by David Odell
Javier Marias
A HEART SO WHITE
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
First published with the title Corazôn tan bianco by Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, 1992
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by The Harvill Press, 84 Thornhill Road, London NI 1RD
This paperback edition first published in 1997
This edition has been translated with the financial assistance of the Spanish Direcciôn General del Libro y Bibliotecas, Ministerio de Cultura
Copyright ©Javier Marias, 1992
English translation copyright © The Harvill Press, 1995
Javier Marias asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
ISBN 1 86046 339 8
For Julia Altares despite Julia Altares
and for Lola Manera of Havana, in memoriam
My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
Shakespeare, Macbeth
A HEART SO WHITE
I DID NOT WANT to know but I have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn't a girl anymore and hadn't long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father's gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with other members of the family and three guests. When they heard the shot, some five minutes after the girl had left the table, her father didn't get up at once, but stayed there for a few seconds, paralysed, his mouth still full of food, not daring to chew or swallow, far less to spit the food out on to his plate; and when he finally did get up and run to the bathroom, those who followed him noticed that when he discovered the blood-spattered body of his daughter and clutched his head in his hands, he kept passing the mouthful of meat from one cheek to the other, still not knowing what to do with it. He was carrying his napkin in one hand and he didn't let go of it until, after a few moments, he noticed the bra that had been flung into the bidet and he covered it with the one piece of cloth that he had to hand or rather in his hand and which his lips had sullied, as if he were more ashamed of the sight of her underwear than of her fallen, half-naked body with which, until only a short time before, the article of underwear had been in contact: the same body that had been sitting at the table, that had walked down the corridor, that had stood there. Before that, with an automatic gesture, the father had turned off the tap in the basin, the cold tap, which had been turned full on. His daughter must have been crying when she stood before the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and felt for her heart with the gun, because, as she lay stretched out on the cold floor of the huge bathroom, her eyes were still full of tears, tears no one had noticed during lunch and that could not possibly have welled up once she'd fallen to the floor dead. Contrary to her custom and contrary to the general custom, she hadn't bolted the door, which made her father think (but only briefly and almost without thinking it, as he finally managed to swallow) that perhaps his daughter, while she was crying, had been expecting, wanting someone to open the door and to stop her doing what she'd done, not by force, but by their mere presence, by looking at her naked, living body or by placing a hand on her shoulder. But no one else (apart from her this time, and because she was no longer a little girl) went to the bathroom during lunch. The breast that hadn't taken the full impact of the blast was clearly visible, maternal and white and still firm, and everyone instinctively looked at that breast, more than anything in order to avoid looking at the other, which no longer existed or was now nothing but blood. It had been many years since her father had seen that breast, not since its transformation, not since it began to be maternal, and for that reason, he felt not only frightened but troubled too. The other girl, her sister, who had seen the changes wrought by adolescence and possibly later too, was the first to touch her, with a towel (her own pale blue towel, which was the one she usually picked up), with which she began to wipe the tears from her sister's face, tears mingled with sweat and water, because before the tap had been turned off, the jet of water had been splashing against the basin and drops had fallen on to her sister's face, her white breast, her crumpled skirt, as she lay on the floor. She also made hasty attempts to staunch the blood as if that might make her sister better, but the towel became immediately drenched and useless, it too became tainted with blood. Instead of leaving it to soak up more blood and to cover her sister's chest, she withdrew it when she saw how red the towel had become (it was her own towel after all) and left it draped over the edge of the bath and it hung there dripping. She kept talking, but all she could say, over and over, was her sister's name. One of the guests couldn't help glancing at himself in the mirror, from a distance, and quickly smoothing his hair, it was just a moment, but time enough for him to notice that the mirror's surface was also splashed with blood and. water (but not with sweat) as was anything reflected in it, including his own face looking back at him. He was