“And what do you think we thought?” rasped Skinny swigging away. “Three days not knowing where the fuck you’d got to, your phone out of order, not giving any damned warning… You went too far, you bastard, you went too far this time.”

“Hey, hold it, I’m not a kid.” The policeman rallied to his own defence.

Andrés, as usual, attempted reconciliation. “That’s enough, gentlemen, nothing dire’s happened.” And looking at the Count: “The fact is Josefina and Carlos were worried about you. That’s why I brought him here. He refused to let me come by myself.”

The Count observed his best and oldest friend, transformed into an amorphous mass, overflowing the sides of his armchair, where he vented his anger like an animal destined for sacrifice. Nothing now remained of the lean figure skinny Carlos once was, because a mean bullet had mangled his destiny, had left him an invalid for ever. But there also, intact and invincible, was all the goodness of a man who increasingly persuaded the Count of the injustices of this world. Why did it have to happen to a guy like Carlos? Why did someone like him have to fight in a dark and distant war and ruin the best of his life? God cannot exist if such things occur, he thought, and the policeman’s distressed soul felt moved, almost to the point of splitting in two, when Skinny said: “You only had to ring.”

“Uh-huh, I should have rung. To tell you I resigned from the police.”

“Just as well, my son, you had me really worried,” sighed Josefina, and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “But look at your face. And that smell. How much rum did you drink? And you’re so thin it’s scary…”

“And guess what we found out,” interrupted Carlos, his fingers pointing up the Count’s visibly reduced virility, and he laughed again.

“Conde, Conde,” interjected Rabbit anxiously, “you who are at least half a writer, please: elucidate a problem of meaning I have, tell me, what is the difference between pity and pithy?”