She put her cigarette to her lips and started looking for her lighter.
“Allow me,” she heard a voice say behind her. Startled, she stepped aside and spun round with her fists raised.
“Leave me alone!” she yelled at the man who had spoken to her, knocking the match out of his hand. The match fell to the ground, but it didn’t go out.
“There’s no need to be like that,” said the man with a smile that seemed to well up from the very centre of his eyes. He was about her age and was wearing a well-cut brown suit with a red tie. He looked like a singer of romantic ballads.
“I said ‘Leave me alone’,” she said again, removing the cigarette from her lips.
“Can’t we talk?” said the man, still smiling. He sounded very self-assured.
Panic suddenly gripped her. It was as if something — like a ball of cotton wool soaked in alcohol — had started to burn inside her, as if the stranger’s match had set fire to all the fear that had accumulated there over those past few years; it was a cold fire, though, paralysing. While she was running for the bus, her heart began beating faster, and her memory repeated to her, again and again, thudding in her head, the lines that a colleague in the same organization had written after he had escaped from prison:
The mind of an ex-prisoner
Always returns to prison.
In the street, he passes judges, prosecutors and lawyers,
and the police, though they don’t know him,
look at him more than at anyone else,
because his step is not calm or assured,
because his step is far too assured.
Inside him lives
a man condemned for life.
Like the man in the poem, she too felt observed, scrutinized, persecuted, and she had the feeling that the eyes watching her were wrapping her in a sticky web that stifled her and trammelled her every movement. But as soon as she joined the queue of people getting on the bus, she faced up to her feelings of panic and — after retrieving the cigarette from her pocket and lighting it — managed to get her mind free from the weight of fear, to begin to analyse what was going on around her. What was really going on? Was she being observed? Was anyone actually looking at her? No, she had no reason to think that. There was no sign that she was being watched. The passengers nearest her were chatting in groups or pairs, and the taxi drivers parked nearby were listening to the radio or reading the newspaper. And what about the constant flow of people coming out of the station? And those who were sitting on the benches outside? No, they were all looking somewhere else, no one was paying her the slightest attention. And the man in the red tie? She didn’t have to worry about that either. He hadn’t followed her. He was nowhere to be seen.
At the door of the bus, a hostess was checking the passengers’ tickets. The two drivers, who were still in the same mood they had been in an hour before, were trying to joke with her.
“You should get your hair cut short like this young lady,” said one of them, winking at her.
“You’re in seat thirty-two. Upstairs, almost directly above this door,” said the hostess, frowning. She seemed fed up with the drivers’ rudeness.
“Could I stay downstairs? I’m smoking,” she said, showing her the cigarette. And she craned her neck and looked inside, where she saw a tiny counter with a coffee machine, and a sort of lounge area.
“Smoking’s bad for you,” said one of the drivers, the most talkative one.
“You can’t come downstairs until the bus has set off. Just go to your seat, please.”
The hostess’ voice was as jarring to her as the attitude of the two drivers. The hostess had spoken to her in the severe tones of a prison warder.
“We’ll put your suitcase away for you,” said the talkative driver, holding out his hand.
“Can’t I keep it with me? I want to look at some of the books I’ve got in there during the journey. Besides, it’s not very big,” she said, trying to be nice.
“If that’s what you want. I never argue with a woman. Well, only with my wife,” replied the driver, and he and his colleague burst out laughing.
A nun came running up from the far side of the bus depot; she was out of breath. She was about sixty and had come on ahead of her much older companion, who was walking towards them, taking short steps.
“Is this the bus to Bilbao?” the first nun asked the drivers.
“Have you got tickets?” asked one of the drivers, glancing over at the other nun who had not yet arrived.
“No,” said the nun. She was a tall woman, with a rather Nordic air about her. She had green eyes.
“Well, you’d better buy them as soon as possible. You’d better run over to the ticket office. We’re just about to leave.”
“Running’s very good for the health,” added his colleague.
The nun’s green eyes fixed on those of the second driver. At first, the man held her gaze, then lowered his eyes and mumbled an apology.
“Where is the ticket office?” asked the nun coldly, at the same time gesturing to her companion to stop where she was and wait.
“Go into the station through gate number seven and the office is right there,” she told the nun, before the drivers or the hostess could say anything. Then she stubbed out her cigarette on the ground with her foot and got on the bus.
“I’ve got a great film for the video. Those two little nuns will just love it,” said the driver as she was going up the steps. He sounded vengeful. He was feeling uncomfortable because, moments before, he had allowed himself to be intimidated by the nun.
Through the bus window, above the roofs crammed with aerials, the sky — the dirty sheet — had begun its transformation. Across one section of it there were five or six blue parallel lines, as if it really were a sheet and someone had been slashing at it with a knife. Weren’t mattresses usually blue? Because what was up there was also blue. What’s more — she closed her eyes when she noticed this — the clouds near those blue lines were tinged with red, the colour of a bloodstain that someone had tried and failed to wash out.
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”
In her memory she could only see certain parts of the body of the man asking her that question, his white hands, his hairy belly, his thick neck. They were in the cheap hotel room where they had spent the night; the man was on the bed and she was standing beside the wardrobe, getting dressed.
Yes, she said, she was.
“Well, you can forget that. I had too much to drink last night and I wasn’t on form. I’m fine now though. Come back to bed. Now.”
The man was scrutinizing her. His voice had a metallic edge to it.
“Now, do you hear! I don’t like having to argue with whores!”
“There’s no need to shout. Just give me time to light a cigarette.”
She didn’t know what the filter of a cigarette was made of, but, thanks to a self-defence course she had taken when she was a student, she did know that if you lit it and worked it into a point with your fingers it became a sharp weapon, like a bradawl made of black glass.
She retrieved her packet of cigarettes and took one out. They were Havanos, the only kind she could find in the dive where they had drunk their last beer the night before.
“You’ve lit the wrong end! I can smell it from here!” said the man, lying down on the bed.
“You’re right,” she replied while she sharpened the point. She burned her fingers slightly, but she felt no pain.
After a few seconds, she felt the base of the filter. The material had become completely crystallized. It now formed a sharp point. Holding the weapon between her index finger and her thumb, she hurled herself on the bed.