standing on the threshold, like the other two guests, not daring to go in, as if despite the abandonment of all social niceties, they considered that only members of the family had the right to do so. The three guests merely peered round the door, leaning forwards slightly the way adults do when they speak to children, not going any further out of distaste or respect, possibly out of distaste, despite the fact that one of them (the one who'd looked at himself in the mirror) was a doctor and the normal thing would have been for him to step confidently forward and examine the girl's body or, at the very least, to kneel down and place two fingers on the pulse in her neck. He didn't do so, not even when the father, who was growing ever paler and more distressed, turned to him and, pointing to his daughter's body, said "Doctor" in an imploring but utterly unemphatic tone, immediately turning his back on him again, without waiting to see if the doctor would respond to his appeal. He turned his back not only on him and on the others but also on his daughters, the one still alive and the one he still couldn't bring himself to believe was dead and, with his elbows resting on the edge of the sink and his forehead cupped in his hands, he began to vomit up everything he'd eaten including the piece of meat he'd just swallowed whole without even chewing it. His son, the girls' brother, who was considerably younger than the two daughters, went over to him, but all he could do to help was to seize the tails of his father's jacket, as if to hold him down and keep him steady as he retched, but to those watching it seemed more as if he were seeking help from his father at a time when the latter couldn't give it to him. Someone could be heard whistling quietly. The boy from the shop - who sometimes didn't deliver their order until lunchtime and who, when the shot was first heard, had been busily unpacking the boxes he'd brought - also stuck his head round the door, still whistling, the way boys often do as they walk along, but he stopped at once (he was the same age as the youngest son) when he saw the pair of low-heeled shoes cast aside or just half-off at the heel, the skirt hitched up and stained with blood - her thighs stained too - for from where he was standing that was all he could see of the fallen daughter. As he could neither ask what had happened nor push his way past, and since no one took any notice of him and he had no way of finding out whether or not there were any empties to be taken back, he resumed his whistling (this time to dispel his fear or to lessen the shock) and went back into the kitchen, assuming that sooner or later the maid would reappear, the one who normally gave him his orders and who was neither where she was supposed to be nor with the others in the corridor, unlike the cook, who, being an associate member of the family, had one foot in the bathroom and one foot out and was wiping her hands on her apron or perhaps making the sign of the cross. The maid who, at the precise moment when the shot rang out, had been setting down on the marble table in the scullery
the empty dishes she'd just brought through and had thus confused the noise of the shot with the clatter she herself was making, had since been arranging on another dish, with enormous care but little skill - the errand boy meanwhile was making just as much noise unpacking his boxes - the ice-cream cake she'd been told to buy that morning because there would be guests for lunch; and once the cake was ready and duly arrayed on the plate, and when she judged that the people in the dining room would have finished their second course, she'd carried it through and placed it on the table on which, much to her bewilderment, there were still bits of meat on the plates and knives and forks and napkins scattered randomly about the tablecloth, and not a single guest (there was only one absolutely clean plate, as if one of them, the eldest daughter, had eaten more quickly than the others and had even wiped her plate clean, or rather hadn't even served herself with any meat). She realized then that, as usual, she'd made the mistake of taking in the dessert before she'd cleared the plates away and laid new ones, but she didn't dare collect the dirty ones and pile them up in case the absent guests hadn't finished with them and would want to resume their eating (perhaps she should have brought in some fruit as well). Since she had orders not to wander about the house during mealtimes and to restrict herself to running between the kitchen and the dining room so as not to bother or distract anyone, she didn't dare join in the murmured conversation of the group gathered round the bathroom door, why they were there she still didn't know, and so she stood and waited, her hands behind her back and her back against the sideboard, looking anxiously at the cake she'd just left in the centre of the abandoned table and wondering if, given the heat, she shouldn't instead return it immediately to the fridge. She sang quietly to herself, picked up a fallen salt cellar and poured wine into an empty glass, the glass belonging to the doctor's wife, who tended