As I lay unable to sleep, I wondered if I should speak to Luisa, who no longer had breakfast in the same café as me, she must have given up the habit so as not to increase her grief or else to help her forget more easily, or perhaps she went there later, when I had already gone to work (maybe it was her husband who had had to get up early and she had only gone with him in order to postpone their parting). I wondered if it wasn’t my duty to warn her, to let her know who he was, that friend of hers, that possibly unnoticed suitor, her constant protector; but I lacked any proof, and she might think me mad or spiteful, vengeful and unhinged, it’s awkward going to anyone with such a sinister, murky tale, the more bizarre and complex the story, the harder it is to believe; this, in part, is what those who commit atrocities rely on, that the sheer magnitude of the atrocity will make it hard for people to credit. But it wasn’t so much that as something far stranger, because it’s so rare: the majority of people would be glad to tell, most take delight in pointing the finger in secret, in accusing and denouncing, in grassing on friends, neighbours, superiors and bosses, to the police, to the authorities, uncovering and revealing those guilty of something or other, even if only in their imaginations; in destroying the lives of those other people if they can, or at least making things awkward for them, doing their best to create outcasts, rejects, discards, leaving casualties all around and excluding them from their society, as if it were a comfort to be able to say after each victim or each piece of silver: ‘He’s been broken off, detached from the bunch, he has fallen, and I have not.’ Among these people there are a few – we grow fewer by the day – who feel, on the contrary, an indescribable aversion to taking on the role of betrayer. And we take that antipathy so far that it is not always easy for us to overcome it even when we should – for our own good or for that of others. There is something repugnant to us about dialling a number and saying, without giving our name: ‘I’ve seen a terrorist the police are after, his photo has been in the newspapers and he’s just gone through that door.’ Well, we would probably do so in a case like that, but more with an eye to averting crimes than to meting out punishments for past crimes, because no one can put those right and there are so many unpunished crimes in the world; indeed, they cover an area so vast, so ancient, so broad and wide that, up to a point, what do we care if a millimetre more is added to it? It sounds strange and even wrong, and yet it can happen: those of us who feel that aversion would sometimes prefer to act unjustly and for someone to go unpunished than see ourselves as betrayers, we can’t bear it – when all’s said and done, justice simply isn’t our thing, it’s not our job; and that role is still more odious when it’s a matter of unmasking someone we have loved or, even worse, someone who, however inexplicable this might seem, we have not entirely ceased to love – despite the horror and the nausea afflicting our conscience or our consciousness, which, nonetheless, grows less troubled with each day that passes and is gone. And then we think something that we can’t quite put into words, managing only an incoherent, reiterative, almost feverish murmur, something like: ‘Yes, what he did is very grave, very grave, but he is still him, still him.’ During that time of waiting or of unspoken farewell, I just couldn’t see Díaz-Varela as a future danger to anyone else, not even to me, although I had felt a momentary fear and still did intermittently in his absence, in retrospect or in anticipation. Perhaps I was being overly optimistic, but I didn’t think he would be capable of doing the same thing again. I still saw him as an amateur, an accidental transgressor, as an essentially ordinary man, who had done one anomalous thing.
On the fourteenth day, he phoned my mobile when I was in a meeting with Eugeni and a semi-young author recommended to us by Garay Fontina as a reward for the adulation bestowed on him by the former in his blog and in a specialized literary review of which he was editor, ‘specialized’ meaning pretentious and marginal. I left the office for a moment and told Díaz-Varela that I would call him back later; he, however, seemed not to believe me and kept me on the phone for a moment longer.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ he said. ‘How about getting together this evening? I’ve been away for a few days and it would be good to see you. If you like, come over to my apartment when you finish work.’
‘I might have to stay late this evening, things are absolutely crazy here,’ I said, inventing an excuse on the spur of the moment; I wanted to think about it or at least give myself time to get used to the idea of seeing him again. I still didn’t know what I wanted, his simultaneously expected and unexpected voice brought me both alarm and relief, but what immediately prevailed was my pleasure at feeling wanted, at knowing that he had not yet shelved me, washed his hands of me or allowed me silently to disappear, it was not yet time for me to fade into the background. ‘Look, I’ll let you know later, and depending on how things go, I’ll either drop by or phone to say I won’t be able to make it.’
Then he said my name, something he didn’t usually do.
