The Infatuations by Javier Marías Page B

thing had obviously been programmed by some fraud with very dodgy Italian. Fourth: I had been on the go all day with various people and had had no option but to have a few drinks here and there in different places; I am not my usual alert self when tired and a little tipsy – well, who is? Fifth: I was late for an appointment which was already very late in the day and I was feeling disoriented and harassed and worried that the person waiting impatiently for me would give up and leave the place where we had agreed to meet (I’d already had a hard job persuading her to prolong her night in order that we might see each other alone), only that we might converse, you understand. Sixth: for all the above reasons, the first indicationthat I was about to be mugged came when I noticed, with my money in my hand, but not yet in my pocket, the point of a knife being pressed against my lumbar region, it even penetrated a little: when, at the end of the night, I got undressed in the hotel, there was a tiny spot of blood here. Just here.’ – And lifting up the tails of his jacket, he quickly touched some point immediately above his belt, so quickly that I doubt if any of those present could have said precisely where. – ‘You have to have experienced that slight pricking, there or in any other vital zone – aware that your attacker would only have to press a little harder for that point to enter the flesh unopposed – to know you have no alternative but to give them whatever it is they want, and all the fellow said was: “Give us your money.” Oddly enough, you feel an unbearable tingling in your groin, which then spreads throughout the body. But the origin of that sensation is not in the part of your body under threat, but here. Just here.’ – And he indicated the two sides of his groin with his two middle fingers. – ‘Not, you will notice, in the balls, but in the groin, which is quite a different matter, although people sometimes get confused and describe some frightening event as being “ball-shrivelling” or say “my heart leapt into my mouth or throat”’ – and he touched his throat with index finger and thumb – ‘but that’s only because the sensation spreads outwards and upwards from the groin. Anyway, as everyone has known since the weak wheel of the world first began to turn, given the nature of such an ambush or treacherous attack, there is no preventive action to be taken or, indeed, defence. I rest my case. Or would you like me to continue my enumeration? I can easily keep going at least as far as ten.’ – When Díaz-Varela did not respond, Rico assumed he had won the argument by sheer force of logic and, looking around him for the first time, he noticed me, the children and Luisa too, in a way, even though she had already been introduced to him. I think he reallyhadn’t properly taken us in before, otherwise he would, I think, have refrained from using the word ‘balls’, mainly because of the children. – ‘Now who have we here?’ he asked without the slightest hint of embarrassment.
    I noticed that Díaz-Varela had suddenly gone very silent and serious, and for precisely the same reason that Luisa had taken three steps towards the sofa and sat down on it before even inviting the two men to do so, as if her legs had given way beneath her and she could no longer remain standing. She had gone from the spontaneous laughter of a moment before to an expression of grief, her gaze clouded and her skin pale. Yes, she must have been a very simple mechanism. She raised her hand to her forehead and lowered her eyes, and I feared that she might cry. There was no reason why Professor Rico should have known that her life had been destroyed by a knife that had stabbed and stabbed, perhaps his friend hadn’t told him – although that was strange, because one tends to recount other people’s misfortunes almost without thinking – or if Díaz-Varela had told him, he had quite forgotten about it: he had a