Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  He raised the palms of both hands to his face and squeezed his cheeks, distorting his mouth. I didn’t know if he was cursing that old-fashioned upbringing or embracing it retrospectively, if he was struggling to find a place for it again in his heart; after all, we can do little to protect ourselves against what befalls us. Or against our character if we can’t change it. There are, though, more and more people who, every now and then, do reconfigure themselves.

  ‘And how did the other woman take it?’ I was still interested in the abandoned woman, despite Muriel’s reluctance to talk about her.

  Removing his hands from his face, he gave a long sigh, and his mouth returned to its usual shape; then he touched his eyepatch with two fingers to check that it hadn’t shifted.

  ‘I spent the whole night with her. I told her what had happened, I explained everything, and she cried and cried, but she also understood in part, she didn’t become aggressive or hysterical. She wasn’t even filled with self-pity, she just cried. But as I said before, best leave her out of it, since that’s precisely where she was left, poor thing.’ Muriel had doubtless forgotten that he’d already told me a little about this, and in another context. ‘Do what you think you ought to do,’ I remembered him saying that she had said. ‘Do what will cause you least pain, what you’ll find easiest to live with. But never think of us, of you and me. Never think of us together if you don’t want to be filled with regret day after day and, still more, night after night. Never even think of us apart either, because, by remembering that, you’ll bring us together again.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve told me about that before.’ And I repeated those words back to him from memory.

  He sat up again and looked at me for a moment in amazement, then quickly collected his thoughts.

  ‘Hmm, very good.’ There was a slight quaver in his voice and he sounded a touch irritated by my perfect recall. ‘You’ve always boasted about your retentive memory. I’ll need to be careful what I tell you, because you register it all like a tape recorder. Yes, she did say something of the sort. But that was at the end. That night, believe me, was very long. It had its ups and downs and I did occasionally waver. But the decision I had made prevailed. I said goodbye to her just after six in the morning and went straight to the airport, straight from her apartment. I closed the door behind me so that she wouldn’t watch me waiting for the lift to arrive, although she may have watched me through the spyhole, I’ve no way of knowing. I closed that door in the knowledge that I was letting passion and the love of my life slip from my grasp. That rarest of things: passion … When I arrived at Barajas, I probably still smelled of her, but it didn’t matter. No one was going to call me to account, that would have been the final straw; and Beatriz was too astute ever to make such a blunder, not after so many months apart.’

  ‘And how did it go, your re-encounter with Beatriz? Given where you’d just come from, I mean.’ I spoke again because he had fallen silent. I shot a quick glance at the glass door, where the pink face had resumed its vigil.

  ‘The flight arrived punctually, almost on the dot, and I got there just in time. When Beatriz appeared, she looked really lovely, I would be lying if I said otherwise, nothing at all like the way she looks now. Not that it was any kind of compensation, but it was better than nothing. It’s best if you like the person you’re going to spend a long time with, in the most elemental, epidermal way, I mean. She flung her arms around me with a smile the like of which I’ve never seen in my life, radiant, luminous. I’ve tried to get a few actresses to reproduce that smile in my films, but, however good, they’ve never managed to come up with anything but a pale reflection of it. She smiled as if she couldn’t believe her luck, as if she couldn’t believe that she was back with me again. And then she burst into tears, buried her face in my chest and stayed like that for a while; I remember she left a wet patch on my raincoat. She must have been really longing to see me again. And that can’t fail to touch your heart, the other person’s ignorance and their happiness too, I mean, when it’s clear that you’re the cause of that happiness. You feel responsible, or more responsible. When we collected her luggage and she’d recovered a little, one of my first questions – I couldn’t help myself – was: “Didn’t you ever receive my letter? The one I mentioned in my telegram?” “No!” she said in a pained voice. “And I was so looking forward to it. I thought it would be a real consolation, that you would talk to me about my father, about his death, that it would help me to accept it. I was so furious that it got lost, the letter I most needed to read.” She had assumed my letter would be a letter of condolence in a way. That I’d written it as soon as I heard the news, quickly, so that she wouldn’t be left with just a few compressed, laconic sentences. If I had sent it then, though, too few days would have passed for her to give it up as hopelessly lost: nine or ten at most. I hadn’t been explicit enough in my telegram. “Urgent letter on way. Important. Read first,” I had said. At the time, she wouldn’t have been in any state to decipher subtleties or ponder meanings. I should have added “before you travel” or “before you make any decision”. “Read before you travel”; I imagine that would have been enough to bring her up short, to make her think, to investigate further and not rush into anything; or even to phone me when the letter failed to arrive.’ He paused, took a sip of his drink and smiled, this time with a certain self-mockery or a touch of bitterness. ‘But everyone then saved on words when sending telegrams.’

