Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  Oddly enough, I was the only one who speculated about this. Tomás merely did what he had to do when he was in Madrid, never wondering about his future or giving it any thought, almost as if he had no future or as if it had already been carved in stone and he had read what was written. He didn’t seem interested in what life might hold in store, and appeared to have no goals or ambitions or anxieties, nor even any questions. I sometimes had a sense that I was living with someone whose fate had already been decided, who felt trapped, with no possible escape route, and who therefore viewed his days with indifference, knowing that they’d bring him no major surprises and no pleasant ones either. In a way, he was like a very elderly person who waits only for the days to pass and for night to fall, rather than for the nights to pass and day to break. And I say this quite literally: whenever I opened my eyes, whether in the middle of the night or in the morning, I would find him already awake, as if his continuous thoughts wouldn’t allow him to sleep or only very lightly, so that I only had to move, however minimally, or brush against him, to wake him instantly. I would sometimes ask him very quietly if he was awake, but he didn’t usually reply, and I never insisted, fearful that I might be mistaken and be interrupting his sleep, if sleep it was. But his breathing was invariably that of someone awake, of someone pondering or silently cursing his fate, his mind always alert and always giving off a sad mixture of dissatisfaction and resignation. And on quite a few nights, I would see the tip of his lit cigarette glowing in the dark, as if it belonged to a soldier in the trenches, too exhausted and disillusioned now to care about giving away his position and being killed by one sure bullet guided by that persistent light. Then I would dare to raise my voice a little, certain that he was awake, and ask him:

  ‘Can’t you sleep? What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not thinking about anything. I’m just smoking.’

  I would place one hand on his shoulder or stroke his cheek, hoping this contact would calm him.

  ‘Can I help? Do you want to talk?’

  Sometimes he would say ‘No, go back to sleep’, and at others, he would stub out his cigarette in the ashtray, draw me to him, lift up my nightdress and immediately penetrate me in a way that was almost brutish, with no preamble, his penis suddenly erect, or perhaps his insomnia gave him an erection; he was, after all, still very young. I had the feeling that, more than anything else, he was trying to wear himself out or release tension, that any woman would have served his purpose, except, of course, that I happened to be that woman, and it happened to be my bed too, and he didn’t have to sound me out or ask permission or else he took it for granted, as many men do once they are husbands. Perhaps this was one of the few ways in which Tomás could empty his mind a little, and find some rest from his strange nocturnal or diurnal afflictions, or at least merge them with a physical urge or tremor, perhaps he simply wanted his body temporarily to deceive or confuse his mind, or silence it by drowning it out with the body’s own elemental nature (sex always does seem rudimentary, however many refinements one may add; which was not the case here). When he’d finished, I’d go to the bathroom, and, when I came back, I would find him dozing. If it was still not time to get up, I would slide very stealthily into bed and watch for a few moments, interpreting his face and his breathing. And if these were not those of someone soundly asleep, I would gently stroke the back of his neck and whisper:

  ‘Lie very still, my love. Don’t move or turn around, that way sleep will come upon you without you realising it and gradually you’ll stop thinking. I wish you would tell me what it is you’re thinking about. So many hours spent awake. Deny it if you will, but you’re constantly thinking about something that keeps you from sleeping. Something is troubling you, and I don’t know what it is.’

  But those last words I said more to myself than to him.

  During the day he would go about his work diligently and do his best to appear normal. He would smile his usual broad smile, make his usual amiable, pleasing jokes, and – at the numerous suppers and social events we were obliged to attend – he was always willing to entertain the other guests with one of his celebrated impressions. They were just as amusing as they had been at school, except now the audience was an adult one, noisier, more prone to exaggeration. Since then, he had perfected his impressions and become a real virtuoso, from whom no accent, voice, no public figure or private individual was safe, and more than one person had suggested he make a career of it as a professional on British or Spanish television. However, in the midst of our rather easy, cheerful daily life, I sensed an underlying indifference to his own existence, an enigmatic lack of curiosity about the future that prevented him from enjoying the present. And then again, his mood would change whenever one of those month-long absences in England was approaching: moments of anxiety and anger alternated with depression, along with the unease he had brought with him when he came back from Oxford. The young man who returned after completing his studies was not the same youth who had left – not that there was anything so very strange about that – but nor was he the same young man who, over the years, had continued to spend most of his long vacations here and whom I had continued to see on each of those visits and with whom I had continued to have sex, with growing desire and intensity after our first, belated and somewhat disappointing, attempts. Nor was he the same person he had been on the previous occasion, during the five weeks he had spent with me in Madrid between the end of Hilary term and the beginning of Trinity, carefree and unpreoccupied, giving off, more than anything, a feeling of serenity. He had become someone with a dark, evasive edge to him, often quite withdrawn, whereas during his stays between terms at Oxford, he had still been the same person, more or less. There was an increase in the restlessness that had always characterised his grey, almond-shaped eyes, and which was in such marked contrast to his usually affable manner: his eyes no longer seemed to rest, as if they reflected an unceasing torment, that of a single fixed idea that neither advances nor evolves nor reaches a conclusion. At first, I put this down to the unsettled state of someone who has just reached the end of a particular stage in life, to a temporary – albeit often long-drawn-out – process of adaptation, of someone returning to his setting-off point only to stay rooted to the spot, after a few years of not belonging anywhere, of coming and going between two different places, and never being entirely here nor entirely there. He immediately put me right, telling me that his itinerant lifestyle had not yet ended, that he would have to spend periods of time in London on various of those advanced training courses with a view to jobs already promised or agreed, probably starting in September or October. I, of course, asked him about his intermittent sadness:

  ‘Has something happened to you in the last few months? You seem different, as if you’d suddenly aged ten years. As if you were carrying a weight on your shoulders that wasn’t there before, or not until recently.’

