Design of the non

by Javier Marías

  "OK, but don't take too long," she said and I saw that she'd turned out the light, I saw it in the corridor. I closed my door and turned out my light, the small lamp that had lit the room in which I work, where I go over texts to be translated, and then I knew that all our windows were in darkness. I again looked out of my study window, Custardoy the Younger was still looking upwards, his face lifted, the white smudge turned towards the dark sky, despite the sheltering eaves the rain was beating down on it, there were drops on his chin perhaps mingled with sweat, but not with tears, the drop of rain that falls from the eaves always on to the same spot, so that the earth becomes softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel, a hole and a channel, like Berta's, which I'd seen and filmed and Luisa's in which I'd lain only minutes before. "Now he'll leave," I thought, "when he sees that the lights have gone out he'll leave, just as I gave up waiting when I saw the lights in Berta's house go out not so many days ago. Then it was a prearranged signal, I too waited for a while out in the street, as Custardoy is doing now, as Miriam did some time before, except that in Miriam's case she didn't know that she was being watched from up above by two faces or two white smudges and two pairs of eyes, Guillermo's and mine, and in this case Luisa doesn't know that two eyes are spying on her from the street without actually seeing her, and Custardoy doesn't know that mine are watching him from the dark sky, from above, while the rain falls, looking like mercury or silver beneath the streetlamps. On the other hand, in New York, Berta and I both knew where each of us was, or we could imagine it. "Now he'll go," I thought, "he has to go so that I can return to my bedroom with Luisa and forget about his presence there, I won't be able to get to sleep or protect Luisa as she sleeps knowing that Custardoy is downstairs. During my childhood, I'd so often seen him looking out of my bedroom window, as I am now, longing for the outside world and desiring the world to which he now belongs and from which he was then separated by a balcony and by glass doors, turning his back on me, his shaven neck, intimidating me in my own bedroom, he was as terrifying a child as he is a man, he's a man who knows instantly who wants to be approached and why, in a bar or at a party or even in the street and doubtless even in a house he's visiting, but he's the one who creates both disposition and intention, they didn't exist in Luisa before I left, unlike in Berta's case, where disposition and intention existed before I arrived and during my stay and will, I'm sure, remain now that I'm gone. Will she still be seeing Bill, whose real name is Guillermo, will she have seen him again? Or will Guillermo have returned to Spain like me after his planned two months' stay? Berta was the only one of the three to stay behind, I should call her, even though I left I'm still both involved and assimilated, the use of the plural becomes inevitable and ends up appearing everywhere, what does Custardoy want of us now, what's he up to?"

  I hadn't wanted or been up to anything while I waited outside Berta's house, it had been unexpected, something we hadn't counted on, it was the seventh weekend of my projected eight- week stay, the weekend after the one I've already described and during which I made the video lasting only minutes and, in the days prior to that penultimate weekend, the post had positively flowed, we sent our video on the Monday (Berta didn't bother getting a copy made) and it had had the desired effect, or at least it had proved attractive enough for "Bill" to consider taking a few risks. He'd written a brief note in reply, without a word of apology for not responding in kind and still without showing his face even in a miserable photo, but proposing that they meet next Saturday. His note didn't reach us until the Friday, I knew this for sure because Berta had visited her mailbox at Old Chelsea Station every afternoon that week, after work. Bill's note was, as usual, in English, but it was a very Spanish thing to do, to make an appointment like that for the following evening. "I'll recognize you," it said, in the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel, a place where people meet before the theatre or supper or even the opera, unaware that she knew that was also the place he was staying, that is, where he had his pillow. Berta had arranged some weeks ago to have supper that night with her colleague, Julia, and a few other people, I was supposed to go too and she decided that it would be best not to tell them in advance that she wouldn't be there, in case they insisted on dropping by to see her if she said she was ill, and so it fell to me, once I'd reached the harbourside restaurant, to make her excuses, saying she had a terrible migraine and feeling something of an intruder when I appeared there alone, they were people I hardly knew.

  Before going out, as I was shaving and getting ready, Berta was also getting dressed up (perhaps by a process of assimilation) for her long-awaited meeting with "Bill" and "Jack" and "Nick", and we vied for position in front of the bathroom mirror, for the use of the bathroom itself. She was impatient and smelling already of Trussardi cologne. "Haven't you finished yet?" she said, when she saw that I still hadn't finished shaving. "I didn't know you were going out now," I said, "I could have got shaved in my room."

