Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream (20 page)

'You are silly,' I said, 'you really are,' and while I was saying it, we laughed together, and I felt something like
vanto.
'I'm not quite so stupid as to devote myself to the advertising world or, like everyone else, to writing novels. Although, who knows, more ridiculous things have happened, and I never rule anything out. But, honestly, you are so silly, even after all these years, you're just as silly as you always were.'

'All right, then, perhaps you could tell me why you're asking me this perfectly natural, perfectly normal question. A question, of course, that my colleagues at work ask me daily.' And she continued or we continued laughing that easy laugh, there is nothing like a bit of mutual leg-pulling, the sort that never offends and always gives pleasure, to show one's affection for someone, I mean that preliminary affection, when she and I were still together, and when, after a few such phrases, we
would touch and kiss and embrace, lying down and wide awake. But we wouldn't have wanted to do that now, if we had really been able to see each other. 'What's wrong? Has someone made a mess of your floor? Surely not.'

I finally stopped laughing, just for a moment. 'No, it's not my floor. It was Wheeler's. But it's too long a story to go into now.
Is
it possible, do you think? Could that happen?'
'Peter's floor? At his age? I'm going to have to tell him
off.
I can understand the temptation, but I really don't think it's right. Why doesn't Mrs Berry put a stop to it, why doesn't she chase the filthy creatures away?' And she gave another gust of laughter, she was clearly in a good mood. This both pleased and displeased me, it might be because of me or because of some other man who had, perhaps, just left, or was about to arrive, or whom she was getting ready to go out and meet, or else he was already there in my house, listening to the conversation and waiting impatiently for it to finish, listening only to her side of it, to Luisa's, not mine. I didn't believe this last possibility, she sounded as if there were no witnesses and as if she were free of constraints or threats. But who knows, no one ever does, it could be a foreigner who didn't understand the language, and when you're sure you won't be understood, you do speak as if there were no witnesses or even do so on purpose to make yourself appear attractive or to make someone fall in love with you, at least that is what you conceitedly hope, to show yourself as you supposedly are, to allow the person watching to admire the way you are with others, so nice and jolly, there is in it just a pinch of pretence and another of exhibitionism, I've done it myself, in times of weakness of course, and I was beginning to think that this was one of those times. Besides, it wasn't my house. These embryonic thoughts made my laughter abate and allowed me to insist, not in a serious tone of voice, but in one of obvious haste: 'All right, I'll warn them both that you're going to tell them off and that they're in big trouble. But is it possible, the drop of blood, I mean, the stain?'
She knew me well, she was probably the person who knew me best, she realised that it was time either to answer my eccentric question or to drop it altogether, to forget about it, that was easy enough, we were not as close as we used to be and she owed me nothing, not even a polite answer. At least, I didn't feel she was in my debt, and in these matters (whether one feels oneself to be a debtor or a creditor), it is what one feels that counts and is important, much more so than facts or money, or than favours and damage done.

'Yes, it could. But it would be a tiny amount, I should think, a small drop; the thing would have to be in its very early stages to catch a woman off guard like that.'

'In the region of a couple of inches, or one and a half? The stain I mean. Is that possible?'
This again provoked her laughter, although it wasn't quite as it had been before, when we had laughed together; it was a mere remnant, lacking in gusto.

'Inches?' she said, amused. 'What do you mean, "inches"? I would remind you that we don't have inches here, and we don't understand them either, so enough of your anglicised ways. Anyway, did you take a tape measure to it? Or was it just a rough guess? What is all this about? Have you turned detective? Have you joined Scotland Yard? What
has
got into you?' There was surprise in her voice now. In Spain, no one ever remembers that it is New Scotland Yard and has been for years.

'Sorry, I meant centimetres, four or five. In diameter. You get used to these English measurements here.'

'I know, I know. But I really haven't a clue, Jaime. I don't usually carry a tape measure around with me, and, besides, something like that has never happened to me. I'm too careful and I still wear my undergarments as you put it. I've never heard you call them that before, by the way: it's rather nice.' And she gave a snort of genuine laughter. It was only a snort, as if the expression really had struck her as funny, but she couldn't be bothered to laugh out loud.

