My prolonged absence made me feel rather like an intruder and as if I needed to ask such a question, which was perhaps inappropriate in a son with respect to his father’s home, a home that had for many years been mine too. I was still standing, still with my hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, whether seeing me or guessing at my face or remembering me, I don’t know. His gaze was, at any rate, very clear, surprised and slightly helpless, as if he had not quite grasped that I was leaving. His eyes were now very blue, bluer than they had ever been, perhaps because he no longer wore glasses.
‘No, there’s no need. As far as I’m concerned, you all still live here, even if you left a long time ago.’ He fell silent, then added: ‘Your mother too.’
I wasn’t sure whether he meant that she still lived there as well or if he was reproaching her as well for having left, when she died, longer ago than anyone else. He probably meant both.
And I continued to waste no time. I didn’t linger or delay or loiter or dally. I was longing to see my children again, not to mention Luisa and my sister, and, for the first time since my return, my brothers and a few friends, and to stroll around the city like a foreigner, but I felt I had something concrete and urgent to do, something to investigate and resolve and remedy. That was something I had learned from Tupra, at least in theory: Luisa was clearly in danger, and now I understood that sometimes one has no option but to do what has to be done and at once, without waiting or hesitating or delaying: I had to do this unthinkingly, like some very distracted, busy person, as if it were merely my job. Yes, there are occasions when one knows precisely what would happen in the world if no pressure or brake was imposed on what one perceives to be people’s certain capabilities, and that if those capabilities were to remain undeployed, it was necessary for someone—me, for example, who else in this case?—to dissuade or impede them. In order for Tupra to adopt the punitive measures which he deemed necessary and appropriate, he simply had to convince himself of what would happen in each case if he or another sentinel—the authorities or the law, instinct, the moon, the storm, fear, the hovering sword, the invisible watchers—did not put a stop to it. ‘It’s the way of the world,’ he would say, and he would say this about so many things and situations; he applied those words to betrayals and acts of loyalty, to anxieties and quickened pulses, to unexpected reversals and vertigo, to vacillations and torments and to the involuntary harm we cause, to the scratch and the pain and the fever and the festering wound, to griefs and the infinite steps we all take in the belief that we are being guided by our will, or that our will does at least play a part in them. To him all this seemed perfectly normal and even, sometimes, routine—prevention or punishment and never running too grave a risk—he knew too well that the Earth is full of passions and affections and of ill will and malice, and that sometimes individuals can avoid neither and, indeed, choose not to, because they are the fuse and the fuel for their own combustion, as well as their reason and their igniting spark. And they don’t even require a motive or a goal for any of this, neither aim nor cause, gratitude nor insult, or at least not always, or as Wheeler said: ‘they carry their probabilities in their veins, and so time, temptation and circumstance will lead them at last to their fulfilment.’ And for Tupra this very radical and sometimes ruthless attitude—or perhaps it was simply a very practical one—was just another characteristic of the way of the world to which he conformed or adhered; and that unreflecting, inclement, resolute stance (or one based perhaps on a single thought, the first), also formed part of that way of the world which remained unchanged throughout time and regardless of space, and so there was, therefore, no reason to question it, just as there’s no need to question wakefulness and sleep, or hearing and sight, or breathing and walking and speech, or any of the other things about which one knows ‘that’s how it is and always will be.’
