“Blokes in general, blokes, or do you think the only men I know are customers?”
She had a surliness that Celia neither had nor has, if it was her, she was putting on a pretty good act, or perhaps she had been working for a long enough period of time – possibly more than a month or two months, I had managed not to see or speak to her for about four or five – to pick up a few of the mannerisms. It also occurred to me that she might be irritated by my prompt payment, paying in advance as well: she might be wondering if I had picked her up because of the resemblance and as a one-off or if I had always gone with prostitutes and she had known nothing about it while we were married.
“Not at all, no, I’m sorry. I imagine you have a family too.”
“Somewhere around, I never see them, so don’t ask me about them.” And she went on in a resentful tone, her eyes still wearing the dusky night: “Listen, I know lots of people.”
“I’m sure you do, I’m sorry,” I said.
Conversation was not easy, perhaps it would be best to remain silent. One moment, I would feel certain that she was Celia and that we could, therefore, cut the pretence and talk about everything or simply about what we always used to talk about or could question each other openly, and the next I would be sure that it couldn’t possibly be her and that it was just one of those extraordinary resemblances which nevertheless do sometimes happen, as if it was Celia but with another life or history, the same person who had been swapped while in her cradle, as occurs in children’s stories or in the tragedies of kings, the same physical appearance but with a different memory and a different name and a different past in which I would not have existed, perhaps the past of a gypsy child perched on top of a pile of shabby, useless objects on a cart drawn by a mule, Our Lady of the rag-and-bone men, bumping against the branches of the gnarled trees and watching the bourgeois little girls chewing gum on the top floor of a double decker bus (but she was too young to have seen them). Although such a complicated explanation wasn’t strictly necessary, there’s a very thin dividing line and everything is subject to vast upheavals – the reverse side of time, its dark back – you see it in life as well as in novels and plays and films, writers or wise beggars and kings without a kingdom or enslaved, princes shut up in towers and suffocated with a pillow, suicidal bankers and beauties changed into monsters, their faces scarred by vitriol or by a knife, noblemen drowned in huge earthenware vats of sickly sweet wine and the idols of millions strung up by their feet like pigs or dragged through the streets by a horse, deserters made into gods and criminals into saints, great wits reduced to the condition of obtuse drunks, and crippled kings who seduce the most beautiful of women, sidestepping their hatred or even transforming it; and lovers who murder the person they love. It’s a very fine knife-edge, one false move and you could topple over on to the side you’re trying to escape from, because the blade will cut you anyway and you’ll end up falling one way or the other soon enough: all you have to do is to start walking or even just stay right where you are.
“So, how are you enjoying the driving?” Victoria asked, after another silence. “Are you in training for Formula 1 or are you still thinking about where you want us to go? Do you want me to look at the map? You’re probably lost.” And she opened the glove compartment to emphasize her remark with a gesture.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, I’ve paid you for this time,” I said curtly and slammed the glove compartment shut again. “And don’t complain, you’re better off sitting in here than freezing to death on that corner. How long had you been waiting there?”
“That’s none of your business, I don’t talk about my work. If I have to talk about it as well as do it, you can forget it.” She was chewing vigorously on her gum and I wound down my window a little to get rid of the smell of mint which had become mingled with that of her own pleasant perfume, not Celia’s usual one.
“Fine, so you don’t want to talk about your work or about your family or about anything: that’s what happens when you get the money upfront without having to work for it.”
“It isn’t that,” she replied, “if you like, I’ll give it back to you and you can hand it over when we’ve finished. But it isn’t my job to teach you things, just stick to the rules, OK?”
“You’re here to do whatever I tell you to do.” I surprised myself when I said that, to Victoria or to Celia, it didn’t matter which. We men have an ability to frighten women by a mere inflection of our voice or a few cold, threatening words, our hands are stronger and have maintained their grip for centuries. It’s all bravado.
