Luisa crossed her legs, her shoes were still immaculate, as if she had not spent hours walking along wet pavements.
“Do you think I could have that drink now?” she said. “I’m a bit thirsty.” She wasn’t in such a hurry now, she felt less awkward sitting in my apartment, we were bound together by what we had heard, by a tape that contained her voice and mine, as well as others which we did not entirely understand. We were brought close, too, by our weariness and by having told our stories, by having related something one to the other as in an exchange, things that vainly completed each other, she provided the after and I provided the before of something for which there was no help and that perhaps did not even interest us very much: besides, it was in the past, it had happened and was no longer happening, it could be revealed, but it was over now. I got up and went to the kitchen to get her a whisky. She got up too and followed me, she leaned familiarly against the door frame, watching me as I got out the bottle and the ice and a glass and some water. That’s how married couples sometimes continue a conversation, one partner follows the other through the house, while the latter tidies up or makes supper or does the ironing or puts things away, it is common territory where appointments have no place, there is no need to sit down to talk or to tell the other person something, instead activity goes on in the midst of the words and of accounts called for and accounts rendered, I know that because I have not always lived alone. “Well, as I said, they hadn’t been getting on very well for some time,” said Luisa, leaning in the doorway. “I suppose he must have had a few realities too, men can’t put up with pure fantasy for very long. But I don’t know anything concrete, the fact is, I don’t know anything at all.”
I wondered if now she was telling me the truth, shortly before, she had told me that she and Marta told each other almost everything, perhaps Marta hadn’t known anything about it, which would explain why she had said nothing to her sister, it’s best to say nothing as long as you can still give what is always the best reply: “I don’t know, I’m not sure, we’ll see,” the consolation of uncertainty which is also retrospective. I gave her a glass of whisky and I poured myself a grappa. She didn’t seem like a liar, but she might be being discreet.
“Cheers,” I said, and then I got up enough courage to ask her something, to make even more of an ally of her than I had already, there’s nothing like asking a favour of someone to win them over, most people like granting favours. It was a simple, justifiable request, but there was no reason why she should agree to it, there was no reason, as yet, why Luisa Téllez should agree to do anything for me. “Would you do me a favour and not tell Deán about me until I’ve finished the work for your father? It will just be this week. Could you wait until next week, as if you hadn’t met me until then? Please. I’d prefer to finish what I’ve been asked to do, besides, I’m going halves with a colleague, and if Deán finds out about me, it will be difficult for me to finish the work. He might want to stop me doing it, he would be quite capable of telling your father everything, to distance me from him, from everyone, from Marta.”
Luisa took a sip of her drink, the ice clinked in her glass, she took a step forward, she rested her left hand on the table in the utility room, her bracelet clinked, she was holding her glass in her right hand, she said: “What time is it?”
She was wearing her watch on her right wrist as if she were left-handed, it was a rhetorical question to gain time, or perhaps she was afraid that she might tip her glass over if she turned her wrist to look at her watch.
“Almost one o’clock,” I said. I was just about to pour out my own drink.
“It’s late, I’d better be going.” I thought, “Our languages are just as subtle as the old languages, ‘I’d better be going’ indicates that she’s not going just yet, she’s going to wait a bit, at least until she’s drunk half her whisky, although she’ll drink it very quickly, now she’s in a hurry again because I’ve asked her a favour and she won’t want to risk my asking her any more. In a while, she’ll say ‘I must go’ and later still, she’ll say ‘Right, I’m off’ and only then will she actually leave.” We went back into the living room on my initiative, I took the lead and she followed as if she were my partner and not a stranger. She remained standing, looking at my books and videos while she took rapid sips of her whisky. She had grown sombre, the tape or I myself had contributed to that. She had her back to me.
“Will you wait?”
She turned round and looked at me, she had avoided my eyes ever since she had asked me what time it was, her eyes now wearing the face of the other, my face.
“Yes, of course I can wait,” she said. “But don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t think Eduardo wants to beat you up or anything. Not at our age, not at this stage of the game.”
“Oh, really?” I asked ingenuously, perhaps in a tone of slight disappointment: an easing of tension, the reminder that we were not that young, “What does he want then? Why is he so determined to find me? What does he want? To know what happened? In that case you could just tell him everything that I’ve told you.”
“I will tell him, I will, don’t worry,” said Luisa patiently, “I’ll save you that initial repetition if you like, when I talk to him about you on Monday, if that’s all right with you, I don’t want to keep it from him any longer than is necessary. I know it’s not easy for you.” She was being understanding with me, she was giving me more than I had asked for.
“Monday’s fine. I have to hand in my work by then anyway, your father will deliver it, so I’ll definitely have finished. I’m really very grateful. What does he want though? Why is he looking for me?” I asked again.
“I think he’s not so much interested in finding out anything as in telling you something. I don’t know what it is, because he hasn’t told me. But he’s said several times that he wants to meet the man who spent the night with Marta so that he can tell him a few things. He wants you to know certain facts, I don’t know what. Listen, I must go, I’m tired. He’ll tell you whatever it is.”
“Ah,” I thought, “so he too has something to tell. He too is tired, weary of the shadows.”
