that seemed so much like Blanca’s breasts, though he nolonger knew for sure whether their shape and the pinkness of the nipples was or was not identical to the breasts he remembered. He heard her saying his name in Blanca’s voice, almost more tender now than ever before, without the faint note of cool distance whose existence he had always refused to accept, just as he had refused to see and understand so many things, so many slight untruths, so much silent disloyalty. He took one more step, put the dishcloth down on the table, afraid his hands still smelled of grease or detergent, and knelt down next to the sofa, next to the woman whose breath carried nuances different than Blanca’s yearned-for breath or the succulent taste of Blanca’s mouth. As he leaned toward her, he was surprised by a renewed excitement, an unexpected liberation from nostalgia, if not from suspicion. It occurred to him that he, too, was learning how to pretend, and he tried to justify this by telling himself, as he pushed the hair away from her face and kissed her eyelids and nibbled an earlobe perhaps slightly fleshier than Blanca’s earlobe, that this apprenticeship insimulation would help him root out the lie—and not simply in order to make his peace with it, never that. But the fact is that as he kissed and caressed her and unbuttoned her green silk shirt all the way down, he closed his eyes very tightly so that there would be moments when he was sure he really was kissing and caressing Blanca, recognizing her in that willed darkness with a certainty neither his intelligence nor his emotions could grant him.
Two
MARIO LÓPEZ ALMOST never went out for a beer after work with his colleagues. He wasn’t in any way unsociable and prided himself on getting along well with everyone in the office, but each day at ten minutes to three when the staff left the Provincial Council building and dispersed in eager, noisy groups to various nearby bars, he always invented some excuse or simply waved an energetic good-bye and quickened his steps to get home assoon as possible so that he could open the door and call out to Blanca by no later than five past three or, at the very most, ten past.
The only greed he could conceive of was greed for time spent with her. If he yielded seven hours of his life each day to the civil service, and devoted seven more to sleep, any carelessness in the use of the ten hours that remained for living with Blanca would be a reprehensible squandering, a quotidian amputation of happiness. He had never lost the avid and perpetually unsated need to be with her that he’d first experienced during their early days, when they’d spend an afternoon together or go out to dinner and then not see each other again for a week or two, when he didn’t yet dare call her every day from fear of seeming too pushy.
Their years of marriage hadn’t diminished his amazement at having her regularly there beside him, for hours and days and weeks and months, a greater wealth of time than he’d ever dreamed of possessing and that might have lasted so long because it could turn out to be inexhaustible. Sometimesall he needed to do was open the door of their apartment to be welcomed by the familiar signs of their domestic life and Blanca’s habitual and ever-desirable presence: the smell of something cooking in the kitchen, the sound of Blanca putting plates and silverware on the table, maybe even the theme song that accompanied the opening credits of the afternoon soap opera—but that was only on days when he was exceptionally quick and got home at three o’clock sharp, days when there were no last-minute snags at the office or annoying encounters in the street. Other days, he would open the door and hear nothing, smell nothing, and for a fraction of a second, standing just inside the front door with his keys in his hand, he’d be overwhelmed by a devastating, entirely unfounded panic: Blanca had been obliged to leave very suddenly without
Two
MARIO LÓPEZ ALMOST never went out for a beer after work with his colleagues. He wasn’t in any way unsociable and prided himself on getting along well with everyone in the office, but each day at ten minutes to three when the staff left the Provincial Council building and dispersed in eager, noisy groups to various nearby bars, he always invented some excuse or simply waved an energetic good-bye and quickened his steps to get home assoon as possible so that he could open the door and call out to Blanca by no later than five past three or, at the very most, ten past.
The only greed he could conceive of was greed for time spent with her. If he yielded seven hours of his life each day to the civil service, and devoted seven more to sleep, any carelessness in the use of the ten hours that remained for living with Blanca would be a reprehensible squandering, a quotidian amputation of happiness. He had never lost the avid and perpetually unsated need to be with her that he’d first experienced during their early days, when they’d spend an afternoon together or go out to dinner and then not see each other again for a week or two, when he didn’t yet dare call her every day from fear of seeming too pushy.
Their years of marriage hadn’t diminished his amazement at having her regularly there beside him, for hours and days and weeks and months, a greater wealth of time than he’d ever dreamed of possessing and that might have lasted so long because it could turn out to be inexhaustible. Sometimesall he needed to do was open the door of their apartment to be welcomed by the familiar signs of their domestic life and Blanca’s habitual and ever-desirable presence: the smell of something cooking in the kitchen, the sound of Blanca putting plates and silverware on the table, maybe even the theme song that accompanied the opening credits of the afternoon soap opera—but that was only on days when he was exceptionally quick and got home at three o’clock sharp, days when there were no last-minute snags at the office or annoying encounters in the street. Other days, he would open the door and hear nothing, smell nothing, and for a fraction of a second, standing just inside the front door with his keys in his hand, he’d be overwhelmed by a devastating, entirely unfounded panic: Blanca had been obliged to leave very suddenly without
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