“All right, all right, don’t go all stroppy on me,” she said in a conciliatory tone. I calmed down when I heard her say “don’t go all stroppy on me”, it sounded rather cosy.
“You’re the one who’s been stroppy ever since you got into the car. God knows what went on between you and your previous client.” It seemed to me that we were sliding into some absurd conjugal or adolescent argument. I added at once: “Sorry, I forgot, you don’t like talking about your work, the lady likes to keep her professional secrets.”
“I shouldn’t think you want to talk about yours either,” retorted Victoria. “Come on, what do you do?”
“I don’t mind talking about it. I’m a television producer,” I lied again, although I was on safe ground, because I know several and I could easily play the part of one for the benefit of a prostitute. I waited for her to ask what programmes I had made or to provide her with some proof, but she didn’t believe me, so she didn’t do either of those things (perhaps she didn’t believe me because she was Celia, and in that case she would know the truth).
“At this time of night you can be whatever you like,” she said, “As you yourself said, we’re just here to please you men.”
I decided to drive down the quiet, diplomatic streets that she had suggested in the first place, to find a space to park the car. I found it in Fortuny, not far from the German embassy, which appeared to be deserted at that hour, there was no light on in the lodge, perhaps the guard could see better like that at night, and it ensured that he wouldn’t be seen. We passed two very obvious transvestites on the corner of Eduardo Dato, they were sitting on a still-damp wooden bench beneath the trees, surrounded by piles of fallen yellow leaves, as if they had frightened away a road sweeper in the middle of his work.
“How do you girls get on with them?” I asked Victoria, switching off the engine and indicating the transvestites with my thumb. Now we had both resorted to a depersonalizing plural form – “you men”, “you girls”.
“There you go again,” she said. But this time she did give me an answer, she had to erase the impression of sourness, however minimally, you can’t establish physical contact with someone in a sour atmosphere, however negotiated and codified and paid for that contact is: “Well, although we work the same area, we don’t clash. They have this corner, but if, one night, neither of them turns up, we can use it, and then, if they turn up later on, we leave. They don’t cause any problems, it’s the customers who cause the problems.”
“What, you mean we get stroppy?”
“Some of you guys are really frightening,” replied Victoria. “Some of you are real bastards.”
“Do I frighten you?” I asked stupidly, because, when I said it, I was conscious that neither of the two possible replies would please me. I couldn’t frighten her if she was Celia, but she was behaving as if she wasn’t. I, on the other hand, was behaving like myself, leaving aside a few white lies, although perhaps even that wasn’t necessary either.
“Not at the moment, no, but who knows what you’ll do,” she said, as a kind of medium term, as if she had guessed my fleeting thought, or perhaps it wasn’t that. “What do you want, a blow job?” and as she said that, she removed the chewing-gum from her mouth and held it between her fingers, uncertain whether to throw it away or not. That tiny blob would hold the imprint of her teeth, that’s how they make a definitive identification of a corpse, if they can find the dec
eased’s dentist.
“Doesn’t it frighten you getting into a car with a complete stranger again and again?” I asked, and now I was asking out of genuine concern for Celia and also for Victoria, although less for Victoria. “You never know what you’re going to find.”
“Of course it frightens me, but I try not to think about it. Why do you ask, should I be afraid of you?” There was a touch of alarm in her voice, I saw that she was looking at my hands which were still resting on the wheel. Suddenly, every trace of sarcasm had gone, the idea of fear and my insistent questioning had made her feel afraid. How easy it is to introduce a possibility or a fear or an idea into the mind of another person, we are so easily infected, we can be convinced of anything, sometimes all it takes is a nod to achieve your aims, to pretend that you know something, or to suspect another person’s suspicions about us and, out of fear, reveal ourselves without meaning to and reveal what we had intended to keep secret. Celia or Victoria was afraid of me now and I could understand that in Victoria, but how could Celia possibly be afraid of me? Or perhaps she could, if she suspected that I suspected her of avenging herself on me by imposing on me all those non-blood relationships, and without my consent or my knowledge. But how can there be consent? Perhaps she was going to make me become related to myself, Javier and Victor, and then there would be consent.