  ‘You don’t think then that things would have turned out very differently if you hadn’t saved on words?’ I said.

  Then he grew weary of lying down or else wanted to see me face to face, because not only did he get up, he gave himself a good stretch, arms taut, sat down on one of the sofas, the one with its back to the door (when he got to his feet, the smudge, doubtless startled, again disappeared), and told me to leave my post at the desk, indicating that I should sit on the other sofa.

  ‘Sit over there, will you, so that I don’t have to crane my neck. Why is it that you always forget that my field of vision is not the same as yours? As if this eyepatch wasn’t enough of a clue.’ And he drummed on it briefly. And when I’d done as he asked, he said, ‘Who knows? Probably not. She would doubtless have found another way to play the innocent, to feign ignorance. I know that now, but I didn’t then. Well, the idea did occur to me, and even more so to the other woman, but I thought that was just her despair speaking and dismissed it out of hand. To be honest, I didn’t think anyone so young would be capable of acting in such an underhand, cold-blooded manner.’ – ‘I’m slightly older than she was then,’ flashed through my mind, ‘and I’ve acted in an equally underhand manner, but not, I think, cold-bloodedly.’ – ‘Especially not in the midst of her grief, but we often confuse vulnerability with innocuousness and believe victims are somehow harmless – a widespread misconception. I didn’t believe she was capable of basing her whole future life on a lie. Of mortgaging her life and placing it on such a precarious footing. Of course, the more all-embracing the lie, the more likely the liar is to forget about it. She knew me intimately, had spent years studying me from when she was a child, when I was too distracted to even notice or realize. I was too ingenuous, too trusting. I always felt that one couldn’t go through life full of suspicion and mistrust. It took me a long time to learn my mistake. I’m not even sure I’ve learned it now. But what can you do? Life may teach you some bitter lessons and force you to be more cautious, but if that’s not in your nature, those lessons may have an attenuating effect, but little more.’

  ‘And it was years before you found out.’

  ‘Twelve years more or less,’ he said, ‘imagine that. Twelve years and four children later. And I didn’t find out for myself either, she blurted it out in a fit of anger, to wound me. I could have died without ever knowing, which would have been better, I think.’ – ‘If only you’d never told me. If only you’d kept me in the dark,’ I recalled him saying.

  ‘Do you really think so? Are you se
rious?’ However precocious in other respects, I was too young to understand that. Young people are overly attached to the truth, the truth that affects them, that is. They themselves are frequently rather less than truthful, but you can’t expect them to question those truths that concern or touch them. They can’t bear to be mocked or taken for fools, when that, in fact, is a minor matter and the common fate of all men and women, without distinction.

