Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  I was the victim of my own ingenuousness, you have to be much older than I was at the time to lose that quality, always assuming we more trusting souls ever do lose it entirely. I suddenly understood what was happening: someone – a man – was fucking her or pressing himself on her or gripping her hard in readiness to begin, standing up, with no preliminaries and fully clothed, without removing a single item of clothing, hurriedly or perhaps on the spur of the moment, as they say, they probably had very little time before the custodians of the temple returned and were making the most of that moment when they knew that, for whatever reason, the place would be empty, perhaps it always was at that hour. I could only see Beatriz’s back from the waist up or not even that, just the upper part of her torso and the old-fashioned nape of her neck – she was wearing her hair up that day. Obviously, the man who was pressing or pounding her – I don’t much like that verb, but it might be the most appropriate – was further away from the window, and, besides, she filled the whole space with her large body, for she had fairly broad shoulders, although her hips, fortunately, were less so. He was invisible to me, a ghost, I could see nothing of him, not so much as a hair. And I had no further doubts about what was happening when Beatriz brusquely turned round – or was made to – and leaned forward, and it seemed to me then that her hands must be resting on or gripping the lower part of the window frame or perhaps the sill. Instead of her back and the nape of her neck, I could now see her face, only her face and throat, not her body at all, and this really scared me: if I could see her from below, then she would be able to see me from above. In two strides I was behind a tree, from where I continued to watch. This proved to be an unnecessary precaution, because Beatriz had her eyes tight shut, she wasn’t looking outside or anywhere, she was absorbed in herself, I assumed, and in her sensations. I imagined that the man, when he spun her round, would have hoisted up her skirt – there would be no comings and goings now or only of a very different kind – and he would have yanked down her tights and knickers to mid-thigh level so that he could penetrate her with the necessary ease, given the relative discomfort of their vertical position, especially his, because she would have to bend over.

  I felt embarrassed, even though I was fairly well hidden behind the tree, peering out just enough – again with half an eye. Now it wasn’t only that I was afraid of being caught out, but all that espionage and seeing what I was seeing filled me with guilt: Beatriz’s face during what I supposed to be an orgasm, or more than one, or maybe a pre-orgasm, I’ve never really been able to tell the difference, women tend to string these things together and it’s not always easy to tell them apart, people also say that they’re brilliant at faking it, and all I could see now was her face pressed against the glass like an odd portrait with eyes tight shut, there are hardly any such portraits in the history of painting – when an artist paints or draws someone asleep or dead, the eyelids are soft or at peace – I couldn’t see the possible quickening of her movements or the trembling of her limbs, nor, of course, could I hear anything, no moan, no heavy breathing, no word, if, that is, she uttered any – it didn’t look as if she did – in such circumstances, some women talk and urge the man on, or even shout barely credible obscenities, at the risk of making utter fools of themselves or turning their lover off completely, as if they were performing for the benefit of their one witness or for themselves alone, a few even make jokes, while some concentrate hard and say nothing. There are still others who close their eyes tight so that they can imagine they’re with someone other than the person embracing or clasping or penetrating them, and I wondered if this would be the case here, if Beatriz would be imagining that she was with the elusive Muriel or if she would be quite clear about the identity and presence of the man she was coupling or copulating with, all barriers down, no precautions taken, I don’t think we had heard about AIDS in Spain then, nor perhaps had the rest of the world.

  Yes, I felt ashamed and embarrassed, but still I looked and looked at that face in the window, almost squashed against it sometimes – a hint of breath on the glass – sometimes it’s hard to interpret the expression on the face of a woman you’re screwing, you assume it’s pleasure she’s feeling, but it can look very like pain (you stop and scrutinize her face and ask: ‘Are you OK? Am I hurting you?’) or even like despair or profound grief or bitterness, I have occasionally suspected a woman of being with me in that most intimate of situations in order to deaden her sadness or to have her revenge on someone else without his knowledge (thinking somewhat irrelevantly, ‘If he only knew’ instead of ‘When he finds out’: as if she were never going to tell him), so as to alleviate for a while the loneliness of her woeful bed, or even to degrade herself in her own imagination and feel sticky and dirty and treacherous, a fleeting illusion, because that muddy feeling soon dissolves, and the following day there’s not a trace of mud and you’re as clean as you were before – cleanliness is more persistent than dirt, and almost anything can be washed away. I have sometimes suspected that I was just a mechanism, a tool, an instrument. The expression on Beatriz’s face could mean anything, and I wasn’t there with her, I couldn’t stop and ask: ‘Are you OK? Am I hurting you?’ Because I wasn’t the one doing the hurting, if anyone was.

