Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  I switched on my answering machine and heard two anodyne, everyday messages, one from the woman who, until recently, had been my wife and the other from an awful actor I sometimes do work for (I’m a screenwriter for the movies, but I almost always end up writing television series instead; most of these never even get to the production stage, so it’s a fairly pointless task, but television people are a profligate lot and they pay me for the scripts anyway). And that was when I remembered Marta’s tape. If I had forgotten about it until then, it was because I hadn’t made off with it out of indiscretion or curiosity or simply because I wanted to listen to it, I had taken it so that the man, whose imperative, condescending voice I had heard leaving a message that night, might come under suspicion. Suspicion of what? Not of anything particularly serious, not even of having slept with her at the time of her death or just before or just afterwards, I hadn’t, nobody had, as far as I knew. The tape was the same size as the ones I use, which meant that I could listen to it. I removed mine and replaced it with hers, I rewound it back to the beginning and replayed it. The first thing I heard was that man’s voice again (“Oh, for Christ’s sake, pick up the bloody phone”), that tormenting, electric-shaver voice (“Are you stupid or something, why don’t you pick up the phone?”), so sure of how far he could go with Marta (“Honestly, you’re bloody useless you are”), the irritated clicks of the tongue. After the beep there were other messages, all of them pre-dating that last one and Marta would therefore already have heard them, the first was incomplete, the initial section erased by that man’s words: “… so,” a woman’s voice began saying, “make sure you call me tomorrow and tell me all about it. The guy sounds rather nice, but you can never tell. Frankly, I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve. Anyway, talk to you later, and good luck.” Then came a man’s voice, that of an older man, ironic, self-mocking: “Marta,” he said, “tell Eduardo that it’s common to say ‘we’ll get back to you’, he ought to say ‘we’ll return your call’, not that he’s ever exactly been a man of letters, we’ve always known that, but then he’s not an old pedant like myself either. Anyway, give me a call, I’ve got a bit of good news to tell you. Don’t get too excited, it’s nothing dramatic, but in a precarious existence like mine, a little bit of excitement goes a long way, povero me.” He didn’t say goodbye or say who he was, as if it were unnecessary, he could be someone’s father, Deán’s or Marta’s, someone who needs an excuse to phone up even his nearest and dearest, an older man with little to do, fearful of appearing insistent, someone who had perhaps spent some time in Italy as a young man or was a fan of the opera. Then I heard: “Marta, it’s Ferrán. I know Eduardo left for England today, but I’ve just realized that he hasn’t left me a phone number or address or anything, I can’t think why, I told him to be sure to let me have them, the way things are here, we can’t afford not to be able to locate him. Perhaps you’ve got them, or else, if you speak to him, can you tell him to call me at once, at the office or at home. It’s fairly urgent. Thanks.” That was a neutral voice with a barely noticeable Catalan accent, a work colleague with whom continuous contact has become confused with friendship and trust, possibly non-existent. I didn’t remember Marta giving Deán this message when she spoke to him during supper, but then I wasn’t paying that much attention. This was followed by another incomplete message, just the end, which meant that it was fairly old, that is, not from that day or at least not from the part of the day during which Marta had been absent and a girlfriend or sister had phoned her, as well as her father or father-in-law and a colleague of her husband’s. “So we’ll do whatever you say, whatever you want. You decide,” a woman’s voice was saying, that was the end of the message, it seemed to me that it could be the same woman from before, the one who was so amazed at Marta’s daring behaviour, it was hard to tell, even harder to know if she was saying it to Deán or to Marta, “You decide.” And after that, there was yet another incomplete message, belonging therefore to an even older batch, in which a different man’s voice was speaking in tones of feigned neutrality, that is, serious, polite, almost indifferent, as if wanting to pass himself off as a professional call, when it was almost certainly of a personal or even romantic nature, a voice that closed by saying: “… if that doesn’t suit you, we could see each other on Monday or Tuesday. Otherwise, we’d have to leave it until