Design of the non

by Javier Marías

  The woman in the street stood there with her mouth open, not saying anything, and put her hand to her cheek, the hand which, disappointed and ashamed, had slipped gently down from on high. There was no misunderstanding now.

  "Oh, sorry," she said after a few seconds. "I thought you someone else."

  All her anger dissolved in an instant and she realized what had happened - that was the worst part - that she realized she'd have to go on waiting, perhaps on the same spot she'd been before, not beneath the balconies, she'd have to return to her original place on the other side of the street beyond the esplanade, to perform that same swift, furious dragging of her sharp heel after every two or three steps, three blows with an axe followed by a stab, or a stab followed by three blows with an axe. She was suddenly disarmed, docile, drained of all her rage and energy, and I don't think she was worried so much about what I might think of her mistake and of her bad temper - in her green eyes, I was after all a stranger - as about the fact that she still ran the risk of her date not turning up. She was looking at me with her vague, grey gaze suddenly lost in thought, a little apologetic, a little indifferent, though only slightly apologetic, for what predominated was bitterness. Should she leave or go on waiting, having thought the waiting was over?

  "No problem," I said.

  "Who are you talking to?" asked Luisa, who, without my assistance, was emerging from her stupor, although not from the darkness (her voice was rather less hoarse now and her question more precise; perhaps she couldn't understand why it was so dark).

  But I still didn't reply or go over to the bed to calm her and smooth her sheets, because at that moment the doors of the balcony to my left were flung noisily open and I saw two male arms appear and lean on the iron balustrade, or rather grab hold of it as if it were not in fact fixed, and then call out:

  "Miriam!"

  Hesitant and confused, the mulatto woman looked up again, there was no doubt this time about the direction of her gaze, to my left, towards the balcony doors that had been flung open and the strong arms that were all I could see, a man's long arms, a man in shirtsleeves, the white sleeves rolled up, the arms hairy, as hairy or even hairier than mine. I'd ceased to exist, I'd disappeared, I too was in shirtsleeves, I'd rolled my sleeves up when, some time before, I'd gone out to lean on the balcony, but now I'd disappeared because I was myself again, that is, because for her I was once more no one. On the ring finger of his right hand the man was wearing a wedding ring like mine, except that I wore mine on my left hand, I'd done so for only two weeks now and was still not used to it. The man wore his large, black watch on the wrist of the same arm, whilst I wore mine on the other. He was probably left-handed. The mulatto woman wore neither watch nor rings. I realized that the figure of that man must have been half-visible to her all the time, unlike me, clearly visible as I stood with my elbows resting on the balustrade. Now the positions were reversed, I'd been wiped out at a stroke and was invisible and now it was the man I couldn't see, just as I couldn't see Luisa, to whom my back was still turned. Perhaps that man had been repeatedly going over to the windows then moving away again, though never opening the balcony doors, according to whether or not he could feel the grey-green eyes of the woman in the street - that myopic, inoffensive gaze - fixed on him. He'd been blithely playing hide-and-seek, or rather neither hide nor seek, and she was right in fact, her date had already gone up to the hotel room without telling her, to watch her waiting from a distance, to observe her anxious pacing up and down - three steps forward, three steps back — and then her stumbling advance and her fall, her putting on of her shoe again, just as I had done.

  The odd thing was that Miriam's response was nothing like her response to me had been when she thought I was someone else, that I was that man with the long, strong, hairy arms, who wore both watch and wedding ring on his right hand. When she saw him and knew for certain that it was he, when she saw the person she'd waited for so long and heard him call her name, she didn't gesture or shout at him. She didn't insult him or threaten him or say: "I'll get you" or "I kill you", brandishing her bare arm and her impetuous fingers at him, perhaps because, unlike me, when she thought I was him, he'd spoken to her and said her name. The woman's expression changed: a look of relief, just for an instant, and then promptly - almost gratefully, a gratitude aimed at no one in particular — with more elegance in her step than she'd shown up until then (as if she were walking barefoot and her legs were not so stiff), she crossed the stretch of esplanade still separating her from the hotel and went in carrying her large black bag, which apparently weighed less heavily now, thus disappearing from my field of vision without addressing another word to me, reconciled to the world again with those few short steps. The balcony doors on my left closed and then opened again to stand ajar, as if the breeze had blown them open or the man had simply thought better of it a second after closing them (there wasn't any breeze) and wasn't sure how he'd want to have them when the woman was upstairs with him, any minute now (the woman would be coming up the stairs). And then finally (although very little time had passed and Luisa must have felt that she'd still only just woken up), I left my place at the window, switched on the bedside lamp and went solicitously over to our bed, a somewhat delayed solicitude.

