A Heart So White

by Javier Marías

  My father stopped speaking, perhaps to catch his breath or to weigh up what he’d said up until then, perhaps he realized that he’d said too much to stop now. I couldn’t tell from the voices where each of them was sitting, perhaps my father was reclining on the ottoman and Luisa on the sofa, or Luisa on the ottoman and Ranz in the new comfortable armchair that I’d tried out. Perhaps one of them was sitting in the rocking chair, I didn’t think so, at least I was sure Ranz wouldn’t be, the only reason he liked that particular piece of furniture was so that he could sit in it and strike original poses when guests were around. Since his tone was not in the least festive, I couldn’t imagine him in one of those poses now, besides he wasn’t with guests, I could imagine him, though, sitting on the edge of whatever he was sitting on, leaning forward, his feet planted on the floor, not even daring to cross his legs. He’d be looking at Luisa with those devoted eyes that flattered what they looked upon. He’d smell of a mixture of cologne, tobacco and mint, with a suggestion of alcohol and leather, like someone from the colonies. He might well be smoking.

  “But what did you tell her?” said Luisa.

  “If I tell you, dear child,” said Ranz, “for all I know I might be doing the same thing I did before.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Luisa with courage and humour (enough courage to say it and enough humour to have thought it), “I’m not going to kill myself over something that happened forty years ago, whatever it is.”

  Ranz also had enough courage and humour to laugh a little. Then he said:

  “I know, I know, no one kills themselves because of the past. Besides, I don’t think you’d kill yourself over anything, even if you found out today that Juan had done something similar, the thing I told Teresa about. You’re different. The times are different, more frivolous, or perhaps harder, they can absorb anything. But maybe telling you all this is, on my part, a deliberate proof of my affection, further proof, a way of getting you to go on listening to me and enjoying my company. It may well have the opposite effect. I’m sure you won’t kill yourself, but you might not want to see me again. I’m more afraid for myself than I am for you.”

  Luisa perhaps placed a hand on his arm if he was near enough or, if she stood up for a moment, on his shoulder (“The hand on the shoulder,” I thought, “and the incomprehensible whisper that persuades us”) or that’s what I would have imagined happening in a play, I had no option but to imagine since I couldn’t see, I was just listening through a crack in the door, not through a wall or across an open balcony.

  “Whatever you did or said forty years ago doesn’t matter much to me and won’t make me any the less fond of you. I know you as you are now and nothing can change that. I don’t know the person you were then.”

  “The person I was then,” said Ranz. “The person I was then,” he repeated, doubtless smoothing his white hair as he did so, just brushing it with his fingertips without meaning to or realizing he was doing it. “I still am the person I was then or, if not, then I’m his prolongation, his shadow, his heir, or his usurper. There’s no one else more like him than me. If I were not myself, something which I almost believe sometimes, he’d be no one and what happened wouldn’t have happened. In any case, I’m the person who most closely resembles him and all these memories must belong to someone. Those of us who don’t kill ourselves have no alternative but to carry on, although some do choose to remain where they are and stay behind with the others, looking back at the past, making a fictitious present out of what the world calls the past. And so what happened becomes instead a product of the imagination. Not for that person, but for the world. For the world, which abandons him. I’ve thought about this a lot. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “You don’t strike me as being the sort of person who would have chosen to remain where they were,” Luisa said to him.

  “In one way I suppose I didn’t, but in another way I did,” replied Ranz. His voice had grown quiet again. It was almost as if he were talking to himself now, not hesitantly but meditatively, the words emerged one by one, each word weighed and pondered, the way politicians speak when they make a statement that they hope to see translated and to the letter. It was almost as if he were dictating. (Only now I’m reconstructing what he said from memory, that is, in my own words, though they were first his.) “I carried on, I went on living my life as blithely as possible, and I even got married again for a third time, to Juan’s mother, Juana, who never knew anything about all this and was generous enough not to pester me with questions about her sister’s death which she witnessed, which was so inexplicable to everyone and which I couldn’t explain to her. Perhaps she sensed that if there was anything to know and I hadn’t told her, it would be better not to. I loved Juana very much but not the way I loved Teresa. I loved Juana more cautiously, more considerately, less insistently, more thoughtfully, if you can say that, more passively. But even though I did carry on, I know that at the same time I also stopped still on the day Teresa killed herself. On that day, and not on another day that took place before that, it’s odd how the things that happen to other people without our direct intervention seem more important, seem so much more important than the things we do or commit ourselves. Well, that’s not always the case, only sometimes. It depends, I suppose.”

  I lit a cigarette and felt for the ashtray on the bedside table. There it was, on Luisa’s side, luckily she still smoked, we both smoked in bed while we talked or read or after making love, before going to sleep. Before going to sleep we always used to open the window even if it was cold, just to air the room for a few moments. We were in agreement on that, in our shared home in which I was now a spy, no doubt with her consent. Perhaps when we opened the window we could be seen from the corner by someone looking up from below.

