Free While the Women are Sleeping by Javier Marías Page A

against the glass, you could break it and injure yourselves. Be off with you.’ And with a rapid movement he slipped back into the store and bolted the door.
    He returned to his desk and sat down. The beggar was looking at him coldly now from the other side of the glass. He seemed offended. He was angry. His brown eyes were genuinely cool, unfriendly, intimidating, more so than Lawson’s own cool, blue, intimidating eyes. The other two beggars were laughing and jostling the tall beggar as if to say: ‘Come on, let’s go’ (though Lawson could hear nothing). The first beggar, however, remained quite still, as if rooted to the pavement, staring at Lawson coldly, threateningly. Lawson could not hold his gaze. He looked down and tried to immerse himself once more in the compilation of the next catalogue, the 251st since the founding of Rota, the discriminating bookstore of which he was manager. That way perhaps he’ll disappear again, he thought. If I don’t look at him, don’t see him, he’ll disappear, the way he did before. Although, of course, then he came back.
    He kept his eyes lowered until he noticed a change in the light. Only then did he dare to look up to see that the window was clear. He got to his feet and went over to check the display again. On the pavement lay a shattered beer bottle. But there, safe and sound, awaiting their distinguished bibliophile purchasers, were Salmagundi , £350, Oliver Twist, £300, La Chute , £600, Room , £2,000, Epigram of Fealty , £500, and to, £50,000. He gave a sigh of relief, picked up the typescript of Watt and clasped it to him. It had been typed by Beckett himself, who had never trusted anyone else with the task. Perhaps he should withdraw it from display, it was after all worth £50,000. He carried it back to his desk to consider the matter and there, for a moment, allowed himself an absurd thought. A copy of An Epigram of Fealty bearing John Gawsworth’s signature would be worth twice as much. A thousand pounds, he thought. Lawson looked up, but the window was still empty.
    (1989)

a kind of nostalgia perhaps
    It is quite possible that the main aim of ghosts, if they still exist, is to thwart the desires of mortal tenants, appearing if their presence is unwelcome and hiding away if it is expected or demanded. There have, however, been instances of pacts made between ghosts and mortals, as we know from various documents collected by Lord Halifax and Lord Rymer in England and by Don Alejandro de la Cruz in Mexico.
    One of the most modest and touching of these cases is that of an old lady living in Veracruz, around 1920, when she was not an old lady, but a young girl who knew nothing of such visitations and waitings — or are they perhaps a kind of nostalgia? In her youth, this old lady had been the companion of a wealthy widow of advancing years, to whom, among other services rendered, she used to read in order to ease the tedium of her mistress’s lack of visible needs and preoccupations, and of a premature widowhood for which there was no remedy: for, according to people in that port city, Señora Suárez Alday had suffered the occasional illicit disappointment in love after her brief marriage, and it was probably this—rather than the death of her slightly or entirely unmemorable husband—that had made her seem curt and withdrawn at an age when such characteristics in a woman are no longer considered intriguing or charming or a fit topic for teasing. Boredom made her so lazy that she was barely able to read by herself, in silence and alone, so she had her companion read out loud to her details of affairs and feelings which, with each day that passed—and they passed very quickly and monotonously—seemed more and more alien to that house. The lady always listened very intently, utterly absorbed, and only occasionally asked her companion (Elena Vera by name) to repeat a passage or a piece of dialogue to which she did not wish to bid farewell forever without,