'Bloody hell, Deza, where did you get your hands on this piece of pussy?' Those were the great dickhead Rafita's first, repellent and even depressing words to me in Spanish when he could contain himself no longer and swayed onto the dance floor in a terrible pastiche – for that was what it was – of a cocky black man, the semi-slow number was still unfinished, as, therefore, was our semi-fast dance. 'Come on, introduce me, come on, you pig, don't be so selfish. Is she with you or did you pick her up here?' He obviously assumed that Mrs Manoia was English and. so, once more, felt invulnerable in his own language, he probably spent his whole stupid life in London feeling exactly that, one day he would put his foot right in it and someone would make mincemeat of him or beat him to a pulp. I was still busily executing turns and he was spinning in my wake (behind me, I mean), addressing the back of my neck with perfect aplomb, entirely unabashed and unembarrassed: I recalled that he specialised in repeatedly interrupting other people's conversations until they imploded, so there was nothing surprising about the fact that he should sidle his way into other people's dances and pulverise those as well. 'I'll bet you a first edition of Lorca that you've pinched her off some idiot here. When we're out on the pull, watch out, eh?' These small comments of his so enraged me – the puerile rather than, as he probably thought, crude nature of the last; the pedantic wager of this would-be bibliophile; the groundless conceit of his patriotic vulgarity ('we' had to mean 'we Spaniards') – that despite my determination to respond to him in obscure English – for a reason I give below – and to stick with all the resolve of a prisoner of war to my identity as Ure or Dundas, I could not control myself and managed to hurl a few shouted words at him, with my head slightly turned, although not my captive torso: 'You haven't got a first edition of Lorca, Garza Ladra, not even a stolen one.' He probably failed to catch the insulting operatic allusion, but I didn't care, just having made it was reward enough for me. He certainly didn't pick up on it until later, and in a very slow-witted way; initially, though, he opted for a rather snooty, argumentative tone: 'That's where you're wrong, bright boy,' he said, and wagged one absurd, be-ringed finger: he obviously donned his disco gear complete with all the accessories whenever he went out to do some serious partying, or perhaps to play the would-be black; but what could not be explained in such a context (and this is the reason I mention above, the one that should have made me decide to play dumb, and in which aim I immediately failed) was the black Goyaesque hairnet that De la Garza actually and impossibly was wearing to keep his hair in place or for some other cretinous motive, and so my confused vision of that second moment turned out to be right. Now, on the other hand, I couldn't believe it, despite my vision being blindingly clear now. The net did not even have a bob or a ponytail to fill it, its content was pure nothingness; given that he had had the nerve to wear such an anachronistic item, the choice of a sick mind, he could at least have hired a hairpiece, in order, within the awful twisted logic of the idea, to give it meaning and weight and some justification ('meaning' is a manner of speaking, as is 'justification', as is 'mind'). It occurred to me that he might have been sold or given a first-edition Lorca by the former director of the National Library of Spain, who was, I understand, a friend of his and who had, it would seem, taken full advantage of his post – now he was making the most of a still higher post – to squeeze ridiculous prices out of the finest antiquarian booksellers, claiming that he was acquiring the rare, expensive volume in question for that public institution, which was often, moreover, closed to Spanish citizens (appealing, in short, to the patriotic or, in this case, the most easily duped side of each seller), when, in fact, those books flew direct, with no official stopover, to his own private collection, which was still in a phase of rapid expansion.
I chose not to enquire just then why I was a bright boy and why I was wrong. I noticed that Mrs Manoia was beginning to get annoyed. It was completely unacceptable that, in the middle of a dance, her dance, some ridiculous and possibly already rather inebriated man should clumsily join us on the dance floor, position himself behind her partner and begin loudly berating the back of the latter's neck; it had been even more discourteous on my part, I realised, to reply to this erratic individual, even if only with a single, angry phrase, instead of stopping him literally in his tracks and sending him packing back to the bar, or even further off if I was really trying. Nevertheless, I wasn't sure if her annoyance was due to my momentary neglect, to De la Garza's pure, simple and unprecedented intrusion, or to the fact that I had not suggested an immediate halt to the dancing in order to introduce them formally. It seemed to me she felt some curiosity about Rafita the nightbird in his unintelligible get-up, but it was hard to tell, it might just have been complete bewilderment: as she danced, she must have been seeing two faces juxtaposed, which would have put her off pressing still more closely to my breast or concentrating on and enjoying her steps; I saw, too, how, irresistibly, she kept glancing up at the person behind me, she was understandably distracted by the sight of that accessory more suited to a matador or to an eighteenth-century majo, she could probably not quite make out what it was or its improbable significance, its hermetic symbolism. Or perhaps she had sensed from the very first that, regardless of the string bag with which he had chosen to adorn his hair, regardless of the fortune-teller's earring with which he had encumbered his ear, this second Spaniard would be for her a certain, possibly inexhaustible, source of flattery. The idea came to me anyway, and in a fit of irresponsibility and egotism, it occurred to me that it would be no bad thing to let the attache join us for a while, he would keep her supplied with a variety of glowing words and compliments (albeit indecipherable), and put on a brave front (the phrase was never more apt) and withstand the stakes or logs if she insisted on more dances. (I was, I feared, being more meagre with my words of praise than I was expected to be, not because I was being excessively prudent or because I found it hard to flatter such a spirited and receptive woman, who was, basically, very easily contented, except that no amount of contentment lasted her for very long and she required constant nourishment, but because I get so bored with expressions such as carine or tenere, and their monotonous nature soon cloys, even if I happen to read them in a novel or hear them in a film, even if I say them in real life or someone addresses them to me.) Whatever the truth of the matter, it took only four words from Flavia Manoia for me to convince myself that the current situation was unsustainable and that I should, without further delay, proceed to the introductions. And I felt quite certain of this when I saw out of the corner of my eye that Manoia, into whose ear Tupra was insinuating long, whispered arguments or propositions, had shot a couple of interrogative, not to say inquisitorial, glances at the dance floor since De la Garza had been pestering us, a total stranger, -in his eyes, who showed every sign of being a troublemaker and who might even be taken for a debauchee.