She was twenty-seven and she was stabbed twenty-seven times. Too much of a coincidence. Why? says the smoking woman, stuff like that happens. It’s a lot of stab wounds, the journalist replies, but without much conviction. I’ve seen stranger things than that, says the woman who’s smoking. After a moment of silence she adds: And maybe that’s just a typo anyway. It could be, thinks the journalist. Is something bothering you? asks the smoking woman. The victim, the journalist replies. It could have been any of us. The woman who’s smoking looks at her with a raised eyebrow. It could have been me, says the journalist. No way — you’re nothing like her, says the smoking woman. I’m sleeping with two men like she was, says the journalist. The woman who’s smoking smiles and repeats: No way. Everyone’s against her, one way or another. Against who? The victim, of course. The smoking woman shrugs her shoulders. The reporters who cover stories like this are no better than the killers. Not all of them, says the woman who’s smoking, there are some really good ones. Most of them are useless barflies, murmurs the journalist. Not all of them, says the smoking woman. Twenty-seven years old, twenty-seven stab wounds, I’m not convinced. Anyhow, they might have got the victim’s age mixed up with the number of stab wounds. She had a nine-year-old kid, says the journalist, holding the headphones in her left hand and stroking them. The woman who’s smoking stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray beside the window and stands up. Let’s go, she says. No, I’m going to stay for a bit, says the journalist, and puts the headphones back on.
She’s listening to Delalande. Her back is hurting, but otherwise she feels fine and she’s keen to keep working. Out of the corner of her eye she watches the woman who was smoking lean over her desk and put something into her handbag. Soon she feels her colleague’s hand gently pressing her shoulder to say good-bye. She goes on working. After half an hour she gets up and goes to the newspaper’s archives (which are hardly ever consulted any more) and that’s when she sees him.
He’s standing there, just outside the open door, not daring to cross the threshold, looking at her with a half-smile on his face. She stifles a cry and asks him what he wants. It’s me, he says, the sock salesman. The suitcase is sitting at his feet. I know, she says, I don’t want to buy anything. I just wanted to have a little look around, he says. She examines him for a few seconds; she’s not frightened now but angry, and she senses that the presence of the young salesman is a sign of something important, but what that something is eludes her grasp. All she knows is that it’s important (or has some degree of importance) and that she’s no longer afraid. Haven’t you ever been in a newspaper office? she asks. I haven’t, actually, he says. Come in, she says. He hesitates or pretends to hesitate and then he picks up the suitcase and walks in. Are you a journalist? She nods. And what are you writing? She tells him she’s writing an article about a murder. The salesman puts the suitcase down again and his gaze wanders from table to table. Can I tell you something? She looks at him and her mind is blank. In the elevator, he says, it seemed to me that you were suffering for some reason. Me? she says. Yes, I thought you were suffering, although of course I don’t know why. Everyone suffers, she says, as if they were talking in general terms. Neither of them has taken a seat. He’s standing with his back to the door. She has retreated and is standing near the window. Both of them are frozen now, tensely upright, waiting. But when they speak, their voices have a false tone of familiarity.
What murder are you working on? he asks. The murder of a woman, she says. He smiles. He has a nice smile, she thinks, although it makes him look older (he’s probably no more than twenty-five). It’s always women who get killed, he says, and gestures with his right hand in a way that she can’t interpret. As if she’d suddenly woken up, she realizes that she’s alone in the office with a stranger, at a time when the building is almost empty. A slight shudder sweeps through her body. He notices, and looks for a place to sit down, as if to reassure her. Seated, he looks even taller than he is. Tell me about it, he says. The request exasperates her. Wait till the issue comes out. No, tell me now, maybe I can make a suggestion, he says. You’re an expert on the subject, are you? she says. He looks at her without replying. She realizes she’s made a mistake and tries to correct it, but before she can say anything more, he tells her that he’s not an expert on murder. And why should I tell you about it? she says. Maybe you need to talk to someone. You could be right, she says. He smiles again. It was a woman who’d broken up with her husband, she says. Did the husband kill her? No. The husband has nothing to do with the crime. How come you’re so sure? Because they arrested the killer the same day, she says. Ah, I see, he says. She was twenty-seven, she broke up with her husband, then she had a boyfriend, she lived with him, a younger guy, twenty-four, then she split with this boyfriend and starting going out with another guy. Boyfriend A and boyfriend B, he says. If you like, she says, and suddenly she feels calm, tired and calm, as if a part of the imaginary struggle (whose rules remain opaque to her) was already over and done.
I’m guessing, says the sock salesman, that this woman was good-looking. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, and very young too. Well, not all that young, he says. So you think a twenty-seven-year-old woman isn’t young? Come on, let’s be objective: young, sure, but not very young, he says. How old are you? Twenty-nine. I would have guessed twenty-five, she says. No, twenty-nine. He doesn’t ask her age. Did she work or did she live off her boyfriends? She was a secretary. This woman never lived off anyone. And she had a nine-year-old son. And who killed her, boyfriend A or boyfriend B? he asks. Who would you say? Boyfriend A, of course. She nods. Because he was jealous. Yes, she says. But do you think it was just because he was jealous? No, she says. Ah, so you see, we have the same theory, you and I, he says. She chooses not to reply and moves away from the window. I should switch on a light, he says. No, leave it, she says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. After a while, he says: And it’s getting you down, this story about a murder that happened a couple of months ago, I think it was. She looks at him and says nothing. Maybe you identify with the victim? Are you married? No, she says, but I’ve thought about her quite a bit. Are you married? No, me neither, he says, but I’ve lived with a few women. Do you think men have a problem with women who like sex? he asks. She looks away: beyond the windowpane night is enfolding the buildings. What she feels is a kind of claustrophobia. She got killed because she liked it, the journalist says without looking at him. She hears him say, Ah, and the tone of that ah is somewhere between irony and agony. She used to get up early, at a quarter past six every morning. She worked for a mining company in Calama, she was a secretary, and the stories in the papers say that her love life was a continual source of conflict. A continual source, he repeats, how poetic. Men kept falling in love with her, although she wasn’t classically beautiful, she says. Beauty’s relative, he says: There’s a kind of beauty for everyone. Do you think? she asks, and looks at him again, steadily. Yes I do, says the sock salesman, everyone: the ugly, the not-so-ugly, the average-looking and the beautiful. But just because the not-so-ugly seem desirable to the ugly, that doesn’t make them beautiful. So you get what I mean, he says. Yes, I get what you mean, she says ironically, but I don’t agree; beauty’s the same for everyone, like justice. Justice is the same for everyone? Don’t make me laugh, he says. In theory, at least. It’s all different in theory, he sighs, but let’s not argue; tell me more about your murdered secretary. Did you see the body? The body? No, I didn’t see it. I didn’t cover the story, I just wrote an article about the crime. So you didn’t go to the morgue in Calama? You didn’t see the victim or talk with the killer? She looks at him and smiles mysteriously. The killer, yeah, I talked with him, she says.