Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  I still did not dare to turn up the sound on the television, because of that silence, but also because of an absurd thought: it suddenly occurred to me that I should avoid touching the remote control or anything else, in order not to leave my fingerprints anywhere, when I had already left them everywhere and, besides, no one would be looking for them. The fact of someone dying while you remain alive makes you feel, for a moment, like a criminal, but it wasn’t just that: it was that suddenly, with Marta dead, my presence in that place was no longer explicable or only barely so, I couldn’t even invent a story that would explain it, I was more or less a stranger and now it really didn’t make sense to be spending the early hours of the morning in a bedroom that was perhaps no longer hers, since she no longer existed, but her husband’s, in a house to which she could only have invited me in his absence; but who could now affirm that she had invited me, since there was no one there to witness it? I leapt off the bed and then I felt panicked, mentally rather than physically, it wasn’t so much that I had to do things as to think about them, to set in motion everything that had until then been muffled by the wine, the expectation and the kisses, by our flushed faces and our fantasies, by perplexity and alarm, although I don’t know if in that order; and by the present grief. “No one knows that I’m here, that I was here,” I thought, immediately correcting the tense of the verb because I could already imagine myself outside that room, that apartment, that building, and even in a different street, I saw myself hailing a taxi after crossing Reina Victoria or in the avenue itself, there are always taxis passing, however late, it forms the final stretch of an old boulevard that ends up lined by houses and the first of the university campus trees. “Nobody knows that I’ve been here and there’s no reason why anyone should,” I said to myself, “therefore, I’m not the one who should warn anyone or run in a panic to the Hospital de la Luz and wake up the nurse sitting in her chair asleep, with her legs crossed or, grown forgetful, slightly apart, I won’t be the one to drag her from her ephemeral, avaricious sleep, nor will I be the one suddenly and prematurely to drive out everything that the anxious, bespectacled student has managed to learn, nor will I be the one to interrupt the farewells of the satiated lovers lingering at the door of the one staying behind and, at the same time, longing to part, perhaps on this very floor; because no one must know nor will yet know that Marta Téllez has died, I won’t make an anonymous phonecall to the police either or ring at the door of the neighbours opposite, I won’t go out and buy a death certificate at the local late-night chemist’s, for all those who know her she will remain alive tonight while they dream or lie sleepless here or in London or anywhere else, no one will know of the change, the inhuman transformation that has taken place, I will do nothing and speak to no one, I should not be the one to break the news. Were she still alive, no one would know today or tomorrow or perhaps ever that I was here, she would have concealed it and that’s how it should be, even more so now that she’s dead. And the child, oh God, the child.” But I decided that I would think about that afterwards, after a few moments, because another thought interposed itself, in fact, two thoughts, one after the other: “Perhaps there’s someone, a friend or a sister, whom she would have talked to about me tomorrow, possibly blushing and smiling. Perhaps she already has talked to someone about me, someone to whom she announced my visit – news travels fast by telephone – and confessed her hesitant desire or her certain hope, perhaps she was talking about me and only hung up when she heard me ring the doorbell, he’s here already, you never know what was happening in a house the second before you rang the bell and interrupted it.” I buttoned up the shirt that Marta’s now stiff fingers had undone when they were still agile and cheerful, I unzipped my trousers and tucked my shirt in, my jacket was in the living room, draped over the chairback as if the chair were a clothes hanger, but where were my overcoat, my scarf and my gloves, where were they, she had taken them from me when I came in and I hadn’t noticed where she had put them. That too could wait, I didn’t want to go into the living room just yet because my shoes would make a noise and the child hadn’t long since got back to sleep, and anyway, the idea of going past his room and making the aeroplanes tremble with my footsteps made me feel awkward, his whole life had changed, the world had changed, and he didn’t yet know it, more than that: his present world had ended, because, after a short while, he wouldn’t even remember it, it would be as if it had never existed – brittle, erasable time – the memories of a two-year-old do not last, at least I remember nothing from my own life when I was two years old. I looked down at Marta, from the viewpoint of a man standing up and looking down at someone lying on a bed, I saw her firm, round buttocks beneath her scanty knickers, noticed how her skirt had ridden up, observed the hunched position that allowed me to see all that, though not her breasts which were still covered by her arms, she was a remnant, a cast-off, something not to be kept, but discarded – to be burned, to be buried – just as so many of the things that had belonged to her would suddenly become redundant, like the things that get thrown out with the rubbish because they continue unstoppably to change and to rot – the skin of a pear or some fish that’s gone off, the outer leaves of an artichoke, chicken giblets, the fat from the Irish sirloin steak that she herself had scraped off our plates into the bin only a short time before, before we went into the bedroom – a lifeless woman, not even covered up, not even under the sheets. She was mere detritus and yet for me she was the same woman as before: she hadn’t changed, I still recognized her. I should put her clothes back on so that they wouldn’t find her like this, I immediately rejected the idea, it was too difficult, too dangerous, I might break one of her bones putting her arm in the sleeve of whatever I put on her, where was her blouse anyway, perhaps it would be easier just to pull back the sheets and cover her over, you could do anything with her now, poor Marta, manipulate her, move her, at the very least, cover her up.

