Design of the non

by Javier Marías

  "I don't know, I don't know yet how I'll react to what you tell me. But I need to know more, I can't bear the idea that this guy has seen my face, in my apartment, and I haven't seen his, and that no one else has either, you, I mean. This Visible Arena guy is really smart. Once you've seen him I'll decide. I don't know what yet, but I'll decide then. I'd go myself, but he'd recognize me and then he wouldn't want to have anything more to do with me."

  At that point, I would have paid good money to have nothing more to do with the whole affair.

  The following morning, the Saturday of my fifth week there (it was October), I took a copy of the mammoth New York Times with me to Kenmore Station prepared to wait for another hour, or perhaps longer: people who wait, even if they do so unwillingly, always want to exhaust all possibilities, in other words, waiting is addictive. I placed myself, as I had done on Tuesday and Thursday, next to a column that served both as a support and as something to hide behind or to rest my foot against every now and then (bending my leg as though I was about to kick something), and I began to read the newspaper, but not so closely as not to notice the presence of each individual as he or she approached the mailbox, opened it slowly or impatiently and shut it again with satisfaction or repressed rage. Since it was Saturday there were fewer people and the footsteps sounded less timorous or more individual as they crossed the marble floor, so all I had to do was to look up every time some user of the mailboxes appeared. After some forty minutes (by then I was on the sports pages) I heard some footsteps that were more strident and individual than the others, like someone with metal tips on the soles of their shoes or like a woman in high heels. I looked up and saw a man approaching, the minute I saw him I knew he was Spanish, more than anything because of his trousers, Spanish trousers are unmistakable and have a very particular cut, I don't know exactly what it is about them, but they tend to make most of my compatriots look as if they have very straight legs and a very high bum (I'm not entirely sure that the cut flatters them). (But I thought all this later on.) Without even needing to look he went straight to my mailbox, no. 524, and got his key out from the pocket of his patriotic trousers. He might have been going to open no. 523 or no. 525, or so I thought while he was searching for his key (he tried first his lighter pocket, then the pocket in his waistband, but it took only a matter of seconds). He had a moustache, he was well-dressed overall but unmistakably European (although he could also have been a New Yorker or from New England), he was about fifty (but a young or, rather, a well-preserved fifty), he was quite tall and he passed by me so quickly that when I tried to catch a glimpse of his face he already had his back to me, looking for his key and turned towards his mailbox. I folded up my newspaper (a mistake) and stood there watching him (another mistake). I saw him open Box 524 and put his arm inside as far as he could. He took out various envelopes, three or four, none of which could have been from Berta, so he presumably exchanged letters with a lot of people, perhaps they were all curious women, people who write to the personals don't limit themselves to just one attempt, although at a given moment, as Berta was doing now (but as "Bill" perhaps was not), they might concentrate on one particular individual and forget about the rest, strangers all of them. He closed the mailbox and turned round looking at the envelopes with neither satisfaction nor rage (one of them looked to me like a package, possibly a video, given its shape and size). He stopped after taking a couple of steps forward, then walked on again as rapidly as he had before and when he passed me, his eyes met mine, for my eyes were no longer on the newspaper. Maybe he recognized me as being a fellow Spaniard, perhaps because of my trousers. He took a good look at me, I mean, he fixed me with his gaze for a moment and would, I thought, recognize me if he saw me again (as I would him). Any likeness to the actor, Sean Connery, apart from the hairy chest which he wasn't displaying at the time (he was wearing a jacket and tie and was carrying a raincoat over one arm, like someone who's left a car that they themselves aren't driving), was limited to the receding hair which he made no attempt to disguise and the eyebrows, which arched steeply and reached down as far as his temples, giving him, as it does to Connery, a piercing look. I was unable to see his chin or to compare it, but I did notice that he had deep lines on his forehead, although they didn't make him look old, he was doubtless an expressive man. He wasn't ugly, on the contrary, of his type he was doubtless attractive or even handsome, the kind of man who's busy, mature, determined, a rich man with a certain degree of sophistication (perhaps recently acquired): he'd make deals, perhaps go to places where you dance very close, he'd doubtless speak of Cuba like someone in the know, if he was Guillermo, Miriam's Guillermo. But he'd draw the line at injecting himself with silicon, his piercing gaze would never condone that.