  “What other day?” asked Luisa.

  Ranz fell silent, for too long for the pause to be natural. I imagined his hands holding a cigarette, the smoke from which he wouldn’t inhale, or else folded and in repose, those large hands which, though lined, were still unmarked by age spots, I imagined him looking at Luisa opposite him, with those eyes that were like large drops of whisky or vinegar, regarding her with grief and with fear, those two very similar emotions according to Clerk or Lewis, or perhaps with the foolish smile and the fixed gaze of someone looking up, raising his head like an animal, on hearing the sound of a barrel organ or the swooping whistle of the knife-grinder, and wondering for a moment if the knives in the house are as sharp as they should be or if he should run down to the street with them, making a pause in his labours or his indolence to remember and to think about knife-blades, or perhaps become suddenly absorbed in his own secrets, the secrets he has kept and the secrets he suspects, those he knows about and those he doesn’t. And then, when he looks up to listen to the mechanical music or to a repeated whistle that comes advancing down the street, his gaze grows melancholy as it falls upon the portraits of those who are absent.

  “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” I heard Luisa say.

  “The other day,” said Ranz, “the other day was the day on which I killed my first wife in order to be with Teresa.”

  “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” I heard Luisa repeating and repeating, and that repetition, when she’d heard what there was to be told, was her civilized way of expressing her shock, mine too, perhaps her regret at having asked in the first place. I wondered if I should shut my door, close the crack so that everything would again become an indistinguishable murmur, an imperceptible whisper, but it was too late, for me too, I’d heard it, we’d heard what Teresa Aguilera had heard on her honeymoon, at the end of her honeymoon, forty years ago, perhaps less. Now Luisa was saying: “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me,” perhaps for my sake, too late, women feel an unalloyed curiosity about things and never imagine or anticipate the nature of the thing about which they know nothing, of what might come to light, of what might happen, they don’t know that actions happen singly or
that they can be set in train by a single word. The act of telling had already been set in train, it was just a matter of starting, of one word following the other. “Ranz referred to ‘my first wife’,” I thought, “rather than saying her name, and he said it out of consideration for Luisa, because if she’d heard that name (Gloria or perhaps Miriam or Nieves or even Berta), she wouldn’t have known who he was talking about, not with any certainty at least, nor would I, although I imagine we would have guessed. That means that Ranz is engaged in telling the story, not just talking to himself, as might happen in a while, if he goes on remembering and telling. But what he’s said up until now has been said with the consciousness that he’s saying it to someone else, to a particular audience, that he’s telling a story and being listened to.”

  “No, you have to let me tell you now,” I heard my father say, “just as I had to tell Teresa. It wasn’t like now, but it wasn’t that different either, I uttered a few words and with those words I told her all there was to know, but then I had to tell her the rest, I had to tell her more in order to make up for that initial sentence, absurd I know, but don’t worry, I won’t go into too much detail. I’ve told you now, told you all there is to know, I’ve told you in cold blood, then it was in the heat of the moment, you know how it is, you say passionate things and grow still more passionate, you love someone so much and feel so loved that sometimes you don’t know what else to do. In certain circumstances, on certain nights, you become a visionary, a savage, you say the most extravagant things to the person you love. Then it’s forgotten, it’s just a game, but, of course, an actual event can’t be forgotten. We were in Toulouse, we went to Paris for our honeymoon then went south. We were in a hotel, on the penultimate night of our trip, we were in bed, and I’d said a lot of things to Teresa, you say all kinds of things on such occasions precisely because you do feel so unthreatened and I’d run out of things to say, yet I still needed to say more, I told her what so many other lovers have said without suffering any very dire consequences, I said: ‘I love you so much I would even kill for you.’ She laughed and said: ‘Don’t be silly.’ But at that moment I couldn’t laugh, it was one of those moments when you love the other person with such utter seriousness, there can be no joking. I didn’t hesitate then and I said the words: ‘I already have,’ I said. ‘I already have’.” (“I have done the deed,” I thought in English, or perhaps I thought, “It was me” or else I thought it in my own language, “I have done the deed and I have committed the act, the act is both deed and exploit, which is why, sooner or later, it has to be told, I have killed for you and that is my exploit and telling you now is my gift to you, and you will love me even more knowing what I have done, even though knowing it stains your heart so white.”)

  Ranz fell silent again, and this time the pause seemed to me a rhetorical one, as if once he’d begun to tell the untellable he wanted to control how his tale was told.

  “Seriousness has a lot to answer for,” he added after a few seconds, in a very serious voice. “I’ve avoided it ever since, or at least I’ve tried to.”

  I put out my cigarette and lit another, I looked at my watch without taking in what time it was. I’d travelled and I’d slept and now I was listening as I’d listened to Guillermo and Miriam, I’d been sitting at the foot of the bed then too, or rather as Luisa had listened to them, lying down, pretending to be asleep, without my being sure that she could hear them. Now she was the one who didn’t know whether or not I was listening, whether or not I was lying down and asleep.

