I had to bite my lip in order not to join in, even though I found my description as a woman somewhat troubling; but some telltale sound nevertheless escaped my lips.
'Yes, I remember Vesey the bursar,' I managed to say, once I could contain myself. 'In fact, I knew him by sight during my time in Oxford. When he was still Arthur, of course, not Guinevere. I must ask Peter what's become of him or her. He'll be getting on a bit now, and men age differently from women. After a certain age, you get the upper hand again.' And when Luisa's laughter had subsided, I returned to my question: 'So you do know about Botox. Is it true what I was told, about the injections?' This was all very familiar to me: it was what normally happened, she would stray off the point when she was talking to me and intersperse her own jokes. But unlike me or Wheeler, and Tupra too, she did not usually, of her own accord, return to the point.
'Yes, I've heard a few women talking about it. When it first appeared and it wasn't yet on offer here at beauty salons or beauty clinics or whatever you call them, there even used to be parties apparently, where you could have it injected.'
'Parties?' Now I was the one to repeat a word, the one that had most disconcerted me.
'Yes, I heard Maria Olmo talking about it once. It's something that ladies with a bit of money went in for; they would get together for tea or whatever, and a practicante, a visiting nurse, paid for by all the participants, would come in and inject each woman as required. I mean, those who wanted to have it done, of course, and who had contributed, I suppose, to buying the stuff, which would be the expensive part. No, it was probably the hostess who paid the nurse.' And I thought to myself: 'She's not that much younger than me, which is why she, too, uses the word "practicante". ‘But it would have to be someone who specialised in Botox injections,' or so I imagined; I didn't want to interrupt her to ask. 'It was the in thing at the time, people said the results were spectacular, although I don't know if they thought it was quite such a big deal afterwards. I believe lots of salons do it now, but to start with, about a year or so ago, they had to import it specially from somewhere or other, from abroad. Now I assume everyone has it done individually.'
'From America,' I murmured, thinking of Heydrich and Colonel Spooner of the SOE, who organised the attempt on the former's life. 'They'd import it from America.'
'No, actually, I think it was from England, or else Germany.' There was no reason why she should know what I was thinking, she hadn't been there when Wheeler had spoken to me about Lidice and about spatial hatred, the hatred of place suffered by Madrid and by London during those years of bombardment and blockade; and Madrid still suffers from it now, since all its governors, without fail, hate it or have hated it. Now she was never in the same place I was. Before, she often had been; that's why we both knew the story about the transsexual bursar.
'Why is that? Wasn't it illegal, like melatonin? It was melatonin, wasn't it, that was banned in Europe? Didn't they ban it or something?' 'Not as far as I know. It must just have taken a while to arrive. As soon as people find out about something new, they get all impatient and then, when they do finally get hold of the stuff, they pretend they're way ahead of the crowd. You know the type, the idiots who get in a state if they don't fly to New York at least once a year and then insist on telling you all about it, I mean there are more and more of these pretentious hicks; frankly, I'm up to here with stories about New York. And, of course, if they find out that over there or in London, people are shooting up some new, rejuvenating product as if it was heroin, they immediately rush out and buy some needles, just in case.'
'But do they really have injections in their forehead and cheekbones and chin and temples?' I found this in itself shocking, the needle being stuck into the face and the liquid slowly penetrating, all the more so - and this was what really horrified me - if Botox was what I feared it to be. So my tone of voice must have been one of scandalised amazement because I noticed that Luisa's response deliberately brought it all back into perspective, although not with the intention of lecturing me, that wasn't her style.
