Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  ‘Give Mercedes a ring and tell her I won’t be coming in this morning after all. Tell her to get on with whatever needs doing. And then sit down. This is going to take a while.’

  I phoned from the desk in the office, right there. Meanwhile, he went over to the door separating his side of the apartment from the corridor and carefully pulled it to: it was a high door with two leaves that had become warped so that they never quite clicked shut; the lower half was painted white, while the upper half was made of frosted panes of glass framed in white wood, typical of those old Madrid apartments.

  ‘Where do you want me to sit?’ I asked absurdly, to make his job easier, just in case he had a preference.

  ‘Wherever you like,’ he said. ‘I’m going to lie on the floor, in keeping with your possible opinion of me, if you’re of the view that Beatriz is right and that I have fallen very low. That it was all ridiculous, a piece of childish nonsense.’ He said this with a faint smile, which seemed to me somewhat forced. It can’t have been easy to start talking about what he was going to talk to me about, or perhaps he was reluctant to revisit those distant events, or still felt so embittered by them that they had extinguished any underlying joviality in his character. ‘Don’t go thinking you’re the first person she’s told this to, her women friends can’t stand the sight of me, my sister-in-law, for example. Beatriz genuinely believes it, so either she’s an idiot or I’m very wicked. You might incline to the latter view. But she’s not normally an idiot and I’m not naturally wicked. One of us has changed.’ And once he was lying down on the floor, one arm under his head as a pillow (when he was already staring up at the ceiling or at the topmost shelves of the library or at the painting by Casanova, and at me out of the corner of his one half-closed eye), to my surprise, he added: ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to witness those embarrassing scenes these past months. And you’re quite right, I should have been more careful, more discreet. It took me no time at all to get used to having you around and I’ve come to think of you as an extension of myself.’

  This was the same diagnosis Beatriz had made on that insomniac night. She had added: ‘Which is both good and bad.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t so very terrible.’ I felt obliged to play down the importance of those scenes. He had unexpectedly apologized and that only increased my feeling of betrayal and baseness, at least nominally. I’d had sex with his wife in his absence and couldn’t apologize for that, if, indeed, I needed to, given that he didn’t want her in his own bed. That’s the trouble with secrets, one can never ask forgiveness.

  ‘Beatriz, as you know, was largely brought up in America. But she often spent whole summers here as well as the occasional school term, living with her aunt and uncle, and that’s how we first met, when she was almost an adolescent and I was a young man. And when she was a young woman and I a slightly older young man, we got engaged. I suppose it was inevitable that she would fall in love with an older friend of her cousins; with a Spaniard, like her father, rather than with an American. And that she would have the patience to wait until she’d grown up enough to be noticed and to win my heart. Yes, although I’m a few years her senior, which mattered more then than it does now, that is the right expression. Girls are very determined and stubborn, and tend to want to see their childhood dreams come true. Until they reach a certain age or until they see them crushed for ever. That wasn’t the case with us. As soon as she reached adolescence, which she did very early, I began to look at her differently, and the other person’s enthusiasm does tend to persuade and carry you along, and I’ve almost always been the passive type. It wasn’t hard to love her. Besides, Beatriz wasn’t the great fat cow you know now. On the contrary.’

  At the risk of revealing my secret – when you’ve something to hide, you’re afraid to utter even the most innocent of words – I broke in, driven by an urge to do her justice and defend her – which I was finally in a position to do – more than by a need to justify to myself my carnal baseness on that insomniac night and my occasional visual baseness on other nights.

  ‘You do exaggerate, Eduardo, you do blow things up out of all proportion. It’s hard to believe that you don’t intend to wound her when you come out with things like that. How can you possibly describe Beatriz as a fat cow? Or a cask of amontillado.’ It had probably never occurred to him that I might remember his insults, but it was time he realized that I’d memorized nearly all of them. ‘She’s still a very attractive woman, whom many men would find desirable. As you well know.’

  Muriel laughed unexpectedly. He was doubtless amused to be reminded of his own wounding insult, with its incidental homage to Poe. I preferred not to remind him of other outrageous comparisons to the hot-air balloon from Around the World in 80 Days or Hitchcock’s silhouetted figure, still less Charles Laughton.

