"Bear in mind that there is no stronger bond than that which binds one to something unreal or, worse, something that has never existed." And I saw him raise his index finger for the third time. That was also the third time that I saw him.
I suppose the fourth journalist finally rang not long afterwards. But by then I had finished shaving and had covered my mouth with sticking plaster: I hesitated for a moment, I did not answer.
I WAS SO HUNGRY THAT I HAD TO pause for a moment and go downstairs to have supper in a nearby restaurant, lively, expensive and crowded, and which, being much frequented by tourists, opens its doors fairly early. First I looked in my mailbox and picked up the letters that had been waiting for me since the morning. No one had brought them up to me because no one has come to see me today. And I've had the answering machine on too, so I haven't seen or spoken to anyone all day, and the day is nearly over. Among various circulars from banks and the odd pre-contract to sing in a couple of years' time at some particular spot on the globe where I know I will be sure to find myself on that precise and distant date, the only letter in the box (and which I read while I was waiting for supper amid the gabble of tourists) was from that man, Noguera, the husband or widower of my girlfriend Berta. Surprisingly — given my silence — he has written to me again, on today of all days, just when Berta had appeared to me again in this morning's dream, only three weeks after I had learned of her death by the same marital route. Noguera, in this second letter, which I have just read, initially goes on again about my old books and warns me that if I do not write to confirm that I want them back, he will have no option but to throw them on the fire along with everything else (that is what he says, "throw them on the fire," an odd expression given that spring is already here). He is not going to continue living in the house or "tower" he shared with Berta, he tells me (and on this occasion, unlike the first, he does mention his state of mind, which is one of despair), because he finds the constant memories of his wife extremely painful. So sadly do the hours pass that he plans not only to leave the marital home, but also to destroy all her belongings and anything that serves to feed her memory, which he intends to allow to "die of inanition." He is still young, he says, he hopes to rebuild his life, and, given that he has the firm intention of destroying photos, clothes, shoes, records, jewelry, lotions, videos, creams, aprons, books, mirrors, pills, letters — in short, everything that his wife ever used while alive — he asks me if, before he lights the pyre, I would like to have — as well as those books of mine that he has already listed — some of those objects which he, "on the other hand," never wants to see again. Perhaps he thinks that, contrary to what is happening to him, I do want to keep Berta's memory alive with something tangible that once belonged to her, and this legalistic individual — whom I now am sure is called Noguera because I have just read his name — sends me another detailed improbable list of all the things he is kind enough to offer me before the planned incineration. Noguera thinks that I would be particularly interested in photos from the time when she and I "saw most of each other" and in the letters and postcards that I sent her ("there are not that many and most are postcards") and which he found in an old tin box of Lindor chocolates. But— he insists — it would be no trouble at all to send me any other object I might like to keep. If, within two weeks, he receives no answer — just as he received no answer to his first letter — he will assume that I have no desire to keep anything "from the above inventory" and he will proceed with the "cremation," which is why, if there is anything I want, he urges me to reply and gives me his Barcelona telephone number in case my many travels and commitments ("which I know about from the newspapers and the television") do not leave me enough time to write and it would be easier for me to tell him over the phone what I would like to keep. I have not dared to read the new list closely, it is several pages long, but when I glanced over it — repeatedly in fact— I noticed two things: that Noguera is mad enough to include in it all kinds of things that have nothing whatever to do with me, things clearly bought long after I had ceased to have anything to do with Berta; but he is not mad enough to offer me (as I had begun to fear) tights and panties and other such things — which will doubtless be among the objects to be devoured by the fire — nor her set of silver cutlery, her record player, her video machine or her television — which will certainly not be consumed by the flames in a fortnight's time. Noguera, unhinged by the unexpected and possibly avoidable death of his wife (and it is perfectly normal that he should be more troubled now than the first time he wrote to me, when he had just buried her and when the sense of calm and reason that the dead bestow on us would not yet have deserted him), is incapable of understanding that if
he wants to forget Berta Viella, then no one else will want to remember her. For the last person is the one who counts, thus, for example, it will be our last widow who will have to be consoled, and any inheritance we leave will almost always go to those who did not know us when we were young, but only when we were already deep in vile decrepitude or in rigid old age. That is why neither I nor anyone else in the world considers the great Gustav Hörbiger to be the most heroic Heldentenor of our century, but, rather, an obsessed madman, doubtless confined in some German hospital and whose imminent death will not now be his defining moment. That is why Otello is an avenger and Liu a martyr until the end of time, that is why I cannot easily forget Manur (that is why, on the other hand, I do not yet know what I am nor if anyone or no one will remember me). Noguera, with his impossible offer, is trying to contravene an immutable law, according to which the last person is the one who determines, sanctions, amends or cancels everything that came before. He is and always will be Berta's husband, her final choice, and if he now regrets and is wearied by his inability to forget, what he cannot do is to try and carry out an illicit transfer and pass that responsibility over to me. I cannot perform an act of palingenesis, I do not want to remember her; more than that, as I said before, I do not remember her now. I don't want those books that were once mine, I don't want her photos of monuments and faces and beaches, nor the postcards I sent to her from half the known world, I don't want a sponge or a bathrobe, or a scratched record of Lauritz Melchior or even a new one by Pavarotri, let alone one of me singing sublime extracts from seven operas. I don't want her medicines or her sunglasses, her stiletto heels or her azaleas; her random selection of novels, her rings, her colorful earrings, her unopened bottles of Rhine wine and Veuve Clicquot; her cologne, her eye drops, her lamps, her lipsticks, her bits of pottery from La Bisbal, the trilobite I gave her; her silk-blend blouses, her glass Murano ashtrays, her iridescent skirts, her shells from the Lido, her English teapots, her collection of cockerels from around the world and made of all kinds of materials, her — very lovely — Fortuny engravings. I do not want anything that she once owned. Or perhaps just one thing: because although I had no intention of doing so, between courses — the restaurant was so crowded, the waiters so rushed, the hubbub of voices so loud that even the normally affable head waiter did not speak to me, and, unable to eavesdrop on anyone else's conversation, I grew bored — I spent rather too much time leafing through the mad, meticulous sheets that Noguera had sent me, and on the third page, I noticed this object, "elegant Italian calendar" (that is the description given by poor Noguera, about whom I still know nothing, what he does or who he really is). I wonder if it is the same one (