Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  I said goodbye to him at the door of his or Marta’s apartment, I patted his cap, I imagined that it would not be long before Deán arrived, if he hadn’t arrived already, it was more or less the time when he and Luisa had arranged to meet at home, she told me that she had called him at the office from her sister-in-law’s apartment to find out how much longer she was to have the boy. Deán would have said: “Go to the apartment now, if you like, I won’t be long, I should be there around half past seven.”

  “If he hasn’t arrived yet, I’ll have to wait for him,” Luisa said to me as we stood outside the familiar door in Conde de la Cimera. “There’s no one else upstairs.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the café over there, however long it takes,” I said and I gestured vaguely towards the establishment with the Russophile name on the other side of the detached building, on the ground floor, where they would put out chairs and tables in the summer. There was a dry cleaner’s there too, I think, or perhaps it was a stationer’s, or both.

  “And what if he wants a bit of a chat? He might need to talk about that scene with my father, get things off his chest.”

  “I’ll wait, for however long it takes.”

  She was just about to go in with the child when she half turned round – her heel went over slightly, the ground was still wet – and she added thoughtfully: “You do realize that, sooner or later, I’ll have to tell him about you.”

  “But not now,” I said.

  “No, not now. He might want to come down and get you,” she said. “I’ll try not to be too long, I’ll tell him I have things to do at home.”

  “You could tell him the truth, that you’ve got a date at, let’s say, half past eight.” And I looked at my watch.

  She looked at hers and said: “OK, let’s say half past eight.”

  I waited in the café, from there I would not be able to see if Deán arrived nor would he be able to see me waiting – I was at the rear of the building – unless he came in to have a drink before going upstairs or in order to buy cigarettes, it was unlikely. I waited. I waited, feeling the lack now of a good article on demonology and soccer to peruse, then at a quarter to nine, Luisa Téllez appeared, still carrying her bag containing either the top or the skirt, I had waited for her for over an hour, she must have had a long chat with Deán or else he had arrived late. Not for a moment did I think she would fail me, nor that she would turn up with Deán without prior warning: she would tell him about me, but not now; I believed her. When I saw her, I felt suddenly tired, all that wasted tension, the two beers I had drunk, the whole day spent out and about, I hadn’t been home, I hadn’t listened to my answering machine or opened the post, the following morning, I would have to get up early to go to Téllez’s house and continue writing the words that Only You would soon unleash on the public as if they were his, words in which no one believes anyway. I hoped it would not be another long night, there would be time enough for everything, not a night like that spent with Marta Téllez or with the prostitute Victoria and with Celia, my mind has decided in retrospect that they were not the same person: absurd, grim, endless nights. Celia was about to get married again and put her life in order.

  “Right, where shall we go?” asked Luisa. It was already dark. I was still sitting at the bar as if I were Ruibérriz.

  “Shall we go to my place?” I said. At that moment, what I wanted most in the world was to be able to change my shoes and socks. “I’d like to change my shoes,” I said and showed them to her. White stains, like dust or, rather, lime, had appeared on them as they dried, especially on the right one. Her shoes were immaculate, though she had walked just as far as I had, and along the same streets. When I saw a flicker of doubt cross her face, I added: “I’ve got the tape from Marta’s answering machine too, it might be a good idea if you listened to it.”

  “So it was you who took the tape,” she said, touching her lips with two fingers. “I thought perhaps Marta had got rid of it, I didn’t want to go through the rubbish that first night, so I just tied up the bag and put it out, so that Eduardo wouldn’t look through it either when he arrived, besides it was already starting to smell. And what about his phone number and address, did you take that too? Why?”

  “Let’s go somewhere else and I’ll answer all your questions.” But I did answer one of her questions, because I went on to say: “I took the phone number and the address with me without realizing, I was going to copy it out, but I never got round to it, I thought perhaps I should phone him in London, then I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Look, I’ve still got it.” I took out my wallet and showed her the yellow post-it that Marta had not put away in her handbag or lost in the street, nor had it flown out of the open window or been swept up by the streetcleaners. Luisa didn’t bother to look at it, she wasn’t interested in seeing it, she just took it as read, she knew what it said. “Come on, let’s go back to my place for a moment, then, if you like, we can go out to supper.”

  “No, let’s have supper first, I don’t want to go to a stranger’s apartment.”

  “If that’s what you want,” I said, “but don’t forget, it was your father himself who introduced us.” She was on the point of smiling again, but she stopped herself, for the moment, she still needed to be strict and severe.

