Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream

I looked at the poor, resigned pointer, he did not look like the kind of dog to raise any objections.

'No, leave him. He deserves a bit of consideration. He'll be better off with us. The carpet will help him dry off, it's pretty batallada anyway.' I realised at once that this was an odd expression, neither proper Spanish nor an adaptation of some English expression, maybe both my languages were becoming not so much confused as unreliable, because I spoke the latter almost all the time and thought in the former when I was alone. Perhaps I was losing my confidence in both, because, unlike Perez Nuix, I had not been bilingual since childhood. I added: 'I mean very sufrida.' I wasn't sure, though, that sufrida was the right word either, my mother had used it in a different sense, referring more to the colour of a fabric than to its ability to stand up to wear and tear. My mother spoke excellent Spanish, much better than my contaminated version.

And that was about all I did say while my visitor apologised: forgive me for turning up here at this late hour, forgive me for not warning you first, forgive me for being so wet and for bringing with me an even wetter dog, but he desperately needed a walk, would you mind very much lending me a towel for a moment, don't worry, it's for me, not the dog, do you mind if I just take my boots off, they're supposed to be waterproof, but nothing's proof against rain like this, and my feet are frozen. She said all this and more in a kind of torrent, but she didn't take her boots off- a remnant of discretion perhaps – she merely unzipped them both and, later, zipped them up again, in fact, she fiddled with them a little, zipping and unzipping them, while she was sitting down, although only a couple of times while I was actually there, because I had insisted she take a seat while I deposited her now dispensable items of clothing in the kitchen along with my now dry ones, for I had stood for a while looking out of the window, and she had hung about, undecided, once she had ascertained where I lived, I mean before ringing the bell and announcing herself without actually using her name. However, I found it hard to believe that, doing our kind of work and with files so easily to hand, she hadn't known my address already, she could have waited for me outside my front door and thus avoided having to trail me through the disagreeable night, or waited in still more comfort in the foyer of the hotel opposite, from where she would have seen me arrive or would have noticed my lights on (although, during the hours that I'm away, there is always at least one light on day and night), and she could then simply have crossed the square and barely got wet at all. I asked if she would like something to drink, something hot, alcoholic, or water perhaps, but she didn't want anything just then, she lit a cigarette, we all smoked in our office despite the regulations, apart from Mulryan who was trying to give it up, and she continued talking quickly and volubly in order not to get to the point or to the one thing that she was obliged to tell me – what a night, it feels as if it were raining all over the world, no, she didn't say that, but something similar with the same trivial meaning, if one pretends there is nothing extraordinary about one's extraordinary behaviour it can end up not seeming extraordinary at all, this very dumb trick works with the dozy, passive majority and there's nothing more useful than liberties taken and left unchecked, but neither she nor I, Tupra or Wheeler belonged to the majority, rather, we were the sort who never let go of our prey, are never dazzled and never entirely lose the thread or lose sight of our objective, or only in part or apparently. She did not cross her legs until a little while later, as if her indecisiveness about the zips on her boots were only possible while her legs remained parallel and at a right angle, nor did she use the towel I quickly handed her to dry her legs (she was wearing dusky tights, not dark or transparent; I noticed a loose thread which would soon become a ladder, even though they were winter tights), she applied it to her face, hands, throat and neck, not this time to her sides or armpits or breasts, none of those was visible. Her thigh was the one I had glimpsed before when the skirt of her raincoat fell open, in the street, at a distance, except that now I could see both thighs, in their entirety, as one usually does, a good reason to look at the dog lying at her feet, an even better reason to lean forward and pat the dog, I remembered De la Garza at Wheeler's cold buffet supper making himself dwarfishly small by sitting on a very low pouffe in order to inspect Beryl Tupra's uninhibited thighs beneath her very short skirt (although hardly beneath, rather, outside her skirt, although it may not have been her thighs for which he was watching and waiting). Perez Nuix's skirt wasn't anywhere near as short, although it did ride up slightly or quite a lot when she sat down; and I, of course, would never stoop to such puerile tricks, for a start, spying isn't my style, at least not with an ulterior motive, which there clearly was in this instance – a remnant of discretion on my part perhaps.

