A Heart So White

by Javier Marías

  “It’s not that bad,” I said. I immediately thought of my Aunt Teresa and my mother Juana, both of whom were dead, Custardoy was referring to them, uniting them in their death with his exaggerated words or perhaps his malice. “Worse than Bluebeard,” he’d said. “Jinx,” he’d said. Worse than Bluebeard. No one knows who Bluebeard is any more.

  “Oh no?” he said. “Well, your mother put a stop to all that, if it had gone any further, you wouldn’t even exist. But look, he survived her too, he’s unbeatable. May she rest in peace, eh?” he added with mocking respect. He spoke of Ranz with approval, perhaps almost admiringly.

  I looked at the women, who weren’t taking the slightest notice of us, they were deep in conversation (doubtless the latest episode of some on-going story), of which from time to time I heard the odd phrase spoken in a louder voice (“That’s really disgusting,” I heard the one with her back to us say in genuine amazement, the other was casually revealing her thighs and, from another angle, I imagined, you could probably have seen her knickers; her strong, brown thighs made me think of Miriam, the woman in Havana of a few days ago. Or rather, made me remember her image and think to myself that I should think about her at some point. Perhaps Guillermo, like us, had also come back a few days ago).

  “That’s just a coincidence, no one can predict the order of death, it could just as well have been him, just as he might bury us. My mother lived to a good age.”

  Custardoy the Younger then lit a cigarette and put the lighter down on the table, he abandoned the flame and drew on the ember. From time to time he’d turn round a little to look at the two thirty-something women sitting at the bar and blow smoke in their direction, I hoped he wasn’t thinking of getting up and going over to talk to them, it was something he often did, with great aplomb, without even having exchanged a glance, without exchanging a single glance with the woman to whom he would suddenly be speaking. It was as if he knew instantly who wanted to be approached and why, in a bar or at a party or even in the street, or perhaps he was the one who provoked both disposition and intention. I wondered who he would have approached at my party at the Casino, I’d hardly seen him. He turned back to me again and looked at me with his disagreeable eyes to which, however, I was quite accustomed.

  “All right, a coincidence if you like. But three times is a lot of coincidences.”

  “Three times?”

  That was the first time in my life I’d heard anyone mention the foreign woman to whom I’m not related and about whom I now know something but not enough, I’ll never know very much, there are people who’ve been in the world for years and years and about whom no one remembers anything, as if in the end they’d never existed and that first time, I didn’t even know that he was referring to her or who he was referring to, I still didn’t know of her existence (“three times is a lot of coincidences”). At first I wanted to believe that it was a mistake or a lapse and, at first, Custardoy let me think it was, perhaps he’d only foreseen talking to me about my Aunt Teresa or perhaps he hadn’t foreseen telling me anything, things which, at that time, full of presentiments of disaster and taking my first steps in matrimony, I would have preferred not to know, although once you know about something, it’s difficult to know whether you wanted to know about it or would have preferred to remain in ignorance.

  “I mean two,” said Custardoy quickly, perhaps it was all quite unpremeditated and without evil intent, although it was unlikely there was no intent at all, be it good or otherwise, Custardoy isn’t a reflective man but he is full of intent. He gave a brief smile (his long teeth lent his face a sharp cordiality, well, almost) at the same time blowing more smoke in the direction of the two women: the one with her back to us, not realizing where it was coming from, waved it away with an irritated hand, as if it were a mosquito. Custardoy added without a pause: “But let me make it absolutely clear that I’ve nothing against your father, quite the contrary, as you very well know. But for one of them to go and kill herself right after the wedding doesn’t look like coincidence. That can’t be fitted into the order of death you were talking about.”

  “Kill herself?”

