'She won't just let me go off like that without saying goodbye, especially if I'm going to be away for a while,' said Custardoy, interrupting me. I didn't mind because this meant he was accepting my plan and was prepared to obey it, and that I wouldn't have to damage his other hand or even consider doing so, because I would then have no other hold over him and would have to shoot him and that now seemed to me impossible. I had lost all my heat, what little I'd had. I had taken on Tupra's coldness only momentarily and half-heartedly. Perhaps not even Tupra was so very cold: after all, he hadn't, in the end, cut off De la Garza's head.
'Don't you understand? She won't be able to say goodbye to you, however much she wants to, because when you phone her, you'll already have left, you'll call her from somewhere else, do you see?'
'She'll think that very odd.'
'Try to make it seem perfectly normal. Emergencies do happen, as do unforeseen events. Besides, you don't see each other every day, do you? Or phone each other on a daily basis?' I wasn't expecting an answer, and I preferred him not to give one. 'While you're away, only call her now and then, and make those calls less and less frequent, until, in two weeks or so, you'll have stopped phoning altogether. After two weeks, you give no sign of life at all, none, and if she does manage to locate you, be evasive with her, impatient. And when your hand has healed and you come back (if that wretched hand of yours ever does heal after what I've done to it), you won't call her then either. Sooner or later, she'll hear from someone that you're back, and if she's still interested, she'll be the one to seek you out or phone you or demand an explanation. And you can tell her then, bluntly and arrogantly, it should come easily enough to you, you've probably done it hundreds of time. As far as you're concerned, you'll say, she's history, you never even give her a thought. Tell her that on the beaches of Malibu you've met the new Bo Derek or a lady security guard or Getty's daughter or whoever. Or an heiress from Boston whom you're about to marry. You make it clear to her that it's all over, that she should leave you alone, that you don't want to see her. And you won't see her. As of today, you've said your farewells, do you understand? And if you utter one word to her about what has happened here, about this visit, if you lead her to suspect or, however remotely, imagine what went on, now or later, even if it's in ten years' time, you can say farewell to your right hand as well.' The words of the 'Streets of Laredo' came into my mind: 'But please not one word of all this shall you mention, when others should ask for my story to hear.'
Custardoy opened his coarse eyes a little wider, he looked suddenly older, as if the weariness that follows immediately on relief had put ten years on him. He was cautiously stroking his crippled hand, he must have been impatient for this to be over, to be rid of me once and for all, so that he could go to a doctor or a hospital, where they could do something to take away the pain.
'I'm not the marrying kind, I'm not like you,' he said with a tiny, barely perceptible remnant of scorn, which I nonetheless noticed. It didn't matter, it afforded him some small compensation. He didn't know that I
'Like I said, you stay here for half an hour without moving and without phoning anyone. You never lay a hand on her again. You never see her again. I'll know if you don't do as I say, and London is only two hours away. It would be easy enough for me to fly over and cut off your hand.'
I flung the poker into the fireplace, it had a little blood on it, but I'd leave him to clean it off. I removed the third unused bullet, put the pistol in my raincoat pocket and headed for the door without taking my eyes off him, until he disappeared from my field of vision. There he was sitting on his sofa, with his clothes all rumpled, his hand shattered and a mark on his face. He held my gaze, despite his sudden tiredness, his abrupt senescence. No one has ever looked at me with such hatred. Nevertheless, I wasn't afraid that he would try anything, that he would grab the poker and hit me on the back of the head. The terror and humiliation he had experienced might have made him risk doing something like that. His hatred, however, was impotent, frustrated and without consequences, it was tinged with fear and shock; or it was like the hatred of a child condemned to remain too long in the incongruous body of a boy, obliged to endure a fruitless wait that consumes him, but which he will no longer remember when he does finally grow up. He was looking at me in the knowledge that I was no longer within his grasp and would not be for a long time, possibly never: like a furious adolescent looking out at a world slipping by before his eyes and which he's not yet allowed to enter; or like a prisoner who knows that no one is waiting or refraining from doing anything just because he's not there, and that his own time is disappearing along with the world rushing by him, and that he can do nothing about it; it's a common experience among the dying too, only far more tragic.
