I doubt that I’ll ever hear anything of Miriam again, unless she manages to get out of Cuba or the new Cuba, for which there are so many plans (may that island soon prosper and may fortune aid her). I think I’d recognize Miriam anywhere, even if she wasn’t wearing her yellow blouse with the scoop neck or her tight skirt or her high heels stabbing the pavement, nor carrying her huge bag on her arm not on her shoulder, as women do today, her indispensable bag that almost overbalanced her. I’d recognize her even if she walked more elegantly now and her heels didn’t keep slipping out of her shoes and she didn’t make gestures that meant “Come here” or “You’re mine” or “I kill you”. There is, alas, a good chance that I might meet Guillermo one day in Madrid, where sooner or later everyone meets everyone else, even those who come from elsewhere and stay. But I wouldn’t recognize him. I never saw his face and you can’t recognize someone by their voice and their arms. Some nights, before I go to sleep, I think about the three of them, about Miriam, him and his sick wife, Miriam far away and the other two possibly in the same city as me, or in the same street, or in the same apartment block. It’s almost impossible to resist putting a face to someone whose voice one has heard, and that’s why sometimes I give him “Bill’s” moustachioed face, the most likely face, too, since it might well be his, I could meet him in this restless city; on other occasions, I imagine him looking like that fine actor, Sean Connery, a childhood hero of mine, who in his films often sported a moustache; but mixed in with it is the obscene, gaunt face of Custardoy, who’s constantly growing and then shaving off his moustache, or that of Ranz himself, who had a moustache in his youth, when he lived in Havana and later too, when he married Teresa Aguilera and left with her on their honeymoon; or mine, my face which has no moustache and never has, but one day I might grow a moustache, when I’m older, as a way of avoiding looking like my father as he looks now, as he looks now and as I will remember him.
On many nights I’m aware of Luisa’s breast brushing against my back in bed, either when we’re awake or asleep, she likes to lie close up. She’ll always be there, at least that’s what I intend, that’s the idea, although there are still many years to run before that “always” comes to pass, but sometimes I think perhaps everything will change over time and in the abstract future, which is what matters because the present can neither taint nor assimilate it, and that strikes me now as a great misfortune. At such moments I’d like nothing to change, ever, and I can’t discount the possibility that at some point, someone, a woman I haven’t even met yet, will arrive, absolutely furious with me or perhaps relieved to find me at last, but she’ll say nothing to me and we’ll just look at each other or stand locked in a silent embrace or go over to the bed and get undressed or perhaps she’ll simply take off her shoes, showing me the feet she’d so carefully washed before leaving home simply because I might see them or caress them and by then they’ll be tired and aching having waited for me for so long (the sole of one of them dirty from contact with the pavement). It might be that this woman will go to the bathroom and shut herself in for a few moments, without saying a word, in order to regain her composure and do her best to erase from her face the accumulated expressions of anger and tiredness and disappointment and relief, wondering which would be the most appropriate, most advantageous face to wear to confront the man who’s kept her waiting all this time and who’s now waiting for her to emerge from the bathroom, to face me. Perhaps that’s why she’d make me wait much longer than necessary, with the bathroom door closed, or perhaps that wouldn’t be the reason, perhaps she’d just want to sit on the lid of the toilet or on the edge of the bath weeping secret tears, having first taken out her lenses if she wore them, drying her eyes and burying her face in a towel until she managed to calm down, wash her face, put on her make-up and be in a fit state to come out again and pretend that everything is all right. Neither can I discount the idea that Luisa might one day be that woman and that it won’t be me there that day but another man demanding a death of her and saying to her, “It’s him or me” and that the “him” will be me. But were that the case, I’d be happy simply for her to come out of the bathroom and not lie there on the cold floor with her breast and her heart so white and her skirt all creased and her cheeks wet from a mixture of tears and sweat and water, because the jet of water from the tap had been splashing against the basin perhaps and drops would have fallen on her fallen body, drops like the drop of rain that falls from the eaves after the storm, always on to the same spot where the earth or skin or flesh grows softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel, not like the drip from a tap that disappears down the plughole leaving no trace in the sink, or like a drop of blood that can be soaked up with whatever is to hand, a cloth or a bandage or a towel or sometimes water, or when only the hand itself is to hand, the hand of the person losing the blood, assuming they’re still conscious and the wound wasn’t self-inflicted, the hand that goes to the stomach or the breast or the back to stop up the hole. Someone who’s wounded himself, however, has no hand, and needs someone else’s hand to support them. I would support her.
Sometimes Luisa sings when she’s in the bathroom, while I watch her getting dressed, leaning against the door which is not our bedroom door, like a lazy or sick child seeing the world from his pillow or without crossing the threshold and from there I listen to that murmured feminine song, which isn’t sung in order to be heard, still less interpreted or translated, that insignificant song, with neither aim nor audience, which one hears and learns and never forgets. A song that is sung despite everything, but that is neither silenced nor diluted once it’s sung, when it’s followed by the silence of adult, or perhaps I should say masculine life.
He just wanted a decent book to read ...
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.
We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books
The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy. We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.
So wherever you see the little bird – whether it’s on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism – you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.
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The translator would like to thank Javier Marías, Annella McDermott and Loreto Todd for all their help and advice. M.J.C.
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Spanish as Corazón tan blanco by Editorial Anagrama S.A., Barcelona, 1992
First published in this translation in Great Britain by The Harvill Press 1995
Published in Penguin Classics 2012
Copyright © Javier Marías, 1992
English translation copyright © The Harvill Press, 1995
Introduction copyright © Jonathan Coe, 2012
Cover © Oberto Gili/i2i photography.
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author, translator and introducer has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-19996-2
A Heart So White Page 32