Your Face Tomorrow 3

by Javier Marías

  People believe what they want to believe, and that's why it's only logical—and so easy—that everything should have its time to be believed. We'll believe anything: even something that's manifestly untrue and contradicts what we can see with our own eyes, yes, even that has its time to be believed, each separate event in its own time and, in the fullness of time, everything. Everyone is prepared to look away and turn a deaf ear, to deny what's there before them and not to hear the shouting, and to maintain that there are no screams only a vast peaceful silence; to modify events and what has happened as much as they need to— the one-legged man still able to feel his leg and the one-armed man his arm and the decapitated man staggering three steps forward as if he hadn't yet lost both will and consciousness—but above all their own thoughts, feelings, memories and their anticipated future, which is sometimes mistaken for prescience. 'It wasn't like that. This isn't going to happen or won't have happened. This isn't happening' is the constant litany that distorts the past, the future and the present, and thus nothing is ever fixed or intact, neither safe nor certain. Everything that exists also doesn't exist or carries within itself its own past and future nonexistence, it doesn't last or endure, and even the gravest of events run that same risk and will end up visiting and traveling through one-eyed oblivion, which is no steadier or more stable or more capable of giving shelter. That's why all things seem to say 'I'm still here, therefore I must have been here before' while they are still alive and well and growing and have not yet ceased. Perhaps that's their way of clinging grimly to the present, a resistance to disappearing put up by the inanimate, by objects too, not only by people, who hang on and grow desperate and almost never give in ('But it's not time yet, not yet,' they mutter in their panic, with their dwindling strength), perhaps it's an attempt to leave their mark on everything, to make it harder for them to be denied or erased or forgotten, their way of saying 'I have been' and to stop other people saying 'No, this was never here, no one saw it or remembers it or ever touched it, it simply never was, it neither strode the world nor trod the earth, it didn't exist and never happened.'

  It was nothing very grave, almost insignificant given the times we live in, and pleasurable too, the thing that happened without happening between young Pérez Nuix and me late that night, perhaps at the hour the Romans called the conticinio and which doesn't really exist in our cities now, for there is no time when everything is still and silent. She gave a sigh of satisfaction or relief and thanked me for my promise that was not a promise, for my declaration that I would do my best, which is hardly a major commitment. She seemed suddenly very tired, but this lasted only a moment, she immediately sprang to her feet, went over to the window and looked more closely at the tireless rain. She stretched discreetly—just her hands and wrists, not her arms; and her thighs, but without standing on tiptoe or rocking back on her heels—and then she asked me if she could stay. She couldn't face going home at that hour, she said, and I needn't worry, she'd get up very early to take the dog out, she'd leave in time to go back to her place and shower and change ('And put on a new pair of stockings,' I thought at once), and we wouldn't have to go together to the building with no name, like some strange married couple who, when they set off to work, don't go their separate ways. No one there would guess that we had met outside of work to conspire nor that we had said goodbye only a short time before. I agreed, how could I refuse such a minor request after granting the major one (well, at least its attempt), even though they were quite different in nature; it was a filthy night to be heading off out into the street again and who knew how long it would take for a taxi to come, and I'd have to phone for one first, if, that is, anyone answered the phone. Besides, I would prefer, for reasons of dramatic delicacy, that she didn't just leave as soon as she'd got what she wanted (or at least a declaration of intent), which would have made her visit exclusively utilitarian. It was, of course, utilitarian, as we both knew, but it would be best not to draw attention to that, nor was it appropriate given how much remained to be done in the next days, especially by me, for I would have to interpret and perhaps meet Incompara. I offered to sleep on the sofa and let her have the bed; she, however, wouldn't allow this; she, after all, was the intruder, the unexpected guest, she couldn't possibly deprive me of my mattress and my sheets.

  'No, I'll take the sofa,' she said. But when she looked at it properly and saw how uncomfortable it was, and possibly still wet from her and the rain she'd brought in, she made the only suggestion someone of her age and self-assurance could make: 'I don't see what's wrong with us sharing the bed, as long as you don't mind, that is. I don't. Is it fairly wide?'

  Of course I didn't mind, I had been young during an age when you were happy to sleep in any bed and alongside new acquaintances wherever you happened to find yourself after a night of wild excess or induced ecstasy or supposed spirituality or partying—the seventies, so effortfully spontaneous and so unhygienic, not to say downright grubby at times, and part of the eighties, which continued in the same vein. And of course I did mind, I no longer was that young man nor was I accustomed to sleeping anywhere but in my own bed, and I had spent too many years getting used to sleeping only beside Luisa, not even by the side of that stupid short-lived lover who ruined much of what I had, or what I treasured, even though Luisa never knew for certain about her existence; and later, in London, only beside a few sporadic women—three, to be exact—with whom the unhygienic or, if you like, grubby part had happened earlier and with whom, therefore, there was no danger that I'd want to grope them for the first time in dreams or while half-asleep, nor that I'd try to brush up against them, holding my breath and pretending to have done so purely by chance, nor that I'd want to observe them in the dark with my five senses alert and my eyes wide open, and with poindess intensity.

