SUBMISSION

  THE WOMAN EATING VANILLA ICE CREAM AT THE FRONT TABLE IN the café has always been quite candid. She is seeking out (and will do so until she finds him) what she calls a real man, one who is on the ball, who doesn’t waste time on gallant pleasantries, on futile frippery. She wants a man who doesn’t hang on her every word, say, when they’re having dinner. She cannot stand men who try to be understanding and look angelic as they say they want to share the burden of her problems. She wants a man who’s not worried about any feelings she might have. From adolescence she has avoided callow youth who spend their time talking to her of love. Of love! She wants a man who never speaks of love, who never says that he loves her. She thinks a dewy-eyed man saying “I love you” is ridiculous. She’ll say she loves him (she says it a lot, because she’ll really love him), and when she’s said it, she’ll be delighted by the understanding glance he directs her way. This is the kind of man she wants. A man who will use her in bed the way he wants, without worrying about what she wants, because her pleasure will come from what he gets out of it. Nothing irks her more than the kind of man who, at one moment or another during copulation, enquires whether she has or hasn’t achieved an orgasm. On the other hand, he must be intelligent, successful, and lead an intense life of his own. He mustn’t be dependent on her. And must like traveling, and have other women apart from herself (and be up-front about it). The latter doesn’t worry her one bit, because she knows he only has to whistle and she will be at his feet, ready for whatever he demands, because she wants him to give her orders. She wants a man who tells her what to do, who dominates her. Who (when he feels like it) paws her in public, and wildly. And who, as she’s not embarrassed by such things in life, gives her a good wallop without stopping to worry if anyone is watching or not. She also wants him to hit her at home, partly because she likes it (she enjoys being beaten like crazy) and partly because she’s convinced that, with everything she has to offer, he could never do without her.

  THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE

  IN THE THIRD YEAR OF HER BIOLOGY DEGREE, GRMPF IS IN LOVE with Pti and Pti with Grmpf. However, as Pti is a tad shy or proud, he never lets on to Grmpf, and Grmpf ends up thinking he isn’t in fact in love with her. So she strives to put him out of her mind. It’s a battle and a half, because she’s very much in love with him, but in the end she manages to half forget him. Particularly from the moment she gets to know Xevi and take an interest in him. Which suits Xevi to a T, because he’d have clung to a red-hot poker: he’s just broken up with Mari and feels totally alone. In a rush, like people who want to bury the past as fast as they can, Xevi and Grmpf marry immediately. When Pti finds out, he’s completely flummoxed: he realizes at once that he was very, very much in love with Grmpf. He waits by her front door and, the second he sees Xevi leave, he rings the bell. Grmpf opens the door and is astonished to see Pti with one knee on the ground, declaring himself. Her emotions trigger inner turmoil, she’s on the point of doubting her actions, but she’s strong, takes a deep breath, and tells him it’s too late. Pti says nothing, stands up, and walks away, despairing, not wanting her to see his tears. Meanwhile, on the way to the office, Xevi has bumped into Mari. Oh, what a coincidence. They only have to look into each other’s eyes to realize that breaking up was a mistake. They hug and pledge eternal love. Though Mari is worried about Xevi: she’s not convinced by his quick change of heart, or that he loves her, not Grmpf. Xevi insists he does, that he really loves her, and to prove it he goes back to Grmpf’s place when he reckons she won’t be there; he packs his suitcase and leaves her a note, saying what has happened and how sorry he is. When Grmpf comes home, she sees the note and feels desperate. How stupid she was not to accept Pti’s proposal. She opens a bottle of vodka and drinks every drop. That allows her to pluck up courage. She calls Pti, she tells him she’s had second thoughts, and that she loves him.

  There’s a silence at the other end of the line. Finally, Pti clears his throat and speaks. He says her declaration is rather late because, when she said no, he was so distraught he immediately started a process of denigration, which was so rapid, by that evening he’d destroyed the high opinion he held of her and totally transformed the love he felt for her up till that afternoon. Now he only feels hatred, an intense hatred that allows him to reject her outright and hang up. Phone in hand, Grmpf bursts into tears, and immediately comes down with a fever: she’s suddenly 39.2°C. She doesn’t go to work the next morning. That afternoon, a friend from the office, Toni, appears, flourishing a bunch of flowers, to see how she is and whether she needs anything. Grmpf is aware that there is a glimmer of love behind his concern and that bouquet. But now is not the time. For now, she can only think of Xevi, until that wound heals.

