‘And what did he say? Tell me.’
‘He wasn’t categorical about it, but nevertheless… He thought about it for a moment and then said: “I suppose so. I don’t know that he has, no one’s ever told me he has and he wouldn’t tell me so himself. It’s not the kind of thing you boast about. But I suppose that, yes, he would be perfectly capable of doing so.” You see what I mean. (Of course, Ranz doesn’t like the man and so can’t be taken as the oracle.) That was when he told me about the prostitutes and, well, I assumed it wasn’t only prostitutes. Now you tell me that Luisa has another injury, one she hasn’t even mentioned to me. If she’d bumped into a door and given herself a black eye, the normal thing would be for her to tell me about it, we may not have seen each other lately, but we’ve spoken on the phone. And she didn’t tell you about the incident with the bollard. Yes, now I really am very worried. And Jaime, Luisa may not be stupid, but you’ve only known her in a stable situation, when she was with you. Apart from the last few months before you left, of course, but there was still a remnant of stability while you were at home, a kind of postponement, an inertia. But how long have you been away now? Nine months, twelve, fifteen? That’s a long time for the person left behind, longer than for the one who leaves. Neither you nor I know what she’s like in that situation, and she was still very young when she met you. People are unpredictable when they’ve just split up with someone. Some might closet themselves at home and not want to see anyone, others might hit the streets and climb into the first bed that’s offered. Some might do first one thing and then the other, or the other way round, I mean, who knows what foolishness you’ve been getting up to in London, fancy-free and with no family obligations. There are half-measures too, of course. Luisa won’t have hit the streets because, to start with, there are the children to consider. But she won’t simply have wept into her pillow. She must feel slightly impatient, excited, curious to meet another man and see how it works out, and curiosity leads to all kinds of silliness and to persisting in that silliness until the curiosity wears off. She hasn’t told me a great deal, about her feelings, I mean, or her expectations; she probably doesn’t have any great expectations and is simply letting time pass until she can see more clearly what she wants or, indeed, if she wants anything. From what Ranz told me, and given Custardoy’s reputation, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll put any pressure on her to move in with him or to get divorced or whatever, if he isn’t the sort to fall in love. Not that I’ve asked her much about it either, I suppose: you know what I’m like, I’ll listen to what others tell me, but I’m not that interested really, unless things get serious. All I know is that she’s going out with this guy, has a good time with him and obviously likes him. How much she likes him I don’t know, possibly a lot, she might be crazy about him, which is why she’s being discreet and keeping quiet about it. She doesn’t try and hide their relationship, but she’s not shouting it from the rooftops either. Not with me, I mean, and I would think with other people she says even less. She didn’t announce it to me with a great fanfare, as if it were headline news. And I’ve only seen them together once, very briefly and from the car, so I haven’t spent time with them or anything. I get a sense of reserve, modesty almost, as if after all those years as a married woman, she was embarrassed to have a boyfriend.’