  I thought that I could perhaps follow him for a while, it was a way of prolonging the waiting which was, in fact, over. When I saw him leave the post office, when I reckoned that the closing of the swing doors would disguise the sound of my shoes on the indiscreet marble floor, I set off, keeping the same swift pace in order not to lose him. From the street door I saw him go over to a waiting taxi, which he paid off and sent away, he must have decided to walk a little, it was a nice day (he didn't put his raincoat on, he had it draped over his shoulder now, I could see that it was a posh shade of pale blue, mine, which I was wearing, is the traditional raincoat colour of beige). He was walking along looking at the envelopes from time to time then, without slowing his pace, he opened one, read its contents, ripped up the two things, contents and envelope, and tossed them into a litter bin he was passing. I didn't dare stop to rummage around in it, the idea filled me with shame and I was afraid of losing him. He continued walking. He was looking straight ahead, one of those men who always walk with their head held high, in order to seem taller than they are and to appear more dominant. In his hand he was carrying the other envelope and the package containing the video (I was sure it was a video). Then, when I looked at that right hand, I noticed the wedding ring, he wore it on the opposite hand to me, for I'd been wearing my wedding ring on my left hand for some months now, I was beginning to get used to it. Then, again without slowing down, he opened another envelope and did the same as he had with the first one, but this time he put the torn pieces in one of his jacket pockets, perhaps because there was no litter bin to hand (a civic-minded gentle- man). He stopped to look in the window of a bookshop on Fifth Avenue, Scribner's, if I remember rightly, but presumably nothing interested him or he was just attracted by the shop, because he continued on his way. When he stopped, he put his raincoat on, or rather he threw it over his shoulders without putting his arms into the sleeves, as Ranz, my father, has done all his life and still does, but as many Americans would not (only gangsters, like George Raft). I was following him, doubtless more closely than was prudent in such cases, but then I'd never followed anyone before. He had no reason to suspect anything, although he wasn't exactly strolling along, he was keeping up a good pace, stopping only for traffic lights, and not always for them, there's not so much traffic on Saturdays. He seemed to be in a hurry, although not in enough of a hurry to have kept the taxi. He was on his way back somewhere, but it was obvious that he knew where he was going, perhaps both his haste and the need to wait were linked to the package he was carrying in his hand, the video probably had no return address of any kind on it, just a card inside, perhaps "Bill" thought it might be from my friend Berta, whom he knew as "BSA", perhaps he believed he was carrying her naked in his hand at that very moment. He paused again outside a superperfumery, perhaps intoxicated by the multitudinous smell created by the mingling of all the different brands as they wafted out on to the street. He went in and I followed (I felt that waiting outside would make me more conspicuous). There were no shop assistants, the customers wandered about as they pleased, chose their bottles of cologne and paid on the way out. I saw him stop by the Nina Ricci stand and there, leaning for a moment on the glass counter, he opened the third envelope and read the letter it contained: this t
ime he didn't tear it up but placed it instead in the pocket of that pretentious raincoat (the torn-up letter had been consigned to his jacket pocket, he was a very orderly man). He picked up a small tester of Nina Ricci and sprayed his left wrist, bare of any watch or any other adornment. He waited the required few seconds, sniffed it but was not apparently impressed, since he moved on to another less prestigious counter, on which various brands of perfume were displayed. He sprayed his other wrist with Eau de Guerlain - his large black watch must have got wet too. He sniffed it (the watch strap), after the requisite few seconds allowed for by those who know about such things, and he must have liked it, because he decided to buy the bottle. He lingered a while longer in the men's section, trying two scents on the back of each hand, soon he'd have no uncontaminated areas left. He picked up a bottle of an American make bearing some Biblical name, Jericho or Jordan or Jordache, I can't remember now, he obviously wanted to try the local products. I picked up some Trussardi for women, now that I was married it would never go amiss I thought (I often thought of Luisa), I could even give some to Berta (and, when I thought that, I picked up a second bottle). It was then, standing in the queue to pay (each of us in a separate queue with another between us, though he was nearer than I was to his corresponding checkout), that he turned his head and looked at me and recognized me. He had piercing eyes, just as they'd seemed when I first looked into them in the post office, but though penetrating they revealed nothing, neither curiosity nor unease nor fear (neither terror nor threat), they were piercing but opaque as if their penetrative qualities were blind, as if he were one of those television personalities who think of themselves as very intense, forgetting that they can't be, given that they spend all their time looking at a camera and never at a person. He left the shop and continued walking and, despite everything, I followed, despite the fact that I knew he'd seen me. He stopped more frequently now, pretending to be looking into shop windows or checking his watch against the clocks in the street, and when he turned round to look back at me, I had to act normal, buying magazines and hot dogs I didn't want from street vendors. But his walk lasted only a little while longer, for when he reached 59th Street, "Bill" turned sharp left and I lost sight of him for several seconds and, when I reached the corner and he might again have entered my field of vision, by a miracle I glimpsed him running up the canopied steps of the luxurious Plaza Hotel and disappearing, at the same swift pace, through its doors, greeted by uniformed, behatted porters whom he ignored. In one hand he was carrying his video and a bag containing the perfume he'd bought, I was carrying my magazines and the gigantic New York Times, the bag containing my bottles of perfume and a hot dog. He must have run the distance from the corner, hoping to reach the hotel in time to prevent me from seeing where he'd gone, the famous Plaza Hotel, the discreet initials "PH", the bathrobe was borrowed and his name wasn't Pedro Hernandez.

