On the other hand, in favour of the veracity of his story, of his final version, was the fact that Díaz-Varela had been very restrained when speaking of his own sacrifice and suffering, of the heart-rendingly contradictory nature of his situation, of his immense grief at finding himself forced to do away with his best friend, the one he would most miss, and in such a precipitate and violent way – any precipitate death is, alas, bound to be violent. With time against him and with a deadline set, knowing that in this case, more than ever, ‘there would have been a time for such a word’, as Macbeth had added when he found out about his wife’s unexpected death. That is, there would have been time, another time, for such a phrase or fact: and to let in that other time, which he would neither have brought about or accelerated or disturbed, all Díaz-Varela would have had to do was refuse the commission and turn down the request, and allow things to take their natural and, inevitably, grim and pitiless course. Yes, he could have spun me some line about his accursèd fate, he could have used that very phrase to describe his task, he could have emphasized his loyalty, stressed his selflessness, even tried to arouse my compassion. If he had beaten his breast and described his anguish to me, how he’d had to keep his feelings to himself and dredge up the necessary courage to save Deverne and Luisa from a far worse fate, slower and more cruel, from deterioration and deformity and from having to contemplate both, I would have felt more suspicious of him and would have had few doubts about the falsity of his feelings. He had spared me that and given a very sober account; he had merely set out the facts and confessed his part in it. Which he had said, from the outset, was what he knew he had to do.
In the end, everything tends towards attenuation, sometimes little by little and thanks to great effort and willpower on our part; sometimes with unexpected speed and contrary to our will, while we struggle in vain to keep faces from fading and paling into nothing, and deeds and words from becoming blurred objects that drift about in our memory with the same scant value as those we’ve read about in novels or seen and heard in films: we don’t really care what happens in books and films and forget about them once they’re over, although, as Díaz-Varela had said when he spoke to me about Colonel Chabert, they do have the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen. When someone tells us something, it always seems like a fiction, because we don’t know the story at first hand and can’t be sure it happened, however much we are assured that the story is a true one, not an invention, but real. At any rate, it forms part of the hazy universe of narratives, with their blind spots and contradictions and obscurities and mistakes, all surrounded and encircled by shadows or darkness, however hard they strive to be exhaustive and diaphanous, because they are incapable of achieving either of those qualities.
Yes, everything becomes attenuated, but it’s also true to say that nothing entirely disappears, there remain faint echoes and elusive memories that can surface at any moment like the fragments of gravestones in the room in a museum that no one visits, as cadaverous as ruined tympana with their fractured inscriptions, past matter, dumb matter, almost indecipherable, nearly meaningless, absurd remnants preserved for no reason, because they can never be put together again, and they give out less light than darkness, are not so much memory as forgetting. And yet there they are, and no one destroys them or pieces together their sundry fragments scattered or lost centuries ago: they are kept there like small treasures or out of superstition, as valuable witnesses to the fact that someone once existed and died and had a name, even though we cannot see the whole person and reconstructing him is impossible, even though no one cares at all about that someone who is now no one. The name of Miguel Desvern will not vanish entirely, even though I never actually knew him and merely enjoyed watching him from a distance, every morning, as he breakfasted with his wife. The same is true of the fictitious names of Colonel Chabert and Madame Ferraud, of the Count de la Fère and Milady de Winter or, as she was in her youth, Anne de Breuil, who, with her hands tied behind her back, was hanged from a tree only mysteriously not to die and to return, ‘belle comme les amours’. Yes, the dead are quite wrong to come back, and yet almost all of them do, they won’t give up, and they strive to become a burden to the living until the living shake them off in order to move on. We never eliminate all vestiges, though, we never manage, truly, once and for all, to silence that past matter, and sometimes we hear an almost imperceptible breathing, like that of a dying soldier thrown naked into a grave along with his dead companions, or perhaps like the imaginary groans of those companions, like the muffled sighs which, on some nights, he still thought he could hear, perhaps because he lay cheek by jowl with them for so long and because he so nearly shared their fate, was on the point of becoming one of them and perhaps was one of them, which means that his subsequent adventures, his wanderings in Paris, his re-infatuation and his hardships and his longing to be restored, were like those of fragments of gravestones in a room in a museum, of a few ruined tympana with illegible, fractured inscriptions, of the shadow of a trace, an echo of an echo, a tiny curve, a piece of ash, a scrap of past, dumb matter that refused to pass or to remain dumb. I could have played that role for Deverne, but I couldn’t do that either. Or perhaps I didn’t want even his most tenuous lament to filter into the world, through me.
That process of attenuation must have begun, as all such processes do as soon as something ends, the day after my last visit to Díaz-Varela and my farewell to him, just as the attenuation of Luisa’s grief doubtless began on the day after her husband’s death, even though she could only see that day as the first day of her eternal sorrow.