‘How did you happen to see them?’ Even if it was as brief as she said, that would provide me with the only image I had of the two of them together, apart from the indirect and imprecise one provided by my brother-in-law via my sister. And I needed to be able to imagine them. It was odd to imagine Luisa being with anyone other than me. It seemed not so much repugnant or offensive as unreal, like a performance, a farce. Yes, it was more unreal than painful. Separations like ours make no sense, however commonplace they have become in the world and have been for a long time now. You spend years orbiting round a particular person, depending on her at every turn, seeing her every day as if she were a natural prolongation of yourself, including her in all your comings and goings, in your aimless thoughts and even in your dreams. Thinking of telling her the slightest thing seen or experienced, for example, a Romanian mother asking for a packet of baby wipes for her children. You are with that person, just as the Hungarian gypsy was with her children or Alan Marriott’s dog was without a leg. You have a detailed, constant and permanently refreshed knowledge of her thoughts and preoccupations and activities; you know her timetable and her habits, who she sees and how often; and when you join her each evening you tell each other what has happened and what you’ve been up to during the day, during which neither of you has ever entirely left the consciousness of the other for a single moment, and sometimes those reports are quite elaborate; then you go to bed with her and she’s the last thing you see that day and—even more extraordinary—you get up with her too, for she’s there in the morning, after those hours of absence, as if she were you, someone who never goes away or disappears and of whom we never lose sight; and so on, day after day over many years. Then suddenly—although it isn’t sudden, it just seems like that once the process is over and distance has been established: in fact it happens very gradually and both parties know when it began, even though they prefer not to—you cease to have any notion of what that person’s daily thoughts, feelings or actions are; whole days and weeks go by with almost no news of her, and you have to resort to third parties—who used to know much less than you, well, nothing really, in comparison—to find out the most basic things: what kind of life she’s leading, who she sees, how the kids are taking it, who she’s going out with, if she’s in pain or ill, if she’s in good or low spirits, if she’s still looking after her diabetes and taking her long prescribed walks, if anyone has upset or hurt her, if she’s finding work exhausting, if it’s getting her down or is a real source of satisfaction, if she’s afraid of growing old, how she sees her future and how she views the past, how she thinks of me now; and who she loves. It makes no sense that it should go from all to almost nothing, even though we never cease to remember and are basically the same person. It’s all so unbearably ridiculous and subjective, because everything contains its opposite: the same people in the same place love each other and cannot stand each other; what was once long-established habit becomes slowly or suddenly unacceptable and inadmissible—whether slowly or suddenly it doesn’t matter, that’s the least of it, someone who helped set up a home finds he’s forbidden from entering it, the merest contact, a touch, once so taken for granted that it was barely conscious becomes an affront or an insult, it’s almost as if you were having to ask permission to touch yourself, what once gave pleasure or amusement becomes hateful, repellent, accursed and vile, words once longed for would now poison the air or provoke nausea and must on no account be heard, and those spoken a thousand times before seem unimportant. Erase, suppress, take back, cancel, better never to have said anything, that is the world’s ambition, that way nothing exists, nothing is anything, the same things and the same facts and the same beings are both themselves and their reverse, today and yesterday, tomorrow, afterwards and in the long-distant past. And in between there is only time that does its best to dazzle us, the only thing with purpose and aims, which means that those of us who are still traveling through time are not to be trusted, for we are all foolish and insubstantial and unfinished, with no idea of what we might be capable nor of what end awaits us, foolish, insubstantial, unfinished me, no, no one should trust me either …
‘We’d arranged to have lunch one day,’ Cristina said. ‘This was a few months ago now, before the business with the bollard and that ugly cut, I had no anxieties or concerns at the time, in fact, I really didn’t care what she did or who with as long as it cheered her up a bit, she is the older sister, don’t forget, and I’ve never tended to be very protective of her, although she is of me, which is only normal. Luisa had arranged to meet him afterwards, at his apartment or studio, I don’t remember which now. Anyway, lunch went on longer than expected, and it got a bit late and she was
really alarmed when she saw the time, because they hadn’t arranged to meet actually in his apartment or studio or whatever, but outside in the street and they would then go up together or perhaps go on somewhere else, I don’t know, but she was horrified at the thought of keeping him waiting. So I gave her a lift in my car, because she hadn’t brought hers; she’d planned to take the metro, she said, which, normally, would have been quicker, but it was quite a way from the nearest station to his place and so would have taken too long, anyway, I dropped her off at the door. It’s impossible to park in that part of town, I could barely stop, just long enough to let her out, I dropped her almost on the corner. She didn’t introduce him or anything, although, as I say, I knew him by sight already from seeing him out and about in bars at night. I only saw them together from the car, for a matter of seconds, while I waited for the lights to change, from the corner.’
‘What part of town was it? What corner?’
‘At the end of Calle Mayor, just past Bailén, next to the viaduct. Just before you reach Cuesta de la Vega.’
‘Can you remember which number?’
‘No, I didn’t notice. Why do you want to know?’
‘Which side of the road?’
‘The only one with houses. The eyesore’s on the other side, if you remember, But why do you want to know?’
