painting of the surrender at Breda, had Tupra been wielding one of those as well he would have filled us with even more dread, me, of course, but especially his victim, De la Garza, against whom he had raised his sword, Reresby was holding it in one hand when he pushed me aside to get past, but he was gripping it now with both hands to raise it, ready to unleash the blow. I noticed that his waistcoat rode up when he had both arms raised, he was creating as much momentum for himself as possible, underneath, above his belt, I could see his shirt with its very fine, pale, elegant stripes.
'He's going to kill him,' I thought, 'he's going to cut off his head, slice through his neck, no, he can't, he won't, yes, he is, he's going to decapitate him right here, separate his head from his trunk and I can do nothing about it because the blade is going to come down and it's a two-edged sword, he can't just deal him a blow, even a hard blow, with the blunt edge, just to frighten him, to teach him a lesson, because there is no such edge, but two equally sharp edges which would cut through him anyway, De la Garza will die immediately and then we will have to wait an infinite amount of time before we see him whole again, all in one piece, until the day when, out of respect, the two parts into which he is about to be transformed will be joined together, so that he can come to Judgement as he should, not like some freak-show monster, but with his head on his shoulders and not under his arm as if it were a ball or a globe of the world, and there cry: 'I died in England, in a public toilet, in a Disabled toilet in the old city of London. This man killed me with a sword and cut me in two, and this other man was there, he saw it all and didn't lift a finger. It was in another country, the country of the man who killed me, but for me he was a foreigner, which is what he would have been in my country; on the other hand, the man who watched and did nothing spoke my language and we were both from the same land, further south, not so very far away, albeit separated by the sea. I still don't know why I was murdered, I hadn't done anything very bad, nor did I constitute a danger to them. I had half a life or more before me, I would probably have become a minister or, at the very least, ambassador to Washington. I didn't see it coming, I was left without life, without anything. They came like thunderless lightning: one did the destroying, while the other kept silent.' But perhaps De la Garza would be incapable of speaking like that even on the last day, for on that day each man and each woman will continue to be exactly as they always were, the brutish will not become delicate nor the laconic eloquent, the bad will not become good nor the savage civilised, the cruel will not become compassionate nor the treacherous loyal. And so the likelihood was that Rafita would make his complaint in his usual coarse, affected way, and bawl at the Judge: 'You know, the way I snuffed it was really nasty, I mean, along comes this guy and slices my head off on the lid of a toilet seat in a public lav for cripples, can you believe it? The great British bastard, the son-of-a-bitch. I was fucking innocent, I was, I hadn't a clue what was coming, I was pretty much out of my head and pretty much danced out too, and feeling distinctly under the weather, I was just minding my own business and hadn't a clue what was going down, but I hadn't done him any harm, I swear it, he just turned up there in psychopath mode, in inexplicable enigma mode, anyway, the brute produced this sword out of nowhere and chopped off my head with one blow, I don't know, the nutter must have come over all Conan the Barbarian, or El Cid, or Gladiator, a guy in a waistcoat for Christ's sake, a waistcoat, and suddenly he goes and whips out this sword, and his little private fantasy cost me my neck, and my life ended right there and then, I mean, what a bummer. And the other guy just stood there like a statue, his face frozen in horror, a guy from Madrid, would you believe, a fellow Spaniard, one of us, and he didn't even try to grab the other guy's arm, well, his two arms, because the swine was holding this cutlass thing with both hands so as to bring it down on me with all his might, so much for world medieval literature, although it was probably better like that, you know, a clean cut, imagine if he'd only sliced halfway through and left me hanging, still alive and watching it all and knowing that I was being killed for no reason. I died in London, I died when I was out one night partying, I didn't even get to enjoy the whole evening, didn't even have time to drain it to the dregs, those two set a trap for me. And do you know the last thing I did, I knelt down, dammit. And then it was all over.' No, there's nothing to be done,' I thought, 'he's going to kill him. The voice is the quickest thing there is, all I can do now is shout.’