“I’ll give you my number,” I said. “You can give it to him any time after Monday if you want, that way he won’t have to look it up or ask your father for it.” I wrote it down on a yellow post-it, I have one of those little pads next to my phone too, almost every house has.
Luisa took the bit of paper and put it in her pocket. Now she really did look exhausted, the sorrow of the whole day had swept over her, she must be heartily sick of it all, of her father, of the boy, of Deán, of me, of her own sister alive and dead. She sat down in my armchair again with her glass in her right hand, as if she didn’t have the strength to remain standing. With her other hand, she covered her face as she had in the cemetery, only now she wasn’t crying: it was a gesture sometimes made by people when they feel horror or shame or want not to see or to be seen. I couldn’t help noticing her lips – those lips – that her hand did not cover. She had not yet said: “Right, I’m off,” not yet.
I WORKED WITH TÉLLEZ for the rest of the week and, on Sunday, I went to the races with Ruibérriz de Torres, now, I thought, I could reward him for his work, pay off my debt to him and tell him what had happened to me, more than a month before, with a woman I barely knew, he would enjoy the story, it would amuse him, that’s all, in a way he would envy me: had it been his story, he would have proclaimed it to the four winds right from the start and it would have become a story that was half-macabre and half-jocular, half-absurd and half-sinister, a horrible death and a ridiculous death, something which, when it happens, is neither vulgar nor elevated nor funny nor sad can be any of those things when someone makes a story out of it, the world depends on its storytellers as it does on those who hear the story and occasionally influence it, I would not have dared to tell my story to Ruibérriz other than in the tone I used during the first two races – of little interest – that is, by turns sinister and jocular, interrupting
the story now and then to watch the final straights through our binoculars, going from the grandstand to the paddock and from the paddock to the bar and from there to place our bets and then back up to the grandstand, nothing is ever told twice in exactly the same way or using exactly the same words, not even if the storyteller is the same each time, even if it’s the same person. I told the story distractedly, adding a lot of gestures, in order that he should appreciate it to the full, I told it quickly, I couldn’t talk to Ruibérriz about spells or enchantments. “You’re kidding,” he said a few times, “the woman snuffed it, just like that?” Yes, for him, that was what it was all about, nothing more, the woman had just snuffed it, just like that. “And you didn’t even get your end away, bloody hell,” he said, rather amused at my bad luck. And it was true that I didn’t get my end away, and perhaps that was bad luck on my part. “And it was Téllez Orati’s daughter? You’re kidding,” he said again, I remember. He listened to me with a mixture of hilarity and horror, as happens when we read in the newspapers about the inevitably risible misfortune of some unknown person who dies in their socks, or at the hairdresser’s, still wearing a voluminous smock, or in a whorehouse or at the dentist’s, or eating fish and getting a bone stuck in their throat, like a child whose mother isn’t there to save him by sticking a finger down his throat, death as a performance or a show to be reviewed, that is how I talked about my dead person as I strolled around the racecourse that Téllez used to frequent when he was younger, outside the tote and in the bar and in the paddock and standing up in the grandstand watching through our binoculars, the horses swathed in a thickening mist, it was a month of almost constant mist in Madrid such as had not been known for over a century, there were more car accidents and delays at the airport, the horses, as they ran past us, appeared to have no legs, we watched their bodies and their spectral heads pass by, disputing the lead, like the horses on the merry-go-rounds we rode in childhood, those first horses had no legs at all, only a long transfixing pole to which we would cling while we rode round and round in a circle, without moving from the spot, faster and faster, just like in a race over turf or grass, until the music began to crackle and they slowed us to a halt. The new month had brought mists, the previous month storms. Ruibérriz was wearing a raincoat with the belt tightly knotted, the way posers do, I wore mine unbuttoned, we both had on stiff leather gloves, we looked like a couple of bodyguards. The brilliance of his smile remained entirely undimmed, he curled back his lip in dissolute laughter, he watched the first, unimportant trials disdainfully, he looked about him, even while I was telling him my story, in search of prey or of people he could greet or wheedle something out of, he was wearing a lot of cologne. I didn’t tell him about more recent events, I didn’t talk to him about the sister nor of what I foresaw happening, my debt was paid off with the story about the woman’s death and the fuck that never happened. Then I told him that I had finished the speech the day before, I gave him a copy, after all, he would partake of the minimal profits, though when we would get paid was quite another matter, I had acted in his name.
“So, how did it turn out?” he asked, crumpling up the speech and stuffing it into his raincoat pocket without even looking at it.
“Oh, just as boring and inane as all the others, when he finally gives the speech, no one will pay any more attention to him this time either. Téllez forced me to behave myself and to be very conventional, he kept me on a tight rein, and the fact is he didn’t have to change much either, I didn’t really try anything new. You know how it is, the user of the product, or the public image you have of them, always somehow imposes his or her personality on you, and you just can’t shake it off when it comes to writing for them.”
