A Not So Perfect Crime by Teresa Solana Page B

I should confess I’ve never been able to get past the first forty pages, and it’s not for want of trying.
    To be frank, not to have read Don Quixote is not such a serious problem, unless you happen to be a student in a Department of Spanish Literature. Naturally I’d have behaved much more intelligently if I’d imitated most of my companions and pretended I’d read it. It would have been sufficient to repeat pompously and authoritatively a handful of ill-digested critics. Rather than this, let’s be quite clear, I behaved remarkably stupidly.
    I had only a year to go and couldn’t think of any better topic for my final dissertation than a study that would show how almost nobody in this country (in this city, really) had read from beginning to end the sacred text of Spanish letters. I wasted my time getting 500 questionnaires distributed – yes, five hundred – in and outside the faculty, a sample that included every social class, from patrician Pedralbes to proletarian Santa Coloma de Gramenet. Of the 500 surveyed, eighteen were emphatic they’d read it from cover to cover and had really enjoyed the experience (needless to say, not a single one belonged to the faculty or had passed through its halls). The remaining 482 confessed they hadn’t even tried to read Don Quixote or hadn’t got beyond the first fifty pages. Always for the same reason: as a novel it was too long and too full of words they didn’t understand, not to mention the miles of footnotes that some demented sadist had decided to concoct with the clear aim of demoralising the long-suffering readers. These 482 en masse answered “no” to section “D” of the survey which asked if they would be prepared to confess to their sin in public.
    Predictably, I felt relieved after seeing those results and a little less lonely. It turned out I wasn’t the only person in the world who’d not read that masterpiece of world literature! Unfortunately, the staff in the department didn’t rate my original contribution to the study of Golden Age literature and muttered that rather than wasting my time so dreadfully I should have immersed myself in the tome and forgotten all that nonsense. They swore they’d never give me a degree, whether in that faculty or any other, and also declared if you attempt to go all quixotic and make this survey public (verbatim) someone will ensure you get a facelift (also verbatim). As I wasn’t at all sure what going all quixotic entailed, I decided to drop it and deliver myself unto Montse.
    â€œMy only condition is that you don’t tell your wife I’m your brother,” Borja pressed me while we were still in the restaurant. “If she knew, she’d put her foot in it sooner or later. Eduard, this business will only prosper if we can persuade our clients I am Borja and belong to their social
circle. Believe me, it’s the only way they’ll confide in us. Just think of it as your second chance in life.”
    â€œI don’t intend to change my name,” I objected.
    â€œThat won’t be necessary,” he hurriedly explained. “You can go on being Eduard Martínez and who you are now. Well, no need to go around proclaiming you’re leftwing and all that ... I expect you’re still waving the red flag, aren’t you?”
    â€œAnd what about you?” I asked, although by this stage I could imagine his reply.
    â€œBah, I don’t believe in politics any more!” he said, making a gesture that suggested he’d given all that up: “You know, if you have to make a choice, I prefer the good life.”
    I decided not keep prodding, afraid he’d come out with some really outrageous comment. On the other hand, the decision I faced was too important to take on the spur of the moment, particularly after we’d landed ourselves with a skinful of three bottles of Rioja and a couple of glasses of