an ever denser cloud over me, and still I cannot see her, do not see her.
2
Luisa did not get caught or entangled, but she did, once, become involved because of a request and a gift of alms and she involved me a little in both of those things too, this was before we separated and before I left for England, when we had not yet foreseen the deepening rift or our backs so firmly turned on each other, at least I had not, for it is only later on that you realise you have lost the trust you had in someone or that others have lost the trust they had in you – if, that is, you ever do realise, which I don't really think you do; I mean, that only afterwards, when the present is already the past and is thus so changeable and uncertain that it can easily be told (and can be retold a thousand times more, with no two versions agreeing), do we realise that we also knew it when the present was still present and had not yet been rejected or become muddied or shadowy, how else would we be able to put a date to it, because the fact is we can, oh yes, we can date it afterwards with alarming precision: 'It was that day when…' we say or remember, as people do in novels (which are always heading towards a specific moment: the plot points to it, dictates it; except that not all novels know how they're going to end), sometimes when we are alone or in company, two people summing things up out loud: 'It was those words you came out with so casually on your birthday that first put me on my guard or began to distance me.' 'Your reaction disappointed me, it made me wonder if perhaps I was wrong about you, but that meant I'd been wrong about you for years, so perhaps you had simply changed.' 'I just couldn't stand the way you kept criticising me, it was so unfair that I thought maybe it was simply a ploy of yours, a way to freeze me out, and frozen out was how I felt.' Yes, we usually know when something breaks or breaks down or begins to grow weary. But we always hope that it will sort itself out or mend or recover – by itself sometimes, as if by magic – and that what we know will not be confirmed; or if we see that it is something far simpler, that there is something about us that annoys or displeases or repels, we make valiant efforts to change ourselves. These attempts, however, are made in a theoretical, sceptical spirit. In reality, we know that we won't succeed, or that things no longer depend on what we do or don't do. It is the same feeling that the ancients had when an expression came to their lips or their minds, an expression which our time has forgotten or, rather, rejected, but which they recognised: 'The die is cast.' And although the phrase has been more or less abolished, the feeling still persists and we still know it. 'There's nothing to be done about it' is what I sometimes say to myself.
A young woman – very young – had posted herself at the door of the hypermarket or supermarket or pseudomarket where Luisa used to do the shopping, she was not only very young, she was also foreign and a mother and was both these things twice over: for she had two children, one only a few months old sitting in a battered pushchair and another, who was older, but still very small, two or three perhaps (or so Luisa thought, she had noticed that he was still wearing nappies under his short trousers), and who guarded the pushchair like a soldier, a tiny unarmed member of the Praetorian guard; and the young woman was not only Rumanian or Bosnian, or possibly Hungarian – although that is less likely, there are far fewer of them in Spain – she also appeared to be a gypsy. She couldn't have been more than twenty, and on the days when she begged there (it wasn't every day, or perhaps Luisa simply didn't happen to see her), she was always with her two children, not so much because she wanted to inspire pity – this was Luisa's interpretation – as because she clearly had nowhere else to leave them or no one else to leave them with. They were part of her, as much a part of her as her arms. They were her prolongation, they were
The Rumanian woman would spend hours standing at the door of the supermarket, sometimes she would sit on the steps at the entrance and move the pushchair back and forth on the pavement, with her older son on guard. The reason Luisa noticed her was not because of this tableau vivant, this picture, which is both effective and fairly commonplace, even though it's now forbidden to use children when begging – and Luisa isn't the kind of person who takes pity on just anyone, nor am I, or perhaps we are, but not to the point of her putting her hand in her purse, or, in my case, of me putting my hand in my pocket, every time we come across an indigent, we couldn't afford it in Madrid, we don't earn enough for such extravagance, and our crude and callous officials are constantly transferring to the big city, and releasing onto its streets, wave upon wave of illegal immigrants who know nothing of the language, the country or the customs – people who have just slipped in via Andalusia or the Canaries, or via Catalonia and the Balearics if they're coming from the East, the officials wouldn't even know which country to send them back to – and they are left to get by somehow without papers and without money, with the number of poor people always on the increase, poor people who are disoriented, lost, peripatetic, unintelligible, nameless. Luisa, then, did not notice this little group, one of many, because they struck her as being unusually deserving of pity; she singled them out as individuals, she noted the young Bosnian woman and her child sentinel, I mean that she saw them as
'He's got such a bright, lively little face,' she told me. 'And what touches me most is his readiness to help, to look after his little brother, to be of some use. That child doesn't want to be a burden, although he can't help but be one because he can't yet do anything on his own. But small though he is, he wants to take part, to contribute, and he's so affectionate with the baby and so alert to what might happen and to what is happening. He spends hours and hours there, with no means of entertaining himself, he goes up and down the steps, he swings on the handrail, he tries to move the pushchair back and forth, but he's not really strong enough yet for that. Those are his main distractions. But he never strays far from his mother, not because he's not adventurous (as I say, you can see that he's really bright), but as if he were aware that this would just be another worry for her, and you can tell that he's trying to make things as easy as possible for her, well, insofar as he's able to, which isn't very much. And sometimes he strokes the young woman's cheek or his little brother's cheek. He keeps looking around and about him, he's very alert, I'm sure those quick eyes of his don't miss a single passer-by, and some he must remember from one visit to the next, he probably remembers me already. I find it so touching, that terribly responsible, industrious, participatory attitude, that enormous desire to be useful. He's too young for that.' She paused and then added: 'It's so absurd. A moment ago, he didn't even exist and now he's full of anxieties he doesn't even understand. Perhaps that's why they don't weigh on him, he seems quite happy, and his mother adores him. But it's not just absurd, it's unfair too.' She thought for a few seconds, stroking her knees with her two hands, she had sat down on the edge of the sofa to my right, she had just come in and had still not taken off her raincoat, the shopping bags were on the floor, she hadn't gone straight to the kitchen. I've always liked her knees, with or without tights, and fortunately, since she usually wore a skirt, they were nearly always visible to me. Then she said: 'He reminds me a bit of Guillermo when he was small. I used to find it touching in him too, it's not just because they're poor. Seeing him so impatient to participate in the world or in responsibilities and tasks, so eager to find out about everything and to help, so aware of my struggles and my difficulties. And, even more intuitively – or more deductively – aware of yours too, if you remember, even though he saw you much less.’
She wasn't asking me, she was merely reminding me or confirming my memory. And I did still remember, even when I was in London, when I didn't see the boy and was beginning to fear for him; he was very patient and protective towards his sister and often shared or gave in too much, like someone who knows that the noble, upright thing is for the strong always to give in to the non-tyrannical, non-abusive weak, a rather old-fashioned principle nowadays, since now the strong tend to be heartless and the weak despotic; he was even protective of his mother and, who knows, possibly of me, now that he felt that I was exiled and alone and far away, an orphan in his eyes and understanding; those who act as a shield suffer greatly in life, as do the vigilant, their ears and eyes always alert. And those who want at all costs to play fair, even when they are fighting and what is at risk is their survival or that of their most indispensable loved ones, without whom it is impossible to live, or almost.
'And Guillermo hasn't changed,' I said to Luisa. 'I hope he doesn't, but then again, sometimes I hope he does. He's bound to lose, given the way the world is going. I thought he'd learn to take better care of himself when he went to school and experienced the dangers for himself, but the years have gone by, and that doesn't seem to have happened. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being a bad father by not training him, not teaching him what he needs to
