Design of the non

by Javier Marías

  "What did you do? Did you tell her everything?" Luisa asked. Luisa was only asking what had to be asked.

  "Yes, I told her everything," said Ranz "but I'm not going to tell you, not what I did exactly, not the details, how I killed her, you can't forget that kind of thing and I'd rather you didn't have to remember it, nor would I want you to remind me of it in the future, which is what would happen if I told you."

  "But what explanation was given for her death? No one knew the true one, surely you can tell me that," said Luisa. I felt afraid, she was only asking what had to be asked, as she would do with me if ever she had to ask me.

  I heard the clink of ice, this time against the side of a glass. Ranz would be thinking with his brainsickly brain, or perhaps his brain hadn't been brainsickly for decades now. Perhaps he would be smoothing, just touching, his talcum-white hair. Perhaps he would be wearing that look of momentary defencelessness I'd once seen on his face. That day was beginning to seem very far off.

  "Yes, I can tell you, and Villalobos was right about that too," he said at last. "He must be one of the few people alive who still remembers anything about it. Apart, of course, from Teresa and Juana's brothers, they'll remember it if they're still alive, as did Juana herself and her mother. But it's been years since I had anything to do with my two brothers-in-law, my brothers-in-law twice over, after Teresa died they didn't want to have anything more to do with me or with Juana, not that they ever said that in so many words: Juan, for example, barely knew them at all. Only her mother, Juan's grandmother, continued to treat me as one of the family, more in order to protect her daughter than for any other reason, to watch over Juana and not to abandon her to her marriage, to what I imagine she considered to be her dangerous marriage to me. I don't blame her, when Teresa died they all suspected that I was in part to blame, that I was hiding something and yet, on the other hand, no one suspected anything about the other death. You see life doesn't depend on events, on what you do, but on what people know about you, what people know you've done. I've led a normal, even a pleasant life since then, those of us who can, can survive almost anything: I've made quite a bit of money, I have a son I'm very proud of, I loved Juana and I never made her unhappy, I've worked in the field that most attracted me, I've made friends and owned some good paintings. I've had fun. All of that was possible because, apart from Teresa, no one knew anything. What I did was done, but the big difference about what happened afterwards is not whether I did or didn't do it, but the fact that no one knew about it. That it was a secret. What kind of life would I have had if people had known? I might not have had a life at all."

  "So how was her death explained? Was there a fire?" insisted Luisa, who refused to let my father stray too far from the subject. I lit another cigarette from the cigarette I was still smoking, I was thirsty, it would have been nice to be able to clean my teeth, I couldn't get to the bathroom despite being in my own home, I was there secretly, my mouth felt as if it had been anaesthetised, perhaps by sleep, perhaps by the tension of the journey, perhaps because for some time my jaws had been clenched tight. When I realized what I was doing, I unclenched them for a moment.

  "Yes, there was a fire," he said. "We were living in a small two-storey chalet, in a residential area some way from the centre, she was in the habit of smoking in bed before going to sleep, I was, too, to tell the truth. I went out to supper with some Spanish businessmen I had to entertain, i.e., take them out drinking. She'd probably been smoking in bed and she fell asleep, perhaps she'd had a bit to drink in order to get to sleep, she used to do that towards the end, perhaps that night she drank too much. The cigarette set light to the sheet, it was perhaps slow to take at first, but she didn't wake up or only when it was too late, we never asked whether or not she'd died of asphyxiation before being burned, people in Havana often sleep with the windows closed. What did it matter? The fire didn't destroy the whole house, the neighbours intervened in time, I didn't get back until they found me and told me, much later on. I'd got drunk with the businessmen. But there was time enough for the fire to consume our bedroom, all her clothes, all mine, the clothes I'd given her. There was no investigation, no autopsy, it was an accident. She was burned to ashes. Nobody bothered to investigate further and I didn't pursue the matter. Her mother, my mother-in-law, was too devastated to think about other possibilities." He was speaking rapidly now, as if he were in a hurry to finish the story, or that part of the story. "Anyway, they weren't influential people," he added, "middle-class, with not much money, a widow and her daughter. I, on the other hand, had good connections and, if I'd had to, I could have put a stop to any investigation or dispelled any suspicions. But there was no need for that. I took a calculated risk and it worked. That was the explanation, bad luck," said Ranz. "Bad luck," he repeated, "we'd been married for a year."

  "And what was the truth?" said Luisa.