 
'Could the woman
be
unaware of it?'
'Yes, she could, although it wouldn't be long before she did become aware of it, if she's normal, of course, and not crazy. Or drunk or something. But initially, yes, she might not be aware of it, I suppose. Tell me what this is all about, go on, if it isn't anything to do with ads for sanitary towels or a novel. You're starting to worry me.'

'In that case, she presumably wouldn't clean it up, then?' I asked. 'If she doesn't see it, there it stays.' And this was not a question but a statement.

The laughter had dissolved, vanished, ended. I had asked one too many questions, perhaps two, but certainly one, I had realised this before I even asked it, that last question. But it's hard not to try and ascertain whether or not something is possible, and the remoter the possibility, the harder it is.

'I've no idea, you presumably know just how trashy the person you're talking about is. But seriously, what is all this about? What's happened?' There was no anger in her voice, nor, I think, any jealousy, I'm not that naive. But there was a slight abruptness, perhaps she had grown tired of this game and was no longer playing.

'Wait, there's one more question I want to ask you, you probably know more about these things than I do, because I haven't got a clue. Have you heard of a beauty product, some sort of artificial implant or something, an injection apparently, although, frankly, I find that hard to believe, something called Botox?'
I wanted to know even if the information were purely anecdotal, and this way I could avoid answering her, she had asked me quite seriously ('But seriously,' she had said, and she did seem serious) and I wasn't going to tell her, not just because it was a long story and nothing to do with her, but because she would find the story disappointing and, above all, because once she knew about it, she would no longer feel intrigued. And she had seemed slightly intrigued, not quite worried, although that would have been still better, so that for a few days I would drift
into her thoughts now and then. Yes, I had aroused her curiosity and her impatience, that hadn't been my intention when I phoned, but that's how it had turned out. And suddenly she was interested in my life, just like in the old days. It had been brief, only a minute (there is always more to come, there is always a little more, one minute, the spear, one second, fever, another second, sleep and dreams, and a little more for the dance — spear, fever, my pain, words, sleep and dreams, and still a little more, for the last dance), she had wanted to share my researches, or my exploits, without even knowing what they were, just as she used to. Poor me or whoever I was at the time, it felt to me like a triumph, however brief. Or, rather, like a glory, a gift, a joy, a
vanto.
She would certainly drift into my thoughts for some days following that conversation, and not just now and then, but all the time. But I could not return home, or even think about it, and so, necessarily and fortunately, these days would be few. They would last only until the disappearance once more of my renewed realisation that Luisa was not going to say to me: 'Come, come back, I was so wrong about you before. Sit down here beside me, here's your pillow which now bears not a trace, somehow I just couldn't see you clearly before. Come here. Come with me. There's no one else here, come back, my ghost has gone, you can take his place and dismiss his flesh. He has been changed into nothing and his time no longer advances. What was never happened. You can, I suppose, stay here for ever.' Yes, that night would pass too, and she would still not have said these words.

I
first heard the word 'Botox' from De la Garza while we were waiting for Tupra in the spacious toilet for the disabled, where Tupra had ordered me to take the attaché; I had to escort him there and wait while Tupra restored Flavia to her husband, to take Rafita off to that empty room and keep him or hold him there until Tupra could rejoin us, he clearly preferred to take full charge now, he must think me stupid and slow and completely impractical in an emergency and perhaps, also, lacking in courage. It had not, I think, taken me more than five minutes to enter and leave the three toilets one after the other, but this doubtless seemed far too long to someone whose response to any setback was unyielding.

