Design of the non

by David Odell

  "You don't strike me as being the sort of person who would have chosen to remain where they were," Luisa said to him.

  "In one way I suppose I didn't, but in another way I did," replied Ranz. His voice had grown quiet again. It was almost as if he were talking to himself now, not hesitantly but meditatively, the words emerged one by one, each word weighed and pondered, the way politicians speak when they make a statement that they hope to see translated and to the letter. It was almost as if he were dictating. (Only now Fm reconstructing what he said from memory, that is, in my own words, though they were first his.) "I carried on, I went on living my life as blithely as possible, and I even got married again for a third time, to Juan's mother, Juana, who never knew anything about all this and was generous enough not to pester me with questions about her sister's death which she witnessed, which was so inexplicable to everyone and which I couldn't explain to her. Perhaps she sensed that if there was anything to know and I hadn't told her, it would be better not to. I loved Juana very much but not the way I loved Teresa. I loved Juana more cautiously, more considerately, less insistently, more thoughtfully, if you can say that, more passively. But even though I did carry on, I know that at the same time I also stopped still on the day Teresa killed herself. On that day, and not on another day that took place before that, it's odd how the things that happen to other people without our direct intervention seem more important, seem so much more important than the things we do or commit ourselves. Well, that's not always the case, only sometimes. It depends, I suppose."

  I lit a cigarette and felt for the ashtray on the bedside table. There it was, on Luisa's side, luckily she still smoked, we both smoked in bed while we talked or read or after making love, before going to sleep. Before going to sleep we always used to open the window even if it was cold, just to air the room for a few moments. We were in agreement on that, in our shared home in which I was now a spy, no doubt with her consent. Perhaps when we opened the window we could be seen from the corner by someone looking up from below.

  "What other day?" asked Luisa.

  Ranz fell silent, for too long for the pause to be natural. I imagined his hands holding a cigarette, the smoke from which he wouldn't inhale, or else folded and in repose, those large hands which, though lined, were still unmarked by age spots, I imagined him looking at Luisa opposite him, with those eyes that were like large drops of whisky or vinegar, regarding her with grief and with fear, those two very similar emotions according to Clerk or Lewis, or perhaps with the foolish smile and the fixed gaze of someone looking up, raising his head like an animal, on hearing the sound of a barrel organ or the swooping whistle of the knife- grinder, and wondering for a moment if the knives in the house are as sharp as they should be or if he should run down to the street with them, making a pause in his labours or his indolence to remember and to think about knife-blades, or perhaps become suddenly absorbed in his own secrets, the secrets he has kept and the secrets he suspects, those he knows about and those he doesn't. And then, when he looks up to listen to the mechanical music or to a repeated whistle that comes advancing down the street, his gaze grows melancholy as it falls upon the portraits of those who are absent.

  "Don't tell me if you don't want to," I heard Luisa say.

  'The other day," said Ranz "the other day was the day on which I killed my first wife in order to be with Teresa."

  "Don't tell me if you don't want to. Don't tell me if you don't want to," I heard Luisa repeating and repeating, and that repetition, when she'd heard what there was to be told, was her civilized way of expressing her shock, mine too, perhaps her regret at having asked in the first place. I wondered if I should shut my door, close the crack so that everything would again become an indistinguishable murmur, an imperceptible whisper, but it was too late, for me too, I'd heard it, we'd heard what Teresa Aguilera had heard on her honeymoon, at the end of her honeymoon, forty years ago, perhaps less. Now Luisa was saying: "Don't tell me, don't tell me," perhaps for my sake, too late, women feel an unalloyed curiosity about things and never imagine or anticipate the nature of the thing about which they know nothing, of what might come to light, of what might happen, they don't know that actions happen singly or that they can be set in train by a single word. The act of telling had already been set in train, it was just a matter of starting, of one word following the other. "Ranz referred to 'my first wife'," I thought, "rather than saying her name, and he said it out of consideration % for Luisa, because if she'd heard that name (Gloria or perhaps Miriam or Nieves or even Berta), she wouldn't have known who he was talking about, not with any certainty at least, nor would I, although I imagine we would have guessed. That means that Ranz is engaged in telling the story, not just talking to himself, as might happen in a while, if he goes on remembering and telling. But what he's said up until now has been said with the consciousness that he's saying it to someone else, to a particular audience, that he's telling a story and being listened to."

