The Infatuations

by Javier Marías

  The person must have been downstairs in the street, because I didn’t hear the apartment door open, just Díaz-Varela’s muffled voice answering the entryphone, I didn’t understand the words, only the tone, half-surprised and half-irritated, then resigned and reluctantly acquiescent, like someone unwillingly agreeing to something he finds really annoying or that he doesn’t want to get involved in. After a few seconds – or possibly a couple of minutes – the voice of the new arrival sounded louder and clearer, an angry male voice, Díaz-Varela had waited with the front door open so that his visitor wouldn’t have to ring that bell too, or perhaps he was hoping to deal with him right there and then, without even inviting him in.

  ‘Fancy having your mobile turned off,’ the man said reproachfully. ‘That’s why I’ve had to come traipsing all the way over here.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. Like I said, I’m not alone. I’ve got a bird with me, she’s sleeping now, but you wouldn’t want her to wake up and hear us. Besides, she knows the wife. Anyway, do you really expect me to have my mobile on all the time just in case you need to call me? Besides, why would you call me, we haven’t spoken in ages. This had better be important. Wait a moment.’

  That was enough to jerk me completely awake. All it takes is for someone not to want us to hear something for us to do all we can to find out what that something is, not realizing that sometimes people conceal things from us for our own good, so as not to disappoint or involve us, so that life doesn’t seem as bad as it usually does. Díaz-Varela had tried to lower his voice when he answered, but had failed because he was feeling irritated or perhaps apprehensive, and I heard his words quite clearly. His final words, ‘Wait a moment’, made me think that he was going to come into the bedroom to check that I was still asleep, and so I lay very still and with my eyes tight shut, even though I was now completely awake. And that was what happened, I heard him come in and take four or five steps until he was level with my head on the pillow, from where he studied me for a few seconds, like someone carrying out an examination; the steps he took were cautious, but quite normal, as if he were alone in the room. When he left, however, his steps were far more wary; it seemed to me that, having made sure I was still sleeping deeply, he didn’t want to risk waking me. I heard him close the door very gently and, once outside, give the handle a tug just to be quite certain that there wasn’t the slightest crack through which his conversation might sneak in. The bedroom was next to the living room. There was no click, however, which meant the door was not properly closed. ‘A bird,’ I thought, half-amused, half-wounded; not ‘a friend’, not ‘a date’, certainly not ‘a girlfriend’. I was possibly not yet the first or the second and would never be the third, not even in the broadest, vaguest sense of that all-purpose word. He could have just said ‘a woman’. Or perhaps his companion was one of that large band of men with whom you can only use a particular vocabulary, their own, rather than the vocabulary you would normally use, the sort of man for whom you have to adapt your language so that they don’t feel alarmed or uncomfortable or inadequate. I didn’t take it personally at all, for most of the ‘blokes’ of this world, I would be just that, ‘a bird’.

  Half-clothed as I was (I had kept my skirt on throughout), I immediately leapt off the bed, crept over to the door and put my ear to it. That way I caught only a murmur and the occasional word, for both men were too agitated to be able to keep their voices permanently lowered, however much they wanted to and however hard they tried. I decided to widen the crack that Díaz-Varela’s gentle tug from the outside had failed to eliminate; fortunately, no tell-tale creak betrayed me; and if they did become aware of my indiscreet presence, I could always say that I had heard voices and wanted to confirm that there was, indeed, a visitor, in which case I would have stayed in the bedroom, thus saving Díaz-Varela the bother of having to introduce me or explain my presence. Not that our sporadic encounters were clandestine, at least there had been no agreement between us to that effect, but I sensed that he probably hadn’t told anyone else about them, perhaps because I hadn’t either. Or maybe it was because we would both have doubtless concealed them from the same person, Luisa, although why I should do that, I have no idea, apart from a vague, incongruous respect for the plans that he was silently hatching, and for the idea that, if he succeeded in his plans, he and Luisa might one day become husband and wife. The minimal crack that barely deserved the name (the wood was slightly swollen, which was why the door didn’t quite close) allowed me to distinguish who was speaking when and, sometimes, to hear entire sentences, at others only fragments or almost nothing, depending on whether the men succeeded in talking in whispers, as was their intention. Contrary to their intention, however, their voices would immediately rise a notch, for they were clearly excited about something, if not somewhat alarmed or even frightened. If Díaz-Varela were to find me spying on them later (he might come and look in on me again, just in case), the more time passed, the more awkward it would be for me, although I could always say, by way of an excuse, that I had assumed he had closed the door simply in order not to wake me and not because he was talking to his visitor about some secret matter. He wouldn’t believe me, of course, but I would keep my cool, at least on the surface, unless he confronted me sharply or furiously, regardless of the consequences, and accused me of lying. And he would be right, too, because the truth is, I knew from the beginning that his conversation was not for my ears, not just for reasons of discretion, but because, as he had said, I knew ‘the wife’, and he used the Spanish word ‘mujer’ in the sense not of ‘woman’ but of ‘wife’, in this case, someone else’s wife, and for the moment, that someone could only be Desvern.

