Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

by Javier Marías

  “What did you talk about? What did she say to you?”

  Deán got up, as if prompted by my question, and returned to his initial position, one elbow leaning on the shelf, a decorative pose, a thin man, a tall man. His face grew even more sombre, his energetic chin turned away as if in flight, his beer-coloured eyes glinting wildly as they had when he had left the restaurant and Téllez wouldn’t let him pay the bill, but we were not lit now by the greenish light of a storm, only by electric light and, outside, fog which, in the city, looks yellowish or whitish or reddish, it depends.

  “Nothing, what could she say? She tried to placate me, she pleaded, she explained, she tried to justify what could not be justified, as if the love people bear you could wash away certain things, there are people who believe that the intensity of their feelings is some sort of guarantee, having exalted feelings becomes confused with acting honourably. Perhaps I would have seen it like that too had I known what was going on here, I was behind with the news.”

  “We can never know for certain that we have acted honourably,” I said, venturing an opinion, perhaps myself acting improperly. The effects of the cocaine were wearing off, I was less alert now, at least less alert in relation to myself.

  “You’re right, I can’t say that I acted honourably any more than you can.” Deán cadged another cigarette off me and, this time, he lit it straight away, he took two puffs, he probably wasn’t really a smoker and he was smoking now in order to accompany the narrative act by some physical gesture, the person telling a story barely moves. That is what I thought and that is how I remember his talk, he had ideas, but he found it hard to put them in any kind of order. But then who doesn’t? “She insisted on explaining the process, her thought process, it wasn’t necessary, I understood it already. She could see that I was distancing myself from her, or trying to, and she didn’t want to lose me, it made her desperate just to imagine it, she considered getting pregnant but that wasn’t easy, as I told you before I was always very careful. She couldn’t trust to her flesh to keep me, one year isn’t long, but two might be enough for it to wear thin, for it to give. She said that it broke her heart when she saw how impatient I was to leave her apartment and go back to mine, I hadn’t been like that in the beginning, then I hated having to leave, maybe I was the one who was clinging then, it’s true that I used to find it hard to say goodbye to her, that was shortly after I had met her, I can hardly remember it now (“The kisses of the one who is leaving, standing at the front door of the one who is staying, become confused with those of the day before yesterday and those of the day after tomorrow, there was only ever one memorable first night and it was immediately lost, swallowed up by the weeks and the repetitive months that succeeded it”). I know it was like that once, but I can’t remember it. I was different now, she said, irritable and abrupt, as if she had suddenly become a stranger, it’s perplexing and upsetting when things change so radically, but one hasn’t oneself changed (“I do not know you, nor do I know who you are, I have never seen you before, do not come to me asking favours or calling me sweet names, for I am not the thing I was, and neither are you; that is what people always say, sooner or later”). Then she thought up this little drama, she believed that an abortion might also bring us together, that I would admire her sacrifice and respect her for her powers of renunciation, and her reasoning was quite sound, it would have been like that had I kept my cool and obediently finished reading my newspapers and not moved from that café, I had promised her that I would stay there just in case she needed me and there I sat for more than an hour, pretending to read, but all the time thinking about her and the doctor’s hand on her, and about similarities. It had seemed like an eternity to me and all the time she had been calmly reading magazines, can you understand that?”

  “The person telling a story is usually able to explain himself,” I thought, “telling a story is tantamount to persuading someone or making oneself clear or making someone see one’s point of view and, that way, everything is capable of being understood, even the most vile of acts, everything can be forgiven when there is something to forgive, everything can be overlooked or assimilated or even pitied, such and such happened and we have to learn to live with it once we know that it did happen, we have to find a place for it in our consciousness and in our memory where the fact that it happened and that we know about it will not prevent us from going on living.” I also thought: “Sometimes, telling a story can even get you into someone’s good graces.”

  “I think I understand how you felt, I think it’s understandable,” I said.