next week; from Wednesday onwards, I’m up to my eyes. But anyway, there’s no rush, get back to me and tell me what would be best for you, OK? See you.” That was my voice, that was me some days ago, when I was still not sure whether Marta Téllez and I would be going out to supper and seeing each other for a third time, after our first conversation, standing up at a cocktail party on the evening we were introduced, and after the long talk we had over coffee a few days later, our intentions already far from honourable, any courtship looks pathetic when seen from outside or in retrospect, a mutually agreed manipulation, a laborious compliance with formalities, the social gift-wrapping around something that is pure instinct. The person speaking did not perhaps know then that this was something he was both seeking and wanting, but listening to him now, hearing his affected intonation, his barely suppressed excitement – that of someone who knows that his message might be heard by a husband, someone who, besides, considers dissembling to be a virtue – it was clear that I was seeking it and wanting it, what hypocrisy, what pretence, every word a lie, there’s no doubt in my mind that the owner of that voice was in a great hurry, and it wasn’t true that from Wednesday onwards I was “up to my eyes”, how could I have used such an expression, I would never normally say that, it was the kind of thing a phoney would come out with, and I never usually say “see you” either, I simply say “goodbye”, why had I said that, in order not to appear insistent when, in fact, I was, sometimes we weigh each word according to our secret intentions; and that “OK?”, spoken in such unctuous, counterfeit tones, the blatant flimflam of someone wanting to seduce not only by flattery, but by appearing respectful and deferential too. It startled me to recognize not only my own voice, but also those few, transparent phrases, it frightened me to remember the day when I left that message, a message to which, later on, she replied, when, in reality, everything was already utterly predictable apart from what actually happened in the end or, rather, in the middle, everything else already both had and hadn’t been consciously foreseen. It suddenly occurred to me that I must have given my name and surname at the beginning, I always do, in the part of the message that had been recorded over, and then I’d gone on to mention Monday or Tuesday, so Deán could have known about our date from the first, perhaps that was why Marta hadn’t mentioned it to him on the phone in my presence, perhaps it was something he already knew about, not something hidden nor unspoken, and, in that case, my precautions would have been as vain as they were ineffectual, it was quite possible that, any day now, Deán would seek me out and find me and would ask me point-blank what had happened, how come his wife had died when she was with me, perhaps the only unpremeditated, hidden thing was the fact that the supper and the rendezvous had taken place in his own home. I rewound the tape and listened to my voice again, I found the sound of it repellent, it was Wednesday today and I wasn’t up to my eyes at all, I was alone at home faffing about with dictionaries and a tape, how ridiculous. But I didn’t have much time to be indignant with myself, because on the next message, I immediately recognized the electric-shaver voice again, except that on this occasion it was addressed to Deán and not to Marta and said: “Hi, Eduardo, it’s me. Listen, don’t wait for me to start supper, I’m going to be a bit late. A problem has come up which has rather complicated matters, I’ll tell you both all about it later. Anyway, I shouldn’t get there much after eleven, and please tell Ines. I can’t get hold of her and she’ll be going straight to the restaurant, just so that she doesn’t worry. Anyway, could one of you save me a slice of ham? See you later.” That man always had some tale to tell, or, which comes to the same thing, some titbit, postponed, probably some stupid inci
dent that had happened that night – nights before, some incident that had “complicated matters” – on which two couples and perhaps other people too had arranged to have supper in a restaurant that served excellent ham. His voice was still despotic, although this time he didn’t lard his speech with mild swearwords and insults, his was an irritating voice, he had said “It’s me” as if he were so instantly recognizable that it wasn’t necessary to clarify who that “me” was, which was doubtless the case at the apartment he was phoning – the house of a friend and the house of a lover, he was addressing Deán, but also Marta, “I’ll tell you both”, “Could one of you save me a bit of ham?” – but you should never take it for granted that your voice will be