Design of the non

by David Odell

  "What's his name? What does he do?"

  "His name's Bill, which suits him, and he hasn't told me what he does. We didn't talk about that."

  "Tell me a bit more about him, what he's like? Did you like him? Were you disappointed? Were you afraid? He was horrible in that video," and I indicated the programme with the canned laughter, which I could still hear even with the sound down. "I'm not sure yet," Berta replied, "that will depend on what happens next."

  "Have you arranged to see each other again?"

  "Yes, I suppose so. We know each other's mailbox numbers and he can call me, I've given him my phone number." Berta was being laconic, like a person in love who doesn't want to share, who hides things, stores them away; she couldn't be in love, it was ridiculous, perhaps she was infatuated or perhaps she didn't want to talk about it just then, when he'd just left after more than four hours in his company, or rather, four plus four, since they'd arranged to meet at half past eight. Perhaps she wanted to think about it on her own, about what had happened, to reinforce the memory which, now that Bill had left, would already have begun the slow process of disappearing, and which must have been why she'd put on the video which I had interrupted. "Tomorrow perhaps," I thought, "perhaps she'll feel more like talking about it tomorrow, the truth is that it's not that important to me, in fact my mission is over, I had to take seriously what she took seriously, to help her reach the person she wanted to reach and perhaps to win him. That's all. Besides, my stay here's almost over, I'll be gone in a week and I may not be back for another year, and that will be when she tells me everything as if it were something that belonged to the past, something venial and ingenuous that we'll laugh about and which we'll experience rather as if we weren't the people who'd participated in it or made it happen, something that can perhaps be told in its entirety, from beginning to end, not like now, when it's still happening, and we don't know how it will turn out." But I knew I couldn't go to bed without asking her two things, at least two. "Did he have condoms with him?" I asked. In the shadows it seemed to me that Berta blushed, she was looking at me with a flushed face she definitely hadn't worn when she asked me for them, nor — or, at least, so I believe, for I only saw her through the camera lens — when I was filming her. "I don't know," she said, "I didn't give him the chance to offer, I got mine out first, the ones you gave me. Thanks, by the way." And that "Thanks" was spoken with a distinct blush. "And what about Miriam? Did you get a chance to ask him about her?" Berta was no longer interested in that, she'd forgotten all about it, she made a face as if to say: "Why bring that up after all this time?" The name "Miriam" must have got lost at some point near the beginning of their date and had thrown up no new information. "Yes, I did," she said, "I mentioned the name, as being that of a friend in Spain. But it didn't seem to mean anything to him, so I didn't insist. You did say that I shouldn't make a big thing of it." Now she didn't ask me what that was all about or what I suspected or knew (she didn't say to me "Come on, out with it" or "Explain yourself" or "Tell me everything"), too much time had passed, erasing my imaginings, my idea. She was lying down on the sofa again, she must be tired after that long night of getting to know him and of disguising her lameness. I looked at her long-toed feet on the sofa, they were pretty feet, very clean, for "Bill's" benefit — they hadn't stood on the asphalt - I felt like touching them. I'd touched them before, a long time ago (had I reminded her of that, she would have pulled that face that meant: "Why bring that up after all this time?"), they were still the same feet, even after the accident, how many steps must they have taken, how often would they have been touched in the past fifteen years? Perhaps, only a short time before, "Bill" had touched them, perhaps while they were talking, having first driven me out into the street, but what had they talked about, they hadn't discussed his visible arena, what then, maybe they'd talked about me, maybe Berta had told him my whole story just to talk about something, on the pillow we betray and denigrate others, we reveal their greatest secrets and offer the only opinion that flatters the listener, which is the disparagement of everyone else: everything outside that territory becomes unnecessary and secondary if not despicable, it's there that one so often abjures friendships, past as well as present loves, as Luisa would have denied and decried me had she shared a pillow with Custardoy, I was far away in another country on the other side of the ocean, my memory vague, my head absent, leaving no trace on the pillow for eight weeks, she would have got used to sleeping across the bed, there was no one there for some time, and it's easy to deny the importance of someone who isn't there, with a remark, just as it was easy for Guillermo to speak with such indifference of his sick wife on another continent, when he thought no one else was listening, in a hotel room in Havana beneath the mellow moon and with the balcony doors ajar, to speak of killing her or at least of letting her die: "I'm letting her die," he'd said. "I'm doing nothing to help her. I'm pushing her towards death." And later on: "I take away from her the little will to live that she has. Don't you think that's enough?" But Miriam didn't think it was enough, she'd spent too long waiting, and waiting is the one thing guaranteed to bring on despair and wild talk, it corrodes and makes one say things like: "I'll get you" or "You're mine" or "I'll see you in hell" or "I kill you". It's like a vast piece of cloth with no stitching, no ornament, no folds, like an invisible, reddish sky with no angles to limit it, an undifferentiated, immobile whole in which one cannot see the weave and there is only repetition, but not the repetition that occurs after some time has passed, which is not only tolerable but pleasant, not only tolerable but necessary ( you can't accept that certain things are not going to be repeated), but a continuous, uninterrupted repetition, an unending whistle or a constant levelling out of what is happening. Nothing is ever enough when you're waiting, something needs to be ripped asunder with a sharpened blade or burned with a lighted cigarette or a flame, nothing is ever enough after the disparagement and the abjuration and the disdain, afterwards you can only allow yourself the next inevitable step, the suppression, cancellation or death of the person expelled from the territory delineated by the pillow. The mellow moon, the balcony doors ajar, the bra cutting into the flesh, the damp towel, the concealed tears in the bathroom, the hair or the lines across the forehead, the sleeping woman and the woman about to go to sleep, the soft singing of someone still hoping: "You must kill her," Miriam had said. And Guillermo had replied, forswearing his sick wife on the other side of the ocean and like a weary mother who'll say the first thing that comes into her head, it's easy to condemn someone verbally, nothing happens, everyone knows that you're not responsible for what you say, even though at times the law punishes people for it, the tongue in the ear, the tongue doesn't kill, it commits no act, it can't: "All right, all right, I will, but for the moment just keep doing that with your hand." And later on, she'd insisted, in a neutral, but not a faint tone: "If you don't kill her, I kill myself. Then you get one woman's death on your hands, either her or me."

