Viana’s foot appeared to have dried off, but, hanging on the back of the lounger, the sock was still dripping rapidly onto the grass. I felt as if I could feel its dampness on my own shod feet, I could imagine what it would be like to put that wet sock on. I took off my left shoe so as to scratch the sole of that foot with my black moccasin, the one on my right foot.
‘Why are you telling me all this? Aren’t you afraid I’ll report you? Or talk to Inès in the morning?’
Viana interlaced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back on his lounger, and his bald head touched the wet sock. He reacted at once and sat up again, as one does when a fly brushes one’s skin. He put on the red moccasin he had taken off some time before, when I was still standing on our balcony, and this somehow dissipated any air of helplessness he might have had, and it occurred to me suddenly that the conversation might end.
‘You can’t report intentions,’ he said. ‘We leave for Barcelona tomorrow, you and I will never see each other again, we leave early, there’ll be no time to go to the beach. Tomorrow, you’ll have forgotten all about this, you won’t want to remember, you won’t take it seriously or remember me or this moment, you won’t try to find out anything. You won’t ask about us at the hotel, to check that Inès and I left together, that we paid the bill, that nothing happened in the night, when you were the only person awake, talking to me. You won’t even tell your wife what we talked about, why trouble her with it, because deep down you don’t want to believe me, you’ll manage, don’t worry.’ Viana hesitated for a moment, then went on: ‘You may not think so, but if you were to warn Inès, you would simply accelerate the process, and I would have to kill her tomorrow, do you understand?’
He hesitated again, paused, looked up at the sky, at the moon, and down at the water, then repeated that gesture of panic, covering his face, and continued speaking. ‘And who’s to say that you’d be able to speak to her tomorrow, who’s to say that I haven’t already killed her, tonight, a while ago, before I came down here, who’s to say that she isn’t already dead and that’s why I’m talking to you now, anyone can die at any moment, they taught us that at school, we’ve all known it ever since we were children, we all have our place in the order of dying, you yourself left your own wife sleeping, but how do you know she hasn’t died while you’ve been down here talking to me, perhaps she’s dying at this very moment, you wouldn’t have time to reach her, not even if you ran. How do you know it’s not Inès who has died at my hands, and that’s why I shaved off my moustache, a while ago, before you came down, before I came down? Or Inès and your wife? How do you know that both of them haven’t died, while they were sleeping?’
I didn’t believe him. Inès’ ideal beauty would be resting, her eight rings on the bedside table, her voluminous breasts safely under the sheets, her breathing regular, her identical lips half-open like a child’s, her hairless pubis leaving a slight stain, that strange nocturnal secretion women make. Luisa was asleep, I had seen her, her fine-featured, open, and as yet unlined face, her restless eyes moving beneath her eyelids, as if they couldn’t get used to not doing at night what they did during the day, unlike Inès’ eyes, which would probably be quite still now, during the sleep she needed to maintain her immutable beauty. Both were sleeping, that’s why they didn’t wake up or come out onto the balcony, Luisa hadn’t died in my absence, however long that had been — I’d forgotten my watch. Instinctively, I glanced up towards the rooms, towards my balcony, towards all the balconies, and on one of them, I saw a figure wrapped in a sheet toga and heard it call to me twice, saying my name, as mothers say their children’s names. I stood up. On Inès’ balcony, though, whichever it was, there was no one.
(1990)
gualta
Until I was thirty years old, I lived quietly and virtuously and in accordance, as it were, with my biography, and it had never occurred to me that forgotten characters from books read during adolescence might resurface in my life, or even in other people’s lives. Of course, I had heard people speak of momentary identity crises provoked by a coincidence of names uncovered in youth (for example, my friend Rafa Zarza doubted his own existence when he was introduced to another Rafa Zarza). But I never expected to find myself transformed into a bloodless William Wilson, or a portrait of Dorian Gray minus the drama, or a Jekyll whose Hyde was merely another Jekyll.
His name was Xavier de Gualta — a Catalan, as his name indicates — and he worked in the Barcelona office of the same company I worked for. His (highly) responsible position was similar to mine in Madrid where we met at a supper intended for the dual purpose of business and fraternisation, which is why we both arrived accompanied by our respective wives. Only our first names were interchangeable (my name is Javier Santín), but we coincided in absolutely everything else. I still remember the look of stupefaction on Gualta’s face (which was doubtless also on mine), when the head waiter who brought him to our table stood to one side, allowing him to see my face for the first time. Gualta and I were physically identical, like twins in the cinema, but it wasn’t just that: we even made the same gestures at the same time and used the same words (we took the words out of each other’s mouths, as the saying goes), and our hands would reach for the bottle of (Rhine) wine or the mineral water (still), or our forehead, or the sugar spoon, or the bread, or the fork beneath the fondue dish, in perfect unison, simultaneously. We narrowly missed colliding. It was as if our heads, which were identical outside, were also thinking the same thing at the same time. It was like dining opposite a mirror made flesh. Needless to say, we agreed about everything and, although I tried not to ask too many questions, such was my disgust, my sense of vertigo, our lives, both professional and personal, had run along parallel lines. This extraordinary similarity was, of course, noted and commented on by our wives and by us (’It’s extraordinary,’ they said. ‘Yes, extraordinary,’ we said), yet, after our first initial amazement, the four of us, somewhat taken aback by this entirely anomalous situation and conscious that we had to think of the good of the company that had brought us together for that supper, ignored the remarkable fact and did our best to behave naturally. We tended to concentrate more on business than on fraternisation. The only thing about us that was not the same were our wives (but they are not in fact part of us, just as we are not part of them). Mine, if I may be so vulgar, is a real stunner, whilst Gualta’s wife, though distinguished-looking, was a complete nonentity, temporarily embellished and emboldened by the success of her go-getting spouse.
The worst thing, though, was not the resemblance itself (after all, other people have learned to live with it). Until then, I had never seen myself. I mean, a photo immobilises us, and in the mirror we always see ourselves the other way round (for example, I always part my hair on the right, like Cary Grant, but in the mirror, I am someone who parts his hair on the left, like Clark Gable); and, since I am not famous and have never been interested in movie cameras, I had never seen myself on television or on video either. In Gualta, therefore, I saw myself for the first time, talking, moving, gesticulating, pausing, laughing, in profile, wiping my mouth with my napkin, and scratching my nose. It was my first real experience of myself as object, something which is normally enjoyed only by the famous or by those who play around with video cameras.