  "No, I won't be going out for another hour," she replied and yet she was very smartly dressed and needed only to put her make-up on, which, as I knew, she did very quickly (she put her shoes on even more quickly, her feet were doubtless very clean). I still hadn't put my tie on when she came back into the bathroom this time in a quite different but equally smart outfit. "You look lovely."

  "I look hideous," she replied "I don't know what to wear. What do you think?"

  "Perhaps what you had on before was better, although you look lovely as you are."

  "What do you mean 'before'? I haven't even begun getting dressed yet," she said, "that was just something I'd put on to wear around the house, not to go out in tonight."

  "But it suited you," I replied while I rinsed one of my contact lenses, my tie hanging loose about my neck. She left the bathroom again and, after a few moments, reappeared in a different, more provocative outfit, if the word "provocative" means anything any more, I assume it does since it's often used to describe women's clothing and is the same in all the languages I know and languages are rarely all wrong about the same thing at once. She looked at herself in the mirror from a distance to get the most complete view possible (there was no full-length mirror in the house; I stood to one side and stopped tying my tie); she bent one leg and with one hand smoothed her rather short, tight skirt, as if she feared that some imaginary crease might be spoiling the line of her skirt at the rear, or perhaps she was just adjusting the elastic of a recalcitrant pair of knickers through the fabric covering them. She was concerned about the way she looked when dressed, Bill having already seen her naked, albeit only on screen.

  "Don't you feel a bit frightened?" I asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Meeting a total stranger, after all, you never know. I don't want to put a jinx on things, but as you yourself said, the world is full of men you wouldn't even feel safe crossing the street with."

  "And most of them work in very visible arenas: you see them every day at the United Nations and everyone crosses the street with them. It doesn't matter anyway. I'm used to it. If I gave in to fear I'd never meet anyone. You can always change your mind, it's just tough luck if it doesn't work out. Well, in fact, you can't always change your mind. Sometimes it's too late."

  She kept looking at herself, from the front, from the side, from the other side and from behind, but she didn't ask me if she looked better now or before and I didn't want to say anything unless she asked me to. Finally she did.

  "I look awful, perhaps I've put on weight," she said.

  "Don't worry, you look great, only a few days ago you were fretting that you were too thin," I said, adding, in an attempt to distract her from gazing into the mirror and from her unnecessary concerns about herself: "Where do you think he'll take you?"

  She moistened a tiny brush under the tap and applied it to her eyebrows, brushing them upwards to lend them emphasis.

  "Bearing in mind that he's wasting no time and has arranged to meet me at his hotel, I imagine he'll want to tak
e me straight up to his room. But I have no intention of going without supper tonight."

  "He might have arranged for you to have supper upstairs, like one of those Don Juan types in the movies."

  "Well, he's got another think coming then. Don't forget, I haven't even seen him yet. I may not even bother to stay for a drink once I have." Berta was putting a brave face on things, she was feeling unsure of herself, wanting to think just for a moment that things wouldn't turn out the way they inevitably would, that she'd need to be persuaded, or rather, seduced. She knew how things were going to turn out because that depended in large measure on her, she'd been seduced long before "Nick" wrote to her, by her own disposition and intention, which are the most important elements in matters of persuasion and seduction. Which was why she added, as if unwilling in my presence to nurture any illusions: "Oh and don't worry if I don't come home tonight, I might not be back to sleep."

  I left the bathroom and finished tying my tie in my room, with the aid of a hand mirror. I was almost ready to go out, my date, which had been hers, was due to begin earlier than her actual date which wasn't mine. I put on my jacket and, with my raincoat over my arm, stood at the bathroom door to say goodbye, not daring this time to cross the threshold, as if, once I was dressed and ready, I no longer had the right to do so, despite the lack of social niceties between us, between two friends who, fifteen years before, had lain awake in one another's arms.

  "Will you do me a favour?" I asked her, poking my head round the door (I was still not sure whether to ask her, I was still considering whether I should or shouldn't do so when I spoke).

  She continued looking at herself (standing at the mirror, now hers entirely, searching out or inventing imperfections with the aid of a pair of tweezers). She said: "Of course, what is it?"

  I considered again and again spoke before I'd decided to do so (the way I do sometimes when I'm interpreting and anticipate the words to be translated because I can guess what follows), while I was still thinking: "If I ask her, she'll want to know why."

  "During the course of the conversation could you just mention the name 'Miriam' and let me know how he reacts?"

