When the doorbell rang, it almost brought the house down. The electric discharge echoed through the silence of the building with the violence of a seismic shock. I went to open up, my heart thumping. There she was, at the door, smiling at me as if I were Humphrey Bogart. “God, what a racket!” she said, pointing to the bell. “I pressed the only one that didn’t have any name next to it.” She came in, glancing at herself in the hall mirror. “Oh,” she said, shaking out her hair, “I’m so beautiful, don’t you think?” I didn’t reply, and she shrugged, as she walked into the room overlooking the valley. “So, this is where you live,” she said, looking around. The apartment was a terrible mess, with the plugs out of the walls, the slats of the blinds dangling toward the floor, newspapers heaped up in the corners, the faulty TV set buried under a pile of dirty shirts. There was even a pair of pants hanging on a door handle. I took it and flung it behind the armchair, but she noticed, which made it even worse. “So this is where you live,” she said again, still looking around. “It looks like a shelter. Don’t you have anyone to help you? A maid, something like that.” She sat down on the bed. “Do you plan to say anything or not?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you don’t like it, you can go.”

She sat there for a moment, stiff and motionless, then looked at her broken-down watch. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I realize it’s late to be visiting people.” I noticed she’d taken off her shoes and had to get up to look for them under the bed. Then I went over and put my arms around her while she still had her back to me. She didn’t move. “I came here to go to bed with you,” she said, her voice a little hoarse.

We stood like that, rooted to the spot, waiting for something to happen, for one of us to make the first move. In the end I opened my arms and after a moment’s hesitation she started to undress. She did so briskly, without looking at me, as if she were alone and getting ready to go to sleep. My heart leaped when she took off her panties. For the first time in my life, I felt bashful.

“What about you?” she said, once she’d pulled the sheet up over her. I sat down next to her. “Are you still angry?” she said gently.

I shook my head. I still had the flash of her body in my eyes and felt intimidated. I turned out the light and started to undress. When I was lying next to her, next to that small, hard body of hers, without touching her, I was overcome with unhappiness.