The Infatuations

by Javier Marías

  ‘I didn’t say anything about that,’ I responded rapidly. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I was just asking a question. But I’d almost prefer not to know, not if there was another death involved. Let’s drop the subject. The lesson is: never ask questions.’ – I glanced at my watch. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable to be sitting where Desvern used to sit, talking to his indirect executioner. – ‘Anyway, I have to go, it’s getting late.’

  He ignored my last words, still pondering. I had sown doubt in his mind, I just hoped he didn’t go to Díaz-Varela now and ask him about Luisa, demand an explanation, and that Díaz-Varela did not then summon me again, I don’t know, to give me a telling-off or something. Or perhaps Ruibérriz was reliving what had happened in Mexico all those years ago, which clearly still weighed on him.

  ‘It was all Elvis Presley’s fault, you know,’ he said after a few seconds, in a quite different tone of voice, as if he had suddenly alighted upon a new way to impress me and not leave entirely empty-handed, so to speak.

  I giggled slightly, I couldn’t help it.

  ‘You mean the Elvis Presley?’

  ‘Yes, I worked for him for about ten days, when he was shooting a film in Mexico.’

  This time I laughed out loud, despite the sombre nature of the conversation.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, still laughing. – ‘And I suppose you know which island he’s living on. That’s what his fans believe, isn’t it? Who is he currently hiding out with: Marilyn Monroe or Michael Jackson?’

  He looked annoyed and shot me a cutting glance. He really was annoyed because he said to me:

  ‘Don’t be such a dickhead, woman. Don’t you believe me? I did work for him, and he got me into deep trouble.’

  He sounded far more serious than he had at any other point in the conversation. Genuinely miffed and angry. But that couldn’t possibly be true, it sounded like pure bluster, or else a delusion; but he had taken my scepticism very much to heart. I swiftly backpedalled.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. But you must admit it does sound a touch unbelievable.’ – And I added, in order to change the subject without completely abandoning it, without beating a retreat that would lead him to believe that I thought him either a complete fraud or a nutter: ‘How old are you, then, if you worked with the King no less? He died years ago, didn’t he? It must be nearly fifty years.’ I was still struggling not to laugh, but fortunately, managed to contain myself.

  I noticed at once that he was recovering some of his old flirtatiousness. But he began by ticking me off.

  ‘Don’t exaggerate. It will thirty-four years ago next 16th of August, I think. That’s all.’ – He knew the exact date, he must be a real fan. – ‘All right then, so how old do you think I am?’

  I wanted to be kind, to make amends. But I couldn’t go too far, I mustn’t flatter him too much.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, about fifty-five?’

  He smiled smugly, as if he had already forgotten the offence I had caused him. He smiled so broadly that his top lip once again shot upwards, revealing his healthy, white, rectangular teeth, and his gums.

  ‘Add another ten, at least,’ he replied, pleased. ‘What do you think?’

  So he really was very well preserved. There was a childish quality about him, which was what made him so likeable. He was doubtless another victim of Díaz-Varela, whom I was now growing accustomed to calling not by his first name, Javier, that name I had so often spoken and whispered in his ear, but by his surname. That’s pretty childish too, but it helps to distance us from those we have loved.

  It was then that the process of attenuation began in earnest, after that first act of washing my hands, after thinking for the first time – or not even thinking it, perhaps it has less to do with one’s mind than one’s spirit, or with one’s mere breath: ‘Why should I care, what’s it got to do with me anyway?’ That thought is always within the grasp of anyone regarding any situation, however close to home or serious it might be, and if someone can’t shake a situation off, it’s because they don’t want to, because they feed on it and find it gives meaning to their lives; it’s the same with those who happily carry the tenacious burden of the dead, who are always ready to continue to loiter at the first indication that someone wants to hold on to them, because they are all would-be Chaberts, despite the rebuffs and the denials and the grimaces with which they are received if they actually dare to return.