to drink quickly. After a few minutes watching while the cake began to soften, and still unable to make a decision, she heard the front doorbell go, and since one of her duties was to answer the door, she adjusted her cap, straightened her apron, checked that her stockings weren't twisted and went out into the corridor. She glanced quickly to her left, at the group whose murmured comments and exclamations she'd listened to intrigued, but she didn't pause or approach them and walked off to the right, as was her duty. When she opened the door she was met by a fading trail of laughter and by a strong smell of cologne (the landing was in darkness) which emanated either from the eldest son of the family or from the new brother-in-law, who'd recently returned from his honeymoon, for the two had arrived together, perhaps having met in the street or downstairs at the street door (they'd doubtless come for coffee, although no one had made any yet). Infected by their gaiety, the maid almost laughed too, but stood to one side to let them pass and just had time to see how the expressions on their faces changed at once and how they rushed down the corridor towards the crowd standing round the bathroom door. The husband, the brother-in-law, ran behind, his face terribly pale, one hand on the brother's shoulder, as if trying to prevent him from seeing what he might see, or as if to hold on to him. This time the maid didn't go back into the dining room, she followed them, quickening her step as if by assimilation, and when she reached the bathroom door, she again noticed, even more strongly this time, the smell of good cologne emanating from one or both of the gentlemen, as if a bottle of it had been smashed or as if one of them had suddenly begun to sweat and the smell was thus accentuated. She stayed there, without going in, along with the cook and the guests, and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that the boy from the shop was walking, still whistling, from the kitchen into the dining room, doubtless looking for her; but she was too frightened to call out to him or to scold him or to pay him any attention at all. The boy, who'd already seen quite enough, no doubt hung about for a good while in the dining room and then left without saying goodbye or taking with him the empty bottles, because hours later, when the melted cake was finally cleared away, wrapped in paper and thrown into the wastebin, a large part of it was found to be missing, although none of the guests had eaten any, and the wine glass belonging to the doctor's wife was once again empty. Everyone said how unlucky for Ranz, the brother-in-law, the husband, my father, being widowed for a second time.
THAT WAS a long time ago, before I was born, before there was the remotest chance of my being born, indeed it was only after that that I could be born. Now I myself am married and not even a year has passed since I returned from my honeymoon with Luisa, my wife, whom I've known for only twenty-two months, a hasty marriage, well, fairly hasty considering the amount of thought everyone always says should go into such a decision, even in these precipitate times so different from those other times, even though those other times were not so very long ago (only a single, incomplete or perhaps already half- lived life ago, my life, for example, or Luisa's), when everything was considered and deliberate and everything had its weight, even foolish things, though not death, and certainly not death by suicide, like the death of the person who would have been and yet never could have been my Aunt Teresa and was only ever Teresa Aguilera, whom I've gradually come to know about, though never from her younger sister, my mother, who was almost entirely silent during my childhood and my adolescence and who subsequently died and was thus silent forever, but from more distant, incidental people and, finally, from Ranz, who was the husband of both sisters as well as of a foreign woman to whom I'm not related.
The truth is that if, in recent times, I've wanted to know about what happened all those years ago, it's precisely because of my marriage (in fact, I did not want to know, but I have since come to know about it). Ever since I contracted matrimony (the verb has fallen into disuse, but is both highly graphic and useful) I've been filled by all kinds of presentiments of disaster, rather as you are when you contract an illness, the sort of illness from which you never know with any certainty when you will recover. The expression "to change one's marital status or state", which is normally used quite casually and so means very little, is the one that most adequately describes my case and, contrary to the general custom, I give it great weight. Just as an illness changes our state to such an extent that it obliges us sometimes to stop everything and to keep to our beds for an unforeseeable number of days and to see the world only from our pillow, my marriage disrupted my habits and even my beliefs and, more importantly still, my view of the world. Perhaps that was because it came rather late, I was thirty-four years old when I contracted marriage.
