s no trace of that mobile phone, if it doesn’t exist? Canella never even knew the number, apparently he’s given them four or five different numbers, he’s not sure what it was, which is perfectly normal, since they’re all invented or dreamed up by him. He was given the phone but never told the number, that’s what we agreed and that’s what happened. So what’s new? The guy claims he heard voices talking about his daughters and telling him who was to blame. Like lots of other nutcases. There’s nothing so very odd about him hearing those voices through a mobile phone rather than in his head or coming down from the sky, they’ll just assume he’s a loony showing off. Even losers, even madmen, know about the latest trends, and these days, anyone who doesn’t have a mobile phone is an idiot. Just let it go. Don’t get too alarmed about it, because that’s not going to help either.’
‘And what about the man in the leather coat? You yourself were alarmed about that, Ruibérriz. That’s why you came running to tell me. Now you’re saying there’s no need to worry. So which is it to be?’
‘To be honest, it did freak me out a bit. There we were, happily convinced that he wouldn’t make a statement or say a word. It caught me by surprise, I just wasn’t expecting it. But telling you about it now has made me realize that it’ll be fine. And if he did get a couple of visits from a man in a leather coat, so what? Practically speaking, it’s tantamount to him saying he’s been visited by the Virgin of Fatima. Like I said, I’m only wanted in Mexico, and the warrant there has probably lapsed by now, not that I’m planning to fly over and check: a youthful misdemeanour, it happened years ago. And I didn’t wear these leather coats then.’ Ruibérriz knew he was in the wrong, that he should never have allowed himself to be seen by the
gorrilla
. Perhaps
that was why he was trying to play down the importance of the news he himself had brought.
‘Well, you’d better get rid of the coats you’ve got, starting with that one. Burn it or shred it. We don’t want some smart-arse linking you with what happened. You may not have a record here, but you’re still known to a few cops. Let’s just hope the murder squad doesn’t swap information with other crime squads, although that seems unlikely, no one in Spain seems to swap information with anyone else. Each department keeps pretty much to itself, so I’d be surprised if they did.’ Díaz-Varela was trying to be optimistic now and to reassure himself. They sounded like normal people, as much the bumbling amateur as I would have been, people who are unaccustomed to crime or not fully convinced that they’ve committed, or from what I could gather, commissioned one.
I wanted to see that man Ruibérriz, who must have been about to leave; I wanted to see his face and see that famous leather coat before he destroyed it. I decided to leave the bedroom and was on the verge of getting dressed. But if I did that, Díaz-Varela might suspect that I’d been aware for a while that there was someone else in the apartment and had perhaps been listening or spying, at least during the few seconds it would have taken me to pull on the rest of my clothes. If, on the other hand, I burst into the living room as I was, I would give the impression that I had just woken up and had no idea that anyone else was there. I would have heard nothing, convinced that he and I were, as usual, still alone, with no witness to our occasional evening conjunctions. I was simply going to look for him, having discovered that he had left the bed while I was sleeping. It would be best if I presented myself in that state of half-undress, with no show of caution and making a normal amount of noise, like an innocent unaware of anything.
The fact is, though, that far from being half-dressed, I was half- or almost-naked, and ‘the rest of my clothes’ meant everything apart from my skirt, because that was all I was wearing, Díaz-Varela preferring to see me with it pulled up or preferring to pull it up himself during our labours, but for reasons of pleasure or comfort, he always removed my other garments; well, 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 the field, now it is all within your grasp.’ Even that man Ruibérriz had not been the actual executioner, he hadn’t held the weapon or given precise instructions to anyone: he had, at least initially and as I understood it, been a third party, and had merely poisoned the crazed mind of the beggar, trusting in the latter’s eventual violent reaction or response, which might or might not happen; if it was a premeditated crime, much had been left strangely to chance. To what extent had they been sure that he would act, to what extent were they responsible? Unless they had given him instructions or orders and put pressure on him and provided him with that butterfly knife with its seven-centimetre blade, every centimetre of which enters the flesh; after all, given that, in theory, such knives are banned, it can’t be easy to buy one nor would it be affordable to someone who exists solely on tips and sleeps in a clapped-out car. They had obviously given him a mobile phone so that they could phone him, not so that he
could make any calls himself – perhaps he had no one to phone, his daughters’ whereabouts were unknown or they may deliberately have kept their distance, avoiding their angry, puritanical, unhinged father like the plague – but to persuade him, like someone whispering in his ear, people forget that what is said to us on the phone comes not from far away, but from very near, which is why what we are told over the phone is so much more persuasive than the same words spoken by someone face to face, for such an interlocutor will not, or only in very rare cases, brush our ear with his lips. Generally speaking, this argument doesn’t work at all, on the contrary, it’s merely an aggravating factor, but it helped momentarily to reassure me and make me feel less threatened, not in principle and not then, not in Díaz-Varela’s apartment, in his bedroom, in his bed: he had not actually stained his hands with blood, with the blood of his best friend, that man I had become so fond of, at a distance and over the years, when we breakfasted in the same café.