  The process is a slow one, of course, and it’s hard work and you have to apply willpower and effort and not be tempted by memory, which returns now and then and often disguises itself as a refuge, when you walk past a particular street or catch a whiff of cologne or hear a tune, or notice that they’re showing a film on TV that you once watched together. I never watched any films with Díaz-Varela.

  As for literature, of which we did have some shared experiences, I immediately warded off that danger by facing it full on: although our publishing house usually only publishes contemporary writers – to the frequent misfortune of readers and myself – I persuaded Eugeni to bring out an edition of Colonel Chabert, in a new and very good translation (the most recent one was, indeed, abominable), and we added three more stories by Balzac to bulk it out, because the story itself is quite short, what the French call a nouvelle. It was in the bookshops within a matter of months, and I thus shuffled off its shadow by producing a fine edition of it in my own language. I thought of it while I had to, while we were editing and preparing it for publication, and then I could forget about it. Or I at least ensured that it was never going to catch me out or take me by surprise.

  I was on the point of leaving the publishing house after that final manoeuvre, so as not to have to continue going to the same café, so as not even to have to continue seeing it from my office, although the trees did partially block my view; so that nothing would remind me of anything. I was also tired of having to cope with living writers – what a delight to deal with dead authors, like Balzac, who don’t pester you or try to manipulate their future – with Cortezo the Bore’s clingy phone calls, with the demands of mean, repellent Garay Fontina, with the pretentious cybernetic nonsense of the fake young men, each of whom managed to be, at one and the same time, more ignorant, stupid and pedantic than the last. However, the other offers I received, from our competitors, did not convince me, despite a promised increase in salary: I would still have to continue dealing with writers of overweening ambition and who breathed the same air as me. Eugeni, moreover, having grown a little lazy and absent-minded, urged me to take more of the decisions, and I did: I trusted that the day would come when I could get rid of the odd fatuous author without even asking Eugeni’s permission, my sights being set particularly on that ever-imminent scourge of King Carl Gustaf, who was still tirelessly polishing his speech in garbled Swedish (those who had heard him practising assured me that his accent was execrable). Above all, though, I realized that I mustn’t flee that landscape, but master it as best I could, just as Luisa must have done with her house, forcing herself to continue living in it rather than suddenly moving out; stripping it of its saddest and most sentimental connotations and conferring on it a new day-to-day routine, in short, remaking it. I knew that the publishing house was, for me, a place tinged with sentiment, which is impossible to conceal or avoid, even if the sentiment is only half-imagined. You simply have to get on good terms with it and appease it.

  Almost two years passed. I met another man whom I found sufficiently interesting and amusing, Jacobo (who is not, thank heavens, a writer), I got engaged to him at his insistence, we made tentative plans to get married, plans that I kept postponing without actually cancelling them,
well, I’ve never been that keen on matrimony, but in the end, what convinced me was my age – late-thirty-something – more, at least, than a desire to wake up in company every day, I don’t really see the advantage of that, although it’s probably not that bad, I suppose, if you love the person you go to bed with and sleep next to, as is true in my case – needless to say. There are things about Díaz-Varela I still miss, but that’s another matter. It doesn’t make me feel guilty, for nothing is incompatible in the land of memory.

  I was having supper with a group of people in the Chinese restaurant at the Hotel Palace when I saw them, about three or four tables away, shall we say. I had a good view of them both, in profile, as if I were in the stalls and they were on stage, except that we were on the same level. The fact is, I didn’t take my eyes off them – they were like a magnet – apart from when one of the other guests spoke to me, which wasn’t very often: we had come from a book launch, and most of the guests were the proud author’s friends, whom I didn’t know from Adam; they chatted among themselves and hardly bothered me at all, I was there as the publisher’s representative – and to pay the bill, of course; most of the guests looked strangely like flamenco artistes, and my main fear was that they might whip out their guitars from some strange hiding place and start singing loudly, between courses. Quite apart from the sheer embarrassment that would cause me, it would have been sure to make Luisa and Díaz-Varela look over at our table, for they were otherwise too immersed in each other’s company to notice my presence in the midst of that assembly of dark, curly heads. It did occur to me, though, that she might not even remember me. There came a moment when the novelist’s girlfriend noticed my gaze permanently trained on that one point. She turned round rather ostentatiously and sat looking at them, at Javier and Luisa. I was afraid that her uninhibited stare might alert them to my presence, and so I felt obliged to explain.