  I stood for a few moments paralysed, immobilized by my own mental haste, doing nothing, haste makes us think very contradictory things, it occurred to me that, had she foreseen this or known about it, it would have distressed her that those close to her should be left in ignorance, that they should believe her still alive when she wasn’t, and for how long, that they would not be informed immediately, that everything would not be thrown into instant disarray by her sudden death, that those imprudent telephones would not at once start to ring, talking about her, and that everyone who had known her would not be exclaiming over her, thinking about her; and, later, those who had known her would find unbearable their ignorance of the fact of her death, an ignorance of which they were about to be or already were the victims, for the husband remembering, later on, that he was peacefully asleep on an island – for how long, and that he got up and had breakfast and went to a business meeting in Sloane Square or in Long Acre, and perhaps even went for a walk – while his wife was dying and was dead with no one at her side, no one to tend to her, first the one and then the other, because he would never know for sure that there had been no one else with her, although he might suspect it, it would be difficult for me to cover up every trace of the hours I had spent there, should I decide to do so. He must have left his London telephone number and address somewhere, next to the phone, I saw that there was no paper next to the phone on Marta’s bedside table, a phone and answering machine combined, perhaps by the phone in the living room, where she had spoken to her husband before, with me there in the room. It would be a good idea for me to have that address and that telephone number anyway, in case several days passed, not that they would, that was impossible, too long a silence, suddenly the idea terrified me: someone would come, and soon, Marta went to work and would have to leave the child with someone, she couldn’t possibly take him with her to the university, she would have arranged for the child to be looked after by a child minder or a friend or a sister or her mother, unless, another terrifying thought occurred to me, unless she left the child at a nursery and took him there herself
before going to her classes. And then what would happen, tomorrow no one would take him, or perhaps tomorrow Marta didn’t even have any classes or only in the afternoon and no one would come to the house until then, she hadn’t seemed worried about having to get up early in the morning, and had remarked that she had some classes in the mornings and others in the afternoon, and not every day of the week, which days though, or were they just tutorial times when she had to be there in the morning or the afternoon, I couldn’t remember, when someone has died and can no longer repeat anything, you wish you had listened more carefully to each and every word, other people’s timetables, no one ever pays much attention to them, mere preliminaries. I decided to go into the living room, I took off my shoes and went on tiptoe, I wondered if I should close the door of the child’s bedroom as I passed by, but the door might creak and wake him up, so I continued on, barefoot and on tiptoe, my shoes hooked over the middle and index fingers of one hand, like the villain in a cartoon or a silent movie, still making the floorboards creak despite all my efforts not to. Once in the living room, I closed the door and put my shoes back on – I didn’t tie the shoelaces, already thinking about the return journey, because I would have to go back – there were the bottle and the wine glasses, the only things that Marta hadn’t tidied away, she was particular about such things, and the wine had been left not by accident, but because we were still drinking a little of it as we sat on the sofa that had been occupied and finally vacated by the boy, after eating our Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and before we kissed and moved into the bedroom. That hadn’t happened so very long ago, now that it was all over: everything seems as nothing to us, everything becomes compressed and seems as nothing to us once it is over, then we always feel that we were not given enough time. Next to the telephone in the living room there were a few yellow post-its stuck to the table – three or four had notes scribbled on them – along with the little rectangular block from which they came; on one of them was what I was looking for, it said: “Eduardo” and underneath that: “Wilbraham Hotel”, and underneath that: “Wilbraham Place” and underneath that: “4471/730 8296”. I tore off another post-it from the block and I started copying it all out with the pen I took from my jacket as I was putting it on (the time for me to leave was drawing closer), it was where I had left it, on the back of the chair that had served as a clothes hanger. I didn’t, in fact, copy out the information, when you first get hold of a telephone number, you always feel tempted to dial it at once, I had the London number of that Eduardo whose surname I still didn’t know, but in his own house it shouldn’t be a problem to find out what his surname was, I looked around, on the coffee table I saw a few letters which I had had no reason to notice before and so hadn’t, it was probably the day’s mail that had arrived after his departure and would have been allowed to accumulate there until his return, except that now he would have to return very soon and nothing would accumulate. “Eduardo Deán”, said two of the three envelopes and the other said even more, an envelope from a bank with his two surnames on it, and if I called London there would be no problem with the surname that counted, the first, rather unusual one, there would be no need to spell it because I would ask for Mr Dean which is how the hotel would know him or recognize him, in spite of the accent on the “a”, which the English would ignore. If I phoned, what would I say, I wouldn’t give my name just the news, I would force him to take charge of the situation now, since he hadn’t saved us before, and then I could wash my hands of the affair, I could simply leave and start to forget, a piece of bad luck, I could start to hone the memory and reduce it to just that, a piece of bad luck, perhaps an anecdote or, more dignified, a story, one I could tell to close friends, not now, but one day, when it had acquired the necessary degree of unreality that would make it all more benevolent and bearable, that particular businessman had spent far too long not worrying about his family (you have to worry ceaselessly about those closest to you), no, that wasn’t true, he had phoned after his supper at the Indian restaurant, but Marta Téllez was not my wife but his, and the boy, Eugenio Déan by name, was not my son, Déan, the father and the husband, would have to take responsibility sooner or later, why not now, why not from London. I looked at the clock for the first time in ages, it was nearly three, but on the island it would be an hour earlier, almost two o’clock, not particularly late for a native of Madrid even if he had things to do the following day, and besides, in England, people don’t get up particularly early. While I was dialling, I thought (one’s dialling finger bypasses one’s will, bypasses any decision one has taken, acting without knowing, deciding without knowing): “It doesn’t matter what time it is, if I’m going to give him such news anonymously, it’s irrelevant what time it is or if I wake him up, he’ll wake up quickly enough once he’s heard it, he’ll think it must be a joke in the worst possible taste or the product of some enemy’s incomprehensible grudge, he’ll call back at once and no one will pick up the phone; then he’ll call someone else, a sister-in-law, a sister, a friend, and ask them to come over and find out what’s going on, but by the time they arrive, I will have gone.”

