What the Eye Doesn't See

by Alice Jolly

  Javier comes back with a glass of red wine. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Si, si.’ Javier has shaved for once, so he looks younger.

  ‘I’ve already drunk too much.’

  ‘Ah, then – it is the hairs of the dog.’

  He’s so pleased with that expression that I have to give in. The rioja tastes of wood and smoke and Spain. Javier goes to the kitchen and fetches plates and knives. ‘Sorry, in disorder,’ he says.

  Again I find myself sliding into the back of the chair.

  ‘I like your dress,’ he says. ‘Es muy bonito.’

  ‘I bought it in the market here.’

  ‘I cannot see well.’

  I struggle up, my ears singing, and hold out the dress. He rubs the material between his fingers. ‘Let me see more.’

  I take off my cardigan and run my hands down the front of the dress to straighten it. He peers down at the material again, and then looks at my face, and smiles. I put my cardigan on, clear my throat, sit down. Javier puts cutlery and plates on a low table near the fireplace. He holds the wine bottle out to me and my chair squeaks as I reach out with my glass. My head blurs as I remember that other bottle which turned out not to be a bottle.

  He goes back to the kitchen and brings out the tortilla pan, and puts it down on the tea towel. I give up on my uncomfortable chair and sit on the floor. The tortilla is golden on top and, kneeling beside the low table, he eases out a slice and slides it on to a plate. The egg is still runny and the onions are transparent and fried brown at the edges. There’s a tang of pepper as I bite and the potato is soft and heavy with olive oil.

  ‘Absolutely my favourite thing.’

  He raises his glass to me and laughs.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ I ask, pointing at the curling row of photographs above the fireplace.

  He jumps up, plate in hand. ‘My family. In Spain. Yes.’ He waves his arm and nearly loses the tortilla. He begins to explain the photographs to me, pointing with his fork as he talks. Then he pours me more wine, and watches me as I eat, his dark eyebrows raised, and the white of his teeth showing as he moves his lips back from the hot tortilla. He’s holding his fork the wrong way up in his right hand – white pianist’s hands which bend like wire.

  I ask him about his piano-playing. He plays everywhere he says – bars, as an accompanist, sometimes proper concerts. I ask him if he’ll stay here and he doesn’t seem to know. ‘But is this a good place for a pianist? Wouldn’t you have to go to Paris or London to get better known?’

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘I am happy,’ he says. ‘I play for pleasure.’

  ‘And that’s all you want – pleasure?’

  He doesn’t understand. The problem is more than mere language. We eat more tortilla and wash it down with rioja. I’m ashamed of how much I eat but Javier keeps putting more and more onto my plate. I peel off my cardigan. What am I doing here? The middle of the night, rudderless in homesick city, the flat of a man I don’t know.

  ‘And you? What is wrong with you?’ Javier asks.

  So it’s that obvious. I start to give him a drink-garbled version of the Tiffany story. Now that I’ve spoken to Dad, now that I’ve written the letter, I feel as though I could broadcast the whole thing from a balcony like the Pope’s Christmas Day address. Javier’s face is full of confusion. ‘But this Tiffany – so she was in love very much with your father. And now she has died because of this. So for what cause does she have complaint?’

  I hadn’t thought of it quite like that before.

  ‘And your father,’ he says. ‘So you are arguing with him. Fathers and daughters they are arguing since Jesucristo. It is normal. But still he is your father. You are stuck in him.’

  ‘With him.’

  So that’s it really. Perhaps it was always that simple.

  He finishes his tortilla, goes to the kidney-shaped table and starts to sort through a pile of records. I thought Nanda was the last person in the world with vinyl. The arm of the record player slides out over the record Javier has chosen.

  ‘Now I’m going to play you,’ Javier says.

  ‘Play for you.’

  The rioja has soaked into my blood. ‘Couldn’t you play something on the piano?’

  He stops the record player. ‘Yes, for you I do anything.’

  Standing by the piano, the lamplight shines on his high forehead. He’s wearing a velvet jacket which is too big and a white shirt with long points to the collar. ‘But what do you want?’ He spreads his hands palms upwards, summoning music out of the air.

