criminal, but it wasn’t just that: it was that suddenly, with Marta dead, my presence in that place was no longer explicable or only barely so, I couldn’t even invent a story that would explain it, I was more or less a stranger and now it really didn’t make sense to be spending the early hours of the morning in a bedroom that was perhaps no longer hers, since she no longer existed, but her husband’s, in a house to which she could only have invited me in his absence; but who could now affirm that she had invited me, since there was no one there to witness it? I leapt off the bed and then I felt panicked, mentally rather than physically, it wasn’t so much that I had to do things as to think about them, to set in motion everything that had until then been muffled by the wine, the expectation and the kisses, by our flushed faces and our fantasies, by perplexity and alarm, although I don’t know if in that order; and by the present grief. “No one knows that I’m here, that I was here,” I thought, immediately correcting the tense of the verb because I could already imagine myself outside that room, that apartment, that building, and even in a different street, I saw myself hailing a taxi after crossing Reina Victoria or in the avenue itself, there are always taxis passing, however late, it forms the final stretch of an old boulevard that ends up lined by housesand the first of the university campus trees. “Nobody knows that I’ve been here and there’s no reason why anyone should,” I said to myself, “therefore, I’m not the one who should warn anyone or run in a panic to the Hospital de la Luz and wake up the nurse sitting in her chair asleep, with her legs crossed or, grown forgetful, slightly apart, I won’t be the one to drag her from her ephemeral, avaricious sleep, nor will I be the one suddenly and prematurely to drive out everything that the anxious, bespectacled student has managed to learn, nor will I be the one to interrupt the farewells of the satiated lovers lingering at the door of the one staying behind and, at the same time, longing to part, perhaps on this very floor; because no one must know nor will yet know that Marta Téllez has died, I won’t make an anonymous phonecall to the police either or ring at the door of the neighbours opposite, I won’t go out and buy a death certificate at the local late-night chemist’s, for all those who know her she will remain alive tonight while they dream or lie sleepless here or in London or anywhere else, no one will know of the change, the inhuman transformation that has taken place, I will do nothing and speak to no one, I should not be the one to break the news. Were she still alive, no one would know today or tomorrow or perhaps ever that I was here, she would have concealed it and that’s how it should be, even more so now that she’s dead. And the child, oh God, the child.” But I decided that I would think about that afterwards, after a few moments, because another thought interposed itself, in fact, two thoughts, one after the other: “Perhaps there’s someone, a friend or a sister, whom she would have talked to about me tomorrow, possibly blushing and smiling. Perhaps she already has talked to someone about me, someone to whom she announced my visit – news travels fast by telephone – and confessed her hesitant desire or her certain hope, perhaps she was talking about me and only hung up when she heard me ring the doorbell, he’s here already, you never know what was happening in a house the second before you rang the bell and interrupted it.” I buttoned up the shirt that Marta’s now stiff fingers had undone when they were still agile and cheerful, I unzipped my trousers and tucked my shirt in, my jacket was in the living room, draped over the chairback as if the chair were a clothes hanger, but where were myovercoat, my scarf and my gloves, where were they, she had taken them from me when I came in and I hadn’t noticed
Similar Books
