Your Face Tomorrow

by Javier Marías

  I waited and waited and waited. I paced from one side to the other and back again, between steps and railings, looking down on each of the four corners and the eight stretches of sidewalk, Custardoy might come from the direction of the viaduct or pass beneath my eyes, staying close to the Cathedral or to the wall, or he might come from the direction of the Istituto Italiano or walk up Cuesta de la Vega from the Parque de Atenas; I kept a tight grip on the pistol hidden in my pocket and sometimes felt overwhelmed by nerves, I had a clear view of the whole scene, but there were too many fronts to keep watch over simultaneously and I constantly had to change my vantage point, I noticed that a few devotees were starting to eye me with interest—they didn’t look Spanish, they were perhaps Lithuanians or possibly Poles, like their former boss—and, even worse, they were starting to copy me in my pacing back and forth as if they feared they might be missing out if they didn’t do the same—people’s tendency to imitate others’ behavior is becoming an international plague—I felt slightly beleaguered and longed to be able to leave. And that was when I saw him in the distance, the unmistakable figure of Custardoy walking along Calle Mayor, on the same side as the Capitanía General and the Consejo de Estado, that is, on the same side as his apartment or workshop or studio. I stayed where I was, I didn’t move, I waited until he had reached the traffic light, just in case he crossed over to take his usual seat outside the bar, but it was a cloudy day and not really warm enough for that. He was wearing a raincoat too, a good quality one, black and very long, almost like a dustcoat, and that, together with the hat he had chosen to wear that day, a kind of Stetson, but broader brimmed and cream or white in color like the hat Tom Mix used to wear in those ancient silent movies (the man really was a fool), gave him the appearance of a character out of the Wild West; he and his friend, the female Daniel Boone or Jim Bowie, would have made a fine pair. Fortunately, though, he was alone, striding along, the tails of his coat, and doubtless his ponytail too, beating the air (he was still a follower of fashion even at his age, with enough energy to try and keep up), walking as resolutely as I had done a short while before, but then I’d had a pistol in my pocket. ‘He won’t be easy to bring to heel,’ I thought, ‘he won’t be easy to intimidate or even kill. Besides, he has the kind of strength that comes from pure energy and impatience and a desire to be many, this man accustomed to spending hours alone with his brushes, focused and still, concentrating on tiny details and staring at one canvas in order to make an exact copy of it on another canvas, and when he stops and finally gets up and opens the door and goes out into the street, he’ll be filled by a vast amount of accumulated tension and be ready to explode. No, he won’t be the kind to beg, he’ll put up a fight, he isn’t timid or easily scared, so one thing is sure, I have to instill him with fear, more fear than he might try to instill in me, he’s not going to freeze and draw in his neck and close his eyes as De la Garza did, nor am I Tupra, who seems to instill fear whenever he wants to, quite naturally, nor am I the two Kray brothers Tupra told me about and who taught him the value of the sword, and to whom a cellmate had, according to Reresby, given a very condensed lesson in how to get what you want: “Now these people, they don’t like getting hurt. Not them or their property. Now these people out there who don’t like to be hurt, pay other people not to hurt them. You know what I’m saying. Course you do. When you get out, you keep your eyes open. Watch out for the people who don’t want to be hurt. Because you scare the shit out of me, boys. Wonderful,” that’s what Tupra had said,’ I thought and remembered, ‘in a fake accent which was perhaps his real accent, as he sat to the right of me in his swift silent car, in the lunar light of the streetlamps, with his hands still resting on the motionless steering wheel, squeezing or strangling it, he wasn’t wearing gloves by then, but I’ve been wearing mine since I left the hotel and won’t take them off until I return, having removed Custardoy from the picture, having done the deed.’ ‘That’s the thing, Jack. Fear,’ Tupra had added before urging me to go to his house to watch those videos that weren’t just for anyone’s eyes, and, after showing them to me, had asked again: ‘Tell me now, why, according to you, one can’t go around beating people up and killing them? You’ve seen how much of it goes on, everywhere, and sometimes with an utter lack of concern. So explain to me why one can’t.’ And it had taken me a long time to give him an answer, one that turned out to be no answer at all.

