Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  ‘But as you well know, Beatriz, that man no longer exists. It’s just absurd for you to go on suffering like this day after day with no end in sight, hoping for the return of someone who will never come back. Why would he? The return of someone who has vanished, is dead, as dead as my husband, even though he’s still moving about in the world and we can see and hear him. The man living with you today is a ghost, a usurper, a bodysnatcher like in the films. At least as regards you. He may live on for others, but that’s no consolation to you, it may even highlight his desertion of you, as if he’d decided to die or kill himself as far as you’re concerned, but not perhaps as regards the others, and that makes it all the worse. What’s the point of remaining by his side? It’s like living with the reverse or the negative of that person, his double, if you like. Despite what you say, I can imagine no greater torment.’

  Gloria probably didn’t use those exact words, but that is how I remember the gist of what she said now, after all this time.

  Beatriz again remained silent, as if she were pondering what her friend had said. She was a good listener, unlike most people, who, while the other person is talking, usually remain impatiently silent merely out of politeness (those who aspire to such heights), waiting only to say their piece. She wasn’t like that, she really did pay attention and concentrate, thinking about what she was hearing. Then she would answer or not.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, that is how it is, superficially, apparently,’ she said after a few seconds. ‘But that’s precisely why you must bear this in mind: the person most like the man who, according to you, is dead, continues to be him, or his usurper or ghost. Unlike what happened with Roberto, who can no longer remember anything, the memory of that protective, affectionate, happy man must still be there in the man who, for years now, has treated me so vilely. In the man who comes and goes, who gets up and goes to bed in this apartment when he’s not off travelling or endlessly out partying or whatever. In the man who makes cutting remarks to me and cannot even bear me to touch him, and who never comes to my bed or allows me to go to his. It makes no difference. If the man I yearn for is somewhere, he’s there and nowhere else. It would make no sense for me to leave him, even if he is only a ghost of himself. What do I care about other men? I prefer the pallor of that walking dead man to all the colours of the whole world. I prefer to linger and die in the dim glow of his deathly pallor than live in the bright light of the living.’

  She probably didn’t use those exact words either, but that was definitely the gist of what she said, as I sat, head raised, like a listening animal, looking up from my work.

  IV

  * * *

  I didn’t follow Beatriz Noguera when she went out with these people, nor, of course, when she took Muriel’s motorbike and headed off who knows where, she once said that she simply liked to leave Madrid behind and imagine (that’s what she said, ‘imagine’, as if she knew it was an illusion) that she could go anywhere she wanted and feel the strong wind in her face on those little-frequented B-roads flanked by trees. Twice she said that she’d been to El Escorial (fifty or so kilometres away), and I know that, on the odd Sunday, with her binoculars in her pocket, she went to the race course (only eight kilometres away) and spent the afternoon there, watching all six races or only the four main ones. I found it odd that she should take no one else with her to that sociable place, or perhaps she found company in those old stands, built in 1941 by the engineer Eduardo Torroja and only belatedly declared a monument of historic and artistic interest in 1980: on a couple of occasions, she returned with tales about the philosopher Savater, a great fan of horse-racing, indeed, a connoisseur, whom she knew and who advised her, successfully it seems, on which horses she should place her meagre bets, thus helping her to return contented with her modest winnings. Apparently, unless he was away travelling, he never missed the Sunday races and went there with his little boy and one of his brothers. Or perhaps she picked up a companion en route – another motorcyclist for example, with whom, unbeknown to me, she would set off to the races. On Sundays, I would often go to the Muriels’ apartment and get on with my work, his library being a mine of information on any period or subject that might be required for a script or for some vague project-in-the-making; I ended up coming and going as I pleased, almost as if I were another resident (they even gave me a key); but I lacked the means to follow her on her Harley-Davidson.