  So it was that I found myself in bed with young Pérez Nuix, so aware of her warmth and her presence that I couldn't really get to sleep, and what made it even more difficult was the question that kept going round and round in my head as to whether the same thing was happening to her, if she was waiting or fearing that I would move closer, a slow, stealthy approach, so gradual at first that she would doubt it was happening, just like those men who used to feel women up on buses or trams or on the underground, using as their excuse the crush of people and the swaying motion, and who would rub and even press themselves against the uncomplaining bosom of the chosen woman, but never using their hands—so 'feeling up' is perhaps not quite the right phrase—and always with the excuse that any contact was entirely involuntary and attributable to the overwhelming pressure of the crowd and the bends in the road and the jolting. I speak of this in the past, because it's been ages since I saw this embarrassing spectacle on any form of public transportation and I don't know if it still happens in this day and age, which is more respectful at least in that one area; I often saw it during my childhood and adolescence, and I can't rule out having timidly done the same myself when I was thirteen or fourteen, when, in the minds of we fledgling men, everything is imaginary or frustrated sex. And I suppose it's because I associate such scenes with the remote past that I mention trams, which have been ghosts for decades now, as are those nice Madrid doubledeckers that they withdrew only a short while ago, and which were identical to the London ones, except that they were blue not red, and had the same doorless entrance, just an open platform at the rear with a vertical bar to grab hold of and haul yourself aboard—on the right rather than the left, in keeping with the side of the road we drive on in my country.

  Genitalia, women's that is, are also like entrances with no doors, I mean that if they're unobstructed by clothes there's no need to open them in order to enter. I let her get into bed first, alone, I waited in the living room for a while so that she could get ready and get undressed as she wished, and so when I eventually went into the bedroom, after those few minutes, young Pérez Nuix was already in bed and I had no way of knowing which clothes or how many she had removed before lying down. I had lent her
a clean T-shirt, short-sleeved, because that's what I wear when it looks like it might be cold, I don't own any proper pajamas. 'That'll do fine, thank you,' she had said, which meant that this was probably all she was wearing and that her legs were bare, although I was almost sure she would have kept her panties on out of modesty, or out of consideration, or out of cleanliness, so as not to stain someone else's sheets, just as I kept on my boxer shorts and also donned a T-shirt, less because it was cold that night than to avoid any chance contact with her, skin on skin, flesh on flesh, such contact would happen only with our legs, my hairy ones against her smooth ones, for she was one hundred per cent Spanish as regards waxing her legs. However, before turning out the light—the bedside lamp—which she had left on so that I wouldn't have to enter the room in the dark, I pretended I was making sure my clothes weren't mixed up with hers, for we had both placed them on the same armchair, and then I could see and count the items of clothing she had taken off, and I counted not only her bra, as I had imagined, but also her other underwear, as I hadn't imagined at all, for there, neatly folded, were her white panties, they were tiny, which is to say normal, and I thought at once: 'I'm taller than she is, so the T-shirt will probably be long enough for her to feel covered.' This thought, though, was of no use to me, and from the moment the room was in darkness and I had slipped in between the sheets, I realized that I would spend the whole night unable to forget that strange and unexpected fact and that it would be almost impossible for me to go to sleep, as I lay agonizing over it and looking for some meaning: what did she mean by taking off her panties and leaving her genitalia—how can I put it—exposed, so close to me and to mine, we were separated by only a few inches and two bits of flimsy cloth or not even that, by the cloth of my boxer shorts with their ready-made opening and that of her borrowed T-shirt, if, of course, it hadn't ridden up when she was getting into bed and she hadn't bothered to pull it down, for then it was possible that her bottom—she had lain down on the other side of the bed and so had her back to me—was bare and very close to my irremediably aroused member, it was hopeless, I wouldn't get a wink of sleep in that state of physical alertness and repetitive mental activity, thinking and thinking about the singular fact, about my member, about her buttocks and below, about the nearness of everything and the absence of doors and of any barrier, even a barrier of cloth, wondering whether to approach surreptitiously and alight tentatively, making it look as if it were unconscious, something done in dreams, something merely instinctive, involuntary, animal almost, all the time waiting tensely, wide awake, to see if she would escape at once, if she would shy away at the first contact or accept it and stay where she was and not flee, neither surrender nor let me fall into the air, into the void, into emptiness; I didn't dare expect any pressure or stimulus from her, all of this was going on in my mind, which, in such circumstances, immediately becomes obsessed, it's the kind of doubt or idea which, once started, won't dissolve or withdraw, still less if the blood has gathered and impedes all abatement and all breathing, all appeasement or distraction or truce, and the temptation then becomes fixed. After a while spent listening to her breathing—it didn't sound to me like that of someone sleeping—and holding in, almost stopping my own, it occurred to me that I should get up and go and sleep on the sofa, with a blanket, but the truth was I didn't want to leave the bed or lose the unlikely proximity thus far achieved, it was a kind of promise that was its own satisfaction and which allowed me to remain in that state of mortifying, hopeful ignorance, to fantasize about what might happen at any moment if we did touch and neither of us avoided it or started away, we were only a little way apart and it's all a question of time and space and of coinciding in those two dimensions, we had the time and, very nearly, the space as well, all that was needed was a slight slippage, a minimal shift, for things to be completely in our favor, it was so easy that it seemed impossible it would not occur, one first tentative caress perhaps and my member would slip inside her and then both would be in the same place, one inside the other almost without our realizing, we could even pretend not to know and to be asleep even though we were both fully awake, I knew I was and thought the same was true of her; I was pretty convinced but not certain, of course, and that was what held me back or one of the things.