  "No, you have to let me tell you now," I heard my father say, "just as I had to tell Teresa. It wasn't like now, but it wasn't that different either, I uttered a few words and with those words I told her all there was to know, but then I had to tell her the rest, I had to tell her more in order to make up for that initial sentence, absurd I know, but don't worry, I won't go into too much detail. I've told you now, told you all there is to know, I've told you in cold blood, then it was in the heat of the moment, you know how it is, you say passionate things and grow still more passionate, you love someone so much and feel so loved that sometimes you don't know what else to do. In certain circumstances, on certain nights, you become a visionary, a savage, you say the most extravagant things to the person you love. Then it's forgotten, it's just a game, but, of course, an actual event can't be forgotten. We were in Toulouse, we went to Paris for our honeymoon then went south. We were in a hotel, on the penultimate night of our trip, we were in bed, and I'd said a lot of things to Teresa, you say all kinds of things on such occasions precisely because you do feel so unthreatened and I'd run out of things to say, yet I still needed to say more, I told her what so many other lovers have said without suffering any very dire consequences, I said: 'I love you so much I would even kill for you.' She laughed and said: 'Don't be silly.' But at that moment I couldn't laugh, it was one of those moments when you love the other person with such utter seriousness, there can be no joking. I didn't hesitate then and I said the words: 'I already have,' I said. 'I already have'." ("I have done the deed," I thought in English, or perhaps I thought, "It was me" or else I thought it in my own language, "I have done the deed and I have committed the act, the act is both deed and exploit, which is why, sooner or later, it has to be told, I have killed for you and that is my exploit and telling you now is my gift to you, and you will love me even more knowing what I have done, even though knowing it stains your heart so white.")

  Ranz fell silent again, and this time the pause seemed to me a rhetorical one, as if once he'd begun to tell the untellable he wanted to control how his tale was told.

  "Seriousness has a lot to answer for," he added after a few seconds, in a very serious voice. "I've avoided it ever since, or at least I've tried to."

  I put out my cigarette and lit another, I looked at my watch without taking in what time it was. I'd travelled and I'd slept and now I was listening as I'd listened to Guillermo and Miriam, I'd been sitting at the foot of the bed then too, or rather as Luisa had listened to them, lying down, pretending to be asleep, without my being sure that she could hear them. Now she was the one who didn't know whether or not I was listening, whether or not I was lying down and asleep.

  "Who was she?" she asked my father. Once she'd got over her shock and any instinctive feeling of regret, she too was prepared to know everything, more or less, once she knew and could not unhear the words ("Listening is the most dangerous thing of all," I thought, "listening means knowing, finding out, knowing everything there is to know, ears don't have lids that can close agains
t the words uttered, they can't hide from what they sense they're about to hear, it's always too late. Now we know and it may well stain our hearts so white, or are our hearts merely pale or fearful or cowardly?")

