He came across him a short while later, purely by chance. When passing one of the bedroom doors on his way back to his attic, he heard snoring. He thought that whoever was inside must have seen him on the way back to his room: until just a few minutes ago, he had been almost next to the bedroom. Then he looked inside. Alvaro was sleeping face down on the bed, fully dressed, down to his shoes and tie. He gave the impression of having collapsed there.
Maria had killed his foreman without any feeling of rage. If you wanted to put it better, you could say he had done it in the memory of his rage, some hours after having experienced it, as if the rage itself had vanished, only to leave him in the hands of the new form of reason it had engendered. It was wholly premeditated. Not in detail, nor in method - those remained free to be improvised on the spur of the moment - but in its ultimate objective of killing the foreman. When the time came, he paced the outskirts of the work site, leaving and returning to it more than once: he took his time. At half-past six, or possibly a few minutes later, once he was certain he would find the man alone - the foreman always being the last to depart - he went in. He was feeling calm. He hadn't even bothered with an alibi. He had no thought of possible consequences. The foreman had: he looked into Maria's eyes and knew that this was the last man he would ever see.
The terror which followed this realization froze him to the spot. He didn't even have time to swallow the saliva risingin his throat. Maria thought thatAlvaro, even drunk and asleep - maybe just because of this -would probably offer more resistance than the foreman. In addition to which, this time he had no stone in his hand, as he'd had wielded on the previous occasion. He would be obliged to strangle him, or... To his right he caught sight of a poker. He estimated that two or three blows would be enough to smash his skull. He could visualize the entire scene: the first blow... the second, to the forehead... the blood... And suddenly he felt overwhelmed with tiredness, as if he'd already executed the deed.
He left the room and slowly crossed the dark landing, heading in the direction of the staircase. Halfway over he heard a noise. He turned to look. One window pane, which had swung itself shut, was swinging slowly open again... It was the wind, nothing but the wind. Even so, he hastened his pace.
9
Spring only really arrived in mid-November. Outside - he could observe it in the garden or on the street - it had begun earlier, before you could get a sense of it inside the house. The attic and the third floor stayed damp and dark, but all the same the temperature had risen in there by at least a degree a day in recent weeks, until finally it seemed on a par with that outside.
Maria had come to feel more comfortable and at ease: he slept somewhat easier, food seemed to taste better, he allowed himself longer in the shower... Even his daily constitutionals around the house lasted longer. This was helped by the fact that his confidence had also improved: neither Alvaro nor the police had reappeared, Senor and Senora Blinder were spending more and more daylight hours away from the house, and Maria's domination of its second and third floors was nearly complete, in every sense. For some time now, he'd been able to tell the footsteps of the house's inhabitants apart; now he'd learned to distinguish the direction they were heading in, their degree of haste, even what each person had in mind as they went on their way. He knew their routines, their caprices, he had the measure of their breathing and differentiated the manner in which they opened and closed doors - and he could tell who had just deposited their glass on the table... all learned as a blind man would, since he had never - or almost never - seen any of them.
Two or three times he had gone into the Blinders' bedroom, so at least he'd obtained a physical portrait and an intellectual profile of the two of them. He had investigated their wardrobes, and always noted the new copy of Reader's Digest on Senor Blinder's bedside table, and the daily paper on the Senora's, invariably with a glass of whisky standing on it. Rita Blinder drank in bed, and no doubt in all kinds of other quiet places, like her son. And finally he discovered that a man had started phoning Rosa.
This discovery coincided with another, which he made through his passion for intercepting all forms of communication with Rosa. The very thought of Rosa kissing another man wounded him deeply. In a fit of jealousy, one afternoon when Rosa had just received one of these calls, Maria raced up the staircase and picked up the telephone on the third floor. But he could only hear the dial tone through it. He headed downstairs again at full speed. Rosa was still talking. That meant the house had to have two phone lines.
At that moment, he wasn't particularly bothered with following Rosa's conversation, with its suggestive giggles in the background. His only thought was that he must have made an extraordinary discovery. "I've got a phone!" he told himself. It was so absurd it was emotionally moving. He could speak to Rosa, he could ring and talk to her without her suspecting he was no more than a few yards away.
He went back up to the third floor, picked up the telephone directory and searched for a phone number under the name Blinder. There were seven.
He began with the first. He dialled the number, and while the phone rang at the other end, he realized he hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to say. He cut the line. He had let himself be carried away on an impulse, but - wasn't it perhaps something he should think about? He made an effort and thought.
He felt a dizziness throughout his body. A dizziness that didn't - as usually happened - begin in his head. Then he picked up the handset again and resumed dialling the first number on the list.
Engaged.
He hung up and redialled.
Still engaged. He couldn't believe it. He was no more than two steps away from his lover and all he got was: engaged!