  "You didn't tell him I followed him, did you?" I asked Berta. "No, I didn't, but I might tell him later on, if you don't mind. But I did talk to him about you, about our conjectures and suppositions."

  "And what did he say?"

  "Nothing, he just laughed."

  "So you talked about me, then?"

  "Well, I told him a bit, after all we had thrown you out on to the street in order that he could come up, it's only logical he should feel some curiosity about the person he was inconveniencing." Berta's reply seemed exculpatory when there was no need to be. Unless my question had sounded somewhat accusing because of the "then" with which I'd closed it, converting it into a statement of fact. Berta didn't want to talk, she kept replying to my questions, but without any enthusiasm, just so as not to be rude or to make it up to me a little for my nocturnal wanderings. Her dressing gown had fallen open slightly, I could see part of her breasts through the opening, and the shape of them through the silk, just then I would like to have seen those breasts I hadn't wanted to fi
lm, an extemporary desire. She was dressed provocatively. She was a friend. I didn't insist.

  "Right, I'm going to go to bed, it's late," I said.

  "Yes, I'll be going to bed in a minute," she replied. "I just want to tidy up a bit."

  She lied to me just as, later, on the other side of the ocean, I would lie to Luisa, when I didn't want to go to bed so that I could watch Custardoy from the window. There was nothing to tidy up, apart from a bottle of Eau de Guerlain on the table and the opened box. I picked up my book, my record and the newspaper in order to take them to my room. I still had my raincoat on.

