'Fairly big? Good grief, you clearly don't remember her at all, Jack. Wait, I'm going to show you a funny photo, I have it here.' Tupra had little difficulty in finding it. He got up, went over to one of the shelves, wiggled his fingers about as if he were trying the combination of a safe and then took from the shelf what seemed to be a hefty volume but which turned out to be a wooden rather than a metal box, disguised as a book. He took it down, opened it there and then, and rummaged for a couple of minutes among the letters kept inside, heaven knows who they were from, given that he knew exactly where to locate them and kept them so easily to hand. While he was doing this, he tapped the holder of his Rameses II cigarette and nonchalantly tipped ash onto the carpet, as if it didn't matter. He must have had servants. Permanent staff. Finally, he carefully removed a postcard from an envelope, using his index and middle finger as tweezers, then held it out to me. 'Here it is. Take a look. You'll remember her clearly now, as clear as clear. In a sense, she's unforgettable, especially if you discovered her as a boy. You can understand Mulryan's fascination. Our friend must be more lecherous than he seems. Doubtless in private. Or in his day perhaps,' he added.
I took the black-and-white photo from Tupra-like him with index and middle finger-and it immediately made me smile, even while he was commenting on it in words very similar to those going through my own head. Seated at a table, elbow to elbow, in the middle of supper or before or possibly afterwards (there are a few disorienting bowls), are two actresses famous at the time, to the left of the image Sophia Loren and to the right Jayne Mansfield, whose face ceased to be vague the moment I saw it again. The Italian, who was herself far from flat-chested- she had been another dream for many men, a long-lasting one too-is wearing a dress with a very modest neckline and she's giving Mansfield a sideways look, but making no attempt to conceal the fact, her eyes drawn irresistibly, with a mixture of envy, perplexity and fright, or perhaps incredulous alarm, to the far more abundant and far barer breasts of her American colleague, which really are very eye-catching and prominent (they make Loren's bust seem positively paltry in comparison), and even more so in an age when augmentative surgery was unlikely or certainly infrequent. Mansfield's breasts, as far as one can judge, are natural, not stiff and hard, but endowed with a pleasant, mobile softness-or so one would imagine ('If only I'd encountered breasts like that tonight and not Flavia's rock-hard pair,' I thought fleetingly), and must have caused a tremendous stir in that restaurant-whether in Rome or America who knows-the waiter who can be seen in the background, between the two women, maintains a praiseworthy impassivity, although we can only see his body, his face is in shadow, and one does wonder if
he isn't perhaps using his white napkin as a shield or screen. To the left of Mansfield is a male guest of whom one can see only a hand holding a spoon, but his eyes must be turned as sharply to the right as Loren's are to the left, although probably somewhat more avidly. Unlike Loren, the platinum blonde is looking straight at the camera with a cordial but slightly frozen smile, and although not totally unconcerned-she's perfectly aware of what she has on show-she's quite at ease: she is the novelty in Rome (if they are in Rome) and she has put the local beauty in the shade, made her look almost prim. A childhood memory of that pretty woman, Jayne Mansfield, came to me then and with it a title, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (or La rubia y el sheriff-The Blonde and the Sherriff--as it was known in Spain): a large mouth and large eyes, she was all large, vulgar beauty. To a boy at any rate, and to many grown men too, like me.
This was what Tupra was saying and what I was thinking, while he continued to enlighten me. He gave occasional short laughs, he found both the photo and the situation amusing, and they were.
'May I look to see what caption they gave it? May I turn it over?' I asked, for I wasn't going to read, without permission, what had been written on the back by the person who had originally sent it.
'Yes, please do,' Tupra replied with a generous gesture.
There was no noteworthy or imaginative or saucy caption, only 'Loren and Mansfield, The Ludlow Collection,' that much I saw, I didn't bother trying to read the message someone had scrawled for him in felt-tip years ago, two or three sentences, punctuated by the odd jokey exclamation mark, in a possibly feminine hand, large and rather round, my eye caught the signature for a second, just an initial, 'B,' perhaps for Beryl, and the word 'fear.' A woman with a sense of humor, if it was a woman who had sent it to him. A very unusual sense of humor, out of the ordinary, because a photo like that mainly causes amusement among men, which is why I laughed out loud at Sophia Loren's apprehensive sideways look, at the way she distrustfully shrinks back from that triumphant, intimidating, transatlantic decolletage, Reresby and I laughed in unison with the kind of laughter that creates a disinterested bond between people, as had happened once before in his office, when I was telling him about the hypothetical clogs worn by some minor tyrant-albeit elected, voted in-and about the patriotically starry print on the shirt I saw him wearing once on television, and when I said 'liki-liki,' that comical word which it's impossible to hear or read without immediately wanting to repeat it: liki-liki, like that. I had asked myself then, apropos of that disarming laughter, his and mine united, whether, in the future, he or I would be the one to be disarmed, or if, perhaps, both of us would.
'He's got some balls,' I thought crudely, in De la Garza style, feeling irritated, 'he's managed to make me laugh out loud. Only a while ago I was furious with him and still am, those feelings won't just go away; a while ago I was witness to his brutality, afraid he was going to kill a poor wretch with methodical coldness, that he was going to cut his throat for no real reason, if there ever can be a reason for doing so; that he was going to strangle De la Garza with his own ridiculous hairnet and drown him in the blue water; and I saw from up close the beating he gave him without ever using his own hands to deal a single blow, despite the threatening gloves he was wearing.' Tupra hadn't forgotten about those gloves: the first thing he'd done after getting the fire going again was to take them out of his overcoat pocket and throw them on the flames along with the pieces of toilet paper he'd wrapped them in. The smell of burning leather and wool was finally fading and what predominated was that of burning wood, the gloves must have dried off considerably since we left the handicapped toilet, 'The smell won't last,' he'd said as he threw them onto the fire with an almost mechanical gesture, like someone putting down his keys or loose change when he arrives home. He had kept them with him until he had the opportunity to destroy them, I noticed, and in his own house too. He was cautious even when he had no need to be. 'And now there he is, perfectly at ease, showing me a funny photo and cheerily commenting on it. (The sword is still in his overcoat, when will he take it out, when will he put it away?) And I'm equally at ease, seeing the funny side of the scene in the photo and laughing with him-oh, he's a pleasant fellow all right, in the first and the next-to-last instance, we can't help it, we get on well, we like each other.' (He wasn't so pleasant in the last instance, but that didn't usually occur, although that night it had.) I quickly traced back in my mind (it did little for my recovered anger, but it was better than nothing) why he had shown me the postcard in the first place. For a few moments, I'd forgotten what that photo was doing there, and what he and I were doing there. It was no night for laughter, and yet we'd laughed together only a short time after his transformation into Sir Punishment. Or Sir Revenge perhaps. But if the latter, what had he been avenging? It had been so over-the-top, so excessive, and for what? A trifle, a nothing.