  We went to Nicolás, a small restaurant where the people know me, so that she could see that I didn’t always behave in that furtive, clandestine manner, the owners call me Víctor and the waiters, Señor Francés, there I have a name as well as a face and there I could, at last, tell her the story, I answered her questions and I told her other things that she didn’t and couldn’t ask me about, that was obviously the only thing I was after, to step out from the shadows and to cease being the holder of a secret, the keeper of a mystery, perhaps I too sometimes have a longing for clarity and probably for harmony too. I told the story, I told it all. And as I told the story, I did not feel as if I were stepping free from the spell I was under and from which I have still not escaped and perhaps never will escape, I felt, instead, as if it were beginning to mingle with another less tenacious, more benign spell. The person telling a story is usually able to explain things well and to explain himself, telling a story is tantamount to persuading someone or making oneself clear or making someone see one’s point of view, that way everything becomes capable of being understood, even the most vile of acts, everything can be forgiven when there is something to forgive, everything can be overlooked or assimilated or even pitied, such and such happened and we have to learn to live with it once we know that it did happen, we have to find a place for it in our consciousness and in our memory where the fact that it happened and that we know about it will not prevent us from going on living. For that reason, what actually happened is never as dreadful as our fears and hypotheses, as our conjectures and imaginings and bad dreams, which we do not, in fact, incorporate into our knowledge, we dismiss them once we have suffered them or considered them for a moment, and that is why they continue to horrify us, unlike actual events which, by their very nature, precisely because they are facts, diminish in importance: since this has happened and I know about it and nothing can be done, we tell ourselves, I must try and understand it and make it mine or have someone else explain it to me, and the best person to do that would be the person directly involved, because he is the one who knows. You can even get into someone’s good graces by telling them a story, that’s the danger. The sheer power of the performance, I suppose: that’s why there are defendants, that’s why there are enemies who are murdered or executed or lynched without being allowed to utter a word – that’s why there are friends whom one casts off, saying: “I do not know you”, or whose letters one refuses to answer – precisely so that they cannot explain and slip back into our good graces again, when they speak, they slander me, so it’s better that they say nothing, even though, in their silence, they do not defend me.