  Muriel had bought the bike for himself a few years before, a classic or, who knows, an ultra-classic Electra Glide, as he told me proudly the first time he showed it to me: ‘What power,’ he said. The film Easy Rider was already a bit old hat by then, but he had enjoyed a later and less famous film: Electra Glide in Blue, blue being the colour of the model used by American motorcycle patrolmen, and on which, I believe, they got up to all kinds of nasty things. Muriel, by the way, went to see all sorts of films, the good, the average and the bad, and he learned from all of them: ‘Good films make you want to emulate them, but that’s inhibiting; bad films give you good ideas and the cheek to put them into practice.’ He seemed to me such a reckless motorcyclist (it was perhaps not the best mode of transport for a man with only one eye), that, after riding pillion with him once and being driven like the clappers through the streets, I decided never to repeat the experience. He didn’t use it much, though, once the fever of novelty and excitement had worn off, and Beatriz was the one who used it most, although again not that much, just for her sporadic and apparently solitary excursions, for I had no way of knowing if she met someone else in El Escorial or in other places, like her brother-in-law Roberto, who had driven off to die near Ávila with a woman who was a stranger to his family. (None of us can ever know for sure who we are going to die with.) She would pull on some jeans and don a helmet, get the bike out of the garage and, from the balcony, I would watch her speed away, her large body looking smaller on the back of that vast mount which, to me, seemed a mass of tubes, but, at the same time, she looked somehow more confident and less fragile, an image, I thought, that any man would find attractive, something she would surely be aware of – a sturdy woman astride a fast, powerful machine, it’s an erotic cliché really, and I did notice heads turn as she rode off down the street – but Muriel was not there to see her.

  Anyway, I took to following her when she went out on her own and on foot, on afternoons when she wasn’t giving one of those theoretical private lessons at the home of a student. I would hear her getting ready, humming to herself without realizing that she was, an unusual sound, because when she was alone, she tended to be serious, not to say sad, my presence almost invisible to her – until, that is, it ceased to be – and she viewed me in a kindly, friendly fashion, but otherwise ignored me. When I could hear the click-clack of the slenderest of her high heels (she put these on last, and every shoe sounds different to the discerning ear), I knew she was about to leave. I would wait for a minute after she had closed the front door, then cautiously go after her and, spotting her just a short way from the street door, I would begin my pursuit; she cut such a tall, striking figure that I never lost her among the other passers-by. She would stop now and then to look in a shop window or pause at the traffic lights, but otherwise, she walked at a brisk pace, determined and even jaunty despite her height, and during these walks, I noticed that, despite her sometimes three-inch heels, she could walk without wobbling or stumbling and without them distorting her legs, which remained straight and erect; I was also able to contemplate at my leisure the sway of her skirt, a rare sight these days, most women having forgotten how to walk gracefully, which is not the same as swinging your hips, or not necessarily. Her flesh was so abundant and firm when seen from behind – the only view available to the persistent pursuer – that no fabric could entirely conceal or suppress it, I had the sense that I was admiring not only her visible, vigorous calves, but also her naked thighs and pert buttocks, even though they were covered. This is why Muriel considered her fat. Or perhaps he only called her that.