  I recounted all this to Berta, although without mentioning my idea that he might be the same man who'd made Miriam wait and incurred her wrath one evening in Havana, Miriam with her strong legs and her big bag and that grasping gesture, a married man with a sick or perhaps a healthy wife. Berta listened to all this with evident fascination and a look of modest triumph (the triumph was due more than anything to the fact that her idea that I should visit Kenmore Station had proved successful). I was incapable of lying to her and telling her that "Nick", "Jack" or "Bill" was a monster, he wasn't and I told her so. Nor could I tell her that he was weird, he wasn't and I told her that too, although I hadn't liked his ostentatious raincoat and his piercing, indecipherable eyes and his sharp up-and-down eyebrows like Sean Connery's and his neat moustache and his cleft chin and his voice like a saw. With that voice he would make deals and talk about Cuba like someone in the know. With that voice he'd seduced Berta. I didn't like him. I gave Berta the first bottle of Trussardi.

  A few days went by without either Berta or myself mentioning him again (I said nothing, hoping to dissuade her, she was doubtless thinking things over), they were days of intense work at the United Nations: one morning I had to translate a speech by the same high-ranking politician from my own country whose words I'd altered the first time I met Luisa. I abstained from doing so on this occasion, we were, after all, at the Assembly, but whilst I translated his pompous Spanish and his rambling, ill-judged ideas into English and into the earpieces of the world, I recalled that first time and I remembered vividly what had been said on that occasion, through my mediation, while Luisa was breathing at my back (she was breathing near my ear like a whisper almost brushing me, almost brushing against me, her breast against my back). "People love one in large measure because they're obliged to," the Englishwoman had said. And then she'd added: "Any relationship between two people always brings with it a multitude of problems and coercions, as well as insults and humiliations." And a little later: "Everyone obliges everyone else, not so much to do something they don't want to do, but rather to do something they're not sure they want to do, because hardly anyone knows what they don't want, still less what they do want, there's no way of knowing that." And she'd continued, whilst our high- ranking politician kept silent, perhaps already weary of that speech or as if he were actually learning something: "Sometimes they're obliged by some external factor or by someone who's no longer in their lives, the past obliges them, their own discontent, their own history, their own wretched biography. Or even things they know nothing about or which are beyond their comprehension, the part of our inheritance we all carry within us and of which we're all ignorant, who knows when that whole process actually began." Lastly, she'd said: "Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better if we all just stayed very still, if we were dead, after all it's the only thing that, deep down, we all want, the one future idea we're gradually accustoming ourselves to, and about which there can be no doubts, no anticipated regrets." Our leader had remained silent and the Englishwoman who, by this time - it was autumn — had already lost her post and no longer attended the Assembly in New York, had blushed after her pseudo- soliloquy, when she heard the long silence that ensued, shaking her out of her emotional trance. I had again helped her out and put a suggestion of my own in her mouth: "Why don't we go and have a stroll in the gardens? It's a glorious day." (I'd invented this Anglicism - "un dia glorioso" - in order to lend verisimilitude to the phrase.) The four of us had gone out to walk in the gardens, on that most glorious of mornings when Luisa and I had first met.