  And then I, in turn, asked questions, not many, just a few things, out of pure curiosity, who came
to the apartment and when, who discovered what I had kept silent all that night, how long the boy was left alone, when and how they managed to locate Deán in London and how long, from the time it happened, when he could have known about it, did he spend in ignorance, how many minutes had he spent in error, how much of his time had become something strange, floating or fictitious like a film you start watching halfway through on the television or in the cinemas of years ago, how much time was claimed by a kind of limbo. And Luisa answered my questions without any trace of suspicion or distrust – by then, she felt little of either, I had explained myself, I had made her see what had happened, I had made myself clear and perhaps even gained her forgiveness if there was anything to be forgiven (leaving the child alone, but it would have been worse had I taken him with me, that’s what I told her: it would have been like kidnapping); and I had doubtless gained her sympathy. The boy had only spent the morning alone, from the moment he woke up until the time the cleaning woman arrived and let herself in, she used to clean the house and prepare a bit of lunch for the boy and for Marta and for the husband when he ate at home, and then she would stay with him while his mother went to her classes at the university – the same university where I studied – either in the morning or the evening, depending on the day. The boy did not seem to have realized that Marta was dead, because you can only recognize something you have known before and he did not know what death was, indeed, he still did not know and he would have had to assume that the unmoving body, indifferent to his calls and pleas, was asleep, he would have had to go back to that sleeping image in order to explain what happened that morning. He must have clambered up on to the double bed, he must have uncovered his mother as best he could, bearing in mind the weight of the bedspread and the sheets, he would have touched her, his hands would have touched her all over, he might perhaps have struck her, because small children do hit out when they get angry (you shouldn’t hold it against them) and Marta would still have looked like Marta. No one knows if he cried or shouted angrily for a long time without anyone hearing him or perhaps choosing not to hear him, the fact is that he must have grown tired and got hungry, he ate the food from the eclectic platter I had improvised for him and he drank the juice, then he sat down to watch television, not the one in the living room that was showing Chimes at Midnight when I left, but the television in the bedroom that was still showing Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, who were still on screen talking in subtitles, he probably preferred to be close to his sleeping mother, still clinging to the hope that she would wake up. That’s how the cleaning lady found him just after midday, lying at the foot of the bed near his inert, dishevelled mother, watching with the sound turned down whatever programme chance offered him at the time, with luck, something for children. For a few moments, the cleaning lady did not know what to do – her hands still raised to her hat secured with the hat pin that she had not had time to remove since arriving at the apartment, still with her overcoat on, her initial thought, like a flash of lightning, was to curse the mess she had been left to clear up, she didn’t know that Deán was in London, for the previous day, Marta had forgotten that he was going to be away until it was too late, she called his office and, unable to speak to Ferrán, she spoke hysterically to his secretary who understood little or nothing of what she said, then she found the sister’s phone number, Luisa’s, who was the first to arrive at Conde de la Cimera, in a taxi, out of breath, ten minutes later, Deán’s colleague or partner at the office arrived, he had come in order to try and find out what was meant by the garbled message left with his secretary by the unfortunate cleaning woman. They looked in vain for the London address and phone number, they called a doctor they knew and while he was examining the corpse and advising them on its removal – I didn’t ask what the cause of death was, because I still don’t feel that it matters and life is unique and fragile, who knows, a cerebral embolism, a myocardial infarction, an aortic aneurysm, a meningococcal infection of the adrenal glands, an overdose of something, an internal haemorrhage caused by being hit by a car a few days before, any illness that kills swiftly, impatiently and unhesitatingly, meeting no resistance on the part of the dead woman who died in my arms as if she were a docile child, Ferrán stayed with her and Luisa took the child to her brother Guillermo’s house – removing him from there as soon as possible, so that he would begin to forget and not ask questions – then to see her father in order to break the news in person, she asked the cleaning lady to wait but not to touch anything or throw anything away, they had to keep looking for Deán’s address in London – the cleaning lady agreed to do so, but she kept grumbling about the time she was wasting idly in the kitchen, in her work clothes, knowing that they would expect her to get down to some hard slog later, outside her normal working hours. Luisa accompanied Téllez to María Fernández Vera’s house as soon as her father was able to get out of the armchair he had fallen or, rather, sunk back into, since he was already sitting down – his face hidden in his mottled hands, seeking refuge – and as soon as he had drunk the whisky that his daughter had poured for him even though it was still morning, as it is in Madrid until lunchtime, at two or three o’clock: she probably tied his shoelaces properly before going out so that he would not stumble any more than he might otherwise do, his legs shaky with the news, he would walk as if he were walking in snow, just managing to extricate one foot, only to plunge back in again at every step, his dainty feet like those of a retired dancer. While Luisa was at her father’s house, María Fernández Vera, who had been sobbing and clutching the child to her ever since they had brought him over, managed to free one hand long enough to call her husband at work, and he and Luisa returned together to Conde de la Cimera (or rather Luisa returned and Guillermo went there for the first time) to find another doctor at the apartment, a forensic one this time – sporting rather inappropriate sideburns, doubtless to compensate for his baldness – who certified that Marta was dead, and to find that Ferrán had disappeared: according to the cleaning lady, he had been very upset and had gone to the Russophile café downstairs to drink a few vermouths or a few beers. Luisa went down to get him and they diligently resumed their double search, Luisa, Guillermo and the cleaning lady were in charge of looking for the bit of paper with Deán’s London address and phone number on it, his colleague was in charge of phoning round, trying to locate the English businessmen with whom Deán was supposed to be getting in touch during his stay there. But Ferrán barely