And this time Georges could see them, exactly as if he had been there himself: all three (by then the trainer—the former adjutant -had been gone a long time, without their being able to tell from the few words they had been able to get out of Iglésia if it was he, the trainer, who had watched Corinne spoil his horses for him and refused to go on taking care of them or if it was Corinne who had had him sacked, for after he left, according to what Iglésia said, and when he himself had taken over the training, she stopped coming to make them gallop for the mere pleasure of pressing the chronometer button), seeing the three of them in or rather in front of that stall where the hydrocephalic groom with the doll’s limbs, the face precociously aged (puffy, with pouches under his eyes, his eyes themselves with something stale, prurient in them, that is, containing, filled, at fourteen, with the experience of a man of sixty, or almost, or maybe even worse), trying to hold the filly still while Iglésia, crouching, adjusted her gaiters, she and de Reixach standing, watching him, and she saying almost without opening her lips, without looking away from Iglésia, speaking in a furious, imperceptible voice: “You’re still bent on this nonsense, you’re really going to ride her?” and de Reixach: “Yes,” the sweat (not fear, apprehension: merely the suffocating heavy atmosphere of the stifling, stormy June afternoon that was also making the chestnut restive) standing in tiny gleaming drops on his forehead, also answering without turning his head, without raising his voice, not casual or provocative, not even stubborn, merely saying yes, watching Iglésia’s movements below him, saying without transition, but aloud now: “Don’t wrap them too tight,” and she stamping her foot furiously, repeating: “What’s the good of it? What good can it do you?” and he: “None, I just want to . . .” and she: “Listen: let him ride her, he . . .” and he: “Why?” and she: “What good can it do you?” and he: “Why?” and she: “No reason. Because it’s his job to be a jockey, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you pay him?” and he: “But it’s not a question of money,” and she: “But it’s his job, isn’t it?” and he loudly: “Why don’t you cool her off a little? She . . .” and Iglésia standing up: “She’ll be all right, Monsieur. Do what I told you and she’ll be all right. She’s a little nervous from the weather, but she’ll be all right,” and she talking to Iglésia now, but somehow more with her eyes than with her mouth, her eyes hard, furious, fixed on Iglésia’s, or rather planted in them like nails, while underneath, her lips moved without either of them needing to hear what they were saying: “Don’t you think that with this storm coming she’ll be, I mean wouldn’t it be better if you . . .” and de Reixach: “There: put the sponge on . . . There, yes, like that, yes, that’s right, there . . .” and she: “Ooohh!. . .” and Iglésia: “Don’t worry, she’ll be all right. Just let her go and she’ll be all right, she only wants . . .” and she suddenly opening her bag (a sudden, unforeseeable gesture, with that lightning-like rapidity of animal movements, the execution not following but apparently preceding the intention or, so to speak, the thought, rummaging furiously in it, her hand immediately coming out again, the two men having just time to glimpse the sparkle—the flash—of diamonds, a bracelet, the dry click of the clasp snapped back in place), the hand with the polished nails, the fragile porcelain fingers now holding out a crumpled mass of loose notes, or rather stuffing them under Iglésia’s nose, the furious voice saying: “Here. Go bet for me. For us. Half and half. Go do it yourself. Take your choice. I don’t want to see the tickets. You don’t even need to take them if you think it isn’t worth it, if you think he wouldn’t know the . . .” and de Reixach: “Now what the . . .” and she: “I don’t want to see the tickets, Iglésia, I . . .” and de Reixach (a little pale now, the muscles of his jaw bulging, shifting under the skin, the sweat streaming down over his temples, saying, still without raising his voice—still impersonal, calm, but now maybe a little drier, shorter): “Now look. Stop that,” suddenly ordering her or else perhaps addressing Iglésia as well, or perhaps the groom, the toad-faced apprentice pressing the sponge on the filly’s head, for he stepped forward, took the sponge out of his hands, wrung it out and began wiping it, scarcely moist now, over the neck several times without turning round, speaking gently to the groom—the toad—the latter saying: “Yes Monsieur—No Monsieur—Yes Monsieur . . .” while behind them Iglésia and Corinne went on staring at each other, Corinne talking very fast, in that voice she was trying to control now, to keep down, but still a shade too loud without revealing if it was anger, anxiety or what, as if it were merely the transparency of the cerise picture hat that reddened her face, her neck, the upper parts of her arms bared to the armpits (showing, where the shoulders and the breasts met, those two delicate, fan-shaped folds of the impetuous, hard, swollen flesh) by one of those violent, not antagonistic but antagonized dresses, that is, whose fragility, insubstantiality, meagre dimensions gave the impression that half of it had already been torn away and that the little still remaining only held by something like a thread, and more indecent than a nightgown (or rather which would have been indecent on any other woman but which on her was something beyond indecency, that is, suppressing, making senseless any notion of decency or indecency), Corinne saying: “Halves, Iglésia. On her. To win. You can choose: bet on