  “Who was she?” she asked my father. Once she’d got over her shock and any instinctive feeling of regret, she too was prepared to know everything, more or less, once she knew and could not unhear the words (“Listening is the most dangerous thing of all,” I thought, “listening means knowing, finding out, knowing everything there is to know, ears don’t have lids that can close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late. Now we know and it may well stain our hearts so white, or are our hearts merely pale or fearful or cowardly?”)

  “She was a Cuban girl from Havana,” said Ranz, “where I’d been posted and where I spent two idle years, Villalobos has a better memory than he thinks (“They’ve been talking about the professor,” I thought, “so my father knows that I already know what Villalobos knows”). But I’d rather not say too much about her, if you don’t mind, I’ve more or less managed to forget what she was like, she’s just a shadowy figure now, that whole period is, we weren’t married very long, only a year, and I have a tired and weary memory. I married her when I no longer loved her, if I ever did. You do these things out of a sense of responsibility or duty, out of momentary weakness, some marriages are the objects of pacts, agreements, a formal announcement is made, and they thus become logical and irrevocable, and that’s why they take place. It was she who obliged me to love her at first, then she wanted to get married and I didn’t put up any opposition, her mother, well mothers always want their daughters to marry, or they did then (“Everyone obliges everyone else,” I thought “and if they didn’t the world would grind to a halt, we’d all just float around in a state of global vacillation and carry on like that indefinitely. All people want to do is to sleep, the thought of future regrets would simply paralyse us”). The wedding took place in the chapel at the embassy where I worked, a Spanish ceremony not a Cuban one, a bad move on my part, but it was what she and her mother wanted, on purpose perhaps, if we’d got married under Cuban law we could have got divorced when I met Teresa, they had divorce there, although I don’t think Teresa would have agreed, and I’m sure her mother wouldn’t have, she was very religious.” Ranz paused to catch his breath and added in his usual mocking voice, the one I was most familiar with: “The religious mothers and mothers-in-law of the middle classes are the real ties that bind. I suppose I got married in order not to be alone, I don’t exempt myself from blame, I didn’t know how much longer I was going to stay in Havana, I was wondering whether I should do something in diplomacy, I hadn’t even finished my degree then. I abandoned the idea though and never pursued it and instead went back to my art studies, I’d got the job in the embassy through family connections and string-pulling, just to see if I liked it, I was a bit of a n’er-do-well until I met Teresa, or rather until I married Juana.” He used the expression “n’er-do-well” and I felt sure that, despite the serious nature of what he was talking about, it would have amused him to use that old-fashioned term, just as it had amused him to call me a “Lothario” on the day of my wedding, during the reception, while Luisa was talking to an old boyfriend whom I dislike and to others – possibly to Custardoy, yes, Custardoy, I hardly saw him at the reception, only from a distance, watching with avid eyes – and I found myself separated from her for a few moments by my father, who led me into a room in order to ask me: “Now what?” And after a while, to say to me what he really wanted to say: “If you ever do have any secrets or if you already have, don’t tell her.” Now he was telling his and telling Luisa, perhaps to prevent me from telling her mine (what secrets do I have? perhaps the one about Berta which isn’t mine, perhaps about my suspicions, perhaps about Nieves, the former object of my love in the stationer’s shop) or so that she would be the one to tell me her secrets (what secrets does she have? I don’t know, if I did, they wouldn’t be secrets). “Perhaps Ranz is telling us the secret he’s kept for all these years, so that we don’t tell each other ours,” I thought, “past, present and future secrets, or so that we do our best not to have any. Nevertheless, today I have, in fact, returned home in secret, without warning, or rather letting her think that I’d be back tomorrow and now Luisa is keeping her secret from Ranz, the secret that I’m here, lying down or sitting at the foot of the bed, perhaps listening, she must have seen me, if she didn’t, how else explain the bedcovers and the blanket and the sheets pulled up to cover me?”

  “Could I have a drop more whisky, do you think?” I heard my father s
ay. So Ranz was drinking whisky, which is the colour of his eyes when the light shines on them, except now they’ll be in shadow. I heard the sound of ice falling into one glass and then another and then the sound of the whisky and then the water. When it’s mixed with water, the colour isn’t quite so similar. Perhaps the olives from the fridge were on the low table in our living room, it was one of the first pieces of furniture we bought together, and one of the few that hadn’t changed position in all that time, not since our wedding, barely a year ago now. I suddenly felt hungry, I would have been glad of those olives, especially if they were stuffed olives. My father added: “Then we’ll go out to supper, eh? Regardless of what I tell you, just as we planned. Besides, there isn’t much more to tell.”

  “Of course we’ll go out to supper,” Luisa said. “I always honour my engagements.” That was true, she always has and she still does. She might take a while to say yes, but once she’s decided she doesn’t go back on her word. She’s very good like that. “What happened next?” she said, which is the question children always ask, even when the story’s over.