There he was, as always, and the night must, indeed, have been warm, because he, too, had flung open two of his large windows, two of the four, and it was likely that the music was coming from his long room, bare of furniture, like a dance floor cleared of all obstacles; it wasn't late and so he must, for once, have dispensed with his headphones or with the cordless contraption he used, and this time the rune would not be playing in his head alone – as well as in the deductive ears of my mind, as I watched him dance – but throughout the house and outside too, until it died like a shadow or a fraying thread where I stood at my window. He wasn't alone, but with the two partners I knew from before, the two women I had occasionally seen, usually separately I seemed to remember: the white woman in tight trousers who had not, as far as I knew, stayed the night (she had got on a bicycle and pedalled briskly off into the dark), and the black or mulatto woman with the full, swirly skirt who appeared not to leave afterwards. Both of them were now wearing rather short, tight skirts (about mid-thigh-length, and possibly not very comfortable to dance in), and none of the three was as yet dancing, not properly, it was more as if they were deciding or agreeing on the exact steps they were going to take, doubtless in unison with the music that was just failing to reach me, and which I would, therefore, never recognise.
'He's brought them together,' I thought, 'perhaps he's going professional and wants to rehearse with them what in America they call a "routine", that is, movements and steps that are not improvised but agreed and coordinated, that country and this era are always spoiling words, everything is always being usurped, always becoming more imprecise, more oblique and fictitious and often incomprehensible, words and customs and reactions; but it may be that only one of them is his lover and there is, therefore, nothing odd about the three of them getting together to dance, or maybe neither of them is; if, on the other hand, both of them are, that would be a bit strange, I suppose, despite the artificial liberalism of these times in which, according to many people, nothing is ever very important, not even violent actions, which are so easily forgiven or regarding which there is never any shortage of imbeciles equipped with an imbecilic – or should I say monkish? – moral authority and ready to delve with infinite patience into the utterly unmysterious causes of that violence and which, naturally, they understand, as if they were above such things (they may pretend to be secular, but the old question that priests used to ask is always on the tip of their tongue, a permanent temptation: "Why are you like this, my son?"), until someone gives them a smack in the mouth and knocks them off their ivory tower and then they no longer understand; for example, I know that I could be violent in certain circumstances, apart from in self-defence, that is, but I know that it would be for the basest of reasons about which there would be no mystery at all, out of frustration or envy or revenge or in response to my own petty fears, and so it is best simply to avoid those circumstances: I couldn't meet up with a boyfriend or lover of Luisa's for some unthinkable activity involving all three of us, not at the moment, but in a few years' time who knows, when not a centimetre of my skin still smarts and if he turns out to be a really great guy, which I doubt; nor could she, I think, with a girlfriend or lover of mine, who will, at some point, inevitably exist, and given that she and I are neither that nor anything else at the moment, what, I wonder, will we be or what are we already, perhaps just a past, each other's past and one so long and enduring that it seemed to us it would never become the past. She can't be so very distracted these days – although she did sound happy at the beginning and also at the end of our conversation – if she has time to worry about how she will look in the immediate future,' I thought. When speaking of using those poisonous brews and bloodstained bits of plastic, she had said: 'I might not need them today, but tomorrow, rather than the day after tomorrow, I certainly will,' and that is not so very different from what Flavia Manoia must think when she wakes each morning from her last anguished and already diurnal dream, at least according to Reresby or Tupra, who described her to me beforehand, as he did her husband, thus skilfully determining my subsequent perception of them both: 'Last night, I was still all right, but today I'm another day older,' thinks Mrs Manoia when she opens her eyes, bare of make-up, and then, for a few minutes, unable to stand the thought of submitting herself to another test, she wants simply to close them again. How hard it is for me to imagine Luisa with such fears, I am used to her being young.
Or, rather, when I think about it, it isn't so very hard: such fears are not unknown to me either, I suppose. Such feelings are felt not only by women, but probably by anyone who suffers some setback late in life or experiences a first real sense of weariness, I myself believe I feel it every day, that fear or some inkling of it, especially in this foreign time in which I am without a partner and a little alone here in London, not greatly alone, as Wheeler believes, only a little and only sometimes; 'But women recognise it, they confront it without ennobling it or looking for some meaning in it, while we men, most men, think of it with a more deliberate and therefore somewhat phoney bleakness, our way of thinking being both sadder and more definitive, but, on the other hand, we thus manage not to see ourselves as either frivolous or fearful of solitude – which is incidental – nor of the loss of love – which is fundamental, but, at the same time, insignificant.' And so we ask ourselves, in order not to blush: 'And how much longer until I die?' I listened more closely because it seemed to me that the music was clearer now, they must have turned the volume up, and when I looked again – really looked this time, rather than while absorbed in thought – I saw that the three of them had finally begun their much-discussed dance. It was an elegant dance, they weren't jumping or running around, instead, they were taking short and, how can I put it, sinuous and, yes, synchronised steps, the same steps at the same time, all the movement was in their feet and hips, heads nodding in time, arms accompanying those movements only lightly and minimally, slightly bent and held out to the side, as if each pair of hands were holding an open newspaper. They, the trio, travelled swiftly across the floor, but the impression they gave with their tightly controlled steps was diat each of them maintained their position, as if their respective positions or allotted areas of floor moved with them, and each of them were stepping always on the same boards; I said to myself- or perhaps it was because I could hear more clearly now, in the distance – that they must be dancing to some Henry Mancini tune, it could be the famous 'Peter Gunn', hardly anyone remembers now that it was originally written as the theme tune for an old TV detective series, I don't know if it was ever shown in Spain, I think it was on in the 1950’s (that is, almost prehistoric) and, of course, in black and white, but the music has not aged and has gone on to become an elegant modern-dance classic, assuming people know how to dance it elegantly, as these three did. Otherwise, it might be the beginning of the soundtrack to Touch of Evil, a film from the same period made by Orson Welles, in which Charlton Heston, no less, played a Mexican, it was astonishing that anyone could possibly believe he was a Mexican however large the moustache he sported from the first frame to the last, but people did. But that music is much less famous, and so I decided it must be 'Peter Gunn'. There are a few essential pieces of music that always travel with me if I'm well prepared (I wasn't when I left Madrid, I brought very little with me) or which I buy again if I'm staying in a country for any length of time, and among them are three or four pieces by Mancini because they almost infallibly cheer up even the gloomiest of days, and so I got it out and programmed the machine to repeat the first track, which is what the three people opposite must have done (the track lasts only two minutes and their dance was going on for much longer than that), and I played it in my apartment, as I had with other melodies on other occasions when I thought I could guess the music my dancing neighbour was dancing to, partly to amuse myself, partly to save him from the ridiculous fate of flailing around and moving and making absurd leaps before a spectator who cannot hear the music provoking them, who hears nothing, not that he would care anyway, for he was oblivious to the fact that he had any spectators, but one should show even more respect than normal to those who cannot demand it.