  Buah, he said, or was it Bué? ‘There’s no accounting for taste. I imagine there are some men who like voluptuous women. The ones who only want to get them into bed. The lechers of this world.’ Again that word that had been used before to describe Van Vechten, one of the men who did find Beatriz attractive, in however utilitarian a fashion, or, given his age, perhaps he couldn’t afford to be choosy. But I was nearly forty years his junior. Perhaps I was a bit of a lecher at the time too, it’s not uncommon among young men, beginners don’t have much taste.

  ‘I think you’re wrong. I think that one day you made a decision and put a veil over your eyes that you’ve chosen not to take off. A distorting veil. But I interrupted you. You were saying she wasn’t a fat cow then, on the contrary.’

  ‘Quite. I don’t mean she was scrawny, not at all. No, she was always on the voluptuous side, but in proportion. She was striking. She was very pretty and sensual, with those slightly widely spaced teeth of hers. She smiled a lot. And she certainly filled her clothes, but in a good way. To put it bluntly: she was an absolute dish, if that’s an expression you still use nowadays. And, yes, any man would have fancied her then, especially me. She was a real gift in that respect. And since she set the pace, I just let myself be carried along. Looking back, and despite all that, it’s possible that I might not have taken the initiative, or wouldn’t have gone so far as to get engaged. Engaged to be married, you understand. But she was so determined and so strong, and tried so hard to please me … You’ll have noticed that she knows as much if not more about films as I do. She made my interests hers and moulded herself to my tastes and my eccentricities, I sometimes think that this was a task she set herself, a programme, as if, even when she was a girl, she’d said to herself: “I’m not going to let this man be bored in my company. I don’t want him not to be able to share a part of his life with me because he thinks I won’t be interested or won’t be up to understanding it. I don’t want him to find me lacking and to look elsewhere. I don’t want him to exclude me from anything.” She was not only happy to see all kinds of films, from masterpieces to the utter tripe I sometimes dragged her along to – because to get a real grasp of things, you need to see the full range, the old and the new, the good, the bad and the bizarre – she also read all the books I recommended, and quickly overtook me in that regard. The young Beatriz wasn’t the woman you see now, apathetic and unstable, spending hours at the piano without so much as playing a scale. She brimmed with energy and curiosity, she was unstoppable. Of course I’ll never know to what extent she had her own life, or if she merely lived her life through me. She took all the weight, she did all the heavy work demanded by any loving relationship when it’s just starting out, and afterwards too, as it develops.’ He paused very briefly, then added: ‘It wasn’t hard to love her. Another person’s love is inevitably touching. It arouses pity too, like the love of children. So much so that it seems cruel not to accept it, not to welcome it. It’s the kind of pity that melts the heart. Even though there was no passion on my part … not that I missed it at the time, having never experienced it.’

  He remained silent for longer this time and fixed his gaze on his beloved painting
of the retreating horsemen and the one man turning round, dressed in red and possibly one-eyed, in order to cast a final, stern backward glance at the fallen he was leaving behind and whose deaths he and his men had probably caused: ‘At least remember me.’

  ‘And what happened then?’ I didn’t want to give him time to have second thoughts, to regret telling me about something that was still no business of mine.