  I STILL FIND that delay inexplicable and even then I sincerely regretted it, not because it might have any consequences, but because of what, in an excess of scruple and zeal, I thought it might mean. And whilst it's true that I immediately linked that marital tardiness with the first feeling of unease I mentioned, and with the fact that since our wedding it had become increasingly difficult for me to think about Luisa (the more corporeal and continuous her presence, the more removed and remote she seemed), the appearance of the second feeling of unease, which I've also mentioned, was due not to my laconic contemplation of the mulatto woman and to my brief moment of negligence, but to what happened once I had ministered to Luisa and dried the sweat from her forehead and her shoulders and undone her bra so that it wouldn't cut into her, leaving her to decide whether to keep it on, even though it was unfastened, or to take it off. With the light on, Luisa brightened up a little and wanted to drink something, and once she had, she felt better, and once she felt better she was in the mood to talk a little, and when she'd calmed down and saw that the sheets were less clammy and that she felt more composed with the bed in order and, above all, understood and accepted the idea that it was now night and that for her, whether she liked it or not, the day had ended and there was no possibility of resuming anything and all she could do now was to try and forget about her illness and bury it in sleep until the next morning, when, presumably, everything would return to the somewhat anomalous normality of our honeymoon and her body would have sorted itself out and would once more be fully corporeal, then she remembered my moment of inattention, which she'd certainly not perceived as such or, rather, what she remembered was that I'd said: "No problem" to some unknown person in the street below and that voices and shouts heard in dreams or in half-sleep had risen up from the street and woken her and possibly frightened her.

  "Who were you talking to earlier on?" she asked again.

  I saw no reason not to tell her the truth and yet I had the feeling as I did so that I wasn't doing so. At that moment, I was holding a towel one corner of which I'd moistened with water and was busy cooling her face, her throat, the back of her neck (her long, dishevelled hair clung to her skin and a few stray hairs lay across her forehead like fine lines sent by the future to cast a momentary shadow over her).

  "No one, a woman who mistook me for someone else. She mixed our balcony up with the one next door. She must be very shortsighted, because it was only when she was right up close that she realized I wasn't the man she'd arranged to meet. He's in there." I indicated the wall that separated us from Miriam and the man. There was a table against the wall and above it a mirror, in which, when we moved or sat up, we could see ourselves from the bed.

  "But why was she shouting at you? Sh
e seemed to shout a lot. Or did I dream it? I'm so hot."

  I left the towel at the foot of the bed and stroked her cheek and her round chin several times. There was still something nebulous about her large, dark eyes. If she'd had a temperature before, it had gone down now.

  "I've no idea, since it wasn't me she was shouting at but the other man she'd mistaken me for. God knows what they can have done to each other."

  While I was taking care of Luisa (though without paying much attention, because I was tending to her and doing various other things at the same time and going to and fro between the room and the bathroom), I'd heard the tapping of high heels reach the door along from ours and heard how it opened without her knocking and then, apart from a slight creaking (only briefly) and the gentle thud as it closed again (very slowly), there was nothing but an indistinguishable murmur, whispered words that I couldn't make out despite their being spoken in my own language and despite the fact that, according to the noise I'd heard shortly before, their balcony doors were ajar and I still hadn't closed ours. My concern at the inexcusable delay was joined by another, my concern at my feeling of impatience. I felt as if I were impatient not only to calm Luisa and smooth her sheets and, as far as I could, alleviate the effects of her transitory illness, but also to stop her asking me any more questions and simply go back to sleep, for there was no time to explain my curiosity to her nor was she in any state to interest herself in anything outside her own body, and while we exchanged a few words and I went to the bathroom to moisten the corner of the towel and gave her a drink and stroked her chin, the chin I was so fond of, the slight noises I myself was making and our own short, fragmented sentences prevented me from paying attention and attuning my ears to any individual word I might be able to make out amongst the murmurings next door which I was impatient to decipher.

  And I was impatient because I was aware that what I didn't hear now I never would hear; there would be no instant replay, as there can be when you listen to a tape or watch a video and can press the rewind button, rather, any whisper not apprehended or understood there and then would be lost forever. That's the unfortunate thing about what happens to us and remains unrecorded, or worse still, unknown or unseen or unheard, for later, there's no way it can be recovered. The day we didn't spend together we never will have spent together, what someone was going to say to us over the phone when they called and we didn't answer will never be said, at least not exactly the same thing said in exactly the same spirit; and everything will be slightly different or even completely different because of that lack of courage which dissuades us from talking to you. But even if we were together that day or at home when that person phoned or we dared to speak to them, overcoming our fear and forgetting the risks involved, even then, none of that will ever be repeated and consequently a time will come when having been together will be the same as not having been together, and having picked up the phone the same as not having done so, and having dared to speak to you the same as if we'd remained silent. Even the most indelible things are of fixed duration, just like the things that leave no trace or never even happen, and if we're far-sighted enough to note down or record or film those things, and accumulate loads of souvenirs and mementos and even try to replace what has happened by a simple note or record or statement, so that, right from the start, what in fact happens are our notes or our recordings or our films and nothing more, even in that infinite perfecting of repetition we will have lost the time in which those events actually took place (even if it were only the time it took to note them down) and while we try to relive it or reproduce it or make it come back and prevent it becoming the past, another different time will be happening, and in that other time we will doubtless not be together, we will pick up no phones, we will not dare to do anything, unable to prevent any crime or death (on the other hand, we won't commit any or cause any) because, in our morbid attempt to prevent time from ending, to cause what is over to return, we will be letting that other time slip past us as if it were not ours. Thus what we see and hear comes to be similar and even the same as what we didn't see or hear, it's just a question of time, or of our own disappearance. And, despite that, we cannot stop focusing our lives on hearing and seeing and witnessing and knowing, in the belief that these lives of ours depend on our spending a day together or answering a phone call or daring to do something or committing a crime or causing a death and knowing that that was how it was. Sometimes I have the feeling that nothing that happens happens, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered, and even the most monotonous and routine of existences, by its apparent repetitiveness, gradually cancels itself out, negates itself, 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. What takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us is 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 told. 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. Or perhaps there never was anything.