'Yes, they do, and in worse places too, I understand. In their eyelids, in the bags under their eyes, in their neck, and doubtless in their lips too and, of course, above their lips, in those little vertical lines that are the bugbear of quite a few of my women friends, that and their neck. It seems pretty horrific to me as well, but I'm probably more used to all these implants and inoculations than you are, as well as various other forms of butchery. I know more and more women who go for periodic sessions of nip and tuck, just as if they were going to the hairdresser's. And, you know, quite a lot of men go in for it too, and not just vain bachelors and depressed divorcés, I know of more than one husband as well. If, that is, I can believe what I'm told, which, of course, one never should.' She said this so casually that it made me think: 'That's good, it doesn't even occur to her to include me among the depressed divorcés, I don't inspire her pity, at least not yet, and, besides, I don't like to play the poor sap as so many boyfriends and husbands do. Also, we're still not divorced. But that will come, I suppose, when she wants it.' I felt that such an initiative was unlikely to come from me. But you never know. I did not, however, share these thoughts with her. 'I mean look at that clown Berlusconi, he must be entirely made of latex by now, have you seen him, he looks like a papier-mâché doll. Now there's someone who should perhaps consider changing sex, to see if it improved him, or rehumanised him and turned him into a grandmother.' And she laughed again, as I knew she would when she used the word caricato or 'clown': we knew each other far too well for us ever to stop. The danger now was that we might set off along that tangent and start imagining other politicians transformed into portly matrons; and so I led her back to the subject: 'And what exactly is Botox? Do you know?' 'Someone told me at the time, but I didn't really pay much attention. It's a toxin, I think, or an antitoxin, I can't remember to be honest.'
'Botulinum toxin? Could that be it? As in botulism. It was used as a poison in the past, you know.' And I told her about my intuited etymology.
This apparently failed to shake her. Through her various female acquaintances, or from the occasional insecure girlfriend, she really must have grown used to the most bloody and venomous remedies against ageing.
'I can't remember. Possibly. It wouldn't surprise me, half of these cosmetic surgeons are completely irresponsible, if not criminal. Maria told me about one man who had helped her lose an enormous amount of weight. They happened to go into a pharmacy together one day and he claimed to have left his prescription pad at home and the only way he could think of convincing the pharmacist he really was a doctor was to run back to his car and bring her the stethoscope he happened to have lying on the back seat. Can you imagine: "Look, I've got a stethoscope, I'm a doctor," and he waved it around in front of her. Maria deduced from this that, despite the fact that he ran a clinic, he wasn't a member of a professional association or certified or anything. She was horrified. Which is why now I can believe anything.'
'Could you find out for me if it is botulinum toxin?' 'I suppose so. Maria is sure to know, or else Isabel Una will, she's involved in things like that too, I can ask them. But why this interest of yours in Botox? Are you thinking of turning yourself into a Berlusconi or is that careless girlfriend of yours considering Botox? You don't need it, you haven't got a single wrinkle, it's not fair really.' She hadn't forgotten my first question about the drop of blood, she was still thinking that someone might have stained my floor, some chance or not-so-chance visitor. The prospect of Luisa carrying out a bit of research for me cheered my innocent heart. It was the first time in ages that we had shared something in common, something new (not the children or money or practical matters), even if it was a trifle. And it would mean that we would phone each other again soon, that she would phone me or I her, to share the information she had gathered. There were matters pending between us, and that, now, was a novelty.
'Thank you, you're very youthful-looking yourself,' I replied with eq
ual parts of humour and gallantry, and added: 'No, it's just curiosity. Someone mentioned it to me, and I'd like to know if it's the same substance that was used in 1942 to kill a Nazi bigwig Wheeler told me about. Do you know what effect it has? The process I mean.'
'I think it paralyses the muscles in the injected area and so smoothes the skin out and plumps it up, don't ask me why or how. Apparently the people who have the injections look a bit expressionless afterwards, although I haven't noticed that with Maria or with Isabel, who are the two women I know who've tried it. Although, of course, I may just not have seen them when they were under its first effects, I think it lasts for a few months and then after a break they have it done again, but the breaks get shorter and shorter. Although now that I come to; think of it, they did look a bit stiff and somehow tauter, more compact . . . It's odd this obsession,' and she sounded more thoughtful now, 'it's not just prevalent among rich people, nor, as I said, only among women. We'll all be at it soon. You've no idea the things people do to themselves nowadays, the putting in and taking out that goes on, the injecting and slicing, and all the other tortures they submit themselves to. It would make your hair stand on end if you knew the details. But you wait, we'll all end up the same way, and those of us who won't join in will be told: "How can you bear to go around looking like that," they'll say, "with all that flab and those folds of skin and those bags under your eyes; with those lines and that fat and that sagging flesh, how can you stand to go around looking so neglected?" Some people compare it to going to the dentist. "After all, we go to the dentist when we have a chipped tooth, and because it looks unsightly we have it capped. Well, all these other things are just the same." As if growing old were a defect or a vice we tolerated, the result of negligence on our part. As if you could choose and were guilty of allowing yourself to grow old. Or, of course, as if you were poor, with no means to conceal the fact. That's what looking old will mean eventually, that you're a pariah. It will be another division, another difference, as if there weren't enough already. It will be equivalent to walking around in threadbare clothes. I hope we don't live to see it.'