  ‘But what if she’s being raped? What if she’s being threatened by whoever’s with her? And what if she’s being forced to submit to him, what if she’s being blackmailed?’ I thought these thoughts without really believing them, as if I were merely playing at thinking them. But they helped me overcome my desire to discover the man’s identity, to see his known or unknown face. I didn’t for a moment think it would be Roy the cicisbeo, although on the night of Beatriz’s patient, pleading wait outside his bedroom door, Muriel – doubtless to humiliate her or as a joke – had accused him of being her lover, and no idea should be rejected out of hand under the distracted sun, still less under the vigilant moon; he had named Rico as well, and it could be him, unlikely but not impossible, for in certain situations he would behave with utter scrupulousness and in others not, like a lot of men, utterly scrupulous when it comes to friendships, but not when it comes to women, and they would get their scruples well and truly singed when presented with an opportunity to go to bed with the wife of a friend, although they can’t usually stand the heat for very long. In this case, though, I assumed his loyalty to Muriel would prevail – a possibly unwanted loyalty, since Muriel might prefer it if Beatriz were out enjoying herself so that she would then stop pestering him – as I said, Rico worshipped Muriel. Besides, he was in love with his own wife, who never accompanied him to Madrid, so perhaps he wasn’t an adulterer at all, except as an enjoyable hypothesis, another fantasy, like going for a stroll and a chat with Petrarch.

  ‘Why here, in this strange and inappropriate place, in a sanctuary devoted to worship?’ I wondered. ‘They’re not in the chapel, of course; that would, I imagine, have been profanation or sacrilege, or both. Why the rush and why fully clothed, at least in her case? Not that I can imagine that he, whoever he is, would remain completely naked while she kept all her clothes on, it would be too much of a contrast, because I don’t think she’s actually taken off anything, just pulled down her tights and knickers, but not removed them. And why at this anodyne time of day when nothing really tempts one and everything seems a bit of an effort? Why don’t they meet at his place or pay for a hotel room, why risk being discovered by a gardener, a guard, an employee of some kind or, even worse, by a priest or a nun or a devout parishioner? There must be quite a few of them around when Our Lady isn’t left here all on her own.’ The place had a strong whiff of the far right about it, and the far right, at the time, was very active, not to say rabid, having been in power for thirty-seven years up until only five years before; we all knew the stench well, it was unmistakable and still is now, three decades on, for those of us who had been choked by it: we can pick the scent up instantly, in an office, a room or a building, whether on an ordinary civilian, male or female, a bishop, or a pol
itician pretending to be a democrat and proud of having been elected, some part of Spain will always smell like that. ‘Beatriz isn’t religious, so what on earth is she doing here? She obviously hasn’t come to light a candle, although someone might be dipping his wick.’ I was surprised by this coarse thought, this bad play on words, it’s not my style and it wasn’t then, but we do sometimes succumb to such facile crudity and our mind runs away with us even more than our tongue. It’s not so bad if we stop ourselves, or even if we don’t; after all, no one’s listening to our mental associations, our meandering thoughts, our scornful comments and our curses. I was surprised, too, by this lack of respect on my part: perhaps there was an element of disappointment – so much love for her husband and now this; how could there be any possible connection between the two things? – perhaps an element of unconscious platonic spite; or perhaps it’s impossible to feel respect for anyone we observe engaged in such activities. ‘I must climb this tree,’ I thought, moving swiftly on to the practical, ‘before they finish and leave, or she leaves, because she’s the visitor, the one who came when called. If I don’t, I’ll never know who the man is, I’ll never see him.’

  And so I began to climb and had no difficulty reaching one of the lower branches, from where I moved on to a higher branch and then to a higher one still, until I was on the same level as the window or even just above, I didn’t even have to climb to the very top, in those days, I was pretty good at acrobatics and semi-acrobatics, and it only took me a minute, if that. I crouched on my chosen branch, making sure I was concealed by the foliage. But I still couldn’t see the man, he must have bent over too, hidden behind Beatriz’s face that was still pressed against or very close to the glass, she hadn’t opened her eyes for an instant. Now, being directly opposite, I could interpret her expression more easily, if the face of a woman in that situation can ever be interpreted, it’s all pure conjecture really. Her face was more attractive than usual, her skin firmer and more youthful, her lips fuller or fleshier, as if this were unknown territory for them, and they had grown more porous, softer, redder, and slightly parted to allow her panting breath to escape, as well, possibly, as the occasional discreet groan (certainly no screams), her eyelashes longer or more visible because her lids remained firmly shut, it was remarkable that not once did she open her eyes, as though she didn’t want to know where she was. I’ve known rather plain women become really pretty in that moment of semi-oblivion, although, to be blunt, it lasts only as long as the sex does. But it seemed to me that she didn’t much care about the man she was with, that it was all very routine, or not even that, perhaps purely functional, which, as I’ve said, is something I myself have noticed, probably we all have, men and women alike, and anyone who says he hasn’t is heading for a disappointment, it’s no big deal and, depending on the circumstances, might even have its advantages. ‘The man’s certainly got stamina,’ I thought, ‘he’s been going at it for a while now,’ and I felt a little envious, I was still too young always to be able to show sufficient restraint, to contain myself. I learned this somewhat later, with practice and distance and by dint of conjuring up various random images.