  It may be that not one word passed between Miriam and the man during all the time I thought I might be missing what they said. Perhaps they just looked at each other or stood locked in a silent embrace or went over to the bed to get undressed, or perhaps she simply took off her shoes, showing the man the feet she'd so carefully washed before leaving home and which were now tired and aching (the sole of one of them dirty from contact with the pavement). They obviously didn't hit each other or become embroiled in a fight or anything like that (I mean in hand-to-hand combat), because when you do that you immediately start breathing hard and shouting, either just before or afterwards. Perhaps, like me (although I was doing it for Luisa's benefit and going to and fro), Miriam went to the bathroom and shut herself in without saying a word, to look at herself and regain her composure and do her best to erase from her face the accumulated expressions of anger and tiredness and disappointment and relief, wondering which would be the most appropriate, the most advantageous face to wear to confront the left-handed man with the hairy arms who'd found it amusing or diverting to have her wait for no reason and to have her mistake me for him. Perhaps now she'd make him wait for a while, with the bathroom door shut, or perhaps that wasn't what she wanted at all, perhaps she just wanted to sit on the lid of the toilet or on the edge of the bath weeping secret tears, having first taken out her lenses if she wore them, drying her eyes and burying her face in a towel until she managed to calm down, wash her face, put on her make-up and be in a fit state to come out again and pretend that everything was all right. I was impatient to start listening, and for that I needed Luisa to go back to sleep, to stop being corporeal and continuous, to remove herself and become remote, and I needed to sit still in order to listen through the wall on which the mirror hung or through the open balcony doors or, stereophonically, through both.

  I speak and understand and read four languages including my own and that's why, I suppose, I've spent part of my working life as a translator and interpreter at congresses, meetings and seminars, especially political ones, sometimes at the highest level (on two occasions I've acted as interpreter between two heads of state; well, one was only a prime minister). I suppose that's why I have a tendency (as does Luisa, who is also an interpreter, except that we don't share exactly the same languages and she's less career-minded than I am and works less than I do, and so the tende
ncy is not so marked in her) to want to understand everything that people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it's in one of the innumerable languages I don't know, even if it's in an indistinguishable murmur or an imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn't understand and what's said is not intended for my ears, or is said precisely so that I won't catch it. I can disconnect, but only in certain irresponsible states of mind or by making a great effort, and that's why sometimes I'm glad that murmurs really are indistinguishable and whispers imperceptible and that there are so many languages that are strange and impenetrable to me, because then I can rest. When I know and accept that however much I want or try to understand, I simply can't, then I feel calm and indifferent and I can rest. There's nothing I can do, it's out of my hands, I'm useless, and my ears can rest, as can my head, my memory and my tongue, because, when I do understand, I can't help but translate, automatically and mentally, into my own language and quite often (luckily not always, perhaps even without being aware that I'm doing it), if what reaches my ears is in Spanish, I even translate that in my head into one of the other three languages I speak and understand. I often even translate the expressions, glances and gestures, it's a substitute, a habit, and it seems to me that even objects say something when they come into contact with those gestures, glances and expressions. When all else fails, I listen to the sounds which I know to be articulated, meaningful, and yet, nevertheless, remain indecipherable: I can't separate them out into individual sounds or units. That's the chief curse of the working interpreter, when for some reason (terrible diction, a thick foreign accent, my own absent- mindedness), you can't separate or select and you lose the thread and everything you hear sounds identical, a jumble or an uninterrupted flow, that might just as well have remained unuttered, since the fundamental thing is to distinguish individual words, the way you have to distinguish individuals if you want to get to know them. But when that happens and you're not at work, it's also your main consolation: only then can you rest completely and not pay attention or remain alert, and find pleasure instead in listening to voices (the insignificant murmur of speech), which you know not only have nothing to do with you, but which you are, besides, unqualified to interpret or transmit or memorize or transcribe or understand. Nor even to repeat.