Free The Infatuations by Javier Marías Page A

passed by at that particular moment; a minute earlier and you would have known nothing about it. Or like a stray bullet from a hunting party, fired by some inexperienced hunter or by a fool; you could so easily not have gone into the countryside that day. Or like an earthquake you get caught up in while on a trip abroad; you could so easily not have gone to that place. No, hating him serves no purpose, it doesn’t console or give me strength, I take no comfort from waiting for him to be sentenced or hoping that he rots in prison. Not that I feel sorry for him either, of course; I can’t. He’s a matter of complete indifference to me, because nothing and no one will bring Miguel back. I imagine he’ll be sent to some psychiatric hospital, if such things still exist, I don’t know what they do now with the mentally ill who commit violent crimes. I suppose they put them out of circulation because they constitute a danger to society and so as to prevent them committing a similarcrime again. But I don’t seek his punishment, that would be as stupid as the kind of thing armies used to do – in more naive times – arresting and even executing a horse that had thrown an officer and brought about his death. Nor can I take it out on beggars and homeless people in general, although I do feel afraid of them now. When I see one, I tend to move away or cross the road, a perfectly justifiable reflex action that will stay with me for ever. But that’s different. What I can’t do is actively devote myself to hating them, as I could hate a group of rival businessmen, say, who had hired a hit man to kill him, apparently that’s becoming increasingly common, even in Spain, flying in a murderer from another country, a Colombian, a Serbian, a Mexican, to get rid of an overly successful competitor who’s cramping their style, in other words, a simple business arrangement. They bring in a hit man, he does his job, they pay him and he leaves, all in the space of one or two days, and the police never find these killers, they’re discreet and professional, entirely neutral, leaving no trace, and by the time the body is found, they’re already at the airport or on the return flight home. There’s rarely any way of proving anything, still less who hired the killer, who instigated the murder or gave the order. If something like that had happened, I couldn’t even hate that abstract hit man very much, he just drew the short straw, and it could have been someone else, whoever happened to be free at the time; he wouldn’t have known Miguel or had anything against him personally. But I could hate the instigators, that would give me the chance to suspect people right, left and centre, a competitor or someone who felt resentful or hard done by, because every businessman creates victims either accidentally or deliberately, even among close colleagues, as I read again the other day in Covarrubias.’ Luisa saw my look of vague incomprehension. ‘Don’t you know it? Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española . It was the first Spanish dictionary, written in 1611 by Sebastián de Covarrubias.’ Shegot to her feet, picked up a fat green book from a nearby table, and began leafing through it. ‘I had to look up the word “ envidia ” to compare it with the English definition of “envy”, and this is how the entry ends.’ And she read out loud to me. ‘“Unfortunately, this poison is often engendered in the breasts of those who are and who we believe to be our closest friends, in whom we trust; they are far more dangerous than our declared enemies.” And that’s obviously a very old idea, because look what it goes on to say: “This is a commonplace, written about by many; but since it is not my intention to dig over ground others have already dug, I have nothing to add.”’ And then she closed the book and sat down again, with the book on her lap; I noticed that various pages were marked by bits of paper. ‘My mind would have something