quite simply, to cease to exist for them, not even in order to fight them. That, of course, is the ideal. Unfortunately, you can't make yourself invisible by sheer willpower or by choice. For example, when I was in prison, our friend Margarita came to visit me (there was a metal grille between us), and she became so passionately indignant about the things she had heard my betrayer saying about me that this attracted the attention of the prison guards. They asked her who she was talking about, fearing, no doubt, that it was Franco himself. She, being of a highly excitable nature, told them, and they made her go with them to Del Real's house to find out if what she had said was true. There they found his mother, who, of course, Margarita knew (we all knew her, we had been good friends for many years), and whom she attempted to persuade to get her son to see reason and to withdraw his unfair and incomprehensible accusations. His mother, who was very fond of Margarita, listened with a mixture of astonishment and discomfort. In the end, though, maternal faith outweighed everything else, but all she could say in her son's defence was: 'La patria es la patria' – 'One's country is one's country.' To which Margarita replied: 'Yes, and lies are lies.''
My father fell silent again, but this time he didn't look at me, but at the arm of his chair. He seemed suddenly tired, or perhaps distracted by something that had nothing to do with our conversation. I couldn't tell if he had become slightly lost amongst his memories and did not intend to add anything more, or if he was still going to connect the last story to the one before and offer me a conclusion. It seemed unlikely that I would find out because my sister had arrived (perhaps my father had heard the lift) and had just come into the living-room, but only, I imagine, in time to hear Margarita's quoted words, because she immediately asked us in a jovial, chiding tone:
'All right, what are you two arguing about?'
And I said:
'We're not, we were talking about the past.' 'What past? Was I there?'
My sister always had a particularly cheering effect on my father, even though she resembled my mother rather less than I did. Well, not exactly: she resembled her more in that she was also a woman, but less so in her actual features, which I reproduced in my male face with disquieting fidelity. He replied with an ironic, happy smile, his usual harmonious blend:
'No, you weren't, not even as the embryo of a plan of a hypothesis of a possibility.' Then he went on to conclude, addressing himself solely to me: 'Lies are lies, you see. There's not really any more to say or time to waste on such things.'
'No, not once you've emerged from them, more or less unscathed that is,' I said.
'Yes, of course, once you've emerged from them, scathed or unscathed. That's obvious, I mean if I hadn't emerged, we wouldn't be talking now, you and me, still less this young woman here.'
'Is this some deep dark secret you two are talking about?'
That is what my sister said then, I remember it well, and those were the memories that came to me as I finally climbed into the familiar bed prepared by Mrs Berry many hours before, but first I returned to its place in the next room the copy of From Russia with Love with its dedication. I had, I thought, left almost everything in order, and had even cleaned up a strange bloodstain that I had neither spilled nor provoked and which now, in the midst of my drunkenness and tiredness, and just as I had foreseen before erasing it for good and expunging its rim or last remnant, was already starting to seem unreal to me, a product of my imagination. Or perhaps of my readings. Without realising it, I had read a great deal about the days of blood in my own country. The blood of Nin, the blood of the uncle who never was my uncle, the blood of so many people without names or who had to abandon their name and who inhabit the earth no longer. And the blood of my father which they sought but did not manage to spill (blood of my blood which did not spurt forth or spatter me). 'La patria es la patria', the traitor's poor, trapped mother. An inextricable phrase, meaningless like all tautologies, empty words, a rudimentary concept – that of fatherland, homeland, mother country – and fanatical in its application. Never trust anyone who used it or uses it, but how would you know someone was using it if they were speaking in English and said 'country', which usually translates as 'pais', as in 'What country do you come from?', or 'campo' as in 'countryside', which are both entirely inoffensive in Spanish. From the top floor I could hear the murmur of the river even more clearly now, quiet and patient or indifferent and languid; sound rises, or was it just the part of the house I was in, lying in bed at last. I could already see a little light in the sky or so I thought, it was barely noticeable, my eyes might have been deceiving me. But there you can't help but notice, even at dead of night and at the hour we Latins used to call the conticinio – a word now forgotten by my own language – because of that strange English penchant for sleeping without blinds on the windows, something I never did grow accustomed to, there are no blinds, they don't have them, indeed, they don't always have curtains or shutters, often only transparent net curtains which neither shelter nor conceal nor calm, as if they always had to keep one eye open when they fall asleep, the inhabitants of that large island on which I have spent more time than is advisable and more than was foreseeable, if I add up the before and the after, the now and the then. 