 
The first time I followed her, she went to a strange place near the top of Calle de Serrano, where there are plenty of old mansions and a few shops, and I saw her vanish through the doorway of one of the former. When I went closer, after prudently waiting for a few minutes, I saw that it was not a private house owned by the wealthy, but a kind of sanctuary called Our Lady of Darmstadt, or so it said on a sign made of ceramic tiles. I peered in, and even from the street I could see a small, well-kept courtyard and a brief flight of double stairs leading up to a large, raised garden and a couple of low, two-storey buildings, which looked rather cosy, with their white wood lattice windows, like foreign windows from more northerly climes; both garden and buildings were visible from down below; it had the air of being a posh private school, but there was not a voice or a sound to be heard. To the right, in the entrance, was a lodge with a sign saying ‘Information’, so this was presumably a place open to the public; to the left was another identical lodge with a sign bearing the words ‘The Father Gustavo Hörbiger Room’, the sign consisting of blue lettering on white tiles, like the sign in the middle of the courtyard, which greeted visitors with: ‘Come and you will see’; I don’t know why religions always address even complete strangers in such familiar terms. Despite this open invitation, however, I did not at first dare to go any further, just in case Beatriz saw me from wherever it was she had gone. There was no movement or activity, no sign of life; even the information lodge, I discovered, was empty, and so I was obliged to remain uninformed, at least just then. I was getting bored standing outside on the pavement and so I decided to risk it and enter, gingerly, almost stealthily, even though I could easily be spotted in that open space. When no one came out to meet me, I carried on up the short stairs and took a stroll around the very kempt garden, at the far end of which stood an ugly cream-painted chapel with an exaggeratedly pointed slate roof and, near the very plain belfry, one tiny window very high up, it certainly wouldn’t let in much light, and the chapel itself resembled a bunker, but one with a vaguely fairy-tale, vaguely German look about it, as suggested by the name of the place – Darmstadt is in the state of Hesse, near Frankfurt and not far from Heidelberg – and of that Father, whose first name had been Hispanized to Gustavo. The chapel was firmly locked, and on the door was a notice protected by glass, which read: ‘Our Lady of Darmstadt Sanctuary, Madrid. Open every day from 08.00 to 22.00’, which was wrong for a start, given that it was then about five o’clock in the afternoon. There followed a list of communion services and, after that, some special mass for the ‘renewal of vows’, which took place ‘on the 18th of every month’ at 20.30, a time at which, depending on the season, it would either be getting dark or already night. ‘Something extraordinary must have happened to these people on the eighteenth day of some month in some year,’ I thought somewhat lamely. ‘Perhaps the Virgin made a mass appearance to every single one of Darmstadt’s inhabitants.’ What I found strangest of all was that, in the garden, along with the plant pots and the flower beds, there were, in the shade of the various tall trees, benches and small round tables and comfortable chairs, all in white, some already set out and others piled up as they are on café terraces at closing time, as if drinks or snacks or aperitifs might be served there or as if it were a venue for festive gatherings. ‘Perhaps when there’s a christening or a wedding in the “bunker”,’ I thought, again rather pointlessly.

  I don’t quite know why – perhaps it was the ivy-clad walls and the immaculate lawn – but I was reminded vaguely of the house in which Cary Grant both was and wasn’t kidnapped and held in North by Northwest and, at the same time, although very different and set in a different country – but then directors with real style leave their mark on everything and bring together apparent opposites – of the garden in the part of London where James Stewart went looking for Ambrose Chappell in The Man Who Knew Too Much, I had just seen both films at a Hitchcock season at the Filmoteca, to which Muriel had insisted on taking me – and to which I more than happily went – saying that you had to see his films over and over, because with each viewing you discovered and learned something new, something you hadn’t noticed before. I had a sudden feeling that the exquisite James Mason or the ominous Martin Landau might suddenly appear in the garden, or that a group of angry taxidermists or the slightly cross-eyed actress Brenda de Banzie would emerge from the sanctuary, Muriel knew all the supporting actors (‘You never know when you might need them’) and pointed out their names to me and taught me to recognize them. It occurred to me that, just like Brenda the Strabismic, who, in the film, was hiding in the Ambrose Chapel – hence the confusion with Ambrose Chappell – Beatriz might have slipped in there, alone or accompanied, and bolted the door from the inside. And so, very cautiously, I approached from one side, where there was a much larger and lower window than the one on the chapel’s façade, and peered in as best I could, trying to ensure that I would not be seen, even in silhouette. But there was no one there, the place was deserted and rather too Germanically dark and unadorned, too much so for a Catholic chapel in southern Europe.

