A Heart So White

by Javier Marías

  “Why don’t we watch it now?”

  “No, I’m not ready yet. I want to wait a few hours, just to know that I’ve got it but without watching it. I’ll wait up for you as long as I can.”

  I was on the point of cancelling my date. Berta would rather watch the video with me, in order to be protected while she was watching it or in order to give it the visual importance that she’d been giving it verbally for days now. It was an event, even a solemn event, and you have to give importance to what is important to your friends. But my date was in part work-related, with a senior Spanish civil servant, a friend of my father’s who was visiting the city and who had a reasonable but uncertain grasp of English and had asked me if I could accompany him and his (much younger) wife to supper with another couple, an American senator and his (much younger) American wife, in order to chat to the women while the men discussed dirty tricks and also to lend him a hand with his English if, as was quite probable, he needed it. Not only were the two ladies younger, they were also a pair of frivolous birdbrains who, after supper, insisted on going out dancing and so we did: they danced for hours with me and with various other men (never once with their husbands, who were up to their eyes in dirty tricks) and they danced very close, especially the Spanish woman, whose breasts to me felt like silicon implants, like wood soaked in water, not that I submitted them to any hands-on analysis. The two couples were both rich and sophisticated, they did deals, they injected themselves with silicon, they spoke of Cuba like people in the know, they went to places where you dance very close.

