He remembered something, staring fixedly into Judith’s very wide eyes where the fire was reflected: in the doorway of a church in the Salamanca district, across from the Retiro, which he passed almost every morning, a blind man with a dog played the violin, always Schubert’s or Gounod’s “Ave Maria” or the “Hymn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” a cap at his feet into which devout women dropped their alms, watched over by the dog, which wagged its tail at the sound of the coins. One day the church was burned and all that remained were the walls. The blind man disappeared, and he thought he wouldn’t see him again, but one morning, before he reached the ruins of the church, he heard the pious scraping of the violin: the blind man at the door of the ruined church, as if he hadn’t noticed its destruction or didn’t care. Now between one “Ave Maria” and another, he attacked “The Internationale” with the same mixture of sweetness and dissonance, or the “Himno de Riego,” or “To the Barricades.” One day as he was walking down the street, approaching the blind man on the sidewalk across from the church, a speeding car pulled ahead of him, an old luxury car with an open driver’s seat, a silvery shine on the spokes of the tires, heads and rifles protruding from the windows. He tried to go on, walking naturally, even when the car went into reverse, the tires squealing on the paving stones, the engine forced by an inexperienced driver; the rifle barrel aimed at the spot where the blind man stood; a burst of gunfire and laughter, the dog blown to pieces, transformed into bloody tatters. With his violin in one hand and the bow in the other, the blind man trembled, understood nothing; he kneeled hesitantly and with extended fingers felt the puddle of blood. But I’m not telling you this to discourage you, he told her. You’ll do what you have to do. I’m telling you this so you’ll have an idea of how things are. It was true: he didn’t want to dissuade her; what excited him most about Judith at this moment was what he’d seen glowing in her that disconcerted him so much and frightened him at times when he first knew her, a beautiful woman, independent, confident, smart, like the solitary women he’d seen crossing the avenues or sitting in the cafés of Berlin in their short skirts and high heels, laughing out loud, smoking, removing a shred of tobacco from their red-painted lips. The strong will that separates her from him is what makes him love her more. Judith speaks now, and for the first time she smiles.
“I told my mother about you, in the hospital, a few days before she died. There was no way to deceive my mother. When I was writing less and my letters had a different tone, she knew that something was going on. Your letters were travel guides, she said. But this time she didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to give any sign of being concerned about me, afraid that any kind of censure would make me behave more foolishly. I talked to her about you, I even brought a photograph of you. I was showing it to her as if I’d just become engaged, as if you’d given me a ring. She put on her glasses to see you better. I’m glad to tell you this one is far more handsome than your former husband. He looks like a true gentleman to me, she said, and I felt proud and was annoyed with myself and turned red when she took off her glasses and asked what I knew she was going to ask, what she had guessed from the moment she saw the photo, or long before that, when my letters to her became infrequent. Is he married? But instead of scolding me when I told her yes, she moved her head and began to laugh but couldn’t; a cough came out instead, and she choked, so small in her nightdress, like a bird, just skin and bones, and her hands that had been so pretty and that she was so proud of as dry as a corpse’s. What’s the word in Spanish? Like sarmientos, like shoots on a vine. But it was clear she liked you, and I thought you would’ve liked her. A good man is hard to find, she said, and I was amazed she hadn’t been angry with me. A good man is hard to find but it can get even harder once you’ve found him. She asked me where you were, whether you planned to join me in America or was I thinking about going back to Spain, in spite of what the papers and the radio said was happening there. I’d been so afraid she’d find out about your existence, and now she only regretted not being able to meet you. So much fear and remorse for nothing.”