I’m blind I miss out on the most important indicators of the human body, which is physiognomy. We speak more to each other with our features and bodies than we do with our mouths. Think how little you would glean from a conversation just by hearing words. Only if someone was in an extreme state, such as fear or anxiety, would you understand what they were feeling, whereas if you have a face and body you pick up on a whole range of subtleties. You can tell the difference between someone who is lying, or exaggerating, someone who’s bored, and someone who wants to go to bed with you. Reading the pulse, which I learnt from a Chinese doctor and have adapted to my needs, enables me to pick up on nuance.’
‘That sounds like an intelligent way of saying that you’re a human polygraph.’
‘I don’t just detect lies,’ said Aguado. ‘It’s more to do with undercurrents. Translating feeling into language can defeat even the greatest of writers, so why should it be any easier for an ordinary person to tell me about their emotions, especially if they’re in a confused state?’
‘This is a beautiful room,’ said Consuelo, already shying away from some of the words she’d heard in Aguado’s explanation. Undercurrents reminded her of her fears, of being dragged out into the ocean to die of exhaustion alone in a vast heaving expanse.
‘There was too much noise,’ said Aguado. ‘You know how it is in Seville. Noise was becoming so much of a distraction for me, in my state, that I had the room double-glazed and soundproofed. It used to be white, but I think my patients found white as intimidating as black. So I opted for tranquil blue. Let’s sit down, shall we?’
They sat in the S-shaped lovers’ seat, facing each other. She showed Consuelo the tape recorder in the armrest, explaining that it was the only way for her to review her consultations. Aguado asked her to introduce herself, give her age and any medication she was on so that she could check it was recording properly.
‘Can you give me a brief medical history?’
‘Since when?’
‘Anything significant since you were born—operations, serious illnesses, children…that sort of thing.’
Consuelo tried to drink the tranquillity of the pale blue walls into her mind. She had been hoping for some miraculous surgical strike on her mental disturbances, a fabulous technique to yank open the tangled mess and smooth it out into comprehensible strands. In her turmoil it hadn’t occurred to her that this was going to be a process, an intrusive process.
‘You seem to be struggling with this question,’ said Aguado.
‘I’m just coming to terms with the fact that you’re going to turn me inside out.’
‘Nothing leaves this room,’ said Aguado. ‘We can’t even be heard. The tapes are locked up in a safe in my office.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Consuelo. ‘I hate to vomit. I would rather sweat out my nausea than vomit up the problem. This is going to be mental vomiting.’
‘Most people who arrive at my side are here because of something intensely private, so private that it might even be a secret from themselves,’ said Aguado. ‘Mental health and physical health are not dissimilar. Untreated wounds fester and infect the whole body. Untreated lesions of the mind are no different. The only difficulty is that you can’t just show me the infected cut. You might not know what, or where, it is. The only way for us to find out is by bringing things from the subconscious to the surface of the conscious mind. It’s not vomiting. It’s not expelling poison. You bring perhaps painful things to the surface, so that we can examine them, but they remain yours. If anything, it’s more like sweating out your nausea than vomiting.’
‘I’ve had two abortions,’ said Consuelo, decisively. ‘The first in 1980, the second in 1984. Both were performed in a London clinic. I have had three children. Ricardo in 1992, Matías in 1994 and Darío in 1998. Those are the only five occasions I have been in hospital.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Not any more. My husband died,’ said Consuelo, stumbling over this first obstacle, used to obfuscation of the fact, rather than natural openness. ‘He was murdered in 2001.’
‘Was that a happy marriage?’
‘He was thirty-four years older than me. I didn’t know this at the time, but he married me because I reminded him physically of his first wife, who had committed suicide. I didn’t want to marry him, but he was insistent. I only agreed when he said that he would give me children. Quite soon after the marriage he found out, or allowed himself to realize, that my likeness to his wife stopped at the physical. We still stayed together. We respected each other, especially in business. He was a diligent father. But as for loving me, making me happy…no.’
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Aguado. ‘Something outside. A big noise, like an explosion.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘I know about your husband’s case, of course,’ said Aguado. ‘It was truly terrible. That must have been very traumatic for you and the children.’
‘It was. But it’s not directly linked to why I’m sitting here,’ said Consuelo. ‘That investigation was necessarily intrusive. I was a prime suspect. He was a wealthy, influential man. I had a lover. The police believed I had a motive. My life was turned inside out by the investigation. Nasty details of my past were revealed.’
‘Such as?’
‘I had appeared in a pornographic movie when I was seventeen to raise money to pay for my first abortion.’
Aguado forced Consuelo to relive that ugly slice of her life in great detail and didn’t let her stop until she’d explained the circumstances of the next pregnancy, with a duke’s son, which had led to the second abortion.
‘What do you think of pornography?’ asked Alicia.
‘I abhor it,’ said Consuelo. ‘I especially abhorred my need to be involved in it, in order to find the money to terminate a pregnancy.’
‘What do you think pornography is?’
‘The filming of the biological act of sex.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It is sex without emotion.’
‘You described quite strong emotions when you were telling me—’
‘Of disgust and revulsion, yes.’
‘For your partners in the movie?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ said Consuelo. ‘We were all in the same boat, us girls. And the men needed us to perform. It’s not a highly sexually charged atmosphere on a porn set. We were all high on dope, to help us get over what we were doing.’
Consuelo’s enthusiasm for her account waned. She wasn’t getting to the point.
‘So who were these strong feelings of anger aimed at?’ asked Aguado.
‘Myself,’ said Consuelo, hoping that this partial truth might be enough.
‘When I asked you