  By the time I got home it was after two o’clock in the morning, but luckily it was Saturday the next day (indeed, I’d only agreed to the evening out because it was a Friday). The light was on, the one Berta read by and had been reading by, the one she left on when she went to bed before I got home, or that I left on if she hadn’t got home. I wasn’t tired, my ears were still filled with the music I’d danced to with the two birdbrains and the sound of the manly voices drawing up plans for the new Cuba (I had to help the civil servant out several times by translating for him). I looked at my watch even though I knew what time it was and I remembered what Berta had said: “I’ll wait up for you as long as I can.” She hadn’t been able to wait for me until the end of the dance. On top of the television, as she’d promised, was a video tape with a card, the card from Bill (“which might be my definitive name”) that I’ve already mentioned. The tape was very brief as these personal videos usually are, it was at the end and hadn’t been rewound. I put the cassette in to wind it back, I still had my raincoat on. I sat down, creasing it, something you should never do, because then you walk around for weeks looking like an illegal immigrant. I started playing the video and watched, sitting in my raincoat. During the three or four minutes of recorded tape the scene didn’t change, it was always the same, the camera remained resolutely still, and what you saw was a headless torso, the frame cut off the man’s head (you could just see his throat, his pronounced Adam’s apple) and below, you saw only as far as his waist, he was sitting upright. The man was wearing a bathrobe, a pale blue bathrobe, newly bought or just washed, perhaps the sort that expensive hotels lend their guests. Or perhaps not, since on his left breast you could see two discreet initials, “PH”, his name was perhaps Pedro Hernández. You could also see his forearms, his arms were folded, hiding his hands, but the sleeves to the bathrobe were not that long, it was a kind of kimono style that left his strong, hairy, possibly even long arms uncovered, folded and immobile, dry, not wet, not just out from the shower or the bath, the bathrobe was perhaps only a way of avoiding wearing any clothing that might be recognizable or identifiable, a kind of sartorial anonymity: the only object that was clearly his was a large, black watch on his right wrist (his hands were concealed by his folded arms), perhaps he was lefthanded or merely perverse. He spoke in English, but his accent betrayed his Spanish origins even more clearly than his letters had. Talking like that, he couldn’t possibly believe that he could pass himself off as an American to a Spanish woman who lived in New York, who worked as an interpreter (only he didn’t know that); and yet he continued to speak in English, using language as a disguise, as a false trail, voices change slightly when they speak a language not their own, as I’m all too well aware, even when the person speaks it imperfectly and without making much of an effort (his English wasn’t bad, it was just that he had an accent). The open neck of his bathrobe revealed a triangle of chest, which was again very hairy and with a few grey hairs, though the hair was otherwise dark. In that bathrobe and with all that hair he reminded me of that great actor, Sean Connery, a childhood hero of mine: as I remember it, when he played the part of the spy licensed to kill, he was often dressed in a towel or a bathrobe or a kimono. I immediately gave the faceless man Connery’s face, it’s difficult to listen to someone on television without imagining their features. At one point in the recording his chin appeared in the picture when he lowered it, just for a few seconds, it seemed to be cleft although not quite, the shadow of a dimple, a groove, a hollow in the bone but not in the skin, but which nevertheless showed through (I can’t remember if Sean Connery has a cleft chin or not). For more than a minute I watched the almost motionless image of this torso with its arms folded (motionless apart from his breathing) and heard nothing, as if the man had set the camera running before he was ready to say his words, or as if he were thinking about them or memorizing them. In fact, far off in the background you could hear music playing, as if there was a radio or a television on in the distance. I was just about to fast-forward the tape to see if it changed at all and whether there was in fact any message when “Bill” finally started speaking. His voice shook. It was almost a whisper only rather sharp, shrill even, it didn’t seem the right voice for such a hairy man and certainly not for Sean Connery. His Adam’s apple moved up and down. He made strange pauses when he spoke, as if before sitting down in front of the video he’d broken his text down into short, simple phrases and was reciting them. Sometimes he repeated himself. It was difficult to know if this was for stylistic effect or involuntary, in order to correct his pronunciation. The result was very sombre. The phrases were not just short, they were cutting. His voice was like a saw. His voice was like the voice I’d heard in Havana on the balcony and through the wall, the voice of Guillermo, which in English translates as William, the diminutive of which is Bill and not Nick or Jack. “I received your video, thank you,” said the voice in its intelligible but Hispanicized English which he’d translated and which I now re-translate, long after the event. “The fact is that it all looks very promising. You’re very attractive. But that’s the unfortunate thing, that it’s only promising. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. That’s why I’m only sending you something partial too. Incomplete. You seeing my face would be equivalent to me seeing your body. Your body. You women care about faces. Eyes. That’s what you say. Men care about the face and the body. Or the body and the face. That’s how it is. As I said before, I work in a very visible arena.” (“A very visible arena,” he said again and the last word he pronounced as if it were Spanish, he couldn’t help himself, given the Spanish origin of the word. I leaned back. My raincoat grew even more creased.) “Very visible. I can’t meet a complete stranger just like that. Unless I’m convinced that it’s worth it. To know that, I have to see all of you. Everything. I have to see you naked. In as much detail as possible. You say you had an accident. You say you limp a little. A little. But you don’t let me see how little that little is. I’d like to see your injured leg. How it looks. To see your tits. Your cunt. If possible, wide open. To see your tits. Your cunt. I’m sure they’re lovely. Only once I’ve seen them can we arrange to meet. That’s how it is. If your breasts and your cunt and your leg persuade me that it’s worth running the risk. If you’re still interested in me. Perhaps you don’t want to go on with this. You probably think I’m being too direct. Brutal. Cruel. I’m not cruel. I just can’t afford to waste any time. I can’t waste any
time. I can’t run unnecessary risks. I like you. You’re very pretty. I mean it. You’re very pretty. I like you a lot. But from what you’ve sent me I know as little of you as you now know of me. I’ve seen very little of you. I’m not cruel. I just want to see more. Send it to me. Send it. Then I’ll show myself. If it’s worth it. I think it will be. I still want to fuck you. Even more now. Even more now. That’s how it is.” The recording continued for a few seconds longer, with no voice now, the same scene as before, the hairy triangle and the folded arms, the black watch on the right wrist, the Adam’s apple not moving as it had when he was speaking, his hands hidden, I couldn’t see if he was wearing a wedding ring, as Guillermo had, and as I’d seen from my balcony. Then the torso got up and walked off to the left (still wearing the long dressing gown), and for a few seconds I could see what until then had remained hidden, a pillow, a large, unmade double bed, at the foot of which he’d sat to film himself. Immediately afterwards the screen went blank and the clock stopped, it was a new tape, one of those lasting fifteen or twenty minutes, which are beginning to replace letters or perhaps photographs, since letters have already been replaced, long ago. When I switched off the television and its light, much brighter than that of the reading lamp, had gone, I saw Berta behind me, reflected in the now dark screen, and I turned round. She was standing there in her dressing gown, looking sleepy or rather sleepless, she must have watched and listened to the video dozens of times before I arrived and now she’d left her bedroom in order to see it again, with me or rather while I watched it for the first time. She had her hands in her dressing-gown pockets, she had no shoes on, her hair was all dishevelled from her tossing and turning, she looked pretty, with no makeup on. Nor shoes, if she’d been walking she would have limped. She didn’t move. The music from the dancing had left my head, but not the Cuba of the conversation. She took her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms as “Bill” had done to speak to her but not to reveal himself; she leaned back against the wall and said:

  “So now you see.”

  My raincoat was seriously creased by now. I got up.

  “Yes,” I said, “I see.”

  OVER THE NEXT few days I waited for Berta to mention him again, “Nick” or “Jack” or “Bill” or “Visible Arena” or maybe Pedro Hernández, or perhaps Miriam’s Guillermo, although I almost immediately dismissed this possibility, because we always distrust our first impression of something or someone when a second, third or even fourth impression becomes superimposed on it, someone whose words or image remain for too long in our memory, like a dance tune that dances on in our thoughts. But during that time, during the weekend immediately following (the whole of Saturday and Sunday), Berta said nothing or perhaps preferred not to talk about it, she wandered round the apartment and came in and out as if distracted, not in a bad mood but not in a good mood either, without the cheery nervousness of the days of waiting, perhaps asking me more questions than she usually did about my plans, about my still recent marriage and apartment, about my father and about Luisa, whom she knew only from her photo and from talking to her on the phone. If I often thought about “Bill”, I thought, she couldn’t but do otherwise, after all she was the person he’d been speaking to in his bathrobe, she was the one he wanted to see more of before agreeing to meet her, this man who needed so many certainties. Neither of us used the video that weekend, as if it were jinxed or contaminated, and “Bill’s” video remained inside, at the end of the tape just as I’d first found it and then left it, without either of us rewinding it or taking it out.

  On Monday, however, when we both went back to work, I got home in the evening to find Berta, who’d also only just got back (her handbag was still open and in it her key, she’d taken off her raincoat, but it was lying on the sofa), playing the video. She was looking at it again and stopping now and then, stopping it here and there, all in vain, since, as I’ve explained, the image remained the same throughout its three or four minutes’ duration. The days were already quite short, it was getting dark, it was Monday, my work at the Assembly had been exhausting, as I imagined it had been for her as well, after that you need some distraction, you need not to listen. But Berta was still listening. I said nothing, just waved to her, went to my room, then to the bathroom to freshen up, and when I returned to the living room she was still studying the tape, stopping it and winding it on a little only to stop again.

  “Did you notice that at one point you can see his chin?” she said to me. “Here.” She froze the image of “Bill” lowering his chin a fraction so that for an instant it appeared on the screen.

  “Yes, I noticed it the other night,” I replied. “It’s almost like a cleft chin.”

  She held back the question for a second (but only a second).

  “You couldn’t recognize him from that alone, could you? If you saw him I mean. If you saw that face somewhere else.”

  “Of course not, how could you possibly recognize him?” I said. “Why?”

  “Not even if you knew it was him? If you knew beforehand, I mean, that it must be him.”

  I looked at the chin frozen on the screen.

  “Perhaps if you knew, yes, perhaps then you’d be able to. Why do you ask?”

  Berta switched off the video with the remote control and the image disappeared (the image that she could flick back on at will). Her eyes were bright and lively again.

