Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  There was nothing more to do, I couldn’t do anything else. I glanced towards the bedroom, the idea of going back in there terrified me, luckily I didn’t have to, there was nothing I needed to do in there. I went into the living room and put the television on for the boy, with the volume down low, at least that way he would be able to hear something; I left it on a channel where there was still something on, they were showing a film which I recognized at once, Chimes at Midnight, the whole world is in black and white in the early hours of the morning. I felt as if I were leaving that apartment in a state of devastation: lights and televisions left on, food taken out of the fridge and arranged on a plate, the tape removed from the answering machine, unironed clothes and unemptied ashtrays, a body, half-naked and covered up. Only the child’s room remained in some sort of order, as if it had survived the disaster unscathed. I looked in again, I could hear his quiet breathing, and I stood on the threshold for some moments, thinking: “This child will not recognize me if he sees me again in the distant future; he will never know what happened, he will never know why his world has ended nor the circumstances in which his mother died; his father will hide it from him as will his aunt and his grandparents if he has any, the way such people always do with things they judge to be degrading or unpleasant; they will hide it not only from him, but from everyone, a horrible, ignominious death, a ridiculous death, one that offends us. In fact, it will be hidden from them too, by me – they weren’t here – the only person who knows anything: no one will ever know what happened tonight, and the boy, who was here and saw me and was a witness to the preliminaries, will be the one who knows least of all; he won’t remember it, just as he will forget about yesterday or the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow, and soon he won’t even remember this world or the mother he has lost today for ever or had already lost before, nothing of what happened in his life from the moment he was born, it’s just useless time for him since his memory retains nothing of it for the future, his time until now has been useful only to his parents, who will be able to tell him later on how he was when he was a little boy – very, very little – how he talked and the things he said and the funny ideas he had (his father, not his mother now). So many things happen without anyone realizing or remembering. There is almost no record of anything, fleeting thoughts and actions, plans and desires, secret doubts, fantasies, acts of cruelty and insults, words said and heard and later denied or misunderstood or distorted, promises made and then overlooked, even by those to whom they were made, everything is forgotten or invalidated, whatever is done alone or not written down, along with everything that is done not alone but in company, how little remains of each individual, how little trace remains of anything, and how much of that little is never talked about and, afterwards, one remembers only a tiny fraction of what was said, and then only briefly, the individual memory is not passed on and is, anyway, of no interest to the person receiving it, who is busy forging his or her own memories. All time is useless, not only that of the child, for all time is like that, however much happens, however much enthusiasm or pain one feels, it only lasts an instant, then it is lost and everything is as slippery as compacted snow, like the boy’s dreams at this moment, at this very moment. Everything is to everyone else what I am to him now, a vaguely familiar figure observing him from his bedroom door without him realizing it, without him ever knowing or finding out and rendering him, therefore, for ever incapable of recalling it, the two of us slowly travelling towards our own dissolution. So much else goes on behind our backs, our capacity for knowledge is so limited, we cannot see what lies beyond a wall or anything happening at a distance, someone only has to whisper or move slightly away from us and we can no longer hear what he or she is saying, and our life might depend on it, all it takes is for us not to read a book and therefore not know about the principal danger, we cannot be in more than one place at once, and even then we often have no idea who might be watching us or thinking about us, who is about to dial our number, who is about to write to us, who is about to want us or seek us out, who is about to condemn us or murder us and thus put an end to our few evil days, who is going to hurl us over on to the reverse side of time, on to its dark back, just as I am standing here thinking about and contemplating this child, knowing more than he will ever know about what happened tonight. That is what I must be for him, the reverse side of his time, its dark back.”

