Yes, it's often bothered me that the other person involved has then gone on to describe to me her characteristics, her inner world, painted me a portrait of herself, not, of course, entirely true-to-life, or has tried to make out that with me it's different ('This has never happened to me with any other man'), partly to flatter me and partly to save a reputation upon which no one had cast a doubt. I've found it irritating when she's started moving about my house or apartment-if that's where we were-with excessive familiarity and nonchalance and with an appropriative attitude (asking, for example, 'Where do you keep the coffee?' taking it for granted that I do keep coffee and that she can make some herself; or else announcing 'I'm just nipping to the bathroom,' instead of asking if she can, as she would have done a little while before, when she was still dressed and as yet unskewered; although that verb is too extreme). It has infuriated me when one of them has settled down to spend the whole night in my bed without even consulting me, taking it for granted that she has an open invitation to linger in my sheets just because she's lain on the mattress for a while or rested her hands on it to keep her balance while bending over, her back to me, more ferarum, with her skirt hitched up and the heels of her shoes firmly planted on the floor. It has angered me when, a day or so later, that same woman has turned up at my door, to say a fond and spontaneous hello, but really in order deliberately to repeat what happened before and to make herself more at home, on the baseless assumption that I will let her in and devote time to her at any hour or in any circumstances, whether I'm busy or not, whether I have other visitors or not, whether I feel pleased or regretful (though I've more than likely forgotten) that I allowed her to set foot on my territory the day before. When I want to be alone or I'm missing Luisa. And it's really riled me when one such woman has phoned up later saying 'Hi, it's me,' as if yesterday's bit of carnal knowledge had conferred on her exclusivity or uniqueness, or made her instantly identifiable, or guaranteed her a prominent place in my thoughts, or obliged me to recognize a voice that possibly-if I was lucky-uttered only a single groan or a few, purely out of politeness.
However, what has most enraged me has been the feeling that I was somehow in her debt (absurd in this day and age) for allowing me to sleep with her. This is probably a hangover from the era into which I was born, when it was still considered that all the interest and insistence came from the man and that the woman merely gave in or, more than that, conceded or assented, and that she was the one making a valuable gift or granting a large favor. Not always, but all too frequently, I have judged myself to be the architect or the person ultimately responsible for what has happened between us, even if I hadn't sought or anticipated it-although I've seen it coming on most occasions, suspected it-and assumed that they would regret it as soon as it was over and I'd withdrawn or moved away, or while they were getting dressed again or smoothing or adjusting their clothes (there was even a married woman once who asked to borrow my iron: her tight skirt, by then, looked like a concertina, and she was going straight on to a dinner party with some very proper married couples and didn't have time to go home first; I lent her my iron and she left looking very pleased with herself, her skirt silent and showing no trace of its recent ups and downs), or perhaps later on, when they were alone and in pensive or reflective mood, gazing up at the same moon-to which I would be oblivious-through windows that, for them, had suddenly taken on a nuptial feel, as they dozed in the early hours.
And so I have often felt an impulse to repay them at once, by being sensitive, patient or prepared to hear them out; by attending meekly to their woes or engaging with their chatter; by watching over their unfamiliar sleep or bestowing on them inappropriate caresses that certainly didn't come from the heart, but which I dredged up from somewhere; by thinking up complicated excuses so that I could leave their house before dawn, like a vampire, or leave my own house in the early hours, thus letting it be understood that they couldn't stay overnight and that they had to get dressed and go downstairs with me and pick up their car or get a taxi (with me having paid the driver in advance), instead of admitting to them that I could no longer stand seeing them, listening to them or even lying breathing sleepily by their side. And sometimes my impulse has been to reward them, symbolically and ridiculously, and then I've improvised a gift or prepared them a good breakfast if it was that time of the morning and we were still together, or I've bowed to some wish that it was within my power to grant and which they had expressed not to me but to the air, or agreed to some implicit and unformulated request, made long enough ago for the two things not to be connected or only if there was a stubborn insistence on bringing together word and flesh. Not, on the other hand, if the request was made explicitly and immediately after the event, because then I've never been able to shake off the unpleasant feeling that some sort of transaction or exchange has taken place, which falsifies what has happened and makes it seem somehow sordid or, indeed, glossed over, as if it had never happened.
