The Man of Feeling by Javier Marías Page A

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