  ‘Yes, I really do. I had, after all, made an effort, a huge effort. I’d taken absolutely seriously the advice of that other woman, whose words you recalled. Hers was a rhetorical, not to say dramatic recommendation, yes, a final theatrical flourish. Quite right, given the abrupt, unexpected nature of that farewell, a way of preserving her dignity. But I took it literally, I saw the sense in it. And so I did exactly as she said, I forgot all about her and me, insofar as that was possible, that is, superficially: a nostalgia for the life you discarded always lingers on in the inner depths of your being, and, during bad times, you seek refuge in it as you might in a daydream or a fantasy. But once I’d made that decision, or on that morning when I left the airport with Beatriz on my arm, as if we were a real couple setting out towards our future, I decided that I would follow that path. “I’m going to love her,” I told myself over and over, “I’m going to be always by her side. I’m going to be faithful to her, I’m not going to fail her or abandon her. I didn’t choose her, but she’s the person who it’s fallen to me to marry. It doesn’t matter, though, I’ll stay by her side, I’ll protect and support her and care for her children, and I’ll love her as if I had chosen her. I’ll forget what was lost along the way, it’s too late to go back and, besides, that path is no longer mine to follow. I will walk this path without looking back and will try not to complain.” That’s what I told myself and repeated to myself endless times, over many years.’

  ‘And did you keep that promise?’ I asked, although I knew the answer, because I’d heard it that night when Beatriz rapped timidly on his bedroom door with one knuckle: ‘How stupid of me to love you during all those years, love you with all my heart, as long, that is, as I knew nothing,’ he had said, placing his hands on her shoulders, before disdainfully, crudely groping her body, with perhaps a vague or concealed lust he had long since forbidden himself to feel. And after a while, after the groping, she had answered: ‘No, it wasn’t stupid of you. On the contrary, you were quite right to love me during all those years, all those past years … You’ve probably never done anything better.’ Then I felt sure that her eyes must have filled with tears, because that’s the only explanation I could find for Muriel’s surprising reaction. ‘I’ll grant you that,’ he said. ‘All the more reason for me to feel I’ve thrown away my life. A part of my life. That’s why I can’t forgive you.’ And he said this in a gentle, almost regretful voice.

  ‘Of course I kept my promise, perhaps excessively. As I said, it was easy enough to love her, but without passion. But then passion isn’t essential. And I found it easier still after her revelations about her father, his convalescence and subsequent death, I saw her as helpless and rootless, alone and without a place in the world. It was easy enough to desire her too, until I felt repelled by what she’d done, and it was then that she began to neglect herself. I’m not saying I didn’t have the odd flirtation during those twelve years, because we often spent time apart, when I was filming in America or not so far afield. But they were very few and were just that, occasional flirtations that were never any threat to her and left no mark on me, still less nostalgia. I can barely remember them now. Then the children came along, and that always strengthens ties. Then our oldest child died, and we got through that together. I won’t even attempt to describe what the death of a small child means, there’s far too much cheap, opportunistic literature out there, too many films exploiting that misfortune as a guaranteed way to move people to tears and pity, it’s easy enough in fiction and in autobiography, it’s cynical, indecent. Even Thomas Mann resorted to it, I believe, in his famous Doctor Faustus. Anyway, it’s something you never forget. It’s not just the child you don’t forget, but the person who was by your side, who experienced that misfortune with you, who you watched suffer and struggle to keep afloat, who you sustained and who you yourself clung to so that she could sustain you. You can’t cancel out everything that happened, Juan, even if the origin of it all turns out to have been a lie.’

  He broke off, remained sunk in thought. He was no longer looking up, but staring downwards with his one fixed and penetrating eye, as if trying to see right through the wooden floorboards. I didn’t dare go over to the photo of Beatriz and the little boy, which was my first impulse; not that I really needed to, I knew it well and had studied it carefully. I took a moment to glance over at the glass door, where there was not a trace now of the blurred face; perhaps she was hiding behind the door frame or had left, not wanting to hear any more (if she could hear) or not wanting to be discovered there by her old and current love who had so wholeheartedly rejected her (‘I’m so sorry, my love,’ she had said).

  ‘Why did she tell you after all those years?’