  ‘She moved here when she was about eighteen, to live with her aunt and uncle, who thought of her almost as a daughter. I’m afraid I was the reason for that move, so that she could be close to me. Or, rather, she reversed the order of her visits, going to Massachusetts once a year to spend two or three months with her father, her solitary, disastrous father, and look after him a little. During those visits, we would write to each other – well, phoning was just unthinkable then, we’re talking about 1959 or 1960 remember. No one could afford it. Then, about six or seven months before the wedding (she had just turned twenty-one, I think), she had to go to America urgently, some serious incident, some grave problem. Her father … I don’t know how much I should tell you about him, Juan, it’s not really up to me …’ He gave a sigh of annoyance, drummed his fingers on his eyepatch, pondered for a few seconds, then opted for indiscretion. ‘Her father was a homosexual. There you are, I’ve said it. He may always have been, and it may not have been a belated discovery, as Beatriz at first believed. Perhaps that’s why his wife left him shortly after Beatriz was born and chose not to accompany him into exile. That may have been part of the reason why he chose exile, who knows? He was a Republican by conviction, but hadn’t done anything very significant during the War and wasn’t, therefore, at risk of being persecuted. But for a man with that problem (and it was an enormous problem then, your generation has no idea) and with a child to take care of, you can imagine what it would have been like for him in Franco’s ultra-religious Spain, with the Church having been given carte blanche. If he’d been found out, they would, for a start, have taken his daughter from him. So he went first to France, then to Mexico and ended up teaching in Massachusetts, thanks to some contacts he had there; he had a thorough knowledge of Spanish literature and was a pretty decent translator from German and English, in fact, you can still find some of his translations in second-hand bookshops. Not that there was much, if any, tolerance of homosexuality in 1940s or 50s America or even in the mid-60s, but it wasn’t like it was here, where all queers were sent to prison – no, almost anywhere was more civilized than here. I don’t know how he coped. A lot of self-imposed abstinence, I suppose, and a few weekend escapes to Boston or New York, where he wouldn’t be noticed (on a campus it was impossible), to visit the odd clandestine or semi-clandestine club and have some fun. There would have been bars like the one Don Murray goes to in Advise and Consent, with men dancing with each other, you’ve seen it, haven’t you?’ I shook my head. ‘You haven’t? You’re mad. What are you waiting for? It’s wonderful. It was made in 1962 and is based on fact, so there must have been something of the sort at the time. Whatever the truth of the matter, poor Ernesto Noguera would have had a much harder time of it having a bit of modest fun in America than Towers did setting up his prostitution racket in the headquarters of the United Nations, because that coincided more or less with the final part of her father’s life.’ He raised one hand to his chin, stroked it repeatedly with his thumb and smiled: despite his humiliating dismissal from the Towers film, and given his excitement about his new project with Palance and hopefully Widmark, his most furious fury must have passed. ‘Harry’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? I’m sure what Lom told us is true, about the worst of his dirty tricks, I mean. What did you think?’

  ‘Yes, I felt he knew more than he was telling us. But then it’s only normal that he should tread rather carefully, always allowing for a degree of indiscretion. After all, he’s often worked with him.’ Muriel shook his head, amused by the memory of that conversation, distracted. Yes, he had probably forgiven Towers, just as he had completely forgiven Van Vechten, without knowing exactly what he was forgiving, which always makes things easier, and without wanting to know either. If he wasn’t a man to bear a grudge, or to pass judgement on matters that didn’t affect him, and was even playing down the importance of having a film taken away from him, then his gross behaviour towards Beatriz for all those years was utterly inexplicable. But he had been about to explain and had got diverted. I grew impatient, afraid again that, at any moment, he might think better of it. I decided to lead him back to the matter in hand. ‘But you were saying that just months before your wedding, some grave incident occurred, some serious problem. I presume involving her father.’

  He raised his head a little to look at me more directly. I had a sense that he was enjoying keeping me hanging on: now that he had agreed to tell me the story, he would do so at his own pace and in his own way. That is the prerogative of the one doing the telling, and the person listening has none at all, or only that of getting up and leaving. But I was not going to leave just yet.

