Everything he said seemed to me to show an extraordinary lack of tact. Or perhaps not: perhaps it was a delicate way – delicate because it was so aseptic, measured and pragmatic – of telling me to abandon all hope and stop waiting; to give Tom up as dead and never buried. My eyes again filled with tears, but I didn’t want Tupra to see this. I got to my feet, turned and went over to the balcony, where I rested one hand on my forehead and cheekbone, the better to control my tears (three fingers on my forehead and one thumb on one cheekbone), and looked down at the ugly statue in the square beyond the trees; I knew the inscription by heart: ‘On the initiative of Spanish women this monument was erected to the glory of the soldier Luis Noval. Spain – never forget those who died for you.’ It was dated 1912, and I’d never bothered to find out anything more about that soldier, whose effigy had enjoyed the support of, among others, Queen Victoria Eugenia and the writer, Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose name appeared on the inscription as the ‘Condesa de Pardo Bazán’. Nor did I know in which war he had died, possibly in the Cuban War of Independence, fourteen years earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, where Tomás had also perhaps died: ‘down the sea’s throat or to an illegible stone’. I’d never really taken any interest, and our country is very good at forgetting and allowing its inscriptions and stones to fade and quickly become illegible, something it does tirelessly, not caring in the least who dies for it and having no concept of gratitude, perhaps finding such a concept merely irritating. Luis Noval is a shadow, an empty name, a spectre; he may have a monument erected to him, but no one recognises his name and no one notices him. And Tomás would be even more of a shadow, a ghost, neither living nor dead, who wouldn’t even be remembered by his children – and who, then, would remember him, if they did not? A blade of grass, a speck of dust, a lifting mist, a snow that falls but doesn’t settle, a handful of ashes, an insect, a cloud of smoke that finally disperses.

‘I wonder where his body is?’ I thought, and struggled to hold back my tears. ‘No one will have mourned him and no one will have closed his eyes, perhaps no one will have buried him either, or perhaps only hastily and on the run, making sure it didn’t look like a grave, leaving the earth carefully flattened and with no gravestone, of course, hiding him away so that no one will find him, if anyone should ever want to.’ I stopped thinking for a moment, because Tupra was speaking to me again, respecting neither my silence nor my back turned to him, he probably didn’t want me to think too deeply or to abandon myself to grief, he wanted my mind to be occupied with practical matters, with legalisms and curiosities.

‘Look, Berta,’ he said, ‘here, in Spanish law, it specifies what would happen if the dead man were to return later on. Listen to this: “If, after being declared legally dead, the disappeared person should appear and his existence be proven, he can recover all his property and goods, but only in the state in which he finds them at the time of his appearance.” I assume they mean “reappear” and “reappearance”. “He will also have the right,” it goes on, “to be given the amount obtained from the sale of his goods or to be given the goods that accrued with said money. However, he may only reclaim the fruits or profits earned from his goods from the time of his appearance.” Again, it should say “reappearance”, I think; that would be more exact,’ he added punctiliously, giving the piece of paper a disapproving flick. ‘In short, if his heirs have spent everything, he won’t see a penny of his former fortune, there’ll be nothing for him to recover. What will he live on, the poor reappeared man (or woman of course)? He’ll not only be dead, he’ll be dispossessed as well. Will he live on the charity of friends? I’m not sure friendship lasts that long; beyond death, I mean. Or on the charity of his offspring? They, of course, might feel horrified, even threatened, to see him resuscitated, and, deep in their hearts, might wish him back in his grave. It would seem that the State has no intention of compensating him in any way, or of giving him a pension. I would say that someone who returns after having been deemed to be dead for years, should, at the very least, be treated like a retiree, or, indeed, better.’

I was barely listening to him. ‘While leaving open the possibility that Tomás might still be alive, this Tupra fellow is basically telling me that I should get used to the idea that Tomás is dead: he may only talk about the legal aspects and what I’m going to live on in the future, but he’s actually talking to me as if I were already a widow. A rather unusual widow, who needs to be recognised as such as quickly as possible, because I could find myself in difficulties if we don’t do things properly. So that I can remake my life and even remarry if I want, for he doubtless assumes I won’t lack for suitors at my age and with my looks, I’ve seen how he almost ogles me, trying hard to suppress any feelings of sexual attraction, but he doesn’t fool me; Tupra clearly likes women a lot and is accustomed to making conquests easily, you can sense it in his attitude, and he must be cursing the fact that he’s met me in such gloomy or pessimistic circumstances, as the bringer of news that strikes grief and despair into the heart, that overwhelms both mind and intellect, and precludes any advances he might make, which would be doomed to failure as inappropriate, disrespectful and completely out of order. That’s what constrains and impedes him, not the fact that I’m the wife of a close collaborator of his: such men are immune to scruples, they depend upon concealment and silence whenever things need to be concealed and silenced, that’s their natural medium, their natural element. Yes, he imagines I could get married again whenever I choose, and doesn’t even see as an impediment the burden I carry and will always carry, namely, two small children, so he’s being very generous in his assessment of my chances. Anyway, he’s prepared to help me even if Tomás is a deserter or has passed over to the enemy, become a defector, because that’s also a possibility. He must be pretty sure that Tomás has done neither of those things, which is why he’s given him up for dead, another outcast from the universe, although officially he’s obliged to leave me with a slender thread of hope, a chink of light. Nothing is definitive without a corpse, without some clear evidence, and Tomás has vanished with no witness to the how or when of his disappearance.’

