Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  ‘Really? Even nowadays? That sounds like something out of a novel from the eighteenth or nineteenth century? A novel set in the country, you know, the young master of the house and the peasant girl.’

  She didn’t seem put out by my unwitting pedantry. She was probably more educated than I had at first thought.

  ‘You mean Dickens and the like? I don’t know about that, but I can assure you it still goes on, and it’s not that uncommon either. They plead with you and you give in. They insist and you give in. Oh, they flatter you too, I don’t deny it, and that counts and sometimes even convinces. Anyway, you may not much want to do it, but it’s almost easier to give in than to refuse. It doesn’t wash with me, mind, but it happens to a lot of women.’

  ‘Really?’ I thought of the bullfighter, who was at least twenty years older than her. ‘Do you only ever go with someone you really like? With someone you liked before they made it clear that they liked you too? Sometimes you only notice someone because that someone has noticed you. Sometimes we only consider those who have already considered us. It’s not unknown for the way someone looks at you to influence the way you look at them.’

  She smiled and answered only my first question; she must have found the rest far too complicated.

  ‘More or less. There’s always the exception, of course. I’m sure it’s happened to you too, with some overly affectionate or overly enthusiastic girl you couldn’t bring yourself to reject. Come on, own up, I’m sure you have plenty of admirers.’ And she nudged me with her elbow, very gently, not in a vulgar way, while we were walking shoulder to shoulder along the empty streets, just as she would occasionally grab my arm to steady herself, our footsteps made a lot of clatter, especially her high heels (such a promising sound). With each step her earrings swung gracefully back and forth, and sooner or later, I imagined, if it took us much longer to find a taxi, she would regretfully take them off, because they must have been bothering her.

  I took her words as a compliment not a come-on. She was some ten years older than me, possibly more, and so could allow herself to be a kind of pretend older sister to me. She knew a lot, but not enough, or else, accustomed as she was to being with older men like the actor or the bullfighter, she had forgotten what many young men are like. She must have forgotten that for most of us any sexual relationship is still a miracle, a gift (at least it was in 1980), unless we find the girl in question repellent or creepy, someone we had discounted at first glance, someone horribly obese and flabby or an out-and-out freak. When you’re young, you’re not that fussy or pernickety, you’re still rather coarse-minded, in that area and in others. You hardly ever turn down an acceptable opportunity, especially if you don’t have to try very hard. Young men are often quite heartless when it comes to sex. Or at least unscrupulous. I was, I don’t deny it, and I remained so for a few more years after that. Considerateness is something you learn, as is the advisability of not gaily forging links with people. However unlikely, there is always a stronger link than you might believe, even if it springs from one night of wild partying and you eventually forget the person’s name and even her existence or almost what happened. The truth is that you never forget anyone you’ve been with, if you ever happen to meet them again, even though, paradoxically, you have retained no images, no memory, of the occasion. It’s like a mental record on which the information is stored, and which reappears the moment you see that face again or hear the name if the face has changed beyond all recognition. You know it, you know you had that experience, that you fucked that woman in another life, another you of whom there is only evidence rather than memory. It doesn’t make much sense, knowing something that you can’t remember, but that’s how it is.

  I was about to answer Celia: ‘Yes, it’s true, I’ve experienced that myself, which leads me to suspect that some girl must have experienced the same thing with me, which is not a pleasant thought. But what can you do, it’s impossible to know what someone else is thinking, which is just as well really, because, otherwise, we’d never do anything, never even tentatively brush another’s hand.’ I was just about to say something along those lines when we spotted the green light of a taxi far off and started waving frantically like exiles or shipwreck victims; her feet must have been hurting by then, although, with great dignity, she wasn’t complaining, and at no time did she appear to consider taking her shoes off, not even once inside the taxi. I let her get in first, not yet having learned that the man should always get into a car ahead of the woman, especially if the woman is wearing a skirt, and especially if that skirt is short and tight. When she sat down, it became still shorter, indeed it was almost as if she wasn’t wearing one at all (but she was, that was the point), I kept casting sideways glances at her smooth, firm, tanned thighs, which, all the while we were walking, I hadn’t been able to see. I asked where she lived, she said in Calle Watteau and launched into a complicated explanation, I had no idea where it was nor indeed that Watteau even had a street named after him. The driver had never heard of it either and got out his A–Z, she spelled the name for him (‘Bloody hell, the names they give streets these days,’ he muttered when he had finally grasped not just the initial ‘W’ but all the other letters too), and she ended up giving him directions, which I ignored completely, and we finally set off. I soon found myself in completely unknown territory, as if I had been transported to another city, and with the meter ticking too. ‘It’s just as well Viana gave me some dosh,’ I thought. ‘If he hadn’t, I’d be in trouble.’

