And so I wasn’t just angry with Tomás for concealing the truth from me and for having placed Guillermo and myself at risk, for having disappeared when I most needed him and for being absent long enough for his features to become blurred, I was also fearful of his reaction when he saw me again – on the coarsest, most lascivious level, I admit – as if I had to win him back, as if I had immediately to drive away the scent or stench, the smooth touch or the grime, the memory of soft or rough skin, firm or flaccid flesh, the attractiveness or ugliness of the other woman or women who might have been with him and those he might have become more or less accustomed to; that, as far as I was concerned, was the best-case scenario. By then, I was completely drenched, and my shoes were ruined, they would survive the night, but I’d have to throw them out in the morning, after all the downpours and all that frenzied opening and closing of windows and repeated leaning out from balconies, calling to him, thinking: ‘Why don’t you come? Where are you? They can’t have refused you permission at the last moment, you can’t have missed the plane, you can’t have decided to delay your return, you can’t spend another day absent from my life, I mean, as it is, I can hardly remember you.’ At one point, I went into the bedroom and looked at myself in the full-length mirror. In a moment of insecurity or vanity (they’re so often the same thing or else coexist, or, rather, struggle with each other), I thought that I looked rather good drenched to the skin, it suited me, given my predominant feelings at that moment – my coarsest, most lascivious feelings. My blouse was transparent, my skirt was wrinkled and had ridden up a little and clung to my thighs, and there was something vaguely obscene about my buttocks when viewed from the side as a man would. My hair had suffered most, but that didn’t matter, it lent me a wild, rumpled look, which might give me an advantage over my rivals. Now I was afraid I might dry off too soon, that it would stop raining, and then I felt cheap and ridiculous, and what bothered me most was that word (or idea) ‘rival’. Why did I feel like that, why did I feel threatened in that particular sphere, when the real threat was quite different and infinitely more serious, and didn’t include just me, but the three of us? And yet, despite everything, that was the most urgent issue preoccupying me, my main concern.
At that moment, I heard the key in the door and I jumped, I had failed to see him arrive and get out of the taxi, I had failed to reach a decision about whether to change my clothes or not. It was too late now, and I rushed out of the bedroom just as I was and saw him putting his suitcase down in the hallway with a resigned, weary gesture, and he looked so different that, for a second, I didn’t recognise him: he had grown a short, fair beard and his hair was longer, although not that long, and it seemed fairer too; he had lost a few pounds, and it was as if, in his absence, he had also lost any vestige of his youth, as if he’d taken the irreversible step that leads us into a maturity from which there can be no going back. Yes, he was a proper man, an attractive man who now seemed definitively, utterly foreign, as if he had also lost his half of our country, my country which, unlike Tomás, is the only country I have.
He looked at me in surprise, as if he didn’t quite recognise me either, or had forgotten what I was like in the flesh, and, during those months of who knows what adventures and missions, or what servitudes, the image that had prevailed in his memory was a static one, frozen, bereft of sight, speech, intensity and pulse, a dim, dull image, perhaps of me as a mother, men do sometimes develop a pernicious respect for their wives once they’ve given birth or even before, once they’ve seen her change, aware that she is no longer alone, but carries within her an invasive creature that never ceases to grow and make demands. That had all been some time ago, but perhaps Tomás had taken away with him the image of my pregnant self, then of me as a nursing mother, that of someone who suddenly has another priority and pays little attention to anyone else. I had completely regained my figure, and no one seeing me for the first time would have thought I had a young child, not with any certainty. Tomás seemed to belong to the category of someone seeing or discovering me for the first time, and I felt foolishly flattered that his look was one of appreciative surprise, that is, of unmistakable sexual admiration, almost as if he were saying to himself coarsely: ‘Well, aren’t I a lucky bastard. I’d almost forgotten.’ Many women complain about being eyed up, about what today we call being seen as a ‘sex object’, and almost none will admit how annoying it can be, how humiliating, depressing and discouraging, never to be looked at like that, at least not by those we feel have that obligation. Or we presume to choose, to select: he can look at me, and so can he, but not him. But I had chosen Tomás Nevinson many years ago and had waited for him, had waited, when we were young, for his eye to fall on me, and later had waited just for him, and, at last, he had returned.