  Custardoy bit his lips in a gesture that was too expressive to be spontaneous. He then snapped his fingers at the waiter to call him over and took the opportunity to glance salaciously over at the women, who were still paying us not the slightest attention (although one of them had already noticed our smoke the way one might notice a mosquito). The one facing us said in a very loud, jolly voice: “I know, I know, but I just find it so disgusting.” She said this in a gleeful voice, almost slapping her brown thighs. Custardoy, on the other hand, was paying as much attention to them as he was to his conversation with me, he was always torn, always wanting to be more than one, to be wherever he wasn’t. I thought he was about to get up and to stop him doing so, I said: “What do you mean ‘kill herself’?” But he just asked the waiter for another beer.

  “Another beer, please. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Custardoy stroked his still sparse moustache and repositioned his short pigtail with a gesture that was unavoidably feminine. I don’t know why he affected that ridiculous, greasy pigtail, he looked like an eighteenth-century artisan or rustic. He blew into his beer. Although he was almost forty he was still a follower of fashion, still with enough energy to try and keep up. Or perhaps in his case it was the influence of the painting world.

  “Too much froth,” he said. “You know, it’s not bloody fair,” he added, “that you don’t know anything, I mean, it’s not fair the way families don’t tell their children things, God knows the things you must know about my family that I’m completely in the dark about.”

  “I don’t know,” I said quickly.

  He was playing with the flame of his lighter again. He’d done a rather inefficient job of putting out his cigarette, so that it smelled bad.

  “I seem to have put my foot in it. Ranz will go up the wall. I didn’t realize that you didn’t know how your mother’s sister had died.”

  “From an illness, that’s what they’ve always told me. I never asked much. So, what do you know?”

  “It’s probably not true. My father told me years ago.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Custardoy sniffed twice. During that time he hadn’t as yet visited the toilets for his usual line of coke, but he sniffed as if he had. He flicked the flame on and off.

  “Don’t tell Ranz I told you, OK? I wouldn’t want him to take against me because of this. I may well have misremembered it or else misunderstood.”

  I didn’t reply, I knew he’d tell me even if I didn’t make him that promise.

  “What is it that you remember? What did you understand?”

  Custardoy lit another cigarette. All this primness was entirely false; he felt relaxed enough to take two long drags on his cigarette and blow out a cloud of smoke (which is much more abundant and slower moving than if inhaled) in the direction of the two women. The woman with her back to us turned round for an instant, very mechanically, and blew to one side to get rid of it. She was showing her thighs too, but it was clear that they hadn’t as yet paid a visit to the swimming pool. Her eyes had alighted on Custardoy now, although only for a few seconds, the time it took her companion to say in confident, disdainful tones of the person they were discussing: “The guy’s crazy about me, but I don’t like the look of him, even if he is loaded. What would you do?”

  “Your aunt shot herself soon after coming back from her honeymoon with Ranz. You knew that, didn’t you, that she married him I mean?”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  “She went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father’s gun at her heart, her father was in the dining room with other members of the family and some guests. That’s what I remember my father telling me.”

  “In my grandparents’ house?”

  �
��That’s what I understood.”

  “Was my father there?”

  “Not at the time, he arrived shortly afterwards, I think.”

  “Why did she kill herself?”

  Custardoy sniffed, perhaps he had a slight spring cold, he might be a follower of fashion but he wasn’t the kind of man to suffer from hay fever, much too common. He shook his head.

  “I’ve no idea, and I don’t think my father knew either, at least he didn’t say so. If anyone knows it’s your father, but he probably doesn’t know either, it’s not easy to know why people kill themselves, not even people close to us, everyone’s crazy, everyone’s having a rough time of it, sometimes for no reason but almost always in secret, people just turn their face to the pillow and wait for the next day. Then one day they stop waiting. I’ve never spoken to Ranz about this, how do you ask after a friend’s wife who shot herself after marrying him? Even if it was years ago. I don’t know, I could ask you if it happened to you, not that I want to be a jinx, touch wood. But I couldn’t ask a friend who’s so much older than me and whom I really respect. Respect inhibits certain conversations, and so you end up never having them.”