I had worked until Saturday, Téllez becoming more excited and more familiar as the week progressed, visiting me, correcting me, inspecting me, advising me, preening himself on his knowledge of our employer’s noble psyche. He certainly did not lack for distractions that week, he had a project in hand, responsibilities of state, a younger man who came every morning and placed himself at his disposal. Sometimes he would interrupt me to talk about other things, about the death notices in the newspaper which he always scrutinized minutely, about the catastrophic situation in this plundered country of ours, about the foibles and vanities of his most famous colleagues. He smoked a pipe when he was with me or cadged a few cigarettes, he held them inexpertly between thumb and forefinger as if he were holding a pencil or a piece of chalk, he puffed at them timidly and coughed a little when he inhaled the smoke, but he managed. He would wander off for a while to grind some coffee in the kitchen and then, mid-morning, he would force me to take a break, he would pour himself some port wine and pour a glass for me, then, with glass in hand, he would read out loud the pages we had finished and approved, keeping time with eloquent movements of his wine glass, adding a comma or replacing it with a semicolon, a sign he favoured, “it helps you to breathe,” he would say, “and it stops you losing the thread”. The phone almost never rang, no one needed him, no one sought him out, I would occasionally hear him talking to his daughter or his daughter-in-law, but he was usually the one who phoned them at work on various pretexts. His existence was a precarious one. On the last day, on Saturday, I ordered a huge arrangement of flowers to be delivered to him while I was there, from Bourguignon’s, he wouldn’t have settled for less. I had them sent without a card or message of any kind, I knew that would keep him intrigued for several days – until the flowers faded – it would help him feel my absence less keenly once I had finished my task and I no longer came to his house, not on Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or any other day. The ancient maid brought it in to the living room still in its cellophane and its bowl, she placed it on the carpet and Téllez lifted it up immediately to look at it, astonished, as if it were some strange beast.
“Open it,” he said to the maid in the same tone in which Roman emperors would once have said to a servant “Taste it” regarding a possibly poisoned delicacy. And once the cellophane and the maid had gone (the latter disappeared carefully folding up the wrapping paper, so that she could use it later) he walked two or three times around the bowl looking at it with as much expectation as distrust. “Anonymous flowers,” he said, “who the devil would send me flowers? Have another look, Victor, are you sure there’s no card? Have a good look amongst the stems. Very strange, very strange indeed.” And he scratched his chin with the end of his extinguished pipe while I scanned the floor in search of something I knew we would not find. He pointed at them with his index finger as I had seen him point to his shoe in the cemetery, the thumb of his other hand cocked in his armpit as if it were a riding crop. He was about to say something, but he was too confused, too overwhelmed. He did not even go near the flowers, then, at last, he planted his swaying body heavily down in a chair, his chest puffed out, his face like a gargoyle, and he stared at the flowers in their bowl on the carpet as if they were a marvel. “It isn’t my birthday, it’s not my saint’s day or any anniversary that I can remember,” he said. “They can’t be from the Palace either, we still haven’t delivered the speech. I wonder if Marta and Luisa have any ideas, perhaps they can come up with a reason, I’m going to call Marta and tell her, sometimes she doesn’t have a class until the evening and, besides, it’s Saturday today, she’s bound to be at home.” He made as if to get up and go over to the phone, but stopped short and slumped into the chair again, leaning his neck against the chairback as if buffeted by an enormous wave or as if he had received a revelation that had left him drained. Or perhaps he felt dizzy and needed to hold his head back in order to stop the feeling. He realized what he had done immediately and apologized to me, it wasn’t necessary: “I’m not mad, I’m not losing my memory,” he said to me, “it just takes time to get used to it, you see. It’s hard to grasp that someone who did exist doesn’t exist any more.” He paused and then added: “I don’t know why I go on existing when so many have gone before me.” He didn’t say anything more. He stood up a
gain, leaning heavily on the arms of the chair to push himself up, and then again took a few cautious steps around the bowl of flowers. He was always immaculately dressed when at home, as if he were about to go out even when he wasn’t, wearing tie, waistcoat, jacket and his street shoes, one morning he had been railing against tracksuit bottoms, which he found unspeakable. “I can’t understand why politicians allow themselves to be photographed wearing them,” he had said. “More than that, I don’t know how they dare put them on, even if no one’s going to see them. And in summer, they go out without any socks on, the vulgar creatures, such appalling taste.” He was neat and elegant, like a beautifully finished, rather ornate piece of antique furniture. He put his pipe to his mouth and added: “Anyway, about these mysterious flowers, I must make some enquiries, I’ll have to thank whoever sent them. But we’d better get back to work, Víctor, otherwise we won’t finish today, and I always like to keep my promises.” Then, taking me by the arm, he led me back into his study next door, full of books and pictures, jumbled and alive, where I was about to close my portable typewriter that had sat there open all week. He didn’t call Luisa just then, he would do so later, as he would other people, and with a good reason this time. I thought that he would, at least, have some motive to live until Monday, he would go to the Palace to deliver our transient piece of work, his and mine and Only the Lonely’s, under Ruibérriz’s name, although probably only Segurola and Segarra would be there to receive him, Only the Lonely is not often available. Precarious existences rely on the day-to-day, or perhaps all existences do. He could make conjectures about the flowers for a few days more, for a whole week if he was lucky.
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me Page 31