A Heart So White

by Javier Marías

  “No, I won’t tell you, I don’t want to tell you. Then I buttoned up my shirt and I went out on to the balcony, no one was there. I closed the balcony doors, went to the wardrobe, where her inert, scented clothes were hanging, and put on my jacket and tie, I was very late by then. I lit a cigarette, I didn’t understand what I’d done although I knew that I’d done it, sometimes those are two different things. Even now, I don’t understand it even though I know I did it, just as I did then. If it wasn’t me then it wasn’t anyone and she could never have existed, it was a long time ago and one’s memory grows as weary as one’s eyes do. I sat down at the foot of the bed, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted, my eyes ached as if I hadn’t slept for several nights, I remember that, the pain in my eyes, then I thought and I acted, I thought again and at the same time I acted. I left the lit cigarette on the sheet, I watched it, saw how it burned, I flicked the burning ash off the end, though without putting it out. I lit another one, took three or four puffs at it and left that on the sheet too. I did the same with the third, knocking the ash off all of them, so that the cigarettes were burning and the scattered embers were burning too, three plus three equals six, all burning on the sheet. I watched as holes fringed with red began to open up (“And I watched for a few seconds,” I thought, “watched how the circle grew and widened, a stain that was at once black and fiery, consuming the sheet”), I think.” My father stopped, as if he hadn’t quite finished his last sentence. You could hear nothing, only, for a moment, his harsh, troubled breathing, that of an old man. Then he went on: “I closed the bedroom door and I went out into the street and before getting into the car, I turned and looked back at the house from the corner, everything was normal, it was night, night had fallen and there was no smoke as yet (“Nor would anyone notice anything up there,” I thought, “at the balcony or the window, even if you stood opposite them like Miriam when she was waiting, or like a gypsy woman with a plait and an old organ-grinder on their pitch, or like “Bill” first and then myself later outside Berta’s house, both of us waiting for the other one to leave or like Custardoy beneath my own window one night of silvery rain”). But that was a long time ago,” said Ranz, his voice a shadow of his normal voice, of his more usual voice. I thought I heard the click of a lighter and a tinkling sound, perhaps he’d picked up an olive and Luisa had lit a cigarette. “And besides these are not things one talks about.”

  For a while there was silence, Luisa wasn’t saying anything now and I could imagine that Ranz would be waiting tensely, his hands folded and in repose, perhaps sitting on the sofa or reclining on the ottoman or in the nice, new grey armchair which he may have helped her to choose. But not, I thought, in the rocking chair, not in the rocking chair in which my Cuban grandmother used to sit and think about her own daughters, one living, one dead, both married, and perhaps about the dead, married daughter of another Cuban mother, when I was a child and she used to sing “Mamita mamita, yen yen yen” in order to fill me with a fear that was both transitory and tinged with humour, a very female fear, the fear of daughters and mothers and wives and mothers-in-law and grandmothers and nannies. Perhaps Ranz was afraid that Luisa, his daughter-in-law, might make some gesture to him that meant “Go away” or, rather, “Clear off”. But what Luisa said in the end was this:

  “It’s time we were thinking about supper, if you’re hungry that is.”

  Ranz’s heavy, troubled breathing ceased and I heard him respond with what I thought to be relief:

  “I’m not sure I’m that hungry. If you like, we can walk as far as Alkalde and if we feel hungry when we get there we’ll go in, if not, I’ll walk you back and we can go to our separate apartments. I hope we sleep all right tonight.”

  I heard them stand up and heard Luisa tidying up some of the things she’d placed on the coffee table, one of the few pieces of furniture that we’d bought together. I heard her walk to the kitchen and back and I thought: “Now she’ll have to come in here to change her clothes or to pick up something. I’d love to see her. When they’ve gone I can clean my teeth and have a drink of water and there might still be some olives left.”

  My father, who probably had his raincoat on already or, rather, draped over his shoulders, had reached the front door and was opening it.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Luisa.

  “I won’t be a second,” she replied. “I’m just going to get a scarf.”

  I heard her high heels approaching, I knew her steps well, they echoed on the wooden floor much more discreetly than “Bill’s” metal-tipped shoes on the marble floor or Custardoy’s anywhere, any time. They didn’t limp, even when she was barefoot. They wouldn’t clamber wearily up a ladder in search of some unknown make of ink cartridges, nor would they dig into the pavement like knives, they wouldn’t swiftly, angrily drag their sharp heels, they’d never be like spurs, like axe blows. Not if I had anything to do with it, or so I hoped, hers were fortunate footsteps. Through the crack I saw her hand on the doorhandle. She was about to come in, I would see her. I hadn’t seen her for about three weeks, and I hadn’t seen her there in our home, in our bedroom, on our pillow, for almost eight. But before pushing the door open she called to Ranz down the corridor, he’d still be in the hallway, waiting for the lift, his raincoat over his shoulders:

  “Juan arrives tomorrow. Do you want me to tell him or would you rather I didn’t?”

  Ranz’s reply was quick in coming, but the words emerged slowly, wearily, his voice sounding rusty and hoarse as if he were speaking through a helmet.

