disquieting thought – I could see he was more than ready to enlighten her with his learned witticisms or to stultify her with dances more primitive than mine, but which would not, however, be unwelcome. Before absenting myself, I whispered or, rather, yelled in her ear, so that she would not bear me a grudge for failing to give her an answer: ''Pussy' means 'beauty'.’
'Really? But how? Where does it come from? It's such a odd word.’
'Well, it's an affectionate, colloquial term from Madrid, prison slang.' I threw in that last part, I don't know why – as decoration. 'He considers you a great beauty, as each and all of us do.' Well, that's how I said it in Italian, more or less verbatim. 'That's what he said.’
'But surely the ambassador hasn't been to prison?' she asked, startled. There was in her voice not so much shock (she must have grown used to seeing friends and acquaintances ending up in the clink) as an absurd degree of pity and alarm about the monstrous majo's police record and his possible past misfortunes (personally, I would have packed him off to pokey for a good long time, with or without a trial). She was concerned, I suppose, because of his youth.
'No, no, at least not as far as I know. The word started off as prison slang, but words go forth, travel, fly, expand; they're free, are they not, and no bars or walls can imprison them. They have a kind of terrible strength.’
'Terribile,' put in De la Garza, who had been listening in and had understood random words in my Spanish-tinged Italian (he was simply guessing, there was no way he spoke Italian; guessing, I mean, at the one adjective he had contributed).
He was a real ace at that, at butting in with some irrelevant comment, with no idea what the topic of conversation was, and entirely uninvited, and even, sometimes, when he had been firmly and plainly rebuffed.
'There's no need, quindi,' I went on, 'to go to prison to find them, I mean, the words that were born or invented there. And, by the way, he's not the ambassador; he's just part of his team. But I'm sure he will be some day. Indeed, I think he will rise still higher if, as seems inevitable, he continues in his present vein: they'll make him Secretary of State, anzi minister.' There is no exact equivalent in Spanish for those two words, anzi and quindi.
'Minister? But minister of what?' 'Beh. Culture probably; that's his field, he's knows all there is to know.' I said this quite spontaneously: beh is another ambiguous word in Italian, perhaps I simply didn't like to be found wanting in the use of indefinable vernacular interjections. And I added, moving a little away from her, with the intention of making it easier for De la Garza to hear and to catch more than just a few random words: 'No one knows more about world literary fantasy, including the medieval and the palaeo-Christian. Oh yes, he knows a hell of a lot.' This I translated with unforgivable literalness, quoting what he had said at Wheeler's party. 'Sa un inferno,' I said brazenly, knowing that the expression doesn't exist and is, therefore, incomprehensible. 'Which, as well as being valuable and useful, is also tremendously chic, you know.’
'Tremendously chic,' commented Rafita, who had understood very little despite my very clear enunciation. His words were slightly, very slightly, slurred, it might pass off quickly if he eased up on the drinking or if lust restored his clarity of speech; this time, he didn't even repeat his one attempt at an Italian word. He was looking at Mrs Manoia with fixed, glassy desire, by which I mean that he was staring in near stupefaction at her two silicone menhirs.
'Really? Addirittura.' Another expression for which there is no exact Spanish equivalent.
'Now, if you'll excuse me, dearest, most delightful Flavia' -I was at least piling on the superlatives, which are more common in Italian – 'I must leave you for a few moments in the very best and most chic of company. Our friends are calling me.’
There I left her, beneath the hooves of the dark horses and in the faux-black mouth of the wolf and before the menacing maw of the crocodiles, hoping that her husband and Tupra would not keep me long, I felt responsible for the lady's evening, for her well-being and contentment, I wanted her ten bracelets to continue tinkling. As I walked back to rejoin Tupra and Mr Manoia, I saw that De la Garza was, for the moment, avoiding dancing with Flavia and was, instead, leading her over to his table, not far from ours, and to his noisy, mainly Spanish friends, and this reassured me a little because we could see them from our table and he could not so easily heap her with compliments there as he could when they were alone and dancing. (There were a couple of women in the group, and many of my female compatriots dislike any kind of competition, even when it's purely imaginary and there's not so much as a hint of it because basically there is no competition: they were both about twenty years younger than Mrs Manoia, who would, however, have given them a run for their money had she met them without that two decades' age difference – 'Luisa isn't like that,' I thought, 'she doesn't compete with anyone, and if someone does try to challenge her, she just moves away, perhaps because she's sure of herself, or because she's happy being the way she is, perhaps I'm the same.') I noticed that the idiotic music lover and poseur was now very quietly clapping, holding his, cautiously clapping hands close to his ear, his eyes tight shut, fully aware of his intense pose, and even wailing softly to himself (given the tortured, ecstatic look on his face, like that of a willing martyr, it must have been a formidably painful piece of flamenco), absorbed in music that was ill-suited to such depths of grief, perhaps he was following another tune in his head with incredible concentration and constancy, or perhaps he really was listening to it – and therefore deaf to the disco music around him – through tiny hidden headphones, like the ones my dancing neighbour opposite must use in his prancings. His face looked familiar, rather peasant-like despite the baroque ringlets that sought to soften or even deny it, his hair furiously dyed a demented black; I got the feeling that he was a very important, very famous writer, he might have given a talk at the Cervantes Institute that evening, brought ex profeso from the Peninsula by De la Garza, and I would have missed it, a magisterial reading, a magical recitation, how stupid of me. He seemed to me a complete fool and, immersed as he was in his mournful clapping, he, of course, failed to notice Flavia's arrival at the table; the others did not even get up when Rafita made the introductions, with the exception of one man who was perhaps British, given his appearance and his preservation of certain manners; the British are taking a little longer to perceive all manners as entirely dispensable. With a despotic gesture, the attache ordered the others to move up to make room for them, I saw them sit down rather close together (their legs would be touching, Mrs Manoia's skirt had ridden up a little – a little too much, I mean – perhaps that would arouse her knight-flatterer) just before I did the same, only not quite so cosily, on a chair to Reresby's left, he preferred people to sit on that side if possible, I imagined that he heard better with that ear and saw better with his right eye.
He immediately asked me what the Italian was for the four or five words which he had taken the precaution of noting down on his coaster and on which Manoia's English, being rather sparse in vocabulary, would have foundered. One of them, oddly enough, was 'vows', or to be more precise 'to take vows'; another was 'toadstool', equally strange, and in another sphere entirely; a third was 'nipples', which did not help me in my deductions. It was understandable that Manoia would not know these words, less so that Tupra had not resorted to alternatives or approximations to explain them, even, in the last instance, to gestures (perhaps, despite his surname, he was too English for that). Fortunately, I had read or heard them before and could find equivalents (pronundare i voti, there I was guided by the Spanish; junghi, piuttosto quelli velenosi, here I had to explain; capezzoli, I ventured: I seemed to remember that the stress fell on the antepenultimate syllable, but I wasn't sure). Luckily, too, my curiosity was not aroused. I trusted, however, that the capezzoli or nipples in question were not Mrs Manoia's, I would have found any reference to them embarrassing (even though any reference would have been purely medical or, shall we say, pathological), having been impaled on them as if by two darts and still conscious of the impression they had left on my chest. I was about to go back to her side, having fulfilled my task as walking dictionary, when Tupra stopped me with a gesture, he showed me the flat of his hand as if warning me: 'Wait, we might still need you.' Manoia took advantage of the pause provided by these consultations (he only reacted to the third, and then very soberly: 'Ah, gabezzoli,' he repeated in his non-Roman accent, an accent that came from further south) to lift his long, bluish chin and look across, with his glasses pushed well up on the bridge of his nose
