A Heart So White

by Javier Marías

  “I’m glad you haven’t gone to bed yet,” she said.

  “I just got in. What’s up?”

  “Bill’s downstairs. He doesn’t want us to go to his hotel, well, he hasn’t even told me that he’s staying at a hotel. Anyway, he doesn’t want us to go to his place, he wants to come here. I told him I had a friend staying for a few days and he said he doesn’t want any witnesses, which is reasonable enough, isn’t it? So what do you think we should do?”

  She had the delicacy to use the plural now, although it was possible that this time the plural did not include me, but Bill, who was waiting downstairs, or perhaps it applied to all three of us.

  “We can do what we used to do as students, I suppose,” I said, getting up and recalling another plural that applied only to us and which had been ours in the past. “I’ll go for a walk.”

  She knew that’s what I would say, she was expecting it. She didn’t protest, that was what she’d wanted me to say.

  “It won’t be for long,” she said. “An hour, maybe, or an hour and a half, I don’t know. A little further down, on Fourth Avenue, there’s a fast-food place that’s open twenty-four hours a day, you can’t miss it, it’s huge. Anyway, it’s not that late, there’ll still be plenty of places open. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, of course I don’t. Take all the time you want, shall we make it three hours, to be on the safe side?”

  “No, we won’t be that long. I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave the light on in this room, you can see it from the street. When he’s gone, I’ll switch it off. You’ll be able to see from downstairs if the house is in darkness and then you can come up. Is that all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. “And what if he wants to stay the night?”

  “I’m sure he won’t. Take something with you to read,” she added in a more motherly tone.

  “I’ll buy tomorrow’s paper. Where is he, by the way?” I asked. “Don’t forget he’s seen me before. If he sees me leaving here now and he recognizes me, it could look bad.”

  Berta went over to the window and I followed her. She looked to left and right and finally spotted Bill, to the right. “There he is,” she said, pointing. My chest brushed against her back, she was breathing fast, with haste or distress or fear or perhaps it was just the night. The night sky was overcast and reddish in colour, but it didn’t look like rain. I saw “Bill”, standing with his back to us, waiting quite some way from the street door and out of reach of the one beam of light in our field of vision (Berta lives in a street of brownstones, on the third floor, not in an avenue of skyscrapers).

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll go down with you to warn him. He’s the one who doesn’t want to be seen by anyone. All you have to do is head off to the left when you leave, he won’t turn round until I tell him to. Are you sure you don’t mind?” And Berta stroked my cheek with the affection women always show towards you when they’re nursing some illusion, even if that illusion is only going to last an instant or might even be ending at that very moment.

  I left and wandered around for a bit. I went into various shops, which were still open, there are always shops open in New York, Berta had thought for a moment like a true Spaniard, perhaps because one Spaniard was waiting for her and she was speaking to another. In a Korean shop that never closed I bought the New York Times, in its mammoth Sunday edition, and some more milk because we’d run out. I went into a record shop and bought a record, the original soundtrack of an old film, not available on compact disc, only on uncatalogued vinyl. It was Saturday night and the streets were full of people, in the distance I could see the drug addicts and the future delinquents. I went into an all-night bookshop and bought a Japanese book purely for its title: House of the Sleeping Beauties it was called in English, I didn’t like the title but that, nevertheless, was the reason I bought it. I was accumulating a lot of small packages so I put it all in a plastic carrier bag, the largest one containing the record, and discarded the rest, the handle-less brown paper bags you get in shops are awkward and require both hands to hold them, they fill them, the way a man’s hands – and a woman’s – are filled on the wedding night, which in today’s terms is equivalent to the first time they have sex, so forgettable if there’s no second time, indeed if there’s no third or fourth or fifth time, even if you know that’s how it will be. This was “Bill” and Berta’s wedding night and it was taking place while I was wandering about in the city, passing the time, killing time as they say. I saw the fast-food place that Berta had mentioned, in fact because she’d mentioned it, I’d been making my way there without even realizing it. I decided not to go in just yet, I’d keep it for later on because, unlike the other shops, it stayed open twenty-four hours and I might need it, instead I read the menu. The sky above the avenues was invisible now, there was too much light and too many angles, I knew though that it was overcast and reddish in colour and that it wouldn’t rain. I walked on without going very far and the time passed, the time that is always all so noticeable when you’re killing it, every second seems to take on its own individuality and weight, as if the seconds were pebbles you let fall one by one, like grains of sand in an hourglass, time becomes rough and rugged, as if it were already past or had passed, you watch past time passing, it would be different for Berta and for Guillermo, that had been agreed and settled from the very first letter and the final stages of the negotiations would have taken place over supper; I wondered where they would have gone, to talk a little, impatiently and without really listening, pretending to enjoy the conversation, an anecdote, watching the other person’s mouth, pouring the wine, being polite, lighting cigarettes, laughing, sometimes laughter is the prelude to a kiss and the expression of desire, its mode of transmission, without one quite knowing why, laughter disappears afterwards during the kiss and the fulfilment of the desire, there’s rarely any laughter when two people lie awake in one another’s arms, their heads on the pillow, no longer watching the other person’s mouth (the mouth is always full, abundance itself), there’s a tendency to seriousness, however full of laughter the prologues and interruptions might have been, or the delay, the waiting, the prolongation and the pauses, a breathing space, laughter stops, sometimes voices do too, the articulated voice falls silent or speaks only in vocatives or interjections, there’s nothing to translate.