  We didn’t continue our earlier conversation; that had got left behind. I asked where she worked.

  ‘In a government department,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m a civil servant.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I could not, I think, avoid the note of surprise in my voice, and to make amends, I added: ‘High up?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said with a smile, then added after a pause: ‘Not low down.’

  I made no attempt to draw her out further, I was waiting for something else to happen, one of those things that makes you fall silent, hold your breath a little and concentrate solely on that for as long as it lasts. Celia had not sat at the furthest end of the back seat (perhaps momentary carelessness or laziness, perhaps because of her skirt), but had stopped about halfway along (or less), so that I had no alternative but to sit very close to her, with her right thigh rubbing or, rather, pressing against my left thigh. She obviously wasn’t bothered by this (she could have moved along, there was plenty of space). Perhaps she was too tired to notice or didn’t care, she saw me as almost a boy, and certainly not as an indefatigable demon between the sheets. I didn’t move away either. Not that I had much room for manoeuvre, but I did have a little, or I could have asked her to shift over and allow me more space. But I wasn’t going to do that. Certainly not. It wasn’t flesh against flesh, but flesh against fabric, not that it mattered, I could still feel it, feel her firm, warm flesh, and I preferred to go on feeling it. I wondered if she could feel my warmth too or not at all. Only a few minutes before she had spoken about precisely this with regard to Van Vechten, saying: ‘But almost no such contact is purely accidental, we all know that, you’re almost always aware of touch.’ What more did I need? And yet I did need more: even young men whom others judge to be good-looking are insecure and even the boldest are timid. There was that qualifying ‘almost’, she might consider that contact in the taxi to be accidental, and it could be the exceptional occasion on which she didn’t notice. She had added: ‘You’re aware of what you’re touching or what is being touched, and if you don’t move away, that’s fine.’ What if she was experimenting to see if I would be the one to move, or if I was perfectly fine with the insistent touch of her thigh? I, of course, didn’t draw back or move away or retreat. Nor did she, but what the other person does is never clear, it’s always obscure, even wives and children are opaque to us, and we can never know what someone else is thinking and sometimes the other person isn’t thinking at all, but merely responding to stimuli or bypass
ing the brain or ignoring or avoiding it, not giving it time to express itself or to formulate a thought, I’ve never had the good fortune of being in that position, and it probably is fortunate rather than unfortunate.

  And never having had that good fortune, not even as a young man, I decided to do something positive and half-calculated, but which would still act as a safeguard, something that would not dispel my doubts, but would at least diminish them. I offered her a cigarette, which, although she was a smoker, she declined. I lit my cigarette and, contrary to my usual habit – I always hold my cigarette in my left hand – I held it instead between the index and middle finger of my right hand and allowed my other hand, still holding my lighter, to fall on her thigh, which gleamed resplendent beneath the street lamps as they flashed past or beneath the intermittent moon. Not the palm, of course, that would have been cheeky, but the back of my hand. And not the whole of my hand either, but, initially, just the side or the edge, and then a little more, as if my hand were giving in of its own accord or being jolted into position by the occasional bumps in the road or by the driver when he accelerated through a green light. It seems absurd, a hand is just a hand, but there’s an enormous difference between the back and the palm of the hand, the palm is the part that feels and caresses and speaks, usually deliberately, while the back pretends and is silent.