  I hurried down the steps and very nearly collided with or, rather, almost flattened a devotee, Custardoy wasn’t going to the bar, but to his studio, he had kept straight on and stopped at the traffic light on Calle de Bailén, and I knew that when the light turned green, it was only forty-nine steps from there to the door of his house, which was where we had to meet, not before he arrived and definitely not after, because afterwards the door would be closed again, with him inside and me outside. I decided to cross the road, taking advantage of the fact that the stoplight was in my favor; now we were on the same side of the street, I saw him set off when the cars stopped, one, two, three, four, five, I lurked for a few seconds behind a tree, not a very wide tree, hoping that he wouldn’t see me before putting his key in the door, a matter of only a few moments, it would be best if he didn’t notice me while he was putting the key in the door either, it would be best if I remained behind him for as long as possible and for him to feel as frightened as possible because he wouldn’t know who it was threatening him, because he wouldn’t be able to see his assailant’s face, my face, and would wonder whether this was going to be a quick doorstep mugging or a slow ransacking of his whole apartment or a swift and then eternal kidnapping Mexican-style, or whether I was alone or there were several of us, whether we were white, copper-colored or black (although our blacks don’t go in much for mugging), or an unexpected settling of accounts, a tardy act of revenge on behalf of someone he didn’t even recall, which, in a way, was the case with me, he probably didn’t even remember that Luisa had, or once had, a husband, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight and forty-nine, and just as he put the key in the lock and the door opened, I stuck the pistol in his back without taking it out of my pocket (that way he wouldn’t know if it was cocked or not, even if he spun round, which he wouldn’t, not that it was cocked of course, and my finger was resting on the guard, I was very careful about that), but pressing the barrel of the gun hard against his spine, so that he would haven’t any doubt that it was a gun and would feel it.

  ‘Get inside, and don’t say a word,’ I whispered into the back of his neck with its stupid affected ponytail hanging there and which, at such close quarters, I found quite disgusting.

  The door was half-open and he went in, we both went in, our bodies glued together, I slammed it shut with my free hand. Now he knew that there was only one of me.

  ‘What bullshit is this?’ he asked. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ He still wasn’t frightened, perhaps he hadn’t had time to feel frightened or perhaps it wasn’t in his nature. He sounded slightly cocky or at most uppity, but certainly not alarmed. ‘It’s going to be difficult to make him take me seriously, he’s not the sort to lose his cool,’ I thought at once. ‘A bad beginning.’

  ‘No, it’s no joke, so be quiet. Let’s go up to your apartment. We’ll take the stairs. If we meet one of your neighbors, we’re together. Take off your hat and hold it with your two hands. And don’t drop your keys, you’ve got hands enough for both.’ He didn’t have his briefcase with him that day, so perhaps he hadn’t been to the Prado. I was still talking into the back of his neck, perhaps Luisa had kissed that neck, I could smell his hair, it smelled of something, but nothing bad, he obviously washed it every day. He obeyed and took off his ridiculous hat. He would know now that I was a local, and not from Eastern Europe or the Maghreb or from South America, that my accent wasn’t Albanian or Ukrainian or Arab or Colombian or Ecuadorian, it hadn’t even occurred to me to put on a different accent or to disguise my own and I had said enough to make it clear that I was unequivocally Spanish, so he wou
ld know, too, that I was white, things remain hidden for such a short time, nor had I thought of addressing him in English, for example, a language I was used to speaking. ‘You don’t want a bullet lodged in your spine, do you? Well, get moving then.’ Now he would know that I was a reasonably educated person too, because ‘lodged’ wasn’t a word that would spring to everyone’s lips.