  ‘I’m sorry, they’re a couple I know, but whom I haven’t seen in ages. And, at the time, they weren’t a couple. Don’t think me rude, please. I’m just very curious to see them like that, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied warmly, after shooting them another impertinent glance. She had understood the situation at once; I must be very transparent at times. ‘I’m not surprised. He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? Anyway, don’t you worry, it’s your business. Nothing to do with me.’

  Yes, they really were a couple, that’s something that usually even complete strangers can tell, and I knew him very well, but not her, whom I knew very little, or only from talking to her at length on one occasion – or, rather, from her talking to me, she could have been speaking to anyone that day, I was just a useful pair of ears. But I had observed her in a similar situation over several years, that is, with her then partner, who had been dead for long enough now for Luisa not to describe herself first and foremost, as if it were a definitive state, with the words: ‘I’ve been widowed’ or I’m a widow’, because she wouldn’t be that at all, and that fact or piece of information, while remaining the same as before, would have changed. She would say instead: ‘I lost my first husband, and he’s moving further away from me all the time. It’s such a long time since I saw him, whereas this other man is here by my side and is always by my side. I call him “husband” too, which is odd. But he has taken the other husband’s place in my bed and by virtue of that juxtaposition is gradually blurring and erasing him. A little more each day, a little more each night.’ And I had seen them together before, again only once, but enough to sense his love and solicitude for her and her obliviousness and blindness to him. Now it was all changed. They were both talking vivaciously, hanging on each other’s every word, occasionally gazing into each other’s eyes without speaking, or holding hands across the table. He was wearing a wedding ring, they must have got married in a civil ceremony at some point, perhaps very recently, perhaps the day before yesterday or even yesterday. She looked much better, and his looks had certainly not deteriorated, there was Díaz-Varela with those same lips, whose movements I followed at a distance – some habits we never lose or else recover immediately, as if they were automatic. Unwittingly, I made a gesture with my hand, as if to touch those lips from afar. The novelist’s girlfriend, the only one of the guests who occasionally glanced in my direction, noticed this and asked kindly:

  ‘Sorry, did you want something?’ She perhaps thought I had been signalling to her.

  ‘No, no, don’t worry.’ And I waved my hand, adding: ‘Just personal stuff.’

  I must have looked if not upset, then troubled. Fortunately, the other guests were offering endless toasts and talking very loudly. Worryingly, one of them was beginning to sing to himself (I heard the words ‘Ay de mi niña, mi niña, Virgen del Puerto’), but I’ve no idea why they should all resemble performers in a flamenco show, because the novelist wasn’t like that at all, he was wearing an argyle sweater, the kind of glasses a rapist or maniac might wear, and had the look of a neurotic, who, for some incomprehensible reason, had a very pleasant, attractive girlfriend and sold a lot of books – a pretentious con trick, each and every one of them – which is why we had taken him to that rather expensive restaurant. I offered up a prayer – a short prayer to the Virgen del Puerto, even though I had no idea who she was – that the song would go no further. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I couldn’t take my eyes off that stage-like table, and suddenly a sentence from those now old newspapers started going round and round in my head, the same newspapers that had carried the news for just two wretched days, then fallen silent about it for ever: ‘He hovered on the brink of life and death for five hours, during which time he never recovered consciousness; the victim finally succumbed late that evening, with the doctors unable to do anything more to save him.’

