“He might have been in the apartment already,” I said, stung by the unfairness of the reprimand. “When they failed to get it on, the guy probably forced my friend to go out hunting alone and bring him back a woman.”
“Oh yes, and I suppose your friend would have gone out to trawl the streets, leaving the guy alone in the apartment?”
I thought about that. Dorta was fearful and cautious. He might go a bit crazy one night, but not to the point of allowing some rent-boy to rip him off while he went in search of a woman.
“I suppose not,” I replied, exasperated. “I don’t know, perhaps he phoned the rent-boy and had him come over later, the small ads section in the newspapers is full of all kinds of different services at any time of day or night.”
Gómez Alday gave me another of his fulminating looks, but this time it was more out of impatience than anything else.
“So what was the woman there for, tell me that? Why would he have taken her home with him, eh? Why do you insist on trying to put all the blame on a queer. What have you got against them?”
“I’ve never had anything against them. My best friend was what you’ve just said, I mean he often got called that. If you don’t believe me, ask someone else, ask other writers, they’ll tell you, they love a good gossip. Ask in the gay dives, to use your term. I spent my whole life defending him.”
“I find it hard to believe that you were his friend at all. Besides, I’ve already told you that I’m only interested in his last night, not in any other night. That’s the only thing that concerns me. Now, come on, get out of here.”
I went over to the door. I already had my hand on the door handle when I turned round and said:
“Who found the bodies? They found them at night didn’t they, the following night? Who went up to the apartment? Why did anyone go up?”
“We did,” said Gómez Alday. “A man phoned, he said we’d find them there rotting like two dead animals, that’s what he said, two animals. Probably the husband got in a state thinking about his whore lying there with a great gaping wound in her and with no one knowing anything about it. He probably came over all sentimental again. He hung up immediately after giving us the address, he wasn’t much use.” The inspector spun his chair round and turned his back to me as if, with that response, he was bringing any dealings with me to a close. I saw the broad nape of his neck as he said again: “Get out.”
I stopped thinking about it, I assumed that the police would never clear the matter up. I stopped thinking about it for two years, until now, until one night when I’d arranged to have supper with another friend, Ruibérriz de Torres, not such an old friend as Dorta and very different, he always goes with women and they treat him well and he’s not in the least bit timid, still less resigned. He’s a complete scoundrel and I get on very well with him, although I know that one day he will make me the object of the same disloyalty with which he treats everyone, and that will be an end of our comradeship. He knows everything that’s happening in Madrid, he goes everywhere, he knows or can arrange to get to know anyone you care to mention, he’s a man of great resourcefulness, his only problem is that his criminal tendencies and his fraudulent desires are written all over his face.
We were having supper in La Ancha, on the summer terrace, sitting opposite each other, his head and body blocking my view of the table behind, a table I had no reason to be interested in until the woman sitting in the place occupied by Ruibérriz, that is, in the seat opposite mine, bent to the side to recover her napkin, snatched up by a sudden slight breeze. She leaned to her left looking straight ahead, as we do when we pick up something that is within our reach and when we know exactly where it has fallen. Nevertheless, she tried and failed and that was why she had to feel for some seconds with her fingers, all the time looking straight at us, I mean straight at where we were, because I don’t think she was actually looking at anything. It was a matter of seconds — one, two, three and four; or five — long enough for me to see her face and her long neck tensed in that minimal effort of search and recovery — her tongue in one corner of her mouth — a very long neck, perhaps made longer by the effect of her low-cut summer dress, a small, round chin and flared nostrils, thick eyelashes and thin eyebrows as if they had been pencilled in, a full mouth and high cheekbones, and dark skin, whether naturally so or from the swimming pool or the beach it was difficult to say at first glance, although my first glance at someone may sometimes be like a caress, at others more like a glancing blow. Her hair was black and coiffed and curly, I saw a necklace or a chain, I noticed the rectangular neckline, a dress with shoulder straps, white like the dress, and heard the clink of bracelets. I barely noticed her eyes, or perhaps I just ignored them because I was used to not seeing them in the photograph, in which they were screwed up, tight closed in that grimace of pain, of someone who has died from a terrible wound. It’s true that, in summer, women look more alike than in winter and in spring, and still more to Europeans if they are or appear to be American, they all look the same to us, it happens a lot in summer, on certain nights we can’t tell them apart. But she really did look like her. I know that’s saying a lot, the resemblance between a flesh-and-blood woman in motion and a mere photocopy from the police station, between brilliant colours and murky black and white, between laughter and paralysis, between gleaming white teeth and some decayed molars that were never even seen, only described, between a fully-clothed woman with no apparent money problems and an indigent, naked one, between a living woman and a dead one, between a low-cut summer dress and a wound in the chest, between a talkative tongue and the eternal silence of cracked lips, between open, smiling eyes and closed eyes. Yet she did look like her, so much so that I couldn’t take my eyes off her, I immediately shifted my chair to one side, to my right, and since, even like that, I could still only half-see her and then only intermittently — concealed by Ruibérriz and by her companion, both of whom kept moving — I simply changed places altogether on the pretext that the breeze was bothering me, and I went to sit — having moved my dessert plate as well as spoon, fork and glasses — to the left of my friend, in order to enjoy an unobstructed view and I then quite openly stared. Ruibérriz realized at once that something was going on, he doesn’t miss much, so I said to him, knowing that he would prove understanding about such an access of interest:
“There’s a woman over there whom I find absolutely fascinating. I know it’s a lot to ask, but don’t turn round until I tell you. More than that, I must warn you that if she and the man she’s having supper with get up, I’m going to shoot off after them, and if not, I’ll wait however long it takes for them to finish and then do the same. If you want you can come with me, otherwise, you stay and we’ll settle up later.”
Ruibérriz de Torres smoothed his hair flirtatiously. He had only to discover that there was an interesting woman in the vicinity for him to start oozing virility and getting terribly full of himself. Even though she couldn’t see him nor he her; all a bit animalesque really, his chest swelled beneath his polo shirt.
“Is she that special?” he asked restlessly, dying to turn round. From then on it would be impossible to talk about anything else, and it was my fault, I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman.
“You might not think so,” I said. “But I think she might be special to me, very special indeed.”
Now I could see her companion in three-quarters profile, a man of about fifty who looked rich and rather coarse, if she was a prostitute, he was obviously inexperienced and didn’t know that you could get straight down to business, without the need for supper on a restaurant terrace. If she wasn’t, then it was justifiable, what would be less so was that the woman had agreed to go out with such an unattractive man, although I’ve always found the choices women make as regards their flirtations and their love affairs a complete mystery, sometimes, by my lights, a complete aberration. One thing was certain, they weren’t married or engaged or anything, I mean it was clear that they had not yet lain together, to use the old expression. The man was trying too hard to be pleasant and attentive: he was careful to keep filling her glass, he prattled on, recounting anecdotes or giving his opinions about things so as not to fall into the silence that discourages any contact, he lit cigarettes for her with a wind-proof fighter, like the ones you get in cars, Spanish men don’t go to all that trouble unless they want something, they don’t watch their manners.