‘No, María. Come and see me.’ And then he paused as if he really wanted what he had said to sound imperative, which it had. When I didn’t immediately say anything in response, he added something to mitigate that impression. ‘It isn’t just that I want to see you, María.’ He had used my name twice now, which was unheard of, a bad sign. ‘I need to discuss an urgent matter with you. It doesn’t matter if it’s late, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait in for you anyway. If not, I’ll come and fetch you from work,’ he concluded firmly.
I didn’t often say his name either, and I did so this time only because he had said mine and so as not to be caught on the back foot, hearing your own name often makes you feel uneasy, as if you were about to receive a warning or as if it were the prelude to some mishap or to a farewell.
‘We haven’t seen each other in days, Javier, can it really be so urgent that it can’t wait a day or two longer? I mean, if it turns out that I can’t make this evening.’
I was playing hard to get, but nevertheless hoping that he wouldn’t give up, that he wouldn’t be satisfied with a ‘we’ll see’ or a ‘perhaps’. I found his impatience flattering, even though I could sense that this was not a merely carnal impatience. Indeed, it was likely that there wasn’t an ounce of carnality in it, but had to do only with his haste to bring something verbally to a close: because once it becomes clear that things cannot simply drift on, that they are not going to dissolve of their own accord or quietly die or come to a peaceful conclusion, then, generally speaking, it becomes very difficult, almost impossible, to wait; one feels a need to say the words, to come out with them immediately, to tell the other person and then vanish, so that she knows where she stands and won’t continue living in a fool’s paradise, so that she won’t still think that she matters to us when she doesn’t, that she occupies a place in our thoughts and our heart when she has, in fact, been replaced; so that we can erase her from our existence without delay. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Díaz-Varela was summoning me simply in order to get rid of me, to say goodbye, I hadn’t seen him for fourteen days and had feared that I might never see him again and that was all that mattered to me: if he saw me again, it might be harder for him to keep to his decision, I could try, I could give him an inkling of what the future would be like without me, persuade him by my presence to reverse his decision. I thought this and realized at once how idiotic it was: such moments are unpleasant, when we don’t even feel ashamed to realize how idiotic we are, but abandon ourselves to our idiocy anyway, fully aware of what we are doing and knowing that soon we will be saying to ourselves: ‘I knew it, I was sure of it. How stupid can you get?’ And that reaction, which came to me as surely as iron to magnet, was even more inconsistent and idiotic, given that
I had already half-decided to break off with him if he ever got back in touch. He had arranged to have his best friend murdered and that was too much for my awakened conscience. Now, however, I discovered that it wasn’t too much, at least not yet, or that my conscience had grown murky or else simply fell asleep if I let my attention wander for an instant, and that made me think precisely those words: ‘God, I’m stupid!’
Díaz-Varela was, at any rate, not used to me putting any obstacles in the way when he suggested that we meet, apart from my work, that is, and there are few tasks that cannot be left until the following day, at least in the world of publishing. Leopoldo was never an obstacle for as long as that relationship lasted, he was in the same position as I was vis-à-vis Díaz-Varela, or perhaps in an even worse position, because I had to make a real effort to enjoy being with him, whereas it never felt to me that Díaz-Varela had to make such an effort of will when he was with me, although that may have been a mere illusion on my part, for who ever really knows what anyone else feels. With Leopoldo, I was the one who decided when we could and couldn’t see each other and for how long; for him, I was always a woman absorbed in an inexhaustible string of activities about which I didn’t even talk to him, he must have imagined my small, unhurried world as being a barely sustainable maelstrom, so rarely did I make time for him, so burdened with work did I seem. He lasted for as long as Díaz-Varela did in my life: as often occurs when you have two relationships on the go at once, the one cannot survive without the other, however different or even opposed they might be. Lovers often end their adulterous affair when the married party divorces or is widowed, as if they were suddenly terrified of finding themselves face to face or didn’t know how to continue without all the usual impediments, how to live or how to develop what had, until then, been a circumscribed love, comfortably condemned to not manifesting itself in public, possibly never even leaving one room; we often discover that what began purely by chance needs always to cleave to that way of being, with any attempt at change being experienced and rejected by both parties as an imposture or a falsification. Leopoldo never knew about Díaz-Varela, I never so much as mentioned his existence, why should I, it was none of his business. We parted on good terms, I didn’t wound him deeply, and he still phones me from time to time, but we don’t talk for long, we bore each other and after the first three sentences find we have nothing else to say. His was merely a brief hope cut short, a hope that was inevitably tenuous and somewhat sceptical, because an absence of enthusiasm is not something that can be easily concealed and is obvious even to the most optimistic of lovers. That, at least, is what I think, that I barely hurt him at all, that he never knew. Not that I’m going to bother finding out now, what does it matter, or, rather, what does it matter to me? Díaz-Varela certainly wouldn’t take the trouble to find out how much harm he had done me or if he had wounded me: I had, after all, always been sceptical about our relationship, I couldn’t even say that I ever had any hopes of him. With others I did, but not with him. If I learned one thing from him as a lover, it was not to take things too seriously and not to look back.