It was dark by the time I left, and on that occasion, I left without the slightest hint of a doubt. I had never felt sure that there would be a next time, that I would return, that I would ever again touch his lips or, of course, go to bed with him, everything was always very vague between us, as if each time we met, we had to start all over, as if nothing ever accumulated, as if no sediment built up, as if we had never covered that territory before, and as if what happened one evening was no guarantee – not even a sign or a probability – that the same thing would happen on another evening, in the near or distant future; only a posteriori would I discover that it would, but that was never any help when it came to the next opportunity; it was always an unknown, there was always the lurking possibility that there would be no next time, although there was also, of course, the possibility that there would, otherwise what ended up happening would not have happened.
On that occasion, however, I was sure that his front door would never open to me again, that once it had shut behind me and I had walked towards the lift, that apartment would remain closed to me, as if its owner had moved or gone into exile or died, one of those doors that you try not to walk past once you have been excluded, and if you do pass by it, by chance or because a detour would take too long and there is no way of avoiding it, you glance at it out of the corner of your eye with an anguished shudder – or perhaps simply the ghost of an old emotion – and quicken your step, in order not to become submerged in the memory of what was and is no longer. At night in my room, looking out at my dark, agitated trees, before closing my eyes to go to sleep, or not, I saw this quite clearly and said to myself: ‘Now I know I won’t see Javier again, and that’s just as well, even though I’m already missing the good times and the things I so enjoyed when I used to go there. That was over even before today. Tomorrow, I will begin the task of making all that happened cease to be a living creature and become instead a memory, even if, for some time, it remains a devouring one. Be patient, a day will come when that will cease too.’
However, after a week, or possibly less, something interrupted that process, wh
en I was still struggling to get it started. I was leaving work with my boss, Eugeni, and my colleague Beatriz, slightly late because, as we all do when we apply ourselves to that slow task of forgetting and to not thinking about what we inevitably tend to think about, I was trying to spend as many hours as possible there, in company and with my mind occupied by things I didn’t much care about. As I was saying goodbye to them, near the café towards the top of Príncipe de Vergara, where I still had breakfast every morning and where I always, at some point, thought of my Perfect Couple, I immediately spotted, pacing up and down on the pavement opposite, a tall figure with his hands in his overcoat pockets, as if he had been hanging about there for some time and had got cold, as if he had arranged to meet someone who had not yet turned up. And although he wasn’t wearing a leather overcoat, but a rather old-fashioned camel-coloured and even, possibly, camel-skin coat, I recognized him at once. It couldn’t have been a coincidence, he was clearly waiting for me. ‘What’s he doing here?’ I wondered. ‘Javier must have sent him,’ and mixed up in that thought – as with everything connected to the latest version of Javier, the two-faced or unmasked version, if you like – were both irrational fear and foolish hope. ‘He’s sent him to find out if I’m still neutralized and appeased, or purely out of interest, to ask after me, to find out how I’m coping after all his revelations and his stories, but whatever the reason, he still hasn’t managed to dislodge me from his mind. Or perhaps it’s intended as a threat, a warning, and Ruibérriz is going to tell me what will happen if I don’t keep my peace until the end of time or if I start snooping around or going to see Dr Vidal; Javier is the kind of man who broods on things, that’s what he did after I eavesdropped on their conversation.’ And while I was thinking this, I was also wondering whether to avoid him and head off with Beatriz and accompany her wherever she happened to be going, or to follow my first instinct and stay there alone and allow him to approach. Succumbing once more to curiosity, I chose the latter path: I said my goodbyes and took seven or eight steps towards the bus stop, without looking at him. Only seven or eight, because he immediately crossed the road, dodging the cars, and stopped me, touching me lightly on the elbow, so as not to startle me, and when I turned round, I was confronted by his flashing teeth, a smile so broad that, as I had noticed on that first occasion, his top lip folded back to reveal its moist interior, it was quite striking really, as if his lips were on the wrong way round. He had the same appraising, male gaze, even though, on this occasion, I was fully clothed rather than wearing only my bra and a skirt that was either rumpled or had ridden up. It made no difference, he was obviously a man with a synthetic or global vision: before a woman knew it, he would have examined her in her totality. I didn’t feel greatly flattered by this, because he seemed to me to be one of those men who lower their standards as they grow older and need little incentive to go chasing after any woman who still has a slight spring in her step.
‘Why, María, what a delightful coincidence,’ he said and raised one hand to his right eyebrow, mimicking the gesture of taking off his hat, as he had when he said goodbye to me on that other occasion, as he was about to get into the lift. – ‘You remember me, I hope. We met at Javier’s apartment, Javier Díaz-Varela. To my great good fortune, you didn’t know I was there, do you remember? You got a shock and I a dazzling and all-too-fleeting surprise.’
