The Blind Man of Seville

streets of his mind. Sweat broke from his forehead. He wiped it away.

‘Your father died two years ago. Were you close to him?’

‘I thought I was close to him. I was his favourite. I … I … now I’m confused.’

He told her about the will, his father’s expressed wishes for the destruction of his studio and how he was disobeying him by reading the journals.

‘Do you think that strange?’ she asked. ‘Famous men normally want to leave something for posterity.’

‘There was a warning letter which told me it could be a painful journey.’

‘Then why are you doing this?’

Falcon hit a cul-de-sac in his mind, a flat white wall of panic. His silence deepened.

‘What did you say it was that so appalled you about the murder victim?’ she asked.

‘That he was being forced to see …’

‘Remember who you were looking for in the victim’s photographs?’

‘My mother.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

In the silence that followed Alicia stood, put the kettle on and made some herbal tea. She fumbled for some Chinese teacups. She poured the tea, took his wrist again.

‘Are you interested in photography?’ she asked.

‘I was until recently,’ said Falcon. ‘I even have my own dark room in the house. I like black-and-white photography. I like to develop my own pictures.’

‘How do you look at a photograph?’ she asked. ‘What do you see?’

‘I see a memory.’

He told her about the home movies he’d seen that afternoon, how they’d made him weep.

‘Did you go to the beach much as a child?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, in Tangier the beach was right there next to the town … I mean, in the town almost. We went every afternoon in summer. My brother and sister, my mother, the maid and I. Sometimes it would just be my mother and I.’

‘You and your mother.’

‘Are you asking me where my father was?’

She didn’t respond.

‘My father was working. He had a studio. It overlooked the beach. I went there sometimes. He used to watch over us though, I know that.’

‘Watch over you?’

‘He had a pair of binoculars. He let me use them sometimes. He helped me find them … my mother, Manuela and Paco on the beach. He said it was our secret. “It’s how I keep an eye on you.”’

‘Keeping an eye on you?’ she said.

‘You mean, it sounds as if he was spying on us,’ said Falcon. ‘That doesn’t make sense. Why should a man spy on his own family?’

‘In these family movies you saw today, did you ever see the father?’

‘No, he was behind the camera.’

She asked him why he was watching these movies and he explained the whole Raul Jimenez story. She listened, fascinated, only stopping him to change the tape halfway through.

‘But why are you watching these movies?’ she asked again, at the end of it all.

‘I’ve just told you,’ he said. ‘I’ve just spent nearly half an hour …’

He stopped and thought for long, endlessly complex minutes.

‘I told you that I see photographs as memory,’ he said. ‘I’m entranced by them because I have a problem with memory. I told you that we used to go to the beach as a family, but I didn’t really remember it. I didn’t see it. It’s not something inside me that I recall. I’ve invented it to fill the gaps. I know we did go to the beach, but I can’t remember it as if it’s my own. Am I making sense?’

‘Perfect sense.’

‘I want these movies and photographs to jog my memory,’ he said. ‘When I was talking to Jose Manuel Jimenez about his family tragedy he told me he had problems recalling his childhood. It made me try to remember my earliest memory and I panicked, because I knew it wasn’t there.’

‘Now you can answer my earlier question, about why you’re reading the journals,’ she said.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, as if something had clicked, ‘I’m disobeying him, because I think the journals might have the secrets to my memory.’

The tape clicked off. Distant city sounds filled the room. He waited for her to change the tape but she made no move.