  Berta tugged hard at the one eyebrow hair she'd condemned and which she now held in the grip of her tweezers. She looked at me then.

  "Why Miriam? Do you know something I don't? Is she his wife?"

  "No, I don't know anything, it's just a kind of experiment, an idea I have."

  "Come on," she said, wiggling the forefinger of her left hand as if drawing me towards her, or as if to say: "Come on, out with it," or "Explain yourself," or " Tell me everything." She was all agog.

  "I don't know anything, it's nothing, just a suspicion, a theory of mine, anyway, I haven't got time to explain now, 1'd better be punctual if I'm to warn your friends you won't be coming, I'll tell you tomorrow. But if you wouldn't mind and the opportunity arises, just drop that name into the conversation somehow or other, say you had to cancel supper with a friend of that name, anything, it's just a name. But don't make a big thing of it."

  Berta was fascinated by the unknown, nobody can resist participating in an experiment and returning with news, even when they don't know what the experiment's about.

  "All right," she said "I'll try. Can you do me a favour in return?"

  "Of course, what is it?" I said.

  She spoke without thinking, or rather she'd considered the question and had already decided to ask it.

  "Have you got any condoms you can let me have?" she said not looking at me, her mouth tight (she was painting her lips with a tiny brush and with inordinate care).

  "I should have some in my sponge bag," I replied, as casually as if she'd asked me for a pair of tweezers, hers were still by the washbasin; but my nonchalance was so obviously artificial that I couldn't help adding: "I thought you always lived in hope that one day one of your dates wouldn't bring any."

  Berta burst out laughing and said:

  "I know, but I don't want to run the risk of Visible Arena being that date."

  There was genuine happiness in her laughter, as there was in the soft singing that reached my ears (she'd be brushing her hair in front of the mirror, alone now, without me there leaning at a door other than my own bedroom door), whilst I was leaving the apartment, the laughter and the soft singing of the more fortunate women, who are not yet grandmothers or widows or old maids, the insignificant song intended for no one particular person's ears and judged by no one, and which was not now the prelude to sleep or an expression of weariness, but the foolish smile or the expression and prelude to something desired or guessed at or known already.

  But something unexpected happened which, when I thought about it later, wasn't unexpected at all. I returned from my supper around midnight, and, as I always do before I go to bed when I'm alone, I switched on the television and flicked through the channels to find out what had been happening in the world during my absence. I was still engaged in that when the front door opened again, the door I'd closed but not bolted only minutes before, and Berta appeared. She didn't put her key away in her handbag, she kept it in her hand. She was limping less than ever, or perhaps concealing it so well that she wasn't in fact limping at all. Her raincoat was unbuttoned and I noticed that she wasn't wearing the outfit I'd last seen her wearing in the bathroom, she'd probably changed dozens of times after I left her. It was another pretty and provocative outfit and she wore a look of urgency etched on her face (or was it fear or distress or was it just the night, her night face).

  "I'm glad you haven't gone to bed yet," she said.

  "I just got in. What's up?"

  "Bill's downstairs. He doesn't want us to go to his hotel, well, he hasn't even told me that he's staying at a hotel. Anyway, he doesn't want us to go to his place, he wants to come here. I told him I had a friend staying for a few days and he said he doesn't want any witnesses, which is reasonable enough, isn't it? So what do you think we should do?"

  She had the delicacy to use the plural now, although it was possible that this time the plural did not include me, but Bill, who was waiting downstairs, or perhaps it applied to all three of us.

  "We can do what we used to do as students, I suppose," I said, getting up and recalling another plural that applied only to us and which had been ours in the past. "I'll go for a walk."

  She knew that's what I would say, she was expecting it. She didn't protest, that was what she'd wanted me to say.

  "It won't be for long," she said. "An hour, maybe, or an hour and a half, I don't know. A little further down, on Fourth Avenue, there's a fast-food place that's open twenty-four hours a day, you can't miss it, it's huge. Anyway, it's not that late, there'll still be plenty of places open. You don't mind, do you?"

  "No, of course I don't. Take all the time you want, shall we make it three hours, to be on the safe side?"

  "No, we won't be that long. I'll tell you what, I'll leave the light on in this room, you can see it from the street. When he's gone, I'll switch it off. You'll be able to see from downstairs if the house is in darkness and then you can come up. Is that all right?"

  "Fine," I said. "And what if he wants to stay the night?"