  “Yes, respect can be inhibiting.”

  He’d used the word “jinx” again, I automatically tried to translate it into English, French or Italian, my languages, I didn’t know the term in any of them, well, I knew “evil eye” and “jettatura”, but it’s not the same thing. Every time he said “touch wood” he didn’t, he touched the glass his beer was in. I, on the other hand, was touching my chair.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

  “They give children watered-down versions of anything that happens or has happened and I suppose later on it’s difficult to disabuse them. Maybe they can’t find the right moment, after all, when do you stop being a child? It’s difficult to draw a line, when is it the right time to acknowledge an old lie or reveal a hidden truth? They let time pass, I suppose, and the person who told the lie comes to believe it or else forgets, until someone like you puts their foot in it and shatters the studied silence of a lifetime.”

  I couldn’t recall what “evil eye” was in French either. I had known but I couldn’t remember, then it came back to me, guignon. “I hope you don’t bring me bad luck saying things like that,” I heard the blonde woman with the brown skin saying, she was very expansive, her voice hoarse, she was one of those Spanish women who don’t moderate the tone of their voice or the reach of their words or the harshness of their gestures or the length of their skirts, all too often Spanish women exude a sense of scorn in what they say and in how they look, in their despotic gestures and their crossed legs, Miriam’s arm had been proof of the Spanish legacy in Cuba, as had her shouts and her high heels and her legs like knives (“You’re mine”, “I kill you”). Luisa isn’t like that, the new generations are just as scornful, but they express it in a more controlled fashion, Luisa is gentler, although with a sense of rectitude that at times makes her wax very serious, sometimes you just know that she’s not joking, she thinks I’m with my father now, but my father has had to go out unexpectedly and that’s why I’m listening to these revelations from Custardoy, if they’re true; they must be, he’s never had any talent for invention, in all his stories he’s always kept close to the facts or to what actually happened to him, perhaps that’s why he has to experience things and live out his doubleness, because then he can talk about them afterwards, that’s his way of being able to conceive of the inconceivable; there are people who know only the fantasies that they themselves experience, who are incapable of imagining anything and so have little insight, using one’s imagination avoids many misfortunes, the person who anticipates his own death rarely kills himself, the person who anticipates that of others rarely murders, it’s better just to think about murdering someone or killing yourself, there are no consequences, it leaves no traces, even the distant gesture made with a grasping arm, it’s all a question of distance and time, if it’s a little too far away, the knife stabs the air instead of someone’s chest, it doesn’t plunge into dark or pale flesh but through the empty air and nothing happens, its passage isn’t recorded or registered and so remains unknown, you can’t be punished for intentions, failed attacks are often not even spoken of, they’re even denied by the intended victims, because everything goes on as before, the air is the same, there’s no wound to the skin, there’s no change in the flesh, no tear, the pillow pressed down on no one’s face is inoffensive, and afterwards everything is exactly the same as before because the mere accumulation of events and the blow that strikes no one and the attempt at suffocation that suffocates no one are not enough in themselves to change things or relationships, neither is repetition or insistence or a frustrated attack or a threat, that aggravates the situation but it doesn’t change anything, reality can’t be summed up like that, they’re just the same as the grasping gestures that Miriam made and her words (“You’re mine”, “You owe me”, “I’m gonna get you”, “I’ll see you in hell”), which did nothing to prevent the subsequent kisses and her singing in the room next door as she lay by the side of the lefthanded man, Guillermo by name, to whom she’d said: “Then you get one woman’s death on your hands, either her or me.”

  “I’ve put my foot in it,” said Custardoy the Younger, “but I think it’s better to know about things, better to find out about something late than never at all. It happened a long time ago and, anyway, what does it matter how your aunt snuffed it?”

