The Infatuations

by Javier Marías

  He was perfectly shaved and immaculately dressed, and didn’t look at all as if he had been waiting at home for a long time, especially with no guarantee that his wait would not prove to be in vain – something which, without one realizing it, always has a deleterious effect on one’s appearance – but, rather, as if he were about to go out. He must have been struggling with all that uncertainty and inaction by shaving over and over, combing his hair and then ruffling it up again, changing his shirt and trousers several times, putting his jacket on, then taking it off again, weighing up how he looked either with or without it, in the end, he had left it on as a warning to me perhaps that this encounter was not going to be like the others, that we would not necessarily end up in the bedroom, a move that we always pretended was unintentional. Anyway, he was wearing one more item of clothing than usual, although it’s easy enough – even unnecessary – to remove anything. Now I did look up and meet his gaze, which was, as usual, dreamy and myopic, calmer than during my previous visit or, rather, during the final moments of that visit, when things took a strange turn, and he placed his hand on my shoulder and made me feel that he could destroy me simply by that slow, steady pressure. After all that time, he still seemed very attractive to me, because the more elemental part of me had missed him – we are capable of missing anything in our lives, even something that has not had time to take root, even something pernicious – and my gaze went immediately to the usual place, I couldn’t help it. When that happens with someone, it’s a real curse. Being incapable of looking away, you feel controlled, obedient, almost humiliated.

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry. Rest for a moment, breathe, have a drink, take a seat. What I want to discuss can’t be dispatched in a couple of sentences and while standing up. Come on, be patient, be generous. Have a seat.’

  I sat down on the sofa we usually occupied when we were in the living room. But I kept my jacket on and perched on the edge of the sofa, as if my presence there were nonetheless still provisional and a favour to him. He seemed calm and, at the same time, very focused, the way many actors are just before they go on stage, that is, they put on an artificial calm, which they need if they are not to run away and go back home and watch television. There appeared to be none of that morning’s imperiousness and urgency, when he had phoned me at work and almost ordered me to come. He must have felt pleased and relieved that I was now there within his grasp, because in a way I had placed myself in his hands again, and not just in the figurative sense. But now I was free of that kind of fear, I had realized that he would never harm me, not with his own hands, not alone. But with someone else’s hands and when he was not present, when the deed was done and there was no choice and he could say, like someone taken by surprise: ‘There would have been a time for such a word, she should have died hereafter’ – yes, that was possible.

  He went into the kitchen to get me a drink and poured one for himself. There was no sign of any other glasses, perhaps he had not allowed himself a single drop while he waited, so as to keep a clear head, maybe he had used the time to select and put in order what he was going to tell me, even memorizing part of it.

  ‘Right, I’m sitting down now. What is it you want to say?’

  He sat beside me, too close, although I wouldn’t have thought that on any other day, it would have seemed perfectly normal or I might not even have noticed how much distance there was between us. I moved away a little, only a little, I didn’t want to give the impression that I was rejecting him, besides I wasn’t rejecting him physically, I realized that I still liked him to be close. He sipped his drink. He took out a cigarette, flicked his lighter on and off several times as if he were distracted or getting up the energy to do something, then, finally, lit the cigarette. He stroked his chin, which didn’t have its usual bluish tinge, so carefully had he shaved this time. That was the preamble, and then he spoke to me, in a serious tone, but forcing himself to smile every now and then – as if he were telling himself to do so every few minutes or had programmed himself to smile and kept belatedly remembering to activate the programme.

  ‘I know that you heard us, María, heard Ruibérriz and me. There’s no point in you denying it or trying to convince me that you didn’t, like the last time. It was an error on my part to talk like that with you in the apartment, while you were here, any woman who’s interested in a man is always curious about anything to do with him: his friends, his business dealings, his tastes, it doesn’t matter. Everything intrigues her, because she wants to know him better.’ – ‘He’s been turning it over in his mind, just as I foresaw,’ I thought. ‘He’ll have gone over every detail, every word, and reached that conclusion. At least he didn’t say “any woman in love with a man”, although that’s what he meant and, as it happens, it’s true. Or was true, I’m not sure, it can’t be true now. But two weeks ago it was, so he’s quite right really.’ – ‘It happened and there’s no going back. I accept that, I’m not going to deceive myself; you heard what you shouldn’t have heard, what neither you nor anyone else should have heard, but especially not you, otherwise we could have made a clean break from each other, without leaving a mark.’ – ‘He now bears the mark of his own fleur-de-lys,’ I thought. – ‘After hearing what you heard, you will have formed an idea, an image. Let’s have a look at that idea, it’s better than running away from it or pretending that it isn’t in your mind, that it doesn’t exist. You must be thinking the worst of me and I can’t blame you, it must have sounded dreadful. Repellent. I’m grateful that, despite everything, you agreed to come here, it must have made you feel really uncomfortable having to see me again.’