The line stayed engaged for at least another half-hour or more. He was inclined to keep trying (after all, he had all the time in the world: there had never been a man more absorbed in what he was doing and with so much time to be doing it), but he heard the sound of the street door opening, and the voices of Senor and Senora Blinder as they came inside, arguing. So he put away the directory and the handset (it was a free-standing one, a half-moon of transparent plastic, with all the internal chips and cables exposed, some apparatus which seemed to have been dropped there from another planet) and took it to his room with him.
He closed the door and resumed dialling once more.
This time the phone rang.
(Brilliant.)
The phone rang seven times before it was picked up, and a woman's voice spoke:
"Hello?..."
Maria cut it short and hung up.
It hadn't sounded like Rosa's voice. "OK," he said to himself, "I don't even know if I'm really calling home or not." After all, it might not have been "his" Blinders' home number. Had he been lucky enough to get it right first time, the only way to be sure was to ask for Rosa by name, and to be allowed to speak to her. So he redialled yet again.
While the phone was ringing, he asked himself what on earth he'd say if Senora Blinder happened to answer...
This time the woman picked it up at the second ring, before he'd had a chance to gather his thoughts.
"Good afternoon," he said, faltering. "Please may I speak to Rosa?"
"Rosa who?"
He put the receiver down.
It wasn't her.
He felt relieved that it was the wrong number, so irrationally and profoundly relieved that he frantically dialled the next number, as though he'd suddenly realized that his relationship with this telephone would be sufficient once and for all to modify his entire genetic make-up.
Another woman responded this time.
"Good afternoon. Please may I speak to Rosa?"
"Who is it?"
"A friend... one of Rosa's friends. Is she in?"
"There's nobody called Rosa here..."
He hung up again.
Then he dialled the next number.
"Good afternoon. Is Rosa there?"
"You've got the wrong number." Yet another woman.
> It seemed to him as if that night there had to be some reason why all the Blinders in town were next to their telephones. So he went on to the next number listed.
As the phone rang, he suddenly felt as if he were immersed in a world of irrationality and chance. He had crossed his legs, as he always used to before settling himself in at home in order to listen to the lottery results on the radio. Even now, he could feel the palpitations...
"Hello?"
Yet another woman on the line.
"Hello?" she repeated.
Maria paused. It was her! It was Rosa!
Impatiently, Rosa hung up.
Maria dialled the number again.
He dialled with his right index finger, carefully holding the telephone steady. But his left hand (resting on the telephone directory, with its index finger underlining the correct number) was trembling.
"Hello?" enquired Rosa.
"Rosa?" enquired Maria.
"Yes, that's me. Who is it?"
Rosa sounded indifferent, formal, as if, having spoken to "the man who called her", any other voice that didn't belong to "him" would necessarily be for the Blinders, and that he - and the rest of the world - were something in which she didn't have the remotest interest.
Maria could sense it. He had been with Rosa on other occasions when someone rang, requesting to speak to one of the Blinders. He knew the timbre, the form, the waves of indifference her voice could transmit, all of which contrasted with the urgency which formerly only he could elicit from her. It was no longer jealousy he was experiencing but pain. The pain of exclusion.
"It's Maria," he said in a tone of voice which belonged to a man cast out of the world, with nothing but a coin in one hand, and a telephone in the other.
"Who?" she asked.
"It's Maria, Rosa. It's me. How are you? Hello? Rosa, are you there?"
"Maria?"
"Yes, me. What's up?"
"Maria?"
"Yes..."
"Maria, is it you?"
"Yes, yes..."
"Maria, good God, swear that it's really you..."
Maria bunched his fingertips into the form of a cross and kissed them. He was feeling emotional.
"Swear it to me," she repeated.
"I swear it."
A pause.
"Maria..."
"I surprised you..."
"Where have you been? Whatever happened to you?"
"Oh, well, it's just that..." he gesticulated as if to say "too long to explain".
"I can't believe it," exclaimed Rosa, and Maria could hear the sound of her crying.
"I'm sorry not to have called you before but..."
A sob.
"Rosa, look, things turned out in such a way that..."
Another sob.
Silence.
Then Rosa said:
"What happened?"
"It's a long story..."
"Tell me."
"I always meant to tell you... you understand me. I love you. I've never forgotten."
"Are you at home?"
"Rosa..."
"Where are you? Why are you talking in such a low voice?"
"I can't tell you that..."
"Are you well? What happened? They say you killed the foreman at your old workplace..."
"No."
"Then why do they say so? What happened to you, my darling?"
"How beautiful that you use those words to me, `my darling'."
"They just slipped out..."
"I wish they could slip out like that all the time."
"They do slip out, but since I've heard nothing further from you..."
"You're going out with someone else?"
"No! Wherever did you get that idea from?"
'Just asking..."
"That's rubbish. I'm on my own, as before. And you? When are you going to come round? Why did you disappear like that?"
"That's what I'm about to tell you..."
"So it's all a lie, everything they say about you?"
"About killing that guy?"
"Yes..."
"Of course it is."
"Where are you, Maria?"
"I'm going to have to hang up, Rosa, I'm using someone else's phone..."
"Is that why you're talking so quietly?"
