He hears the fridge motor starting up.
“Well that’s a drag, because I’m crazy about you.”
“I know you’re the love of my life and that I could be happy with you.”
She keeps looking out the window. She’s sitting sideways, her legs folded under her, her arms folded over the back of the sofa, her forehead almost touching the glass of the windowpane. He’s sat back down too, but looking the other way, his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands together. He has to turn around if he wants to see her. Her neck, the start of her curls, her very small white ear, her eyes reflected in the window. He doesn’t know if she sees him.
“I thought I could make you happy.”
“So there’s no hope for me, then.”
He remembers himself counting the time between the flashes of light from a lighthouse.
“Esan, zuk ni ez nauzu ezer maite?” she asks—don’t you love me at all?
He finds the question harder in Basque. He doesn’t know what to answer. It would be hurtful of him to say no, and there’s no point in him saying that that’s not the issue, but that’s what he says. That isn’t the issue.
And then: “In any case, what is love . . . ?”
“Oh, I guess when you love someone, you know it, just as when you hate someone.”
She turns back from the window, frowning, and he looks away from her.
“But you must love me some, because I’ve seen that you’ve been happy with me. Isn’t that true?”
He says it is.
“We’ve had fun. We’ve laughed.” She touches his shoulder for him to pay attention. “¿Verdad que sí?” she asks—isn’t that right?
He says it is, with a tired voice, and she goes back to her previous position, almost kneeling, her arms crossed on the back of the sofa, her forehead against the window. He stays still, his head down, looking at his open hands, their fingertips touching each other.
The photo of the two of them in front of the statue of the angel in the Place Jean Moulin in Bordeaux is still on the triangular table. Abaitua thinks he looks old and pathetic in it, one hand on the shoulder of the smiling girl next to him, the same girl who’s sitting by his side right now and making statements every few seconds, who turns toward him from time to time as if to make sure that he’s still there.
“I won’t be offended if you don’t love me.”
“You love her, don’t you?”
He can’t help thinking that his mind, which he needs in order to think straight, is zipping around like a trapped hornet banging its head into windows again and again. He thinks of Kepa’s mother making bread crumbs for her robins. His father and his friend—the latter a much bigger man—at the Hendaia station, the same place where Franco and Hitler met, saying goodbye to him. Pilar smiling at Loiola as she says to him “what would I do without you?”
He thinks he deserves his punishment.
“What do you still see in her? Tell me. What do you see in her?”
When he doesn’t answer her questions, she says, “Oh my God,” the clearest sign of her frustration or lack of hope. Abaitua finds this moaning more distressing that her tone of anguish as she continues her questions: “Tell me. Do you understand me? Come on, I know you’re not enjoying this, but it’s so important for me, and you talk so little. I have to know. Don’t you realize that?” She speaks forcefully but without any trace of anger. “Because you’re the man of my life. Do you understand that?” She moves her face toward him, as if she doubted his ability to understand, as if she were with a little child. “Do you understand that I need to know? Do you still love her?”
“Tell me.”
And once more: “Oh my God.”
Her eyes are shining, and the red on her cheeks looks like a temperature, he’d say. The dryness of her lips is even more apparent now. The sweat on her neck is shiny, too; a couple of drops have slipped down to her freckle-covered collarbone and toward her neckline. She adjusts her shawl and moves her face toward him, as if she wanted to whisper in his ear. “You looked so alone when I saw you, that’s why I got close to you. I thought you wanted my affection, and I liked you so much. I’m never going to want anybody as much as I want you. I don’t think anybody’s ever going to love you like I do.” Covering her face with her hands: “It’s really bad luck to have gotten to spend just enough time with you to know that this great thing that I feel actually exists, and then to have it all go away.”
Nada, nothing, deus ez.
He stands up, and she holds onto his wrist for him not to leave. She does so softly and tries to smile. “Please don’t leave like this,” and a moment later she repeats it in Basque. “Ez joan horrela, mesedez.” He stays still, leaning down a little, because she’s holding onto his wrist. She shakes his arm as if to ask him to pay attention. She doesn’t mind if he goes on loving his wife. She doesn’t mind sharing him, being his lover, she’ll find a small apartment when Maureen arrives and they can meet up three times a week, or twice, whenever he wants. She’d be happy like that. Please think about it. He loosens his arm and tells her not to say stupid things, but she doesn’t listen him.
“How very annoying it must be to have somebody love you and not be able to love them back.”
Now he’s the one who lifts his hand to touch her forehead, but she moves away resolutely, though not brusquely. Then she makes that gesture of hers, wrinkling her eyes and stretching her lips. She’s all right, he doesn’t have to worry about her. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to commit suicide.” She smiles.
They say goodbye like any other day. She opens the door and lets him past, then sticks her head out from behind the door and offers her cheek for him to kiss. Which he does, lightly. He’s already gone down a few steps on the spiral staircase when he hears her say that she’s going away for a while. He stops still. After thinking for a moment about whether to ask her where, he decides not to. He says he’ll probably go away, too.
