Muriel appeared at his door, lit by the light that he had finally turned on, weary of listening to her spiel. His dark dressing gown contrasted with his white pyjamas, of which I could see only the collar and part of the legs, for his dressing gown hung elegantly halfway down his calves. His hair had not had time to become tousled by the pillow and, apart from being in his nightclothes, he looked his usual self. He folded his arms sternly and, with his one eye, fixed Beatriz with the piercing gaze of a teacher who has caught a pupil telling a lie so grave that all her virtues — in this case her exuberant flesh — were cancelled out by his condemnation; as if his indignation had, in a second, transformed his inevitable feelings of pleasure into pure displeasure. (Because seeing her there in that nightdress, such pleasure did seem to me inevitable.) Insofar as I could discern such subtleties, I thought I saw in his eye annoyance, scorn and anger, and perhaps, too, the kind of embarrassment one might feel on behalf of someone close to you and which tends to provoke rage rather than pity. His voice, even in a whisper, sounded ice-cold, metallic.
‘Some stupid thing that happened ages ago?’ he said, repeating her words. ‘Some stupid thing? How dare you describe it like that, even now, after all the pain it’s caused and continues to cause us. A prank, eh? A little game, is that right? And all’s fair in love and war? How very witty, how very astute.’ He placed his hands on her shoulders as if he were about to shake her, and I was afraid he would give her a shove and send her flying, and if she did fall, she might hit the back of her head on the wall or the floor, just one sharp blow and she could be dead, anyone can die at any time. Muriel was clearly in a violent mood, and I feared that things might get out of hand, that he might lose control. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You never will. You’ll never understand what it was that you did, it’s of no importance to you, it wasn’t then and it never will be for as long as you live, which I hope won’t be much longer, yes, let’s hope you die soon. How stupid of me to love you during all those years, love you with all my heart, as long, that is, as I knew nothing. It’s as if I’d loved a lemon, a melon, an artichoke.’ The comparison surprised me and made me hope that Muriel had perhaps recovered his sense of humour, even if it was the kind of abusive humour he sometimes used with her. While a lemon can sometimes mean a fool or a dupe, the same could not be said of a melon or an artichoke: he had, I thought, been unable to resist adding further jokey references to other fruits, or however you choose to classify an artichoke. But I was alarmed to see him shift his hands from her shoulders to her neck (the long neck of a tall woman, unlined and still firm), where it’s so easy to start pressing and, in a matter of two or three minutes, it’s all over, the irritating or hated person no longer exists and there’s nothing to be done, the tongue that speaks and wounds has fallen silent and is perhaps now protruding from the mouth, motionless and bloated and purple, that’s how films sometimes depict the victim of a strangling. I don’t know if it has any basis in reality or is merely intended to terrify the viewer, who will think that, as well as kicking the bucket, he might end up looking like a complete grotesque, with wide, bulging eyes that resemble painted porcelain or eggs. ‘What is it you want me to look at? That nightdress? Did you buy it or did someone give it to you? Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve seen more than enough of you, keep it for your lovers, who clearly have no taste anyway, keep it for those two horny bastards, and don’t waste it on me. All right, I’m looking at you, so what? Lard, pure lard, that’s all you are to me.’ And he ran his fingertips up the fine cloth, from hem to neck, a scornful gesture, as if he found it repugnant to touch both the cloth and her. ‘How can he say that?’ I thought. ‘He’s either mad or lying through his teeth. And how can he persuade her that he means it, if he can persuade her? “Lard” is the last word you would use to describe her.’ Fortunately, that last gesture led his hands elsewhere, removed them from her neck, so that I no longer feared they would close around it and squeeze, and, unexpectedly after that initial gesture of disgust, he placed his hands on her breasts and began groping them clumsily, roughly, with not a hint of a caress, not a suggestion of eroticism, or so it seemed to me, but who knows what a touch or a contact might mean to someone else, it’s often unpredictable, and you can make strange discoveries when touching or when touched, when you accidently brush against someone’s thigh (the woman’s skirt having slightly ridden up) and notice that the thigh is not withdrawn, does not move away, that’s often all it takes to prompt you to touch the thigh again and not by accident this time but just to make sure, out of curiosity and a sudden desire you hadn’t expected, the unpremeditated desire which finds so many beauties hooked up with horrible men or men they had, at first sight, detested, the skin is a very treacherous thing, the flesh disconcerting. Muriel almost crushed Beatriz Noguera’s doubtless firm breasts, he brazenly pawed them, yes, just as an impatient, unimpugnable groper on the metro might do, the kind who waits until the train is coming into the station to unleash his talons for a few interminable seconds, then shoots off as soon as the doors open. His attitude was vengeful, inconsiderate, loutish, and I wondered what it would have cost him simply to embrace her, which was all she had so far asked of him. ‘But no one touches the thing that repels him,’ I thought, ‘not even in that disdainful, mechanical way, as if the body being touched were of no significance. You don’t put your hands on someone’s breasts if you don’t expect to get some pleasure from it, however minimal. And yet I’m sure that, afterwards, he’s going to reject her and send her away, he won’t accept that she is even the tiniest bit in the right, even if she is. He’ll go against his own lascivious feelings, which he pretends are of no significance merely in order to repress them more easily. He couldn’t help giving in to those feelings for a moment (her nightdress that both conceals and reveals), but he has to disguise it with indifference and contempt, as if all it provoked in him was this insulting, brutish, boorish behaviour.’ Then he slid one hand, his left hand, further down and grabbed her crotch through her nightdress (I had already seen that she had nothing on underneath), he didn’t stroke or rub nor, of course, introduce one finger or two, no, he merely grabbed it like someone picking up a handful of earth or a clump of grass or catching a thistle head in the air or grasping one of the handles in table football or the handle of a frying pan, something trivial like that, unimportant, inconsequential, that one forgets a moment later. ‘See,’ said Muriel, still grabbing her, holding her. ‘You wanted me to look at you, and I am. I’m touching you too, as you may have noticed. So what? I don’t fancy you one bit, you can dress how you like, it makes no difference, and that’s how it’s always going to be. I might as well be touching a pillow, you might as well be an elephant, for all I care. A bag of flour, a bag of flesh.’ He couldn’t bear to miss an opportunity to be offensive. She allowed herself to be grabbed in that brusque, indelicate manner, she didn’t attempt to resist or detach herself from his grasp or take a step back. It seemed to me that, despite the rough way he was groping her, her impulse was to throw herself into his arms, to encircle his neck with her own arms; but if that were so, she either lacked the necessary courage or he didn’t give her time, it was all very quick and grubby. ‘Go on, go back to bed. Clear off, there’s nothing for you here, this is no place for you. How many more times do I have to tell you? When the hell are you going to understand that this is serious and for good, until you die or I do? I just hope I’m the one who’ll carry your coffin, because I could never be sure you wouldn’t rub yourself up against my still warm or already cold corpse, because warm or cold it would be all the same to you. God, you don’t seem to register anything, it’s as though, for years now, you haven’t even been able to remember what happened yesterday, and each night wiped your memory clean of whatever happened the day before. Will you never give up?’