I hadn’t moved away from the balcony, I was still standing with my back to him, still trying hard to contain the tears filling my eyes, and which I kept swallowing, so to speak, again and again. I finally managed to swallow them all, or so I thought. I heard Tupra light another cigarette taken from that ornate, Egyptian case. Several seconds later, and still without turning around, I said:

‘I can assure you that if Tomás does return one day, his money will have remained intact. I won’t touch it as long as there’s the slightest chance that he might be alive, even if he’s in the farthest-flung corner of the world,’ I said

‘I don’t doubt your intentions, Berta, but don’t be too naïve, intentions can only take you so far. You’ll still need to earn a living, 1989 is a long way off, and 1990 even further, which is when, according to English law, Tom could officially be declared dead, and when you could be eligible for a widow’s pension from the Foreign Office. It would be most unfair, however, if the possible widow of one of our men should suffer any hardship. We usually try our best not to let that happen, we don’t just abandon the family of someone who has fallen, we always provide them with the means to live.’

I interrupted him. That word ‘fallen’ fell like lead upon my soul, like a confirmation of a fact. But that isn’t what I asked him about.

‘1990?’ I repeated. ‘Does that mean that you still had contact with Tom this year, in 1983? So he didn’t disappear in 1982, and he didn’t take part in the Falklands War. Where did he go, then? At least tell me that, please.’

I had turned round now and moved a few steps closer to Tupra. He smiled as if amused by my rapid calculations, or perhaps by his own carelessness, something he realised he must avoid in future. Not that he was particularly bothered, he was an old hand and knew better than to answer my questions.

‘Later, Berta. When, as I explained earlier, we’ve reconstructed what happened.’ And he went on as if I hadn’t asked anything. ‘We’ve come up with the following plan for you: you will appear on the payroll as a translator, as is perfectly feasible, for one of the various international organisations that have their headquarters in Madrid, the COI or the OMT. People who work for them, as for the UN and the FAO and so on, are exempt from paying tax, so the salary they receive is paid gross, and it’s really not bad at all. A privilege, a reward if you like, extended to those functionaries who often have to live away from their country of origin. That won’t be the case with you, but you’ll still enjoy that privilege. Your name will appear on the payroll, but you won’t ever have to visit the organisation’s offices. You can carry on teaching, continue your normal life, and, according to our calculations, you won’t be any worse off, and will receive more or less the same as Tom brought in. Slightly less, of course, but you’ll hardly notice it. You see, if he carried out a particularly long, complex, difficult mission, one requiring special skills, he was sometimes paid bonuses in cash, which, to all intents and purposes, don’t exist, and, obviously, that won’t happen any more.’

‘I don’t know what the COI or the OMT are.’

‘In Spanish, they’re the Consejo Oleícola Internacional and the Organización Mundial del Turismo, respectively.’ He pronounced the two names in halting Spanish, especially the word ‘Oleícola’, putting the stress in the wrong place. ‘Both organisations have their headquarters in Madrid, as I say, and they don’t object at all; they’ve already given their consent. Lots of places are happy to help us, you see, which is a great advantage. They’re eager to oblige when we ask a favour.’

That vague ‘we’, again and again and again. Tomás had belonged to it, and still would after his death or disappearance, after his desertion or betrayal. They gave him the benefit of the doubt, or benefit of their genuine ignorance, and I suppose that was something to be grateful for. They could have washed their hands of him, left him to his fate, because an agent who has fallen can never be used again, he becomes useless or, worse, a nuisance. But perhaps, if he hadn’t fallen, he would be of enormous value when he returned.

‘You mean you’ll be paying me for a job I won’t do?’

‘That’s rather an unnecessary question, Berta. Don’t tell me you’d object to that. If you knew the number of people in the world who get paid for doing nothing, for being on a board of directors or a member of a trust, for attending a couple of meetings a year, for being an advisor who never advises. They’re really being paid for sitting still and keeping quiet. The State happily employs such parasites. Doing so frees it from all kinds of problems, calms any discontent, and can be considered an investment. Besides, in your case, it’s more than justified. It’s a question of fairness. It’s the least we can do when you’ve lost your husband, who served his country. Believe me, this is the simplest and best way to go about things.’

I once more turned my back on him and went over to the balcony. This time, I opened the balcony doors and looked out. A ghost with a statue erected to him, the soldier Luis Noval. ‘You’ve lost your husband,’ he’d said. And I had, even if he was still alive or long since dead. I would have to assume that he wouldn’t come back. I’d spent more than a year and a half without him, nineteen months, I thought. I’d long been used to his absences, or to his intermittent presence, but this was different. ‘I’ll probably, almost certainly, never see him again,’ I thought. ‘Never again.’ And then, unable to stop myself now, I began to weep silently, with no sobs or moans. My eyes brimmed with tears, and I immediately became aware of them wetting my cheeks, my chin and even my blouse. I couldn’t hold them back. (Yes, in the disfigured street he left me, with a kind of valediction.) Tupra noticed at once, he was the kind of man who noticed everything, and instead of staying where he was, waiting for me to compose myself, as any other Englishman would have done, I heard him stand up and approach slowly, quietly, doubtless counting the steps – one, two, three, four; and five. They were warning shots, as if allowing me the opportunity to stop him with a word or a gesture, the gesture meaning ‘Wait’ or ‘Leave me alone’ or ‘Stay where you are’. But I felt too helpless at that moment to reject any human companionship, regardless of who it was. I heard his light breathing on the back of my neck, then his hand on my shoulder, his right hand on my left shoulder, his arm around my neck like a false embrace from behind. I buried my face in that arm, seeking refuge or somewhere to rest, and his sleeve immediately became drenched with tears. I don’t think I ruined his suit though.