Free At Close Quarters by Eugenio Fuentes

ridiculous as teaching a frog to catch flies,’ replied Alkalino. ‘I mean, you’re already very good at what you do, and you don’t need any help.’
    ‘No, that’s not true. You know how much I appreciate your contribution. You know I value your words, and not simply as ingenious or eccentric speculations.’
    Alkalino looked doubtful.
    ‘Sometimes I do get that impression, but there are moments when I’m not so sure my opinions are worth much.’
    ‘You’ve known me long enough not to doubt it.’
    ‘Well, I don’t know much about you,’ he said, still serious.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You’re in the business of knowing. You’re the one who asks and listens and thinks things over and knows. The rest of us are what is known. I haven’t heard you talk about yourself for a long time, Cupido.’
    The detective looked at him in silence, weighing up the words Alkalino had used to describe him. It was true. He’d never been someone given to confidences or talking about himself, but with the passage of time he was becoming even more secretive. He hid from everyone his disappointments, his loneliness, his fears and how fed up he was with his job, the profession that led him to believe that no person can love another forever. He kept those impressions to himself, where no one might see them and point out their painful harshness. Looking back, he realised he’d been able to salvage very few things from the wreckage of time, that the wealth of his youthful dreams had rotted before they could come true. He no longer hoped to have children. Nor did it seem likely that he would have for a woman feelings as intense as when he had first loved. He no longer believed that an ideology could make the world a better place; and as for the human condition, well, he’d seen his fair share of evil and misery, and had concluded that some men can only do harm. He’d seen people die and people kill. It was true that, when he thought of the future, the moral landscape he identified in himself was not lacking in dignity, but it wasn’t the kind best shared with anyone else. He was over forty and knew that, unless he did something about it, he’d get lonelier as each year passed. Up to this age, he often told himself, most of the people one has met and known are alive, but from now on the balance will start to even out, until the presence of the living weighs as much as the memories of the dead. And a little later everyone would start dying around him, if his number didn’t come up first. Nowadays, all he felt was a sort of pity towards innocent victims, filial love for his mother, and friendly affection for halfa dozen people. Alkalino took pride of place among them, and Cupido didn’t want him to feel scorned, or that he was someone who didn’t matter, someone one doesn’t count on, and whose opinion is not consulted because one’s indifferent to it.
    ‘You may be right in part,’ admitted Cupido.
    ‘I am, Cupido, I am.’
    ‘Some day I might talk about myself.’
    Alkalino still looked doubtful.
    ‘I’m not so sure. You’re very self-sufficient. You’ve become isolated, and … and …’ He looked at the furniture, searching for an inexistent bottle of something, and made a vague gesture, as if he suddenly didn’t know where he was or whether his words meant anything. Nor did he seem to be expecting a reply. ‘I think I’d better go back to Breda,’ he said, leaving the previous sentence unfinished.
    ‘What, now? When summer is coming and the city fills up with all those tourists you like to watch so much?’
    ‘Precisely now that the first ones are arriving. I’ve come back from the beach, and people have already started sunbathing. The girls were coming out of the water in their wet, almost see-through bikinis, cold and trembling, as if they were waiting for someone to come and wrap them up in a towel.’
    ‘And what’s wrong with that?’
    ‘Wrong? Nothing wrong if it was me they were waiting for.