'What a night, it feels as if it were raining all over the world,' she said again, well, either that or her more prosaic equivalent, and this meant that she had done with all the preambles and diversionary manoeuvres and her dilatory fiddling with the zips on her boots (they were zipped now, although not fully) and with the towel, which she still held scrunched up in the hand that was now resting on the sofa, like someone keeping hold of a used handkerchief which they might need again at any moment, with sneezes one never knows if another one is on the way. She was showing quite a lot of leg and she must have been aware of just how much, but nothing in her attitude indicated that she knew – it wasn't at all obvious – and when it comes to things that are not entirely manifest, you must always allow room for doubt, however clearly you think you can see them. 'She's very intelligent in that respect,' I thought. 'So much so that she can't possibly not be aware of what she's showing, but, at the same time, her utter naturalness – she's not immodest or an exhibitionist – gives the lie to any such awareness, indeed, gives the lie to its importance, like that morning in her office when she didn't bother to cover herself up for several seconds -not that long really, but long enough – and I saw that she had not entirely ruled me out: nothing more than that, I didn't start getting ideas, I don't think I'm that big-headed, and there's a great gulf between feeling desire and not entirely rejecting someone, between affirmation and the unknown, between willingness and the simple absence of any plan, between a 'Yes' and a 'Possibly', between a 'Fine' and a 'We'll see' or even less than that, an 'Anyway' or a 'Hmm, right' or something which doesn't even formulate itself as a thought, a limbo, a space, a void, it's not something I've ever considered, it hadn't even occurred to me, it hadn't even crossed my mind. But in this job I'm learning to fear everything that passes through the mind and even what the mind does not as yet know, because I have noticed that, in almost every case, everything was already there, somewhere, before it even reached or penetrated the mind. I'm learning to fear, therefore, not only what is thought – the idea – but also what precedes it or comes before, and which is neither vision nor consciousness. And thus you are your own pain and fever or can be, and then… then, who knows, one day you might hear a 'Yes' regarding something or spoken by someone who has not yet been ruled out: depending on the threat or the vulnerability or the insecurity or the favour asked or the hurt, or the interests involved or the revelations, one sometimes makes late discoveries, sometimes after a surprising and prolonged semi-lascivious dream or, while awake, after a few flattering words, indeed, one does not even have to be the object of passion oneself, it is still more treacherous then: someone finally explains himself or herself and gets our attention and, seeing that person speaking with such vehemence and feeling, we start to wonder about that mouth from which those thoughts or arguments or that story are emerging and consider kissing it; who has not experienced the sensuality of intelligence, even fools are susceptible, and not a few unexpectedly surrender to it even though they cannot put a name to it or recognise it. And at other times we realise that we can no longer do without someone who, before, seemed to us totally expendable, or that we are prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to reach someone towards whom, for half a lifetime, we took not a single step, because, before, he or she had always made the effort to cover that distance, which is why each day they were always so close at hand. Until, suddenly, one day, they grow weary of the journey or else spite gets the better of them or their strength fails them or they are dying, and then we panic and rush off to find them, worried to death and shorn of any pretence or reserve, the sudden slaves of those who once were ours without our ever wondering about their other desires and believing that being our slave was their one conscious desire. 'You never felt for me what I felt for you, nor wanted to; you kept me at a distance, not even caring if we never saw each other again, and I do not reproach you with that in the least; but you will regret my going and you will regret my death, because it pleases and contents one to know that one is loved.' I often quote these words or repeat them to myself, wondering whose going I will unexpectedly regret and who, to their surprise, will regret my death; I quote it inaccurately and very freely, the farewell letter written more than two hundred years ago by an old blind woman to a superficial foreigner, still young and good-looking.’

'She doesn't rule me out, but that's as far as it goes,' I thought. 'Her legs reveal themselves unthinkingly and in doing so do not exclude me, nothing more, that's all, I am the one who notices and bears it in mind. In reality, though, it is nothing.’

And then I took advantage of her repetition of the phrase and the ensuing silence, because she was aware that she had repeated herself and was slightly thrown. It was up to her to say why she had come, but when she stopped short, I felt obliged to remind her: 'What was it you wanted to talk to me about? What is it you want to say?' She had merely been delaying it, perhaps that is necessary before any kind of transaction can take place, one can rarely come straight to the point right from the start without causing offence or sounding like a mafioso or a bluff, scornful