  ‘All right, what’s up, what’s so damn urgent?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard the response from the other man, who had a resonant voice and very clear, correct diction, not one of those cod Madrid accents – people say that we madrileños separate and emphasize every syllable, and yet I’ve never heard anyone from my city speak like that, well, only in antiquated films and plays, or as a joke – but he barely elided his words, and so each was easily distinguishable when he wasn’t speaking in the whisper to which he aspired and of which his speech or tone of voice seemed incapable.

  ‘Apparently the guy’s started to blab. He’s not as silent as he was.’

  ‘Who? Canella?’ I heard Díaz-Varela’s question very clearly too, and I heard that name as someone might hear a terrifying curse – I remembered that name, I had read it on the Internet, in fact, I remembered the man’s whole name, Luis Felipe Vázquez Canella, as if it were a catchy title or a line of poetry – or as someone might hear sentence being pronounced on herself or on the person she most loves, telling herself that this is simply impossible, that this can’t be happening, she can’t be hearing what she’s hearing and what’s happened can’t have happened, as when our lover announces in that universal phrase, which is the same in all languages, ‘We need to talk, María,’ even addressing us by our name, which he barely uses otherwise, not even when his flattering mouth is breathing hard against our neck, and then goes on to condemn us: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment, I can’t understand it myself’ or ‘I’ve met someone else’ or ‘You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit strange and distant lately’, all of which are preludes to misfortune. Or like someone hearing the doctor utter the name of an illness that has nothing to do with us, an illness that afflicts other people but not us, and yet, ridiculous though it may seem, this time, he’s saying that we have that illness, how can that be, there must be some mistake or else he didn’t say what I think he said, that sort of thing doesn’t happen to me, it just doesn’t, I’ve never been unlucky like that, an
d I’m not going to start being unlucky now.

  I was startled too, filled by a momentary panic, and I almost stood back from the door so as not to hear any more, so that I could then persuade myself later on that I’d misheard or hadn’t actually heard anything. But once we’ve started, we always go on listening, the words fall or float out on to the air and no one can stop them. I wished they would just lower their voices, so that it wasn’t up to me to listen or not, I wished their talk would become muffled or entirely indistinct, and then I could have my doubts, and not have to trust my own ears.

  ‘Of course, who do you think?’ retorted the other man slightly scornfully and impatiently, as if now that he had given the alarm, he had the upper hand, the bearer of news always does, until he blurts out what he has to tell and hands it over and is left with nothing, and the person listening no longer needs him. The bearer’s dominant position is short-lived and lasts only for as long as he can still announce that he knows something, but has as yet said nothing.

  ‘And what’s he saying? Not that he can say much. I mean, what can he say? What can the wretch say? What does it matter what a madman says?’ Díaz-Varela kept nervously repeating the same thing over and over, to himself really, as if he were trying to exorcize a curse.

  The visitor gabbled his response – he could hold it in no longer – and in doing so, his voice rose and fell erratically. I caught only fragments of his response, but of these quite a few.

  ‘… talking about the calls he got, the voice telling him things,’ he said; ‘… about the man in leather, meaning me,’ he said. ‘It’s no joke … it’s hardly a serious matter … but I’m going to have to mothball them, which is a shame because I really like them, I’ve been wearing them for years now … They didn’t find a mobile phone on him, I took care of that … so they’ll think it’s all in his imagination … They’re not going to believe him, I mean, the man’s a nutter … The danger would be if it was to occur to someone … not spontaneously, but with a bit of nudging … It’s unlikely, because if there’s one thing the world isn’t short of, it’s lazy sods … It’s been a while now … It’s what we expected, the fact that he refused to speak initially was a real bonus, it’s just that things now are as we thought they would be from the start … We had relaxed a bit, that’s all … At the time, in the heat of the moment … worse, but more credible … Anyway, I wanted you to know straight away, because it’s a change, and not a minor one either, although it doesn’t affect us at the moment and I don’t think it will … But I thought it best you should know.’

  ‘No, you’re right, Ruibérriz, it isn’t a minor change,’ I heard Díaz-Varela say, and I heard that unusual surname clearly, Díaz-Varela being too upset to moderate his voice, incapable now of whispering. ‘He may be a nutter, but he’s saying that someone persuaded him, in person and via telephone calls, or else put the idea in his head. He’s sharing out the blame, or broadening it, and you’re the next link and I’m right behind you, damn it. What if they show him a photo of you and he picks you out. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? You’re on their files, aren’t you? And, as you yourself say, you’ve been wearing those leather coats all your life, that’s how people recognize you, that and your T-shirts in summer, which, by the way, you’re far too old for. At first, you told me that you wouldn’t go, that you wouldn’t be seen, that if he needed a bit of a push, you’d send a third party to feed him a little more poison and show him a face he could trust. You said there would always be at least two steps between you and him, not one, that the third party wouldn’t even know of my existence. Now it turns out there’s only you between me and him, and he could easily identify you. You’ve got a record, haven’t you? Go on, tell me the truth, this is no time to pull punches, I’d rather know where I stand.’

