Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  This did not happen as quickly as I expected. He must have made some minimal preparations, or perhaps more than that, put on his long, dark navy-blue dressing gown and rinsed out his mouth or, who knows, had a pee – both he and Beatriz had small private bathrooms in their respective bedrooms. Perhaps he had already removed his patch in order to go to sleep and had to put it on again and adjust it in front of a mirror, because when he did finally emerge, he was wearing it as usual, which slightly disappointed me, because I was hoping to see what was hidden underneath, even though I could only do so in very dim lighting and from a distance, after all, there was no reason why he should cover his eye in his wife’s presence, she must often have seen it or what remained of his eye, at least before he suddenly broke off their relationship, before he had begun to find her presence boring and before their relationship had languished, according to what Beatriz had said, and there was no reason why this should not be true, there had been no witnesses and, normally, where there are no witnesses, the two interlocutors are unlikely to lie about the facts, not in principle, unless one of them does so without really knowing what they’re doing, because they’ve told themselves the only version of events they find bearable, for example: ‘I can’t believe you’ve stopped wanting to have sex with me. It must have been a decision taken against your own instincts, self-imposed, and now you’re sticking to it blindly because you feel a hostage to your own words. One day or one night of frustration and yearning, you’ll forget them, you’ll rebel and believe you never spoke them. Perhaps tonight or else tomorrow or the day after, and I’ll be here to help you erase them.’

  Muriel flung open the door, although without making any noise, you might say he did so with mute, measured violence so that everything continued to happen soundlessly and nothing shattered the silence of the house, the city, the universe, as if he didn’t want the scene he was making, or that domestic quarrel, to trouble them in the least, house, city or universe. Perhaps it was true what he had said and what she had called exaggerated, that she came to his door every night from her woeful bed, and thus both were skilled at holding their conversations almost in a whisper and tempering their anger so as not to disturb or wake anyone else. Perhaps, too, so that their story would remain a tenuous, never-told tale, as tends to be the case with such deeply personal matters, and would be seen only by the moon’s somnolent, half-open eye. On that night, however, the moon’s eye had been joined by my eyes, somnolent certainly, but wide open and far from cold.

  Muriel appeared at his door, lit by the light that he had finally turned on, weary of listening to her spiel. His dark dressing gown contrasted with his white pyjamas, of which I could see only the collar and part of the legs, for his dressing gown hung elegantly halfway down his calves. His hair had not had time to become tousled by the pillow and, apart from being in his nightclothes, he looked his usual self. He folded his arms sternly and, with his one eye, fixed Beatriz with the piercing gaze of a teacher who has caught a pupil telling a lie so grave that all her virtues – in this case her exuberant flesh – were cancelled out by his condemnation; as if his indignation had, in a second, transformed his inevitable feelings of pleasure into pure displeasure. (Because seeing her there in that nightdress, such pleasure did seem to me inevitable.) Insofar as I could discern such subtleties, I thought I saw in his eye annoyance, scorn and anger, and perhaps, too, the kind of embarrassment one might feel on behalf of someone close to you and which tends to provoke rage rather than pity. His voice, even in a whisper, sounded ice-cold, metallic.