spoke any English, that was Deán’s province, which was why he did all the travelling, he couldn’t get in touch with some of the businessmen and the one he did manage to speak to apparently said that he hadn’t heard from Deán, that he didn’t even know he was in London. They began making other phone calls to a few close friends, they had to hide the manner and circumstances – though not the cause – of her death from as many people as possible, it was best to tell only a few in order to limit the questions asked. Even so, the apartment began filling up with relatives and neighbours and friends and the kind of vulture who loves this kind of situation and who insists on embracing all the family – the young woman with the beige gloves was probably there too, but I didn’t ask about her – a bearded judge arrived and, finally, the corpse was taken away to the morgue. Some people accompanied it, amongst them Guillermo and later María Fernández Vera; when Luisa managed to get back to María’s apartment and pick up her father and the boy and free the latter from María Fernández Vera’s embraces, she dropped Téllez back at his own apartment, having given him a sleeping pill, went back to her own place to collect a few things and then, alone now with Eugenio, who was absolutely exhausted, she returned to Conde de la Cimera for the third time that day at about eleven o’clock at night: she decided to sleep there rather than take the child somewhere else, in the belief that it’s better for those who live in the home of a person who has died to go on sleeping and living there from the very first night, otherwise, later, they often don’t want to go back, they don’t want to go back there ever
; that belief was shared by her more experienced father whom she consulted on the matter. According to the porter, the cleaning lady had left in high dudgeon, no one had told her what she was supposed to do or paid her the least bit of attention – Luisa had merely asked if she could borrow her key – it was hoped that, even so, she would turn up the next day to clean up the mess, that she would be understanding. Luisa put the exhausted child to bed – along with his dummy and his rabbit – his bedroom being the only room that remained intact, no one touched the aeroplanes, although all peered in as they passed by the open door, then she too took a sleeping pill. She tied up the rubbish bag and put it out, or did so subsequently, she searched, hopelessly and only superficially now, for the unfindable address and telephone number, at the same time tidying up a bit and changing the sheets on Marta’s bed, which no one had bothered to do, the cleaning lady lacked initiative. She lay down and then she wondered about me, when she still didn’t know that I was I, she remembered the message Marta had left on her answering machine about twenty-four hours previously (“I’ve got a date with a guy I hardly know, but I quite fancy him, I met him at a cocktail party and we arranged to meet for coffee the next day, he knows all kinds of people, he’s divorced, he writes scripts and things, and he’s coming over for supper; Eduardo’s in London, I don’t quite know what will happen, but something might and I feel a bit nervous about it”); she hadn’t mentioned any name, no name, my name. She thought about her sister, she thought about her sister for a long time as she lay on her sister’s bed, in her sister’s bedroom, unable to understand what had happened, her abrupt dissolution, as if suddenly she could not differentiate between life and death, as if she no longer knew the difference between someone you can’t see now and someone you will never see again, even if you want to (we don’t see anyone all the time, only ourselves, and only then partially, our arms and hands and legs). “I don’t know why I’m alive and she’s dead, I don’t know what either of those words means any more. I no longer have any clear understanding of those two terms.” That’s what she thought, or what I thought for her while she was telling me. She turned on the television, she wouldn’t be able to get to sleep for some time even though she was exhausted by all the toing and froing and by the tragedy and the grief, she didn’t even try, it was still early for her to go to bed, she didn’t even bother getting undressed. Past midnight the telephone rang and it made her jump, it was then that she noticed that the tape in the answering machine was missing or, rather, immediately afterwards, when she saw that the machine was on, but went on ringing instead of operating as normal; she picked it up in a state of some distress, both wanting it to be Deán in London – making a routine call home with no clue as to what had happened – and dreading it: it was Ferrán, he had finally managed to talk to one of the English businessmen, who had told him the name of the lost hotel, the Wilbraham. He didn’t want to phone Deán, he didn’t dare, too many hours had passed for him to break the news to his friend just like that, in cold blood, and it would be in cold blood. “I’ll do it,” Luisa said, “but he’s bound to want to call you afterwards, when he finds out that you arrived immediately after me and saw Marta that way.” “If he wants to talk to me, that’s different,” replied Ferrán, “it’s just that I don’t feel capable of giving him the news now, myself, over the phone. Are you going to tell him that she wasn’t alone?” “I’d rather wait until he’s here to tell him that, but I’m not sure that will be possible, he’ll ask me questions, he’ll want to know all the details, how it happened and why she didn’t call him as soon as she felt ill. Too many other people have realized what happened for us to try and hide it, he’s bound to find out, it’s best that he should know.” And then, without any further delay, Luisa phoned the hotel (I didn’t enquire as to whether she asked for Mr Deán or Mr Dean or Mr Ballesteros), so he already knew when I dialled his number from a public telephone at about one o’clock in the morning, only to hang up without saying a word, after hearing his voice say “Hello”. He had just found out about it from Luisa, and his colleague had confirmed it, and some twenty hours of his time had to be corrected or cancelled or recounted, some twenty hours of his stay in London had to be converted into something strange, floating or fictitious, as will the images I retain of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, if I ever watch that subtitled film all the way through, as will the fragment of Chimes at Midnight that Only the Lonely watched on his sleepless night, when they get hold of the video for him, assuming Miss Anita bothers to do so. Or those scenes of Spitfire pilots and ghosts and kings that I saw on another night two and a half years ago, I still haven’t managed to catch either of the films being shown simultaneously that night, I still don’t know what the films were nor do I understand them, and yet that neither denies nor cancels their existence. Those twenty hours would have become for him the kind of enchantment or dream that must be expunged from our memory, as if we had not really lived through that period of time, as if we had to re-tell the story or re-read a book; they would have come to represent a period of time we find unbearable, a source of despair.