  There was a silence, perhaps that man Ruibérriz was wondering whether or not to tell the truth, as Díaz-Varela had asked him to, and if he was, that meant he did have a record and his photo would be on file. I was afraid that the pause might have been sparked by some noise I had made without realizing it, my foot on a creaking floorboard perhaps, I didn’t think so, but fear will not allow us to discount anything, not even something that doesn’t exist. I imagined the two of them standing motionless, holding their breath for a moment, suspiciously pricking up their ears, looking out of the corner of their eye at the bedroom, making a gesture with one hand, a gesture meaning ‘Hang on, she’s woken up.’ And suddenly I felt afraid of them, those two men frightened me; I tried to believe that Javier on his own wouldn’t frighten me: I had just been to bed with him, I had embraced and kissed him with all the love I dared show him, that is, with a great deal of repressed, disguised love, I let it show in tiny details that he probably wouldn’t even notice, the last thing I wanted was to frighten him, to scare him off prematurely, to drive him away – although that time would come, I was sure of it. Now I noticed that any feelings of repressed love had vanished – love, in any of its forms, is incompatible with fear; or else those feelings were deferred until a better moment, that of denial and forgetting, but I knew that neither of those things was possible. And so I stepped away from the door in case he should come back into the room to see if I was still asleep, and to check that I had not been an ear-witness to their conversation. I lay down on the bed, adopted what I thought was a convincing posture and waited, I couldn’t hear anything now, I missed Ruibérriz’s reply, which he must have given sooner or later. I stayed there for one minute, two, then three, but no one came, nothing happened, and so I screwed up my courage and got off the bed, went over to the false crack in the door, still half-undressed as he had left me, still with my skirt on. The temptation to listen is irresistible, even if we realize that it will do us no good. Especially when the process of knowing has already begun.

  The voices were less audible now, just a murmur, as if they had calmed down after the initial shock. Perhaps before that, they had both been standing up and now had sat down for a moment; people talk more quietly when they’re sitting down.

  ‘So what do you think we should do?’ I heard Díaz-Varela say at last. He wanted to bring the discussion to a close.

  ‘We don’t have to do anything,’ answered Ruibérriz, raising his voice, perhaps because he was giving the orders now and felt, momentarily, in charge again. It sounded to me like he was summing up, he would leave soon, perhaps he had already picked up his coat and draped it over his arm, always assuming he had taken it off, for his was an untimely, lightning visit, Díaz-Varela probably hadn’t even offered him a glass of water. ‘This information doesn’t point to anyone, it doesn’t concern us, neither you nor I has anything to do with it, any interference from me would be counter-productive. Just forget you know about it. Nothing is going to change, nothing has changed. If there’s any other news, I’ll find out, but there’s no reason why there should be. They’ll probably make a note of his claim, file it away and do nothing. How are they going to investigate what he says if there’s no trace of that mobile phone, if it doesn’t exist? Canella never even knew the number, apparently he’s given them four or five different numbers, he’s not sure what it was, which is perfectly normal, since they’re all invented or dreamed up by him. He was given the phone but never told the number, that’s what we agreed and that’s what happened. So what’s new? The guy claims he heard voices talking about his daughters and telling him who was to blame. Like lots of other nutcases. There’s nothing so very odd about him hearing those voices through a mobile phone rather than in his head or coming down from the sky, they’ll just assume he’s a loony showing off. Even losers, even madmen, know about the latest trends, and these days, anyone who doesn’t have a mobile phon
e is an idiot. Just let it go. Don’t get too alarmed about it, because that’s not going to help either.’

  ‘And what about the man in the leather coat? You yourself were alarmed about that, Ruibérriz. That’s why you came running to tell me. Now you’re saying there’s no need to worry. So which is it to be?’

  ‘To be honest, it did freak me out a bit. There we were, happily convinced that he wouldn’t make a statement or say a word. It caught me by surprise, I just wasn’t expecting it. But telling you about it now has made me realize that it’ll be fine. And if he did get a couple of visits from a man in a leather coat, so what? Practically speaking, it’s tantamount to him saying he’s been visited by the Virgin of Fatima. Like I said, I’m only wanted in Mexico, and the warrant there has probably lapsed by now, not that I’m planning to fly over and check: a youthful misdemeanour, it happened years ago. And I didn’t wear these leather coats then.’ Ruibérriz knew he was in the wrong, that he should never have allowed himself to be seen by the gorrilla. Perhaps that was why he was trying to play down the importance of the news he himself had brought.

  ‘Well, you’d better get rid of the coats you’ve got, starting with that one. Burn it or shred it. We don’t want some smart-arse linking you with what happened. You may not have a record here, but you’re still known to a few cops. Let’s just hope the murder squad doesn’t swap information with other crime squads, although that seems unlikely, no one in Spain seems to swap information with anyone else. Each department keeps pretty much to itself, so I’d be surprised if they did.’ Díaz-Varela was trying to be optimistic now and to reassure himself. They sounded like normal people, as much the bumbling amateur as I would have been, people who are unaccustomed to crime or not fully convinced that they’ve committed, or from what I could gather, commissioned one.