‘Why are you so wet?’ he asked. I must have looked a very odd sight indoors in my sodden clothes.
I didn’t answer, I may even have blushed. I raised my right hand to touch my blouse and skirt, as if I hadn’t noticed they were wet and needed to confirm what he could see, and with my left hand I pointed vaguely over at the balcony, at one of the balconies.
He came closer, took four steps – one, two, three; and four – and embraced me. That embrace was short-lived, though, because he then did as I had suggested, whether intentionally or not I’m not sure, he felt my blouse and my skirt, or the flesh beneath the blouse and skirt. Then he turned me around and embraced me from behind, his hands on my breasts, his lower body pressed against my buttocks, perhaps he’d had time to observe them from the side in a vaguely obscene manner. (It didn’t even occur to him to ask about Guillermo, who had been asleep for a while now; that would have been incongruous, and I actually preferred it that way.) He abruptly lifted up my skirt and pulled down my knickers, and I recognised this almost brutish approach from his many sleepless nights, with no preamble, no foreplay, when I had a sense that, in his anxiety-ridden state, any woman would have served his purpose, except that, fortunately, I happened to be the woman who was there, who had always been there until tonight. And tonight I was there again, and I was that ‘any woman’.
He did his best to make that night one of release and respite, of physical reunion and languor; he did his best to avoid talking and to avoid me telling him this or that or asking questions, which is why, after a while, he wanted to do it again, once I’d dried off after having a shower, without my wet clothes on now and in the bedroom, in the bed that was more and more mine and less and less his, for it had been far too long since he’d visited it, and it was becoming what another classic writer, not Eliot this time, described as a ‘woeful bed’. I’d been reading Eliot in English, as best I could and with a dictionary beside me, out of curiosity, and to understand why he was so important to Tomás and to try to understand Tomás better. ‘The day was breaking. In the disfigured street he left me, with a kind of valediction, and faded on the blowing of the horn.’ I, too, was beginning to know a few lines by heart, although without entirely understanding them, not that I needed to; I repeated them like the fragments of a prayer, which is perhaps how it was for him too, nothing more. ‘Repeat a prayer also on behalf of women who have seen their sons or husbands setting forth and not returning.’ But you have come back, at least this time. ‘So I find words I never thought to speak in streets I never thought I should revisit when I left my body on a distant shore.’ And what about the next time? Will you come back? Or will you leave your body on a distant shore? Isolated phrases and random lines, although probably not entirely random.
After my shower, I’d put on a bathrobe, but hadn’t lain down next to him, not even on the bedspread, instead – feeling angry again rather than indignant – I’d perched, very erect, on the edge of the bed, as far away as possible while still sharing the same space; if I’d sat down on a chair, that would have signalled my regret or displeasure at what had just happened, and that isn’t how I felt at all; he would have dug in his heels then or found some instant justification for saying nothing and
keeping any account of what had happened to him until the following day, until the next morning or evening or night or dawn.
‘In the disfigured street he left me,’ I said, then paused. ‘With a kind of valediction,’ I added, then paused again.
He couldn’t resist finishing the line:
‘And faded on the blowing of the horn.’
‘How many times is it now that you’ve left me, Tomás, and how many more times will you leave me? It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it? And each time it will be longer and more uncertain.’
He’d pushed aside the bedspread and drawn the sheet up over him – just one sheet because of the heat – briefly covering his face, as if realising or acknowledging that he could postpone it no longer, that I wouldn’t agree to have sex again, just like that, free now of my earlier impatience, nervousness or insecurity, my superficial vanity satisfied. (When he saw me come into the room in my bathrobe, he had untied the belt and opened my robe, and I had immediately closed it again.) The moment he’d been dreading had arrived, the moment when he would have to explain what he had been authorised to explain.