And then she fell silent, as if she were suddenly considering her own case. I had never noticed in her the slightest concern or temptation in that regard: I used to hear her talk about the female acquaintances and friends who were most preoccupied with the passing of time, she would laugh indulgently at their extravagances and their experiments, she didn't really give it much importance, or else thought it a good thing if her friends were then happy with their supposedly improved appearance, even if it were only borrowed or false or bought, or were, sometimes, downright monstrous. She had never been like that.
But Luisa was no longer so very young and she had never before mentioned my lack of wrinkles — on a par with Tupra's firm skin; a family legacy — as a comparative reproach, not even in the joking tone she had used now. 'Perhaps she's starting to worry, under the effect or influence of everyone else,' I thought. 'She certainly has no reason to, not judging by the last time I saw her; although my criterion would be of little use to her if she's invented reasons (no one is safe from that) or someone has instilled them into her (no one is safe from that either), she thinks I look at her with too kindly an eye.'
'You're not considering resorting to such things yourself, are you?' I asked. 'You certainly don't need to.'
She laughed for a moment, thus emerging from her brief brooding silence.
'I might not need them today, but tomorrow, rather than the day after tomorrow, I certainly will,' she said. 'Not that I'll be able to afford it, I'll be one of the pariahs, one of the threadbare ones.' And she laughed again, it had amused her to say this. 'Even though you are sending us an awful lot of money since you've been in that job of yours that you keep so quiet about,' she added. 'I'd like to thank you, Deza; we're living in the lap of luxury here — or very nearly. There's really no need to send us quite so much.' It was as if she wanted to apologise for accepting it; that is why she called me Deza and not Jaime, she wasn't trying to worm anything out of me nor was she angry with me.
'You thank me every time I send a bank transfer. I only send you what's fair, after all, you've got the kids to take care of, and, besides, I'm earning good money now and don't have that many expenses. I'll only send less if my expenses go up.'
'Yes, but you could be putting some aside. The kids have been asking when you'll be coming to see them.'
'Not in the immediate future I shouldn't think. I've got a trip with my boss coming up, but I don't know exactly when yet, it might be in a week's time or in a month or later, so I'm tied up until then. Perhaps I'll make it over after that, on a bank holiday weekend.' That is what public holidays are called in England, they usually fall on a Monday, apart from Christmas and New Year. 'Anyway, I've still got enough to put some aside. And I'm buying some really good antiquarian books, better and more expensive than ever.'
'Well, hang on to that job. Who knows, perhaps you'll tell me about it one day, what you're doing, I mean.' I didn't think she was really interested, it was just a way of being friendly. She had shown no interest in it in other conversations. Or was it just that those conversations had always been much shorter?
'There's not much to tell,' I said and here I lied, especially considering what had happened two nights previously. 'Diplomatic and commercial translation is pretty routine stuff, although you do get to meet some interesting people now and then. But, as you know, I won't hang on to the job if I get bored with it.'
She waited a couple of seconds before replying: 'Yes, I know. And, as you know, that's fine with me too.'
I saw her smile when she said this, with the wide-awake eyes of my mind. She was in another city, in another country. But I could see her very clearly from London.
I thanked her and said goodnight, we said goodbye, I put the phone down. But not so my thoughts. I glanced up, got out of my chair, went over to the sash window and opened it to air the room, I'd been smoking while I was talking. It wasn't raining, nor was it cold, or so it seemed to me at first, and it could have been an early-spring night, except that it wasn't very late, not even for England, and yet it had got dark some hours before, outside I could see the pale darkness of the square, barely lit by those white street-lamps that imitate the always thrifty light of the moon, and a little further off, the lights of the elegant hotel and of the houses that shelter families or men and women on their own, each enclosed in their own protective yellow rectangle, as was I for anyone watching me. I also thought I could hear faint music, so faint that any movement I made covered or smothered it, and so I stood quite still — another cigarette in my hand - and tried in vain to hear and identify it, but it was so tenuous that I couldn't even make out what kind of music it was or even its rhythm. Then, as I usually did, I looked across beyond the trees and the statue to the other side of the square, in search of my carefree, dancing neighbour.