  This situation of sexual imminence was not new to me, that is, it was new with young Pérez Nuix, but not in my previous existence, it had happened more than once with Luisa, silently and peacefully at first, after the initial tentative caress and the minimal shift that had caused us to coincide in both space and time, that's what matters, that's what determines important events, which is why it's so vital sometimes not to linger or delay, although it can also be what saves us, we never know what would be for the best and what is the right thing to do; if bullet and head or knife and chest or sword-blade and neck do not coincide in the same place and moment, no one dies, and that's why De la Garza was still alive, because his neck and Reresby's Landsknecht sword, or his Katsbalger, had not coincided exactly, despite having been on the point of doing so several times. However, with Luisa, her acquiescence was almost certain, and from her I could expect both pressure and stimulus, after all, we got into the same bed each night, she earlier and I later, as if I were coming to visit her in her dreams and I were her ghost, and the rest formed part of the foreseeable and the probable, or at least the possible. And if one of us said 'No,' either her or even me, it was a chance rejection, reasoned and momentary ('I'm exhausted,' or 'I'm too preoccupied today, my mind's on other things' or even more trivial 'I have to get up really early tomorrow'), not essential either to the totality or to the act itself, as young Pérez Nuix's refusal might be, expressed in unequivocal and crushing terms: 'What the hell are you are up to? Who do you think you are?' or perhaps gentler and more diplomatic, 'I wouldn't continue down that road if I were you, you won't get anywhere,' or more humiliating: 'Huh, I thought you'd have more self-control, more maturity, I didn't have you down as your average Spanish sex maniac, or an old-fashioned Spanish macho-man.'

  None of these wounding words were spoken, indeed no words of any sort were uttered when I finally dared to make that tentative approach and lightly rested my member against her buttocks and was immediately aware that I was touching not T-shirt but firm, warm flesh, she was probably one of those women who are really sensitive to the cold, but who give off the heat they themselves don't feel, they're like a warm oven to the person who touches them, even though they themselves may be shivering, like someone with a fever. Nothing was said, there was no reaction, no movement either towards me or away, no discouragement and no encouragement, it really was as if she were deep asleep, I wondered if she really could be sleeping so profoundly that she wouldn't notice the touch of skin on skin with nothing in between, I thought not and that she must be pretending, but when it comes to other people, and possibly even when it comes to yourself, you can never be absolutely sure about anything, or almost anything. I got a little closer, pressed a little harder, but so very little that I wasn't even sure of having done so, sometimes you think you've moved or shifted, or pushed or caressed, but your approach is so timid and terrified that you can sometimes deceive yourself, and your advance or even your touch may prove imperceptible to the other person. And that was where I was, caught between a yes and a no, between irresistible desire and fearful or perhaps civilized restraint, applying such minute pressure that it might not have been pressure at all, when a thought suddenly, ridiculously, occurred to me: A condom,' I thought. 'I can't do anything without a condom on, and for that I need a minimum of consent, permission, agreement. If I get up now and fetch one and then come back to bed with it, I'll have lost my position, lost this closeness, I'd have to start all over again, she might move away or perhaps prove less accessible. And with a condom on I would no longer have an alibi, I would no longer be able to say to her, if she told me off or pulled me up short: "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to, I was fast asleep and didn't realize I was touching you. It wasn't intentional,
I'm sorry, I'll keep to my side of the bed," because the ridiculous sheath would be irrefutable proof that it was intentional and premeditated as well.'