  She didn’t move her thigh, not a millimetre, she didn’t avoid or evade that new contact and she could easily have done so, there was room to her left; now it was flesh against flesh, still cautious, almost motionless, still wearing the mask of chance. I took the risk of moving the back of my hand very minimally during what remained of the journey, as though impelled by the slight swaying of the car when going round bends or corners or roundabouts, of which there are many all over Madrid. We didn’t speak. We didn’t speak. We didn’t speak. The longer you go without speaking, the harder it is to begin again, or so it seems, and yet all you have to do is open your mouth and utter one or two or three meaningful syllables: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or ‘What’ or ‘How’; or ‘Come here’ or ‘Go away’ or ‘More’ or ‘Nothing’. Or perhaps ‘Do you want’, and other words always follow. But neither of us said a word for the rest of the ride, we didn’t even have to give directions to the driver, as he knew where he was going now. When I finished my cigarette, I stubbed it out in the ashtray next to me, but my left hand remained where it was, still gripping the lighter as if it were a talisman or a relic, and this allowed me to keep the back of my hand resting on her leg, and with every minor swerve or lurch it gently caressed her thigh as if by chance. It met with no opposition, no rebuff, Celia didn’t seem bothered nor did she change her position. ‘And now what?’ I thought. ‘What will happen when we stop? Will we just go our separate ways, with a kiss on both cheeks? That would be the most natural thing, we’ve only walked a few blocks together, it’s just another minor nocturnal escapade – one of many – one that we probably won’t even remember. I’ll get out of the taxi first, so that she can get out the way she got in, it’s always dangerous to do so on the left-hand side, and it would be rude not to accompany her to her door, not after travelling all this way and with all these twists and turns, after which I have no idea where we are. Until she’s safe and sound, although she still wouldn’t necessarily be safe even then, I’ve heard of women being attacked in the lift, when they thought they were already safe, by men who’ve been waiting for hours, if they know a woman’s late-night habits, or who emerge out of the shadows and slip in behind her before the street door closes, and then she’s trapped when she’s so close to home, to her welcoming or woeful bed. Perhaps I should go upstairs with her, leave her outside her apartment door, play at being one of those almost non-existent gentlemen and thus get as close as I can to her sheets; absurd as it may seem, proximity facilitates and suggests, and can even tempt someone who had considered herself immune and had dismissed the possibility right from the start, but then suddenly changes her mind and succumbs to that feeblest and most decisive of arguments: ‘Why not?’ she says to herself. ‘I can always pretend it never happened.’

  Calle Watteau was a short, narrow street, more of an affront to the French painter than an honour. I discovered with surprise that the road running parallel to it was called Juan de Vera, almost my name, or the one it should have been, and that seemed to me a sign and an incentive – who could he be? I wondered. The city council clearly thought him more important than Watteau at any rate, and about on a par with the Batalla de Belchite, of which Watteau was a side street. I knew none of them, but had suddenly, belatedly, recognized the area, and it occurred to me that the driver had taken us the long way round and that Celia had allowed him to or even led him to do so with her directions, so as to lengthen the journey and have more time to study me. We were a stone’s throw from the Paseo de las Delicias on one side and from the Museo del Ferrocarril on the other, and not very far from the river on another. Almost directly opposite where Celia lived was a women’s prison, or so the sign said, and a sad, chilling thought crossed my mind: what if she worked for the prison service, for the Ministry of the Interior? I looked at the walls and the high, dark windows. The inmates would have long since been in their beds, sleeping soundly, free from temptation, or only in dreams or, who knows, perhaps every night of those febrile years was the same to them. They would inevitably be aware of each other’s smell, a strong smell perhaps, I could smell Celia and she smelled sweet, even after the trek that had left us both slightly hot and out of breath and made her largish feet ache. The taxi stopped. I deliberately (I pretended not to notice, to forget) allowed the taxi driver to stop the meter, I pretended to protest.

  ‘Oh, you’ve stopped the meter,’ I said. I could have told him long before that I would be continuing on, but I hadn’t. He or another driver would have to take me home, that much was certain.

  ‘Well, since you didn’t say anything, I assumed … Shall I start the meter again or just work out a price for you?’