When he turns around to close the iron gate after crossing the garden—Lynn’s living room, a soft amber color, is the only room with lights on in the house—he promises himself that he won’t go into that house again unless he’s a free man, with no ties, after sorting out his situation with Pilar. He’s ashamed to be so mixed up, it doesn’t seem appropriate for a man of his age. He doesn’t feel like going home, either. He’d like to be sitting in a park in some other country, at the side of a lake, throwing bread to the ducks. The lights at the train stop aren’t on, but there’s a very intense bluish light in the gloaming. He takes a deep breath to relieve the pressure in his chest and takes a few steps. He crosses the rails and decides to sit on a bench at the train stop for a moment. There’s nobody waiting; there are very few local trains at that time. He feels a long way from everything and surprisingly calm. What is he doing here? He wonders what his answer would be if he were to bump into an acquaintance and they asked him that. What comes to mind: He misses lakes with ducks and swans on them, and he’s seldom sat on a bench in his own city. He feels mixed up. He remembers Pilar’s smile once more as she said “what would I do without you?”—something she’s never said to him. By now she will have decided whether to stay over in Bilbao or not. What would he answer her if she were to call and tell him she needed to know whether or not he loves her? Not whether he feels affection for her, liking, or whether he’s attached to her—whether he really loves her. Loves her according to Lynn’s parameters. He hears the sound of a train to his left, from the direction of Txominenea, but a long way off and coming at great speed. Too fast to be a local train. That shaking sound of the whistle—he doesn’t know what makes it do that—and shortly afterward, the sound of another train, coming the other way but already very close. They pass each other right in front of him. The light from their windows lasts awhile, he sees them as if they were blinking eyes. When they disappear, he tries to tell which train’s noise lasts longer, but
he can’t make it out.
21
It’s a fine morning with a clear sky, the horizon slightly shaded in pink, no trace of wind, which doesn’t encourage Julia much to start on her corrections. But the author is standing there in his ugly bathrobe, looking out of the window and not saying anything. “There she is,” he says. He’s talking about Maureen, Lynn’s friend, who’s just walked by dragging her wheeled suitcase. She thinks it’s Lynn’s case, and it’s come in and out of the house two or three times since Maureen arrived. This times she’s heading out, and her way of walking reminds her of a blackbird—forward and backward. She’s had to lift the case up for a long stretch of the path, apparently because the gravel keeps stopping the wheels from turning, but that doesn’t seem to tire her, she lifts it a foot and a half off the ground; maybe she’s strong and there isn’t much in the case. That’s what Martin’s deduced, and even so, because she seems to be equally at ease in both directions, leaving the house and coming toward it, he can’t tell whether she’s taking things out or bringing them in, and being highly interested in the question, the owner of the house doesn’t take his eyes off her. But what he’s really interested in is where Lynn is, because they haven’t heard anything from her in the last six days. Julia, too, is very surprised at her having spent so long away without saying anything, but she doesn’t take it the same way Martin does, she doesn’t think it’s rude of her. She’s worried at her being away for so long and can’t help imagining situations of greater and lesser misfortune, and that’s why she doesn’t find it funny when Martin says there’s no doubt the fat woman’s killed her and is carrying her body out in bits inside the wheeled suitcase. Martin no longer mentions her by name. He talks about “the woman upstairs,” or “the American girl,” or “the delivery doctor’s friend.” It’s true that she didn’t tell them much when she said she was going away for a couple of days, and he says maybe she’s gone on another trip with friends. Julia, too, thinks it the most credible hypothesis, even though Lynn didn’t look in the mood for that type of thing the last time she saw her, and in any case, that wouldn’t explain her not telling them where she was after those first couple of days had gone by, and still less her not picking up the phone.
Martin calls Maureen “the fat one” for obvious reasons, and also “the side table,” because she wears a long gathered skirt and a belt around her waist that make her look like she’s got on a long, circular tablecloth. Julia is convinced that on both the occasions she went up to the penthouse—worried about not having any news from Lynn and overcoming her fear to be taken for a nosy Spanish snooper—she didn’t open the door to her even though she was in there, and that she didn’t make any effort to hide the fact, either; on the contrary, the second time, she clearly heard her closing a window while she waited to see if she would open the door. The following day, when Julia went out to meet her on the garden path and very politely asked her if she knew anything about Lynn, her answer was vague, even mysterious, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that she wasn’t very good at Spanish. She hoped to see her “con prontitud” she said—which is more like saying “quite promptly” than saying “soon”—thanked her for her concern, and said she’d let her know as soon as possible.
The writer, in his incredibly ugly bathrobe, is still looking out at the garden. There’s very little hair left on his head, which isn’t the same for the man in front of the mirror, or if it is, the man doesn’t seem to realize, as evidenced by the fact that he comforts himself, in his many reflections about his baldness, by saying that at least for the time being, it’s limited to his hairline. The type of baldness he thinks most terrible is when it’s a round emptiness that starts at the temples and draws a clear line all the way around the head, which looks even worse when the remaining hair is thick—something he calls bank clerk baldness or notary baldness—and he’s much less worried about the other type of baldness, the one that widens the forehead but doesn’t affect the back of the head.
