I look out of the window of an apartment, ingenuously furnished by an Englishwoman I have never seen, while I put down the phone, then pick it up again, dial and hang up, I look out at the lazy London night across the square that is emptying of active beings and their resolute steps, to be filled for a while – an interregnum – by the inactive and their erratic steps, which lead them now to the waste-paper bins and dustbins into which they plunge their ash-grey arms, rummaging for treasures invisible to us or for the fortuitous wages of another day survived, when it is still not yet night but certainly not day either, or when it is still today for those going home or getting dressed up to go out again, but is already yesterday for those who come and go and never find their bearings. I look up to seek out and to continue seeing the living world that knows where it's going and to which I imagine I still belong, which finds shelter in its illuminated interiors from the crepuscular ash of the air, so as to distance myself from and not be assimilated by the disoriented world of these ghosts who plunge in among the rubbish and become one with it; I look out across the traffic that is growing quieter now and beyond the shadowy beggars and the stragglers – they run five or six steps and leap on to the back of the double-decker bus just pulling away, the women's high heels scrape on the ground, they're taking a real risk – I look up and past the trees and the statue on the other side of the square, at the smart hotel and the vast offices and the private houses that are homes to families, but not always, just as I was not always part of a family, but sometimes still am – 'I'll be more myself,' I murmur. 'I'll be more myself now,' I say, by being and living alone; I sometimes see people who look like me, people who don't live with anyone and receive, at most, visitors, some of whom occasionally stay the night, as also happens in my apartment, should anyone be watching me from some observatory.
A man lives opposite, beyond the trees whose tops crown the centre of this square and on exactly the same level as me, the third floor, English houses don't have blinds, or only rarely, sometimes lace curtains or shutters which are not usually closed until sleep begins its wild circling, and I often see this man dancing, sometimes with a partner, but nearly always alone and with great enthusiasm, using, as he dances or, should I say, bops, the whole length of his sitting-room which is long enough to accommodate four large windows. He is definitely not a professional dancer busy rehearsing, that much is clear: he's usually wearing street clothes, sometimes even a tie and everything, as if he'd just walked in through the front door after a day's work and was too impatient to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves (although he normally wears an elegant sweater or a long- or short-sleeved polo shirt), and his dance steps are spontaneous, improvised, not without a certain harmony and grace, but without, I would say, much control or rhythm or thought, he makes whatever movements he's inspired to make by the music I cannot hear and which perhaps only he can hear; I've seen him through my horse-racing binoculars putting on some sort of headphones or other such contraption – or so I believe: I occasionally use them at home myself – obviously cordless, otherwise he wouldn't be able to leap about and move as freely as he does. That would explain how it is that on some nights he begins these sessions quite late, especially for England, where no neighbourhood would put up with loud music after eleven o'clock at night, or even an hour earlier, though I don't know what he does to dampen the sound of his dancing feet. Perhaps, when he begins so late, he's trying to summon up sleep: to wear himself out, to numb or stun himself, to distract the desires of his conscious mind. He's about thirty-five, thin, with bony features – jaw and nose and forehead – and has an agile, athletic build, with fairly broad shoulders and a flat stomach, all of which seems perfectly natural rather than the product of working out at a gym. He has a thick but well-groomed moustache, like that of a boxer from the early days, except that it's cut straight with no nineteenth-century curlicues, and he wears his hair combed back with a middle parting, as if he had a ponytail, although I've never seen it, perhaps one day he'll reveal it. It's odd seeing him moving about to different rhythms without my ever hearing the music that guides him, I amuse myself trying to guess what it is, to supply it mentally, in order – how can I put it – to save him from the ridiculous fate of dancing in silence, dancing before me in silence that is, it's an incomprehensible, illogical, almost crazy sight if you don't supply the music with your own musical memory – or even get out the record you think he's playing and put it on, if you have it to hand – the tune controlling or guiding this man, but which is never heard, sometimes I think, 'Judging by the frantic way he's moving his upper body, he might be dancing to Chubby Checker's "Hucklebuck" or perhaps something by Elvis Presley, "Burning Love" for example, with all those fast head movements, like a puppet nodding, and those short steps, or it could be something more recent, maybe Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that famous song of theirs, the one about Alabama, he lifts his thighs up a lot like the actress Nicole Kidman did when she unexpectedly danced to it once in a film; and now perhaps it's a calypso, he has a certain sway to his hips, absurdly West Indian or something, he's even picked up some maracas, I'd better look away at once or else immediately put "I Learn a Merengue, Mama" or "Barrel of Rum" on the record-player, the guy's mad, but so happy, so oblivious to everything that wears the rest of us down and consumes us, immersed in his dances danced for no one, he'd be surprised if he knew that I sometimes watch him when I'm waiting or have nothing to do, and I might not be the only person watching from