unassailable dowager of a clergyman would ever have renounced her more intimate garments (possibly not even alone in her bed, and certainly not in someone else's house and with a lot of other people present).
Some of the women present had been wearing trousers, but not Harriet Buckley, the newly divorced medical doctor, who, according to Tupra, might have been more interested that night in making investigations in that area than Beryl or Mrs Wadman (not, of course, her real name); I had paid no attention to her nor spoken with her beyond the introductions, but she was not lacking in a certain basic attractiveness, indeed, it was a miracle she did not burst out of her skirt, not because she was fat, but because her skirt was so tight, so close-fitting, so figure- hugging (these apparent redundancies are necessary to give an idea of just how tight it was), and she kept her glasses on throughout the evening, which gave her a vaguely lascivious air, like a spry, young secretary out of a 1950’s American comedy (a pure fantasy figure); the knickerless doctor seemed to me an acceptable idea, well, at least it didn't set my teeth on edge or prick my conscience (or only slightly), nor did the idea of an equally naked Beryl or a young woman who had drifted around all evening looking bored and whose identity I never discovered, she was doubtless the student daughter of one of the guests, possibly even of Buckley herself: at any rate, I had judged her from afar to be capricious and bold and had noticed a hint of licentiousness about her mouth (wide- spaced incisors; lips that never managed entirely to close nor, consequently, to conceal those lewd teeth); I did not feel it was unfair of me to imagine her to be flighty, I mean, when it came to what she wore or did not wear under her skirt.
One of these three women must have chosen an unfortunate moment to go up to the first floor and must have lost or released without noticing that one drop of blood, as had the Central American woman who had thanked me, which meant that she had not noticed the drop on her shoe until I had pointed it out to her. It was, however, an unlikely conjunction of factors at Wheeler's party, and I did not even know if such unpreparedness and the consequent stain on the floor were technically possible (technically or physiologically, if I can put it like that). I realised that in London I had no close female friend or regular lover whom I could ask about this, no one I knew well enough; in Madrid I had, and in my normal life I would immediately have consulted Luisa, then there was my sister, and old female friends and former girlfriends, 'old flames' as Beryl was to Tupra, or Tupra was to Beryl, she being more indifferent to their past. 'My normal life': I could not get used to the idea that it was no longer normal, I had been expelled from it or else my tomb was there, dug down deep inside it; I still had the illusory feeling that this other country was just a parenthesis, that my second sojourn in England was a life not entirely lived, a life that does not really matter and for which I was barely responsible, or only when the time came to hold that ever more improbable great dance – it has doubtless been abolished now, cancelled until further notice or, more likely, until further belief- a time that is no longer time or is frozen and motionless.
Two days later, regardless of the untimeliness and even eccentricity of my question, I phoned Luisa. It's more embarrassing talking about such things to a sister: our sister may be our first girlfriend, but that is when there has as yet been no blood, a sister is only ever our child-bride. I phoned Luisa and found her at home, I had no need to feel anxious; she sounded a bit surprised (after all, it wasn't a Thursday or a Sunday), but not put out. I asked a few routine questions about the children, about their health and hers, and immediately justified my call by saying: 'I'm phoning to ask you something.' 'Ask away,' she replied good-humouredly. And so I asked her, after a brief preamble and a few words of apology, if a drop of blood could fall from a woman wearing no undergarments and whose period had come on unannounced while she was standing up or walking ('Yes, or else going up the stairs,' I added pointlessly, to complete the already absurd image). There was a brief silence during which I was afraid she might simply hang up on me or suggest I go in search of my lost wits, but what I heard next was a friendly chuckle, I knew that laugh well, amused and genial, the laugh she always laughed when something really tickled her. At that moment, I could see her face clearly, and what a pleasant face it was (I saw it in my mind's eye, there in London, or, rather, in my memory's eye, as I stared out through my window).
'What kind of question is that?' she said, still laughing. 'Are you writing a novel or something, or an ad for sanitary towels perhaps? Or are you keeping very trashy company now? I hope not, because a woman would have to be very trashy indeed for what you're describing to happen.' And her merry laughter rang out again.
I had time to wonder if the reason she seemed so happy was because she had not been expecting to hear my voice or because the figure who would replace me was now clearly delineated -the kindly flatterer who wheedles his way in, the irresponsible raver who stays outside, the suspicious authoritarian who ends up imprisoning her; I preferred the second, hypothetically speaking, despite his bird-brain; but one thing was sure, she wasn't going to ask my opinion on the subject. I never questioned her about it, just as she never asked me what I was up to, only once had she said: 'I hope you're not too lonely there in London,' and that had not really been a question. 'No more than can be expected,' I had replied at once, answering neither yes nor no, and in any case making light of the whole thing. And I had time to wonder if her mention of 'trashy company' could mean that she was curious to know if I mixed with women in situations intimate enough for them to walk around in my presence without their knickers on (although I could, of course, be totally oblivious of any such manoeuvre). And that could, in turn, mean either that she was not entirely indifferent to this news and found it a little irksome, or that she couldn't care less, which is why she could speak so blithely, perhaps urging me to frequent or to recruit a few such trashy women, of whom she was sure there would be no shortage. I no longer had the slightest idea what her feelings for me were, if she merely harboured a quiet affection or if there was still some lingering passion there, or what place she assigned me, if she was still waiting for the smell of me to disappear entirely and for me to become a ghost (one with whom she got on well, or the sort who remains friends and makes no demands and agrees not to appear too often) or if the process was already complete and my sheets torn up to make rags or dusters. The truth is that we almost never know anything about what touches us most directly, however much we interpret and conjecture, as I did endlessly, perhaps I was wasting my time in the building with no name, I thought I was making a contribution there, but perhaps I was unwittingly doing harm: perhaps I was working in a vacuum. And in short, I was afraid, afraid of Tupra and afraid of failing him, and I was filled, too, with self-distrust (I had discovered all this only a couple of nights before, the night spent with the Manoias). I was paid to make guesses about the future behaviour of people and their probabilities, and I could not even see the face – today's or tomorrow's; I saw only yesterday's face with my one mind's eye – of the person I knew best, I had lived with Luisa for quite a number of years and, through my children, continued to receive further complementary information, they were a prolongation of her, and children are transparent as long as they are still our children, later, they grow a shell or run away or wrap themselves in their own mists. I didn't even know what her hair was like now (and the way a woman's hair is combed or cut says so much about her), indeed, I could not even see myself; but that was of less importance, because the report about me that I had read half secretly in the filing room was quite right: this had never interested or worried me in the least. A rather unworthy enigma, a waste of time.
I could not resist joining in her laughter, nor did I want to resist, on the contrary: I had missed it intensely and therefore made the most of this opportunity; she had long since withdrawn her laughter from me, but, before, we used to set each other off, or would burst out laughing almost simultaneously, that laughter – when she laughed with me and I with her – was of the kind that is never forced and never preceded by a decision or a calculation, although this time I did join in afterwards, I had lost the habit and had not even noticed the comical nature of my enquiry, I suppose I was too sunk in myself, especially during the days that followed that night of new fear and not-so-new distrust; but she had found it funny at once or almost at once, after a few seconds' disbelief, unable to credit that I would phone her up to ask such a question. (An old but far from ephemeral flame from Italy, someone from my now remote past, to whom I largely owe my knowledge of Italian, used to exclaim:
'You are silly,' I said, 'you really are,' and while I was saying it, we laughed together, and I felt something like