  “I’d be very grateful,” he said, “I’d be very grateful if you saved me the trouble of thinking about that, I don’t know what’s for the best. Would you mind very much deciding for me?”

  “No problem,” said Luisa and pushed open the door. She didn’t put on the light until she’d closed it again. She must have noticed at once the smell of the smoke from my cigarettes. I didn’t stand up, we didn’t kiss, it was still as if we hadn’t seen each other, as if I hadn’t yet arrived. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, smiling, she opened our wardrobe and took out the Hermes scarf I’d bought her on a previous trip, before we were married. She smelled good, a new perfume, not the Trussardi I’d given her. She looked tired, as if her eyes hurt, Ranz’s eyes, she looked pretty. She put the scarf round her neck and said to me:

  “So now you see.”

  And I realized at once that those were the very words Berta had said to me when she came into the room in her dressing gown and I saw her reflected behind me in the dark glass of the TV screen after I’d finished watching the video that she’d already watched several times and would go on watching and is perhaps still watching today. That’s why, I suppose, I replied as I had then. I got up. I placed a hand on Luisa’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” I said, “I see.”

  MY UNEASE has dissipated somewhat and my presentiments of disaster have grown less disastrous and, although I’m still not capable of imagining, as I once was, an abstract future, I can once again allow myself to think vague thoughts, to let my thoughts drift over what will or might happen, to wonder without too much exactitude or intensity what will happen to us tomorrow or in five or forty years’ time, to wonder about things we cannot foresee. I know, or rather believe, that I won’t understand for a long time what may have taken place or may take place between Luisa and myself, or perhaps I never will know, but my descendants will, assuming we have any, or someone unknown to us will, someone who doesn’t even know us, someone who perhaps hasn’t yet entered this longed-for world, being born depends on a movement, a gesture, a phrase spoken at the other end of the world. To ask or to remain silent, either is possible, remaining silent like Juana Aguilera or asking and demanding like her sister Teresa, or doing neither one thing nor the other, like the first wife whom I’ve christened Gloria, who might almost never have existed or who existed only minimally, for her match-making mother, the mother-in-law, who by now will have died of heartbreak in Cuba, a widow with n
o daughter, the serpent swallowed her, I know of no parental equivalent for “orphan” in any of the languages I speak. Besides, very soon she will cease to exist at all, when Ranz’s time comes and Luisa and I can remember only what has happened to us and what we’ve done and not what others have told us or what has happened to other people or what others have done (when our hearts are no longer quite so white). Sometimes I have the feeling that nothing that happens happens, that everything happened and at the same time didn’t, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered, and even the most monotonous and routine of existences gradually cancels itself out, negates itself in its apparent repetitiveness until nothing is anything and no one is anyone they were before, and the weak wheel of the world is pushed along by forgetful beings who hear and see and know what is not said, never happens, is unknowable and unverifiable. Sometimes I have the feeling that what takes place is identical to what doesn’t take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try, and yet we spend our lives in a process of choosing and rejecting and selecting, in drawing a line to separate these identical things and make of our story a unique story that we can remember and that can be recounted, either now or at the end of time, and thus be erased or swept away, the annulment of everything we are and do. We pour all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven’t already been, and that’s why we’re so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost. There’s no such thing as a whole or perhaps there never was anything. But it’s also true that there is a time for everything and that it’s all there, waiting for us to call it back, as Luisa said.

  Now, like her, I’m considering new jobs, it seems that we’ve both grown tired of making those trips of eight weeks or sometimes less, which are exhausting and which alienate us a little from each other. I’ll have no problem finding work, with my four languages and a smattering of Catalan, which I’m learning in order to ingratiate myself, since one of my employment possibilities would involve frequent phone calls to Barcelona. And a lot of people are under the impression that I have important contacts in international organizations and that I have dealings with leading politicians. I’m not going to disabuse them, even though they’re quite mistaken. Nevertheless, I don’t much like the idea of staying in Madrid all the time either, coming in and going out with Luisa instead of going to see her or receiving her, with a few rooms and a lift and a front door that now belong to both of us, with one pillow (that’s just a manner of speaking, there are always two) for which we sometimes find ourselves obliged to battle in our sleep and from which we are becoming accustomed, like invalids, to seeing the world; our feet no longer hesitate outside on the damp pavement, they don’t deliberate or change their minds, there’s no room for regret or even choice: there’s no doubt now when we leave the cinema or a restaurant that we’re both heading towards the same place, in the same direction down the half-empty, hosed-down streets, whether we want to or not that particular night, or perhaps it was only last night that she didn’t want to. At least that’s how it seemed to me for a moment, but we nevertheless walked on. I suppose, though, that when our steps head off together towards that same place (the echoes out of time with each other, because now there are four feet walking), we’re both principally thinking about one another, at least I am. I think, though, that we wouldn’t exchange each other for anything in this longed-for world, we’ve still not demanded any act of mutual suppression or obliteration of the person each of us was and with whom we fell in love, we’ve merely changed status, and that no longer seems so serious or incalculable: I can now say we went or we’re going to buy a piano or we’re going to have a baby or we’ve got a cat.

