Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  “Anything else?” she asked, while I was hesitating. That’s what shop assistants ask you in shops.

  “Do you want anything else?” I replied, trying my luck.

  “Ah,” she replied, in a slightly surprised, vengeful tone of voice, “remember now, I’m here to do what you tell me to do, you’re in charge.” She had picked up her mac from the back seat but she hadn’t put it on, she had placed it on her lap, carefully folded, like someone preparing to leave. I said nothing, and then she took another piece of chewing-gum out of her handbag and while she was unwrapping it, added rather mockingly, studying the tiny rectangle: “And to think you could have killed me.” She could allow herself this remark now because she was feeling calm and no longer afraid, she herself had said, “You can see right away what a bloke is after,” and it was me she had seen.

  “What a nasty girl you are,” I replied and it was then that I started the engine again as if it were a continuation of that phrase or perhaps a full stop. The noise made the light in the porter’s lodge at the German embassy go on, but only for a moment, darkness was immediately restored. Perhaps the guard hadn’t even noticed our presence, perhaps he was dozing and the sound of the engine had woken him up from some bad dream. “Where shall I drop you?”

  “Where you found me,” she replied. “The night isn’t over yet for me,” and she put the chewing-gum in her mouth: this time it was a strawberry smell that mingled with the other smells in the car, there were newer, stronger smells now.

  I wasn’t expecting that last remark, I mean, it hadn’t even occurred to me to think such a thing, and that was why I decided to follow her too or, rather, not to leave after dropping her on the corner which had not, for the moment, brought her bad luck. We were so close to the corner that I made a short detour before returning to Hermanos Bécquer in order to absorb that unexpected thought and to gain time. Before she got out, I gave her another note, I put it in her hand, money passing from hand to hand, that doesn’t often happen.

  “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “For the fright I gave you earlier on,” I replied.

  “You are conscientious, anyway, you didn’t really,” she said. “Still, it’s received with thanks.” She opened the door, got out of the car and began putting on her raincoat before stepping on to the pavement, her minuscule skirt was more creased than ever, but it wasn’t stained or crumpled, not by me at least. I drove away quickly, when she still had just the one sleeve on. I turned to the right, now only one of the other two prostitutes was standing in a doorway in the Castellana, the ground was still damp and it must have been freezing.