I wondered what he was playing at. There he was, pretending that this was an entirely chance encounter, when I had seen him waiting there and he must have seen me see him, he hadn’t taken his eyes off the door of our office while he was walking up and down, who knows for how long, perhaps since the theoretical end of our working day, which he could have ascertained over the phone, but which had nothing to do with the real end. I decided to humour him, at least to begin with.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, and I smiled back, out of politeness. ‘Yes, that was a bit embarrassing. It’s Ruibérriz, isn’t it? An unusual surname.’
‘Ruibérriz de Torres, actually. Yes, it is unusual. We’re a family of soldiers, prelates, doctors, lawyers and notaries. Oh, I could tell you a tale or two. I’m on the family’s black list, of course, I’m the black sheep, you know, although you wouldn’t know it today.’ – And he stroked the lapel of his coat with the back of his hand, a disdainful gesture, as if he were not yet used to wearing that particular item of clothing and felt awkward without his usual black Gestapo leather. He laughed for no reason at his own mini-joke. Or perhaps he found himself funny or was trying to infect me with his humour. He looked every inch the rogue, but one’s first impression was that he was a cheerful, rather inoffensive rogue, and it was hard to believe that he had been involved in fabricating an assassination. Like Díaz-Varela, although each in his own way, of course, he seemed a perfectly normal guy. If he had taken part in that murder (and he had taken a very active part, that much was certain, whatever his motives were, whether vaguely loyal or unquestionably vile), he seemed unlikely to reoffend. ‘But perhaps,’ I thought, ‘that’s how most criminals are, pleasant and amiable, when they’re not committing crimes.’ – ‘Let me buy you a drink to celebrate our meeting. If you have time, that is. How about here?’ – And he pointed to the café where I usually had breakfast. – ‘Although I know hundreds of infinitely more amusing places and with far more atmosphere too, places you wouldn’t even imagine could exist in Madrid. Later on, if you fancy it, we could go to one of them. Or what about supper in a nice restaurant? Are you hungry? Or we could go dancing, if you’d rather.’
I was tickled by this last suggestion, that we go dancing, which seemed to belong to another age. And how did he expect me to go dancing straight from work, at an absurdly early hour and with an almost complete stranger, as if I were sixteen again? And because the idea tickled me, I laughed out loud.
‘What are you talking about? How can I possibly go dancing now, dressed like this? I’ve been at work since nine o’clock this morning.’ And I gestured with my head towards the door of the office building.
‘I did say later on, after supper. It’s up to you. If you like, we can drop by your apartment, you can shower and change and then we’ll go out on the town. You obviously don’t realize that there are places where you can dance at any hour of the day. Even at noon.’ And he let out a guffaw. Even his laughter was dissolute. ‘I don’t mind waiting or I can pick you up somewhere.’
He was invasive and mischievous. The way he was behaving, he didn’t give the impression of having been sent by Díaz-Varela, although he must have been. How else would he know where I worked? And yet he was behaving as if he were acting on his own initiative, as if he had clung on to that scantily-clad image of me from a few weeks before and decided, quite simply, to take a chance, to dive in, on a kind of urgent whim, it’s a tactic some men use and it usually works too, if they’re the jolly, convivial sort. I remembered feeling then that, not only was he immediately registering my existence, he also deemed our summary introduction to each other to be some sort of step forward or even an investment for the near future; that he had noted me down in his mental diary as if hoping to meet me again very soon, alone and in another place, or was even blithely considering asking Díaz-Varela for my phone number later on. Perhaps Díaz-Varela had referred to me as a ‘bird’ because that was the only term Ruibérriz de Torres was capable of understanding: because that’s all I was to him, ‘a bird’. I didn’t mind, I myself think of some men simply as ‘guys’. He was the kind of man who possesses limitless self-confidence and cheek, so much so that it’s almost disarming sometimes. I had put that attitude down to the two men’s mutual lack of respect, to their being accomplices and knowing each other’s weakest points, to being partners in
crime. Ruibérriz didn’t seem to care what my relationship to Díaz-Varela was. It also occurred to me that perhaps the latter had told him there was no relationship now. And that idea bothered me, the possibility that he might have given Ruibérriz the green light without so much as a flicker of regret, without the slightest trace of jealousy, with no sense that, in some diffuse way, I belonged to him – that, if you like, he had discovered me – and that idea made me more determined to take that shameless individual down a peg or two, albeit gently, wordlessly, because I was still intrigued to know what he was doing there. I agreed to have a drink with him, a very quick one, I told him, nothing more. We sat at the table next to the window, the one where the Perfect Couple used to sit, when they existed, and I thought: ‘What a falling off was there.’ He removed his overcoat with the dramatic, resolute gesture of a trapeze artist, and immediately puffed out his chest, he was doubtless proud of his pectorals and considered them an asset. He kept his scarf on, he must have thought it suited him and went well with his close-fitting trousers, both items being light stone in colour, a distinguished colour, but one more appropriate for spring, he clearly didn’t pay much attention to the seasons.
The Infatuations Page 30