Apart from my old boss and the Semperes, I didn’t have much time to see anybody else except Vidal, and when I did see him it was more because he came to see me than through any effort on my part. He didn’t like my tower house and always insisted that we go out for a stroll, to the Bar Almirall on Calle Joaquín Costa, where he had an account and held literary gatherings on Friday evenings. I was never invited to them because he knew that those who attended, frustrated poetasters and ass kissers who laughed at his jokes in the hope of some charity—a recommendation to a publisher or a compliment to soothe their wounded pride—hated me with unswerving vigor and determination that were quite absent from their more artistic endeavors, which were persistently ignored by the fickle public. At the Bar Almirall, knocking back absinthe and puffing on Caribbean cigars, he spoke to me about his novel, which was never finished, about his plans for retiring from his life of retirement, and about his romances; the older he got, the younger and more nubile his conquests became.
“You don’t ask after Cristina,” he would sometimes say, maliciously.
“What do you want me to ask?”
“Whether she asks after you.”
“Does she ask after me, Don Pedro?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are.”
“The fact is, she did mention you the other day.”
“And what did she say?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Go on.”
“She didn’t say it in so many words, but she seemed to imply that she couldn’t understand how you could prostitute yourself by writing second-rate serials for that pair of thieves, that you were throwing away your talent and your youth.”
I felt as if Vidal had just plunged a frozen dagger into my stomach.
“Is that what she thinks?”
Vidal shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned she can go to hell.”
…
I worked every day except Sundays, which I spent wandering the streets, always ending up in some bar on the Paralelo where it wasn’t hard to find company and passing affection in the arms of another solitary soul like myself. It wasn’t until the following morning, when I woke up lying next to a stranger, that I realized they all looked like her: the color of their hair, the way they walked, a gesture or a glance. Sooner or later, to fill the painful silence of farewells, those one-night stands would ask me how I earned my living, and when, surrendering to my vanity, I explained that I was a writer, they would take me for a liar, because nobody had ever heard of David Martín, although some of them did know of Ignatius B. Samson and had heard people talk about City of the Damned. After a while I began to say that I worked at the Customs Offices in the port or that I was a clerk in a solicitors’ office called Sayrach, Muntaner, and Cruells.
One afternoon I was sitting in the Café de la Ópera with a music teacher called Alicia, helping her get over—or so I imagined—someone who was hard to forget. I was about to kiss her when I saw Cristina’s face on the other side of the glass pane. When I reached the street, she had already vanished among the crowds in the Ramblas. Two weeks later Vidal insisted on inviting me to the premiere of Madama Butterfly at the Liceo. The Vidal family owned a box in the dress circle and Vidal liked to attend once a week during the opera season. When I met him in the foyer I discovered that he had also brought Cristina. She greeted me with an icy smile and didn’t speak to me again, or even glance at me until, halfway through the second act, Vidal decided to go down to the adjoining Círculo club to say hello to one of his cousins. We were left alone together in the box, with no other shield than Puccini and the hundreds of faces in the semidarkness of the theater. I held back for about ten minutes before turning to look her in the eye.
“Have I done something to offend you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Can we pretend to be friends then, at least on occasions like this?”
“I don’t want to be your friend, David.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t want to be my friend either.”
She was right, I didn’t want to be her friend.
“Is it true that you think I prostitute myself?”
“Whatever I think doesn’t matter. What matters is what you think.”
I sat there for another five minutes, then left. By the time I reached the wide Liceo staircase I’d already promised myself that I would never give her a second thought or look or a kind word.
The following afternoon I saw her in front of the cathedral and when I tried to avoid her she waved at me and smiled. I stood there, glued to the spot, watching her approach.