  ‘Can you play Debussy? “Girl with the Flaxen Hair”?’

  ‘Si, si.’

  Javier goes to the metal shelves and takes down a file. He searches through it and then, taking out a thin book, he goes to the piano. He sits in a circle of light, flexing his fingers. I wipe red wine from my lips and it leaves a purple stain along the back of my hand. That one note echoes in the early morning silence, and the sound of it expands, before more notes tumble down, and then rise, and fall, and rise again. The sound flows over me, and there are far too many notes for ten fingers. I lie flat on the floor and stare up at the blackness, imagining nothing except sky above. The music ebbs and flows and the rug beneath me vibrates.

  When Javier stops playing the air seems bereft. Silence closes around us. Javier lights a cigarette and stands by the piano. ‘I’ll play some more after a minute.’ His face is in the shadows but I can feel his eyes on me. I turn my head to one side and stare across the parquet at the legs of the table, the oil paintings propped against the wall. The zigzag of the parquet jiggles up and down. When I look back Javier hasn’t moved. The cigarette burns between his long fingers and his other hand is in his pocket. A sudden twitching starts in my leg. I reach out for my cardigan. ‘Thanks so much, but I’ve got to go.’

  ‘No, no.’

  I try to stand up and it’s like I’ve fallen off the edge of a cliff. The floor is rushing towards me. I steady myself against the chair, concentrating on the half-full glass in my hand, being careful to keep the surface of the wine flat. The bookcases and the purple witches’ hats go up over my head and rise again beneath me. I steer my feet towards the door.

  Javier is standing in the hall, which narrows to a front door so slender I’m not sure I’ll fit through it. I balance on one leg like a tightrope walker. The red sunset wallhanging glares. Still I’m holding my wine glass and I wonder why. Javier’s hand swims towards me and picks up a strand of my hair. The pull of his hand pricks my scalp. ‘You have very beautiful hair.’ There’s a spot of blood on his chin where he cut himself shaving. At the neck of his shirt there is hair, thick and dark. My stomach lurches, I pull my hair out of his hand and try to move to one side of him. Spider plants brush across my legs. I know I’ve got to go now. It’s very important for me to go now.

  ‘I am in love with you,’ he says.

  Mediterranean hysteria and alcohol, I tell myself, and congratulate myself that I am still able to be rational. His hand moves towards my glass. Slow, deliberate, like the record player arm. Glass and hand collide, and in action replay the glass unbalances, hangs in the air, spills wine onto my dress. Purple stains spread across crimson roses. This is a scene from a bad play and I want to walk out.

  ‘Oh, I am ve-e-ry sorry.’ He takes the glass out of my hand.

  The purple stain leaks across the cream silk. I shake my head, pull at the material, staring at the stains. My mind moves like treacle, but the dress is ruined, that much I know, and tears thicken behind my eyes. I go to the kitchen, my foot clattering against a plate on the floor. The sink is in a corner by the window, full of unwashed plates. Brown units, brown lino, orange-brown tiles. The tap lets out a high-pitched whistle and then a sickening groan.

  Javier is behind me. ‘I’m sorry. Magdalena, I’m sorry.’

  I splash water onto my dress. Above me a bulb with a basketwork shade shines a speckled light. Through the window, the stree
t below is silent. No cars ripple over the cobbles. The stain is on the bodice of the dress and the skirt. The water runs through my hands before I can get it onto the dress. I can’t tell now which are water stains and which are wine. From behind me Javier reaches for a cloth but I push his hands away.

  ‘You’ll have to take your dress off you. It is the only way.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you must take it off.’

  My hips are pressed against the edge of the sink. The zip of the dress runs down my back like a drip of cold water. Outside the window I look down at the yellow pools of streetlight on the pavement. His hands are on my shoulders. The dress slides off and there’s air all around me. I look down at myself, at the top of my bra, at the curve of my stomach, and shut my eyes. I’m telling the story of this to myself, recording every detail. Voices are babbling in my head, explaining, justifying. I’m not the kind of girl that does this.