  "She was a Cuban girl from Havana," said Ranz, "where I'd been posted and where I spent two idle years, Villalobos has a better memory than he thinks ("They've been talking about the professor," I thought, "so my father knows that I already know what Villalobos knows"). But I'd rather not say too much about her, if you don't mind, I've more or less managed to forget what she was like, she's just a shadowy figure now, that whole period is, we weren't married very long, only a year, and I have a tired and weary memory. I married her when I no longer loved her, if I ever did. You do these things out of a sense of responsibility or duty, out of momentary weakness, some marriages are the objects of pacts, agreements, a formal announcement is made, and they thus become logical and irrevocable, and that's why they take place. It was she who obliged me to love her at first, then she wanted to get married and I didn't put up any opposition, her mother, well mothers always want their daughters to marry, or they did then ("Everyone obliges everyone else," I thought "and if they didn't the world would grind to a halt, we'd all just float around in a state of global vacillation and carry on like that indefinitely. All people want to do is to sleep, the thought of future regrets would simply paralyse us"). The wedding took place in the chapel at the embassy where I worked, a Spanish ceremony not a Cuban one, a bad move on my part, but it was what she and her mother wanted, on purpose perhaps, if we'd got married under Cuban law we could have got divorced when I met Teresa, they had divorce there, although I don't think Teresa would have agreed, and I'm sure her mother wouldn't have, she was very religious." Ranz paused to catch his breath and added in his usual mocking voice, the one I was most familiar with: 'The religious mothers and mothers-in-law of the middle classes are the real ties that bind. I suppose I got married in order not to be alone, I don't exempt myself from blame, I didn't know how much longer I was going to stay in Havana, I was wondering whether I should do something in diplomacy, I hadn't even finished my degree then. I abandoned the idea though and never pursued it and instead went back to my art studies, I'd got the job in the embassy through family connections and string-pulling, just to see if I liked it, I was a bit of a n'er-do-well until I met Teresa, or rather until I married Juana." He used the expression "n'er-do-well" and I felt sure that, despite the serious nature of what he was talking about, it would have amused him to use that old-fashioned term, just as it had amused him to call me a "Lothario" on the day of my wedding, during the reception, while Luisa was talking to an old boyfriend whom I dislike and to others - possibly to Custardoy, yes, Custardoy, I hardly saw him at the reception, only from a distance, watching with avid eyes — and I found myself separated from her for a few moments by my father, who led me into a room in order to ask me: "Now what?" And after, a while, to say to me what he really wanted to say: "If you ever do have any secrets or if you already have, don't tell her." Now he was telling his and telling Luisa, perhaps to prevent me from telling her mine (what secrets do I have? perhaps the one about Berta which isn't mine, perhaps about my suspicions, perhaps about Nieves, the former object of my love in the stationer's shop) or so that she would be the one to tell me her secrets (what secrets does she have? I don't know, if I did, they wouldn't be secrets). "Perhaps Ranz is telling us the secret he's kept for all these years, so that we don't tell each other ours," I thought, "past, present and future secrets, or so that we do our best not to have any. Nevertheless, today I have, in fact, returned home in secret, without warning, or rather letting her think that I'd be back tomorrow and now Luisa is keeping her secret from Ranz, the secret that I'm here, lying down or sitting at the foot of the bed, perhaps listening, she must have seen me, if she didn't, how else explain the bedcovers and the blanket and the sheet pulled up to cover me?"

  "Could I have a drop more whisky, do you think?" I heard my father say. So Ranz was drinking whisky, which is the colour of his eyes when the light shines on them, except now they'll be in shadow. I heard the sound of ice falling into one glass and then another and then the sound of the whisky and then the water. When it's mixed with water, the colour isn't quite so similar. Perhaps the olives from the fridge were on the low table in our living room, it was one of the first pieces of furniture we bought together, and one of the few that hadn't changed position in all that time, not since our wedding, barely a year ago now. I suddenly felt hungry, I would have been glad of those olives, especially if they were stuffed olives. My father added: "Then we'll go out to supper, eh? Regardless of what I tell you, just as we planned. Besides, there isn't much more to tell."

  "Of course we'll go out to supper," Luisa said. "I always honour my engagements." That was true, she always has and she still does. She might take a while to say yes, but once she's decided she doesn't go back on her word. She's very good like that. "What happened next?" she said, which is the question children always ask, even when the story's over.

  I could hear the click of Ranz's lighter (the ear becomes accustomed to hearing everything from wherever it happens to be), so before, he probably had his hands folded and in repose.