I was feeling now as he did, that is, like someone who didn’t bother to issue any prior warning, at least not always, someone who makes decisions at a distance and for barely identifiable reasons, or without the actions appearing to have any connection of cause and effect with those reasons, still less with the proof that such acts have been committed. Nor did I need proof of that arbitrary or justifiable occasion—who could tell which it was and what did it matter?—nor did I intend sending any warning or notice before unleashing my saber blow, I didn’t even require any evidence of actions committed or proven, of events or deeds, or even certainty in order to set to and remove from Luisa’s existence the man marring and threatening her life and, therefore, the lives of my children. First, I had to find out more about the man and then track him down. She wouldn’t say a word to me about him, especially now that I had voiced my immediate suspicion that this as yet nameless, faceless man was the person responsible for her multicolored black eye. After my father’s conjectures and his belief that my wife would be inclined to humor or encourage whoever she was attracted to or whoever she was focused on now (‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘strictly speaking, she is still my wife. We’re not divorced and neither of us seems in a hurry to get a divorce or has even suggested it,’ and this confirmed me in my determination or in my first thought that admitted of no second thought), my next step was to go and see her sister or talk to her on the phone; and even though she and I had never got on particularly well or had much to do with each other and even though she led a very independent life with few family ties and saw myself and the children only infrequently, as mere extensions of Luisa, she did meet up with Luisa once or twice a month; Luisa would either go to her place without the kids and without me, her husband, or they would lunch together in a restaurant and tell each other about their respective lives, just how much I didn’t know, but probably almost everything. If anyone knew what was going on, if anyone knew the identity of that man with violent tendencies, his face and name, that person was Cristina, Luisa’s somewhat surly younger sister. And although her first loyalty was to Luisa and even though she considered me to be a mere dispensable appendage, I was sure that if something was worrying her—and if my deductions were correct, and even if they weren’t, this guy was very worrying indeed—she would tell me and welcome hearing the views of someone who felt the same way about the matter.
I phoned her that evening, much to her surprise, for she didn’t even know I was in Madrid, but then how could she unless she had spoken to Luisa during the day and Luisa had told her, she asked me how things were going in London, and I was amazed that she actually knew where I was currently living,‘Fine,’ I said, without going into detail, after all, it was just a reflex question, and then I asked if we could meet up as soon as possible, ‘No,’ she said, ‘impossible, I’m off on a trip tomorrow and I’ve got loads of things to do before I go,’ ‘How long are you away for?’ ‘A week,’ ‘It will be too late when you get back, I need to see you before you leave, I’m only here for two weeks, well, less than that now, what time are you leaving?’ I asked,‘ At lunchtime, but I’m really tied up until then, can’t you tell me over the phone? Is it about Luisa?’ ‘Yes, it’s about Luisa.’ Then she fell silent for a few seconds and it seemed to me that she had sat herself down on a chair in readiness. ‘What have you got to say, then? Come on, tell me,’ ‘What? Now?’ ‘Yes, now. If it’s what I think it is, it won’t take much time and I imagine we’ll be pretty much in agreement on the subject. It’s about Custardoy, isn’t it?’
‘Who?’
‘Custardoy, the guy she’s going out with. Or didn’t you know? Oh, Jaime, don’t tell me you didn’t know.’ She said this not as if she were afraid she had put her foot in it, but as if she couldn’t believe I wouldn’t know. Perhaps she had always thought of me as rather absentminded, or worse, a fool.
‘I’ve only just got back. I didn’t know his name.’ Now, however, I did and knew of his existence in Luisa’s life, so it wasn’t all conjecture on my part. All I needed now was to know what he looked like and find out where he lived. Custardoy. It was an unusual surname, odd, there wouldn’t
be many in Madrid. ‘I’ve been away for ages, and when you only talk on the phone, it’s hard to know what’s really going on. Who is he? What does he do?’
‘He’s a painter, a copyist, or both of those things. Some people say he’s a forger too, but at any rate, he’s in the art world. I’m glad you phoned actually, I’ve been really worried—although I’m not sure anything can be done, in this kind of situation there’s rarely much you can do.’
‘Worried? Why? What situation?’
‘Tell me first why you phoned. Has Luisa told you anything?’
I wondered if I should pretend to know more than I did, but that seemed unwise, Cristina could be very touchy and, if she caught on to what I was doing, she might refuse to say another word. And that was the last thing I wanted, I was entirely dependent on her for help, and she had, inadvertently, already told me a lot, with no need for me to worm it out of her.