  Javier takes my hair in his hands. He smells of tortilla, rioja, smoke, something more pungent. I step out of the dress and hold it under the tap, trying to avoid the dirty plates. He’s pressed hard against my back. The light in the kitchen sways and the floor is uneven. My legs buzz and my eyeballs stick. The touch of that music is still in my ears, fingers making far more notes than ten fingers ever could. I’m not the kind of girl that does this.

  ‘I love you, Magdalena.’

  ‘No you don’t.’ I’m pleased with the coherence of that. I push away from him, leave the dripping dress on the back of a chair and go into the sitting room. My cardigan is on the floor and I pick it up. Blood floods into my head and I hold the cardigan against myself. The shadows of the room loom towards me. I go towards the front door. Javier is there and his fingers turn the key in the lock. My throat is tight and a taste of red wine floods back into my mouth. A chasm opens in my stomach. My tongue tastes like leather. So this is how it happens. This is how rape happens. ‘No, no.’

  He stands in front of the door. There’s nowhere for me to go. I turn into the sitting room and feel him behind me. ‘No, please, no.’ I move to the fireplace, my back turned away from him. Pressed against the mantelpiece, my hands are over my eyes and between the bars of my fingers I see the photographs. A woman’s fat legs, in black and white, emerge from under a flowered skirt, and descend like pillars into flat sandals. I feel his hand on my back. I’m not the kind of girl that does this.

  ‘Magdalena?’

  ‘No, Javier, no.’

  ‘Why not?’ His hands take hold of the straps of my bra and move them together so that the clasp unhooks. Then he pulls the bra over my shoulders. It brushes against my hips as it falls. ‘Magdalena. Come with me.’

  He takes hold of my shoulders and turns me round. I lay my hands across my stomach and stretch my fingers out, then watch them, shocked by how inadequate they are to cover me. ‘No,’ I say, ‘no.’ But he’s pressed against me again and I feel his hand move until it rests on the elastic of my knickers. I’m spilling over with fear, shock, drink … something else I don’t want to name.

  ‘But you do want.’ He starts to kiss me, holding on to the back of my head. My whole mouth is enclosed by his, so it’s his breath I’m breathing. I pull away. ‘Javier, I don’t want … Let me go. Let me go.’

  He steps back from me and his head is up. He watches me under lowered lids. Then he’s laughing at me. His shoulders move upwards and his mouth opens, and he’s laughing. First silent laughter, then loud whoops of laughter. He shakes his head, holds up the key to the door. ‘If you want.’

  I step forward, feel his eyes on my body. My hand touches the key. Want floods through me. I’m caught in blind and struggling need. I lay my hands against his chest. I want our arms and legs to be stitched together, our fingers to merge, our thighs to button. I want throats spliced together, our sinews and tendons made into one frame, our veins soldered so that even our blood runs together.

  I lean towards him and kiss his mouth. He pulls off his jacket and his shirt in one quick movement, as though he’s peeling off a layer of skin. He’s thin and brown, and his flesh fits him tightly. There’s even a gold chain hanging on his chest, like the clichés tell you there should be. I try to cling to that thought, I try to keep sniggering in the back row, but the battle is over. My mind is losing its hold. Images break in on me – twisted sheets, a white knee, iron grilles in Seville.

  Javier steers me into the bedroom to an unmade bed, nearly as big as mine, and a vase of red and white roses on a packing case. He undoes his trousers and pulls the belt out of them. Above the bed a wooden crucifix hangs on the wall. The sheets of his bed are white and I enter the space of them, and feel their crisp coolness against my skin. I put out my hand and pull him to me and he kisses me again. A fumbling of clothes, and sheets, and flesh. He touches me between the legs, slides his finger into me, and the space he’s opened there seems as wide as a canyon, and I feel like he’ll fit the whole of him inside me.

  I kneel beside him as he touches me, my eyes fixed by his. Then he lies back and pulls me astride him. It’s like he’s got hold of my bones. I lean down to kiss his face, his neck, his arms. When he turns me over he cups his hand over the top of my head, as he pushes inside me, so that my head won’t bang against the wall. I work my muscles to pull him deeper inside me, my hands grip his shoulders, somewhere in the distance I see the quivering of my foot. My mind has stopped. There are no words here.