  ‘Oh, the reason is the least of it. Not long after Tomás was born, we had an argument. There was an actress … She wasn’t important then, none of them were, not even the woman I left for Beatriz, and by the time she reappeared briefly in my life, I had carried out her advice to the letter. And one time cannot supplant another … Anyway, I turned very nasty, you’ve seen me do it, I can be very provoking. And that’s what I did to her on that occasion, and she blurted it out without a thought, without considering the possible consequences. We so often gauge things badly, thinking erroneously that the words we say are less harmful than anything we might do with our hands. So much time had passed, so many things and events had intervened, children, films, our marriage, that she saw her earlier trick as mere childish nonsense, at least that’s what she always says in her defence. I see it too as prehistory, something that our life together should have buried ages ago, beneath the weight of the present, the weight of events, of irreversible time. But the worst thing wasn’t that she told me, but that she actually brought me the letter to show me. She went straight to a shelf, took the letter out of a book and handed it to me. There it was, opened, but still in its stamped envelope, the name and address in my handwriting, I’d written “Express” on it in red pen and tremulously entrusted it to the postal service, taken it to the central post office in Cibeles so that it would get there more quickly. I’d sweated blood over writing it, spent a whole sleepless night, weighed every word, trying to be honest and at the same time not to hurt her, or as little as possible. As far as I was concerned, it had got lost in some limbo and never arrived, and yet there it was, it had travelled all the way to America and come back with her in her suitcases or perhaps in her handbag or already tucked inside the book she had perhaps read during that long flight. It had spent twelve years in her grasp and, what’s more, she had kept it. Why else would you keep something like that – when it would make more sense to destroy it, burn it – if not to show it to me one day, in order to gloat, in order to rub it in, not content with having changed the course of my entire life, with directing my life as a director would an actor, imposing herself on my life and occupying it against my express wishes, which she had known from the start. She must have wanted me to find out one day, must have wanted me, one day, to be undeceived, when deception is sometimes the best state to be in if you’re resigned to your lot. And I was pretty much resigned to my lot. I’d certainly forgotten all about passion, which is not that difficult, given what a rare thing it is.’

  I remembered then what he’d said to me on another morning, when he talked to me about their firstborn who had died and how much Van Vechten had done to save him, and how much he’d done for all of them over the years. Those were the words of someone who knows what the balance of probabilities is in people’s lives and who doesn’t consider himself to be an exception: ‘Far too many lives are shaped by de
ceit or error, it’s probably always been like that, so why should I be any different, why shouldn’t my life be the same? That thought gives me some consolation, convinces me that I’m not the only one – on the contrary, I’m just one more on an endless list of those who tried to act correctly, to keep their promises, those who prided themselves on being able to say something that sounds more and more like a piece of antiquated foolishness: “My word on it” …’

  He took a sip of his drink, lit another of my cigarettes, and crossed his legs, so long that the foot of the upper leg easily touched the floor. He felt in one of his trouser pockets, took out his compass and brought needle to eye or eye to needle, as if the latter contained all of past time or all of time as yet unhappened, or as if he had grown tired of remembering and was leaving the rest for me to deduce. However, I asked:

  ‘Why didn’t you separate? Weren’t you tempted to just leave at once?’ I wanted to know why he had opted instead for that long and indissoluble misery. As I’ve mentioned, divorce didn’t exist in Spain then and wouldn’t be made legal until a year later, but from 1940 on, people used to separate discreetly, without making it official or telling anyone, especially if it was the husband who decided to leave. It had always been like that in subjugated Spain, with people finding ways of getting around the laws, or some of them.

  ‘Certainly not.’ He reacted at once, his one eye bright with anger, and looked up from his compass. ‘When she showed me the letter, I understood that the radiant smile with which she had greeted me when I went to meet her at the airport, the smile I’d tried to get actresses to emulate, was not one of mere unknowing happiness, blithely unaware of the risk she had run, but the knowing, triumphantly happy smile of someone who has got her own way and seen her performance crowned with success. She had to pay for that, and leaving her would have been too benign a thing to do. She would have recovered sooner or later, and since she was still fairly young, she might have met another man. However, if I was still around, even if only periodically, that would have been impossible. As has proved to be the case.’