Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell

bidder or accepted the best-paid commissions. And what kind of people or private institutions were or are interested in employing agents? Well, some were given work more suited to private detectives, confirming an infidelity, investigating cases of embezzlement or misappropriation of funds, collecting money from debtors in arrears; or working as bodyguards to protect show-business types or tycoons at public events, things like that. Others gave a hand or two to those ex-colleagues of theirs who had become mercenaries, of whom there were quite a few, and there's never any shortage of that kind of work in Africa. The range of jobs kept widening, and eventually the lower-ranking field agents began to suggest and supply such work to the middle-ranking officials and I imagine that, by 2001, the latter had convinced the higher-ranking officials of the advantages of not working solely for the State. The fact is that during those seven or eight years, during that long interval without a principal enemy, a parallel network of diverse clients of every kind was created. More than once, members of MI5 and MI6, whether knowingly or not, or preferring not to know but sensing it, would doubtless have worked for criminals or even criminal organizations, and perhaps, at the darker, more remote end of the chain, for foreign governments.

It's possible, no one knows and no one's going to try to find out, for at this point in time nothing's very clear and everything's very muddled. You get used to not asking who is paying the bill, and besides, almost everything is dealt with and discussed by intermediaries and front men. If you first had to carry out an investigation to discover who was behind each commission, you'd never finish and never start, and any deal would be worthless.'

Young Perez Nuix paused and finished off the second half of her second glass of wine. I hesitated, but, out of courtesy, made a very slight move as if to refill it, without actually touching the bottle. Up until then, I had noticed no hesitancy or difficulty in speaking on her part, but if she carried on at the same rate, this might well happen at any moment, or if not that, incoherence or somnolence, and now I wanted to hear everything she had to say. There were, however, no signs of any such symptoms, she must have been accustomed to drinking wine. Even her vocabulary was select and precise, that of a well-read person, she used unusual words, such as 'arrumbados for 'sidelined,' 'encomienda' for 'commission,' 'rasos' for 'non-commissioned.' Perhaps, despite her ancestry on her father's side, she was like certain English people who have learned my language more from books than from speaking it, and whose Spanish therefore seems rather bookish. And so I got up and, before she could say 'Yes' or 'No' to my hint of an interrogative gesture, announced:

'I'm going to get a glass for myself, I'm ready for a drink now too.' And I then ventured the following warning or caution: 'Do you think it's wise to drink three glasses one after the other like that? That's drinking English-fashion, not like a Spaniard. Anyway, I'll bring a few snacks just in case.'

When I came back with my glass and a few olives and chips in their respective bowls, I caught her inspecting the run in her tights. In the corridor, before going into the room and almost hidden from view-I stopped and spied on her for a few seconds: one, two, three; and four-I saw her looking at it and carefully running her index finger over it (a finger moistened with saliva perhaps or a drop of nail varnish, which is what women used to apply to a catch in their stockings in order to stop a run, to see if the stocking would stay decent at least until they got home; although it was too late now to stop anything). When I rejoined her, she, with arms and legs crossed now, made no reference to this imperfection in her apparel, which was odd: it would have been the moment to express surprise and regret and, if she so chose, to apologize for the theoretically scruffy appearance the run conferred upon her, although it didn't displease me in the least or trouble me, I found it rather entertaining being able discreetly to observe its progress. I wondered how much longer she would keep up the fiction that she hadn't yet noticed, and why, since it was beyond concealment now. And for the first time that evening-for the first time ever-it occurred to me that not only did she not exclude me, but that, without a word or a touch or a look-although she looked straight at me when she spoke, as if there were nothing more to that look than her explanatory, neutral remarks-she was telling me that what did finally occur could occur, quite a lot later and when I was no longer expecting it, despite our insistent nearness in my bed, which was not that big: the opening of silk or nylon as a simile or promise or sign, its steadily growing length and width, the fact that she did not try to stop or remedy it by going to the bathroom and taking off her tights and even changing them (I know women who always carry a spare pair in their bag, Luisa is one of them), allowing the run to continue to grow and expose an ever larger expanse of thigh and soon, possibly, the front part of the calf, for which I've never known the name, if it has one, perhaps shank or shinbone, but neither word seems quite right; that area, of course, was covered by her boots, although her boots had opened fleetingly too, been unzipped, as soon as their drenched owner had arrived and sat down; yes, the run in her tights was like a zipper without teeth, uncivilized and autonomous and uncontrollable, with the added rogue element of being a thing that can be torn, except that this was a tear in which neither my hand nor anyone else's was intervening, the cloth was coming apart of its own accord, while still clinging to the leg, covering and uncovering at the same time and pointing up the contrast, the unveiled flesh advancing in both directions, down and up, and we men know what lies hidden at the top of a long female thigh. (I would accidentally see it myself-a dark triangle-in the ladies' toilet of a disco, where a woman would say to me with great self-confidence: 'You come and see.')

