other than obscure private citizens, like Tupra and like me; but who knows. (It was perhaps more likely that they would appear in the old files in the building with no name; as would Manoia too, along with his good lady wife.) I was getting more and more worried, with De la Garza on the verbal hunt for Flavia (he had not as yet, I trusted, embarked upon a tactile or fingertip search), and with Flavia defenceless against any darts which that great, mannered, vulgar brute might spit at her: at the moment, she was laughing (a good or a bad sign depending on who was doing the looking), I did my best not to lose sight of them for more than a few seconds at a time, when I should really have been listening and looking at my companions at table. Tupra had been quite right when he prevented me from leaving them, because my support was needed again, this time by Manoia to help with a few words or phrases in English, I remember he asked me about invaghirsi, about sfregio, and about bazza, all three of which put me in a tight spot. I didn't know the first at all, and so, after trying to gain time by pretending to check that he hadn't said invanirsi, I translated it intuitively in two different ways, as 'to inebriate' and 'to swoon' or 'faint' (this was the fault partly of the Italian word's phonetic proximity to the Spanish word vahido, meaning a dizzy spell), which while they were not, of course, synonyms could at least happen consecutively, and were therefore not, in that order, impossible. Anyway, I didn't think my infidelity would be that important or give rise to any grave misunderstandings, the gentleman had a liking for unusual words I realised (even regional ones), or perhaps he was simply testing me in order to make me look stupid. I didn't know the second word either, this was terrible, nor could I connect it with any other words I knew; Manoia grew impatient with my vacillations, and started rudely badgering me ('Uno sfregio! Sfregio, dai! Uno sfregio! ), at the same time running one thumbnail down his cheek from top to bottom; but since it didn't occur to me that the word could possibly mean scar or cicatriz, after all, Italian has the word cicatrice, I foolishly opted for something halfway between sound and gesture, that is, for the Spanish estrago, which I converted into the English 'damage' or 'havoc'. Later on, when I consulted a dictionary, I wondered if Manoia had threatened to make just such a scar on the face of some fellow human being tomorrow, and then my translation would not have been entirely absurd, or did it, I wondered, form part of a description of some mafioso or monsignor, for example, and in that case I would have excelled myself, given that the term corresponded more or less to 'scratch' or 'mark'. As for the third word, that put me in an even worse predicament, because I knew that it had two very different meanings, I had read it or heard it during a stay in Tuscany years before, and my sharp memory had stored it away. I hesitated again, paralysed, because one of its meanings was 'long chin' or 'prominent jaw', precisely the feature that Manoia could not conceal and which, during his childhood in Italy, would doubtless have led to him being dubbed a bazzone: I had heard that mocking augmentative in an old film starring Alberto Sordi (who, of course, I best remembered in the buck-toothed role of a dentone), or, more likely, applied to that marvellous comic actor, the great Toto, because, all things considered, no one could possibly have beaten him in the bazzone stakes. The other meanings, related etymologically to the Spanish baza or 'trick' in card games, were 'a stroke of luck' and 'a bargain'. Since I was not in on the conversation and since it was, anyway, barely audible, when Manoia asked me that question ('Come si dice bazza?', or, rather, 'Gome si dishe?', the ch sound became sh in that irrepressible accent of his), I hadn't the faintest idea what they were talking about: I didn't know if he was still describing a hitman or a prelate – whoever it was would certainly be a sight to behold with scars on his cheeks and huge mandibles – or was merely hoping for good luck in their shared projects, or if he was trying to persuade Reresby that the price of his services or of his consent constituted a real bargain. If bazza referred to the latter and I translated it only as 'pointed chin', I risked Manoia thinking that I was making some irrelevant and scornful allusion to his most striking feature, and I had realised, right from the start, that the size of his jawbone had clearly played its part in the shaping of his character, which was at best suspicious, at worst vengeful, no, not at worst, for I sensed in him the potentiality for far worse things. If it was the other way round, my translation would make no sense at all, but it would at least not offend him, unless he attributed my avoidance of the correct word to the presence at the table of that chin of his which was, after all, far from prognathous, even under the shifting coloured lights that distorted it and made him look a little like Fagin. Perhaps I was being excessively punctilious, perhaps I hesitated too long, and that made him grow still more impatient: 'Ma gosa sushede, eh. Non gabishi bene l'idaliano?' - He had from the outset addressed me as 'tu' and had clearly not even considered doing otherwise, and he had unhesitatingly called me Jack, following Tupra's example, as if he knew me as well as Tupra did, or as if he had instantaneously inherited that same familiarity (the prerogative of equals or of those who give the orders). His tone now was one of implicit attack, by which I mean that it sounded like one of those demands that you fail to meet at your peril. 'Bazza, bazza, gome si dishe in inglese bazza, eh? No lo sai?' And so, without further delay, I opted for 'bargain', all in all, it seemed to me more likely that in a conversation about politics or money, or about benefits or even indulgences, he would be talking about money.
