NATALIA MANUR TOLD ME NOTHING during those few days, while I, on the other hand, less reserved than she was or with fewer resources for maintaining a dialogue day after day without resorting to the tale of my own biography (with less strength of mind to endure the silences), did tell her about myself—under the disinterested or slightly incredulous gaze of Dato, who, perhaps out of discretion or diplomacy, pretended to be thinking his own inscrutable thoughts whenever I talked about myself—the bare facts of my story or past or life until approximately a year before, that is, up to the moment when I had decided to live in Barcelona with Berta, whose existence I still had not even mentioned. I talked to Natalia Manur (and therefore to Dato) about my sad, solitary childhood; about my then unhealthy plumpness, which had brought me so much mockery and heartache (another view of the world); about my wretched and always abject relationship with my godfather, Señor Casaldáliga, who took me in on the death of my mother—his cousin—and of whom I have always suspected that he might be, as well as my godfather and second cousin, my ashamed and unconfessed father. I talked to Natalia Manur about the painful experience of being a poor relation, with no rights and no aspirations, with not even the possibility of complaining, obliged to live in a state of uncertainty that goes far beyond what might be deemed reasonable, never feeling that one had a home of one's own. I explained to her how, as a child, I was permanently and painfully aware that I could be expelled at any moment from my room—which, purely by extension, I assumed to be also my home—by Señor Casaldáliga, a truly strange and terrifying man: wealthy (I found out afterwards that he was enormously rich), tortured, mean, devious, somber, sarcastic and authoritarian, a judge by profession and the owner of a bank (but this, like so many other things, I only found out when I was older and through third parties: I knew nothing about his activities when we lived under the same roof). I sensed that my being there—as with my schooling, my food and my clothes—depended entirely on his fancy, not on his affection or sense of responsibility or on his clemency, and nevertheless I felt obliged, not so much to gain his respect and to try to please him, as not to gain his disrespect and not be too much of a disappointment. (I haven't seen him for a long time now: four years ago he was still living in Madrid, but it never occurred to me—not once—to go and visit him, although I did send him tickets to the opening night of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, to which he did not, as far as I know, come, at least he didn't drop by my dressing room to congratulate me. He's still alive now, having retired to the countryside, where he lives in a vast mansion in the province of Huelva, and we write to each other occasionally, a strange, belated father-son correspondence.) I explained to Natalia Manur how I had to ask permission to do anything: to move from one part of the house to another, from my room to the bathroom, from the dining room to the living room, from the kitchen to the bedroom, to say nothing of going outside and coming back in again. I never had my own keys. He always wanted to know exactly where I was, as if he were afraid I might come across him in a corner committing infamies that no one else should witness. Every move I made required his consent, and if my godfather wasn't at home, then I simply had to (this was what he prescribed and what I did not do) wait for his return before I came out of my room: put up with my bursting bladder, put up with my thirst, put up with my hunger; or be farsighted in a way no child, however sensible, unhappy and reliable, could ever be. Anyway, for years I had to avoid the servants (who, distinctly lacking in charity—and not at all enamoured of this fat little boy—promptly informed him whenever I overstepped the mark) and had to be very careful not to leave clues behind of any unauthorized movement: the sponge used to refresh my face had to be left as dry as it was before and in exactly the same position; whenever I gave in to the irresistible temptation to use the telephone in order to discuss the day's homework with my best friend, I had to remember to leave the handset exactly as he had left it, he being left-handed; I often had to walk around in my stockinged feet, like ne'er-do-wells in cartoons or silent films, in order to avoid leaving any telltale muddy stains on the carpet or the floor; any furtive sips of milk—my favorite drink—had to be minimal enough for any change in the level in the bottle to go unnoticed, as would any incursion into the kitchen in his absence; if I listened to the radio—my great passion as a child—I had to return the dial and the volume to the precise position in which they had been before my excited manipulations. I explained to Natalia Manur how, even when I was an adolescent and he could not keep quite such firm control over me, I had to beg Señor Casaldáliga to give me money for really essential things, and how sometimes he would refuse me for days: money to buy soap when mine ran out (mine was cheap Lagarto, not Lux like his) or toothpaste (mine was cheap Licor, not Colgate like his), money to buy replacements for my almost threadbare undershirts or underpants, to go and get my hair cut, to pay for the bus or the tram to and from school. During my childhood and adolescence, Madrid was a hateful place, and the expression on my face was one of permanent abstraction and amazement, like those little children painted by Chardin, elegantly dressed and absorbed in their games—the shuttlecock, the penknife, the spinning top—with the difference that my clothes were tragically ill-made and, although my gaze was as absent as theirs, I had no absorbing toy to hold or to look at. Then one day, I learned how to read a score and began to acquire my own, and singing came to my rescue. But that isn't what I want to talk about now.