  I tried to protest, but somewhat half-heartedly; I saw that he was determined to tackle the subject and leave me no way out, to speak clearly about that murder-by-delegation. He couldn’t be absolutely sure that I knew, but he was nevertheless ready to make his confession or something similar. Or maybe he was going to put me in the picture, explain the circumstances, justify himself somehow or other, tell me what I would possibly prefer not to know. If I knew the details, that would make it even harder for me to ignore the facts or to take no action, as, in a way, and without exactly meaning to, I had successfully managed to do until that evening, although without ruling out a different future reaction, tomorrow might change me and bring with it an unrecognizable ‘I’: I had stayed still and let the days pass, which is the best way to allow things in the real world to dissolve or break down, although they remain forever in our thoughts and in our knowledge, solid and putrid and stinking to high heaven. But that is bearable and we can live with it. Who doesn’t carry something of that nature around with them?

  ‘Javier, let’s not talk about it. I’ve already told you that I didn’t hear anything, and I’m really not as interested in you as you imagine …’

  He stopped me with a wave of his hand (‘Don’t give me that,’ said the hand, ‘no pussyfooting around, please’) and wouldn’t let me continue speaking. He smiled slightly condescendingly, or perhaps it was self-irony, at finding himself in that entirely avoidable situation, because of his own carelessness.

  ‘Don’t go on. Don’t take me for a fool. Although I was certainly very stupid. I should have taken Ruibérriz outside as soon as he turned up. Of course you heard us: when you came into the living room, you claimed that you didn’t know anyone else was here, but you had put on your bra to cover yourself, at least minimally, in front of a stranger, not because it was cold or for some other roundabout reason, and you were already blushing when you opened the bedroom door. You weren’t embarrassed by what you found, you had embarrassed yourself beforehand with what you were going to do, namely reveal yourself in a state of near-undress to an undesirable
individual you had never seen before; but you had heard him speak, and not about just anything, not about football or the weather.’ – ‘So he did notice what I feared he would notice,’ I thought fleetingly. ‘All my forward planning, my little schemes, my ingenuous precautions were in vain.’ – ‘The look of surprise on your face was quite convincing, but not entirely. The real giveaway, though, was that, all of a sudden, you were afraid of me. I had left you there in bed, quiet and trusting, even affectionate and contented, I thought. You had fallen peacefully asleep and when you woke up and were once again alone with me, suddenly you were afraid. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? We always notice when we instil fear in someone. Perhaps women don’t, or is it that you so rarely do instil fear that you’re unfamiliar with the feeling, except with children, of course; you can terrorize them easily enough. I don’t like it at all, although there are lots of men who love it and even seek it out, it gives them a sense of power, of being in command, a momentary, false sense of invulnerability. It makes me really uncomfortable having someone see me as a threat. A physical threat, I mean. You women have other ways of making us afraid. Your demands. Your obstinacy, which is often merely blindness. Your indignation, the kind of moral fury that grips you, sometimes for no reason at all. You must have been feeling that about me for two weeks now. I don’t blame you either. That’s perfectly understandable in your case, you had a reason to feel like that. And not an entirely mistaken reason either. Well, only half-mistaken.’ – He paused and raised a hand to his chin, which he stroked distractedly (for the first time, he looked away), as if he really were pondering or genuinely wondering what he would say next. – ‘What I don’t understand is why you appeared, why you came out of the bedroom, why you exposed yourself to having what is now happening happen. If you had stayed still, if you had waited for me in bed, I would have assumed that you hadn’t heard us, that you knew nothing, that everything was just as it had been before, in general and between you and me. Although I would probably have noticed your fear anyway, sooner or later, that day or today. Once a fear has been born, it’s there and you can’t hide it.’