What he said next sounded like a demand barely disguised as a plea.
‘Please, María, come and see me, it can’t be that difficult. The question I have to ask could possibly wait a day or two more, but I can’t wait, and you know what it’s like with these subjective emergencies, they refuse to be postponed. It would be to your advantage too. Please, come and see me.’
I hesitated a few seconds before replying, just so that it wouldn’t seem quite as easy to him as it usually did; something horrible had happened last time I was there, although he didn’t know that, or perhaps he did. I was in fact burning to see him, to put us to the test, to enjoy looking at his face and his lips again, even go to bed with him, with his former self, who was still there in the new Díaz-Varela, where else would he be? Finally, I said:
‘All right, if you insist. I can’t be sure what time, but I’ll be there. And if you get tired of waiting, phone me and save me the trip. Anyway, I must go now.’
I hung up, switched off my mobile, and returned to my pointless meeting. From then on, I was incapable of paying any attention to the semi-young author who had been recommended to us, and who clearly disapproved of me because that is precisely what he wanted, namely, an audience and lots of attention. I was quite sure of one thing, though: he wasn’t going to be published by us, certainly not if I had anything to do with it.
In the event, I had more than enough time and it wasn’t late at all when I set off for Díaz-Varela’s apartment. So much so, in fact, that I was able to pause along the way to conjecture and hesitate, to take several turns about the block and put off the moment of arrival. I even went into Embassy, that archaic place where ladies and diplomats take afternoon tea, I sat down at a table, ordered a drink and waited. I wasn’t waiting for a specific time – I was merely aware that the longer I delayed things, the more nervous he would get – but waiting, rather, for the minutes to pass and for me to pluck up enough resolve or for my impatience to become sufficiently condensed to make me stand up and take one step and then another and another, until I found myself at his front door agitatedly ringing the bell. But, having decided to meet him and knowing that it was in my power to see him again, neither the necessary determination nor the impatience came. ‘In a while,’ I thought, ‘there’s no hurry, I’ll wait a little longer. He’ll stay there in his apartment, he’s not going to run away or leave. May every second seem long to him, may he count them one by one, may he read a few pages of a book without taking anything in, aimlessly turn the TV on and then off again, grow exasperated, prepare or memorize what he’s going to say to me, may he go out on to the landing every time he hears the lift and be disappointed when it stops before it reaches his floor or goes straight past. What can he possibly want to discuss with me? Those are the words he used, vacuous, meaningless words, a kind of stock phrase which usually conceals something else, the trap one lays for a person so that he or she feels important and, at the same time, curious.’ And after a few more minutes, I thought: ‘Why did I agree? Why didn’t I say No, why don’t I run away from him and hide, or, rather, why don’t I simply report him? Why, even knowing what I know, did I agree to see him, to listen to him if he wants to explain himself, and probably go to bed with him if he suggests doing so with the merest gesture or caress, or even with that prosaic, male tilt of the head in the direction of the bedroom, not even bothering with any flattering, intervening words, being as lazy with his tongue as so many men are.’ I recalled a quote from The Three Musketeers that my father knew by heart in French and which he occasionally recited for no apparent reason, almost like a pet phrase he trotted out to fill a silence, he probably liked the rhythm, the sound and the concision, or perhaps it had impressed him as a boy, the first time he read it (like Díaz-Varela he had studied at a French lycée, San Luis de los Franceses, if I remember rightly). Athos is talking about himself in the third person, that is, he’s telling d’Artagnan his story as if it were that of an old aristocratic friend, who had got married at twenty-five to an innocent, intoxicatingly beautiful young girl of sixteen, ‘belle comme les amours’, so says Athos, who, at the time, was not a musketeer, but the Count de la Fère. While they are out hunting, his very young, angelic wife – whom he had married despite knowing almost nothing about her and without bothering to find out where she came from, never imagining that she had a past to conceal – has an accident, falls from her horse and faints. Rushing to her aid, Athos notices that her dress is constricting her breathing and, to help her breathe more easily, he takes out his dagger and cuts open her dress, thus leaving her shoulder bare. And it is then that he sees the fleur