‘No, not really,’ I said at last. ‘According to Luisa, what she does is no longer any of my business, and she’s right of course. The thing is, I saw her briefly last night, I’d gone over there to see the kids, and she avoided me and left before I arrived, but I waited until she got back, she was away for several hours, I’ve no idea where she went, she left me with the babysitter, and I think the reason she was avoiding me was because when I did see her, her face was a real mess, and that was obviously the reason she hadn’t wanted to be there. She claims she collided with the garage door, but she’s got a black eye and it looks to me as if someone punched her, and I don’t just find that worrying, I find it downright alarming, and it is my business, how could it not be? It would be the same if someone had hit you or any female friend. Do you know anything about it?’
‘It wouldn’t be the same if someone had hit me, Jaime, because you don’t give a damn about me.’ My sister-in-law’s sharp tongue could not resist getting this comment in first. Then her tone changed and she said almost as if to herself: ‘Not again. That’s dreadful.’
‘Again? You mean it’s happened before?’
Cristina didn’t respond at first. She paused as if she were biting her lip and weighing something up, but her hesitation lasted only a moment.
‘According to her, no, nothing has ever happened, not what you suspect now nor what I’ve suspected in the past. Look, I’m telling you this because I’m worried, and even more so after what you’ve just told me, I didn’t know anything about that, I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks, and she hasn’t put any pressure on me to meet up before this trip of mine, presumably because she thinks the mark will have faded by the time I get back and then I won’t ask any awkward questions. But I don’t think she would be at all pleased if she knew I was talking about this to you. The only reason she hasn’t told me not to talk to you is because it would never occur to her that you and I would be in touch. It wouldn’t have occurred to me either, to be honest. Did she know you were coming to Madrid?’
‘No, I phoned her when I arrived yesterday. I wanted it to be a surprise for the children.’
‘She won’t have had time to prepare herself,’ she said,‘nor to worry about you finding out. She probably doesn’t even want you to know she’s going out with the guy.’
‘What is it that you suspected?’
‘Well, according to her, a couple of months ago or so she fell over in the street and hit her face on one of those metal posts the council have put up everywhere, which is perfectly possible, because the city’s full of the things, bollards I think they call them, you have to make a real point of avoiding them if you don’t want to fracture your kneecap. Did she mention anything to you about falling over?’
‘No, nothing. And we talk at least once a week.’
‘Well, I’m surprised she didn’t. It was a really nasty cut, a superficial one, but it went from one side of her nose to halfway across her cheek, you couldn’t miss it.’—‘Uno sfregio,’ I thought, that recently learned word sprang immediately into my mind, ‘a gash.’—‘And she had a graze on her chin. From the way she talked about it, I just didn’t believe her, and it looked more like a scratch or a welt or as if someone had slapped her, I know a bit about these things because a woman I was vaguely friendly with some years ago used to get beaten up by her husband; in fact, he killed her in the end, after I’d stopped seeing her luckily, which is something.’ I instinctively knocked on wood. ‘So I asked her straight out if Custardoy had hit her, if he’d beaten her up. She denied it, of course, and said I must be mad, how could I even think such a thing. But she blushed when she said it, and I can tell when my sister is lying from years of watching her face whenever she lied as a child. And I’ve heard other things since.’ ‘What things? Do you know the guy?’
I realized that I preferred not to mention his name, although I had it stored away in my memory, as if it were a find, a treasure. It was a valuable piece of information.
‘Yes, by sight. And by hearsay too. A few years ago, he was often to be seen drinking in smart bars like the Chicote, the Cock, or the Del Diego, or in others, he’s an arty type, a nocturnal womanizer, although apparently he didn’t restrict his activities to the nighttime only, he’s the kind of man who can tell at once who wants to be chatted up and for what purpose, the kind who’s capable of creating the necessary willingness and purpose in someone else, that is, in women. At least so I’ve heard. I don’t know if he still goes to those places, because I don’t go any more myself. You probably saw him once or twice there yourself, in the eighties or nineties.’
