“Yes, I see. And how does the boss treat you both?”
“Well, for him we’re invisible, he doesn’t not do anything just because we’re there. I’ve seen him get up to some really disgusting things.”
“What sort of disgusting things?”
The bodyguard took my arm and led me over to the betting booths. I felt suddenly embarrassed to be walking along like that with such a tall man. His way of taking my arm was protective, perhaps he didn’t know how to make contact with people in any other way: he was always the protector. He seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he said:
“Well, with women, in the car, for example. In fact, he’s a bit of a dirty old man, got a dirty mind, you know?” He tapped his forehead. “Listen, you’re not a journalist, are you?”
“No, not at all.”
“Good.”
I bet on number eight and he bet on number fourteen, he was a stubborn man, or else superstitious, and we went back to the stands. We sat down, waiting for the third race to begin.
“What shall we do about the binoculars?”
“What if I watch the start and you watch the finish?” he said. “After all, it was my fault.”
He again took the binoculars from me without first removing them from around my neck, but now we were sitting very close together and there was no need for him to pull on the strap. He looked at the grandstand for a second and then replaced the binoculars on my knees. I looked at his bootees, they seemed so incongruous, they made his very large feet look childish. He got excited during the race, shouting: “Go on, Narnia, move it!” at number fourteen which did not get stuck at the gate, but nevertheless got off to a bad start and only came in fourth. My number eight was in second place, so we both tore up our slips with an appropriately embittered look on our faces: ah, to hell with it.
Suddenly, I noticed that he looked depressed, it couldn’t be because of the bet.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He didn’t answer at once. He was looking at the floor, at his torn-up tickets, he had his broad chest thrown forward, his head almost between his spread legs, as if he felt sick and was taking precautions in case he had to throw up, so as not to stain his trousers.
“No,” he said at last. “It’s just that that was the third race, my boss will be about to arrive with my colleague, if they arrive that is. And if they arrive, then it’ll be up to me.”
“I suppose you have to stay here and keep watch.”
“Yes, I do. Do you mind keeping me company? Well, if you want to go down to the paddock and place a bet, you go ahead and then come back for the race. I’ll stay here with the binoculars, just in case anything should happen.”
“I’ll just nip down and place my bet. I don’t need to see the horses.”
He gave me ten thousand pesetas for the first two past the post, another five thousand for a winner, I went down to place my bets, I was only gone a matter of moments, the queue hadn’t started yet. When I got back to the stand, the bodyguard was still sitting with his head down, he didn’t seem particularly alert. He was stroking his sideburns, absorbed in thought.
“Has he arrived yet?” I asked, just to say something.
“No, not yet,” he replied raising first his eyes and then the binoculars to the grandstand. It had become an almost mechanical gesture. “I might not have to do it after all.”
The man still seemed depressed, he had suddenly lost all his bonhomie, as if a cloud were hanging over him. He no longer chatted to me or paid me any attention. I felt tempted to say that I would prefer to see that race by the track, where I could manage perfectly well without binoculars, and leave him to himself. But I feared for his job. He was sunk in thought, and not at all vigilant, just when he needed to be.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I said, and then, more than anything in order to remind him of the imminence of his task. “If you’re not feeling well, do you want me to watch for you? If you tell me who your boss is …”
“There’s nothing to watch,” he replied. “I know what’s going to happen this afternoon. It may have happened already.”
“What?”
“Look, you don’t get fond of someone who pays you to protect them. Like I said, my boss doesn’t even know I exist, he barely knows my name, I’ve been as invisible as air to him for the last two years, and from time to time he’s bawled me out because I was over-zealous. He gives orders and I carry them out, he tells me when and where he wants me and I go there, at the time and place indicated, that’s all. I take care that nothing happens to him, but I don’t feel fond of him. On more than one occasion, I’ve even thought of attacking him myself just to ease the tension and make myself feel necessary, to create the danger myself. Nothing serious, just rough him up a bit in the garage, do a bit of play-acting, hide somewhere and pass myself off as a mugger in my spare time. Give him a fright. I never imagined that the day would come when we’d have to knock him off for real.”
“Knock him off? And who’s we?”
“My colleague and me. Well, either him or me. He might have managed to do it already; I hope so. If he has, the boss won’t appear for this race either, he won’t even have left the house and he’ll be lying on the carpet, or stuffed in the boot of the car. But if he does come, you see, it will mean that my colleague didn’t manage to do it, and then I’ll have to, on the way back from the race course, in the car itself, while my colleague does the driving. With a length of rope, or a single shot once we’re off the road. I really hope they don’t come, I don’t much like him, but the idea of having to kill him myself … It makes me feel ill.”
I thought he was joking, but until that moment he hadn’t seemed like a man much given to jokes, he’d seemed almost incapable of them, that’s why — I thought fleetingly — he had laughed so much when I made that one rather unfunny remark. People who don’t know how to make jokes are so surprised and grateful when others do.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.
He kept rubbing furiously at his sideburns. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and remained staring at me like that.
“Of course you do, I explained it perfectly clearly. Like I said, I don’t much like him, but I’d be relieved if they didn’t come, if my colleague had already done it.”
“Why are you doing it?”
“It’s a long story. For money, well, not just that, sometimes you have no option, sometimes you have to do things that disgust you, but you have to do them all the same, because it would be worse not to, hasn’t that ever happened to you?”
“Yes, it has,” I said, “but never anything so drastic.” I glanced at the grandstand, a pointless gesture on my part. “If this is all true, why are you telling me?”
“It really doesn’t make any difference. You’re not going to tell anyone else, even if you read about it in the paper tomorrow. Nobody likes getting involved in bother; if you go and tell somebody, you’ll get nothing but complications and a lot of trouble. And threats too probably. No one tells anyone anything unless they’re going to benefit in some way. Not even God helps the police, everyone thinks, oh, let them get on with it. And no one says anything. You’ll do the same. I don’t feel like having any secrets today.”
I picked up the binoculars and looked again at the grandstand, with the lenses on full magnification. It was almost empty, everyone must have gone to the bar or to the paddock, it was still some minutes before the race was due to start. That gesture was all the more useless, because I didn’t even know his boss, although, if I saw him, I might guess who he was by his rich man’s face.