  The English voice took a while to answer, five rings, the porter had probably dropped off to sleep, it was a Tuesday night in winter, and before returning to consciousness, he would have imagined that he was dreaming he could hear a phone ringing, his head perhaps resting on the counter like a future decapitee, his ankles wrapped around the legs of the chair, one arm hanging limply down.

  “Wilbraham Hotel, good morning,” that voice said in English, rather indistinctly, but in keeping with the clock.

  “May I speak to Mr Dean, please?” I said.

  “What room number, sir?” replied the voice, which had recovered its harsh, neutral, professional tone, the voice of a factotum.

  “I don’t know his room number, his name’s Eduardo Dean.”

  “One moment, please.” I waited a few seconds during which I heard the porter whistling quietly, rather odd in an English person who has just been woken up in what, for him, would be the middle of the night, the small hours. The next thing I would hear, when the whistling stopped, would be the hoarse voice of Marta’s husband startled awake. I prepared myself, prepared myself mentally rather than the precise, gabbled words I would have to say before hanging up, without a goodbye. But that isn’t what happened, instead the English voice came on again and said: “Hello, I’m afraid there’s no Mr Dean in the hotel, sir. Is it spelled D-E-A-N, sir?”

  “D-E-A-N, that’s right,” I repeated. In the end, I had had to spell it out. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir, there’s no Mr Dean in the hotel tonight, sir. When is he supposed to have arrived?”

  “Today. He should have arrived today.”

  “You mean yesterday, Tuesday, isn’t that right, sir? Just a moment,” said the porter, for whom the day and the night that for me seemed endless were already distant entities, and again I heard him whistling, he was obviously a jovial man, a man of spirit, possibly a young man despite the dignified, professional tone he adopted; or perhaps he had been sleeping soundly until shortly before and was feeling refreshed, the night shift. Appropriately and ironically enough, he was whistling “Strangers in the Night”, now I had time to recognize it, which meant that he couldn’t be that young, young men don’t whistle Sinatra songs. After a few more seconds he said: “There was no reservation in that name for yesterday, sir. He might have cancelled, of course, but there was definitely no reservation in that name yesterday.”

