A smile of beatific idiocy illuminated her face as the concierge chattered on. She spoke of the Casares family, who lived in flat C on the second floor. A young couple from the north who seemed moderately happy, with a moderate, friendly manner, and moderately healthy finances. They had two children. Álvaro sensed that they were the kind of people whose normality kept them immunue to gossip and exasperated concierges. He assured her he remembered them and urged the woman to go on talking about them. The concierge explained that the husband — he wouldn’t be more than thirty-five — worked at the Seat plant, on the afternoon shift, so he started around four and finished at midnight. The woman took care of the house and children. The concierge reproached them (she spoke of all the tenants as if she were a decisive part of their lives) for educating their children above their means and social status. Perhaps living in the upper part of the city made them feel obliged to make undoubtedly excessive extravagances. Álvaro thought the concierge’s voice sounded like it was infected with the kind of rancour happy people inspire in resentful, mediocre people.
Álvaro stood up abruptly, got dressed without a word. The concierge covered her naked body with a robe; she asked him if he’d be coming back tomorrow. While adjusting the knot of his tie in front of the mirror, Álvaro said no. He peered out through the peephole to make sure the entrance hall was empty. The concierge asked him if he’d be back another day. Álvaro answered: ‘Who knows?’ He left.
He waited for the lift. When it arrived and he was about to step in, he noticed Señora Casares, weighed down with packages as well as her shopping trolley, struggling with her key in the lock of the main door. He rushed to her aid. He opened the door and picked several of her bags up off the ground.
‘Thank you so much, Álvaro, I’m so grateful,’ said Señora Casares, almost laughing at the situation she found herself in.
Instead of it making him uncomfortable, Álvaro was flattered by her informal way of using his first name, although he couldn’t help but be surprised by it, given that it was the first time they’d ever spoken. By the time they got to the lift, it had gone back up. Señora Casares joked about being a housewife; Álvaro joked about being a housekeeper. They laughed.
Irene Casares is slight, of medium height and with a neat, meticulous appearance. Her manners seem studied, but not false, perhaps because her naturalness comes from a sort of delicate discipline. The features of her face seem strangely toned down, as if softened by the sweetness that emanates from her gestures, her lips, her words. Her eyes are clear, her beauty humble. But there is within her an elegance and dignity that her somewhat vulgar appearance doesn’t quite disguise.
Álvaro acted kind. He asked questions and received replies. On the landing they stood a while chatting. Álvaro bemoaned the impersonal relations among the residents of the building, launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the woman’s sympathy, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señora Casares claimed she had to go and make lunch and they said goodbye.
Álvaro took a shower, made some lunch and ate. After three, he waited by the peephole for Señor Casares to leave for work. Shortly, Enrique Casares left his apartment. Álvaro left his apartment. They met in front of the lift. They said hello. Álvaro began the conversation: he said that very morning he’d been chatting with his wife; he bemoaned the impersonal relations between residents of the building and launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the man’s complicity, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señor Casares smiled soberly. Álvaro noticed he was a bit fatter than he seemed at first glance and that it gave him an affable air. He asked him how he got to work. ‘By bus,’ Casares answered. Álvaro offered him a lift in his car; Casares turned him down. Álvaro insisted; Casares eventually accepted.
During the drive conversation flowed easily between them. Álvaro explained that he worked as a consultant in a legal agency and that his job only took up his afternoons. With a profusion of gestures that betrayed an exuberant though perhaps rather fragile vitality, Casares described his work at the factory and, not without pride, revealed certain knowledge of motors to which he had access, thanks to the relative responsibility of the position he held. When they got to the Seat plant, Casares thanked him for taking the trouble of driving him there. Then he walked away, towards the huge metal premises, through the full car-park.
That night, Álvaro dreamed he was walking across a green meadow with white horses. He was going to meet someone or something, and felt as if he were floating over the fresh grass. He was going up a gentle slope with no trees or shrubs or birds. At the top a white door with a golden doorknob appeared. He opened the door and, despite knowing that what he was looking for lay in wait on the other side, something or someone tempted him to turn around, to stand at the crest of the green hill, turned back towards the meadow, his left hand on the golden doorknob, the white door half open.
IV
Over the following days his work began to bear its first fruits. The novel was advancing steadily, though it diverged in parts from the outline arranged in the drafts and the previous plan. But Álvaro let it flow freely within that precarious and difficult balance between the instantaneous pull that certain situations and characters imposed and the necessary rigour of the general design that structures a work. As for the rest, if the presence of real models for his characters facilitated his task and provided a point of support where his imagination could rest or derive fresh impetus, at the same time it introduced new variables that would necessarily change the course of the tale. The two stylistic pillars upon which the work was being raised were nevertheless intact, and that was the essential thing for Álvaro. On the one hand, the descriptive passion, which offers the possibility of constructing a fictive duplicate of reality, by appropriating it; moreover, he considered that, while the enjoyment of sentiment is merely a plebeian emotion, the genuinely artistic enjoyment comes from the impersonal pleasure of description. On the other hand, it was necessary to narrate events in the same neutral tone that dominated the descriptive passages, like someone recounting incidents he hasn’t entirely understood himself or as if the relationship between the narrator and his characters was of a similar order to that which the narrator maintained with his toiletries. Álvaro frequently congratulated himself on his immovable conviction of the validity of these principles.
He also checked the efficiency of his listening post in the bathroom. Although on several occasions his neighbours’ conversations got all mixed up together, they came through clearly through the little ventilation window that gave on to the courtyard, and it wasn’t difficult to distinguish those of the Casares, not only because in the mornings the other apartments remained plunged in silence, barely disturbed by the sounds of saucepans colliding or glasses clinking, but because — as he soon realized — the Casares’ little ventilation window was located right next to his own, so their voices always came through clearly.