“No, of course not,” I said, laughing. But I don’t know if that was enough, now that I had introduced the fear into her mind; women know that all they ever get from men are mere concessions – a voluntary surrender of their power, a temporary truce in their authoritarianism – which they can withdraw at any moment.
“Then why ask if it frightens me to get into a car with a complete stranger when that’s just what I’ve done with you?” The sudden intrusion of fear had startled her, she was trying to shake it off before it took hold. She put the chewing-gum back in her mouth, she had been right not to throw it away. “You’re just trying to wind me up, you’re a stranger too, you know.”
Why was she stating the obvious if I was I and she was Victoria, I wondered. Now I could see her face full on, badly lit by the yellowish light from a low street lamp, half-blocked or filtered by the branches, it was Celia’s face but not her name. Celia was twenty-five then and Victoria seemed rather older, twenty-eight or twenty-nine, as if she were a short-term portent of a future Celia who had not yet come into being, an augury of the first lines on her face and of the weariness and panic in her eyes, a prediction of her ruined life or perhaps just a bad patch she was going through, her make-up too heavily applied for such a young young woman and the clothes that did not so much cover up as emphasize, her breasts accentuated and pushed up by the white body she was wearing, her legs bare underneath the tiny skirt crumpled by all that sitting in the passenger seats of indistinguishable nighttime cars, and perhaps, later on, kneeling down or even crouching on all fours, her expression frightened or sour according to the moment, any friendliness suppressed or deliberately put on; I had enjoyed being with that woman for a time and I still did, I liked her shiny mac and her constant chewing and her bad manners, her eyes still wearing the dusky night and wearing fear too, fear of my hands and my desires and my imminent orders, what a disgrace it is to me to remember your name, even though I may not know your face today, still less tomorrow. I put my frightening hand on her thigh, I touched the strip of skin between stocking and skirt and stroked it.
“Am I?” I said, and with the other hand I took her chin and turned her face towards me, forcing her to look at me. She instinctively lowered her eyes and I said: “Look at me, don’t you know me? Tell me you don’t know me.” She pulled away from my hand with a movement of her chin and said: “Listen, what is it with you? I’ve never seen you before in my life. Now you really are frightening me. Look, I can’t be expected to remember everyone, but I’m sure I’ve never been with you before, and, at this rate, I don’t know if I’ll bother. What’s got into you?”
“How can you be so sure? How do you know you haven’t been with me? You yourself just said that it isn’t easy to remember everyone, for someone like you the faces must all get mixed up, or you probably do your best not to look at them, not to see them and then you can always imagine that you’re with the same man, with your boyfriend, or your husband, you’re probably married or have been.”
“Do you think I’d be here if I was married? You must be mad. Besides, you’re quite wrong, we make sure we get a good look at you all, front and back, to make sure we don’t go with you again if you turn nasty or if things get ugly. The first time you go with a bloke, anything can happen to you, but the second time there’s nothing to it. You can see right away what a bloke is after. So come on, tell me what it is you want and let’s be done with it.” The tone of that last phrase was again conciliatory, despite the impatient words.
“Are things getting ugly between us?” I said.
“Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it, talking about fear and asking me if you frighten me and if I know you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
There was a silence. She took the opportunity to remove her mac – another conciliatory gesture – she didn’t just throw it on to the back seat, she folded it up and laid it down carefully, as if she were at the cinema. She wasn’t wearing a bra, Celia always did.