‘Yes, Berta, that’s true. That’s true,’ he said, and he got out of bed and buttoned up his shirt, and put on the trousers he’d taken off, and put on his shoes and socks, as if he had to be fully clothed and protected before we had that conversation. ‘And yes, it will always be like that, although “always” is always a vague term, a manner of speaking.’ And once protected by his clothes, he lay back down again, his head on the pillow and his shoes on the sheet, not that it mattered, I wasn’t going to tell him off. ‘That is, of course, if you want to stay with me. If not, that’s how it will always be for me, but not for you. Anyway, tell me exactly what happened.’
I then began to tell him about the Kindeláns, the sly way they’d befriended me, gained my trust, the questions they’d asked about what he did, as well as what they’d told me about him, the information they’d received and the ugly rumours. The incident with the cigarette lighter and, perhaps the worst thing of all, the things they’d said: ‘He’s putting you and yours in danger too. Don’t you realise that, dear Berta? The people he’s trying to harm will do their best to deflect that harm. They’ll try to neutralise him by any means possible. They’ll take their revenge.’ To which I’d responded with words of unconditional surrender: ‘I’ll do anything you want, Miguel.’ What Miguel wanted was for me to find out the facts – although he already knew quite a lot – and then, depending on the circumstances, to convince and dissuade Tomás. It was up to me to dissuade him and, if I succeeded, it would doubtless be best for everyone. Including his enemies, including the Kindeláns.
‘How could you? Where have you been all this time? Do you realise what you’ve done?’ I concluded my story with those three calmly worded reproaches (I wanted at all costs to remain calm, not to succumb to despair or anger before he’d had a chance to confirm anything).
He answered insofar as he could, I suppose; he told me what he was permitted to tell me, what wouldn’t land him in deep trouble. I asked the occasional question, but I can’t remember now what those questions were, I only remember what he said, almost as if I’d memorised his answers or he’d dictated them to me; sometimes it seemed to me that it wasn’t Tomás speaking, but someone above or behind him. It also occurred to me that he’d got dressed again not to protect himself, but in order to dominate and command: someone who is clothed and shod has more authority than someone who is naked beneath a bathrobe.
‘Given the situation,’ he said, ‘you need to know something for your own good. Something. As little as possible, only the bare essentials. I can’t tell you much. And you’ll have to get used to the fact that I’ll never be able to tell you everything. That’s just not possible, and, besides, what would be the point? You’ll have to make do with this, that I don’t only work for the Foreign Office, and that I do sometimes work for the Secret Service. I’ve been doing so for some time, it’s nothing new, although it’s new to you. It’s been like that for a while, and so it hasn’t really impinged on the life we’ve led together, the life you’ve accepted up until now, the life we lead. I do get sent to places, and sometimes they have no idea how long I’ll have to stay there; they can only make a rough guess, which usually turns out to be wrong. The truth is that when I leave here, I have no idea when I’ll be back, I don’t even know where I’ll have to go, it all depends on what they ask me to do, on what urgent need may arise, on where I could be most useful. But it’s not always like that, sometimes I don’t go anywhere and I stay quietly in London. You mustn’t ask me what I’m going to do, because I’ll never know. You mustn’t ask me what I’ve done either, because I won’t have done anything, what I’ve done won’t have happened, there’ll be no record of it anywhere, not a trace, nor should there be. Whatever happens will have nothing to do with me, because those of us who do this work both exist and don’t exist. We both act and don’t act, or, rather, we don’t carry out the actions we carry out, the things we do are done by nobody. They simply happen, like some atmospheric phenomenon. No one will ever call us to account. And no one gives us orders or sends us anywhere. That’s why, if you decide to stay with me, you mustn’t ask me, you must never ask me, because there’s a part of my life that has nothing to do with you, and although it takes up time, it doesn’t exist, not even for you. Not even for me. But you mustn’t worry. As for the Kindeláns … Nothing like that will ever happen again. There must have been a mistake, they must have mixed me up with someone else or with someone who doesn’t even exist. People like them believe in the existence of things that don’t exist. They’ll know that now. They won’t bother you again.’