  I didn’t need to respond or hesitate or ponder or shoot Celia an interrogative glance or pine palely away or put my expectations into words. I had the feeling that I’d been saved by the bell, as people used to say then, when there were still boxing matches and before they were frowned on.

  ‘Would you like to come up?’ Celia asked. She asked this quite naturally or, rather, with unequivocal certainty. It was a simple matter of going upstairs with her, not to have a drink or because we had got on so famously, nor so as not to interrupt the animated conversation we hadn’t had. Since she was, as I said, about ten years older than me, she would have seen straight through me from first to last, including now. Perhaps my false boast to Van Vechten had intrigued her, even though I had myself partly denied it immediately afterwards. There are lies and jokes that arouse our curiosity simply because we can never be absolutely sure what is a lie and what is a joke. And just in case there was any doubt as to whether her question was genuine, or that she had not meant it at all, but was merely being polite, or was testing me out, she repeated it, this time as a statement of fact: ‘Yes, you would like to come up. Come on, then, let’s go.’ I didn’t reply at once, I didn’t react. She smiled at me as one might smile at someone in shock. ‘Come on, what are you waiting for? Pay the man.’

  She opened the door and got out on her side. That was the first time she had removed her thigh from mine, and I missed its warmth. I was still trying to work out if I would have enough money for a taxi later on or the following morning, the kind of anxieties and calculations that afflict the young, who are always short of funds. In the morning, I could get a bus or the metro, and besides what did it matter? At that age, you don’t care where you end up and are quite prepared to walk back home across the entire city, and will often find yourself marooned in some remote place in the early hours just on the off-chance or promise or possibility of getting a decent, memorable fuck, it’s that crude, that coarse; in the majority of cases this changes with time, after about thirty-five or the
reabouts you become warier, lazier, you can no longer face the prospect of waking up in someone else’s bed and having to eat breakfast with an unappealing, unkempt, unpainted ghost, of getting undressed in the early hours, and, even though it isn’t strictly necessary, of becoming involved and establishing a link that the other person won’t forget, or not as instantly as you do. You also have a keener sense of loyalty towards the person waiting for you at home or away travelling or towards the woman’s unwitting or absent partner, whom perhaps you’ve never even met; you learn to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, even those of some imbecilic stranger (in the eyes of the lover, however fleeting or casual, almost all husbands appear imbecilic, just as all lovers are cretins in the imaginations of husbands, even if they don’t know who they are and aren’t even sure they exist). But none of this holds true when you’re twenty-three – on the contrary. It’s then that you’re most capable of deceiving, of playing tricks and using sophistry to persuade, of committing treacherous acts, pretending to be hard done by and even humiliating yourself in order to get what you want, of trying to arouse a woman’s pity, pretending to be tormented or ill, of lying to a woman and betraying a friend, of resorting to contemptible behaviour of which you will later feel ashamed, or which you will try not to recall so as to pretend it never happened and that the person who committed it is dead and buried: ‘That’s not me any more, he was just a child, and what children do doesn’t count. The real countdown begins today, or possibly tomorrow.’ You extend at will what you consider to be the age of irresponsibility.

  I paid the driver and got out on my side. The taxi moved off, vanished in a second, leaving the two of us alone in the diminutive Calle Watteau, separated by the space previously occupied by the car. I didn’t notice the building or the door or anything, I can remember nothing of that. I only had eyes for Celia, who, for the first time in a long while, I was able to study from that short distance, all of her, including her high heels, which she had not for a moment taken off. Her skirt had ridden up slightly and grown creased during the journey. She held out her hand to me, then changed her mind and linked arms instead, and together we walked over to the street door. It was probably something of an event for her too, coming home with a young man. No, I didn’t really believe that, she could have made off with as many young men as she wanted, some are impatient and eager, others timid and grateful and others insatiable. I doubtless belonged a little to all three categories. I couldn’t help looking at us for a moment with the eyes of a spectator or a collector, with the eyes of the imagination, which are the eyes that best remember a scene and best recall it later. I couldn’t help thinking that if Dr Van Vechten had seen us, he would have added another notch to my gun and would have felt rather proud of me. And hated me too.