  And no sooner had I thought this than he stopped or finished, and then, as he pulled away from Beatriz, took a couple of steps back and drew himself up to his full height, I finally saw him and his large, smiling teeth and his satisfied blue eyes, not filled with sexual satisfaction, as would have been logical, but mental satisfaction, thinking ‘Take that’ or ‘Job done’ or – even more puerile – ‘I certainly gave her a good seeing-to’ or perhaps something more comprehensive, ‘I can still wreak havoc when I want to and the list continues to grow’; as if he wasn’t so much pleased with the physical pleasure he had felt as with his awareness of having experienced it in an unseemly place and at an untimely hour, and with a married woman, the wife of a friend, even if that friend didn’t even want to touch her, let alone venture into the very place he had just poked and penetrated. He was wearing a doctor’s white coat, as befitted his title; naturally, I had never seen him in this before. He wore it unbuttoned over his ordinary clothes, a tie and a cream-coloured shirt, although no jacket, which he had clearly removed beforehand. Dr Van Vechten’s fair hair had become quite dishevelled, quite unkempt, with all that rhythmic pumping away, and had almost toppled forward to form a fringe, because when he wore it, as he usually did, with a neat side parting, it stood out, high and compact, so that from a distance, he looked as though he were balancing a baguette on his head rather than hair, his hair being the same colour as a lightly baked crust. He smoothed it down a little with one hand, while Beatriz stepped back from the window and finally opened her eyes – but she can’t have seen me, not just because I was camouflaged among the branches, but because she probably couldn’t see anything, her gaze cloudy and confused as if she were emerging from a daydream or from deep thought or an involuntary nap – and she walked hesitantly and slowly to the back of the room, her thighs perhaps numb after standing in that fixed position, she was doubtless going to the bathroom, which he would allow her to do first so that she could compose herself. Of Van Vechten all I could see was his torso, from the waist up, I assumed he had put everything below that back in his trousers, although he wouldn’t have been able to wash himself, unless he had made do with a bit of gauze; that whole area was outside my field of vision. I saw him half-sit, half-lean on a table and light a cigarette. He maintained his perennial smile – his teeth as dazzling as those of some foreign film star – which he knew to be one of his main assets, and he was probably now incapable of not smiling even when alone, he would have grown so accustomed to wearing that smile for the benefit of others, that it had, I guessed, become frozen there and, contrary to my original belief – for I had taken him to be an exaggeratedly cordial, overfamiliar fellow – it doubtless meant nothing at all. I even thought he was smiling out of sheer vanity, pleased as punch with what had happened a moment before. Some men chalk up every sexual encounter as if it were a medal or a victory, even grown-up, mature men. It’s a young man’s response really, from a time when they won’t have had many such encounters, but some males preserve that trophy-hunting spirit throughout their life.

  After a couple of minutes, Beatriz returned – well, since she hadn’t got undressed, she wouldn’t have had much to do in the bathroom. He then went in after her, while she straightened her skirt as best she could, smoothed her hair with her fingers and picked up her handbag, as if there were no further reason to hang around and she was ready to leave without delay. I realized that this was one of those wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am situations: not much to talk about before and nothing at all afterwards. He must have shouted ‘Wait!’ from the bathroom because she put her bag down on the table again and leaned heavily on the back of a chair in a slight gesture of impatience. When he reappeared with hair combed – his usual baguette crowning his cranium – he moved very close to her and said something, almost in her ear. Beatriz, seriously and emphatically, shook her head. She certainly didn’t look like a happy lover, neither affectionate nor even content, I wondered how long they had been seeing each other like that, or if it was the first time – which is always a somewhat awkward and prickly situation, haunted by instant regret; on the theory of probabilities, I judged this to be completely impossible: it would have been an incredible coincidence that the very first time I had decided to follow Beatriz should also be the first of such encounters for her, and with Dr Van Vechten of all people, the man Muriel suspected of committing foul deeds in the past and whom he had charged me with observing. The Doctor stroked her cheek and she drew back. ‘No, no caresses,’ she might have said as she dodged the kindly gesture of that huge hand. (And at that very moment, the French equivalent of those words came into my head, as if I had read it somewhere: Non, pas de caresses.) But I heard nothing.

  ‘What are you doing up there, my child? You could crack your head open.’

  This I did hear, a disagreeable voice coming from below, I hadn
’t heard anyone talk about cracking their head open in ages, it was something only the old would say, and it was an old nun who had spoken. She was there at my feet, so to speak, at the foot of the tree, and I realized then the full absurdity of my situation and my behaviour: what was I doing crouched up there, it was hard to justify apart from saying that young people do sometimes do eccentric, inexplicable things, but that was a very poor excuse. The nun was wearing a blue habit and one of those floaty, winged headdresses or helmets or whatever they’re called, resembling an origami bird or a light sailing boat, though you don’t often see them in Spain, perhaps more in France and Italy. Anyway, my spying was at an end, and it occurred to me then that it would be best to make a swift getaway, before Beatriz said her goodbyes and came downstairs, I didn’t want to meet her in the garden or the little courtyard at the entrance, I needed to get out into the street as quickly as possible and vanish. As I made my descent, I was trying to think of a way of preventing the nun from delaying me with questions about who I was, why I had come in, and what I was doing perched on that fairly high branch. When I reached the ground, I decided to pretend to be offended, to divert attention from my entirely anomalous presence and position there: