“I swear!”
“When did you see it?”
“Just now, about a quarter of an hour ago. The time it took me to walk here.”
“Is that so?” Once again she looks thoughtful but unperturbed, with a faint smile playing across her face. She straightens another pleat on her skirt. “That’s why you came, because you think there’s a burglar in our flat?”
“Well, let’s see, I knew you two were here, didn’t I? I saw you leave home, you and your mother … What do you expect me to think, if I see a light and there’s nobody in?”
“Mama must have forgotten to switch it off.”
Ringo takes off his scarf, fetches a chair, and sits down beside her.
“Are you sure? Someone could have got in by the balcony, grabbing the rail … the Easter palm has come loose, it’s about to fall off.”
“It is?”
“He might have come back, and if he doesn’t have a key …”
“Who might have come back?”
“That man with the limp, your mother’s friend.”
“Don’t talk to me about him! I wish he were dead!”
“Well, there’s a light on in the dining-room, Violeta, I swear. We have to warn your mother. Where is she?”
“Where do you think? At the bar.” She looks at him maliciously. “I get it. You want Mama to see you, don’t you? So that she’ll know you’ve come … even if it’s only with the excuse that you’ve seen a burglar.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Because she made you promise you’d come. Do you think I didn’t know? I know all the tricks my mother gets up to.”
“What are you saying? I came because I wanted to. Nobody makes me do anything. This afternoon I intended to go to the Verdi cinema, so you see … They’re showing “The Nine-fingered Beast”, have you seen it? It’s about a pianist who has his finger cut off, and he becomes a murderer to avenge himself, but he’s still the greatest pianist in the world … He’s Peter Lorre. I was about to buy the ticket when I said to myself, this isn’t right, nano, you ought to go and warn Violeta and her mother there’s somebody in their flat.”
“You don’t say. Alright, so now you’ve warned us. But tell me this: why did you promise my mother you’d come and dance with me, when as far as I know you don’t even like dancing?”
There is no way he is going to tell her the reason. He’s not even sure of it himself. Violeta smiles mockingly and adds:
“Don’t worry, you idiot. You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to.”
“Of course I do. I came because of what I told you,” he insists, scrutinising her unconvinced profile, while the orchestra launches into a mambo that produces an explosion of joy and feminine squeals on the dance floor. “Aren’t you worried that a stranger has sneaked into your flat?”
Violeta turns slowly and looks him in the eye.
“Do you really not know?”
“Know what?”
“Have you really not been told?” she asks witheringly, staring at him intently, as though trying to hypnotise him. “Really and truly, you know nothing? I can’t believe it …”
“I’m telling you again, I saw a light on in your flat! Cross my heart and hope to die!”
“Alright, so there was a light. Now tell me something … What’s your father up to? What news do you have of him?”
“My father’s in France,” he says rapidly. “What’s that got to do …?”
“Well actually, it’s got a lot to do with it. If I told you he might have switched that light on, would you believe me? He has a key to the flat. Mama gave it him, and recently he’s met your mother there more than once, always after dark. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You’re so smart.” She uncrosses her legs, then crosses them again brusquely and conclusively, and for a moment the suggestiveness of her gesture is more powerful than his poorly concealed surprise at what he has just heard. He immediately reacts as if he has been caught out, and shifts his gaze to the hands on her lap. Her long, delicate fingers, with their deliberate, enveloping movements, are fiddling with her purse. “Why did they meet in my house and in secret? I’ve no idea. Ask your mother.”
“My father’s in France, I tell you. Most likely with your uncle. And I know why …”
“I don’t want you to explain anything,” Violeta interrupts him, “I don’t want to know anything more. Thank God it was only a few days, and I hardly even noticed. He was shut up in his room the whole time and only came out at night, so don’t ask me anything, because I know nothing.”
Her eyelids flutter disagreeably: they are heavy, with thick, reddish lashes. Ringo meanwhile, still taken aback by what he has just heard, is thinking about the light on the balcony. So from time to time the Rat-catcher is to be seen around here … At any rate what matters now is that the light he saw — although he is starting to wonder whether he really did see it — is the justification for him being here, and not his blasted uneasy conscience. What on earth does anything else matter to me? Then, on the strength of a sudden impulse, he reveals an intimate wish of his, a fantasy he has been elaborating.
“One day I’m going to France. One day my father will send for my mother and me, and we’ll leave this arsehole of the world for good.”
Violeta stares at him in disbelief.
“You will? That’s good. And when is this going to happen?”
“I don’t know, it depends on a lot of things.” He lowers his voice, and adds mysteriously: “We’ll have to wait and see, and above all not go round saying anything about it, alright? Be very careful. Well anyway, since I’m here …”
Since he has come, he means to say, since he has kept his promise and she is alone and so obviously available, with her hard little breasts beneath her blouse and her apple-like knees, seated so upright on her chair and nodding her head to the music …
“Do you want to dance?”
“Ugh! I’m tired. Besides, you don’t like dancing.”
“That depends.”
He’s taken off his scarf, and doesn’t know what to do with it. After the mambo, the crooner conducts the first bars of a slow tune and tilts his head at the microphone, singing in a low, syrupy voice.
“The singer is crap,” says Ringo.
“He’s very handsome.”
“He’s got the face of a goat.”
“Well I like him.”
“And the pianist plays with a pole stuck up his arse, he thinks he’s José Iturbí or someone … and just look at the drummer. This orchestra is useless.”
“It’s the best. Last month they were playing at the Salón Cibeles.”
They fall silent for a while, watching the couples slowly gyrating round the edge of the dance floor. A boy with a huge conk and a tightly combed zeppelin head plants himself in front of Violeta, hands in pockets, and asks her to dance. He’s even uglier than the one before, thinks Ringo. She says no, and the boy turns round and walks off dejectedly. Violeta takes Ringo’s scarf from him and puts it on the back of the chair.
“Your scarf smells really nice,” she says. “Roast coffee, isn’t it?”
Ringo shrugs. The scarf is a perfumed reminder of his secret nights. Less than twelve hours ago it was hanging from a hook in a corner of Señor Huguet’s shed while he turned the handle by the fire. But he doesn’t want to talk about the fire or those nights with Violeta.
“Come on, let’s go,” says Violeta, standing up. “Mama ought to see you’ve come. She’s in the bar. Come on, what are you waiting for?”
“No, dammit, that’s not why I came!”
“It isn’t?”
“No. But you … can I tell you something? You shouldn’t leave your mother on her own, least of all in the bar. You shouldn’t do that.”
Applause for the orchestra. Violeta stares at him, then drops into her seat and sighs.