  "The truth was that she was dead when I left to go drinking," my father replied. His voice again dropped when he said that, so much so that I had to strain to hear him as if the door was closed when it was, in fact, half-open, I pressed my ear to the crack in order not to miss what he said. "Towards evening we had an argument," he said, "when I got back home after various dealings in the city that had taken up the whole day, those businessmen again. I came back in a bad mood and she was in an even worse one, she'd been drinking, we'd barely touched each other for two months, or rather I hadn't touched her. I was withdrawn and distant since I'd met Teresa, and more so since her departure, any sense of pity I might have felt was fast being replaced by resentment ("He avoids saying her name," I thought, "because he has no reason to insult her now, nor can he get angry with or abandon a dead woman who has no reality for anyone else, apart from her mother, mamita, mamita, who didn't know how to keep guard or watch over her, she lyin', mother-in-law"). I felt that uncontrollable irritation you feel when you stop loving someone who continues to love you despite everything and won't give up, we always want everything to end when we choose to end it. The more distant I became, the more clinging she was, the more she hassled me, the more she bothered me ("You won't get away from me," I thought, "come here, you're mine, you owe me, I'll see you in hell, perhaps accompanied by that same grasping gesture, a lion's claw, a claw"). I felt fed up and impatient, I wanted to break that link and go back to Spain, to go back on my own ("I don't trust you no more," I thought, "you got to get me out of here, I never been to Spain, you one real bastard, I'm gonna get you, I kill you"). We argued for a bit. It wasn't a proper argument, just the exchange of a few harsh words, insult and riposte, insult and riposte, and she went into the bedroom, threw herself down on the bed with the lights out and cri ^d, leaving the door open so that I'd be able to see or hear her, she was crying for my benefit. I listened to her sobbing from the living room while I killed time before going out again to meet the businessmen, I'd promised them I'd take them out drinking. Then she stopped and I heard her singing to herself abstractedly ("The prelude to sleep and the expression of weariness," I thought, "the song, more intermittent, more disparate, which you can still hear at night in the bedrooms of those more fortunate women, who are not yet grandmothers or widows or spinsters, a quieter, sweeter, more resigned song"), then she fell silent and when it was time I went into our bedroom to get changed and I saw that she was asleep, she'd fallen asleep after our quarrel and her crying because, whether feigned or not, nothing is as exhausting as grief. The balcony door was open, I could hear the voices of the neighbours and their children in the distance before supper, as evening was falling. I opened the wardrobe and I changed my shirt, I threw the dirty one over the chair and I was still buttoning up the clean one when the idea came to me. I'd thought about it before, but then I thought about it as something that could happen, do you know what I mean, something that could happen at that precise moment. It's odd the way sometimes a thought comes to us with such force and clarity that nothing can stand between it and its execution. You think of a possibility and it ceases to be j
ust a possibility, you act on what you think and it becomes a thing accomplished, there's no transitional stage, no mediation, no negotiation, no thinking it over, you may not even be quite sure you want to do it, such actions are committed singly." ("The same actions that no one is ever sure they want to see carried out," I thought, "actions are always involuntary, no longer dependent on words once they've been carried out, rather they sweep them away and remain cut off from any before or after, isolated and irreversible, whilst words can be reiterated and retracted, repeated and rectified, words can be denied and we can deny we said them, words can be twisted and forgotten"). Ranz was doubtless looking at Luisa with his fervent, liquid eyes, or perhaps he was looking down. 'There she was in her underwear, in her bra and pants, she'd taken off her dress and got into bed as if she were ill, the sheets were pulled up as far as her waist, she'd been drinking alone and had shouted at me, then cried and sung herself to sleep. There wasn't much difference between her and a dead person, or between her and a painting, except that the next morning she would wake up and would turn her head, which was now resting on the pillow ("She'd turn her head and no longer show the pretty back of her neck," I thought, "perhaps, like Nieves', it was the only thing that had remained unchanged about her with the passing of time; she'd turn her head, unlike the young serving girl offering poison to Sophonisba or ashes to Artemisa, and because that serving girl would never turn her head and her mistress would never pick up the goblet and never raise it to her lips, the museum guard Mateu would have burned them both with his lighter, along with the blurred head of the old woman in the background, a flame, a mother, a mother-in-law, a fire"). If she turned her face towards me she would never let me leave her or go in search of Teresa, whom she never found out about, she didn't know why she died, she didn't know she was going to die. I remember noticing that her bra was cutting into her because of the position she was lying in and for a moment I thought of loosening it so that it wouldn't leave a mark. And I was just about to do that when the idea came to me and so I didn't. It came to me with no time for me to imagine its consequences, which is why I could do it ("Using one's imagination avoids many misfortunes,'' I thought, "the person who anticipates his own death rarely kills himself, the person who anticipates that of others rarely murders, it's better just to think about murdering someone or killing yourself, there are no consequences, it leaves no traces, even the distant gesture made with a grasping arm, it's all a question of distance and time, if it's a little too far away, the knife stabs the air instead of someone's chest, it doesn't plunge into dark or pale flesh but through empty air and nothing happens, its passage isn't recorded or registered and so remains unknown, you can't be punished for intentions, failed attacks are often not even spoken of, they're even denied by the intended victims, because everything goes on as before, the air is the same, there's no wound to the skin, there's no change in the flesh, no tear, the pillow pressed down on no one's face is inoffensive and afterwards everything is the same as before because the mere accumulation of events and the blow that strikes no one and the attempt at suffocation that suffocates no one are not enough in themselves to change things or relationships, neither is repetition or insistence or a frustrated attack or a threat"). I killed her while she was asleep, while she had her back to me ("Ranz has murdered Sleep," I thought, "the innocent Sleep, and yet it's always the chest of the other person we lean back against for support, we only feel truly supported or backed up when there's someone behind us, someone we perhaps cannot even see and who covers our back with their chest, so close it almost brushes our back and in the end always does; and in the middle of the night when we wake up startled from a nightmare or are unable to get to sleep, when we have a fever or feel we are alone and abandoned in the darkness, we have only to turn round and see before us the face of the person protecting us, the person who will let themselves be kissed on any part of the face that is kissable (nose, eyes and mouth; chin, forehead and cheeks; and ears, the whole face) or perhaps, half-asleep, will place a hand on our shoulder to calm us, or to hold us, or even to cling to us"). I won't tell you how, don't make me tell you that." ("Clear off," I thought, "I'll get you, I kill you, my father thinks for a moment and acts, but perhaps he has to stop for a moment to consider if the knives are as sharp as they should be, he looks at the bra cutting into her flesh and looks up then to remember and think about knife-blades which, this time, will not strike the air or a breast, but someone's back, it's all a question of distance and time, or perhaps it's his large hand that grips her pretty neck and squeezes and crushes it, and it's true that there's no face beneath the pillow, for the face that will never turn again is lying on the pillow; her feet kick on the bed, her bare feet, doubtless very clean because she's at home or because you never know when the person you've been waiting for might arrive or, if you're married, the person who might see them and caress them, the person she's been waiting for, for so long; maybe she flails her arms about and, when she raises them, reveals her armpits shaved for the returning husband who no longer touches her, ever, but she won't be worried that some crease might be spoiling the line of her skirt at the rear, because she's dying and she's taken off her skirt and it's draped over the chair where my father left his dirty shirt, he's got a clean shirt on now, not yet buttoned up, they'll burn together, the dirty shirt and the ironed skirt, and perhaps Gloria or Miriam or Nieves, or perhaps Berta or Luisa, does manage to turn over and turn her face in one last effort, just for an instant, and with her myopic, inoffensive eyes she sees the hairy triangle of chest belonging to Ranz, my father, hairy like "Bill's" chest and like mine, the triangle of chest that protects and supports us, perhaps Gloria's long hair, dishevelled by sleep or fear or grief, would have clung to her forehead and some stray hairs would lie across her forehead like fine lines sent by the future to cast a momentary shadow over her, over her last moments, because that future, be it concrete or abstract, will never come about, not for her. And yet, in that final moment, the flesh changes or the skin opens or something tears"). "Don't tell me if you don't want to," Luisa said. "Don't tell me if you don't want to," she repeated and it seemed to me then that she was almost imploring him not to tell her.