The ‘eyesore’ was the Almudena or museum of ecumenical horrors, the ghastly modern cathedral, largely the work of Opus Dei or so it seems, with a statue of the Polish Pope outside, totus tuus, with a bulging forehead, worthy almost of Frankenstein’s monster, and arms flung wide as if he were about to dance a jota; and this, though hideous, is perhaps the least of the uglinesses, because there are, among other monstrosities, some monstrous stained-glass windows made by an unimaginable artist called Kiko (Kiko something-or-other), well, nothing good can come from a man with a name like that.
‘Oh, no reason. Just so that I can imagine them there. What did you see?’
‘Well, not much really. Nothing. She leaped out of the car with the lights on red at the junction with Calle Mayor, she was in such a hurry, about ten minutes late. The one thing I did notice was that it had started to rain, and he, instead of taking shelter in the doorway (he only needed to step back two paces), was waiting for her on the sidewalk, getting drenched. Perhaps he was there so that he would be sure to see her arrive, out of impatience.’
‘Or perhaps to have one more reason to reproach her for being late,’ I said, wilfully misinterpreting the facts. ‘That way he could make her feel even guiltier, by saying it was her fault he had got soaked or even caught a cold. How did he greet her? Did they embrace, did he kiss her, put his arm about her waist?’ ‘I don’t think so, I don’t think they actually touched. From her attitude and certain gestures, it seemed to me that she was apologizing profusely, she pointed to my car, to explain why she was late. What does it matter?’
‘Did you see them go in?’
‘Yes, just before the lights changed. Now that you ask, he might have been a bit annoyed, because he went in ahead of her rather than giving way to her, and Luisa followed behind, placing one hand on his shoulder, as if to soothe or placate him, as if she were still apologizing.’
‘Ah, I see. A quick-tempered, artsy-fartsy, hysterical type. Well, certainly not a gentleman anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, I only saw them together for a moment, but he’s definitely not the gentlemanly sort. He’s well-dressed, mind, always wears a tie, very traditional. But his success, I suppose, comes from the roguish air he has about him and which lots of women find attractive. I don’t myself, not at all, but maybe I’m odd or maybe I’ve met a few rogues already and know they’re not worth the bother. That day, with his hair scraped back and all wet, he did look slightly menacing. He gives the impression of being a tense, self-contained, nervy sort, I mean, someone under constant tension. He’s always seemed to me a rather somber figure. Friendly and seductive, but somehow somber too.’
‘How old is he?’
‘I don’t know, he must be around fifty now, I should think. Although he looks younger.’
‘Ten or twelve years older than Luisa. That’s not good; he’ll have authority over her, influence. Do you know his first name?’ ‘Esteban, I think. Wait. Yes, Esteban. Luisa has called him that occasionally, although she tends to refer to him more by his surname, as if she wanted to distance herself from him and make it seem as if they weren’t that close.’—‘I call young Pérez Nuix by her surname too,’ I thought, ‘but that’s not the same thing at all.’—‘As I said, sometimes it’s as if she were embarrassed to have a boyfriend. Because of the kids and you and all that.’
‘Esteban Custardoy. Are you sure? He’s not known as a painter, then? I mean, his name doesn’t appear in the papers, he doesn’t hold exhibitions and so on?’
‘Not that I know of, no; but I don’t take much notice, to be honest; the last thing I would be interested in is modern art. I think he’s more of a copyist. Luisa mentioned that sometimes he’s commissioned to copy paintings from the Prado and that he spends hours there studying and copying. Or he gets commissions to copy paintings in museums abroad, in Europe, and then he goes away for a few days to study those paintings. Ranz told me that he learned the trade from his father, Custardoy the Elder as he used to be called, who made copies for his father, Ranz’s father that is. And at first the son was known as Custardoy the Younger, but I don’t know if he still is.’
I fell silent for a moment. I lit a Karelias cigarette, of which I had brought ten packs with me, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to find them in Madrid.
