IN THE DREAM, the stranger had no face. His black silhouette looked as if it had become detached from the liquid shadows that dripped from the ceiling. At first Alicia thought she had seen him watching her from the foot of her bed, but then she realized that he was sitting on the edge, pulling off the sheets that covered her. She felt cold. The stranger was slowly removing his black gloves. She felt his freezing fingers touch her bare belly, searching for the scar that spread over her right hip. The hands of the stranger explored the folds in the wound, and his lips settled on her body. The warm contact of the tongue caressing the ridge of the scar made her feel nauseous. Only when she heard footsteps walking away along the corridor did she realize she wasn’t alone in the apartment.
Fumbling about in the dark for the switch, she turned on her bedside lamp. The light blinded her, and she covered her eyes. She heard steps in the dining room, then the sound of a door closing. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that she was lying naked on her bed, the sheets piled up on the floor. She sat up slowly, holding her head, overwhelmed by vertigo. For a moment she thought she would pass out.
“Jesusa?” she called out nervously.
She picked a sheet off the floor and wrapped herself in it, then managed to walk down the corridor, searching the walls with her hands, groping in the dark. The trail of clothes she’d left hours before had vanished. The dining room was buried in a steely darkness. A bluish gleam filtered through the window, barely outlining the shapes of furniture and bookshelves. She found the switch and turned on the ceiling lamp, her eyes slowly adjusting to the light. As soon as she understood what she was seeing, fear cleared her mind. The scene before her suddenly jumped into sharp relief, as if until that moment she had been looking through a lens that was out of focus.
Her clothes had been gathered on the dining-room table, except for her red coat, which lay on one of the chairs. Her dress was folded with professional expertise, her stockings delicately stretched out with the seams to one side, her underwear smoothed out as if on display in a lingerie shop. Again, she felt a surge of nausea. She walked over to the bookshelves and pulled out the Bible. Opening it, she removed the gun hidden there, letting the empty book slip from her hands. She made no attempt to pick it up. Cocking the hammer, she grasped the revolver in both hands.
Only then did she notice her bag, hanging on the back of one of the chairs. She remembered having dropped it when she came in. She walked over to look at it. It was closed. A shiver ran through her body when she opened it. She let it fall, cursing herself. The Mataix book was no longer there.
Alicia spent the rest of the night in the dark, curled up in a corner of the sofa, her gun in her hands, her eyes fixed on the door, listening to the unending moans of the old building. Daybreak caught her as her heavy eyelids were beginning to close. She sat up and looked at her reflection in the windowpane. Farther away, a blanket of purple spread over the sky, sketching a parade of shadows between the rooftops and towers of the city. Alicia looked out of the window and saw that the lights of the Gran Café were already speckling the pavement. Barcelona had only given her one day’s respite.
“Welcome back,” she told herself.