When I left the living room, he disappeared from my view. His eyes, dark with hatred, had followed me right until then, and he may have kept his gaze fixed for a few seconds more on the door through which my gloved figure had departed. It would take him a while to get used to the idea of what he had to do. And then he would find it hard to believe that what had happened to him had really happened, but he had a useful reminder, or two; now he would feel on his hand and cheek what Luisa had felt with her black eye and its thousand colors and perhaps before that, according to her sister, the cut, also on her face. He would have many days ahead of him to observe the evolution of his scar, and to hope that the small bones in his hand were knitting together under the cast or whatever it is they use now, although an operation might also prove necessary. He would look at his good hand and think perhaps: 'I've been lucky. At least this hand is still intact.' And he would remember the metal barrel against his forehead and then he would think: 'I've been lucky. He could have shot me, I thought he was going to. But we would always prefer it to be the person beside us who dies, every man for himself. I was saved and here I am.'
I hurried down the stairs (''Do I dare?' and 'Do I dare?' Time to turn back and descend the stair…'), anxious to leave the building and get away from there, to take a taxi and return Miquelin's old pistol to him as soon as possible, having first replaced the three bullets I had removed from the magazine, and to say to him: A thousand thanks, Maestro, I'll never forget this. Don't worry, here it is, there's not a bullet missing. It hasn't even got my fingerprints on it. It's as if you had never lent it to me, as if it had never left your apartment.'
None of the taxis passing by were free, the sky was still cloudy, full of thunderless lightning about to strike but never doing so, and so I set off, walking briskly, following the same straight route back, along Calle Mayor to my hotel, still with my gloves on, I wanted to get away from that place. I felt the lightness one feels on getting what one wants and a little of the conceit I had experienced when I discovered that Rafita was afraid of me, that, quite unwittingly, I filled him with fear. Seeing yourself as dangerous had its good side. It made you feel more confident, more optimistic, stronger. It made you feel important and-how can I put it-in charge. And, this time, that small rush of vanity did not immediately repel me. However, I also had a sudden feeling of heaviness, a feeling that can be triggered by various combinations: alarm and haste, the sense of tedium experienced at the prospect of having to carry out some cold-blooded act of reprisal, or the invincible meekness one feels in a threatening situation. I did feel something of that tedium, as well as haste, but my act of reprisal was over and done with. Only when I reached Plaza de la Villa and saw again the statue of the Marques de Santa Cruz ('I was the scourge of the Turk at Lepanto, the Frenchman at Terceira, the Englishman o'er all the seas…' 'And in short, they were afraid') did I begin to think repeatedly, over and over: 'You can't go around beating people up, you can't go around killing them. Why can't you? You can't go around beating people up… Why can't one, according to you, go around beating people up and killing them? Why not? According to you.' And I remembered, too, what Tupra had said when we were at his house, after our session watching his store of videos: 'You've seen how much of it goes on, everywhere, and sometimes with an utter lack of concern. So explain to me why one can't.' And I gave myself the answer that I managed to give him just before we were interrupted by Beryl or whoever that woman was, the person at his side, his weak point just as Luisa was mine: 'Because then it would be impossible for anyone to live.' I had received no response to those words of mine, but by the time I reached Puerta del Sol, my thoughts had changed, and this was all they were repeating: 'What a lot of one-eyed, one-handed people there are in these old streets, but at least he's out of the picture. What a lot of cripples and what a lot of dead people there are in these old streets, but at least he's out of the picture. Yes, at least he's out of the picture and he'd better not try and climb back in.'
I didn't in fact think much about anything until I was in the plane on my way back to London, by which I mean that I postponed any form of ordered thought and, during the few days that remained of my stay in Madrid, restricted myself to feelings, sensations and intuitions. I devoted those days to the children and to taking them out and about (they were as insatiable as all children are nowadays, I suppose they've lost the habit of being at home, which feels to them like imprisonment, and require constant distractions in the exhausting outside world) and to visiting my father, who was getting very slowly, but perceptibly, worse.
The last time I went to see him, on the eve of my departure, he was, as he almost always was, sitting in his