'Lies are lies', another meaningless tautology, although this time the word is not empty, nor the concept rudimentary, nor its application fanatical, but, rather, universal, effortless, routine, constant, almost mechanical and casual at times, and the more mechanical and casual, the more difficult it is to identify, to distinguish, and the truer the lie, for lies have their truth, the more defenceless we are. 'Lies are lies, but all lies have their moment to be believed.' Just as I might believe the river as I lay listening to its murmurings, and, thinking I understood, repeated what it said, as I drifted off to sleep, keeping one eye open, as is the custom in this country, which is also, for some, their patria, softly and languidly, with the open eye of my contagion and the non-existent lightness in the sky: 'I am the river, I am the river and, therefore, a connecting thread between the living and the dead, just like the stories that speak to us in the night, I take on the likeness of past times and past events too, I am the river. But the river is just the river. Nothing more.'
2 Spear
We never know when we have entirely won someone's trust, still less when we have lost it. I mean the trust of someone who would never speak of such things or make protestations of friendship or offer reproaches, or ever use those words – distrust, friendship, enmity, trust – or only as a mocking element in their normal representations and dialogues, as echoes or quotations of speeches and scenes from times past which always seem so ingenuous to us, just as today will seem tomorrow for whoever comes after, and only those who know this can save themselves the quickening pulse and the sharp intake of breath, and thus not submit their veins to any unpleasant shocks. Yet it is hard to accept or to see this, and so hearts continue their somersaults, mouths their drynesses and inhalations, and legs their tremblings, how was I or how could I have been – men say to themselves – so stupid, so clever, so smug, so credulous, so dim, so sceptical, the trusting person is not necessarily more ingenuous than the wary, the cynic no less ingenuous than the person who surrenders unconditionally and places himself in our hands and offers us his neck for the last or the first blow, or his chest so that we can pierce it with our sharpest spear. Even the most suspicious and astute and the most cunning turn out to be slightly ingenuous when expelled from time, once they have passed and their story is known (it's on everyone's lips, which is how, ultimately, it takes shape). Perhaps that's all it is, the ending and knowing the ending, knowing what happened and how things turned out, who was in for a surprise and who was behind the deception, who came off well or badly or who came out quits and who did not bet at all and so ran no risk, who – even so – came out the loser because he was dragged along by the current of the broad, rushing river, which is always crowded with gamblers, so many that eventually they manage to get all the passengers involved, even the most passive, even the indifferent, the scornful and the disapproving, the hostile and the reluctant; as well as those who live along the banks of the river itself. It doesn't seem possible to remain apart, on the margins, to shut oneself up in one's house, knowing nothing and wanting nothing – not even wanting to want anything, that's not much use – never opening the letter-box, never answering the phone, never drawing back the bolt however loudly they knock, even if they seem about to break the door down, it doesn't seem possible to pretend that no one lives there or that the person who did has died and doesn't hear you, to be invisible at will and when one chooses, it isn't possible to be silent and to eternally hold your breath while still alive, it's not even entirely possible when you believe that you inhabit this earth no longer and have abandoned your name. It simply isn't that easy, it isn't that easy to erase everything and to erase yourself and for not a trace to remain, not even the last rim or the last remnant of a rim, it's not easy simply to be like the bloodstain that can be washed and scrubbed and suppressed and then… then one can begin to doubt that it ever existed. And each vestige always drags behind it the shadow of a story, perhaps not complete, doubtless incomplete, full of lacunae, ghostly,
