P.: Oh, may God forgive me, I should have listened harder. I should have listened to my father. I should never have let your icy hands near me. You are a brute. You are the perfect monster. It chilled me to my bones to see you with the children today, because that is you, that is what …
Me: What are you talking about, Pilar?
P.: I will say it to your face if you wish.
Me: I do wish it.
P.: You murdered Tariq Chefchaouni.
Me: Who?
Her contempt is almost too massive for the room.
P.: You know I’m not a fool. When you gave me that ring, when you gave me his bone sculpture … didn’t you think that I would know precisely what you were doing? It didn’t stop me though, Francisco. It would never have stopped me from enjoying the true passion of a man with more genius in a single hair than you have in your entire, vacated soul.
The words come down on me like cudgels, each one reaching some vital organ or crucial joint.
P.: So tell me, Francisco, why did you kill him? I can’t believe that it was because he was … fucking me. Or was it? Was it because he was pleasuring your wife while you played games with that rich whore, or sodomized young men with your cronies from the Bar La Mar Chica? Was that it? When did we last make love? Did we ever?
Me: You’re taking this too far, Pilar.
P.: I’m taking this too far for you, am I? This is the mother of your children speaking. She is telling you what you are. You are unfaithful. You are a sodomite. Deny it!
Me: You don’t speak to me like this.
P.: I do. I am telling you, Francisco. It’s all going to come out. Everything … right down to the fact that you were even off sodomizing young men on our wedding night with that revolting character … I can’t bear to say his name.
Me: Who told you that?
P.: I hear everything. It all comes back to me. I know it all, Francisco. I even know why you married me, you cold-hearted brute.
Me: Why did I marry you?
P.: Because you thought that I could tap your genius, that with me it would flow. But genius, Francisco, is God-given. You were offered it. You caught a glimpse of it. You took it. And what did you do with it? You sold it. And that’s why God never came back to you. He recognized you for the puta that you are.
Me: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
P.: No, no, no que no! This is the end, Francisco Falcon. You will hear it all. You were given sight. You were given a special sight. You were allowed to see into the nature of things and you treated it like coin. When I came back to you, oh, you were so pathetic. You were so grateful. Your muse had returned. And you asked to look again but, because of the man that you are, you couldn’t see inside. You saw only the surface. And anybody can paint surface. They whitewash the Medina every day.
Me: I won’t stand for this.
P.: Stay seated then. But admit it to yourself, even if you can’t to me, that the reason you murdered Tariq Chefchaouni and destroyed his work …
Me: Shut up, Pilar!
P.: … was that he, some poor Arab boy from the Rif, was succeeding where you had failed. He went quite mad with rage when he discovered that his father had sold his bone sculpture. He only relented when he knew that I had it. His work was not for sale. It was between him and his Creator. That was his principle. That was his morality. You do not sell your sight to the highest bidder.
I get to my feet on shaky legs. All my strength is pouring into some central rage. I am like a volcano preparing to erupt. I have to support myself on the table with both hands to contain myself. She leans across to me so that our faces are close and I can see the sharp, hard whiteness of her teeth. Her eyes are roaring at me, burning green flames.
Me: So what was his sculpture doing in a shop window?
P.: None of us are without vanity, only a few are totally consumed by it.
I hit her. I lash her with the back of my hand across her face. It is a terrible blow, which sends her flying across the room so that she collides with the wall and drops like a befuddled beetle. She crawls directionless to the corner and sits there, retrieving her senses. The bones in my hand crackle. I feel completely murderous and savage, but something holds me back. P. pushes herself up off the floor, bracing herself against the whitewash wall, which crumbles in flakes. She is blinking, shaking her head. She is determined.
P.: I have one thing more for that ravening beast in your head to feed on. You should know that you have murdered the father of my last child and you will never be forgiven.
She leaves the room. My enraged brain has trouble deciphering the complex words, whose every letter seems as sharp as an ‘X’, a string of them, that wrap themselves around my chest like barbed wire pulled tight. I have to sit. I am in a paroxysm of agony. My heart seems to have contracted, gone into cramp. Through the stupefying howl in my head I hear her heels retreating down the terracotta-tiled corridors. A door shuts. A lock clicks. I want to call her back to save me. But I am alone with something terrible going on inside me, which I am not sure my ribcage can contain. I screw my eyes into a prolonged wince of agony. I sob and on the back of it comes a stentorian belch which fills the room with the stink of rancid chorizo. The relief is immediate. Death