as unmistakable to others as it is to yourself. The beep sounded and, before the tape continued on in silence, traversing virgin territory – the messages at the beginning of the tape cutting each other off or cancelling each other out – a final voice emerged, a voice that said one thing only, the voice of someone crying; it was a child’s voice, or that of a curiously infantilized woman, but then everyone becomes like a child when they cry, it’s unavoidable, to the point where you can’t even articulate or breathe, when the crying is strident, continuous and undisguised, beyond words or even thoughts, because it does not just replace them, it stops or excludes them – it impedes them – and that voice, whose distressing message, since it lacked a beginning, obviously predated those in the previous batch – it pre-dated my mellifluous tones and that of the tyrant with the electric-shaver voice – was saying intermittently in the midst of the weeping, or incorporated into the weeping as if it were merely one of its many modalities: “Please … please … please …,” and it uttered those words in an oddly dehumanized way, it was not so much a genuine plea intended to have some effect as a conjuration, ritual, superstitious words, empty of meaning, spoken either to overcome or to fend off a threat. Again I was startled, I was on the point of stopping the tape, fearful lest that immodest, almost malign weeping might wake my neighbours and prompt them to come over in order to find out what brutal act I was committing: that hadn’t happened with Marta, no neighbour had come to investigate, but then she had not cried out, she had not complained or pleaded, nor had I committed any brutal act. There was no need to stop the machine, however, once the minute allowed for each phone call was over – again it wasn’t the full minute – there was another beep and the tape ran on, as I said before, silent now; the voice crying childishly had used up its time without saying anything more and they had not rung again, perhaps knowing that the person the message was intended for, the cause of her torment, must be there, at home, by the telephone, listening to her crying and yet refusing to pick up the receiver, and that she would succeed only in continuing to record her grief that was now being listened to by a stranger.

  The following night, I went back to the kiosk where they sell the early editions of the newspapers and waited there for a few minutes around midnight, then I hurriedly bought one bearing the date of the day that was officially beginning at that moment, especially in England, although, according to the clocks, it’s always an hour earlier there. I didn’t dare read it standing up in the midst of so many people, so I went into the café again and, this time, ordered a whisky before looking up the list of the recently deceased: although the list is alphabetical, I had sufficient self-control not to go straight to the end of the list and look at the Ts, but to start at the beginning and thus, for a few seconds more, prolong the agony and the uncertainty, that is, the hope that Marta’s name would appear and would not appear; I wanted both things simultaneously, or, if you prefer, my desires were completely split: if her name appeared, I would know that she had been found and I would feel both relieved and cast down; if her name did not appear, I would be even more worried and would once again start to fiddle with the bit of paper bearing Deán’s London number, or return to prowling around the block of flats, but also, for a few seconds, I would be able to savour the unbelievable possibility that it had all been a ghastly misunderstanding, a false alarm, an act of inconceivable haste on my part, she had merely lost consciousness or even gone into a coma, but was still alive. I looked at the surnames and their now abandoned ages: Almendros, 66, Aragón, 88, Armas, 48, Arrese, 64, Blanco, 77, Borlaff, 41, Casaldáliga, 93, but I couldn’t keep reading them one by one and I jumped to L: Luengo, 59, Magallanes, 93, Marcelo, 48, Martín, 43, Medina, 28, Monte, 46, Morel, 61, a lot of fairly young people had died yesterday, Francisco Pérez Martínez, 59, but Marta had died the day before, in fact, she did not belong with these more premature dead but with the older dead of the previous day. There she was, Téllez, 33, Marta Téllez Angulo, aged 33, and that was more or less the age she looked, the penultimate on the list, after her, there was only Alberto Viana Torres, 55. Still terrified, I glanced quickly back at the Ds, in case there was a Deán, 1, Eugenio Deán Téllez, who was not yet two according to his mother, Coya, 50, Delgado, 81, no, he wasn’t there, he couldn’t be and wasn’t, I had left him alive and asleep, left food for him on a plate.