  This thought immediately made me draw back a little, enough to lose contact, and that reaffirmed me in my uncertain belief that there had been contact and that the ghostly pressure had been neither avoided nor rejected; and after a few seconds, I abandoned my position ('Goddamn condoms,' I thought, 'in my youth, we despised them, it never even occurred to me to buy them, now, though, we always have to use them') and no longer lay behind her, in that privileged place, but on my back, wondering what to do or how to do it or whether I should give up despite my growing hopes and try to go to sleep and do nothing. I put my arm under the pillow the better to rest my head, an involuntary gesture of deliberation, and in doing so I uncovered my chest, almost as far as my waist, and uncovered her shoulders. And that was enough—or a pretext—for young Pérez Nuix to wake up or pretend she did. And for the first and only time in the whole of that night we spent together I was not invisible to her, despite our being in darkness: she turned over and placed the open palms of her hands on my cheeks as if to show her fondness for me, they were very soft palms; she looked into my eyes for a few seconds (one, two, three, four; and five; or six, seven, eight; and nine; or ten, eleven, twelve; and thirteen) and smiled at me or laughed as she delicately cupped or held my face, as Luisa sometimes used to do when her bed was still mine and we weren't yet sleepy or not sleepy enough to say goodnight and turn our backs on each other until the next day, or when I came to her late like a ghost she'd arranged to meet and for whom she was waiting, and welcomed me. Only then was I not invisible to Pérez Nuix, when there was no light. My eyes were accustomed to seeing in the half-dark of my room without blinds or shutters, like almost all bedrooms on that large island whose inhabitants sleep with one eye open; but not her eyes, which were unfamiliar with the space. Nevertheless, she looked at me and smiled and laughed, it was very brief. Then she turned over again and offered me her back, adopting the same position as before, as if that gazing at each other in the dark hadn't taken place and she were ready to continue sleeping. But it had taken place, and that for me was the necessary sign of consent, permission, agreement I needed, it made me get out of bed for a moment and rapidly search out a condom, put it on and return with much more confidence and aplomb to my previous position, and to the rubbing and touching and gentle pushing, not against her buttocks now but slightly lower down, towards the dampness and the passage, the passageway, more ferarum, in the manner of the beasts, that's the Latin tag for it. She didn't move, at least not as I began to slide in, easily now ('I'm screwing her,' I thought as I entered her, I couldn't help it), she just let me, she didn't participate if one can say that or if that's possible, at any rate, we didn't speak, there was no indication on either side that what was happening was happening, how can I put it, we pretended to pretend to be asleep, to be unaware, to recognize nothing of what was going on as if it were taking place in our absence or without our knowledge, although occasionally she did utter a few sounds and perhaps I did too when I came, I conscientiously repressed them though, telling myself I had merely breathed more deeply, at most sighed, but who knows, one hears oneself so little, and anyway sounds and even groans are permissible during sleep, some people even deliver whole speeches while asleep, but they're never accused of being awake. Almost nothing was heard or seen, I could see only the back of her neck in the darkness and from far too close, and that's doubtless why I kept picturing things, the same things I had just spent a long time contemplating in the living room ('It'll only take a moment,' she had announced from the street, I wondered if she knew just how wrong she would be), the zippers on her boots going up and down, the run in her stockings advancing in all directions along her thigh, but especially upwards, as if pointing the way, and another older vision, that of her naked breast, a tight skirt, and in her hand a towel and a raised arm that added an additional nakedness to the image by unembarrassedly revealing her clean, smooth, newly washed and, needless to say, shaven armpit, early one morning in the building with no name, that time when she did not blush, making me think that young Pérez Nuix did not rule me out, or did not entirely exclude me, although she didn't necessarily feel attracted to me either, having been seen by me and having decided not to cover herself up, or perhaps no decision was involved. It was all very silent and timid, ghostly really, and it remained so, except that, after a while, I noticed that she was pushing too, it wasn't just me now and neither of us was pretending not to push or else pushing only gently, it was as if we were locked in a tight embrace, but without making use of our arms, she was pressed against me and I against her, but with just one part of our body, the same part, as if we were only those parts or as if we consisted solely of that, it was as if we had been forbidden to entwine in any other way, with our arms or our legs or round the waist or by way of kisses. I don't think we even held hands.