“Look,” she said, “we’re all a bit paranoid around here at the moment. About a month ago, someone killed a young boy who got picked up in Hermanos Bécquer, just where you picked me up. That’s why the transvestites don’t use that corner any more, they think it’s bad luck, and so they’ve given the corner to us. Until something happens to one of us, of course, then we’ll clear off too, we’re a superstitious lot when it comes to territory. He was ever so young, delicate, girlish, not like those great lumps,” and she jerked her thumb backwards as I had done before. “He really did look like a girl. He’d only been here a short time, he’d just arrived from some village outside Malaga. He got into a Golf like this one, except it was white, he came to one of these streets to suck the bastard off, and the following morning they found him lying on the pavement with his head caved in and his mouth full of cum. He’d only just learned to walk in high heels, the poor thing, he must have been about eighteen. And what happens? The following night, we have to go out again and forget all about that, because, otherwise, we just wouldn’t go out, we wouldn’t and neither would they. So I’m really not in the mood for all these questions about whether I get frightened and whether or not I know you, do you understand?”
It couldn’t be Celia, I thought; Ruibérriz or his friends must have seen this prostitute, Victoria, who looked so much like her, and must have wanted to think that it was her, and perhaps they even imagined that they had paid for sex with Celia, if they had done so with Victoria. She couldn’t have changed that much in other respects, it couldn’t be her; unless she was playing her part brilliantly, inventing gruesome stories to frighten me and worry me even more, so that I would want to rescue her from that life and from all those dangers by returning to her side, so that she wouldn’t have to be here or anywhere or on that unlucky corner on Hermanos Bécquer (she herself had said: “Do you think I’d be here if I was married? You must be mad.”). I hadn’t read anything in the newspapers about a young transvestite being found in the street with his head caved in, I usually notice items like that because of my work. Celia did tend to embellish stories a bit and she was something of a liar, but she never went that far and she didn’t normally invent misfortunes, she was optimistic and proud by nature. Nevertheless, I thought, if she was Celia, she would, by then, have spent some time working as a prostitute and would, therefore, be a prostitute, she would know that world and wouldn’t have to invent anything, and that would explain her sour demeanour, her blunt vocabulary and her harsher way of speaking, it’s easy to pick these things up. She wouldn’t, in fact, be pretending. How could I possibly have any doubts, how could I possibly not be sure if I was with my wife or with a p
rostitute (with my wife who had become a prostitute or with a prostitute who felt like my former wife), I had lived with her for three years and known her for a year before that, I had woken up and gone to bed with her every day, I had seen her from every angle and I knew all her gestures and I had heard her talk for hours on end in every possible mood – once I used to gaze into her eyes as she lay with her head on the pillow – it was only four or five months since I last saw her, although people can change a lot in that time if that time is in some way anomalous, a time of illness or suffering or denial of what came before. I was sorry suddenly that she didn’t have some scar or mark or easily visible mole, had that been the case I would have taken her home and undressed her, even at the risk of finding out her identity for certain. Or perhaps I just didn’t remember those identifying marks on her body, we forget and never really notice anything very much, why remember if nothing is as it is, because nothing stays still, nothing lasts, nothing endures or is repeated or stops or persists, and the only solution to that is for everything to end and for there to be nothing, a solution which, at times, the Only One considered no bad thing, or so he had nihilistically said; and, on the other hand, everything is continually travelling on, everything is connected, some things drag other things along with them, all oblivious to each other, everything is travelling slowly towards its own dissolution the moment it occurs and even while it is occurring, and even while you’re waiting for it to happen and it still hasn’t, and you remember as being past something that is still in the future and perhaps won’t even happen, you remember what has not been. Everything moves on apart from names, true or false, that remain for ever engraved on our memories as they do on gravestones, León Suárez Alday or Marta Téllez Angulo, they would have put Marta’s name on the gravestone by now, and it would be no different from that 1914 headstone. I would have known that Victoria was Celia if Victoria had replied “Celia” when I had asked her what her name was, and I might then have answered “Victor” when she asked me mine. And in that case, we would have recognized each other and perhaps embraced and we would not have gone to that street beneath the still-leafy trees and a yellow street lamp, but to our former home, which is now hers alone, or to my new home, and none of this would be happening in my car and she would not be frightened of me.
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me Page 23