  I didn’t go home though, instead, I turned off down the first street and parked there, next to the Dresdner Bank, with its broad lawn and its fountain behind the railings, I still think of it as the Colegio Alamán, which was near my own school, the garden then was a dusty playground where I would sometimes see boys my own age playing during break and I would feel that mixture of envy and relief that I wasn’t them, which is how children always feel when they see other children they don’t know. Opposite that bank or school there are three or four archaically frivolous bars where prostitutes from that whole area doubtless go to refuel when they need a drink or when they get drenched to the skin. I walked to the corner further up from the one where Celia or Victoria had taken up her position again, where the first stretch of the hill ended, the one I mentioned before – the false bridge – and where the second stretch, at right angles to that, began, the real continuation of Hermanos Bécquer according to the street name, in that part of that part of the street there were trees covered in creepers, the trunks thick with evergreen leaves and, above my head, ornate branches. I hid there and watched, I saw her lean back against the wall of the insurance-company building, wearily, patiently, immediately opposite her was another building, vaguely biblical in style, with a pretentious ramp reminiscent of the walls of Jericho as portrayed in paintings and films, although I couldn’t see it from where I was standing, I couldn’t see her very well either, it’s quite a distance from one corner to the next, so I walked a little further down the same street in which she was waiting, General Oraa not Hermanos Bécquer according to the street sign, running the risk of her spotting me if she turned too far to her left, the side from which the cars would come, the cars which, like mine, might stop, open their doors and swallow her up. I paused outside a bar that was closed, the Sunset Bar, my light-coloured raincoat would be a visible stain in that night lit by the yellowish street lamps. I stood still for some minutes, keeping close to the wall, like Peter Lorre in the film M, the vampire of Düsseldorf, I’ve seen that too. There was even less traffic than when I had driven down there earlier, and I suddenly found myself hoping that no one else would pass, that no one else would pick her up so that, contrary to what she had thought and to what she had told me, her night would have ended. It was a perfectly normal thing to wish if I wasn’t entirely sure that she wasn’t Celia, but as I stood there, with my back against the wall, I realized that that was what I wanted even if she was Victoria and I had only just met her and wouldn’t see her again, ever. What a strange contact that intimate contact is, what strong, non-existent links it instantly forges, even though, afterwards, they fade and unravel and are forgotten, sometimes it’s hard to remember that they did exist that one night, or two, or more, after a while it becomes difficult. But not immediately after establishing those links for the first time, then they feel as if they were burned into you, when everything is fresh and your eyes still wear the face of the other person and you can still smell them, a smell for which one becomes, for a while, the repository, it is what remains after the goodbyes, goodbye passion and goodbye scorn. Goodbye memories. I could still smell the smell of Victoria or Celia which was not the same smell as that of Celia when she could only have been Celia and she had lived with me, I suddenly thought how absurd it was that I would never see her again or that she should get into another car, even though that was what her job involved and even though I didn’t, in fact, want to have anything more to do with her, if she was Celia, I had stopped having anything to do with her out of choice and after a considerable struggle, I had consistently avoided her until she had grown resigned or weary, or perhaps she was merely recouping her energies and giving me time to miss her persistence, a postponement. She took a few steps across the pavement, dragging her heels, luckily for me, she walked towards the Castellana rather than up General Oraa or Hermanos Bécquer where I was keeping watch, otherwise she would have seen me – I think – there was more traffic coming down the Castellana now and it was possible that, by then, the other prostitute in the doorway would have found a client while I was parking and turning the corner, and Victoria would not, therefore, be invading anyone’s territory if she tried her luck over there. A couple of sinister-looking men came along the pavement, or tree-lined walk, and said something to her, I couldn’t quite hear what, something unpleasant, I heard her reply boldly and they slowed their pace as if to confront her, I thought that I might have to intervene and, after all, be useful and defend her – the beneficent vampire – to meet her again despite everything and against all expectations, at least that night, one can’t always avoid being involved in what happens before one’s eyes, trying to stop a knife being plunged into someone’s chest, if you see it coming, for example, or pushing someone out of the way and thus preventing their decapitation by a tree blown down in a gale, should you see it falling, for example. “Stupid fucking cunt,” they shouted at her. “Oh, go fuck yourselves!” she shouted in turn, and that was that, the two men didn’t stop, they staggered on, gesturing with their fingers, their bomber jackets billowing, they left the field.