  I went back to the news kiosk and bought another paper, the most funeral-conscious of all the Madrid papers, I returned to my table and perused its abundance of death notices, and there was Marta’s, giving an appearance of order to her disorderly death, it was a sober notice, beneath the black cross came her full name, the place and the exact date of her death (verified by the doctor’s pressing, exploratory hand), then R.I.P., and after that, the usual list of shocked survivors, regretful and prayerful, I have appeared in some myself, “Her husband, Eduardo Deán Ballesteros; her son, Eugenio Deán Téllez; her father, Excelentísimo Señor Don Juan Téllez Orati; her brother and sister, Luisa and Guillermo; her sister-in-law María Fernández Vera; and other family members …” The names of a sister-in-law and a sister appeared, but not the name of a friend, and there was a father with an Italian mother, his was doubtless the voice I had heard on the tape, he of the precarious and pedantic existence who had a bit of good news to tell her, but why the Excelentísimo, it seemed rather presumptuous to include that in his daughter’s death notice, a daughter who had recently died in such an unexpected manner, a shameful death, a horrible and, perhaps, ridiculous death. He must have written it himself, he was the kind of father who would know how one should word such things and who, besides, had nothing else to do, an old-fashioned sort of man, he had used the word “husband” rather than such mealymouthed terms as “beloved spouse”, although it did seem overly pompous to give the full name of a child who was barely two years old – it was probably his first appearance in print, as it was for so many of the dead – as if he were a respectable gentleman, Master Eugenio. At least there was no mention of Marta having received the Holy Sacrament, which is what they usually say about everyone, I would have been able to testify to the falsehood of that. “The burial will take place today, the 19th, at 11 o’clock, in the Cemetery of Nuestra Señora de la Almudena.” And some days later, there would be a funeral service in a church whose name meant nothing to me, I’ve never known the names of churches in my own city; I tore out the page and folded it up in order to cut out that particular death notice, it joined the other bit of paper that was now, no doubt, useless, the one giving the number of the Wilbraham Hotel in London.

  I reached the cemetery a little early, on a morning of cold, indifferent sunshine, so as not to miss the arrival of the funeral cortege or get lost somewhere in the cemetery. Some cemetery employees – not all of them gravediggers – showed me where the burial was to take place, I walked over there and waited for a few moments, reading the gravestones and epitaphs round about, rehearsing the act I would have to put on as soon as the Deán and Téllez families arrived with the coffin and their flowers and their black clothes. I was wearing dark glasses as has become customary on visits to cemeteries, not so much to conceal one’s tears as to conceal their absence, when they are absent. I noticed that a gravestone had already been drawn aside – the hole or tomb or abyss open to view – as if in re
adiness to receive a new tenant, they only disturb the dead in order to bring them another dead person whom they surely loved in life, although there is no way of knowing if that gladdens them, seeing again someone they knew when they were younger, or if it saddens them even more to find that person reduced to the same state as themselves and to know that there is one less person in the world to remember them. I looked at the inscription and learned that there lay Marta’s mother, Laura Angulo Hernández, and also her Italian grandmother, Bruna Orati Parenzan, possibly Venetian, and I learned too that Marta had another sister who had died years before – even before her mother and grandmother had died – when she was five years old, according to the dates inscribed there, Gloria Téllez Angulo, born two years before Marta, so the two girls would have known each other, although Marta would barely remember her older sister, just as her son, Eugenio, would barely remember her as he grew older. I realized that a death notice and a gravestone had taught me far more about Marta or her family than anything she had told me during our three preparatory meetings. Preparatory for what, for a modest party (Irish sirloin steak and wine, one guest) and for her farewell to the world, before my very eyes. In that tomb of women inaugurated by a little girl thirty-one years before, Marta was to occupy the fourth place, preempting her father, perhaps, who would have bought the plot when that first daughter died and would have assumed that he would be the next to lie next to his mother, wife and daughter, those tombs are usually made for four, but not always, sometimes they hold five, and, in that case, there would still be room for him, and when he arrived, he would know who all the inhabitants were. Marta’s name had not yet been inscribed on the gravestone, that comes after the burial.