  Around half past two I began to feel a bit peckish, my supper seemed hours ago, so I went back to the twenty-four hour place, ordered a sandwich and a beer and opened my mammoth New York Times, I read the international news and the sports pages, killing all that time was beginning to prove difficult, but I didn’t want to go back before the three hours I’d offered Berta were up. Although, who knows, “Bill” might have left and both the seriousness and the laughter would be over, once everything’s been agreed, the actual execution is often brief and soon completed, men become impatient and anxious to leave, they’re irritated by the unmade bed and the sight of the sheets and the stains, the remains, the traces, the imperfect body which they only notice now and would prefer not to notice (before, they embraced it, now they find it strange), the figure of a woman abandoned on the bed is such a commonplace in both painting and the cinema, but never the figure of a man, unless he’s dead like Holofernes, the woman as reject, perhaps Berta was already alone and waiting or even longing for my return, for my friendly hand on her shoulder, longing not to feel strange or rejected. I paid and left, walking back to my street, to the apartment, there were fewer people now, people don’t stay out so late as they do in Madrid, where Friday and Saturday nights are crazy, but in New York by that time taxis were beginning to be the only presence in the streets. It was three twenty when I reached the spot where Bill had waited for me to leave the apartment, some distance from the door, some distance from the one beam of light, although now, from the pavement, I could see others a little way off, along the smaller streets where the city council economizes on all the electricity it splurges in the avenues. From there I couldn’t see
the living-room light, I was at the wrong angle, I took a few steps, looking for the third floor, I went nearer to take up a more frontal position and I saw that the light was on, “Bill” hadn’t yet left, he was still there, he hadn’t yet reached the point of considering Berta a stranger. I didn’t move after that, I decided to wait in the street, it was too late to go looking for a hotel, I should have thought of that before, I didn’t feel like going back to the fast-food place, there weren’t that many others open, besides I wasn’t hungry now, just a bit thirsty, I didn’t want to wander about any more, I was tired of walking and looking at my watch all the time. I remembered Jack Lemmon in that film from the Sixties, where he could never get into his own apartment, I stood beneath the streetlamp, leaning against it like some stage drunk, on the ground was my bulging plastic bag containing the carton of milk and in my hand the newspaper so that I could read it by the light of the streetlamp. But I didn’t read it, I waited as Miriam had done, except that I wasn’t worried about any deterioration in my appearance during the wait and I knew exactly what the situation was, I mean, I knew why I was being made to wait, I wasn’t angry with anyone, I was just waiting for a signal. I kept looking up at the window, just as Custardoy was now looking up at my bedroom window, I was keeping watch over “Bill” and Berta’s false wedding night, just as the Cuban mother-in-law in the song and the story had watched over that of her daughter and the foreigner who changed into a snake the following morning (it happened during the night, during the wedding night, the daughter’s pleas for help went unheeded, the son-in-law deceived and persuaded his mother-in-law that all was well by addressing her as “mother-in-law”) and left the sheets stained with blood, though it might have been the blood of the newly-wed bride, the flesh changes or the skin opens or something tears, Berta wouldn’t shed any blood that night. Ranz had had three wedding nights, three genuine wedding nights, there was sometimes something to be torn then, in the old days. The light was still on, for too long perhaps, it was a quarter to four, talking, repeating, going on, no more laughter, “Bill” must have decided to stay the night, no, that was unlikely, now you couldn’t even hear the murmur of traffic along the avenue, I suddenly felt frightened for Berta, doesn’t it make you feel a bit frightened?, I’d said to her, it’s just tough luck if it doesn’t work out, she’d replied, but people do die, it seems impossible but they do, like my Aunt Teresa, for example, and my father’s first wife, whoever she was, I still didn’t know anything about her, maybe I didn’t want to; Luisa did though, Luisa was intrigued, who knows, perhaps Luisa was in danger far away on the other side of the ocean, like Guillermo’s sick wife unaware of the danger she was in; meanwhile I felt afraid for Berta who was so very near, on the other side of the window in her brightly lit living room, a signal, my bedroom was still in darkness just as I’d left it, I couldn’t see hers, it didn’t face on to the street, and that was where she’d be with “Bill” and his saw-like voice, his voice inarticulate now, as mine had been with Luisa only a few minutes before going to the fridge (uttering only interjections) and looking out afterwards through the window of the room in which I work, outside, down at the corner opposite my new home, the corner at which so many people stop, an organ-grinder and a woman with a plait, a streetcrier selling roses, as well as Custardoy with his obscene, rain-drenched face turned upwards, I didn’t go down that night to offer him money to make him go away, he wasn’t bothering me or making a noise, I couldn’t buy him off, I couldn’t do anything, he was simply standing in the rain with his hat on looking up at our bedroom window, not that he could possibly see in, given how high up we were, he could probably just see the light that was now no longer on, Luisa had switched it off while I was lying to her and watching the outside world without wanting it; since I married and perhaps before that too, my world has been my shared pillow, could there have been someone in that world or on that pillow during my absence, someone who would know how to furnish both disposition and intention?