  He paused, took another drink, lit another cigarette, got to his feet, walked around the room a couple of times and ended up standing behind me. When he first stood up, I was startled, I jumped, and he noticed, of course, and when he remained for a few seconds without moving, his hands near my head, I turned round at once, as if I didn’t want to lose sight of him or to have him at my back. Then he made a gesture with his open hand, as if to indicate an obvious truth (‘You see?’ said the hand. ‘You don’t like not knowing where I am. A few weeks ago it wouldn’t have worried you in the least if I had walked around you like this; you wouldn’t even have noticed’). The truth is, there was no reason for me to feel startled or anxious, not really. Díaz-Varela was talking in a calm, civilized manner, without getting angry or worked up, without even telling me off or demanding an explanation for my indiscreet behaviour. Perhaps that was the most striking thing, him talking to me about a serious crime in that matter-of-fact way, about a murder committed indirectly by him or at his instigation, in a not yet remote, but almost recent past, murder not being something that one usually talks about calmly, at least it didn’t use to be: when such a thing was revealed or acknowledged, there were no cool explanations or dissertations or conversations, no analysis, but horror and anger, outrage, screams and vehement accusations, or people would grab a rope and hang the self-confessed murderer from a tree, and he or she, in turn, would try to flee and kill again if necessary. ‘What a strange age we live in,’ I thought. ‘We allow people to talk about anything and to be listened to, regardless of what they have done, and not just in order to defend themselves, but as if the story of their atrocities were itself of interest.’ And another thought came to me that I myself found odd: ‘That is our essential fragility. But it is not in my power to rebel against it, because I, too, belong to this age, and I am a mere pawn.’

  As Díaz-Varela had said right at the start, there was no point in me continuing to deny all knowledge. He had already gone far enough (‘It was an error on my part’, ‘I should have taken Ruibérriz outside’, ‘You had a not entirely mistaken reason to feel alarmed, well, a half-mistaken reason’), so far that I was left with no alternative but to ask him what the devil he was talking about, if, that is, I maintained my pose of innocence. Even if I insisted on pretending that this was all entirely new to me and that I had no idea what he was talking about, that wouldn’t let me off the hook either: it was up to me to demand to be told the story and to hear it through to the end, from the beginning this time. It would be best to admit that I knew, thus avoiding having to repeat myself or possibly having to come up with some extravagant lie. The whole thing was going to be most unpleasant, but then it was a thoroughly unpleasant business. The less time he took to tell his story the better. Or perhaps it would turn out to be not a story but a disquisition. I wanted to leave, but didn’t dare so much as try, I didn’t even move.

  ‘All right, I did hear you. But I didn’t hear everything you said, not all the time. Enough though for me to feel afraid of you, what else would you expect? Anyway, now you know, you couldn’t have been entirely sure before, but now you can. What are you going to do about it? Is that why you made me come here, to confirm your suspicions? You were pretty sure already, we could simply have let things run their course and not left any more “marks”, to use your word. As you see, I haven’t done anything yet, I haven’t told anyone, not even Luisa. She, I imagine, would be the last to be told. It’s often those who are most affected by something, those who are closest, who least want to know: children don’t want to know what their parents did, just as parents don’t want to know what their children have done … To impose a revelation on someone …’ I paused, unsure as to how to end the sentence, and so I cut things short, simplified: ‘That’s too great a responsibility. For someone like me.’ – ‘So I am the Prudent Young Woman after all,’ I thought. ‘That’s how Desvern thought of me.’ – ‘You certainly have no reason to feel afraid of me. You should have allowed me to stand aside, to exit from your life silently and discreetly, more or less as I entered it and as I have remained, if I have remained. There was never any reason why we should see each other again. For me, each time was the last, I never assumed there would be a next time. It was always until further notice, until further orders from you, because you were always the instigator, the one who took the initiative. There’s still time for you simply to let me go, I really don’t know why I’m here at all, actually.’