Natalia Manur would listen to me as attentively and compassionately as if she were being told of the misfortunes and privations of some Dickensian child, and she told me later, on more than one occasion, that she was, in part, attracted to me because of those stories and because she could relate her adult fate to that of mine as a child. Soon afterwards, I discovered that her history or past or life shared that same nineteenth-century quality. But, as I have said, prior to the performances of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, what I mainly came to realize was my own unthinking conviction: I wanted to destroy Manur and I had to destroy Berta in order to go on seeing Natalia Manur without impediment of any kind. We were in odor of cruelty. The second act of destruction was easy enough, since it depended entirely on a decision I had already taken: I knew everything about Berta, far more than was necessary. The destruction of Manur, on the other hand, was far more difficult knowing, as I did, almost nothing about him and nothing at all about his weak points, and having seen his manner and glimpsed his smug self-satisfaction, his confidence in himself and in his qualities, it seemed to me impossible to make a fool of him in any direct confrontation, whether dialectical in nature or otherwise. He was clearly stronger and more flexible than I was, as well as more commanding. After thinking it over very quickly in my room one night (the night before the first performance, I remember it well), I realized at once that the only way of putting into effect my improvised or unexpected plans was to invert the order in which I have just listed them: I had only to go on seeing Natalia Manur every day and the destruction of Manur would come about by itself. As for the destruction of Berta, which I did not want, I had, nevertheless, to take it for granted—to put my signature once and for all to a longstanding sentence—and try to ensure that the whole process was as brief as possible and did not interfere with what, from then on, I imagined to be a conquest or a game. But that same night I found myself plunged into doubt as to what method to use. Should I speak openly to Natalia Manur? Declare myself to her in proper operatic fashion, before there was any kind of intimate contact between us? Use Dato as mediator? Or should I try to get her on her own on some propitious occasion—perhaps in my dressing room—and act like a classic—that is, old-fashioned—seducer, at the risk of failing at the first attempt with no possibility of putting things right later on? The fact that I had formulated to myself the nature of my feelings ("I must be in love or under the unknown influence of some powerful fancy to think like this and to feel such desire," I said to myself) suddenly seemed to be a terrible disadvantage that was forcing me to put into action a plan which was more or less premeditated (but which had still not got beyond the meditative stage) and which was forcing me, therefore, to act artificially, instead of letting things continue as they had until then, taking things, not passively exactly, but at least naturally, without forcing or directing anything, in a state of vague, unexpectant waiting. How tiring loving is, I thought. Striving, planning, longing, unable to content oneself with perseverance and immobility. How tiring the real world is, I thought, with its demands to be filled. And how tiring the as-yet-to-be is too. I have had to struggle so hard all my life to fulfill urgent needs: to grow up healthy and sane, to not be the object of other people's mockery, to lose weight, to not give in to my godfather's despotism, to remove myself from his house, to study music, to study singing, to study in Vienna, to leave Madrid, to enter the small, jealous circle of professional singers, to gain respect, to be an international star. So far I have triumphed in everything I have set out to do, and every morning, when I scrutinize myself long and hard in the mirror in order to spot any changes, I feel certain that triumph is written all over my face. I have an agent who looks after me and always tries to get me the best of everything, I travel the world (albeit alone), I make records and my name appears in third or fourth or fifth place on the album covers, I go to luxury hotels like this one (albeit alone), I have enough money and I know that soon I will have much more. I enjoy my profession, I like stepping out onto the stage in costume and transforming myself into many other people, and singing and acting and being applauded for my efforts and reading the ever longer and more glowing reviews in the newspapers of the world's cities. I like the fact that impresarios and journalists from all over the globe call me up to engage me or to interview me in my house in Barcelona. There I live with Berta, whom I may not love, whom I doubtless do not love, as I realized a few months ago during a performance of Turandot when Liu's famous pre-funeral arias moved me so much that I was filled by a sense of invincible love whose object was definitely not Berta, although neither was it anyone else, certainly not the singer playing the part of the enamoured, selfless slave (an excellent soprano, but a kind of German barrel, who has the unfortunate habit of spitting all over her fellow performers when she sings and whose name I will not give here because she is still working; indeed, nowadays she is, like me, a rising star). I don't feel excited about Berta; when I get home, I don't feel particularly glad to see her, nor do I feel any immediate need or desire to go to bed with her, I prefer to wait a few days, to watch a lot of television, to calm myself down, to get used to being back again and accustomed to a sedentary rhythm that doesn't really exist, going out to buy the bread or to the newsstand, going to see Barcelona play at home. The fact is that I find it more exciting to have a luxury call girl come up to my luxury room during some of the lonelier nights of my musical travels. But that doesn't make me unhappy, I mean the lack of excitement I feel about Berta. Relationships with other people have not, up until now, occupied an important place in my existence, perhaps because I have been too busy with the progress of my career, with my indispensable daily exercises, with perfecting my art and lavishing care on my voice, with my studies, the constant practicing and, yes, more studying. Now that I am beginning to reap the rewards and having to struggle less, I see that I have found my place in the wheel and that it will just be a question of that wheel continuing to turn as it should— with me on board—for glory and the plum roles (Calaf, Otello) to come my way. I have had a few love affairs, but none of them was