  My father had known one death, a real death, the sort that, in fact, cannot be considered part of the normal order of death, as Custardoy had said before. Those who kill themselves seem to die more somehow, and if someone dies by my hand they die still more again. He’d also said: “Three times is a lot of coincidences,” and then corrected himself. I wasn’t sure whether to go back to that, whether, if I insisted, he’d end up telling me what had happened or what he’d found out, I knew he would tell me, something, however partial or erroneous, but it’s easy to want to know nothing when you still don’t know, once you do, you’ve no choice, he was right, it’s better to know about things, but only once you do know them (and I still didn’t). It was then that a memory returned to me, one lost since childhood, something tiny and tenuous that could not but be lost, one of those insignificant scenes that return fleetingly as if they were songs or images or the momentary perception in the present of what is past, the memory itself is called into question even as you remember. I was playing on my own with my soldiers in my grandmother’s house and she was fanning herself, exactly as she had on so many other Saturday afternoons when my mother would leave me with her. But that time my mother was ill and it was Ranz who came to pick me up just before supper. I’d rarely seen them alone together, my father and my grandmother, my mother was always there mediating or in the middle, but not on that occasion. The doorbell rang as it was growing dark and I heard Ranz’s footsteps advancing along the infinite corridor, following the footsteps of the maid to the room where I was sitting with my grandmother, finishing my final game, and she was humming and singing and sometimes laughing at my remarks, as grandmothers do with their grandchildren, on the slightest pretext. Ranz was still young then although he didn’t seem so to me, he was a father. He came into the room with his raincoat over his shoulders, and his gloves, which he’d just taken off, in his hands; it was cool, it was springtime, my grandmother always started using her fan before it was strictly necessary, perhaps it was her way of evoking summer, although in fact she fanned herself all the year round. Before Ranz said anything, she asked him: “How’s Juana?” “She seems better,” said my father, “but I haven’t come straight from home.” “Has the doctor been yet?” “He hadn’t when I left, he said he wouldn’t be able to come until later, he might be there now. We can phone if you like.” They probably said something more, or perhaps they did phone, but my memory (as I sat across the table from Custardoy) fixed itself on one thing my grandmother said to my father: “I don’t k
now how you can go off about your business when Juana is ill. I don’t understand why you don’t start praying and crossing your fingers every time your wife gets a cold. You’ve already lost two, my son.” I remembered, or I thought I did, that immediately afterwards my grandmother raised her hand to her mouth, my grandmother covered her mouth for an instant as if to stop the words she’d just said from coming out, words which I’d heard and which, at the time, I took not the slightest notice of, or perhaps I did – as is clear now – only because she covered her mouth to suppress them. My father didn’t answer, and it’s only now that that gesture made twenty-five or more years before takes on meaning, or rather, it did so about a year ago, while I was sitting opposite Custardoy and thinking about what he’d said: “Three times is a lot of coincidences”, only to correct himself, and then I remembered that my grandmother had also said and then regretted saying: “You’ve already lost two, my son.” She’d called Ranz “my son”, her son-in-law twice over, her double son-in-law.

  I didn’t press Custardoy, I didn’t want to know more just at that moment, and besides he’d moved on to something else.

  “Do you fancy those two?” he said suddenly. He’d turned almost right round now and was looking straight at the two women, who in turn noticed the direct gaze from those wide-set, lashless eyes and lowered their voices, or didn’t speak at all for a moment, feeling themselves observed and considered, or perhaps admired sexually. The last words, before their conversation was interrupted or muted, were uttered by the one with her back to us and had reached my ears almost at the same time as Custardoy’s question, perhaps they’d heard what he said despite the superimposition, Custardoy had doubtless asked me knowing that they would hear, so that they would know, so that they would be aware of his presence. “I’ve had enough of blokes,” the woman with the white thighs had said. “Do you fancy those two?” Custardoy had said (it’s easy enough to be heard, all you have to do is raise your voice). Then they’d held their breath and looked at us, the pause necessary to find out the identity of the person who desires us.