  The wound heals, Grmpf gets over it completely, and Toni persists: he takes her for a stroll, he takes her out to dinner, they go to the movies. He’d like to go further, but she makes it plain from the start that they are going be good friends and nothing more. Toni acquiesces. He acquiesces because he is so understanding. He understands Grmpf’s feelings are still raw and can’t be toyed with. Every Saturday, on the way back from the movies or a restaurant, he leaves her by her front door and they say goodbye with a kiss on the cheek.

  Until one day Toni meets Anni. It’s what they call love at first sight. They get involved immediately and Toni stops seeing Grmpf. Grmpf is upset and decides that Toni’s not going out with her anymore because all he wanted was to jump into bed with her and, as that didn’t happen, he stopped dating her. This is the proof: as she’s not an easy woman, he’s ended the hypocrisy of their dinners, their moviegoing, and the phrase he liked to repeat: “I’m not worried. I know you’re still grieving over Xevi; I’m not at all bothered if we don’t sleep together. Really, I’m not.” Hypocrite. In revenge, Grmpf goes off to a bar and beds the first guy she meets, a Scotsman by the name of Eric, who’s just arrived from Aberdeen and is intending to stay a week, to get a girl by the name of Fiona out of his head.

  CLUELESS

  THE UNIVERSITY TEACHER GOES TO ANOTHER UNIVERSITY teacher’s place for lunch. They must have been working together for a dozen years and now and then (every one or two years) they have lunch together and talk about how things have gone since they last met up. On this occasion it’s been almost three years since they last went out to lunch: from before the time she went through a divorce.

  She goes on all the time about whether people are a turn-on or not. “Do you think Kim Basinger’s a turn-on?” she asks, “I don’t think Mickey Rourke is.” “Bruce Willis really is.” “There’s a teacher in my department who’s a big turn-on.” “Do you think Andreu’s a turn-on?”

  It’s the negative caricature of a certain kind of man talking about women. But the details make it absurd. The men she caricaturizes quite unawares would never ask if such and such a woman was a turn on. They’d know from the first moment they saw them, whether at the movies, in a magazine, or in the department. Nor would they always use “she’s a turn-on” as the only phrase in their repertoire; they’d have fifty others, from the poetic to the obscene, to describe each and every one of the anatomical details or lascivious potential they can intuit.

  After years and years of devoted married life, she has now (since her divorce) discovered the Mediterranean. However, it’s so long since she last swam she’s forgotten how to, or swims so tentatively she can only go a few yards out.

  She never sits still in her chair. She lights one cigarette after another and sucks them avidly. Her lips are a bright red. She never used lipstick before her divorce. She rarely used makeup either. Now, on the contrary, her face looks like a garish sticker. When she smiles (she smiles all the time) her makeup crumples like cardboard at the corner of her lips. And her hair is a perfect cut, dyed a reddish brown that gives her white strands a coppery-gray hue.

  While they drink their coffees, the university teacher listens and watches. Perhaps she’s regretting all those years lost to faith in monogamy? Perhaps she’s taking a roll call of all the men she wanted to bed and didn’t? Perhaps she’s just aware that, being so faithful to fidelity, her flesh has gone flabby, she’s got wrinkles, and that the people who’d have liked to screw her ten years ago wouldn’t be interested now?

  “Why are you staring at me so hard?” she suddenly asks. “You’re not coming onto me, are you?”

  FAITH

  “WHAT IF YOU DON’T LOVE ME?”

  “But I do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t. I just feel it. Sense it.”

  “How can you be sure what you sense is your love for me and not for someone else?”