very significant and none of them wrought any great changes in me. Berta is actually perfect. Organized, intelligent, discreet, affectionate and cheerful, mad about music, patient with my rehearsals, and most people find her very attractive, although for some time now (more or less since we began living together) I have not found her so (I am more attracted to the prostitutes whom, as I said, I occasionally summon, out of loneliness, curiosity or boredom). She is not odd or melancholy, like Natalia Manur, whom I nevertheless want to go on seeing every day. Why do I want to go on seeing her every day? Perhaps because I want to be like Liu or like Otello, because, at this particular moment in my history or pre-past or life, I need to try to destroy myself or to destroy someone else. Liu is a Chinese slave who is tortured and later kills herself with a dagger in order to save the life of Calaf, whom she loves and whose name the cruel Princess Turandot tries to drag out of her so that she, Turandot, will not have to marry him and can have him executed at dawn, as she has her previous suitors. Liu is a condemned woman, and that is how she sees herself from the start. Whatever option she chooses will bring her unhappiness. Either she dies and her beloved Calaf lives to marry Turandot, or else she confesses his name and lives, but then Calaf will die with the night. In neither case will her love be consummated, so it is a matter of choosing between one happiness (that of the beloved) and no happiness, or perhaps even between two happinesses and no happiness if we accept the idea that dying for the beloved can for the lover be a perfect form of happiness. Perhaps that is why for Liu the decision is clear. Otello's story is even better known. Among his options, he does not even consider anyone else's happiness, unless it were, in an impossible Otello, that of the supposed lovers, Desdemona and Cassio. It is unthinkable, Otello stepping aside to bring about the happiness of his wife and the man with whom, according to Iago, she has been unfaithful. If Otello had lacked, as Liu did, the notion of justice . . . (But the lack of that notion only became acceptable in our century.) Berta is perfect for my career and for my general well-being, but not only do I want to go on seeing Natalia Manur every day, tonight, I thought then, I very much want to go to bed with her, as much as I very much do not want to go to bed with Berta ever again. It was, like nearly every night during that stay in Madrid, a spring night. I had the balcony doors open and I could hear, from outside, the murmur of cars and the occasional abrupt, angry, drunken voice. I could hear noises from inside too, keys opening the doors to other rooms, fragments of foreign conversations in the corridors, a waiter with a tray or with a trolley, knocking on a door; at one point, I heard the climax of a loud argument and something crashing into the wall of the room next to mine, it sounded like an ashtray thrown by a woman at a man, rather than by a man at a woman (he said, in Spanish with a Cuban or possibly a Canary Islands accent: "Well, if you didn't want to know, you know now!" and then she replied: "I'll show you, you bastard!" and then came the bang). Natalia and Manur would never argue like that, it wasn't their style, given their apparent sterility and coldness. Would I become the cause of an argument one day, soon, tomorrow, tonight, already? I tried to stop thinking these thoughts by rehearsing for the penultimate time—or, rather, recalling it, since I sang it to myself in my head—what would be one of my brief interventions the following day in the role of Cassio: Miracolo vago . . . Miracolo vago . . . and another immediately afterwards, alternating between the two: Non temo il ver . . . non temo il ver ... I was murmuring or singing these words to myself over and over, as if, after the third or fourth time, they had stayed in my head against my will, and then everything suddenly happened very fast, just as it did in my dream this morning. The image of Natalia Manur at the supper we had shared, and which had ended only half an hour before, kept going round and round in my head. She was wearing a raw silk dress, slightly decollete—a spring decolletage—that had made me notice her cleavage for the first time. It is always a serious moment when you notice for the first time one particular part of a woman's body, because the discovery is so dazzling that it stops you looking away even for an instant; it distracts you from the conversation and the other people around, and when you have no option but to turn your gaze towards, for example, a waiter who is asking you something, your eyes, as they return, do not travel through space from one point to another, nor do they slowly take in the view, instead they alight once more, without pause, on the one thing that they want to see and at which they cannot stop staring. It is impossible to behave correctly. Thus I spent the whole supper without addressing a single word to Dato and listening to Natalia without hearing a word she said, responding mechanically and in complimentary tones to her remarks, with my servile eyes almost fixed on the beginning of that space between what seemed to me to be Natalia's extraordinary breasts. It was a banal discovery, but then I am, in many ways, a banal man (sometimes I even do my best to appear vulgar). She must have noticed, and I must have seemed like a complete idiot, if not worse, but, looking on the bright side, any advances I made, now, tonight, would not come as a complete surprise. My desire was very strong that night, as desire always is when it makes its first identifiable or recognizable appearance in one's consciousness. I picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Natalia Manur's room. While I was waiting for the connection—it took, as it usually does, only a matter of seconds—I realized that I was also ringing Manur's room and that it was already half past midnight. As usual, Dato, Natalia, and I had said our goodbyes to each other in the elevator less than half an hour before. She would still be awake and Manur might not yet have returned from his presumed business supper. But if Manur picked up the phone, I would hang up without saying anything, exactly as if I were one of the lovers that Natalia Manur did not have. Manur's voice answered ("Allò?" it said two or three times in French, then corrected itself and said "Hello?" once) and I hung up, and it was for that reason and no other that I had a prostitute come up to my room that night. I realize that telling you this could make a very bad impression and lose me your sympathy, but the prostitute also appeared in this morning's dream, which is, after all, what I am describing to you.