  “Look, he really intrigues me this guy. He’s a real son-of-a-bitch, but I might just send him what he wants. I’ve never done it for anyone, no one’s ever dared ask straight out like that, in that way, and, as you can imagine, I’ve never responded with one of my own to any of the filthy videos I’ve received before. But it could be fun, just to do it once.” Berta didn’t want to dredge up any more justifications, instead she broke off and changed her tone of voice; she smiled. “My body would be recorded for posterity, even if only for a very brief posterity, everyone always ends up wiping tapes and using them again. But I’ll take a copy for my old age.”

  “You’re including your leg in this film for posterity, are you?”

  “I’m not sure about the leg. The bastard!” Her face hardened for a moment when she swore (but only for a moment). “But before deciding, I need to see him, to know something more about him, it’s really creepy that faceless bathrobe. I need to know what he looks like.”

  “But he says you can’t see him until you send him your video and, even then, you can’t be sure. He’ll have to give you the OK, the swine.” My face, I imagine, had been set hard from the beginning of the conversation and not only when I swore. And had been for three nights perhaps.

  “I can’t do anything because he’s seen my video and knows my face. But he hasn’t seen you, he doesn’t even know you exist. We know the number of his mailbox, which he must visit every now and then. I’ve already found out where it is, it’s at Kenmore Station, it’s not that far. You could go there, identify the mailbox and keep a watch on it, wait there and see his face when he goes to pick up his mail.”

  Berta had said, “We know”, she was including me in her curiosity and her interest, or perhaps there was more to it than that. She was assimilating me into herself.

  “Are you mad? Who knows when he’ll go there next, days might go by without him turning up. Are you expecting me to spend the whole day at the post office?”

  Berta looked irritated. This didn’t often happen. She’d decided what she had to do and would brook no opposition, not even an objection.

  “No, that isn’t what I meant. I just want you to go there a couple of times over the next few days, when you’ve nothing else to do, when you leave work, just for half an hour, and just see if you have any luck, that’s all. At least give it a try. If you don’t have any luck, fine, we’ll forget it. But it’s no big deal to try. He’ll be waiting for my reply at the moment, the video that I’m not yet going to send him, he might drop by every day just to see if it’s arrived. If he’s here on business, he probably works nine to five,
so he might well drop by the post office when he leaves work, after five o’clock, that’s what I do. We might strike lucky.” She’d gone back to using the plural, she’d said “we’ll forget it”. The look I gave her was doubtless more thoughtful than angry, because she smiled and added in a calmer voice: “Please.” The half moon, the scar, however, had become very blue; I was almost tempted to try and wipe it from her cheek.

  I went to the post office at Kenmore Station three times, the first occasion was on the following evening, after work, the second two days later, on the Thursday of that week, again after an exhausting day of interpreting. I didn’t stay for half an hour, as Berta had recommended, but for nearly an hour on both occasions, victim to the fear that always grips people who wait in vain, the fear that at the very moment we leave, the person who’s taken so long to arrive, will arrive, as doubtless happened with Miriam on that hot evening in Havana, when she was pacing up and down on the other side of the esplanade and Guillermo didn’t appear and she didn’t leave. Guillermo didn’t appear on Tuesday or on Thursday, nor did “Bill” or “Jack” or “Nick” or Pedro Hernández. In New York, however, at any time or place, there are enough suspicious-looking people or even people of criminal appearance for no one to take any notice of a man in a raincoat, carrying a newspaper and a book, standing in a post office where other people were busy picking up or delivering parcels and where, from time to time, someone would rush in, key in hand, to open his or her silver mailbox, thrust in an arm and scrabble about and sometimes bring out a booty of envelopes, at others only an empty hand. But none of those men in a hurry went to PO Box 524, which I’d located when I arrived.

  “Just once more,” Berta pleaded on the Friday night, a week after receiving the video; sometimes what threatened to drown us a week ago might just refloat us now, it can happen. “Tomorrow morning, at the weekend. He might be so busy he can only go there on Saturdays.”