  I emerged from these thoughts, and was again gripped by the need for haste. I moved away from his bedroom and went over to the front door, I again looked apprehensively around me, a pointless exercise, I put on my black gloves. I opened the front door very carefully, as one opens any door in the early hours of the morning, even if there’s no risk of waking anyone up. I took two steps, went out on to the landing and, equally carefully, closed the door behind me. Without putting on the light, I felt for the lift button and pressed it, it lit up, indicating that the lift was on its way, it arrived at once, having come from a nearby floor. There was no one inside, no one had travelled up in it and I had not inadvertently brought someone up to my floor, fear believes in the most unlikely coincidences. I got in, pressed another button and the lift descended rapidly, and before opening the door on the ground floor, I stayed there absolutely still for a moment, listening, I didn’t want to meet anyone in the hallway, the porter might be an insomniac or a very early riser. I heard nothing, I pushed open the door and stepped into the dark hallway, I walked over towards the street door that was my way out of all that, and then I saw a couple who had not yet come in, they were outside saying goodbye or having an argument, a man and a woman, possibly lovers, he was about thirty-five and she about twenty-five. When they heard my footsteps on the marble floor – one, two, three, or four – they stopped talking and turned round, they saw me; I had no option but to turn on the light and then look around for the button that would open the door for me automatically. I swung round, my hands performing an interrogative gesture from inside their hiding place in my overcoat pockets – the skirts of my coat lifting accordingly – I couldn’t see where the button was. The woman, doubtless a resident, pointed one beige-gloved index finger through the glass, pointing to my left, just by the door. She didn’t want to come in just yet, she wanted to continue their goodbyes or their argument, she wasn’t prepared to use her key to help me and join me in the hall, that would force her to put an end to those kisses or to those bitter words, how long had they have been out there while I was upstairs? I pressed the button, and they stood to one side to let me pass. “Goodnight,” I said and they replied in kind or, rather, she smiled and he looked startled and said nothing. A good-looking couple, they must be having problems, to stay out in the cold rather than going their separate ways. I noticed the cold at once, it hit me in the face as if it were a revelation or a reminder of my life and my world that had nothing to do with Marta or that apartment. I had to go on living – it was like a sudden realization – I had to busy myself with other things. I looked up from the street, I could tell which was the flat I had just left behind by the lights – on the fifth floor – and I started walking towards Avenida Reina Victoria and, as I was moving away, I just had time to overhear two remarks exchanged by the couple, for they had resumed the conversation interrupted by my poisonous footsteps. “Look, I can’t take any more of this,” he said, and she replied, without hesitation: “Well, piss off then.” But he didn’t, because I didn’t hear his footsteps following mine. I hurried off down Conde de la Cimera, I had to find a taxi, it was slightly foggy, there was hardly any traffic at all, not even along Reina Victoria, which is a wide street, there’s a pedestrian area down the centre with kiosks selling drinks, and there’s a hideous sculpture of the distorted head of that great poet, poor Vicente Aleixandre, who lived nearby. And I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t checked that the windows and the balcony doors were all shut. “What if the child should have a fall tomorrow?” I thought. “Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow! And fall thy edgeless sword.” But t
here was nothing I could do now, I couldn’t go back into that flat whose door had been opened to me hours before by someone who would never again open it to anyone, and for which, for a short while, I had felt responsible, as if I were its owner, everything seems as nothing once it is over. I couldn’t even phone, no one would answer, not even the answering machine, I had the tape in my jacket pocket. In the middle of that yellowish, reddish night, I looked from one side of the street to the other, two cars passed, I couldn’t decide whether to wait or to try another street, to walk on down General Rodrigo, the fog doesn’t really tempt one to walk, I could see my breath in the air. I put my hands in my trouser pockets and pulled out something which I did not recognize by its touch as one does one’s own things: a piece of clothing, a bra, a size smaller than it should be, I had shoved it in my pocket without thinking when I followed the boy to his room, after he had appeared in his mother’s bedroom, I had put it away so that he wouldn’t see it. I sniffed it briefly in the middle of the street, the crumpled white fabric in my stiff black glove, the smell of a good, but slightly acrid cologne. The smell of the dead lingers when nothing else remains of them. It lingers for as long as their bodies remain and afterwards too, once they are out of sight and buried and disappeared. It lingers in their homes as long as these remain unaired, and on their clothes which will not be washed again because they won’t get dirty any more and because they become their repositories; it clings to dressing gowns, shawls, sheets, to the clothes that for days and sometimes months and weeks and years hang unmoving, ignorant, on their hangers, waiting in vain to be chosen, to come into contact with the one human skin they knew, so faithful. Those were the three things that remained of my fatal visit: that smell, the bra, the tape, and on the tape, voices. I looked around, the winter night lit by many street lamps, the kiosk in darkness, behind me the back of the poet’s neck. No cars passed, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. The cold air felt good.