It was not an act of instantaneous despair or of basic spite, nor was it dictated by the impossibility of satisfying my desire for Natalia Manur (I would like to believe that there was nothing in the least compensatory about my decision), rather, I was resorting to a swift, sure way of giving vent to the agitation provoked in me by my hanging up the phone and of filling the sleepless hours that awaited me because I had hung up straight away. The idea of calling a prostitute on the eve of a first night performance was really most unusual, so rarely did I use their services, despite what I said earlier. (And never on special days.) I decided that it would be best to sort the matter out in person, so I went down to the night porter at the reception desk and, very discreetly, although, at the same time, placing some money on the counter, I asked the well-turned-out, respectable-looking fellow who was on duty what chances there were of finding some pleasant company at that hour of the night either on the street or elsewhere. This is a neat way of not involving a reputable hotel in such services by making offensive assumptions, but, equally, giving its employees the opportunity to provide them (I know from experience that even the most venerable hotels, in terms of clientele and years in the business, can provide such a service, which is, indeed, much sought-after by the potentially suicidal or homicidal traveling salesmen who occasionally stay in them, not to mention businessmen like Manur when they are alone). The night porter looked at me entirely unconspiratorially, recognized me and, with the same care with which he would have explained to a tourist how to get to the Royal Palace, he immediately dissuaded me from going out into the streets ("May I be frank? If you don't know the area and you don't have your own car," he said, pausing slightly to give me the chance to shake my head to both these things, "you could waste a lot of time walking up the Castellana," and, taking out from beneath the counter a map which he kept there already unfolded, he pointed to the Paseo de la Castellana and ran one impeccable finger all along it, "before finding anything worth bothering with, apart from transvestites and drug addicts, because I don't imagine you want anything too central or too popular, do you?" I was struck by his use of the word "popular," which was a polite way, then and now, of referring to the riffraff in the most central part of the city center) and suggested that he might be able to get one of the staff masseuses (he emphasised the word "staff" as if that provided some kind of real guarantee, and added "if, of course, you are agreeable") to come up to my room in fifteen or twenty minutes, if I could wait that long. I said, "Yes, I'll wait," and asked him if I should pay for the service separately or if they would add it to my bill, forgetting that the second option was impossible, since it was not I, but the organizers of Verdi's Otello, who would be paying. He, more on the ball than I was, opted for the first solution and informed me that the young woman (that was what he called her now—"young woman") would herself furnish me with a bill. Only when he said the word "bill," did he finally pick up the note I had placed on the counter and which had remained there during the whole of our brief conversation, like a mark on the wood—polished, indelible and ancient, and which no one even notices any more. I went back up to my room.