Once out of the Ladies' toilet, I went over to the busiest and most frenetic of the dance floors and saw Tupra or Reresby leaving his table and coming towards me, pushing his way nimbly through the throng of night-owls - he slipped past them without touching them, thus avoiding being soiled by their perfumed sweat - he would have had to leave Manoia on his own, something that would not have pleased Tupra at all, obliging him as it did to interrupt his persuasions and proposals, his gaze was alert, as alert as mine, and when we simultaneously caught sight of each other, I saw in his a glint of mingled annoyance and incomprehension ('Why haven't you brought them back? Why haven't you even found them yet? I asked you not to delay,' he said to me just with his pupils, which were sometimes almost as pale as his irises, or did he say it with his eyelashes, so thick and lustrous that they
immediately became the predominant feature in any situation where there was more darkness than light?); but there was no time to ponder this at length; we instantly joined eyes so that there were now four eyes doing the looking, and his were the first to spot them, Flavia and De la Garza, he pointed them out to me with one irritated finger, like someone pointing the barrel of a gun.

They were in the thick of the crowd on the fast dance floor, gyrating wildly, each seemingly in urgent need of an exorcist, and both scaring the life out of the people nearby, who doubtless saw them as foreign elements (she because of her age, he because he was dangerous), the music did not allow for any normal dance-hold or even for proximity, and so De la Garza was not subjected to torture by the erect cones or horizontal ice picks that he and I had both experienced already, indeed it was he - and this was what most alarmed Tupra and myself and obliged us to intervene without further delay or ceremony -who was now flailing Mrs Manoia, almost literally, no, literally, and the most surprising thing was that she evinced no pain -that, at least, was my impression, I've no idea what Tupra thought - from the unintended lashes that the prize prick kept dealing her as he danced, I mean, you had to be a complete prick to dance in that crazy way, only a short distance away from his partner, performing Travolta-like turns, presenting Flavia as often with the back of his neck as with his face, completely oblivious to the fact that, with all these fast, abrupt movements, the empty hairnet, with no ponytail, no long hair to fill it and no weight to constrain or hamper it, could easily turn into a whip, a lash, an unruly riding crop; if there had been some metal ornament on the end, it would have been just like the
bolas
a gaucho uses to catch cattle or the knut deployed by cruel Cossacks, but, fortunately, he had not adorned it with aglets or bobbles or bells or spikes, any of which would have made mincemeat of Flavia; I shuddered nonetheless, because such ornamental ideas could so easily have entered his vacant head, it would have been just like an idiot of his calibre,
disguised as he was as a black rapper, as a Napoleonic bullfighter, as the painter-cum-
majo
, Melendez, in his self-portrait in the Louvre, and as a fortune-telling gypsy with the obligatory hoop earring tinkling and bobbing (all these things at once, a total mishmash). 'I'd like to smash his face in,' this, at that instant, was my one brief, simple thought. Every time he spun round, the wretched hairnet would whip across whichever part of Flavia happened to be at the right height and within range, fortunately, most of the time, because De la Garza was taller, the scourge merely skimmed the top of her hair or, perhaps, hair extensions, but we had time to notice that, on a couple of occasions, when the attaché crouched down a little in his febrile whirlings, the hairnet cut across Mrs Manoia's face from ear to ear. It made me wince just to see it, which is why it was so incomprehensible that she should appear not to notice, regardless of however many layers of make-up there might be to deaden the impact of the lashes: I had a fleeting recollection of those boxers who can take an enormous amount of punishment, who do not even blink when they receive the first onslaught - a real rain of blows - although it all tends to be a question of whether their opponent is attacking - and, ultimately, opening up - a cheekbone or an eyebrow.

We did not wait for the ferocious piece of music to end. We immediately rushed onto the dance floor and, grabbing them firmly and carefully by the shoulders (Tupra grabbed Flavia and I grabbed the moron, we did not need to discuss who would grab whom), we brought them both to an abrupt halt. We saw the look of bewilderment on their faces and saw too - now that we were closer - that Mrs Manoia had a line across one cheek, a welt left by the rope, a weal left by the whip, it was not bleeding but it was, nevertheless, noticeable, like a scratch, it reminded me of Westerns I had seen, of the mark that remained on the neck of a hanged man (one who had been reprieved, of course; well, it wasn't perhaps that bad, the mark on her face would soon fade). Manoia wouldn't like it one bit
when he found out, I saw from the expression on Tupra's face that he was thinking the same thing and heard him click his tongue, she had not even noticed, perhaps she was too caught up in the excitement of the dance, I just couldn't understand it.