The principal and the most common problem at the beginning of any fairly conventional marriage is that, regardless of how fragile an institution marriage is nowadays and regardless of the facilities for disengagement available to the contracting parties, you traditionally experience an unpleasant sense of having arrived and, therefore, of having reached an end, or rather (since the days continue implacably to pass and there is no end), that the time has come to devote yourself to something else. I know that this feeling is both pernicious and erroneous and that giving in to it or accepting it is the reason why so many promising marriages collapse no sooner have they begun. I know that what you should do is to overcome that initial feeling and, far from devoting yourself to something else, you should devote yourself to the marriage itself, as if confronted by the most important structure and task of your life, even if you're tempted to believe that the task has already been completed and the structure built. I know all that but, nevertheless, when I got married, even during the honeymoon itself (we went to Miami, New Orleans and Mexico, then on to Havana), I experienced two unpleasant feelings, and I still wonder if the second was and is just a fantasy, invented or dreamt up to mitigate or combat the first. That first feeling of unease is the one I've already mentioned, the one which—judging by what one hears, by the kind of jokes made at the expense of those getting married and by the many gloomy proverbs about it in my own language — must be common to all newlyweds (especially men) at the beginning of something which, incomprehensibly, you feel and experience as if it wer
e an ending. This unease is summed up in a particularly terrifying phrase: "Now what?" and I have no idea what other people do to overcome it.
As with an illness, this "change of state" is unpredictable, it disrupts everything, or rather prevents things from going on as they did before: it means, for example, that after going out to supper or to the cinema, we can no longer go our separate ways, each to his or her own home, I can no longer drive up in my car or in a taxi to Luisa's door and drop her off and then, once I've done so, drive off alone to my own apartment along the half- empty, hosed-down streets, still thinking about her and about the future. Now that we're married, when we leave the cinema our steps head off in the same direction (the echoes out of time with each other, because now there are four feet walking along), but not because I've chosen to accompany her or not even because I usually do so and it seems the correct and polite thing to do, but because now our feet never hesitate outside on the damp pavement, they don't deliberate or change their mind, there's no room for regret or even choice: now there's no doubt but that we're going to the same place, whether we want to or not this particular night, or perhaps it was only last night that I didn't want to.
On our honeymoon, when this change of state came about (and to say that it "came about" makes it sound too gradual, for it's a violent change, one that barely gives you time to catch your breath), I realized that I found it very difficult to think about her and utterly impossible to think about the future, which is one of the greatest conceivable pleasures known to anyone, if not the daily salvation of us all; to allow oneself to think vague thoughts, to let one's thoughts drift over what will or might happen, to wonder without too much exactitude or intensity what will become of us tomorrow or in five years' time, to wonder about things we cannot foresee. On my honeymoon it was as if the future had disappeared and there was no abstract future at all, which is the only future that matters because the present can neither taint it nor assimilate it. That change, then, means that nothing can continue as before, especially if, as usually happens, the change has been preceded and foreshadowed by a joint effort, whose main visible manifestation is the unnatural process of creating a home for you both, a home that had no prior existence for either of you, but which must, unnaturally, be inaugurated by you both. In that particular custom or practice, which is, I believe, widespread, lies the proof that, when they contract matrimony, the contracting parties are, in fact, demanding of each other an act of mutual suppression or obliteration, the suppression of what each of them was and of what each of them fell in love with or perhaps simply perceived as being potentially advantageous, since falling in love doesn't always happen before marriage, sometimes it happens afterwards and sometimes it doesn't happen at all. It can't. The obliteration of each of the parties, of the person they knew, spent time with and loved, involves the disappearance of their respective homes, or is somehow symbolized by that. So two people who had been used to living their own lives and being in their own homes, used to waking up alone and often going to bed alone, find themselves suddenly artificially joined in their sleeping and waking, and in their steps along the half-empty streets heading in one direction only or going up together in the lift, no longer with one as host and the other as guest, no longer with one going to pick up the other or the latter coming down to meet the former, waiting below in the car or in a taxi, instead neither has any choice, they have a few rooms and a lift and a front door that once belonged to neither of them but which now belong to both, with one pillow for which they will be obliged to battle in their sleep and from which, like the invalid, they will also end up seeing the world.