Perhaps that's why Pérez Nuix asked me for the favor early on, when it still hadn't even occurred to me that by the end of the night we would get so close and even reach the morning without entirely letting go of each other. Well, actually the idea had crossed my mind, not as a possible possibility but as a hypothetical improbability (a strange idea in the back of the mind, acknowledging to yourself that you would accept something that is clearly never going to happen), and the first time had been while she was repeatedly zipping and unzipping her boots and drying herself on my towel and there was a snag in one of her stockings that degenerated into a long, wide run, and she had blithely revealed her thighs to me and thus indicated that she did not exclude me. 'She doesn't rule me out, but that's as far as it goes,' I had thought. 'Nothing more, that's all, I am the one who notices and bears it in mind. In reality, though, it's nothing.' And: 'There's a great gulf between feeling desire and not entirely rejecting someone, between affirmation and the unknown, between willingness and the simple absence of any plan, between a "Yes" and a "Possibly," between a "Fine" and a "We'll see" or even less than that, an "Anyway" or an "Hmm, right" or something which doesn't even formulate itself as a thought, a limbo, a space, a void, it's not something I've ever considered, it hadn't even occurred to me, it hadn't even crossed my mind.' I was still invisible to her when she asked me the favor, and perhaps I remained so throughout the night and even into the morning. Except perhaps for that brief moment when she cupped my face with her open hands as if professing some affection for me, the two of us, by then, lying in my bed ready to go to sleep, her soft hands; when she looked into my eyes and smiled at me and laughed and delicately held my face just as Luisa sometimes used to do when her bed was still mine and we were not yet sleepy, or not enough to say goodnight and turn our backs on each other until the morning.
But that came later. And as almost always happens when you ask a string of questions one after the other, young Pérez Nuix began by answering the last one. 'You still haven't asked me the favor, what is it exactly, I still don't know. And which private private individuals do you mean?' had been my two questions, repeating the expression she had used 'private private individuals.'
'Strange though it may seem to us today, Jaime, with our nerves constantly on edge and with everyone in a permanent state of panic over terrorism,' she said, 'there was a period of a few years, quite recently in fact, although it seems a long time ago to us now, when MI5 and MI6, shall we say, lacked work. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, their duties diminished as did their concerns, and the budgets they had at their disposal collapsed, which, as we now know, was a great mistake. For example, the budget for MI5 went from £900 million in 1994 to less than £700 million in 1998. Then it gradually started creeping up again, but until the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, which set all the alarm bells ringing and provoked much breast-beating and many dismissals from the ranks of middle management, there were about seven or eight years when a large part of the world's Intelligence Service, and, of course, our own, felt almost useless and superfluous, how can I put it, unoccupied, unnecessary, idle and, worse, bored. Many of the people who had spent decades studying the Soviet Union found themselves not unemployed exactly, but surplus to requirements, with a sense that they had not only wasted their time, but also a large portion of their lives, which were abruptly coming to an end. A sense that they had become the past. Those who knew German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish and Czech were called on less frequently, and even Russian experts lost prominence and work. Suddenly, there was a kind of unacknowledged superfluity, suddenly, people who had been of fundamental importance were no longer needed, or only for minor matters. The situation was so depressing that even the department heads realized how demoralizing it was, and I can assure you that in any job anywhere, they are always the least likely to notice their subordinates' problems. Anyway, the fact is that they did finally cotton on, incredibly late-and only a few days before September 11th, if I remember rightly, the press, The Independent, I believe, reported that MI5, through the then Director General, Sir Stephen Lander, was preparing to offer its espionage services to the major companies of the land, like British Telecom, Allied Domecq, Cadbury Schweppes and others, whom it could provide with very useful information about their foreign competitors. Apparently, it was the agency that approached the companies, and not the other way round, in the course of a seminar held at their headquarters in Mill-bank, the very first time, if I'm not mistaken, that representatives from industry and the financial world, both from the public and the private sectors, had been invited there. The reason given was that it was just as important and as patriotic to help the British economy and make it more competitive in the world, as well as shielding our large companies from the foreign spies who doubtless exist, as it was to protect the nation from dangers and threats to its security, be they internal or external, political, military or terrorist. The idea was basically to commercialize the activities of the SIS'-I remembered this acronym, I'd heard Tupra and Wheeler use it: the Secret Intelligence Service, she said the acronym in English, s, i, s, or to Spanish ears, es, ai, es, even though we were speaking Spanish- 'to win lucrative contracts, which was tantamount to a partial privatization of the agency, to reap immediate large rewards and rescue from boredom a good number of the idle and depressed by sending them to work more or less directly for these companies. And that, of course, brought with it a real risk of dividing their loyalties. Lander roundly denied this through a spokesman, who stated that offering to spy for private companies in exchange for remuneration would go beyond the competence of MI5 and that such a proposal would be illegal. He admitted that MI5 had, for some time, been mounting operations with a view to uncovering foreign spies in British companies, and that they provided free advice mainly to the defense industry and to those developing new technologies when they were preparing to sign large contracts or if there was any suspicion of computer fraud. The spokesman added, however, that Lander's controversial paper at the seminar, whose theme had been 'Secret Work in an Open Society,' had dealt only with the growing threat from hackers, and that he had offered advice, with no mention of money, to public and private companies on the best ways of guarding against hackers and of combating software piracy. Several of the invited guests, however, acknowledged in private that Lander's initiative had been quite different, and that he had promised to aid them in their business dealings with a constant stream of privileged information about companies and individuals, 'if they asked for it.'