  The thought terrified me and I didn’t want to think it, the secret that remains unspoken harms no one, if you ever have any secrets or if you already have, don’t tell her, my father had said to me shortly after asking me: “Now what?”, her secrets would no longer be secrets if you knew them, he said, but I’d noticed no change in Luisa’s attitude towards me, or if there were some change, there was no need to be afraid any more, she was no longer on the other side of the ocean but close by, in the next room, I’d soon be by her side, backing her up, and Custardoy would leave. I’d told Luisa almost nothing, nothing about “Bill” or Guillermo, nothing about the bathrobe or the triangle of hairy chest, nothing about the video or the saw-like voice, nothing about Berta’s leg or about my wait outside her apartment on that Saturday night, none of that was in itself a secret and there was no reason for it to be a secret, but perhaps it was now a secret because I’d said nothing about it during the week since my return, a secret isn’t characterized by any one thing, it’s shaped out of concealment and silence or out of caution or forgetting, out of not saying anything or not telling, because listening is the most dangerous of acts and cannot be avoided, and it’s only then that things really happen, when we don’t talk about them, because if you talk about them you scare them off, you frighten away the facts; couples tell each other everything about other people, but not about themselves, unless they think that information belongs to both of them, and then you say, with your tongue at their ear: “I have done the deed,” and that bare statement immediately changes or negates that fact or action. Macbeth dared to say: “I have done the deed,” he said it the moment he’d done it, who would dare to do as much, not so much do it but say it, life and the years to come depend not on what you do, but on what people know about you, what people know you’ve done and what they don’t know because there were no witnesses and no one has said anything. Perhaps deceit is inevitable, part of the truth, just as truth is part of deceit, our mind is all vacillations and ambiguities and always prey to suspicions, for our mind there will always be areas of shadow and it will always think in that brainsickly way.