  Our high-ranking politician was still in his post, perhaps thanks to his pomposity and to his ideas which were as rambling and ill-judged as those of the British leader, but in her case they'd not been enough to keep her in her post (she was probably a depressive and, doubtless, thoughtful too and in politics that in itself is enough to dig one's own grave). After his speech I passed him in the corridor, surrounded by his entourage (my shift was over and he was busy receiving insincere congratulations on his peroration from various people) and, since I'd met him, I decided to greet him, holding out my hand and addressing him by the tide of his post preceded by the word "Senor". It was ingenuous of me. He didn't recognize me, despite the fact that I'd once twisted his words and made him say things he hadn't said and which it would never have occurred to him to say, and two bodyguards immediately grasped my extended hand and the hand I hadn't extended and pulled them behind my back, holding me with such violence (crushing my arms, bearing down on me) that for a moment I thought they'd handcuffed, or rather, manacled me. Fortunately, a top-flight United Nations civil servant, who'd noticed me and happened to be passing, immediately identified me as the interpreter and thus managed to free me from those protecting our high-ranking politician. The latter was already on his way down the corridor, borne along on a wave of false flattery and a jangling of keys (he had a mania about his keyring, which he jiggled about in his pocket). Watching him depart, I noticed that he too was wearing the national trousers which shared that famous and unmistakable Spanish cut. Anything else would have been wrong in a representative
so thoroughly representative of our far-off country.

  Later that night, back at home, I recounted this anecdote to Berta, but she didn't listen, as she usually did, with amusement or even amazement, still less with any show of vehemence, her mind fixed on what had been going round and round in it all day, or perhaps longer, a plan, doubtless to do with "Bill".

  "Will you help me make the video?" she asked me the moment I'd finished telling her about my adventure.

  "Help you? What video?"

  "Come on, don't act the innocent. The video. I'm going to send it to him. 1've decided to send it to him. But I can't film a video like that by myself, it wouldn't come out right. Centring the shots, things like that, the camera can't be static, it has to move. Will you help me?" Her tone of voice was light, almost amused. I must have looked at her with an imbecilic expression on my face because she added (and her tone was no longer light) : "Don't just look at me with that imbecilic expression on your face, answer me. Will you help me? It's obvious that if we don't send it to him, he won't give any further signs of life."

  I said (without thinking what I was saying): "What if he doesn't? Would that be so very bad? Who is he, after all? Think about it. Who is he? What possible importance can it have if we don't give him the video? We don't have to give it to him, he's still nobody, you haven't even seen his face."

  She'd reverted to using the plural: "If we don't send it to him", she'd said, taking my participation for granted. Perhaps now she was more justified in using the plural, after my vigils at Kenmore Station and in other places, even by the canopied steps of the Plaza Hotel. I'd used it too, by assimilation, by contagion, "If we don't give it to him."

  "We don't have to give it to him." I'd done so without realizing, "It's important to me, I'm serious about this."