‘What does he look like? Has he got a ponytail?’ I asked, I couldn’t help myself. I was burning to know this.
‘Yes, how did you guess?’
‘Oh, it was just something someone said. But in that case, no, I’ve never seen him. I mean, I can’t remember anyone in particular with a ponytail. Then again, I pretty much stopped going out at night when Guillermo was born, and the guy probably didn’t have a ponytail before that. And of course the surname doesn’t mean anything to me either. What things have you heard?’
‘Well, after seeing that cut on Luisa’s face—which left me with a really bad feeling—I asked an acquaintance of mine, Juan Ranz, about Custardoy, who he’s known since they were children. They never got on well and have had hardly any contact for years, but their parents were friends and used to leave them together to play and entertain each other, so he had to put up with his company quite often. He says Custardoy was one of those very grown-up kids, impatient to enter the adult world, as if he wanted to climb out of his as yet unformed body. Then, when he was older, Custardoy used to make copies of paintings for Ranz’s father, who’s an art expert (apparently, Custardoy’s a brilliant copyist and can make a perfect copy of anything from any period, in fact, it’s hard to tell them from the originals, which, of course, is where his reputation as a forger comes in), and so he still used to see him from time to time, through his father. Juan is an interpreter at the United Nations, and, as a matter of fact, his wife’s name is Luisa too.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘The most notable or perhaps the most troubling fact, and the one that most concerns us, is that, although he’s a great success with the ladies, there’s obviously something slightly sinister about the way he treats them because Ranz knows of some women who’ve emerged from a night with Custardoy feeling really scared, after having sex I mean (some of them were prostitutes, and so it was purely sexual). And afterwards, they didn’t even want to talk about it, as if they needed to forget it as quickly as possible and shake off the whole experience. As if the experience, or even the mere memory of it, had burned itself into them and didn’t lend itself to being turned into a story. And even when there were two prostitutes involved at the same time (apparently he’s into threesomes, although always with women), both had emerged feeling equally scared and refusing to say anything about it. And inevitably, there are lots of other women, prostitutes or not, who feel an irresistible desire to know just what it is he does or doesn’t do.
There’s no shortage of stupid women out there as you know.’
This was the worst possible news. A ladies’ man who was also into whores, and who left his mark on women, even if that mark was only a mark of terror. ‘A man like that won’t even have to bury me or dig my grave still deeper, the grave in which I’m already buried,’ I thought,‘ because he will have erased my memory at a stroke, with the first terror and the first entreaty and the first fascination and the first command, and Luisa could already be under his thumb.’
‘But Luisa isn’t stupid, at least she didn’t used to be, no, she’s never been stupid,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he’s different with women who aren’t whores. Perhaps when he has more than one night at his disposal his behavior changes to the exact opposite, purely in order to ensure that there will be more nights to come. Or do you think that’s precisely what is so sinister about him, that he beats up all the women he goes out with? I can’t believe that. Someone would have said something, someone would have found out, the women he’d been with would have warned each other. You women talk about such things, don’t you, I mean details? Spanish women do. In what sort of terms has she spoken to you about him? Is she in love or infatuated? Desperate, mad, distracted, flattered? Just how serious is she? She can’t be in love. And how did she meet him? Where did he spring from?’ The information provided by this Ranz fellow had perhaps made me even more uneasy than Luisa’s now yellowing black eye. ‘What else did this friend of yours say?’
‘Nothing very good, except that he’s brilliant at his job. According to Ranz, though, he’s a slippery customer, not to be trusted under any circumstances. And he’s not the sort to fall in love, or didn’t use to be, he said. But who knows, love is an area in which people can change at any moment. When I told him that my sister was going out with him, he said: “Oh God” like someone heralding a disaster. That’s why I was trying to find out more, well, because of that and her supposed collision with a bollard and that worrying cut. In fact, I asked him outright if he thought Custardoy would be capable of hitting a woman.’ And Cristina paused, as if she’d completed that particular sequence of sentences.
Your Face Tomorrow Page 31