  "Goodnight," I said. "See you tomorrow."

  "Sec you tomorrow," Berta said.

  She stayed where she was, lying on the sofa in front of the canned laughter on television, tired, with her feet up and her dressing gown half open, perhaps with her thoughts on a new concrete future which the night could not yet take away from her. Or perhaps she wasn't thinking at all: I went to the bathroom for a moment and while I was cleaning my teeth and the water from the tap blotted out all other sounds, I thought I could hear her singing abstractedly to herself, with the pauses you'd expect a person to make who is in fact singing without realizing it, while they're having a wash or caressing someone by their side, even though Berta wasn't having a wash (she perhaps wanted to hold on to the smell of "Bill") and there was no one by her side. And what she was singing was in English, it was this: "In dreams I walk with you, in dreams I talk to you," the beginning of a well-known song from perhaps fifteen years ago. I didn't go into the living room again that night. I went straight from the bathroom to my bedroom. I got undressed and got into the bed that had no particular smell, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep for ages, so I prepared myself for insomnia. I'd left the door ajar as usual, so that the air could come in (in New York, on the lower floors of buildings, you always keep windows that open on to streets closed). And then, when I was more awake than at any other moment in the whole night and there was no sound at all, I heard again, very low, as if through a wall, the voice of "Bill" or the voice of Guillermo, the vibrato voice of a gondolier, the saw-like voice that repeated its cutting phrases in English from the screen. The result was very sombre.

  "That's how it is. If your breasts and your cunt and your leg persuade me that it's worth running the risk. If you're still interested in me. Perhaps you don't want to go on with this. You probably think I'm being too direct. Brutal. Cruel. I'm not cruel. I just can't afford to waste any time. I can't waste any time."

  EIGHT WEEKS ISN'T a very long time, but it's longer than it seems if you add to that another period of eight weeks which is separated from that initial eight weeks by another eleven or twelve. My next eight-week stint was a trip to Geneva in February, it was also my last. I'd like it to stay that way for a while, there's no sense in Luisa and I being married if we're going to spend so much time apart, so that I'm not there to witness the changes wrought by marriage or grow accustomed to them, and to harbour suspicions that I must later dismiss. I wonder if I'm changing too, I can't say I've noticed, I suppose I must be, since Luisa changes in superficial ways (shoulder pads, hairstyle, gloves, lipstick), the apartment changes, the apartment whose unnatural inauguration now seems ages ago, work changes, my workload has increased whilst hers has diminished, indeed almost dried up completely (she's looking for a permanent post in Madrid) : since my stay in New York until my return from Geneva, that is, from mid-September to almost the end of March, she's made only one work-related trip, and it didn't last weeks but days, a trip to London, to stand in for our celebrated high- ranking politician's official translator, who'd been careless enough to catch chicken pox off his children (the leading politician now has his own exclusive interpreter, a post snapped up by an intriguer — though an interpreter of real genius, let it be said — of uncertain nomenclature, for, having obtained the post, he is now known by his two surnames, De la Cuesta y de la Casa), who (the leading politician not the interpreter with chicken pox, who'd been denied entry because of the risk of infection) was making a lightning visit to convey his regrets to his recently deposed colleague and to talk to her successors about what our representatives say they always talk to the British about: Gibraltar, the IRA and ETA. Luisa doesn't go in for telling incredible stories, nor do I require her to do so, and she said little about the interview, to me that is, since one assumes that interpreters, official or not (but it's more common amongst consecutive than amongst simultaneous translators, I do both types of work, but I'm very much the exception, not that I often work as a consecutive translator, for consecutive translators hate simultaneous translators and simultaneous translators hate consecutive translators), never breathe a word about what was said inside a room, they're all principled people who would never betray a secret. But she could have told me. "It was extremely dull," she said, referring to the conversation that had taken place in the official residence which the British leader was about to abandon in a few days' time: she was surrounded by half-full packing cases. "It was as if he saw her now as an old friend stripped of all responsibilities and power and she was feeling much too sad to attend to his pressing problems, it must have filled her with a kind of advance nostalgia." There was only one moment reminiscent of the personal conversation into which I'd guided them the day I met Luisa. It seems that the British politician had quoted from Shakespeare again, again from Macbeth, which must have been her constant reading matter, either that or she saw it performed repeatedly. She said: "Do you remember what Macbeth says that he heard when he murdered Duncan? It's very famous."