  I was on the point of insisting and asking him if perhaps there was a reservation for today, Wednesday. I didn’t, though, I merely thanked him, he said: “Goodbye, sir” and I hung up, and only after hanging up did a possible explanation occur to me: in England, as in Portugal and in America, if someone has three names, what counts is the last name, Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, is usually listed under Doyle. When they saw Deán’s identity card or passport, they would probably have registered him under his second surnam
e, Ballesteros, which, for a Spaniard, barely counts at all. I could have tried asking for Mr Ballesteros and then I realized that I shouldn’t and that I shouldn’t even have asked for Mr Dean and that I had had a narrow escape. If I had managed to leave him my tragic message, Deán might have called not only a sister-in-law, a sister or a friend, but a neighbour or even the porter, who would have been up to the apartment in no time at all and would have discovered me going down in the lift or down the stairs or right there: by the time they had arrived, it was more than likely that I would not even have left. I had to leave soon though, I shouldn’t waste time, even though, as yet, no one knew anything and no one was likely to turn up at that time of night. But there were still things I needed to sort out: I took my shoes off again and went back to the bedroom. When I passed the boy’s room, I clearly thought what had been in my mind all the time, throbbing, postponed, Marta’s last words, “Oh God, the child.” I walked on and, now, having made contact with the outside world, even if it was only with a foreign porter about whom I knew nothing and never would know anything, I saw the situation differently when I went back into the bedroom, for the first time I felt ashamed at the sight of Marta’s half-naked body, ashamed of the part I had played in that nakedness. I went over and pulled back the cover and the sheets on the unoccupied side of the bed, the side occupied by me that night and by her husband on other nights, I pulled the sheets right back, from the pillow down to the foot of the bed, then I walked around the bed and, from the other side, I managed to push her, with due consideration for what had passed between us, then rather harder when I noticed the resistance put up by the slight mound formed by the puckered sheets down the middle of the bed and this time I did feel a certain repugnance towards her dead flesh (one hand on her shoulder, my other hand on her thigh, pushing), that contact no longer felt pleasant, I think I averted my gaze as much as possible as I was moving her. I had to roll her over, there was no other way of getting her across the ruck of woollen cover and sheets, and when she was on the side of the bed where she never slept (she rolled over twice and remained as she had been before, lying on her side, looking to her right), I pulled up the sheets and the bed cover that I had previously drawn back and I managed to lay them over her. I covered her up, I tucked her in, I drew the sheets right up to her neck, to the nape of her neck, which now no longer looked as if she had just emerged from the shower, and I even wondered if I should perhaps cover her face too, as I have seen people do countless times in films and on the news. That, however, would be evidence that someone had been with her, when, at present, there would be only a suspicion, which, however strong (and suspicion was inevitable), was still not a certainty. I looked at her face, still so like the face it had been, still instantly recognizable to herself had she been able to see her reflection, much as it would have been day after day when she looked at herself in the mirror on every countable morning of her life – when things come to an end they have a number, and nothing forewarns us of this and nothing changes from day to day – still recognizable to me too when I compared it to the face in the photo on the dressing table, the photo of her wedding that would have remained there for reasons of implacable, enforced inertia ever since it was first placed there and which neither of the bedroom’s inhabitants would have looked at in ages: five years ago, she had said, a little younger and with her hair up, the back of her neck, old-fashioned somehow, would have been on view throughout the whole ceremony, and on her face is a look of mingled joy and surprise – the laughter of alarm – she’s wearing a short dress, but she’s wearing white (though it might be cream, it’s only a black-and-white photo), her arm linked conventionally through that of her serious and rather inexpressive husband, like all husbands in wedding photos, the two of them seemingly isolated in the picture when, in fact, they would have been surrounded by people, Marta is holding a bouquet in her hands and is looking neither at him nor straight ahead, but at the people who must have been standing to her left – sisters, sisters-in-law and girlfriends, the amused and excited girlfriends who remember her from when she was a little girl, from when they were all little girls, they’re the ones who can’t believe that she’s getting married, the ones who still see everything as a game whenever they get together and are thus a source of relief, they are her confidantes, her best friends because they are like sisters, and her sisters are like friends, all of them both envious and supportive. And I look at her husband, Deán, he isn’t just serious, with his long, strange face, he looks rather uncomfortable, as if he had landed up at a party held by the neighbours of some acquaintances or at a celebration that has nothing to do with him because it is a purely female occasion (weddings are the province of women, not just of the bride, but of all the women present), a necessary intruder but, ultimately, mere decoration, someone who can be dispensed with at any moment, apart from at the altar – just the back of a neck – throughout the whole of that celebration which might last all night, much to his despair and his jealousy and his loneliness and regret, knowing, as he does, that he will only become necessary again – an obligatory figure – when all the guests have gone or when he and the bride leave and she does so unwillingly, looking back, still wearing in her eyes the dusky night. Eduardo Deán has a moustache, he’s looking directly at the camera and biting his lip, he’s very tall and thin and, although his face struck me as memorable, I didn’t remember it once I had left the apartment and left Conde de la Cimera and that part of town. I could no longer see him.