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on the lid of the toilet or on the edge of the bath weeping secret tears, having first taken out her lenses if she wore them, drying her eyes and burying her face in a towel until she managed to calm down, wash her face, put on her make-up and be in a fit state to come out again and pretend that everything was all right. I was impatient to start listening, and for that I needed Luisa to go back to sleep, to stop being corporeal and continuous, to remove herself and become remote, and I needed to sit still in order to listen through the wall on which the mirror hung or through the open balcony doors or, stereophonically, through both.
    I speak and understand and read four languages including my own and that's why, I suppose, I've spent part of my working life as a translator and interpreter at congresses, meetings and seminars, especially political ones, sometimes at the highest level (on two occasions I've acted as interpreter between two heads of state; well, one was only a prime minister). I suppose that's why I have a tendency (as does Luisa, who is also an interpreter, except that we don't share exactly the same languages and she's less career-minded than I am and works less than I do, and so the tendency is not so marked in her) to want to understand
everything
that people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it's in one of the innumerable languages I don't know, even if it's in an indistinguishable murmur or an imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn't understand and what's said is not intended for my ears, or is said precisely so that I won't catch it. I can disconnect, but only in certain irresponsible states of mind or by making a great effort, and that's why sometimes I'm glad that murmurs really are indistinguishable and whispers imperceptible and that there are so many languages that are strange and impenetrable to me, because then I can rest. When I know and accept that however much I want or try to understand, I simply can't, then I feel calm and indifferent and I can rest. There's nothing I can do, it's out of my hands, I'm useless, and my ears can rest, as can my head, my memory and my tongue, because, when I do understand, I can't help but translate, automatically and mentally, into my own language and quite often (luckily not always, perhaps even without being aware that I'm doing it), if what reaches my ears is in Spanish, I even translate that in my head into one of the other three languages I speak and understand. I often even translate the expressions, glances and gestures, it's a substitute, a habit, and it seems to me that even objects say something when they come into contact with those gestures, glances and expressions. When all else fails, I listen to the sounds which I know to be articulated, meaningful, and yet, nevertheless, remain indecipherable: I can't separate them out into individual sounds or units. That's the chief curse of the working interpreter, when for some reason (terrible diction, a thick foreign accent, my own absent- mindedness), you can't separate or select and you lose the thread and everything you hear sounds identical, a jumble or an uninterrupted flow, that might just as well have remained unuttered, since the fundamental thing is to distinguish individual words, the way you have to distinguish individuals if you want to get to know them. But when that happens and you're not at work, it's also your main consolation: only then can you rest completely and not pay attention or remain alert, and find pleasure instead in listening to voices (the insignificant murmur of speech), which you know not only have nothing to do with you, but which you are, besides, unqualified to interpret or transmit or memorize or transcribe or understand. Nor even to repeat.
    But in that hotel room which, I believe, had once been the Sevilla-Biltmore or was built on the site where the latter had once stood (but that might not be the case,