  ‘Some stupid thing that happened ages ago?’ he said, repeating her words. ‘Some stupid thing? How dare you describe it like that, even now, after all the pain it’s caused and continues to cause us. A prank, eh? A little game, is that right? And all’s fair in love and war? How very witty, how very astute.’ He placed his hands on her shoulders as if he were about to shake her, and I was afraid he would give her a shove and send her flying, and if she did fall, she might hit the back of her head on the wall or the floor, just one sharp blow and she could be dead, anyone can die at any time. Muriel was clearly in a violent mood, and I feared that things might get out of hand, that he might lose control. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You never will. You’ll never understand what it was that you did, it’s of no importance to you, it wasn’t then and it never will be for as long as you live, which I hope won’t be much longer, yes, let’s hope you die soon. How stupid of me to love you during all those years, love you with all my heart, as long, that is, as I knew nothing. It’s as if I’d loved a lemon, a melon, an artichoke.’ The comparison surprised me and made me hope that Muriel had perhaps recovered his sense of humour, even if it was the kind of abusive humour he sometimes used with her. While a lemon can sometimes mean a fool or a dupe, the same could not be said of a melon or an artichoke: he had, I thought, been unable to resist adding further jokey references to other fruits, or however you choose to classify an artichoke. But I was alarmed to see him shift his hands from her shoulders to her neck (the long neck of a tall woman, unlined and still firm), where it’s so easy to start pressing and, in a matter of two or three minutes, it’s all over, the irritating or hated person no longer exists and there’s nothing to be done, the tongue that speaks and wounds has fallen silent and is perhaps now protruding from the mouth, motionless and bloated and purple, that’s how films sometimes depict the victim of a strangling. I don’t know if it has any basis in reality or is merely intended to terrify the viewer, who will think that, as well as kicking the bucket, he might end up looking like a complete grotesque, with wide, bulging eyes that resemble painted porcelain or eggs. ‘What is it you want me to look at? That nightdress? Did you buy it or did someone give it to you? Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve seen more than enough of you, keep it for your lovers, who clearly have no taste anyway, keep it for those two horny bastards, and don’t waste it on me. All right, I’m looking at you, so what? Lard, pure lard, that’s all you are to me.’ And he ran his fingertips up the fine cloth, from hem to neck, a scornful gesture, as if he found it repugnant to touch both the cloth and her. ‘How can he say that?’ I thought. ‘He’s either mad or lying through his teeth. And how can he persuade her that he means it, if he can persuade her? “Lard” is the last word you would use to describe her.’ Fortunately, that last gesture led his hands elsewhere, removed them from her neck, so that I no longer feared they would close around it and squeeze, and, unexpectedly after that initial gesture of disgust, he placed his hands on her breasts and began groping them clumsily, roughly, with not a hint of a caress, not a suggestion of eroticism, or so it seemed to me, but who knows what a touch or a contact might mean to someone else, it’s often unpredictable, and you can make strange discoveries when touching or when touched, when you accidently brush against someone’s thigh (the woman’s skirt having slightly ridden up) and notice that the thigh is not withdrawn, does not move away, that’s often all it takes to prompt you to touch the thigh again and not by accident this time but just to make sure, out of curiosity and a sudden desire you hadn’t expected, the unpremeditated desire which finds so many beauties hooked up with horrible men or men they had, at first sight, detested, the skin is a very treacherous thing, the flesh disconcerting. Muriel almost crushed Beatriz Noguera’s doubtless firm breasts, he brazenly pawed them, yes, just as an impatient, unimpugnable groper on the metro might do, the kind who waits until the train is coming into the station to unleash his talons for a few interminable seconds, then shoots off as soon as the doors open. His attitude was vengeful, inconsiderate, loutish, and I wondered what it would have cost him simply to embrace her, which was all she had so far asked of him. ‘But no one touches the thing that repels him,’ I thought, ‘not even in that disdainful, mechanical way, as if the body being touched were of no significance. You don’t put your hands on someone’s breasts if you don’t expect to get some pleasure from it, however minimal. And yet I’m sure that, afterwards, he’s going to reject her and send her a
way, he won’t accept that she is even the tiniest bit in the right, even if she is. He’ll go against his own lascivious feelings, which he pretends are of no significance merely in order to repress them more easily. He couldn’t help giving in to those feelings for a moment (her nightdress that both conceals and reveals), but he has to disguise it with indifference and contempt, as if all it provoked in him was this insulting, brutish, boorish behaviour.’ Then he slid one hand, his left hand, further down and grabbed her crotch through her nightdress (I had already seen that she had nothing on underneath), he didn’t stroke or rub nor, of course, introduce one finger or two, no, he merely grabbed it like someone picking up a handful of earth or a clump of grass or catching a thistle head in the air or grasping one of the handles in table football or the handle of a frying pan, something trivial like that, unimportant, inconsequential, that one forgets a moment later. ‘See,’ said Muriel, still grabbing her, holding her. ‘You wanted me to look at you, and I am. I’m touching you too, as you may have noticed. So what? I don’t fancy you one bit, you can dress how you like, it makes no difference, and that’s how it’s always going to be. I might as well be touching a pillow, you might as well be an elephant, for all I care. A bag of flour, a bag of flesh.’ He couldn’t bear to miss an opportunity to be offensive. She allowed herself to be grabbed in that brusque, indelicate manner, she didn’t attempt to resist or detach herself from his grasp or take a step back. It seemed to me that, despite the rough way he was groping her, her impulse was to throw herself into his arms, to encircle his neck with her own arms; but if that were so, she either lacked the necessary courage or he didn’t give her time, it was all very quick and grubby. ‘Go on, go back to bed. Clear off, there’s nothing for you here, this is no place for you. How many more times do I have to tell you? When the hell are you going to understand that this is serious and for good, until you die or I do? I just hope I’m the one who’ll carry your coffin, because I could never be sure you wouldn’t rub yourself up against my still warm or already cold corpse, because warm or cold it would be all the same to you. God, you don’t seem to register anything, it’s as though, for years now, you haven’t even been able to remember what happened yesterday, and each night wiped your memory clean of whatever happened the day before. Will you never give up?’