  “When we left the restaurant a storm broke and a terrific wind got up, we were both a bit unsteady on our legs, I because of the amount I had drunk, she out of desperation when she saw that none of her explanations or pleas had any effect on me, made no mark on me, I had responded only with cruelty and sarcasm. The fact is that then they genuinely didn’t move me. Afterwards … But there was no time.” Deán fell silent, I didn’t say anything this time, there was no question in that pause, not even an implicit one. He seemed sunk in thought just then, it was impossible to know what transformation or distortion to expect from that face, although his almond eyes looked at me, but did not rest on me, it was as if they merely skirted round or passed over me; his rebellious chin was lowered, an edgeless sword. “I hated her,” he said. “I hated her and yet it wouldn’t have been the same if I’d known, I might even have felt sorry for her and her drama, I would have been more indulgent. Poor Eva, poor Marta.” The distortion or promised transformation took the form of pity, it accompanied his words. “We got soaked through in a matter of seconds, we stood on the kerb to hail a taxi, there wasn’t one, it was rather late for England and, as happens everywhere, taxis always vanish the moment it rains, the underground appeared to be closed and we didn’t bother crossing the road to find out, we walked on a bit, not knowing what to do, perhaps going in the opposite direction to the one we needed to go in, a taxi passed, it was free, but the driver chose not to stop when he saw us, maybe our unsteady steps inspired mistrust, I couldn’t stand still without staggering slightly, I felt more in control when I was walking, I protected myself as best I could by turning up my coat collar, she vainly covered her head with her scarf, a present from me, it clung to her hair, it was completely soaked, at least that way her hair wouldn’t be ruffled by the wind. She wanted to wait in the shelter of an awning, I again grabbed her wrist and pulled her along, I wouldn’t allow her to take shelter. The rain was not as strong as the wind, it was falling obliquely, the street was deserted. A double decker bus stopped at the traffic lights, it must have been on its final run, the open platform looked inviting, Eva broke away for a moment and leapt on, I followed and managed to get on too, grabbing the rail when the bus was already moving off, it didn’t really matter where it was going, she had seen it as a kind of refuge. I paid the conductor, who was Indian or Pakistani, ‘The last stop, please,’ I said, that was simplest, we went up to the empty top deck, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, as I was climbing the stairs, shoving Eva ahead of me, that downstairs, there were only a couple of passengers, ‘Are you stupid or what? You’re crazy,’ I said, ‘we don’t even know where this bus is going.’ ‘What does it matter?’ she replied, ‘anything is better than being out in the street in this gale. When we see an area with more traffic about, we can get off and then we’ll find a taxi. Or else when it’s not raining quite so much. I’m drenched, do you want us both to catch pneumonia?’ She sat down, took off her scarf, shook it and wrung out her hair a little, she took a Kleenex out of her handbag and dried her face and hands as best she could, she offered me one, I refused, I didn’t sit down beside her but behind, like some lout about to set upon his victim, the wind had made my mood wilder, hers too, the wind does madden people, she had suddenly had the gumption to answer me back. We smelled of wet wool, our sodden overcoats, an awful smell. The bus sped on through the rain the way they do at night, there was hardly any traffic, it made a monstr
ous noise when it braked at bus stops or at traffic lights, sometimes it brushed against the branches of the trees at our height (“The foliage”), sometimes it sounded like a whiplash, at others, more like drumming, when there were several branches all in a row waving like furious arms in the wind as the bus passed (“And I always wondered how she managed to avoid the branches of the trees that stuck out over the pavements and thudded against the high windows as if in protest at our speed, as if wanting to reach through the windows and scratch us,” I thought, “and I don’t know if that thought is mine or Marta Téllez’s, or if it is just a memory”). In front of me, Eva was again wringing out her curly hair as if it were a piece of fabric, I had often seen her do so when she emerged from the shower in her apartment, in her dressing gown. She didn’t turn round, she kept her back to me (“The back of her neck”), I got the impression that she was acting offended now, perhaps it was a change of tactic, she wasn’t pleading any more, or perhaps she considered that what she had done was not that serious and was attempting to play another hand, when the fact was that she had played all her cards. Maybe she thought that I had gone too far in my revenge and that now it was her turn to call me to account for my cruelty and my sarcasm and my mistreatment of her all that day (“Everything becomes creased or stained or crumpled”), that’s why she had allowed herself that haughty response. I couldn’t bear it, it was just the idea of it, how dare she, I had sat waiting, thinking about her and about similarities (“What is truly unbearable is that the person one recalls as part of the future should suddenly become the past”). I was drunk, but that’s no excuse, you can be drunk in as many different ways as you can be sober. It was unpremeditated but I knew what I was doing, I was aware of what I was going to do because I remember thinking that no one would see me from the street or from downstairs, they install round, convex mirrors on all the buses, so that the conductor can see what’s going on upstairs, but in order to do that, he has to be looking and that Indian or Pakistani wouldn’t be looking at anything on this final trip of the day, he would be exhausted, and tiredness drives out curiosity. Nowadays, some buses are fitted with a camera instead of a mirror to keep an eye on the upper deck, but that bus wasn’t one of them, a number 16 or 15, I’m not sure, or another bus altogether, I turned round to check, there was no camera, that’s how I know that I thought about myself and about what might happen afterwards, about the possible consequences (“You thought about tomorrow”), that’s why I know that I knew what I was doing when I put my hands around her head and squeezed it violently between them (“You squeezed my cheekbones and my temples, my poor temples”), I held her and squeezed her hard so that she couldn’t turn round, her damp curls beneath my hands (“My large hands with their hard, clumsy fingers, my fingers like piano keys”), because now she did want to turn round but couldn’t, for a moment, she still thought I was playacting or joking, she still had time to say to me in an irritated voice: “What are you doing, stop it,” and then she must have sensed that I was serious, I was hurting her, I must have hurt her a lot with my thumbs, in what was a matter of only a couple of seconds, I could easily have crushed her temples had I kept up the pressure, but in order to stop her crying out, I quickly lowered my hands to her neck and her throat, which were also wet (“Her old-fashioned neck traversed by striations or threads of black, sticky hair, like half-dried blood or mud”), and I put pressure on her throat too, the pressure on her temples had almost made her lose consciousness, she was limp, I hardly felt any resistance in her hands as they struggled lamely to loosen my grip (“Like children who put up no resistance to the swift, impatient illnesses that so effortlessly carry them off), she would remain lying on the seat of a London bus that would continue on its night journey through the wind and the rain and I, on the other hand, would get off, there was no door to stop me (“A foreign death, a horrible death, and on an island”), I couldn’t see her face, I couldn’t see her eyes, only the back of her neck and her hair, but I knew she was rapidly dying (“What disappears is not only who I am but who I have been, not only me, but my whole memory, everything I know and have learned, all my memories and everything I’ve ever seen, the thousand and one things that passed before my eyes and are of no importance or use to anyone else and become useless if I die”). I don’t know if it was the bus suddenly squealing to a halt and stopping with a jolt that made me release my fingers, as if my actions depended on the bus continuing to advance and on the wind that seems less strong when you’re standing still. Or perhaps it was fear or a kind of regret that surfaced simultaneously with the act that provoked it (“A yes and a no and a perhaps and meanwhile everything has moved on or is gone”). I immediately released my grip, I withdrew my hands, I suddenly let her go without taking her life (“Not yet, not yet, and as long as it is not yet, I can go on thinking about the daily battle and looking at this foreign landscape, and making plans for the future, and you can still go on saying goodbye”), I put my hands in my overcoat pockets at once as if I wanted to hide or erase what they had been about to do, but had not, actions are not the same if they do not last long enough, they depend on their effects (“The thread of uninterrupted continuity, my silken thread still intact but without a guide: another day, how dreadful, another day, how fortunate”), Eva was alive instead of being dead (“And I don’t know what either of those words means any more. I no longer have any clear understanding of those two terms”), I got up, I walked round her to look at her, I gazed down at her from my superior height, in her distraction her legs had parted, she raised to me her battered, injured head, she looked at me for a moment and her eyes still wore my face and the dusky night, I saw depression and pity and exhaustion more than fear or resistance (“Without the consolation of uncertainty that cannot always be retrospective, even though the recent present can suddenly seem like the remote past”), as if, more than by her possible death to which she had come within a hair’s breadth, she was saddened to think that of all the people living I should be the one who had tried and wanted to kill her (“The dying woman’s scorn for her own death confronted by the pathetic superiority of the living and our temporary motive for triumph: I stay too long by you, sweet boy, I weary you”). And then she ran down the stairs in the high heels that she had put on in order to wait for me at my hotel, to plead with me, she ran down the stairs so that she could jump