  "I can't say that I do, perhaps you could refresh my memory. . ." our representative had said by way of an excuse. "Macbeth thinks he heard a voice crying out: 'Macbeth does murder Sleep, the innocent Sleep'. Well," she added, "that's how I felt about my sudden removal from power, murdered while I slept, I was innocent sleep, content to rest surrounded by my friends, by people watching over me, but it was those same friends who, like Macbeth, Glamis and Cawdor, stabbed me while I slept. One's friends are one's worst enemies, my friend," she warned our leader, rather unnecessarily, since he's left behind him a path strewn with ex- friends. "Never trust the people closest to you, those whom you always thought never needed to be obliged to love you. And never go to sleep, years of security seduce one into it, one gets used to feeling safe. I fell asleep for an instant feeling perfectly safe and you see what happened." And with an expressive gesture, the ex-leading politician indicated the open boxes round about her, as if they were a manifestation of opprobrium or were the drops of blood spilled in her murder. Shortly afterwards, her ex-colleague from Spain left her to go and speak to her successor, that is, with her Macbeth, Glamis and Cawdor.

  That was the only job Luisa had during all that time, not that she was idle: the apartment looked more and more like a home and she was becoming more and more like a real daughter-in-law, not that I required her to be that either.

  I had no friend living in Geneva and so I spent my weeks as an interpreter at the ECOSOC Commission of Human Rights living in a tiny rented furnished apartment, my only distractions being long walks through the empty city in the evenings, going to films subtitled in three languages or out to the occasional supper with colleagues or old friends of my father's (who had obviously struck up new friendships on all his trips abroad) and watching television, there's always television, it's the one thing you can rely on. The eight weeks I'd spent in New York had been bearable, even pleasant and intense, because Berta was there with her stories to tell (as I said, she's someone I always vaguely miss and someone for whom I store up news for months at a time), the weeks I spent in Geneva, however, were depressing in the extreme. It's not just that I've never found the work interesting, but in that particular city, in winter, I found it unbearable, since it isn't the work itself that's such a torment, but what you know awaits or doesn't await you when you leave it, even if all that awaits you is being able to plunge your hand into a mailbox. There, nothing and no one
awaited me, a brief chat on the phone with Luisa (whose vaguely amorous words meant that I only lay awake at night for a couple of hours, rather than for hours on end), followed by an improvised supper more often than not cooked in my own apartment, which ended up stinking of whatever I'd eaten, never anything complicated, nothing too pungent, but it would still smell, the kitchen occupying the same living space as my bed. After twenty days of being there and again after thirty-five days, Luisa came to spend two long weekends with me (four nights each time); in fact there was no reason for her to wait until then or for her to stay so short a time, since she wasn't tied to any task that couldn't be postponed, nor to any timetable. But it was as if she foresaw that I too would soon give up the kind of casual work that forces us to travel and spend far too much time away from home, and it seemed more important to her - more important than keeping me company doing something that was certain to end, something that was, by definition, ephemeral — to prepare and nurture what was permanent and to which I would eventually return for good. It was as if she'd stepped fully into her new role, burying all that had gone before, whilst I was still bound to my single life by a prolongation of that life which was anomalous, inopportune and unwanted; as if she'd got married and I hadn't, as if she were waiting for the return of her errant husband whilst I still awaited the date of my wedding, Luisa was installed in marriage and her life had changed, whilst mine - when I was away - was the same as it had been in previous years.