Today, while I am writing this with barely a break (although, driven by hunger, I have just paused at last to have breakfast, thus risking abandoning for ever the nocturnal realm), I very much regret not having behaved in a more relaxed and gentlemanly fashion with the woman who knocked at my door a quarter of an hour later, just as the night porter had told me she would. Perhaps if I had been more attentive and less fussy, things would have turned out differently, with her and with the Manurs. Today (but it's too late now) I offer her my arm when she comes in, I introduce myself, giving my name, surname and profession, I help her off with her coat, I ask her to sit down, I pour her a drink from the so-called minibar in my room, I compliment her on her dress and her smile and the color of her eyes and, when she leaves—perhaps not, as really happened, only ten or fifteen minutes after her arrival, but half an hour or an hour later—I give her two tickets for the first night of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela and insist that, at the end, she must drop by and see me in my dressing room with her companion, who might well, I think, have been the highly efficient night porter-cum-emissary. In fact, I feel far more curiosity now than I did then about that willing prostitute who had left her sleep or her work (the latter, since she had put off an engagement) to satisfy the whim of a poor anxious, enamoured guest, although, of course, she knew nothing of my enamoured state or of my anxiety.

I remember very clearly that the first thing I noticed when I opened the door was the black coat she was wearing. It seemed odd to me, because people were no longer wearing overcoats at that time of year in Madrid, where, as everyone knows, one passes effortlessly from winter cold to almost summer warmth. Under that overcoat, the prostitute was wearing a minuscule mauve dress which looked as if it were made out of satin, but which might well have been just rayon, and the shortness of the dress may well have explained the coat: you couldn't go walking along the corridors of a venerable hotel in a brief, clinging garment like that. She took it off and put it down on an armchair (the coat, I mean) while I looked her over and asked her straight out, without even offering her a seat:

"What's your name?"

