All Men Are Liars by Alberto Manguel

it,” he said, “but they were there.”
    â€œAll right,” I said hurriedly, because my train was leaving in a couple of hours. “Let’s see. Suppose it was them. Suppose the grave could not hold her and prison bars were not enough for him. What does it matter to you? It’s not as though they blame Alejandro Bevilacqua for their woes.”
    Bevilacqua shot me a look of terror, wringing his long yellow fingers as though he were washing them. “Brother,” he entreated me, “you’re about to go to France for a few days. Would you let me stay here, in your house, just for the weekend? I promise not to touch anything. I just don’t have the courage to deal with the journalists, with Andrea, with Urquieta, with . . .” He let the sentence hang.
    What can I say—I’m a bit softhearted, as you know. Someone asks me for something and I can’t say no. Also, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the idea of leaving the house unoccupied for more than a few hours. I’d heard of several robberies taking place in the neighborhood, invariably when the occupiers were away. I had a hunch that the nightwatchman was passing on information, but of course it was impossible to prove this. And to be fair, Bevilacqua was a very tidy man. So I agreed. I swear that he embraced me with tears in his eyes; he would have kissed me if I’d let him. I picked up my suitcase, gave him a copy of my key, and let him walk me to the door.
    After I finished my Sunday seminar (the turnout was disappointing; from December to March the French show little interest in anything), I took the train back to Madrid. The Ávila landscape was visible through my window as, yawning and with my
café con leche
slopping cheerfully onto its saucer, I opened a newspaper the waiter had brought and read the terrible news that Bevilacqua had died. It was Tuesday. The newspaper said that on Sunday morning an early riser had come across the body in a pool of congealed blood. A photograph showed the nightwatchman pointing an accusing finger at my balcony. The article gave no further details, but lingered instead on the irony of this feted author having found fame such a short time before his tragic end. It quoted Urquieta, for whom the new literature had just lost one of its best voices. On the same page there was an ad in which the Sulphur publishing house reminded the public of the merits of
In Praise of Lying
. I reread the article several times. A death in one’s immediate circle is particularly hard to take in.
    When I got home, the nightwatchman advised me, with evident satisfaction, that the police wanted to question me. Not many people like the police. The Swiss, the English maybe. Not me. With a growing sense of unease, I started looking around this flat which no longer felt like mine. Violent acts render familiar things alien, and besides, in this case, there were traces of Bevilacqua in every room, on all the furniture. On the dining-room table were the remains of a frugal supper. On the sofa (and I usually keep everything so tidy) there was a waistcoat, several shirts, and a towel. The bed was unmade. I swear that I felt I could never again sleep on that mattress, on that pillow, as if Bevilacqua had died there, between my sheets. After a while I went out onto the balcony, whose balustrade now struck me as dangerously low. For the first time in my life, I felt vertigo.
    I resigned myself to the worst: discomfort, uncertainty, insomnia. I unpacked my suitcase, put Bevilacqua’s things away in his (which sat in a corner of the room, like a loyal dog awaiting its master’s return), and spent the rest of the day cleaning the flat from ceiling to floor with Ajax. I slept badly that night.
    It must have been eight o’clock in the morning when the doorbell rang. Not finding my glasses on the bedside table, I groped my way toward the front door. I could just make out two hazy shapes.