  He looked at me, puzzled, as if surprised I should notice a change he had done his best to disguise by being flippant, jokey, good-humoured. Perhaps in order to delay having to respond, he twice pushed back his hair, even though he wore his hair combed back anyway. Then his eyes grew opaque, and I had the impression that he was hesitating about whether to tell me something or not. If so, he finally opted for evasion:

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all, what could possibly have happened to me? I suppose it’s finishing my degree. The end of the party and of a life of irresponsibility. The fact that whatever steps I take from now on will affect the rest of my life, that there are no more trial periods, no time to put things right. The feeling that what I do now will have consequences over the next twenty years, and yet I don’t feel any more capable of choosing than I did when I was fifteen, no, eight years old. That this path does actually lead somewhere from which there is no return, and that it will be very difficult to turn back, I don’t know. The same thing will happen to you next year.’ In Spain, a degree course lasted five years, and when Tomás came back, I still ha
d one more year to go; it’s true that I’d put off deciding what to do when I graduated, apart from marrying him, of course – but that had been decided ages ago – it was something I still had to sort out and that was, at last, approaching. Not for nothing had I waited all those years, struggling hard with my yearning for him to come home, with that long separation; and if those separations were to recur periodically, that was fine, even if they continued for the rest of our lives, but I would not allow myself to waver, absolutely not. Tomás may have come home a changed man, he may have somewhat abruptly entered adulthood, he may have acquired that opaque, sorrowful air, but I could live with that and grow up equally fast if he needed me to keep pace; I certainly wasn’t going to back down. It wasn’t just the time and emotion I’d invested, it was because I was resolutely in love with him, and I use that adverb deliberately: I hadn’t just been in love with him since adolescence, I’d resolved to be in love and approved that resolution; and there is nothing more immovable than that conjunction of sentiment and will. I’d had the occasional sexual adventure in his absence, as was only natural for a woman my age and in such generally rousing times, but none had undermined, or even diminished, my determination and my certainty, my unconditional love. I’d picked him out with my tremulous finger (tremulous with emotion) when I was still very young, and nothing would make me step back from that defining moment. But what about him? I took it for granted that he, too, would have had some insignificant adventures, but I’d never noticed any change in his relationship with me, the slightest cooling or lessening of enthusiasm. Although troubled by his disquiet, I felt almost sure that I was not the cause. Our initial idea was to get married more or less a year later, once I had finished my degree. Then, as if to support his earlier denial, Tomás added: ‘Besides, what could possibly happen to me in Oxford? As you know, nothing ever happens there. Nothing serious, I mean, or even anything unforeseen. It’s a protected place, and entirely ruled by ceremony, in which everything is mummified or preserved in formaldehyde. With its good and bad qualities, its unreality, it’s …’ And here he paused, hesitated, as if it set his teeth on edge to say what he was about to say: ‘It’s like an outcast from the universe.’

  ‘And are you including me among the things you fear you might not be able to put right? One of those things that might perhaps become a burden in twenty years’ time, that you might wish did not exist, or had never happened? Is that how you see me, as an irreversible step, an obligatory path from which you’ll never be able to diverge? I don’t know, nothing is certain, and no one can tell what the future might hold, and I’m not asking you that, I can’t. But I wouldn’t want you to feel that I’m just another threat. If you’re no more capable of making a choice than you were at eight years old, it would be ingenuous on my part to think that didn’t include me. But the last thing I would want is for you to see me already – and so soon – as a tie and a constraint. That you should view me with dread.’

  He said only: ‘No, Berta, no.’ But such succinctness did little to ease my mind. And when I said nothing, but sat looking at him anxiously, he again smoothed back his hair with that nervous, superfluous gesture, and, after a few seconds, added: ‘Of course not. Of course I don’t include you in that. In fact, you’re one of the few things that isn’t obligatory, that I’ve been able to choose freely. In other respects, I have a sense that the die is cast, as if I hadn’t so much chosen as been chosen. You’re the one thing that is truly mine, the only thing I know I myself wanted.’