off before the bus started up again, I don’t know where we were or what street we were in, I didn’t follow her, I merely opened a window that let in a gust of wind and oblique rain and I leaned out in time to see her jump off (“And I still see the world from on high”), the bus was pulling away and picking up speed when, from the back window, to which I moved immediately afterwards, I saw her overcoat and her entirely un-childish shoes on the asphalt and I saw her, in an obviously confused state, trying to cross the road, fleeing from me, the man who might be pursuing her to continue trying to kill her, or fleeing perhaps from the sorrow of what she had felt and seen. She tried to do this without looking, still concealed by the bus which was just about to draw away but had not yet done so, she didn’t reach the opposite kerb because a black taxi came racing up from the other direction and hit her, an Austin taxi like a rhinoceros or an elephant, the traffic in London drives on the wrong side of the road. I saw this with my own eyes from the back window as I moved off, I saw the tremendous blow, it hit her full on so that she was thrown not upwards but straight ahead at the height of the snout ploughing into her, and I saw how the taxi was unable to brake even after it had hit her and saw how it ran over her after she had dropped to the ground. A fatal blow that came without warning, my bus was either not aware of it or preferred not to be, the moment after the crash, it made as if to brake, but didn’t actually stop, it went on its way, picking up speed by the yard, perhaps neither the sleepy driver nor the Indian had heard it, or perhaps they had and decided that it would make them too late getting off work if they found themselves involved in an accident that they hadn’t seen and in which their vehicle had played no
part. The last I saw, before the bus went round a corner and the scene disappeared from view, was the taxi driver and his passengers – the taxi had finally managed to stop – who had all opened their doors and run towards the body. The woman and the man were sheltering from the rain beneath a newspaper, the taxi driver knew already that the body was a corpse, because he was carrying in his hands a kind of rug with which to cover her, her face too, at least she wouldn’t get any wetter I thought (“But, on the other hand, the smell of metamorphosis would begin”). I did nothing, I mean, I didn’t get off at the next stop or at the next set of traffic lights in order to go back and find out what I already knew or to accompany the dead Eva and to help with the formalities. I would have done if I had known now what had happened here, almost twenty hours before, but I didn’t. But no, that’s not true, I wouldn’t have got off even then. I had washed my hands of it. Strictly speaking, I hadn’t killed her, the taxi had, but a minute before, I had wanted her death and sought it and now it was done, and by my own wavering will, if not by my hand (“She didn’t die of her own accord,” I thought, “and the fact of someone dying while you remain alive makes you feel, for a moment, or for a lifetime, like a criminal, what a terrible curse, now I will have to remember that name too, the name of someone whose face I do not even know: Eva García Valle”). Or perhaps it was her will bowing to mine so as not to be in the way (“The will that steps aside and grows tired and, by its withdrawal, brings our death, as if the world couldn’t bear us and was in a hurry to get rid of us”). In those moments, as the bus moved off and I lost sight of the scene, the thought uppermost in my mind was that no one knew that she was with me. The tickets bought separately, the different hotels and, at the hospital, she hadn’t registered because there was no need (“And, as if it was just another insignificant, superfluous link, the murder or homicide is simply lumped in with all the crimes – there are so many others – that have been forgotten and of which no record remains and with those currently being planned and of which there will be a record, even though that too will eventually disappear”). Her death was just that of another tourist over in London from the Continent who, yet again, forgot to look in the right direction after getting off a bus on the left-hand side and then trying to cross the road, forgetting that the traffic was coming from the other direction (“A ridiculous death, the improbable death of someone who is just a visitor to the city, like someone dying, crushed or decapitated by a tree split in two by a lightning bolt in a broad avenue during a storm, it happens sometimes and we just read about it in the newspapers and laugh”). She had nothing to do with me, she was a stranger, I threw her bus ticket out of the window, the Pakistani wouldn’t remember that I had paid for her as well as myself. There would be no reason why he should even remember her. And besides, I hadn’t done anything, no one had, a mere accident, a misfortune. There was her scarf still on the seat, still wet. It still smelled of her, of her black hair (“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: let me be lead within thy bosom, let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow, bloody and guilty”). I put it in my overcoat pocket. I still have it.” Deán fell silent and then added: “That was what happened to me, do you understand?”