  “I love you because you’re different from all the women I’ve ever known. I love you like I’ve loved no one else, as I can never love again. I love you more than I love myself. I’d give my life for you, I’d let myself be skinned alive for you, and let people play with my eyes like they were bullets. Or throw me into a sea of sulfuric acid. I love you. I love every fold of your body. I’m happy just looking into your eyes. I see myself, so tiny, in your pupils.”

  She shakes her head, nervously. “Oh, Raül, if I only knew that you really loved me, that I could believe you, that you’re not lying to yourself and to me as well … Do you really love me?”

  “Yes, I love you like nobody has ever loved before. I’d love you even if you rejected me, even if you didn’t want to see me. I’d love you silently, on the sly. I’d wait for you to leave work just to get a distant glimpse of you. How can you doubt that I love you?”

  “How can you expect me not to have doubts? What actual proof do I have that you love me? Sure, you say you love me. But that’s words, and words are conventions. I know I love you lots. But how can I be sure that you love me?”

  “By looking into my eyes. Can’t you read in them how much I really love you? Look into my eyes. Do you think they could lie to you? I’m disappointed in you.”

  “You’re disappointed in me. You can’t love me that much if you’re so quick to be disappointed. And you ask how can I possibly doubt your love!”

  He looks into her eyes and takes her hands in his.

  “I love you. Are you listening? I love you.”

  “Oh, ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you’ … It’s so easy to say … ”

  “What do you want me to do? Kill myself to prove it?”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. I don’t like your tone. You get so impatient so fast. If you really loved me, that wouldn’t happen.”

  “That’s not true. I’m only asking one thing: what would convince you that I love you?”

  “I’m not the one who has to say it. It has to come from you. Things aren’t as easy as you might think.”

  She pauses. Gazes at Raül and sighs resignedly. “Maybe I should believe you.”

  “Of course you should!”

  “But why? Because you tell me you’re not lying, that you really do believe you love me, and that’s why you say you do, even though in your heart of hearts, quite unaware, you really don’t? You could be wrong. I don’t think you mean to be. When you say you love me I think it’s because you really think you do. But what if you’re wrong? And what you feel for me isn’t love, but affection, or something similar? How do you know it’s real love?”

  “This is upsetting me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I only know that I love you, and I find your questions baffling. I’m getting annoyed.”

  “Maybe because you don’t love me.”

  PYGMALION

  SHE’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL ADOLESCENT THAT, THE MOMENT HE meets her, Pygmalion wants to sculpt her. He takes her to his studio and spends hours there (first drawing, then painting her), before making the first clay model. Unlike in the film, the girl isn’t an ignoramus and doesn’t speak like a deadbeat. By the time he finishes the sculpture they’ve fallen in love.

  In bed, Pygmalion discovers she is as beautiful and well-mannered as she is inexpert. Conscious of his role in the story, he teaches her everything he knows, and is surprised by how quickly she learns. Until he transforms her into the perfect lover, aware that’s what she is: the one he’d always dreamt of. She adapts to whatever game he subjects her to, until he’s subjected her to every one he knows. Spurred on by the girl’s receptivity, he rummages in his hoard of fantasies for some he’s never put into practice. Until he’s not the only one suggesting ideas, and they both ignite a spiraling crescendo of thrills. Now the girl is at his feet, mouth open, eyes on fire. Holding a spoon, Pygmalion collects the mixture of semen and tears streaming down the girl’s face and puts it in her mouth, feeding her like a baby. Pygmalion looks on, enraptured and anxious, as the girl licks the spoon. What else can he do? The girl begs him to do whatever he wants.

  “Just say the word and I’ll drag myself down the street. If you want, I’ll bring men home so you watch them fuck me. Call me ‘whore’—that’s what you’ve made me.”

  It’s true. He knows he only has to say the word, and she’ll drag herself down the street. But he also knows that, even if he doesn’t say the word, she’ll do it all the same. You only have to take one look at her. Anyone who looks into her eyes will see she is a volcano of lust. That not only will she never refuse to do anything, she’ll grab the first opportunity to be unfaithful, to enjoy the pleasure of deceiving the man who was her teacher. And what if she’s already betrayed him and, knowing he’d like to know and find out every detail, she’s saying nothing out of pure perversion? It drives him crazy to think another man is fucking her, when he’s not present, and he’s missing it all. He looks at her at once furious and passionate. He throws the spoon to one side, and stands up; when he looks back at her again, his heart thuds uncontrollably. On an impulse he collects up the few things the girl possesses in his study (hairbrush, earrings, lipstick, a book), stuffs them in a bag, grabs the girl’s wrist, sticks it under her armpit, opens the door, throws her out, and slams the door.