I do remember saying rather irritably:
‘Really? So how come Mary Kate called me a few days ago from Rome or wherever it was? Why did she ask me about you again? And how did she know you were about to come back? What do you mean by “people like them”? Do they belong to the IRA? Who are they? Have you been in Belfast?’ I didn’t like that idea at all, but for other reasons entirely. Only four years before, in 1972, so-called Bloody Sunday had taken place in Londonderry, in Northern Ireland. I couldn’t bear the idea that Tomás had been there helping the English, whose army had opened fire on the unarmed participants of a peaceful demonstration and killed thirteen people and wounded several more, without those responsible ever being punished or even admonished. In fact, some time later, they were decorated by the Queen. If the IRA were already committing violence before that, the slaughter on Bloody Sunday only helped to justify this in the eyes of the people and strengthened their support.
But Tomás only answered my first question, keeping strictly to what he had just told me: ‘You must never ask me.’
‘They obviously hadn’t been told they’d made a mistake. I can assure you that they will have by now. Something like that can never happen again. You mustn’t be afraid for Guillermo or for yourself. None of this has anything to do with you, it doesn’t concern you, and no one will know about me. This was pure chance, so much so that it can’t happen a second time. It was an excess of zeal, if I can put it like that. People who live under siege, and in a state of permanent suspicion, suspect everyone, and sometimes, by chance, they’re right, or partly so. It’s like the policeman who doesn’t rule out anyone as the perpetrator of a crime. If you don’t rule out anyone, then the criminal is sure to be among your suspects, but that doesn’t mean you know who he is. They probably suspect the whole Foreign Office, and that would include me. But rest assured, I promise you it won’t happen again.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said, and my irritation grew. I stood up, lit a cigarette and walked around the room. As I walked, I revealed my legs beneath the bathrobe, and I knew this because I again caught Tomás’s appreciative look; it’s incredible how some men notice these things even in the middle of a really important discussion or argument. Perhaps he hadn’t been with a woman for a long time, I thought, and was ashamed to find myself t
hinking this, hoping childishly that it was true. Of course, I wouldn’t know about that either, I wouldn’t know about anything, nor where he’d been or what he’d done, and I began to accustom myself to the idea that it would always be like this if I stayed with him. I had no other plan in life but to remain by his side, and now, suddenly, I had to reconsider this. ‘Right, so you’re just one in a thousand and yet they took the trouble to waste a whole month of their time on me. Do you mean there will be others like the Kindeláns doing the same with the families of everyone who works for the Foreign Office? No organisation would have enough staff for that. Come on, please, don’t make me laugh.’
He was the one who laughed, rather inopportunely, as if he were amused by my response, my way of thinking.
‘No, that isn’t how it is, Berta, I was exaggerating. They would probably have suspected certain relatively new people, who are still fresh, who have particular qualities, and I happened to fit the bill. Given what you’ve told me, they were clearly up to speed on my talent for mimicry, but there’s nothing so very odd about that, half of Madrid or half of Oxford and even a few groups in London know about that. We have infiltrators, and so do they – when they can.’ I couldn’t help noticing that ‘we’, it was the first time I’d felt that it had a strangely patriotic ring to it, if ‘patriotic’ is the word. Shortly before, he’d used the expression ‘those of us who do this work’, which was similar, but somehow not the same (‘Thus, love of a country begins …’ another line from Eliot, although I couldn’t remember how it continued). ‘Look, I shouldn’t tell you what I’m about to tell you, but I’ll make an exception this time, because you do need to know something. Today, tomorrow or the day after it will be different. I can confidently tell you that they’ll have realised their mistake, will know that I’m no longer a suspect and will never bother you again, and that’s because this very week the person they thought could be me has gone down. The one who, according to what you were told, was doing a lot of damage in Belfast or was about to. Fortunately, before he went down, his job was pretty much done. They can be quite sure it wasn’t me.’
Berta Isla Page 20