  ‘Five hours in an operating theatre,’ I thought. ‘It’s just not possible that, after five whole hours, the doctors wouldn’t have noticed that “generalized metastasis throughout the body”, which is what Javier told me they had told Desvern.’ And then it seemed to me that I saw clearly – or at least more clearly – that the illness had never existed, unless the fact of those five hours was false or erroneous; after all, the newspaper reports didn’t even agree about which hospital the dying man had been taken to. Nothing was conclusive, of course, and Ruibérriz’s version hadn’t actually contradicted Díaz-Varela’s. That didn’t mean a great deal, though, because it all depended on how much of the truth Díaz-Varela had revealed to Ruibérriz when he first gave him that cold-blooded commission. I suppose it was irritation that led me to that momentary belief – well, it lasted longer than a moment, that is, for at least some of the time I was in the Chinese restaurant – the belief that I could see things more clearly (later, it all seemed far more obscure, when I went home, and the couple were no longer there and Jacobo was waiting for me). It irritated me, I think, to see that Javier had got what he wanted, to discover that things had worked out exactly as he had foreseen. I did feel some resentment towards him, even though I had never had any real hopes and certainly couldn’t accuse him of having given me false hopes. It wasn’t moral indignation that I felt, nor a desire for justice, but something much more basic and perhaps more mean-spirited. I really didn’t care about justice or injustice. I was doubtless suffering from retrospective jealousy or spite, from which, I imagine, none of us is immune. ‘Look at them,’ I thought, ‘there they are, at the end of all that patient waiting, of all that time: she is more or less recovered and happy, he is exultant, there they are married, and with not a thought for Deverne or for me, I barely left so much as a trace. It’s in my power to ruin that marriage right now, and to ruin the life he has built as a usurper, yes, that’s the word, “usurper
”. I would simply have to get up, go over to their table and say: “Well, well, so you finally got what you wanted, you removed the obstacle without her ever suspecting a thing.” I wouldn’t have to say anything more or give any further explanations or tell the whole story, I would turn on my heel and leave. Those hints would be all it would take to sow the seeds of uncertainty in Luisa’s mind and for her to demand to know what it meant. Yes, it’s so easy to introduce doubt into someone’s mind.’

  And no sooner had I thought this – although I spent many minutes thinking it, repeating it over and over as if it were a tune I couldn’t get out of my head, and silently getting myself all fired up, with my eyes fixed on them, I don’t know how they didn’t notice, how they didn’t feel burned or pierced by them, my eyes were like hot coals or like needles – no sooner had I thought this than I stood up, again unwittingly and unthinkingly, just as I had when I reached out my hand to touch his lips, and still clutching my napkin, I said to the much-fêted-conman’s girlfriend, who was the only one still aware of my existence and who might, therefore, miss me if I was gone for long:

  ‘Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.’

  I really had no idea what my intentions were or else those intentions changed several times at great speed while I took the steps – one, two, three – that separated my table from theirs. I know that into my head came this fleeting idea, which would take much longer to put into words, while I walked without realizing – four, five – that I was still clutching my soiled and crumpled napkin: ‘She hardly knows me and, after all this time, there’s no reason why she should recognize me until I introduce myself and tell her my name; as far as she’s concerned, I’ll be a complete stranger coming over to their table. He, on the other hand, knows me well and will recognize me instantly, yet, in theory, in Luisa’s eyes, he has even less reason to remember me. In theory, he and I have only ever seen each other on one occasion, when we happened to meet at her house, one evening, over two years ago, and when we barely exchanged a word. He’ll have to pretend he doesn’t know who I am, if he didn’t, it would look very strange. And so it’s also in my power to unmask him in that respect too, we women can usually tell at once if the woman who comes over to say hello to the man we’re with has had a relationship with him in the past. Unless the two ex-lovers can pretend to perfection and not give themselves away. And unless we’re mistaken, for it’s also true that some of us tend to attribute to our partners a whole host of past lovers, often quite wrongly.’