HASSAN CALLED AGAIN. He is still trying to persuade me to go to Morocco to work with him. I refused. It doesn’t interest me, partly because I want to be able to enjoy the slightly bitter chemical taste of Coca-Cola once again.
I haven’t heard anything more from Felipe, but I know his business went bust. The idea of selling slices of life cannot have worked. No two ways about it: people are very boring.
Ever since she broke up with her violinist, Sonia has stayed single.
Angelika and I are still in contact. In fact, we’ve become great friends. However long we go without meeting up, it’s always as if we had seen each other the day before. But I haven’t heard a thing about Susana or Sofia.
I do know that the girls all left the brothel. Manolo was becoming unbearable, so they decided to move out. As far as I know, they are all still in the same line of work.
Carolina has broken off all contact with me, and I’m afraid she has probably fallen back into the arms of Jaime – whom I’ve started legal proceedings against, with no results so far.
Pedro has left his wife and over time, we’ve become friends. We occasionally go out for a drink, just to have a chat.
Giovanni and I are no longer together. We stay in touch, though. I’ve tried several times to explain the process I’m going through, which is reflected in this diary. He supports me and says yes to everything I say, in order to make me feel good. Perhaps he thinks he’s part of a very strange psychoanalysis. I know he does it with the best of intentions, and tells me I can always count on him. But it will never be the same.
I still have a very special relationship with my bathroom. It’s the place where I can get rid of all that’s still weighing on me psychologically, and sometimes physically too. Everything flows and gets flushed away; it’s just a question of pulling the chain.
I don’t feel sorry about anything. In fact, if I had to live it all again, I would probably do exactly the same. It may be hard to admit, and may seem strange to a lot of people, but the time I spent in the brothel gave me some of the happiest moments in my life, simply because it was there I met Giovanni, and there that I found the new woman I am today. I feel as though I’m changing my skin every day, like snakes do at different seasons. My skin now is much easier to bear – it’s subtle, soft to the touch, and more impermeable to everything around me.
But I wouldn’t want the reader of my diary to get me wrong. This book is not a mea culpa, nor the portrait of a victim of a harsh, unjust destiny. I am not trying to tell anyone anything. I wrote this for myself, and in that sense it’s a completely selfish gesture.
Yes, I have been a promiscuous, insatiable woman. That was because I saw sex as a means to discover what everybody is looking for: recognition, pleasure, self-esteem, or, to put it more simply, love and affection. What’s so pathological about that?