Tupra!' I shouted his name, I didn't have time to do anything else, not even to add 'What are you doing?' or 'Are you mad?' or 'Stop!', as they do in old-fashioned novels and in comic strips, nor to come out with any kind of exclamation which would prove utterly futile in the face of something that is not just imminent but has actually begun, and is already happening and is an arrow flying. De la Garza turned his head for a fraction of a second – it would roll like a globe -just as he had done shortly before, when he had been on the point of asking me for a banknote so that he could roll it into a tube and stick it up his nose, that is, he didn't really turn his gaze on me, didn't focus, and would only have seen the blurred gleam of what hung or hovered over him, but he must have caught a glimpse or a glance of the steel, recognised the blade and the edge, but without recognising that recognition, not believing and at the same time believing, because you are always instantly aware of any real danger of death, even if, in the end, it turns out to be something that merely frightens you half to death. As when, in a dream, a life-threatening situation goes on for far too long, or there is a prolonged sequence of being chased and caught, then chased and caught again, and the sleeping consciousness succumbs to panic and to fatalism and, at the same time, knows that something is not quite right and that your fate is not necessarily sealed, because the dream is still going on without stop or respite or resolution, and the blow that began its descent some time ago has not yet fallen: it delays and lingers and dallies and loiters, the blow, the sword-strike, the dream, it pauses and waits and everything sits heavy on the soul, it freezes and plays for time while the conscious mind struggles to wake up and save us, to dissipate the terrible vision or to shatter it, and to drive away or staunch the pent-up tears that long to burst forth, but cannot.
I saw the look on his face, the look of someone who thinks or knows he is dead; but since he was still alive, the image was one of infinite fear and struggle, mental struggle, perhaps of desire; of childish, undisguised terror, his mouth must have dried instantly, as instantly as his face turned deathly pale, just as if someone had given his face a quick lick of grey or off-white or queasy-coloured paint, or had thrown flour over him or perhaps talcum powder, it was rather like when swift clouds cast a shadow over the fields and a shudder runs through the flocks below, or like the hand that spreads the plague or closes the eyes of the deceased. His top lip lifted, almost folded back on itself in a rictus, revealing his dry gums on which the inner part of his lip got stuck for lack of saliva, he would never be able to lower that lip, it would be fixed like that until the end of time on a tormented face separated from its body, he did lower his head as soon as he caught sight of the blurred gleam of metal overhead, above him and above me, up there, a double-edged sword, two hands, a grip, he pressed his head against the lid of the toilet seat as if hoping it would give way and disappear, and he instinctively drew in his neck, hunched up his shoulders as if in a spasm of pain, the deliberate or unwitting gesture made by all the victims of the guillotine over two hundred years or of the axe over hundreds of centuries, even those satisfied with their guilt and those resigned to their innocence, even chickens and turkeys must have made that gesture.
The sword fell with great speed and force, that one blow would be enough to make a clean cut and even splinter or split the lid, but Tupra stopped the blade dead, about one centimetre or two from the back of the neck, the flesh, the cartilage and the blood, he was in control of what he was doing, he knew how to gauge it, he meant to stop it. 'He hasn't done it, he hasn't decapitated him,' I thought with some relief and not in so many words, but this thought lasted barely a moment, because he immediately raised the sword again, in keeping with the terrible nature of weapons that are not loosed or thrown and can therefore be used repeatedly, and can strike over and over, can threaten first and then cut afterwards or pierce right through, a mistake or a sudden change of mind are not the same as the breathing space, the momentary reprieve or ephemeral truce one would get with a thrown spear that misses the target or an arrow that goes astray or gets lost en route to the sky or simply falls to earth, because it takes a few seconds for the archer to remove another from the quiver and place it in the bow and steady himself again to aim better and carefully pull the bow taut without straining a muscle, and that minimal pause allows you time to take cover or run zigzagging away, in the hope that the nervous archer who has flushed you out has only javelins left to throw, three, two, one, none. Every movement Tupra made continued to be or was resolute, not improvised, he must have planned and calculated each one before he even entered the toilet, when, on the dance floor, he ordered me to bring the attache here and for us both to await his return with the promised cocaine, he had kept his word, he had brought it, always assuming it wasn't just talc, the powder that now lay scattered, swept aside by De la Garza's fleeing head, wishful thinking, for he had nowhere to flee to, nowhere to hide. But while Reresby might know what he was going to do, I did not, still less De la Garza, and so I didn't know how to interpret the half-smile – or not even that, only a quarter-smile, at most, or perhaps it was just his usual mocking expression – which I thought I saw on his fleshy lips, lips that were rather African or perhaps Hindu or Slav, when he stopped the sword and raised it again and thus once more appeared to be about to kill him, this seemed to me even more likely than the first time, because when one opportunity has been used up, that leaves one less chance