"Yes. And you? Are you sure there's no one else in your life?"
"You already asked me about that. The answer's still no."
"Do you think of me?"
"All the time."
"Me too."
"Wait - don't hang up!"
"How did you know I was about to hang up?11
"I know you, Maria. Tell me something... I don't know anything about you..."
"I've got to go."
"No, wait!"
"I'll call you back again tomorrow."
"Don't hang up!"
"Forgive me, but..."
"Wait!"
"I love you."
"Maria!"
"'Bye, my darling, I'll call you tomorrow. It's been wonderful talking to you," said Maria, and hung up.
He could feel his heart pounding throughout his body.
He waited a couple more minutes in order to regain control of himself then went downstairs to replace the telephone. Afterwards, back in his room again, he lay flat on his back on his bed and mentally reviewed everything they had said to each other. All of a sudden he heard a sound away to his right. He turned his head in the direction of the wardrobe and paused a few moments.
"I rang her," he told the rat. And he smiled.
10
The second floor was where he spent most of his time, given its wealth of available facilities. He got into the habit of sitting on the sofa completely naked, legs stretched out in front of him and ankles resting on the coffee table, reflecting on his options of getting out of the house without going to prison. He always thought in terms of "options", in the plural, even though he never got as far as encountering so much as a single one. There was nowhere for him to go. In any case, he was considerably better off here than in his own home, even assuming he'd had a home to call his own. And he no longer thought in terms like "if I were free" with bitterness, but with rejoicing: the street signified his prison sentence. Or that was how he put it to himself. On the other hand, what he missed from the outside world, though unable to approach it, was available to him there indoors. All except for one thing: cigarettes.
He had smoked a pack of twenty a day for over twenty years, and all of a sudden... The funny thing was that he did not reallyfeel like smoking: itwas the image of himself smoking, the performance of this habit, that never gave out. He had thought of leaving the "vice" behind him a thousand times, but he had never got beyond thinking of it; he was that sure of the impossibility of giving up, it was doomed from the start.
So what on earth could be the point of suffering all those symptoms of abstinence? Now, obliged not to smoke, it suddenly occurred to him that nothing had followed from his giving up: he'd suffered no particular anxieties or nervous attacks, no excessive perspiration. Neither had he experienced any particular benefit: absolutely no change had resulted in his energy levels, his senses of taste or smell, all was precisely the same as it was before. For over twenty years he had been the victim of a fictitious addiction.
How?
He took his feet off the cane coffee table, and folded his arms thoughtfully.
What had he done in his life?
His mother had gone off with another man. Almost at once, his father brought another woman home. Maria loathed her. So did his father, but he couldn't stand to live alone. Maria left. He travelled as far as Capilla del Senor and installed himself in a tiny room at the back of a house belonging to his uncle and aunt. They were very distant relatives, so he was obliged to pay rent. A symbolic amount. Maria picked up any old full-time job, and in the rare hours when he had nothing to do, he wandered about alone, mostly because his uncle was a homosexual and kept hitting on him. Why had he never walked out? That's where symbo
lism came into it: the rent was so low that Maria preferred to put up with the uncle. The truth of it was that years had passed without him exchanging a word with anyone, apart from insults and greetings. He couldn't recall having sustained even half a conversation with anyone in his entire life. He communicated by looks with his one and only friend. He never watched television: the TV was in the living room, with his uncle forever planted in front of it. He read. He had got himself enrolled in the library belonging to the Volunteer Fire Brigade, and took out a novel a week, selecting those with the best covers, or with the most promising titles. On the whole he proved lucky. But despite the fact he was what people generally called "a good-looking lad", nothing ever went right for him where women were concerned. He liked them only until they opened their mouths. In contrast, they liked him until they realized that he was never going to open his. He was too sullen and serious, too introverted. He found whores easier to deal with. All of them, with the exception of the kindly ones who didn't charge him to sleep with them, and who then had too much to say for themselves.
So there he was, without family, conversation, friends, love or television. What on earth, then, had he done with his life? He didn't know. But this was one question: it was only when he had asked himself a great number, all together or one after another, piling them up on top of each other, that he found the answer. Rosa.
It was the best thing that had happened to him, and it was instantaneous: a revolution at first sight. Rosa had attracted him like a magnet. He remembered that afternoon at the exit to the Disco supermarket, how as he crossed the street to their meeting, he felt himself literally drawn towards her. He crossed the street like a zombie, his mind a blank, without the least idea of what he was going to say. Fortunately it had all gone well, arguably too well: they talked briefly about Shakira and the Disco supermarket, and from that moment on, Maria was a new man, cheerful, chatty and confident. He no longer had to eat dirt in the way he used to.
Sometimes he'd wake in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was... He didn't know where the window was, nor the door... He'd go back to sleep only when he "understood" he was asleep. When morning rose, he'd feel dislocated all over again. The room and each one of his petty daily indicators, the handle on his little coffee pot, the direction of his shadow, the way his chair was facing, every single thing pointed towards her...
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