And it was true that I had wondered about it when I saw it in his hand – or perhaps that was later on, when I finally got home (not then, not during that car journey or while sitting in the car) and it took me so long to get to sleep (therefore, he may have formulated it for me, may have put it into words for me in the car and my thought might have been a mere echo of those words) – and I had done so in these terms: 'Where did that come from, a primitive blade, a medieval grip, a Homeric hilt, an archaic tip, the most unnecessary of weapons or the most out-of-keeping with these times, more even than an arrow and more than a spear, anachronistic, arbitrary, eccentric, so incongruous that the mere sight of it provokes panic, not just intense fear, but an atavistic fear, as if one suddenly recalled that it is the sword that has caused the most deaths throughout most centuries; that it has killed at close quarters and face to face." Earlier, Tupra had alluded to Homer and now he was talking about the second Plantagenet king and the first of the Richards, born in Oxford of all places, although it is highly unlikely that he knew any English, even broken English, and during the ten years of his reign, he spent, altogether, no more than six months in the country of that language, the rest of the time being taken up with the Third Crusade or with familial wars in France, where he was killed as he was besieging Chalus in 1199 by – to add insult to injury – an arrow from a crossbow, as I was able to confirm later on in a couple of history books: another British foreigner, yet another bogus Englishman and another one who had his aliases: not just the famous 'Lionheart', but also 'Yea and Nay', which, understandably enough, tends to be forgotten; well, Richard Yea and Nay sounds rather comical, even if he was called that because of his sudden and continual changes of mind and plan, even in the midst of battle (he must have been infuriating, that cruel king). I inevitably found these cultural references coming from Tupra rather surprising, in normal conversation he didn't usually make such references, either historical or literary, although perhaps it was because there was no need for them at work: we were always talking about other people, most of whom were present and none of whom was fictitious, although the majority of them were strangers to me. Perhaps, for professional motives, he knew the entire history of weapons. Or, more likely, it was because he had studied at Oxford and been a disciple of Toby Rylands, eminent emeritus professor of English Language and Literature, and was more educated than he seemed. But sometimes I wondered whether Rylands's tutorship had taken place more within the group with no name, which provided a more practical training, rather than at the renowned university to which we had all belonged. Even I had belonged to it during those two now distant years of which barely a trace remained, as I had confidently predicted when I still lived there, conscious that I was just passing through and would leave no mark. Now, in this other London time, I thought the same sometimes, only more so, despite never being very clear as to where I would go if I left or whether I would return: 'When I leave here, when I return to Spain, my life during these real days – and some pass very slowly – will become a "Yea and Nay" or like a banal dream, and none of it will be of any importance, not even the gravest events, not even that temptation or that sense of panic, not even the feelings of disgust or embarrassment that I myself provoke, not even the sense of something sitting heavy upon my soul. A day will have arrived when I will have said a farewell to these days perhaps similar to that written by Cervantes and of which I tried to remind Wheeler, although without entirely daring to, in his garden by the river. Doubtless a less cheerful farewell, but definitely more relieved. For example: "Farewell, laughter and farewell, insults. I will not see you again, nor will you see me. And farewell, passion; farewell, memories."'