"Claudina. What's yours?"

"Emilio," I lied, absurdly, since the night porter not only knew my name and doubtless my status, he also had all my details at his disposal, including my Barcelona address: if he wanted, he could even blackmail me on my return home. And what would Berta say if she found out? Then I remembered that Berta was no longer going to be part of my life.

I looked more closely at the face emerging from the mauve. This prostitute was rather attractive at first glance, with large, sinuous features and a suitably dissolute, somewhat salacious look on her face. To judge by the little attention she was paying me (she was not looking at anything in particular, and certainly not at me), she did not, however, seem overly enthusiastic; I mean that she did not seem prepared to pretend an enthusiasm for her job which some clients expect and for which they are extremely grateful. She was the type, I thought, who thinks it enough simply to be. I closed the balcony doors and then the silence grew still longer.

"Where are you from?" was the next thing it occurred to me to say, or the next thing I wanted to know. This is the kind of question one can only ask in capital cities.

"I'm from Argentina. What about you?" asked Claudina the prostitute without the slightest trace of an Argentinian accent.

But I was the one who was going to pay and I wanted to direct the conversation, and although I was in the mood to ask questions, I certainly wasn't in the mood to answer them.

"Ah, I see. From Buenos Aires?"

"No, I was born in the pampas, in the province of Cordoba."

This statement, just in case there was any doubt, was made in an unequivocally "popular" Madrid accent, which is why it began to seem pointless to continue a conversation in which the person being questioned was not only systematically lying (which was perfectly normal), but was not even making the slightest attempt to lend verisimilitude to the deception. Nevertheless, I wanted to see how this undeniably Spanish prostitute with her modest fantasies would cope. She had an acceptable figure, and her face—as I was able to confirm on somewhat closer inspection—was quite attractive, although, as is often the case with women in that profession, it was spoiled by the exaggerated mouth movements she made each time she spoke.

"And what does the Cordoba over there think of our Cordoba over here?" It was an idiotic question, of course, but precisely because of that a particularly difficult question for a Madrid girl who had probably never been out of the country and, therefore, an excellent question with which to test her imaginative powers. It bothered me that she did not want to answer it: hiring a prostitute also means, in large measure, acquiring the right to dictate a performance, and her reaction annoyed me in exactly the same way as, when I was child, it used to annoy me if, during our games of make-believe, my playmate did not stick to the plot and to the dialogues that I had thought up for each occasion.

"Look, Emilio," she said, "I haven't got much time, you know. I'm already running late for another appointment I made earlier. Don't get me wrong, but I only made time for you because Cespedes asked me to."

So Claudina the prostitute called the night porter-cum-emissary "Cespedes," I thought, and I immediately wondered what Natalia Manur would call me, by my first name or by my surname, when she mentioned me to Dato or to Manur himself. The hum of cars became audible again, once our ears (mine) had grown accustomed to that longer silence. However, all my agitation and my vitality were draining away after only a few minutes' exposure to the indifference and conversational ineptitude of this other person. My discourteous attitude had been a mistake, but, after all, I thought, it is usually women who set the tone in any encounter or conversation. Even Claudina the prostitute was capable of disarming me and dissuading me from my initial intentions simply by not looking at me. I was glad that I had not forced a second encounter with Natalia Manur that night: if she too had failed to look at me, I might very well have ceased to desire her, just as I no longer felt the slightest desire for Claudina the prostitute after only five minutes of her indifferent, lying, unimaginative, weary, and (my fault this) still standing presence. Nevertheless, I tried to make my position clear.