I felt slightly ashamed, almost embarrassed, when I realized I was having these thoughts, that I was thinking them. They were entirely inappropriate, they had taken me pretty much by surprise, and the worst thing is that once an idea gets into your head, it's impossible not to have had it and very hard to drive it out or erase it, whatever it might be: anyone plotting an act of revenge is very likely to attempt to carry it out, and if he can't, out of cowardice or vassalage, or if he has to wait a long time for the right circumstances, then it's probable that he nevertheless already lives with the act and that it sours his light sleep with its nocturnal beating; if one feels a sudden hostility towards someone, it would be odd if that were not translated into machinations and defamations and acts of bad faith, of the sort that seek to cause harm, or lie there watching, in the rear guard, oozing resentment until the long-awaited morning comes; if the temptation to make some amorous conquest arises, the normal thing would be for the conquistador to get straight down to work, with infinite patience and intrigue if necessary, but if he lacks the courage, he will be unable fully to abandon the project until the far-off day when he finally grows bored with so much uncertainty, with such theoretical, future-oriented, and therefore imaginary activities, and only then does the condensation that hangs over his misty wakenings dissipate; if what lies ahead is the possibility of killing someone-or, as is more frequent, of having someone killed-it will be easy enough at least to ascertain the current rates charged by hit men and tell yourself they'll always be there or, if not, their sons will, so that you can approach them once you've overcome your vacillations and your anticipated remorse; and if it's a case of sudden sexual desire, as unexpected as the desire that erupts in our dreams, and as involuntary perhaps, it will be difficult then not to feel it at every moment, for as long as that desire remains unsatisfied and the person inflaming it is still there before us, even though we're not prepared to take a single step towards satisfying it and cannot imagine doing so at any point in what remains of our existence. What remains of the past no longer counts, as regards yearnings or fantasies, or even avarice. Or regret. Although it does as regards speculations.

When I recalled this in Tupra's house, in his comfortable living room that invited a sense of confidence bordering on easeful calm, I wondered if I had spied on Perez Nuix's run and thighs with the same apprehensive, unguarded look Sophia Loren had turned on the white breasts of Jayne Mansfield floating above the tablecloth in a restaurant, although my gaze would have been filled with admiration and desire rather than envy and suspicion. If I had, she would have noticed and very quickly too (the person being observed can sense such looks). I filled my glass and Perez Nuix moved hers a little closer, and I couldn't not fill it without appearing paternalistic or stingy when it came to wine, both of which are extremely unattractive qualities; and so she immediately started on her third glass, taking only a small sip, and at least she ate a couple of olives and a potato chip. My thoughts were, I felt, vain and idiotic, but I was nonetheless convinced that they were right, sometimes idiotic things are. 'It could be,' I thought,' that she's allowing that run to grow so as to show me the way to unexpected lust, to guide me, but be careful: she is about to ask me a favor, she hasn't done so yet in any detail, we're still at the stage when she can't afford to annoy me and when offering me something, or who knows, even giving it to me, must seem to her advisable even though I've made no demands or dropped any hints, a stage that will last at least until I answer 'Yes' or 'No,' or 'I'll see what I can do, I'll do my best,' or 'But I'll want this in exchange.' And it would be only natural if this stage were to last still longer, for several days, until I had done what I said I would do, with irreversible words or deeds, beyond the promise or announcement or the half-open possibility of a 'Let me think about it' or a 'We'll see' or a 'It all depends.' However, she hasn't yet formulated her petition to me, not entirely, and therefore the moment hasn't yet come for me to speak, to concede or deny, to put off, to play hard to get or to be ambivalent.'

'Anyway,' she went on, holding another of my Karelias cigarettes from the Peloponnese, 'once a field has been