  ‘Look, if it’s cash you want, we can talk and come to some agreement. We don’t have to go upstairs and you don’t have to keep that gun stuck in my back all the time. And there’s no need to take that tone with me.’

  He sounded less uppity now, but not afraid. He was addressing me as ‘usted,’ not out of respect, but as a way of maintaining a distance. I was addressing him as ‘tú,’ and his not doing the same to me was an attempt to appear superior despite his evidently inferior position, I was holding the pistol, I was holding the hourglass, like Death in the painting. I wasn’t tugging at him, like the semi-skeleton of Sir Death, linking arms with the old woman, instead I was behind him and pushing him, which came to the same thing, I was the master of time and was propelling him up the stairs, he was trying to stop the flow of sand or water by talking, as have so many others, hoping to postpone events and save themselves, rather than remaining silent. He hadn’t entirely lost his haughty manner, as indicated by the last words he spoke before I interrupted him. It was as if he had said to me: ‘Don’t you raise your voice to me,’ except that wouldn’t have made any sense because I was speaking in a whisper.

  Then I took the gun out of my pocket for a moment and struck him hard on his right side with the barrel, as if I were slapping him except that I was striking him in the ribs and with the pistol, not across the face and with my hand, it made much less noise because he was, of course, wearing a raincoat. He staggered a little, but didn’t fall. He didn’t drop his hat either, but he did drop his keys.

  ‘I’ve told you already, be quiet. Pick up your keys and get going.’ I said this in the same calm whisper, which was, I thought, more frightening than a shout. I was surprised how easy it had been for me to deal him that blow and that it hadn’t worried me to do so with a loaded weapon; usually, people who aren’t used to carrying a gun are always afraid it will go off, however careful they are. My main concern was to frighten him, I suppose, or perhaps his last words had bothered me, either that or his use of the word ‘bullshit’ before, or perhaps I had remembered Luisa’s black eye with its thousand slowly changing colors, an image I summoned up every now and then because I needed to, it filled me with reason and cold fury and strengthened my resolve. It seemed quite right that Custardoy should experience pain, some pain, he instinctively raised his hand to his side and rubbed it, but I told him at once: ‘Keep your hands on your hat.’ I realized, too, that everyone likes to give orders that must be obeyed. One part of my mind didn’t like the fact that I liked that, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to it then, the rest of my mind was fully occupied, I had more than enough to occupy me, it wasn’t possible now to leave half-done what I had already started.

  We set off briskly, one step at a time, with me right behind him, holding onto his ponytail at each turn in the stairs so that he wouldn’t take advantage of the one second when I stopped pointing at him full on to run up the stairs and shut himself in his apartment if, that is, he was quick enough putting the key in the lock (there was no way he would manage that, but I preferred him not to try), it must have been humiliating for him to have me touch his hair, I abstained from giving it a good tug, although I could have. We were lucky, that is I was and he wasn’t, because we made it up to the third floor without meeting anyone; his was one of the apartments with a balcony looking onto the street.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, standing outside his door. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Open the door.’ He did so, a long key for the bolt and a smaller one for the lock. ‘Let’s go into the sitting room. You lead the way. But no funny business. I’m pointing at your spine, remember.’ I could still feel the barrel of the gun against his bones, nice and central, if a bullet entered there it would take out his atlas vertebra.

  We went down a short corridor and emerged into a spacious sitting room or studio with plenty of light despite the cloudy sky outside. (‘Luisa has been here,’ I thought at once, ‘she’ll know this room’). Then I saw the paintings lined up against the wall, in groups of three or four, their faces turned away, some might have been blank canvases, as yet untouched. Either he received a lot of commissions or he made numerous drafts before creating a final version; he was clearly in great demand and had no problem selling his work, for the room was comfortable, well-furnished and even luxurious, albeit slightly untidy; I particularly liked the fireplace. There were some paintings on the walls too, face out, of course, probably not his, although if he really was such a good copyist, who knows; I noticed a small Meissonier of a gentleman smoking a pipe and a larger portrait by Mané-Katz or someone like that, some Russian or Ukrainian who had spent time in Paris (if they were originals, they certainly wouldn’t be cheap, although they weren’t as expensive as the paintings I’d seen in Tupra’s house). I noticed an easel, and the canvas resting on it was also face down, perhaps Custardoy always removed from his sight the thing he was working on as soon as he took a break, so as not to have to look at it while he was resting, perhaps it was the portrait of the Countess and her children on which he had already started work. Since I was the master of time and everything else, I could have looked at it. I didn’t, though; I was otherwise occupied.