"Well, in that case, at least allow me to decide how I fill the time," I said sourly.

"All right, I've got twenty minutes." And she looked at her watch just as Manur had looked at his on the one occasion when I had spoken to him. "What do you want me to tell you about? Not my childhood, please."

No, that wasn't the way. Now I really did feel offended, and the fact is that I did not want her to tell me anything, just to entertain me in my own way, to change personalities for a while, to act, perhaps to play. I should not have treated her like that, she had taken offence and had proceeded to treat me coldly and precipitately. Any possibility of a novel conversation or drama and the harmonious and fair distribution of roles had been spoiled from the start.

She had sat down at last when she said "all right" and now—legs crossed, her gaze still distracted, wandering here and there—she was revealing the whole of her thighs, so I sat down in turn on the left arm of the chair and touched them lightly—full frontally—with my fingertips. She immediately uncrossed her legs to make it easier for me to do so, but there was nothing provocative about this movement, it was made out of sheer indolence. Her thighs were softer than they looked, in fact, they were too soft and had a scar-like texture that did not make them exactly pleasant to the touch. At that same moment, I noticed that Claudina the prostitute was not dark-skinned enough to wear the color mauve. She should have waited a little longer, until the summer, to wear that dress, but she probably didn't realize that. Prostitutes are not educated in colors. I continued touching her, with my whole hand this time, and her pale, soft thighs, firm and smooth, artificially taut, suddenly reminded me of my own thighs when I was a boy (a fat boy) and when I had no option but to see them all the time, because my godfather did not allow me to wear long trousers until I was sixteen years old, on the pretext that the continual rubbing of my plump legs would wear the trousers out. And although Claudina the prostitute's thighs were slim and shapely, I had the feeling that I was touching the thighs of a former me. I found the thought troubling. Claudina the prostitute opened her legs slightly, offering me her inner thigh, but she did so lethargically and hastily, if those two qualities can coexist.

"No," I said, and she, slightly bemused, finally fixed her grey eyes on me. I closed her thighs and got to my feet. I picked up her unseasonable overcoat from the other armchair: it was a gesture that brooked no appeal. "It would be best if we just take this time as filled and you get off to your next appointment. Have you got the bill? The night porter said you would bring one."

"There's no need to be like that, I can always be late for an appointment," said the prostitute, still seated, with a touch of amour propre and a tone that bordered on the conciliatory, just the bare minimum of conciliatoriness to allow money to change hands, however well or ill gotten that money might be, however it was obtained.

But there was no point in starting all over again. I had absolutely no wish to remain with Claudina, especially if I couldn't have a quiet conversation with her and ask her, for example, how it was that she had such a strong Madrid accent, if she had been born in Argentina.

"You haven't even got an Argentinian accent," I said as I handed her three or four (I can't quite remember) of the same notes I had handed to the night porter for the favor.

"What do you mean?" she replied with genuine surprise. "I've done everything I can to get rid of my accent, but I just can't do it. I should know, I've lost several roles in the theater and on TV because of it."

I did not sleep well that night. I had murky dreams that this morning's dream chose not to reproduce. But at least I managed to get to sleep as soon as I was alone, tormented in the midst of the ever longer silence of the city by the belated doubt which I will now never be able to resolve, whether Claudina the prostitute was, after all, a real Argentinian and a magnificent actress, who had managed miraculously and unwittingly to suppress all trace of her origins, or if, on the contrary, she was an extremely stupid girl from Madrid doing her level best to disguise her accent and thus give some verisimilitude to her lies, although, if that were the case, only she would ever know. When I closed my eyes, after looking briefly at the empty wall and thinking, as I used to then, that this would be yet another night spent with no one watching over my sleep, the whole room still smelled of Claudina the prostitute, and the truth is, it smelled good.