-de-lys with which executioners branded prostitutes or female thieves or perhaps criminals in general, I’m not sure. ‘The angel was a devil,’ declares Athos, adding the somewhat contradictory statement: ‘The poor girl had been a thief.’ D’Artagnan asks him what the Count did, to which his friend replies with succinct coldness (and this was the quotation that my father used to repeat and which I remembered): ‘Le Comte était un grand seigneur, il avait sur les terres droit de justice basse et haute: il acheva de déchirer les habits de la Comtesse, il lui lia les mains derrière le dos et la pendit à un arbre.’ ‘The Count was a great lord, he had the right on his estates to mete out justice both high and low; he tore the rest of the Countess’s dress to shreds, tied her hands behind her back and hanged her from a tree.’ And that, without a moment’s hesitation, without listening to reason or seeking extenuating circumstances, without batting an eyelid, without pity or regret for her youth, that is what the young Athos did to the girl with whom he had fallen so deeply in love that, in his desire to treat her honestly, he had made her his wife, when, as he acknowledges, he could easily have seduced her or taken her by force if he liked; he was, after all, the great lord, and, besides, who would have come to the aid of a stranger, a girl about whom nothing was known except that her true or false name was Anne de Breuil? But no: ‘the fool, the simpleton, the imbecile’ had to marry her, Athos says reproachfully of his former self, the Count de le Fère, as upright as he was fierce, who, as soon as he discovered the deception, the infamy, the indelible stain, abandoned all questions and conflicting feelings, all hesitations and postponements and compassion – he did not stop loving her, though, because he still continued to love her, or at least never fully recovered – and without giving the Countess an opportunity to explain or defend herself, to deny or to persuade, to beg for mercy or to bewitch him again, not even ‘to die hereafter’, as perhaps even the most wretched creature on earth deserves, ‘he tied her hands behind her back and hanged her from a tree’, without wavering for a moment. D’Artagnan is horrified and cries out: ‘Good heavens, Athos, a murder!’ To which Athos replies mysteriously, or, rather, enigmatically: ‘Yes, a murder, nothing more,’ and then calls for more wine and ham, considering the story at an end. What remains mysterious or even enigmatic are those two words ‘nothing more’, ‘pas davantage’ in French. Athos doesn’t refute d’Artagnan’s cry of outrage, he doesn’t justify himself or contradict him, saying: ‘No, it was simply an execution’ or ‘It was an act of justice’; he doesn’t even attempt to make the precipitate, ruthless and presumably solitary hanging of the wife he loved more comprehensible, for doubtless only he and she were there in the middle of a wood, a spur-of-the-moment decision with no witnesses, with no one to advise or help him, no one to whom he could appeal; nor did he say anything along the lines of: ‘He was blind with rage and couldn’t restrain himself; he needed to take his revenge; he regretted it for the rest of his life.’ He admits that it was a murder, yes, but nothing more than that, not something more execrable, as if murder were not the worst conceivable thing or else so common and everyday that it need provoke no feelings of scandal or surprise, which is basically the view of the lawyer Derville, who took on the case of old Colonel Chabert, the living dead man who should have stayed dead, for Derville, like all lawyers, saw ‘the same wicked feelings repeated over and over’, feelings that nothing could correct and which transformed his offices into ‘sewers that can never be washed clean’; murder is something that happens, an act of which anyone is capable and that has been happening since the dawn of time and will continue to do so until, after the last day, no dawn comes, nor is there any time in which to accommodate more murders; murder is something banal and anodyne and commonplace, purely temporal; the world’s newspapers and televisions are full of murders, so why such hysteria, such horror, such outrage? Yes, a murder. Nothing more.
The Infatuations Page 21