  It was the moment for him to turn round and, therefore, to see my face. I didn’t know whether he would recognize me from somewhere, from the Prado or from our shared walk or from photos that Luisa might have shown him; people are very keen on showing old photos, as if they wanted you to know them before the time when you actually met, it’s something that happens especially between lovers, ‘This is what I was like,’ they seem to be saying to each other, ‘would you have loved me then, as well? And if so, why weren’t you there?’ Before allowing him to turn round and before ordering him to sit down, I suffered a moment of confusion: ‘What am I doing here with a pistol in my hand?’ I thought or said to myself, and I immediately responded: ‘There’s absolutely no reason to feel surprised. There is a good reason for me to be here and even perhaps a real need: I’m going to rescue Luisa from anxiety and menace and from an unhappy future life, I’m going to ensure that she breathes easily again and can sleep at night without fear, I’m going to make certain my children don’t suffer and come to no harm and that no wounds are inflicted on her, or, rather, no more harm, and that no one kills her’; and as I gave myself this answer, another quote came into my head, the words spoken by the ghost of a woman, Lady Anne, who slept so uneasily between the sheets of her second husband’s ‘sorrow-haunted bed,’ cruel Richard III, who had stabbed her first husband at Tewkesbury, ‘in my angry mood,’ as he, the murderer, once put it; and so she, after death, cursed him on Bosworth Field at dawn, when it was already far too late to flee the battle, and in his dreams she whispered this: ‘Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife, that never slept a quiet hour with thee, now fills thy sleep with perturbations: Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die!’ I couldn’t allow the same thing to happen to Luisa and for her never to sleep a quiet hour with Custardoy if, one day, he occupied my pillow and my still-warm or already cold place in her bed, I was the first husband, but no one in their angry mood was going to stab me or dig my grave still deeper than the one I was already buried in, my memory reduced to the first terror and the first plea and the first order, all of me changed into a poisoned shadow that little by little bids farewell while I languish and am transformed in London, expelled from her time and from that of my children (foolish me, insubstantial me, foolish and frivolous and credulous). ‘No, she is not yet a widow and I am not yet a dead person who deserves to be mourned,’ I thought, ‘and since I’m not, I cannot so easily be replaced, jus
t as bloodstains will not come out at the first attempt, you have to rub hard and diligently to remove them, and even then it seems as if the rim will never go, that’s the most difficult part to remove, the part that resists—a whisper, a fever, a scratch. She probably has no wish and no intention of doing so, but she will find herself obliged to say to this present or future lover, or to herself: “Not yet, my love, wait, wait, your hour has not yet come, don’t spoil it for me, give me time and give him time too, the dead man whose time no longer advances, give him time to fade, let him change into a ghost before you take his place and dismiss his flesh, let him be changed into nothing, wait until there is no trace of his smell on the sheets or on my body, let it be as if what was never happened.” But I’m still here, and so I must have been before, and no one can yet say of me: “No, this was never here, never, it neither strode the world nor trod the earth, it did not exist and never happened.” Indeed, I am the person who could kill this second husband right now, with my gloves on and in my angry mood. I have a pistol in my hand and it’s loaded, all I would have to do is cock it and squeeze the trigger, this man still has his back to me, he wouldn’t even see my face, today or tomorrow or ever, not until the Final Judgment, if there is one.’