When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías

terrace than did my wife, Luisa, always with my binoculars in my hand, or rather, hanging round my neck so that they didn’t slip from my grasp and fall from the terrace to shatter on the ground below. I tried to focus on someone on the beach, to pick someone out, but there were too many people to be able to remain faithful to anyone in particular, I panned across the beach with the binoculars, I saw hundreds of children, dozens of fat men, scores of girls (none of them topless,that’s still fairly rare in San Sebastián), young flesh, mature flesh and old flesh, children’s flesh which is not yet flesh and mother’s flesh which is somehow more fleshly for having already reproduced itself. I soon grew tired of looking and went back to the bed where Luisa was lying down, I kissed her a few times, then returned to the terrace, and again peered through the binoculars. Perhaps I was bored, which is why I felt slightly envious when I saw that two rooms down to my right there was a man, also armed with binoculars, who had them trained on one particular spot, lowering them only from time to time and not moving them at all when he was looking through them: he held them up high, motionless, for a couple of minutes, then he would rest his arm and, shortly afterwards, he would raise it again, always in the same position, he didn’t change the direction of his gaze one inch. He wasn’t leaning out, though, he was watching from inside his room, and so I could only see one hairy arm, now where exactly was he looking, I wondered enviously, I wanted to fix my gaze on something too, it’s only when you rest your gaze on something that you really relax and become interested in what you’re looking at, I merely made random sweeps, just flesh and yet more indistinguishable flesh, if, when we finally left the room, Luisa and I went down to the beach (we were killing time until it got a bit emptier, possibly around lunchtime), we would form part of that conglomeration of distant, identical flesh, our recognizable bodies would be lost in the uniformity created by sand and water and swimming costumes, especially by swimming costumes. And that man to my right would not notice us, no one looking down from above – as he and I were doing – would notice us once we formed part of that disagreeable spectacle. Perhaps that’s why, in order not to be seen, in order not to be focused on or marked out, holiday-makers like to take off a few clothes and mingle with other half-naked people amidst the sand and the sea.
    I tried to work out where that man, my neighbour, was looking, and I managed to fix on a space that was not small enough for me to rest my gaze on entirely and take an interest in whatever it was that was interesting, but at least in that way, by imitating or trying to guess the direction of his gaze, I could discount most of everything else that lay before me, an entire beach.
    “What are you looking at?” my wife asked from the bed. It was very hot and she had placed a wet towel on her forehead, it almost covered her eyes, which were not in the least interested in looking at anything.
    “I don’t know yet,” I said without turning round. “I’m trying to see what another man here beside me on a neighbouring balcony is looking at.”
    “Why? What does it matter to you? Don’t be so nosy.”
    It didn’t matter to me, in fact, but in summer wasting time is what you try hardest to do, if not, you don’t really feel that it’s summer, which is supposed to be slow and purposeless.
    According to my calculations and observations, the man to my right had to be looking at one of four people, all fairly close together and lined up in the back row, far from the water’s edge. To the right of these people was a small empty space, to their left as well, which was what made me think that he was looking at one of those four. The first person (from left to right, as they say in photo captions) had her face turned to me or us, for she was