my building, it's fun and even rather cheering to watch, and mysterious too, I can't imagine who he is or what he does, he eludes – and this doesn't happen very often – my interpretative or deductive faculties, which may or may not be right, but which never hold back, springing immediately into action to compose a brief, improvised portrait, a stereotype, a flash, a plausible supposition, a sketch or snippet of life however imaginary and basic or arbitrary these might be, it's my alert, detective mind, the idiotic mind that Clare Bayes criticised and reproached me for in this same country years ago now, before I met Luisa, and which I had to suppress with Luisa so as not to irritate her or fill her with fear, the superstitious fear that always does the most damage and yet serves so little purpose, there is nothing to be done to protect ourselves from what we already know and most fear (perhaps because we are fatalistically drawn to it, and we seek it out so as to avoid disappointment), and we usually know how things will end, how they will evolve and what awaits us, where things are going and what their conclusion will be; everything is there on view, in fact, everything is visible very early on in a relationship just as it is in all honest, straightforward stories, you just have to look to see it, one single moment encapsulates the germ of many years to come, of almost our whole history – one grave, pregnant moment – and if we want to we can see it and, in broad terms, read it, there are not that many possible variations, the signs rarely deceive if we know how to read their meanings, if you are prepared to do so – but it is so difficult and can prove catastrophic; one day you spot an unmistakable gesture, see an unequivocal reaction, hear a tone of voice that says much and presages still more, although you also hear the sound of someone biting their tongue – too late; you feel on the back of your neck the nature or propensity of a look when that look knows itself to be invisible and protected and safe, so many are involuntary; you notice sweetness and impatience, you detect hidden intentions that are never entirely hidden, or unconscious intentions before they become conscious to the person who should be concealing them, sometimes you foresee what someone will do before that person has foreseen or known or even become aware of what this will be, and you can sense the betrayal as yet unformulated and the scorn as yet unfelt; and the feelings of irritation you provoke, the weariness you cause or the loathing you inspire, or perhaps the opposite, which is not necessarily any better: the unconditional love they feel for us, the other person's ridiculously high hopes, their devotion, their eagerness to please and to prove themselves essential to us in order to supplant us later on and thus become who we are; and the need to possess, the illusions built up, the determination of someone to be or to stay by your side, or to win your heart, the crazed, irrational loyalty; you notice when there is real enthusiasm and when there is only flattery and when it is mixed (because nothing is pure), you know who isn't trustworthy and who is ambitious and who has no scruples and who would walk over your dead body having first run you down, you know who has a candid soul and what will happen to these last when you meet them, the fate that awaits them if they don't mend their ways, but grow still worse and even if they do mend their ways: you know if they will be your victims. When you are introduced to a couple, married or not, you see who will one day abandon whom and you see this at once, as soon as you say hello, or, at least, by the end of the evening. You detect too when something is going wrong or falling apart, or flips right over and the tables are turned, when everything is collapsing, at what moment we stop loving as we once did or they stop loving us, who will or will not go to bed with us, and when a friend will discover his own envy, or, rather, decide to give in to it and allow himself to be led and guided from that moment on by envy alone; when it starts to ooze out or grow heavy with resentment; we know what it is about us that exasperates and infuriates and what condemns us, what we should have said, but did not, or what we should have kept silent about, but did not, why it is that suddenly one day they look at us with different eyes – dark or angry eyes: they already bear a grudge – when we disappoint or when we irritate because we do not as yet disappoint and so do not provide the desired excuse for our dismissal; we know the kind gesture that is suddenly no longer bearable and that signals the precise hour when we will become utterly and irredeemably unbearable; and we know, too, who is going to love us, until death and beyond and, much to our regret sometimes, beyond their death or mine or both… against our will sometimes… But no one wants to see anything and so hardly anyone ever sees what is there before them, what awaits us or will befall us sooner or later, no one refrains from striking up a conversation or a friendship with someone who will bring them only remorse and discord and poison and lamentations, or with someone to whom we will bring all those things, however clearly we perceive this at the very first moment, or however obvious it is made to us. We try to make things different from the way they are and from how they appear, we foolishly insist that we like someone we never liked much to begin with, and insist on trusting someone who inspires our intense distrust, it is as if we often went against our own knowledge, because that is how we tend to experience it, as knowledge rather than intuition or impression or hunch, this has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what's mysterious is that we pay no heed to it. And the explanation must be a simple one, since it is something shared by so many: it is simply that we know, but hate knowing; we cannot bear to see; we hate knowledge and certainty and conviction; and no one wants to be transformed into their own fever and their own pain…'