  I was afraid for Berta, it was four o’clock by then, I was afraid that she might have been murdered, people do die, even people we know die, however impossible that may seem, she was the only one who knew that switching off the light was a prearranged signal, there was no reason why the murderer would do so when he left, the light should have been switched off after his departure, to tell me he’d gone and to say “Come up”, the darkness meant “Come up”; perhaps our darkness meant something to Custardoy, he’d see it, my message to him would be “Clear off.” I picked up my bag and made my way across the road, intending to go upstairs without further delay, it was only a few steps to the other side and no car had passed for some time now, it was twenty past four, too long a time for two people who didn’t know each other to be together. I was in the middle of the road when a taxi appeared, driving along very slowly as if he were getting close to the number house he was looking for. I retreated to the pavement, the taxi driver drew up alongside me and eyed me with distrust (beggars and drug addicts often carry plastic bags, drunks, on the other hand, favour the handle-less brown paper variety); when he could get a clear view of me and could see that I was perfectly composed, he made an interrogative gesture with his head and asked me for the number of Berta’s building, I could barely make out what he was saying, he was probably Greek or Lebanese or Russian, like most New York taxi drivers, everyone knows how to drive. “That’s it there,” I said pointing to the door whose number was lost in the cloudy night beyond the reach of the one solitary streetlamp, and I drew back, withdrew from the beam of light as if I were in a hurry to be on my way, that was the taxi “Bill” must have ordered to take him back to the Plaza, perhaps he was leaving now and the light would finally be switched off, assuming Berta was still alive, or rejected or not rejected, too many hours. I remained standing some way off, even further away from the spot on which “Visible Arena” had waited in order
to proceed upstairs unwitnessed, the taxi driver gave a short, sharp blast on the horn, meaning “Hey”, or “Here I am”, or “Come on down”. The street door opened and the patriotic trousers reappeared, along with the raincoat which, in the night, looked almost peacock blue, the sky was still red, perhaps rainclouds were gathering. I heard the taxi door slam and the engine start up, it accelerated past me, I had my back to it. I retraced my steps as far as the streetlamp and saw that the light in the living room had now been switched off, Berta had remembered me and was alive, our lights had all been switched off too now, I’d just plunged my study into darkness, Luisa had turned the bedroom light off shortly before, only a few seconds had passed. Beneath the beams of light it was still raining mercury or silver, our night was vaguely orange and greenish in colour, as rainy nights so often are in Madrid. Custardoy still had his obscene, white smudge of a face turned upwards. “Clear off,” I said with my brainsickly brain. Then he raised one hand to his hat and, clutching the raised collar of his jacket with the other, he left the shelter of the eaves, turned the corner and disappeared from view, getting drenched to the skin like a lover or a dog.

  WHO HAS NEVER harboured suspicions, who has never doubted his best friend, who, at some time in his childhood, has never been betrayed or let down – at school you encounter everything that will await you later on in the longed-for outside world, the obstacles and the disloyalties, the silences and the traps, the ambushes; there’s also always some classmate who says: “It was me”, the first expression of some recognition of one’s responsibilities, the first time in your life when you feel obliged to say or to hear: “I have done the deed”, and then, as you grow up and the world seems less worldly because it’s no longer beyond your grasp, you say and hear it less and less, childhood language disappears, is rejected as being too schematic, too simple, but those stark, absurd phrases that we used to think so heroic never leave us, they live on in certain glances, attitudes, in signs, in gestures and in sounds (in interjections, inarticulate utterances) which can and should be translated too because their meaning is often so clear, they actually say something and are rooted in the facts (unalloyed hatred and unconditional love), without any unnecessary perhaps or maybe, without the outer wrapping of words which serve less to inform or relate or communicate than to confuse and conceal and avoid responsibilities; words level out things which, as actions, are distinct and not to be confused. Kissing or killing someone may seem opposed as actions, but talking about the kiss and talking about the death of someone assimilates and associates the two things, sets up an analogy, constructs a symbol. In adult life, which is dominated by words, you never hear a yes or a no, no one says “It was me” or “It wasn’t me”, but you still see them (more often “It wasn’t me” than “It was me”), acts of heroism soon join the list of mistakes.