He turns toward her with a look of fear on his face—a real look of fear, his eyes wide open, his eyebrows forming a circumflex—and Julia thinks he’s read her thoughts, but it’s the phone ringing. He makes wild movements with both hands for her not to pick up. They both know it’s his publisher. The persecuted writer doesn’t dare ask her to answer and say that he’s sick, or even about to die; she’s long since told him that she’s not willing to lie for him anymore. As well as being disagreeable and difficult for her, it was obvious that he wasn’t gaining anything by telling lies to put off the moment of having to face the truth. He, on the other hand, accuses her of having an indecent relationship with the truth, of being incapable of betraying her prejudices for him, of not being with him unconditionally, of not protecting him, of not being loyal to him.
The phone keeps on ringing mercilessly, endlessly, and all of a sudden, it brusquely stops halfway through a tone—click. The cease-fire’s brief, and it starts ringing again; the publisher knows only too well that he’s at home. Twice, three times. There’s no more irritating sound than a phone you mustn’t pick up. Why doesn’t he answer and just tell him that there isn’t any novel, and no novella, either, that he can’t write, or doesn’t want to, and that he’s going away to Sicily?
Silence at last. The persecuted writer slumps down in a chair and pulls his bathrobe tight. But Julia wonders whether she’s going to have to put up with him all day like this, in this state of negligence and desolation he deliberately subjects her to, knowing it’s the harshest punishment he can give her. She can’t stand his exaggerations, his overacting, his overblown statements about how he feels, and she can’t help thinking that if Marie Lafôret were to call him and ask him out for a coffee, he’d run up the stairs like a teenager and get ready to go out. She almost says, “Why don’t you call Lafôret and go out for a bit?” But she controls the urge and, in the most affectionate way possible, just says the second part, says he should go out for a while, it’s a beautiful day. He looks at her with a combination of amazement and anger. How could he go out? He’s the very picture of anguish, his elbows on his knees and his hands cradling his forehead. “Go out for a bit,” he mumbles. Once, twice, three times.
She allows a long abandoned feeling of boredom and revulsion to take over, even though she knows it does her no good, but she enjoys giving herself up to it. She looks at the thin hair around his bald patch—standing on end in a mess—which he vainly tries to comb into shape by rubbing at it with his bitten-away nails. Why does he make everything so painful? His ankles are swollen, too. She stares at the skin on his calves, which is white, almost transparent, and there, too, he only has a little bit of long hair, and at his weedy, hairless thighs, the area between which, fortunately, is covered up by the lower part of his foul bathrobe. After finishing her inspection of him, she unintentionally uses the same tone his mother does when she asks, “So why don’t you write some then?”
He stares at her with his blue eyes wide open, his hair looking practically electrified now, as if somebody’s just given him a slap, but Julia hasn’t had enough, and like a boxer wanting to finish off her opponent, she says, “So tell me, why can’t you just finish that fucking novel of yours once and for all?”
He gets up and draws his bathrobe around him, his dignity wounded to the core. It looks as if he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. He’s too angry. Julia feels relieved for a moment, but she knows that she’ll soon feel guilty for having let herself go. A moment of silence. “I’ll finish the fucking novel sooner than you think,” he says finally. He unplugs his laptop and holds it to his chest. His wounded dignity. He’s obviously going to lock himself into the formal library, which is what he’s been doing recently every time he gets angry. “I’ll finish the fucking novel sooner than you think,” he says once more, as if it were a threat, in a low voice, then he says it once again and slams the door behind him. Julia is left wanting to clarify that she didn’t mean to say “that fucking novel,” she
was trying to say “just fucking finish it,” but it’s too late now.
Normally, when the inside staircase creaks so much, Lynn opens the door before she reaches the landing. As long as the music isn’t very loud, at any rate—she says she likes to listen to Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” at full volume—and then she always knocks on the door. She doesn’t think she’s ever rung the bell; it’s unpleasant sounding, and she doesn’t think it’s right when you get on well with your neighbors. Maureen doesn’t open, and it’s one of two things: either she’s not at home, or she doesn’t want to answer. So Julia dares to ring the bell, while trying to remember which way she’d seen her walking through the garden last time, toward the street or toward the house. She rings a few more times, but gets no answer. Although she’s ashamed to do so, she leans down to look through the keyhole, but she doesn’t see anything. She even gets down on her knees to try to see under the door and thinks the cat’s there. It’s sniffing at the crack. “Hi, old chap,” she says, as Lynn usually does.
A rough south wind has started blowing, and it brings dust from the construction being done on the neighboring buildings and shaking the branches of the acacias. She finds the noise of the trees frightening. She’d like it to rain but doesn’t think it will. The garden needs rain. Especially the hydrangeas; before the wind started, there’d been more petals piled up on the ground than on the plants themselves. She wouldn’t mind watering them but would prefer the writer not to find her doing something so frivolous if he came outside, and she only uses the watering can on Lynn’s bougainvilleas.
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