Turandot when Liu's famous pre-funeral arias moved me so much that I was filled by a sense of invincible love whose object was definitely not Berta, although neither was it anyone else, certainly not the singer playing the part of the enamoured, selfless slave (an excellent soprano, but a kind of German barrel, who has the unfortunate habit of spitting all over her fellow performers when she sings and whose name I will not give here because she is still working; indeed, nowadays she is, like me, a rising star). I don't feel excited about Berta; when I get home, I don't feel particularly glad to see her, nor do I feel any immediate need or desire to go to bed with her, I prefer to wait a few days, to watch a lot of television, to calm myself down, to get used to being back again and accustomed to a sedentary rhythm that doesn't really exist, going out to buy the bread or to the newsstand, going to see Barcelona play at home. The fact is that I find it more exciting to have a luxury call girl come up to my luxury room during some of the lonelier nights of my musical travels. But that doesn't make me unhappy, I mean the lack of excitement I feel about Berta. Relationships with other people have not, up until now, occupied an important place in my existence, perhaps because I have been too busy with the progress of my career, with my indispensable daily exercises, with perfecting my art and lavishing care on my voice, with my studies, the constant practicing and, yes, more studying. Now that I am beginning to reap the rewards and having to struggle less, I see that I have found my place in the wheel and that it will just be a question of that wheel continuing to turn as it should— with me on board — for glory and the plum roles (Calaf, Otello) to come my way. I have had a few love affairs, but none of them was very significant and none of them wrought any great changes in me. Berta is actually perfect. Organized, intelligent, discreet, affectionate and cheerful, mad about music, patient with my rehearsals, and most people find her very attractive, although for some time now (more or less since we began living together) I have not found her so (I am more attracted to the prostitutes whom, as I said, I occasionally summon, out of loneliness, curiosity or boredom). She is not odd or melancholy, like Natalia Manur, whom I nevertheless want to go on seeing every day. Why do I want to go on seeing her every day? Perhaps because I want to be like Liu or like Otello, because, at this particular moment in my history or pre-past or life, I need to try to destroy myself or to destroy someone else. Liu is a Chinese slave who is tortured and later kills herself with a dagger in order to save the life of Calaf, whom she loves and whose name the cruel Princess Turandot tries to drag out of her so that she, Turandot, will not have to marry him and can have him executed at dawn, as she has her previous suitors. Liu is a condemned woman, and that is how she sees herself from the start. Whatever option she chooses will bring her unhappiness. Either she dies and her beloved Calaf lives to marry Turandot, or else she confesses his name and lives, but then Calaf will die with the night. In neither case will her love be consummated, so it is a matter of choosing between one happiness (that of the beloved) and no happiness, or perhaps even between two happinesses and no happiness if we accept the idea that dying for the beloved can for the lover be a perfect form of happiness. Perhaps that is why for Liu the decision is clear. Otello's story is even better known. Among his options, he does not even consider anyone else's happiness, unless it were, in an impossible Otello, that of the supposed lovers, Desdemona and Cassio. It is unthinkable, Otello stepping aside to bring about the happiness of his wife and the man with whom, according to Iago, she has been unfaithful. If Otello had lacked, as Liu did, the notion of justice. . (But the lack of that notion only became acceptable in our century.) Berta is perfect for my career and for my general well-being, but not only do I want to go on seeing Natalia Manur every day, tonight, I thought then, I very much want to go to bed with her, as much as I very much do not want to go to bed with Berta ever again. It was, like nearly every night during that stay in Madrid, a spring night. I had the balcony doors open and I could hear, from outside, the murmur of cars and the occasional abrupt, angry, drunken voice. I could hear noises from inside too, keys opening the doors to other rooms, fragments of foreign conversations in the corridors, a waiter with a tray or with a trolley, knocking on a door; at one point, I heard the climax of a loud argument and something crashing into the wall of the room next to mine, it sounded like an ashtray thrown by a woman at a man, rather than by a man at a woman (he said, in Spanish with a Cuban or possibly a Canary Islands accent: "Well, if you didn't want to know, you know now!" and then she replied: "I'll show you, you bastard!" and then came the bang). Natalia and Manur would never argue like that, it wasn't their style, given their apparent sterility and coldness. Would I become the cause of an argument one day, soon, tomorrow, tonight, already? I tried to stop thinking these thoughts by rehearsing for the penultimate time — or, rather, recalling it, since I sang it to myself in my head — what would be one of my brief interventions the following day in the role of Cassio: Miracolo vago. . Miracolo vago. . and another immediately afterwards, alternating between the two: Non temo il ver. . non temo il ver… I was murmuring or singing these words to myself over and over, as if, after the third or fourth time, they had stayed in my head against my will, and then everything suddenly happened very fast, just as it did in my dream this morning. The image of Natalia Manur at the supper we had shared, and which had ended only half an hour before, kept going round and round in my head. She was wearing a raw silk dress, slightly decollete — a spring decolletage — that had made me notice her cleavage for the first time. It is always a serious moment when you notice for the first time one particular part of a woman's body, because the discovery is so dazzling that it stops you looking away even for an instant; it distracts you from the conversation and the other people around, and when you have no option but to turn your gaze towards, for example, a waiter who is asking you something, your eyes, as they return, do not travel through space from one point to another, nor do they slowly take in the view, instead they alight once more, without pause, on the one thing that they want to see and at which they cannot stop staring. It is impossible to behave correctly. Thus I spent the whole supper without addressing a single word to Dato and listening to Natalia without hearing a word she said, responding mechanically and in complimentary tones to her remarks, with my servile eyes almost fixed on the beginning of that space between what seemed to me to be Natalia's extraordinary breasts. It was a banal discovery, but then I am, in many ways, a banal man (sometimes I even do my best to appear vulgar). She must have noticed, and I must have seemed like a complete idiot, if not worse, but, looking on the bright side, any advances I made, now, tonight, would not come as a complete surprise. My desire was very strong that night, as desire always is when it makes its first identifiable or recognizable appearance in one's consciousness. I picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Natalia Manur's room. While I was waiting for the connection — it took, as it usually does, only a matter of seconds — I realized that I was also ringing Manur's room and that it was already half past midnight. As usual, Dato, Natalia, and I had said our goodbyes to each other in the elevator less than half an hour before. She would still be awake and Manur might not yet have returned from his presumed business supper. But if Manur picked up the phone, I would hang up without saying anything, exactly as if I were one of the lovers that Natalia Manur did not have. Manur's voice answered ("Allò?" it said two or three times in French, then corrected itself and said "Hello?" once) and I hung up, and it was for that reason and no other that I had a prostitute come up to my room that night. I realize that telling you this could make a very bad impression and lose me your sympathy, but the prostitute also appeared in this morning's dream, which is, after all, what I am describing to you.