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.I know, Uncle, that you have little sympathy for people who externalize their feelings—I know you find it lowbrow to lose control, to sob out loud and cry hysterically at funerals, but you should have seen the woman that was Sánchez’s.(should I say romantic companion? I’m not really up to speed on hip, modern slang for this sort of thing: companion, longtime lover, I don’t know what you would call Sánchez’s girlfriend.Because, and don’t go calling me old-fashioned, they were technically not married).But anyway.My point is that you cannot begin to imagine the state his girlfriend was in at the funeral.My own philosophical conclusion is that either the girl was crushed at the thought of losing all those “sponsors” that Antonio helped her get for her “artistic” jewelry business or as the old Spanish song goes, “la vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida”—that is, life is filled with surprises, and surprises fill your life, and you can never tell how a woman will react to the death of the man she lives with.This poor, poor woman just fell to pieces, and I think it was for real.Not to compare or anything, but Mercedes sure was cool as a cucumber at Jaime Valdés’s funeral; not a single strand of hair out of place.I told you about all that before—she was so composed, so elegant, that some people believed she was completely indifferent about what had happened.Just like Mama at Bertie’s funeral, I think back with pride.Nobody saw tears fall from her eyes either—and she did have such lovely lilac eyes.Nor did people ever catch her avoiding them, despite everything she had been through and all the despicable things they so openly said about her.“I will toast to that!” I call out, raising my glass in the direction of Hassam so that he will serve me a bit more of that pox he calls a dry martini.As I do this, my eyes cannot help but stray over to the other side of the pool, to the little widow who never shed a tear, according to all the gossipers.And as she sees me raise my martini high in the air, she returns the friendly gesture by raising her own.“To your health, Mr.Moulinex,” I hear her say, for my ears are in far better condition than my eyes.At that very moment a beam of sunlight bounces off her wrist, making it sparkle a bit more brightly than it should.This of course must be due to that thick bracelet she wears, the one that seems so out of place at a country hotel, the one she stopped wearing after that first day we bumped into each other down here by the pool.“How odd,” I say to myself, though for the moment it is just a passing thought, because without my distance glasses I cannot see a bloody thing from so far away.I am blind as a bat.Anyway, I really must get back to Fernanda’s fax.Why are long letters such a bother to read? I must admit that Fernanda’s rambling is often quite entertaining, but in this case I find myself skipping over various sections until my eyes suddenly come across a familiar word, “Borrioboola-Gha,” which makes me backtrack a paragraph or so.I read:And since I am much more generous than you when it comes to divulging information about certain people we know, I should warn you that there is a fresh batch of news regarding Isabella Steine and I must tell you about it blow by blow.Because her situation—my God, it makes you want to do voodoo on her.Bon Dieu.I pray the blows are brief ones.I have come to live in fear of Fernanda’s treatises on Isabella Steine.She has a way of ripping la petite Isabella to shreds.Here’s the latest, Uncle.It appears that our Isabella (I assume you remember her, even though you are a total disaster when it comes to names.She is the gorgeous woman we ran into at Drones, the woman who sparked our entire conversation about Mercedes and Jaime Valdés) has gotten over the death of her ex-lover incredibly fast because she already has a new boyfriend, and he is quite a little dreamboat [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]