There he was, as always, and the night must, indeed, have been warm, because he, too, had flung open two of his large windows, two of the four, and it was likely that the music was coming from his long room, bare of furniture, like a dance floor cleared of all obstacles; it wasn't late and so he must, for once, have dispensed with his headphones or with the cordless contraption he used, and this time the tune would not be playing in his head alone - as well as in the deductive ears of my mind, as I watched him dance - but throughout the house and outside too, until it died like a shadow or a fraying thread where I stood at my window. He wasn't alone, but with the two partners I knew from before, the two women I had occasionally seen, usually separately I seemed to remember: the white woman in tight trousers who had not, as far as I knew, stayed the night (she had got on a bicycle and pedalled briskly off into the dark), and the black or mulatto woman with the full, swirly skirt who appeared not to leave afterwards. Both of them were now wearing rather short, tight skirts (about mid-thigh-length, and possibly not very comfortable to dance in), and none of the three was as yet dancing, not
properly, it was more as if they were deciding or agreeing on the exact steps they were going to take, doubtless in unison with the music that was just failing to reach me, and which I would, therefore, never recognise.
'He's brought them together,' I thought, 'perhaps he's going professional and wants to rehearse with them what in America they call a "routine", that is, movements and steps that are not improvised but agreed and coordinated, that country and this era are always spoiling words, everything is always being usurped, always becoming more imprecise, more oblique and fictitious and often incomprehensible, words and customs and reactions; but it may be that only one of them is his lover and there is, therefore, nothing odd about the three of them getting together to dance, or maybe neither of them is; if, on the other hand, both of them are, that would be a bit strange, I suppose, despite the artificial liberalism of these times in which, according to many people, nothing is ever very important, not even violent actions, which are so easily forgiven or regarding which there is never any shortage of imbeciles equipped with an imbecilic - or should I say monkish? - moral authority and ready to delve with infinite patience into the utterly unmysterious causes of that violence and which, naturally, they understand, as if they were above such things (they may pretend to be secular, but the old question that priests used to ask is always on the tip of their tongue, a permanent temptation: "Why are you like this, my son?"), until someone gives them a smack in the mouth and knocks them off their ivory tower and then they no longer understand; for example, I know that I could be violent in certain circumstances, apart from in self-defence, that is, but I know that it would be for the basest of reasons about which there would be no mystery at all, out of frustration or envy or revenge or in response to my own petty fears, and so it is best simply to avoid those circumstances: I couldn't meet up with a boyfriend or lover of Luisa's for some unthinkable activity involving all three of us, not at the moment, but in a few years' time who knows, when not a centimetre of my skin still smarts and if he turns out to be a really great guy, which I doubt; nor could she, I think, with a girlfriend or lover of mine, who will, at some point, inevitably exist, and given that she and I are neither that nor anything else at the moment, what, I wonder, will we be or what are we already, perhaps just a past, each other's past and one so long and enduring that it seemed to us it would never become the past. She can't be so very distracted these days — although she did sound happy at the beginning and also at the end of our conversation - if she has time to worry about how she will look in the immediate future,' I thought. When speaking of using those poisonous brews and bloodstained bits of plastic, she had said: 'I might not need them today, but tomorrow, rather than the day after tomorrow, I certainly will,' and that is not so very different from what Flavia Manoia must think when she wakes each morning from her last anguished and already diurnal dream, at least according to Reresby or Tupra, who described her to me beforehand, as he did her husband, thus skilfully determining my subsequent perception of them both: 'Last night, I was still all right, but today I'm another day older,' thinks Mrs Manoia when she opens her eyes, bare of make-up, and then, for a few minutes, unable to stand the thought of submitting herself to another test, she wants simply to close them again. How hard it is for me to imagine Luisa with such fears, I am used to her being young.
Dance and Dream Page 19