'A bargain,' I said. And, just in case, I added: 'Or a stroke of luck.’
But I didn't like the man's second irritable outburst at all. It wasn't that I felt affronted or bullied. Well, I did, but that didn't matter, I was not what I was ('I am not what I am,' I would sometimes repeat to myself, 'not entirely,' I would think, 'not exactly') when I went out with Reresby or with Ure or Dundas, not even when I accompanied Tupra, alone or with the others; in a sense, I simply played the role of subaltern or subordinate – which, at bottom, I was, given the circumstances and certainly as long as I remained tied to my paid activities and kept my nameless post – or the role perhaps of escort or acolyte – which I never was in any way at all – and I did not take personally any slights to which my character might occasionally be subject, because I received them – how can I put it – on behalf of the whole group and as a mere part of it, the most recent and belated and insignificant part; and the entire group seemed to me, in turn, fictitious, or, rather, devoted to fictions, perhaps that would be more exact. And the fact that almost everything happened in a foreign language only emphasised the artificial, unreal, make-believe nature of what was said and done: in another language you cannot help but feel that you are always acting or even translating (however well you know the language), as if the words you pronounce and hear belonged to some absent person, to a single author who invented and dictated them and had already distributed the parts, and then nothing that anyone says to you makes much of a mark. How much more difficult it is, on the other hand, to bear the reproaches and humiliations and insults that we hear in our own language, which are so much more real. (Maybe they are the only real slights, which is why it would be best to nip in the bud any possible slights Perez Nuix might deal out; to prevent their even being born so that they would not grieve me and so that I could not store them away. Like those I had received from Luisa, which still resonated, possibly because now there was almost nothing to dissipate or soften them, and she was ever more taciturn with me when we spoke on the phone.) Besides, that night would eventually end, and I would more than likely never see Manoia again, and so I didn't mind if my ‘I’ of that evening or of any other spent in the service of Tupra – myself as Jack, let's say – should feel momentarily, and as it were vicariously, discomfited. My ‘I’ of before that and after was not Jack, but Jacques or Jacobo or Jaime, and that ‘I’ was stricter and prouder and also more vengeful, while the former could not help but see all the events he witnessed or took part in as slightly pointless and false, as if they did not really concern Jacques or did not happen to him, and as if he were protected from them. The reason I so disliked Manoia's reaction was because it alarmed me sufficiently to feel suddenly implicated, at least in my role as Jack, as a negligent and possibly even failed chevalier servant. I realised that his rudeness must have some other cause than my slowness and my hesitancy (or my incompetence, if I was wrong about the stroke of luck and the bargain). It was doubtless to do with Mrs Manoia, and at that precise moment I glanced over at the Spanish table, after an interval of no more than twenty seconds, and De la Garza and Flavia were no longer there.
I looked anxiously around. I had missed the moment when they had left the table, the others were all there, including the trite writer (clapping more furiously now, and looking even more the stereotypical flamenco artiste) and the lacklustre heiress with the invariable expression on her face of someone being forced to breathe the foul odours of some very slow-moving effluvia, which meant that neither the group nor even a part of the group had decamped to somewhere more amusing, only my lady and the attache had absented themselves. The disco was a big place and I could see only a small part of it, they could have moved to any of the numerous bars, or gone on to the more distant and more frenetic dance floors; but they might also have become shadows in some dark corner or – although I refused even to imagine this – abandoned the club, together, with unnatural urgency and without