  And it was only two minutes afterwards that a car stopped alongside Celia or Victoria, it pulled up as I had pulled up, except that it hadn’t come down Hermanos Bécquer but from the Castellana, it was another Golf, red, we Golf owners seem to be amongst the most solitary of night owls. She had her back to me now,
so I moved a little closer, leaving behind me the shelter of the awning outside the Sunset Bar, although still sticking close to the wall like a lizard, I wanted to see and hear, it occurred to me that, with luck, they would be unable to reach an agreement, the bloke might be too mean or might make Victoria feel uneasy for some reason. She walked over to the kerb, I thought that he would open the passenger door for her and that I would not therefore see him, I did see him, though, because he opened his door instead and got out to talk to her from there, over the roof of the car, his left hand resting on the half-open door. Although I could only see her from behind, I recognized the lacklustre attempt at seduction, drawing her raincoat back with her hands in her pockets to show him more of that body with which I had just shared that strange, intimate contact that creates the immediate illusion of some real connection, even through a condom. I took off my raincoat so that I would be less visible if the man suddenly looked across and saw me standing there in the dark; I slung it over my arm, I shivered. “What would you charge me for a quarter of an hour? I’m in a hurry,” I heard him say to Victoria across the car roof. I didn’t hear her response, but it must have seemed reasonable, because the next thing I saw was the gesture he made with his head, a gesture that meant “Get in”, with no hesitation, no pause to consider. The man got back in the car and so did Celia, she opened the passenger door herself and they zoomed off, they left the field, the bloke was in a hurry. He was about the age I am now, fair-haired and balding, he didn’t look too bad, fairly well dressed and showed no signs of being drunk or desperate or malevolent, I thought he might be a doctor, perhaps he knew that he would be able to get to sleep more quickly and more easily if he went to bed after a quick screw or a blow job, his hands still on the steering wheel, something efficient and hygienic after eight hours on duty in a clinic full of exhausted nurses in white stockings with crooked seams. Then I felt a pang to be left there alone like the murderer and fugitive M, all the prostitutes had gone and, regardless of my wishes, one of them was about to make me the subject of that extinct verb ġe·licgan, or a participant of that forgotten noun ġe·for·liġer, while I was left on my own, or was about to make me for ever into that man’s fictitious ġe·brd-guma, without my consent – but how could there be consent – she would have me lie with them, become a party to co-fornication and be the co-bridegroom of that imagined doctor whom I had seen for a moment from afar and who, unlike me, was in a hurry – I would have nothing to do with him again either. At that moment or during the next fifteen minutes, she would be forging an Anglo-Saxon relationship for me, by its very nature posthumous, a relationship I did not want, whose effects and exact meaning I would not know, since my language does not have a word for it, and from which I could do nothing to protect myself; and it’s one thing to know about it and quite another to see it with your own eyes or to be a witness to the preparations, it’s one thing to imagine the time during which events that displease or hurt us or drive us to despair are taking place and quite another to be able to say to ourselves with certainty: “This is happening now, while I’m standing here alone with my back to the wall, not knowing how to react in the middle of a night full of crushed, damp leaves, while I crunch back through them to my car parked next to the Dresdner Bank or the Colegio Alamán of my childhood and get into it and start the engine, a few moments ago, I was in this same car in Calle Fortuny accompanied by Victoria or Celia, enjoying that strange, intimate contact in the back seat or talking with her beforehand in the front seat, not daring to feel the certainty I now believe I feel out of jealousy, trying not to recognize the person I did recognize and at the same time not wanting to mistake my own ex-wife for an unknown prostitute. Now, on the other hand, I am possessed of a certainty unaffected by identity or name, I know that the woman is in another car and that her body is in other hands, the hands that touch everything without hesitation or scruple, the hands that squeeze or caress or investigate and also strike (I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, don’t hold it against me), the sometimes mechanical gestures made by the warm, expert hand of the doctor feeling his way over a body about which he is still undecided as to whether or not it pleases him. And while I drove along the same streets I had driven along before with her, trying to find where the red Golf had parked – down Fortuny itself and Marqués de Riscal and Monte Esquinza and Fernando el Santo, no sign of it in any of them – I thought too, with horror and suppressed hope, that I could not even be sure of that, since I would not be a witness to it: perhaps that fuck or that blow job, hands still on the steering wheel, would not take place if that man or doctor had hard, clumsy fingers like piano keys and decided to deploy them, before any further contact was made, on the throat or the cheekbones or the temples of Victoria or Celia, her poor temples, finally pushing her lifeless body out of the car on to the asphalt and the damp leaves. And while I gave up my search and finally returned home – the fifteen minutes were up, although that fifteen minutes was only a manner of speaking and the two of them might perhaps still be in the red Golf or the doctor could have decided to invite her back to his flat until the morning, I hadn’t wanted to have that memory or ghost in my bedroom and now I was suffering for it – I thought that in the days that followed, I would have to study the newspapers carefully, my heart in my mouth, looking for and fearing a piece of news that would perhaps leave me a widower if Victoria was Celia, news that would make me regret all my fears until the end of my days if Victoria was Victoria. The car smelled of her and I smelled of her.