  ‘I don’t know what could have got into the man. By this time, he was in his late forties, so hardly in the first flush of youth, but ardour takes a long time to fade. Or perhaps he just got fed up and lowered his guard. Anyway, after all those years of moderation, a university colleague caught him in Boston giving a blow-job to a man in some public toilets or maybe it was a cinema toilet, I’m not sure. Like any good liberal, this colleague didn’t rush off and report him to the police, but to the Board of Professors or whatever it’s called, or to the Chairman, although now I think they call him, absurdly enough, the Chairperson, so as not to seem sexist. Those New England colleges are so proud of their moral rectitude they end up being positively inquisitorial. You can imagine the scandal. Not that it was leaked to the press or anything, college rectitude wouldn’t allow that, and, besides, they didn’t want to frighten off any future students. But in those isolated places, in their little bubbles of lakes and woods, everyone knows everything. Not only was he dismissed, other universities in the area were warned about him, making it impossible for him to find a similar post. He was left without a job and without an income, depressed and stuck at home, shunned by most of his friends. And so Beatriz flew there urgently to see what she could do, not quite knowing what had happened. The telegram she received left her no choice; I can remember it clearly: ‘Dismissed from university. Situation desperate. Long story. Don’t phone. Come quickly.’ Her aunt and uncle helped her out with the air ticket, I couldn’t help much at the time because I still hadn’t come into the family money and lived more or less from day to day. She didn’t find out the details until she got there, and the people at the college had no alternative but to explain what had happened and her father had no alternative but to own up to her about his sexual proclivities, and about the fact that her mother wasn’t dead, although we’ve never found out anything more than that, because Beatriz never wanted to go looking for her. The lady, who would be in her sixties now, is probably out there somewhere, perhaps having had more children. Beatriz told me all this by letter, because, at first, we wrote to each other almost every day, or she did anyway. Her father was in a dreadful situation: either he had to move to the other side of the country, to some insignificant university that his colleagues had failed to notify, or … in short, disaster. We even discussed bringing him to Spain to live with us when we got married. Not the ideal start to married life, but we had to consider it as a possibility. Her aunt and uncle, her father’s sister and brother-in-law, who were both loyal franquistas, were outraged when they learned the nature of the offence. They made some comment that included the word “incorrigible”, so they must have known about him before, about his tastes, I mean. Anyway, probably as a result of the shame and the shock, Noguera had a heart attack about a week or so after Beatriz arrived. He survived, but was left very weak and in need of care. She stayed by his side, well, she was always a devoted daughter and continued to be, as daughters brought up solely by their fat
her tend to be, regardless of how that father may have behaved. At least they weren’t in dire financial straits initially: they drew on the savings Noguera had accumulated during years of earning good American wages and making only modest expenditures, and hoped he would recover sufficiently for him to try his luck in Michigan or Oklahoma or New Mexico, or to return to Spain; no firm decision was made, and, besides, he was in no fit state to travel. Months passed. Her father was very slowly and gradually recovering, but he was still very frail, and Beatriz’s return continued to be postponed. Hand me a cigarette, will you, and an ashtray.’

  He paused and I handed him my pack of cigarettes and put an ashtray on the floor beside him. He put aside his pipe, now extinguished, and took a cigarette, which he lit, inhaling deeply, then exhaling and aiming a couple of smoke rings up at the ceiling. He was one of those men who knew how to do that, like Errol Flynn and those other actors whose moustache he had copied as a young man and kept. He had combed his hair back with water, a clear parting through his thick hair. He lay there in silence, thinking. I decided to give him a prod, just in case:

  ‘Poor Beatriz,’ I said. ‘I still can’t see that she did anything deserving of punishment. On the contrary, she seems to have been an affectionate, loyal young woman.’

  He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at me rather haughtily, as if I’d said something impertinent.

  ‘You don’t see because we haven’t got there yet. If you’re going to be impatient and prejudge the situation, we’d better just drop the whole subject.’ I raised both my hands, palms open, as if surrendering or as though to protect myself, meaning: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ or ‘Truce, truce’ or ‘Take no notice of me.’ Again, in that gesture so characteristic of him, he tucked his thumb under his armpit like the tiny riding whip of a British officer, and added: ‘Of course, when we do get there, you, like her, will doubtless consider it to have been nothing, mere nonsense. You’re perhaps expecting something dramatic or terrible. Possibly even a crime, like in the movies. Well, it’s nothing like that. Just a lie and her vengeful, no, her impetuous subsequent revelation, far too many years later, when she would have done much better to keep it to herself. The tenuous facts of married life can also be very serious. And there are hundreds of such facts, so many that people often overlook them, because otherwise the relationship would collapse. I’m not one of those people. Well, I’ve overlooked others, like everyone else, but not that one.’