While the Women are Sleeping by Javier Marías

but extremely mediocre post at the North London Polytechnic, it also brought the distinct possibility of coming into contact with people higher up the administrative ladder and, more importantly, with prestigious members of the diplomatic corps. Furthermore, having dealings, for example (why not?), with an ambassador could prove most useful to him—however sporadic and superficial those dealings might be—possibly in the not too distant future. And so, around the middle of September, and with the indifference characteristic of any only moderately ambitious man, he made his preparations, recommending a far less knowledgable replacement for the post he was vacating at the Polytechnic, and arrived in Madrid, determined to work hard if necessary to earn the esteem and trust of his superiors—with an eye to any future advantages this might bring him—and to resist being seduced by the flexibility of the Spanish working day.
    Young Lilburn soon managed to establish an orderly life for himself in that foreign land and, after a few initial days of vacillation and relative bewilderment (the days he was obliged to spend in the house of old Mr Bayo and his wife while he waited for the previous tenants to vacate the small furnished attic apartment in Calle de Orellana reserved for him from 1 October by Mr Turol, another of his Spanish colleagues; the rent was too high for Lilburn’s budget, but it wasn’t really expensive if one took into account that it was extremely central and had the incomparable advantage of being very near the Institute), he set himself a meticulous and—if such a thing were possible throughout a whole academic year—invariable daily routine, and which he did, in fact, manage to maintain, although only until the month of March. He got up at seven on the dot and, after breakfasting at home and briefly going over what he planned to say in each of his morning classes, set off to the Institute to teach. During break-time, he would share with Mr Bayo and Miss Ferris his dismay at the Spanish students’ appalling lack of discipline and then, over lunch, would make the same remarks to Mr Turol and Mr White. Over dessert, he would review the afternoons lessons, which he would take at a rather slower pace than he had in the morning, and, once they were over, would spend from six to half past seven in the Institute’s library, consulting a few books and preparing his classes for the next day. He would then walk to the elegant house of the widowed Señora Giménez-Klein, in Calle de Fortuny, in order to give an hour’s private tuition to her eight-year-old granddaughter (his protector, Mr Bayo, had found him this simple, well-remunerated work), and then return to his apartment in Calle de Orellana at about half past nine or shortly thereafter, in time to hear the radio news: although, at first, Lilburn understood almost nothing, he was convinced that this was the best way to learn correct Spanish pronunciation. He then ate a light supper, read a couple of chapters of his Spanish grammar book, hurriedly memorising vast lists of verbs and nouns, and went to bed punctually at half past eleven. Any reader familiar with the aforementioned Madrid streets and the buildings occupied by the British Institute will have no difficulty in grasping that Lilburn’s life could not fail to be anything but methodical and ordered, and that his feet probably took no more than two thousand steps each day. His weekends, however, with the exception of the occasional Saturday when he attended suppers or receptions laid on for visitors to Madrid from British universities (and, on just one occasion, a cocktail party at the embassy), were a mystery to his colleagues and superiors, who supposed—based on the not very revealing circumstance that he never answered the phone on those days—that he must make use of his weekends to go on short trips to nearby towns. It would seem, however, that at least until January or February, young Lilburn