  Darkness. Headache. Where? Javier’s voice. My neck heaves a lump of clay up from my pillow and I peel open sticky eyes. Javier’s body presses against me, moving me further over to the side of the bed, where the sheets are cold. He’s speaking in Spanish. My bones are bruised and I’m swollen inside. I turn my creaking neck and find Javier’s hair against my face. Pedro is standing by the bed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Javier says. ‘Go to sleep. He’s staying here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s staying here.’

  ‘In this bed?’ Suddenly awake, my voice is croaky, and I keep the sheets pulled up to my neck.

  ‘Well, he can’t lie himself on the floor.’

  ‘Yes he can.’

  ‘He is my friend. I have to take care with him. He is having some problems in his relations.’

  He’s not the only one.

  I decide to go, except I haven’t got any clothes on and I don’t even know where my underwear is. Perhaps I’ll just get out of bed as I am. Why not? After last night, shame is a redundant concept. I slide crab-wise towards the door. From there I look back and see Javier sitting up in bed, with a puzzled expression on his face, and Pedro is beside him, looking doubtful. Bloody foreigners.

  As I go up the stairs, cold air stings between my legs and up my back. In my flat I look for my pyjamas but both pairs are dirty. I find thick socks in a drawer and put them on, and then take my overcoat off the hook on the back of the door and get into bed with it wrapped around me. I’ve lost layers of skin, and the lining of my coat rubs against the places where I’m raw. What time is it? Half past seven. There’s daylight at the window and no chance I’ll sleep. The bracelet which Adam gave me is lying on my packing crate bedside table. The gold wires of it are twisted together and I stretch out my hand and try to straighten them. My fingers move over its gold wires and bobbles, but it’s too complicated to do it, and my head aches, so I sink my face back into the pillow.

  Last night? It won’t make much of a rape case. Yes, m’Lord, I took my dress off in Senor Sanchez’s kitchen at five o’clock in the morning, as the aforesaid dress had become soaked in red wine. I was drunk. Events got out of control. The tears that are starting turn into a smile. I lean towards the radio and press the knob but there’s no sound. I push the knob on and off but still there’s no sound. I crawl out of bed and sort through the spaghetti wires, plugs and adapters to check that the plug is in. I crawl back into bed and fiddle with the knob again. The radio crackles and French voices come on, and gales of laughter. I lean over and tune into Radio Four b
ut there’s nothing, just crackling. Then I try the World Service. Again, nothing. Armageddon? It certainly feels like it.

  Then the telephone starts to ring. The sound is as brittle as a scream in the cool morning air. Each ring is louder and louder, spiralling around the stairwell. I run but I can’t find the telephone. Where did I put it last night? By the time I reach it the answer machine has come on, and the caller has rung off. A red light flashes in the darkness, a pulse as regular as the beating of a heart. I press the button but there’s no message, just the click as a receiver goes down, a long flat beep, then the machine clicking, rewinding, clicking again. I know it wasn’t Dad.

  Max

  Still Nanda wears the ring I bought for her. It hangs loose on her withered finger. The stone is a tourmaline. Sea green. A semi-precious stone, of course. But more beautiful than diamonds, rubies or emeralds. The ring cost five pounds. I had to save up my pocket money for two years, steal from other children at school. I gave it to her, standing under the apple trees in the garden. She’d been cleaning my shoes with oxblood shoe polish, the stain of it was still in the creases of her hands. She was upset by how much I’d spent on it. I put it on the fourth finger of her left hand. Of course, she’s never worn it there.

  Around me, the room of my childhood, threadbare and dirty. Pitiful squalor. Peeling flowered wallpaper she tried to paint over, years ago, and never finished. Ghastly fringed lampshades. A rug so moth-eaten you can’t tell what colour it is. Layers of soot from the stove. A sickening smell of mothballs and old ladies. Next to the orange sofa the remains of a measuring chart is plastered onto the wall. Ladybirds and butterflies climbing up beside the measurements. She used to mark above the top of my head with a pencil, while I stood, the back of my head against the wall, pushing myself up onto my toes.