  Those words seemed to me exaggerated and rather cryptic. I didn’t know what he meant when he said that the die was cast and his freedom limited. Nothing obliged him to accept the job he’d been offered, indeed, it was a privilege to get such a good job so early on, as soon as he’d finished his degree; most of our contemporaries could expect a period of anxiety, of provisional jobs and difficulties, and even, for the more inept, a period of enforced unemployment. Nor did I understand the sense he had of being chosen, rather than having done the choosing himself. ‘Something must have happened to him, something strange and disquieting that he prefers not to tell me about now,’ I thought. ‘He’ll tell me eventually though. We have years ahead of us, and everyone ends up telling everything to the person who sleeps beside them night after night; it’s difficult to keep anything secret from that person for all eternity.’ As usually happens in moments of insecurity and fear, egotism prevailed, and I clung only to what concerned me, to what seemed to be a ratification, almost a declaration of love. I gave a sigh of relief and banished everything else, gave it little thought. Still less so when he drew me to him with one arm – a slightly awkward embrace – pressing my face gently to his chest, so that, for a moment, I could no longer see him and focused instead on the smell of fresh cologne, cigarettes and good English cloth. I felt comforted and safe, and stroked the back of his neck as if to calm him, and, later on, when I remembered that scene and that conversation, I wondered if my feelings derived in part from the fact that his troubled features had suddenly disappeared from view: my face pressed against his jacket, no longer able to see the full lips I always liked to touch and kiss, nor his fair aviator-ish hair, nor the turbulent eyes which I never again saw untroubled and at peace, or entirely at rest.

  He took a long time to tell me, though, and never did tell me everything; I grew accustomed, however, to not asking for details, and he proved very skilled at concealment, greatly helped by the absolute prohibition he was under to reveal anything. Such a ban means that whenever you feel the temptation to confess, you think of the reprisals you might suffer, the risks to which you might expose others, and you realise, too, that you would be opening the door to endless questions. Better to remain hermetically silent and not utter a single word, better to invent lies, and, if you must, deny everything.

  We’d been married for two years and our first child had already been born when Tomás had no alternative but to speak. Not that he said much, only what he was authorised to say, and he had to ask permission first, despite pressure from me, despite the apparent danger to which he had laid us open with his distant activities. At least I knew what those activities were. Or, rather, I imagined what they might be, and, as all we know, the imagination is often far wilder than reality, even if it lacks the latter’s precision and terrible force, so you can always dismiss what it tells you and say to yourself: ‘That might well not have happened, and since I have no idea what really happened, nor ever will, why torment myself with conjectures?’ From that moment on, I began to live in a state of constant diffuse fear, especially for him, but also for our son and for myself, and, of course, later on, for our little girl. He swore to me that what had happened would never happen again, let alone anything bad, and I thought how easily some people swear oaths about things that are not in their power to avoid or fulfil. (Usually the brazen types or those who feel cornered.) And yet, foolishly, I believed him, or perhaps I needed to. I had no option but to believe him if I wanted to continue living a semi-normal life. Although, afterwards, nothing was ever very normal. He swore in vain in order to save the situation (so he must have felt cornered), and I believed him equally in vain so that my fear remained just that, diffuse, transitory and latent, rather than piercing and overwhelming.

  Yes, the episode that obliged him to tell me what he was allowed to tell me of the truth occurred about three years after his return from Oxford. As expected, Tomás had taken up his post at the embassy and was alternating periods spent in Madrid with those spent in London or in other parts of that second country of his, which bore all the marks of having already become his first, since that was the country he was working for and the one that paid him a rapidly increasing salary, so that, in contrast, my contributions to the family economy soon became merely symbolic, and I tended to spend my earnings on myself or on the child, for children are a ceaseless, limitless drain on resources. His training courses grew so prolonged that the day finally dawned when Tomás had to come up with a more permanent excuse
: given his bilingualism, his ability to get on with people and his other talents (people always took a liking to him and became fond of him), the Foreign Office wanted to keep him in London for longer periods, in a consultative, intermediary, persuasive capacity, as did the BBC World Service to help with their broadcasts in Spanish, and any English-language programmes about Spanish or Latin American matters; and so his sojourns in England would continue indefinitely, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, their precise duration being hard to predict.

  We became a couple who shared our lives only intermittently, but we were already used to that and didn’t find it particularly hard to accept. More than that, loving each other as we did or thought we did (I’m speaking mainly for myself here), we were, in a way, pleased to be able to maintain the privilege of missing each other, or giving ourselves time for desire to condense (both physical desire and the desire to see each other), to avoid the agreeable routine of someone’s constant presence, which, because it lacks any end-date, any interruption, can become a burden or, if not that, something you take for granted and never struggle to achieve, because the person is there every day, including those days when you’d like to be alone with your thoughts and memories, or else simply get in the car and drive off somewhere, wandering aimlessly here and there and spending the night in a hotel in some unknown city where chance and nightfall have brought you: pretending that you’re single again, with no responsibilities and no one to go home to. I welcomed the months he spent in Madrid with renewed enthusiasm and excitement, as if it were a gift, something that, at first, always seemed exceptional, the void filled and everything in its place, his body in bed at night giving off warmth or heat; when I knew he was awake or drifting off, I would reach out one hand and run a fingertip down his back just to make quite sure he was there and to experience the incredulous joy of knowing he really was there, so close, by my side, after I had spent months of finding only empty air on the pillow and the sheets and thinking, half in dreams: ‘When will he come back? I know I didn’t just imagine it, he did once occupy this space, he was once here.’