her, make him let you ride her, and win about six months’ salary. Or if you think he can make her win, it’s the same thing. Or if you think he can’t make her win, keep the money. I don’t want to see the tickets. Now are you going to keep on saying she’ll go by herself?” and Iglésia: “I don’t have time to bet, I have to take ca . . .” and she: “It only takes two minutes to go over to those windows and get back here. You have plenty of time,” and then Iglésia said that it was like the opposite of what he had felt that day when he had seen her for the first time walking beside de Reixach, that is, it seemed to him that he had in front of him not a child or a young woman or an old woman but an ageless woman, like an accumulation of all women, old or young, something that was just as much fifteen, thirty or sixty as thousands of years old, animated by or exhaling a fury, a resentment, a hostility, a guile that were not the result of a certain experience or a certain accumulation of time, but of something else, thinking (later telling what he had thought): “Old whore! Old bitch!” and looking up seeing only the angelic face, the transparent halo of blonde hair, the young, impetuous, unpolluted, unpollutable flesh, and then quickly looking down, staring at the crumpled notes in his hand, calculating that he was holding virtually the equivalent of what it took him two months to earn, and how many months’ salary that would make if he bet as he should have bet, then looking at Corinne again, thinking: “But what does she want Does she even know It doesn’t make sense It doesn’t make sense,” and finally lowering his eyes for good, saying: “Yes, Madame,” and Corinne: “Yes what?” and de Reixach still with his back to them, crouching now, checking the buckles of the gaiters, calling: “Iglésia!” and she: “Yes what?” and de Reixach still without turning round: “Listen we have other things to do besides . . .” and she stamping: “Then you’re going to let him ride? Are you . . . Are you . . .” and Iglésia: “Don’t worry Madame, She’ll go by herself, I’m telling you. You’ll see,” and she: “Which means you’re going to bet on her all the same or are you just keeping the money?” and before he had opened his mouth to answer: “But I don’t want to know. Do whatever you want. Go on and help him play the fool. He pays you for that too, after all . . .” Then she and Iglésia standing beside each other in the grandstand, Iglésia (he had ridden a horse in the first race) with a frayed jacket over his brilliant silk, his face streaming with sweat now, and a little winded from having run to catch up with her—having trotted round the whole track beside the filly, carrying that bucket full of water (which he could have had the groom carry, but which he had taken, or rather torn from his hands), running then, as though crushed by the weight of the bucket, on his short and twisted jockey’s legs, his head raised towards de Reixach who occasionally handed him the sponge which he dipped in the bucket, wrung out, letting it swell up again without stopping for a minute as he trotted beside him, without interrupting the voluble flood—advice, recommendations, objections?—of words that came out of his mouth, excited, passionate, panting, de Reixach merely nodding now and then, trying to make the filly walk straight when she shied, advanced diagonally, constantly dancing, taking (de Reixach) the sponge held out to him, pressing it on the filly’s head between the ears and tossing it back to Iglésia who caught it in the air. Then they reached the gate, he tossed the sponge behind him without looking, and the chestnut leapt ahead like a spring, starting at a gallop, pulling as hard as she could at the bridle, neck turned slightly to one side, one shoulder forward, her long tail whipping the air, bounding as if she had been a rubber ball, de Reixach inseparable from her, almost standing in the stirrups, his chest forward, the pink spot of the silk quickly diminishing from bound to bound, silently, Iglésia standing there against the white barrier, watching them diminish, disappear scarcely rising as they took the little hedge before the turn, after which he saw nothing but the black cap and the silk no longer diminishing, moving now—rising and falling—above the hedge and to the right, and disappearing behind the little woods: then leaving the bucket and sponge there and as fast as his legs allowed (that is, the way a jockey can run, that is, almost the way a horse runs if you’ve cut off its legs at the knees) heading towards the grandstand, butting into people, head raised, looking for Corinne, passing the place, finally discovering her, turning back, climbing the stairs and as soon as he was beside her suddenly motionless, turned towards the little woods, the pair of enormous binoculars (the ones de Reixach habitually used) already trained, as if, like a magician, he had had them ready in the palm of his hand -although they were about a foot long—or up his sleeve: appearing, extracted, one might have said, from nowhere and not from their case, because it was impossible for him to have had time to open the case and then get them out of it so quickly, that is, between the moment when he had appeared, panting, beside Corinne, and the one when he had them, holding them in both hands, glued to his eyes above that eagle (or clown) nose like a natural part of his body, a kind of functional organ (like those little black tubes screwed into jewellers’ eyes), protuberant, abnormally developed, enormous, shiny, and covered with a black, grainy leather—like those bulging, carbuncular and faceted eyes that can be seen on the heads of flies or certain other insects in microphotographs.