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hands—which is nothing but two drafting rulers he’s put together like a cross. But suddenly you hear a horrible growl and footsteps of a frightened animal escaping into the darkness. Anyway, I don’t remember if what happens now is that same night, I think so, the other one goes home again, which is like a very big hotel for women, some kind of women’s club, where they live, with a big swimming pool in the basement. The assistant’s so nervous, on account of everything that’s happened, and returning to her hotel tonight, where they don’t allow male visitors, she thinks the best thing might be to go down and take a swim for a little while to calm her nerves, because she’s so on edge. It’s already very late at night and there’s absolutely no one in the pool. They have changing rooms down there and she’s got her own locker where she hangs her clothes and puts on her bathing suit and bathrobe. Meanwhile, upstairs in the hotel the front door opens and in comes Irena! She asks the woman at the desk about the other one, and, without suspecting anything, the woman tells her the other one just went down to the pool. And because she’s a woman, Irena has no problem getting in, they just let her by and that’s that. Down below the pool’s totally dark; the other one comes out of the changing room and switches on some lights inside the pool, below the surface of the water. She’s fixing her hair to fit inside her bathing cap when she hears footsteps. She asks, kind of alarmed, if it’s the attendant. No answer. Then she gets really terrified, throws off her bathrobe and dives in. From the middle of the water she peers toward the sides of the pool, still in darkness, and now you hear the snarling of some wild black beast pacing furiously, you can barely make it out, but a shadow’s moving, sort of slipping along the edges of the pool. The snarls can hardly be heard, they’re always snarls like with the teeth clenched, and those green eyes glitter watching the other one in the pool who now really starts screaming like crazy. At this the attendant comes running downstairs and turns on all the lights, asking her what’s the matter. No one else is there, why all the screaming? The other one’s completely embarrassed, doesn’t know how to explain why she’s so frightened; imagine what’ll happen if she says some panther woman got in down there. And so she says she thought somebody was there, an animal prowling around. And the woman on duty looks at her as if to say listen to this dope talking, some friend comes to see her so she’s shaking all over, just because she hears some footsteps, and there the two of them are when they notice the bathrobe on the floor, ripped to shreds, and the tracks of an animal, from having stepped in the puddles . . . Are you listening to me?
    —Yeah, but I don’t know why I can’t get something out of my head tonight.
    —What?
    —Nothing, I can’t concentrate . . .
    —But come on, open up a little.
    —I’m just thinking about my girl.
    —What’s her name?
    —That’s not the point. Look, I never talk to you about her, but I’m always thinking about her.
    —How come she doesn’t write to you?
    —How do you know if she writes or not! I could say I’m getting letters from somebody else and they’re hers. Or are you going through my stuff when I’m taking a shower?
    —You’re crazy, Valentin. But you never showed me a letter from her.
    —Well, I don’t like to talk about this ever, but, I don’t know, just now I felt like discussing something with you . . . When you started talking about the panther woman’s following the assistant around, I got scared.
    —What scared you?
    —I wasn’t afraid for myself but for my girl.
    —Ah . . .
    —I must be nuts, bringing this subject up.
    —Why? Talk if you feel like it . . .
    —When you started telling how the girl was being followed by the panther woman, I pictured that it was my girl who was in