The Infatuations Read Online Free PDF Page A

buy the drugs himself, without forcing us into crime or giving him money up front. With him, you couldn’t rule out the possibility that he might do a runner, and the company really wasn’t in a position to throw money around like that. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, do you want it so that you can get stoned or do you simply want to look at it and touch it?’
    ‘I’m not sure yet. That depends on what my book asks of me tonight.’
    It seemed to me ridiculous that a book would ask anything day or night, especially when the book wasn’t yet written and the person being asked was the writer himself. I assumed he was being poetic and let the remark pass without comment.
    ‘You see, if it’s only the latter and all you want to do is describe cocaine … Now how can I put this? As a writer, you aspire to being universal, and you are, of course, which is why you attract readers of all ages. If you start explaining what cocaine is and what its effects are, your younger readers might think that you’re a drugs novice and that you’ve only just cottoned on, and then they might take the mickey. Because describing cocaine nowadays would be a bit like describing a traffic light. Let’s see, what adjectives would you use? Green, amber, red? Static, erect, imperturbable, metallic? People would laugh.’
    ‘Do you mean a traffic light in the street?’ he asked, alarmed.
    ‘The very same.’ What else could ‘traffic light’ possibly mean, at least in ordinary, everyday language?
    He fell silent for a moment.
    ‘Take the mickey, eh? Only just have cottoned on,’ he repeated. I saw that my use of those expressions had been a good move, they had made their mark.
    ‘But only as regards that part of the book, I’m sure, Señor Fontina.’
    The thought that some young readers might take the mickey out of anything he had written was obviously unbearable to him.
    ‘All right, let me think about it. Another day won’t make any difference. I’ll tell you tomorrow what I’ve decided.’
    I knew he would do nothing of the sort, that he would abandon any further idiotic experiments and investigations and would never again refer to that telephone conversation. He always made out that he was anti-conventional and trans-contemporary, but deep down he was just like Zola or some other such writer: he did his best actually to live what he imagined, with the result that his books sounded affected and contrived.
    When I hung up, I was surprised at my success in denying Garay Fontina one of his many requests, all by myself, without consulting my boss. I put this down to being more bad-tempered and more fed up than usual, to no longer enjoying breakfast with the perfect couple and thus no longer being infected by their optimism. Losing them did at least have that one advantage: it made me less tolerant of weaknesses, vanities and stupidities.

 
    That was the only advantage, which was, of course, worth nothing. The waiters were wrong, and when they found out they were wrong they didn’t bother telling me. Desvern would never come back, nor, therefore, would the cheerful couple, who had, as such, also been erased from the world. My colleague Beatriz – who also occasionally breakfasted at the café and with whom I had discussed that extraordinary pair – was the first to mention the incident to me, doubtless assuming that I would know, that I would have found out on my own account, either from the newspapers or from the waiters, and assuming, too, that we would have already talked about it, completely forgetting that I had been away during the days immediately after the murder. We were having a quick cup of coffee outside the café, when she suddenly paused, aimlessly stirring her coffee with her spoon, and said softly, looking over at the other tables, all of which were full:
    ‘How dreadful to have such a thing happen to you, I mean what happened to your favourite couple. To begin a day like any other with not the faintest idea