  I became intensely curious, and curiosity makes us lose all caution. Especially when you begin to become accustomed to observing and eavesdropping without being seen, which anyone living or working in someone else’s house inevitably does. Plus, you’re unlikely to be found out, because you always have the excuse of chance, accident or coincidence, you’re always around and the other inhabitants forget that you’re there. However, I was also becoming aware that I was actively developing this habit and beginning to enjoy it, the habit of espionage or voyeurism, whatever you choose to call it, the latter being only a pretentious term to describe the former. Muriel was partly to blame, I told myself on the rare occasions when my conscience pricked me, although only very lightly: in a sense, he had encouraged me to take up spying, urging me to keep a close eye on Dr Van Vechten and see what I thought of him and store away my impressions – or hoard them – until he inquired about them; and as I said, I would, at the time, have done almost anything he asked, keen to do whatever I could to please him. Up until then, I had carried out his instructions to the letter: I had, of course, met Dr Van Vechten, as Muriel had foreseen, and paid close attention, keeping the strictest silence (‘Don’t confuse me by taking the initiative,’ he had warned), and he had so far asked me nothing, whether I liked the man or what I thought, nor had he told me to forget the whole conversation, ‘as if it had never happened’. The only reason I haven’t as yet spoken about Jorge Van Vechten, who was almost as much of a regular as Rico and Roy, Gloria and Marcela and others, is that my boss had not yet indicated which path I should take, but I will speak about him soon.

  I couldn’t understand how Beatriz could have vanished so quickly, without trace, not that there was any sign of anyone else either. The Sanctuary was clearly inhabited, cared for and venerated, but, at that precise moment, it seemed to have been abandoned even by Our Lady’s most devout, not to say fanatical followers. ‘Maybe they all just happened to have errands to run or are having tea together somewhere,’ I thought somewhat irrelevantly, as if I were in England, while I strolled about the garden ever-more nonchalantly, keeping close to the two-storey buildings, hoping to see something through the ground-floor windows, which were on my level, keeping half an eye out, so to speak. I still saw no one, and I walked round nearly the whole area, until I came to a protecting boundary wall, where the garden ended on that side. So I turned back and stood beside the chapel to get a better view of the upper floor. At first, even by craning my neck, I still saw no one. Until suddenly, someone’s back appeared at a window or was propelled towards it and, for a moment, appeared in my field of vision. I craned my neck still more, wishing I was taller, I stood on tiptoe, thinking if only I had a ladder, I looked around me, but there was none to be seen, I considered climbing on to a chair or one of the tables, but it would make little difference and I’d have to pick it up and carry it over to where I was standing, I hesitated, didn’t move, glued to the spo
t, paralysed perhaps.

  The first time lasted only a moment, the back appeared and disappeared, but I already felt, in that flash, that it was Beatriz, not for nothing had I contemplated that back during my long pursuit. I kept my eyes fixed on that point, on that frame, and the back soon reappeared, and it really was as if the person to whom it belonged had been hurled against the glass with a touch of aggression or violence. If so, I definitely couldn’t see who was doing the pushing and hurling. I felt alarmed, afraid that someone might be mistreating her, harming her, I even had the wild idea that someone was trying to push her through the lattice window, those wooden struts could easily give way, could break and shatter, a body can easily pass through glass if pushed hard enough, and those struts were quite slender. ‘A tree,’ I thought, ‘I’ll climb a tree,’ they were there beside me, far closer than the tables and chairs. I was very agile then and perfectly capable of scaling the trunk, grabbing a low branch and, from there, scrambling up to the very top. However, I was afraid I might miss something while I climbed, I realized that I couldn’t take my eyes off the window for a second, I saw Beatriz’s back thud again and again into the window, remain pressed against it for a moment, then move away, and this was happening continuously, as if they wouldn’t leave her alone or even allow her to take two steps. ‘Perhaps they’re hitting her,’ I thought, ‘or shoving her around, so that she keeps hitting the window, they’ve got her corralled, cornered like a boxer.’ I was about to call out and thus reveal my presence, although I don’t know if I would have been heard. Another possibility would have been to go upstairs to help her or save her from whatever was happening, but I didn’t know which door to go through (there were several) or if it would be open.