  "I happened to meet Teresa and Juana with their Cuban mother, who'd spent almost her whole life in Spain. They were visiting Havana to sort out something to do with legacies and sales, one of their mother's aunts had died, I'm amazed that Villalobos should have remembered so much, I'd never have thought it (I thought: "Luisa must have said to him 'Villalobos has told us this and this, is there any truth in it?'"). We loved each other almost from the start, I was married, we saw each other a few times in secret, but it was all very sad, it made her sad, she couldn't see any possible solution, and the fact that she couldn't made me sad too, sadder than the certain fact that there was no solution. We didn't see each other often, but often enough, in the afternoons when the two sisters used to go out for a walk together and then go their separate ways, I don't know what Juana got up to and Juana didn't know what Teresa got up to, Teresa and I spent the afternoons in a hotel room and when darkness fell (the night told us what time it was), she'd meet up with Juana again and the two of them would go back and have supper with their mother. The last time we met, we were like two people saying goodbye forever, it was absurd, we were young, we weren't ill, there was no war. She was going back to Spain the next day, after a stay of three months in the house in Havana belonging to the great-aunt who'd died. I told her that I wasn't going to stay there forever, that I'd return to Madrid at once, that we had to go on seeing each other. She didn't want that, she preferred to use that enforced separation in order to forget about it all, about me, about my first wife, whom she did in fact know slightly. She liked her, I remember that. I insisted, I talked of separating from my wife. 'We still wouldn't be able to marry,' she said, 'it's just not possible.' She was as conventional as the times she lived in, even though it was only forty years ago, there were thousands of stories like ours, except that most people are all talk and no action. Well, some aren't ("The worst thing is that he won't do anything," I thought, that's what Luisa had said about Guillermo one night, in a rather peevish voice, her chest damp with sweat, her skin slightly shiny, the two of us in bed). And then she said the words which I heard and which later meant she couldn't live with herself ("Translatable, ownerless words that are passed from voice to voice, from language to language and from century to century," I thought, "always the same, always provoking people to the same act for as long as there have been people and languages and ears in the world to hear them. But the person who says them cannot live with themselves if they see those words acted upon"). I remember that we were both fully clothed, lying on the rented bed with our shoes on ("Perhaps her feet were dirty," I thought, "since nobody was going to see them"), we didn't get undressed that afternoon, neither of us felt like it. 'Our one possibility is if she should die,' she said to me, 'and we can't rely on that.' I remember that when s
he said it, she placed her hand on my shoulder and her mouth close to my ear. She didn't whisper it to me, she didn't mean to make it sound like an insinuation, placing her hand on my shoulder and her lips close to my ear was a way of consoling or calming me, I'm sure of that, I've often thought about the way she spoke those words, although there was a time when I took them to mean something quite different. It was an expression of renunciation, not of inducement, they were the words of someone withdrawing, giving up. Afterwards she kissed me, very gently. She was withdrawing from the field." ("The tongue in the ear is always the most persuasive of kisses," I thought, "the tongue that probes and disarms, whispers and kisses, that almost obliges").

  Ranz broke off again, his voice had lost all trace of irony or mockery now, it was almost unrecognizable, but there was nothing saw-like about it. "Then, when I told her what I'd done and I repeated those words to her, she didn't even remember saying them at first, then when she did remember and understand, she claimed she'd said them lightly, without thinking, giving expression to a thought that was in both our minds, it was obvious, a bald statement of fact with no hidden meaning, just as if you were to say to me now: 'It's time we were thinking about supper.' I didn't pay much attention to her words at the time either, it wasn't until much later that I went over them in my mind, when Teresa had left and I missed her so much I could hardly bear it, our one possibility is if she should die, and we can't rely on that. It was my wretched brain that insisted on reading more into it. ("Don't think too much about things, father," I thought, "don't think about things with so brainsickly a brain. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures, father. These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad"). She only remembered what she'd said when I reminded her of it, and that caused her even more torment. If only I'd said nothing to her ("She hears his confession of that act or deed or exploit and what makes her an accomplice is not that she instigated it, but that she knew about the deed and its accomplishment. She knows, she knows what happened and therein lies her guilt, but she was still not the person who committed the crime, however much she may regret it or claim to regret it, staining her hands with the blood of the dead is a game, a pretence, a false alliance she makes with the person who did the killing, because you cannot kill someone twice, and the deed is done; 'I have done the deed' and there is never any doubt about who that T is. She is guilty only of having heard the words, which is unavoidable, and although the law doesn't exonerate the person who spoke, the person who speaks, that person knows that, in fact, she's done nothing, even if she did oblige the other person with her tongue at their ear, her chest pressed against their back, her troubled breathing, her hand on their shoulder, with her incomprehensible but persuasive whisper"). Nothing."