  “Whore!”

  IMMOLATION

  HUSBAND AND WIFE GAZE AT THE SILHOUETTE OF THE TOWER. The wife feels particularly tender and gives her husband a hug.

  “I so wanted to do this trip.”

  They kiss. The husband strokes his wife’s hair. They look back at the tower.

  “When do we have to be in Florence?” asks the wife.

  “Tonight. Are you hungry? Should we get the car and find somewhere for lunch?”

  “Yes. But first let’s climb the tower.”

  “The tower? You must be joking.”

  “Why? Are you saying we’ve come to Pisa and will leave without climbing the tower?”

  “That’s right. I, for one, am not going up.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not safe. It wouldn’t be much fun if it collapsed just when we’re doing the tourist thing and going up.”

  “Why do you think it’s going to fall? It’s stayed up like that for centuries. You shouldn’t think it’ll collapse the moment we climb up.”

  “Yes, it’s been like that for centuries. But it hasn’t been leaning that much for centuries. It’s been getting worse. And one day it will collapse. Everyone will say: ‘You see, it happened today, who’d have thought?’ And I don’t want to be inside when it does.”

  “But they had it closed for years, until they made sure nothing was shifting, until a committee of geologists, architects, and God knows who decided there wasn’t any danger.”

  “Exactly. The fact they closed it for years means it is dangerous. It won’t be a danger once it collapses because then nobody will be able to climb up. The issue is all about before the fall. Besides, they only reinforced the tower with steel rings, anchored it in a cement base, and provided a lead counter-weight. And the fact only a limited number of people can go up at a time is proof they haven’t fixed it.”

  “No. It’s proof they’ve taken the necessary safety measures. Nothing can go wrong now.”

  “On the contrary. More things can go wrong now than ever before. Before, as time went by, the tower steadied itself. Now all those steel rings and other additions have taken away its relative stability. Now is when it’s most likely to fall. Any moment now.”

  “I don’t know what to say. You really don’t want to climb up? We’re in Pisa, and you’re refusing to climb the tower with me?”

  “It’s an unnecessary risk.”

  “Everything is an unnecessary risk. Traveling by plane. By car. Smoking. Even staying at home. Maybe a downstairs neighbor hasn’t turned off the gas, someone lights a match and the whole building blows up.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  “I’m going up. Wait here if you want.”

  There’s a strong gust of wind. The scarf the wife is wearing around her neck blows over her face. She pulls it away and scowls at her husband. He realizes that if he refuses it would be the first crack in the wall uniting them, a wall they’ve been shoring up for years. Because he’d do anything to prevent that wall from cracking, he consents.

  “All right, let’s go,” he says.

  She smiles, puts her arm around his waist; they walk toward the tower, begin to climb, and she doesn’t even have the time to register this proof of love.

  KNOWLEDGE

  WHENEVER THE KNOWING WOMAN BEDS SOMEONE, SHE TELLS her boyfriend she did so, not out of a casual attack of lust, but because she has fallen in love. It’s not that it amounts to feeling guilty about anything (she and her boyfriend have a very clear, elastic agreement on that front), but it’s as if she feels cleaner if, when she beds someone, she observes that she does so for love. Conversely, whenever her boyfriend has a fling with somebody, she thinks he does so simply out of lust, and that irritates her. It’s not that she gets jealous. No. She’s not jealous at all. She’s simply annoyed her boyfriend is so basic, so instinctual. He does feel jealous when he knows she’s bedding somebody else. But it’s jealousy one can understand: because she is in love. And if the person with whom you have a (more or less elastic) agreed modus vivendi falls in love with somebody else, then jealousy is the logical outcome.