  He suddenly withdrew his hands with what was doubtless an exaggerated shudder, holding them up like a surgeon and then shaking them as if they were dripping wet and urgently in need of drying. He withdrew them like someone who has just completed an unpleasant task, like someone who has touched something sticky, like someone removing a sword from a body after plunging it in up to the hilt, much to his regret, because he had been challenged, because he had become drawn into a duel and had no alternative but to fight. And after making these gestures, he put his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, puffed out his chest and drew himself up. He resembled a high priest or a Dracula or a Fu Manchu, in his tunic or his dark cape reaching almost down to his feet, with the eye covered by the black patch seeming to look even more sternly and with even more distaste than the one that was the colour of the sea at evening or at night and which was capable of seeing, as if both eyes were piercing Beatriz with a mixture of ferocity and embarrassment. And when he released her, she went limp and I suddenly saw her – just for a moment – as he saw her or claimed to see her: a plain, cowed, charmless woman, ashamed now perhaps of her skimpy attire, as though all her voluptuous curves had collapsed and flattened out, had suddenly deflated, and all her firmness grown slack; a poor wretch brought low by disappointment and undermined by humiliation, almost a piece of debris, a crumpled, defeated woman who could not even cover herself with her arms – that would have been too pathetic, too much of a surrender, after she had managed to dredge up from somewhere her one remaining scrap of defiance, only a scrap, and display herself to him – but who probably now longed to retreat and run back to her room, to escape and disappear.

  ‘How changed we are by someone’s adverse reaction,’ I thought, or I think I thought, remembering it now from another age, although probably not in those precise words. ‘How cast down we are by rejection, and how much power accrues to the person to whom we gave that power, for no one can take power unless it is first given or conferred, unless you’re prepared to adore and fear that person, unless you aspire to being loved by him or to enjoy his unswerving approval, any such ambition is a sign of conceit and that conceit is what weakens and leaves us defenceless: once that ambition remains unsatisfied or unfulfilled, it marks the beginning of our downfall and we apply ourselves to it day after day, hour after hour, and it’s perfectly natural then that dissatisfaction should predominate and prevail from the start, from the very first steps we take, either sooner or later … Why should we be loved by the person we have chosen with our tremulous finger? Why that one person, as if he were obliged to obey us? Why should the person who troubles or arouses us and for whose flesh and bones we yearn, why should he desire us? Why should we believe in such coincidences? And when they do happen, why should they last? Yes, why should it last, this rarest of conjunctions, something so fragile, so held together with pins? Reciprocal love, reciprocal lust, mutual fever, eyes and mouths in simultaneous pursuit and necks that crane to see the chosen one among the multitude, bodies that seek to join together time and time again, taking a strange delight in that repetition, returning and returning to the same body, then coming back for more … Normally, almost no one coincides, and the existence of so many supposedly loving couples is, in part, a matter of imitation, but largely a matter of convention, or else because the one who first pointed a finger, a man let’s say, has imposed his will, has persuaded, led, propelled, obliged the other to do what she isn’t even sure she wants to do and to follow a path she would never have taken without the urgency or insistence or guidance of the other, and the flattered and courted one – the one who stepped on to the other person’s cloud – has simply allowed herself to be dragged along. That’s why the seducer doesn’t need to persist, the charm and the misty penumbra vanish, the seduced party grows weary or wakes up, and then it’s the turn of the seducer to despair and panic and live on tenterhooks, to resume his labours if he still has the strength, to mount guard on the door and to beg and implore night after night and to be at the mercy of the other. Nothing is so exposing or so enslaving as trying to hold on to the person we chose or who, extraordinarily, came when summoned by our tremulous, beckoning finger, as if by a miracle or as though our word were law, something that would never normally happen.’

  Beatriz soon recovered, it did not take long; she again took on her proper size and shape, having apparently, for a few seconds, inexplicably lost or been deserted by both. She straightened up, lifted her head, regained her striking corporeality, and looked straight at Muriel. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but I thought it would have been very hard for her not to shed tears when she heard her husband’s words – ‘I hope to be the one to bury you, the one to see your lifeless body, your deathly pallor’ – but if she had, she neither sobbed nor groaned, perhaps she had a better memory than Muriel thought and nothing could now hurt her very much, perhaps her nocturnal prowlings were due not to her instantly forgetting what had happened yesterday or the day before, but to her unshakable belief that she could demolish all resistance, wear down all reluctance, as long as she kept trying, and did not retreat or abandon the field, did not faint away. However, those were not the words that haunted her, the words she had retained, the words to which she responded and that had, I assume, wounded her most deeply:

  ‘No, it wasn’t stupid of you. On the contrary, you were quite right to love me during all those years, all those past years … You’ve probably never done anything better.’

  Then I felt sure that her eyes must have filled with tears, because we men are easily moved by a woman’s silent weeping, even if it’s false, feigned, forced, even if provoked by some thought to which we have no access and which may have nothing what
ever to do with us, but with another man, a rival, someone she lost some time before or who, unbeknown to us, she has only just lost. Even if we sense that we’re not the direct cause of her tears, her weeping melts our heart and fills us with pity and we feel obliged to make it stop. That is the only explanation I can find for Muriel’s reaction.