  I arrived home in a state of extreme agitation, there was no way I would get to sleep now, I could have just driven off after leaving the prostitute on her corner and then what happened next would have been a matter of conjecture, a distraction, a pastime, conjecture is only a game, but actually having seen something is a serious matter, sometimes even a drama, it does not provide the consolation of uncertainty not, at least, until more time has passed. But I had seen myself with that woman in my own car and that was enough for me to be able to imagine her now with the doctor, my co-fornicator or, more accurately, co-fucker, perhaps he would frighten her. I turned on the television as I would two and a half years later in Conde de la Cimera, not knowing what to do while a woman lay dying by my side, not that I really believed it or felt particularly worried, the fact is she didn’t believe it either; and as Solus too had turned on the television in his palace that same night, when he couldn’t sleep and left his bedroom so as not to bother anyone and to try and summon up sleep while he watched the screen, in my case, it’s what I normally do when I get home late, I suppose most of us who live alone do, those of us who are therefore no one, we watch to see what has happened in the world during our absence, as if we were not always absent from the world. It was already very late and only a couple of channels were still broadcasting, and the first thing I saw on one of them was a knight in armour on his knees outside a tent, commending his soul to God, it was obviously a film, in colour, but not, of course, new, the best programmes are always on in the early hours, when almost no one is there to see them. The scene immediately changed to show another man, this time lying down, fully clothed, a king, I thought, when I saw the flounced sleeves of his shirt, a king suffering from insomnia or who was perhaps asleep with his eyes wide open, he too was in a tent of war, although he was lying on his back in a real bed with pillows and sheets, I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember that. And then, one after another, ghosts began to appear, superimposed on a landscape, perhaps the site of a future or imminent battle: a man, two children, another man, a woman, and another man bringing up the rear, shaking his fists in the air and crying out like someone calling for vengeance, all the others had sad, desolate faces, their hair had grown white and their bitter words were pronounced by pale lips that seemed to be reading something out in a quiet voice rather than speaking it, those who are now ghosts do not always find it easy to talk to us. That king was haunted or under a spell or, to be more exact, he was being haunted that very night by t
hose closest to him, who were reproaching him with their deaths and calling down misfortunes on him in the battle that would take place the following day, they were saying terrible things in the sad voices of those who have been betrayed or killed by the person they loved: “Tomorrow in the battle think on me,” the men, the woman and the children said to him one after the other, “and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die!” “Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow, let me be lead within thy bosom and in a bloody battle end thy days: let fall thy pointless lance.” “Think on me when I was mortal: despair and die,” they repeated one after the other, the children and the woman and the men. I remember those words clearly, especially those spoken to him by the woman, the last to address him, his ghost wife whose cheeks streamed with tears: “That wretched Ann thy wife,” she said to him, “that never slept a quiet hour with thee, now fills thy sleep with perturbations. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die!” And that king sat up or awoke terrified and screaming at those terrible night visions and I too was afraid when I saw them and heard his scream coming from the television; I felt a shiver run through me – the sheer power of the performance, I suppose – and I changed channels with the remote control, I switched to the other channel that was still broadcasting and they were showing an old film too, this time in black and white, it seemed to be about aeroplanes, Spitfires and Stukas and Hurricanes and Messerschmitt 109s, as well as the odd Lancaster, the name of the dynasty of the two Henries; it was probably about the Battle of Britain, the battle that allowed Winston Churchill to utter one of his most famous phrases: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” that’s all that’s ever quoted, like the phrase about “blood, tears and sweat” from which people always omit the word “toil”. During the Spanish Civil War, Madrid was bombed by Stukas and Junkers, especially the former, people called them “turkeys” because of the way they lumbered across the sky bearing their devastating load, across the same sky that I could see from my window, the Republican fighters, on the other hand, were known as “rats”, fast Russian Migs and old American Curtisses. I felt more comfortable in that unsupernatural world of aerial combat, and closer in time too, those other people on the first channel, in armour and flounced shirts, were doubtless nearer to the time when the verb ġe·licgan or the nouns ġe·for·liġer and ġe·brd-guma were still in use – words I had been forced to think about that night and which, perhaps, I had invented – although no closer to their meaning: I did not want to see them, whoever they were, I preferred to stay in my own century, with deaths brought about by war, although possibly on the other channel they too would be fighting a battle and the new dead might also be men killed in war, not murder victims, men, a woman and children. I was watching the planes while I was thinking this, but while I was watching them, the curses of the ghosts in that scene of insomnia or troubled sleep were still resonating and floating in my head, and that’s why I thought of or rather remembered them much later on, when I bumped against something in the darkness in the bedroom of Marta Téllez’s son and saw, hanging from the ceiling, the miniature aeroplanes that had doubtless belonged to his father, more numerous and far superior to any I had ever had in my own childhood, the aeroplanes hanging from threads, languidly preparing each night for a weary night-time foray, tiny, ghostly and impossible, a battle that never took place or took place only on sleepless nights, in my turbulent dreams.