with her umbrella covering her, and the dog, uncovered, wandering here and there – tis tis tis. As they approached the front of the building, they almost entirely disappeared from my field of vision, by the time they stopped at the door, they were immediately below me, and I could see only a fragment of the cupola of the open umbrella. The bell rang, the downstairs bell. I again looked vainly out for a second, with the window open, leaning out, bending over (my neck and back got wet), before going to pick up the entry-phone: everything except that fragment of curved cloth remained outside my perpendicular line of sight. I picked up the phone. 'Yes?' I said in English, a literal translation from my own language in which I had been thinking, and it was in Spanish that the other person spoke to me:
The kind of people who, on the phone or at the door, say simply 'It's me' and don't even bother to give their name are those who forget that 'me' is never anyone, but they are also those who are quite sure of occupying a great deal or a fair part of the thoughts of the person they're looking for. Or else they have no doubt that they will be recognised with no need to say more – who else would it be – from the first word and the first moment. And the woman with the dog was right about this, even if only unconsciously and without having stopped to think about it. Because I did recognise her voice, and I opened the front door for her from upstairs without wondering why she was entering my house that night and coming upstairs to speak to me.
Javier Marias