‘There’s something that doesn’t quite make sense, Cristina. I just can’t believe that Luisa would put up with someone mistreating her, still less if she’s only known him for a short time, a matter of months. If our suspicions are right, he hasn’t hit her once, but twice. I don’t understand why she would go on seeing him and going to bed with him as if nothing had happened, why she didn’t break it off the first time, let alone the second. Only yesterday she denied anything was wrong; in a way she was protecting him or protecting herself, I mean her relationship with him, to make sure no one meddles or gets involved or sticks their nose in where it isn’t wanted. It’s understandable that I’d be the last person she’d want to talk to about her boyfriend, especially if relations with him are problematic, and even if he represents a danger to her. But she doesn’t even talk to you! How would you explain such forbearance? And she’s hardly the submissive type.’ I suddenly realized that this was the first time I had spoken about or thought about or really imagined their relationship as something real and regular and ongoing; the words that came out of my mouth were: ‘… and going to bed with him as if nothing had happened.’ Of course they went to bed together, that’s one of the benefits of going out with someone, it’s the norm. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean very much,’ I thought at once in order to mitigate that fleeting image and those words. ‘I’ve slept with Pérez-Nuix and with others too and it’s almost as if it never happened. They don’t occupy my thoughts, I don’t remember them, or only very occasionally and without any feeling. Well, it’s a bit different with Pérez-Nuix because I see her every day and each time I see her, I do remember or, rather, know, even though screwing her was an extraordinarily impersonal experience, performed, how can I put it, almost with eyes closed, almost anonymously, in silence. I’ve slept with other women in the past on a regular or continuous basis, Clare Bayes in England was a case in point, or my girlfriend in Tuscany to whom I owe my Italian. But so what, they’re just data in an archive, recorded facts that have long since ceased to affect or influence me. No, those things don’t really mean very much once they’re over. The problem is that Luisa’s affair is happening now and isn’t yet over, and it’s harming her and threatens us all, all four of us.’
Now it was Cristina’s turn to pause and think for a few seconds. I heard her sigh at the other end of the line, perhaps she was weary of o
ur conversation or felt she should be getting on with preparations for her trip.
‘I don’t know, Jaime. Perhaps we’re wrong, and he hasn’t done anything to her, maybe she did collide with a bollard and with the garage door, and is just having a run of bad luck. The trouble is that neither of us believes that. My feeling is that she’s determined to stick to him, however much she may pretend not to know or care, and in that case anything is possible—when a person’s set on loving someone then nothing circumstantial or external will dissuade them. People are much more long-suffering than we think. Once involved, they’ll tolerate almost anything, at least for a time. I should know. They believe they can change the bad things or that the bad things won’t last. And Luisa is patient, she’ll put up with a lot, after all, look how long it took her to break up with you. I don’t really know why we’re talking about it. For the moment, as we’ve seen, she’s not going to tell us anything, and even if she did, we wouldn’t be able to persuade her. I don’t see what we can do. Anyway, Jaime, I have things to do, I’m leaving tomorrow and this conversation is getting us nowhere, apart from feeding our mutual anxieties.’ I said nothing, I was pondering what she had said: ‘Once involved, they’ll tolerate almost anything, at least for a time.’ ‘It’s all a matter of involving the other person, of intervening, making a request, a demand, asking a question. Of speaking to him and interfering,’ I was thinking, still saying nothing.
‘Jaime, are you there?’
‘We could try persuading him,’ I said at last.
‘Him? We don’t know him, least of all you. What an idea! You can count me out. Besides, I’m off tomorrow. Anyway, if you did go and talk to him, he’d probably laugh in your face or punch you, don’t you see, if he really is a violent man. Or were you thinking of offering him money to go away, like an old-fashioned father? Huh. For all I know, he may not even need the money, the art collectors he works for must be rolling in it. Then he’d go straight to Luisa and tell her, and exactly how would you justify such interference in her life? You are, after all, separated. She would never speak to you again, you know that, don’t you? You’re aware of that?’
Your Face Tomorrow Page 32