  He took a few steps, moved away from his position at my back, but rather than sitting down again beside me, he remained standing, taking refuge this time behind an armchair opposite me. And the truth is I kept my eyes trained on him at all times. I watched his hands and watched his lips, both because they would speak and because that was what I always did, they were my magnet. Then he took off his jacket and, as usual, hung it over the back of the chair. Afterwards, he slowly rolled up his shirtsleeves and although that was normal too – he always had his sleeves rolled up when he was at home, indeed that was the only day I had ever seen him with his cuffs buttoned and then not for long – that gesture now put me even more on my guard, because it’s so often a prelude to action, to some physical effort, and there was none in prospect. When he had finished rolling up his sleeves, he leaned on the back of the armchair, as if about to make a speech. For a few seconds, he stood observing me very intently in a manner I had seen before and yet the same thing happened as on that other occasion: I looked away, feeling troubled by those eyes fixed on mine, by that gaze, which was neither transparent nor penetrating, but perhaps hazy and enveloping
or merely indecipherable, and tempered at any rate by his myopia (he was wearing lenses), it was as if those almond eyes were saying to me: ‘Why don’t you understand?’ not impatiently, but regretfully. And his posture was no different from what it had been on other evenings, when he had spoken to me about Colonel Chabert or about something else that had occurred to him or that he had noticed, and I would listen to whatever it was with pleasure. ‘On other late afternoons or evenings,’ I thought, ‘the twilight hour, which is doubtless the worst time for Luisa as it is for most people, the hardest time of day to bear, on those evenings when he and I would meet’ – I realized at once that I was thinking in the past tense, as if we had already said goodbye and each already belonged to the other’s day before yesterday; but I continued anyway: ‘On those evenings Javier didn’t go to her house, didn’t visit or distract her or keep her company or lend her a hand, he probably needed to have a rest sometimes – every ten or twelve days – from the persistent sadness of the woman he loved so constantly and for whom he waited with such inexhaustible patience; he would have needed to draw energy from somewhere, from me, from another close relationship, from someone else, so that he could carry that renewed energy back to her. Perhaps I had helped her a little in that way, indirectly, without intending to or imagining that I was, not that it bothered me. Who would he draw that energy from now, if I was no longer at his side? He’ll have no problem replacing me, I’m sure of that.’ And as I thought this, I returned to the present tense.

  ‘I don’t want to leave any mark on you that has no reason to exist, that has no basis in reality, or has its basis only in what happened, but not in any possible motives or intentions, still less in the original conception, the starting point. Let’s have a look at what you imagine to have happened, at the set of circumstances or story you have constructed for yourself: I ordered Miguel to be killed, making sure to keep myself at a safe distance. I drew up a plan that was not without risks (above all the risk that it might not work), but that left me beyond suspicion. I didn’t go anywhere near the scene of the crime, I wasn’t there, his death had nothing to do with me and it would be quite impossible to connect me with some barmy beggar with whom I had never exchanged so much as a single word. I left it to other people to find out what his problems were and to direct and manipulate his fragile mind. Miguel’s death looked like a tragic accident, a piece of terrible bad luck. Why didn’t I just get a hit man in? That would, apparently, have been far simpler and safer. Nowadays, they’re flown in from all over the world, from Eastern Europe and South America, and they’re not that expensive either: a return ticket, a few meals and three thousand euros or less, or possibly more, depending, but let’s say three thousand if you don’t want to hire a bodger or a greenhorn. They do their job and then leave, and by the time the police have begun their investigations, the killer has already checked in at the airport or is on the plane home. The snag is that there are no guarantees they won’t do the same thing again, that they won’t come back to Spain on another job or that they might like it here and stay. Some who have used their services have proved very careless, even giving a recommendation to a friend or colleague (very sotto voce needless to say), recommending either the killer himself or the intermediary who, very lazily, summons the same hit man back to Spain. Anyone who chooses that option is never entirely clean. The more frequently these hit men visit the country, the more likely they are to get caught, and the more likely they are to remember you or your frontman, and thus establish a link that cannot easily be broken, because there are people who can’t bear to be left idle and can’t resist taking on a little extra work. And if they get caught, they blab. Even those who are on the payroll of some mafia boss and live here permanently, and there are quite a few in Spain, presumably because there’s plenty for them to do here. The code of silence isn’t much respected any more, if at all. There’s no sense of camaraderie, no sense of belonging: if one of them gets caught, tough, let him sort himself out, it was his fault for getting nabbed. He’s expendable, and the organizations accept no responsibility, they’ve taken the necessary measures so that they don’t get tarnished or tainted, and the hit men work more and more in the dark and only ever meet one person, if that: a voice at the other end of a telephone, with the photos of the victims being sent via a mobile. And so those who are arrested respond in kind. Nowadays, all anyone cares about is saving his own skin or getting his sentence reduced. They confess whatever they need to confess and that’s that, the main thing being not to spend too long in prison. The more time they spend behind bars, trapped and easily locatable, the greater the risk that their own mafia boss will do them in, well, they’re useless to him now, a dead weight, a liability. And since they have little to reveal about the mafia they work for, they try other ways of gaining brownie points: “I did a job for a well-known businessman some years ago, or perhaps he was a politician or a banker. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. If I try very hard to remember, who knows what I might come up with?” More than one businessman has ended up in prison for that very reason. And the odd Valencian politician too, well, you know what show-offs they are, they don’t even understand the meaning of the word “discretion”.’