  Some days ago I talked to Berta, she phoned, and when she phones it’s usually because she’s feeling a bit sad or lonely. If I give up my job as an interpreter altogether, it won’t be easy for me to spend a few weeks at her apartment every so often, I’ll have to store up for much longer all the events and anecdotes – dramatic and amusing – which I habitually keep for her or else I’ll have to write to her, which is something we don’t often do. I asked her about “Bill” and she took some seconds to identify him or to remember who he was, he was already ancient history, she thought that he’d probably left New York and hadn’t yet returned. “Now that I think about it,” she said, “he might be back any day now.” I realized that she’d heard nothing more from him since we watched him get into the taxi, I from the street, she from her window. But she’s quite right, it’s possible that he might reappear, assuming he was Guillermo. Berta continues to advertise in the personals. She hasn’t lost her nerve or given up, she told me that she’s currently interested in two men she hasn’t yet met, “J de H” and ‘Truman” to give them their respective aliases. She cheered up when she talked about them, she sounded affectionate the way women do when they’re nursing some illusion and that illusion doesn’t involve or affect us, they’re merely transmitting it to us; but while we were talking, I imagined her during one of those moments when the half moon on her right cheek, her scar, would darken until it was blue or purple and make me think it was a stain. Perhaps the day would come, I thought (and I did so in order to prevent it happening), when she would lose her nerve and give up and the half moon would remain one of those two colours. Berta was her name, her initials “BSA”, marked for life.

  I haven’t seen Custardoy for a while now, though I know that I’ll still meet him from time to time, through my father, and I imagine I’ll go on doing so even when my father’s no longer alive, there are certain figures who accompany us intermittently from childhood onwards and never leave us. He’ll go on coveting the world, he’ll continue in his bid to be more than one person and telling barely credible tales about things that have happened to him. But I prefer not to think about him, although sometimes, without wanting to, I still do.

  I still haven’t talked to Ranz about what I heard that night, which was in fact only a short time ago, although it’s fast receding into the distance in these precipitate times, which, nevertheless, like all times, contain the same thing, a single, incomplete or half-lived life, that of each of us, my own life, or Luisa’s. We probably never will talk about it. Ranz won’t even know that I know, he won’t even ask Luisa if she told me in the end, there’s always someone who doesn’t know something or doesn’t want to, and thus we linger on for ever. As far as I can see, their relationship remains the same, or very similar to what it was before, as if that night had never existed or didn’t count. It’s better that way, they have a great deal of respect for each other and she enjoys listening to him. The only thing that’s new is that now he seems older, not so ironic, almost an old man, which he never was before. He’s a little unsteady on his feet now, his eyes have lost some of their life and sparkle, they seem less fervent when they look at me or at others, they gaze less flatteringly upon the person before them; his feminine mouth, so like mine, is becoming blurred by lines; his eyebrows no longer have the same vigorous arch; sometimes he puts his arms into the sleeves of his raincoat, I’m sure that next winter he’ll do so all the time. We see each other often, now that I know I’m going to be in Madrid for a while and now that I’m taking some holiday. We often go out to lunch, with or without Luisa, to La Trainera, La Ancha, La Dorada, to Alkalde as well as Nicolás, Rugantino, Fortuny and El Café and La Fonda, he likes to vary the restaurants. He still tells me stories, familiar and unfamiliar, about his working life, about his years of travelling and his time at the Prado, about his contacts with millionaires and directors of banks, who have long since forgotten him, he’s too old now to be of any use to them, to amuse them or be able to fly over to visit them, the very rich like to re
ceive people and won’t move an inch in order to see a friend. I thought about what Ranz told Luisa and which I overheard, sitting smoking a cigarette at the foot of my bed. Although I will in time forget it, I haven’t done so yet, and now when I look at the small portrait of my Aunt Teresa (who could never have been my aunt), which Ranz keeps in his house, I look at it with more attention than I did before, during my childhood and adolescence. Perhaps I look at it the way one looks at the photographs of people who can no longer see us and whom we no longer see, out of anger or absence or attrition, the photographs that end up usurping their vanishing features, the photographs fixed for ever on a particular day that no one can remember, the day that they were taken; the way my grandmother and my mother sometimes looked, transfixed or wearing a foolish smile, after their laughter had died, staring into space, their eyes dry and unblinking, like someone who’s just woken up and still doesn’t quite know where they are, that was how Gloria must have looked at the last (there’s no portrait of her) had she managed to turn her head; unreflecting, not even remembering, feeling grief or retrospective fear, grief and fear are not fleeting emotions, looking at faces that one watched grow up but not grow old, three-dimensional faces that have now grown flat, mobile faces that we become used to seeing in repose, not them but their image which has replaced them, as I prepare myself to do with my father, as one day Luisa will become accustomed to doing with my photograph when she no longer has before her even half her life and mine is over. Not that anyone knows the order of the dead or the living, whose turn it will be to experience grief or fear first. It doesn’t matter, everything is past and nothing ever happened and, besides, you just don’t know. What I heard that night from Ranz’s lips seemed to me neither venial nor ingenuous nor did it make me smile, but it did seem to me to belong to the past. Everything does, even what is happening now.