  "No, I won't tell you, I don't want to tell you. Then I buttoned up my shirt and I went out on to the balcony, no one was there. I closed the balcony doors, went to the wardrobe, where her inert, scented clothes were hanging, and put on my jacket and tie, I was very late by then. I lit a cigarette, I didn't understand what I'd done although I knew that I'd done it, sometimes those are two different things. Even now, I don't understand it even though I know I did it, just as I did then. If it wasn't me then it wasn't anyone and she could never have existed, it was a long time ago and one's memory grows as weary as one's eyes do. I sat down at the foot of the bed, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted, my eyes ached as if I hadn't slept for several nights, I remember that, the pain in my eyes, then I thought and I acted, I thought again and at the same time I acted. I left the lit cigarette on the sheet, I watched it, saw how it burned, I flicked the burning ash off the end, though without putting it out. I lit another one, took three or four puffs at it and left that on the sheet too. I did the same with the third, knocking the ash off all of them, so that the cigarettes were burning and the scattered embers were burning too, three plus three equals six, all burning on the sheet. I watched as holes fringed with red began to open up ("And I watched for a few seconds," I thought, "watched how the circle grew and widened, a stain that was at once black and fiery, consuming the sheet"), I think." My father stopped, as if he hadn't quite finished his last sentence. You could hear nothing, only, for a moment, his harsh, troubled breathing, that of an old man. Then he went on: "I closed the bedroom door and I went out into the street and before getting into the car, I turned and looked back at the house from the corner, everything was normal, it was night, night had fallen and there was no smoke as yet ("Nor would anyone notice anything up there," I thought, "at the balcony or the window, even i
f you stood opposite them like Miriam when she was waiting, or like a gypsy woman with a plait and an old organ-grinder on their pitch, or like "Bill" first and then myself later outside Berta's house, both of us waiting for the other one to leave or like Custardoy beneath my own window one night of silvery rain"). But that was a long time ago," said Ranz, his voice a shadow of his normal voice, of his more usual voice. I thought I heard the click of a lighter and a tinkling sound, perhaps he'd picked up an olive and Luisa had lit a cigarette. "And besides these are not things one talks about."

  For a while there was silence, Luisa wasn't saying anything now and I could imagine that Ranz would be waiting tensely, his hands folded and in repose, perhaps sitting on the sofa or reclining on the ottoman or in the nice, new grey armchair which he may have helped her to choose. But not, I thought, in the rocking chair, not in the rocking chair in which my Cuban grandmother used to sit and think about her own daughters, one living, one dead, both married, and perhaps about the dead, married daughter of another Cuban mother, when I was a child and she used to sing "Mamita mamita, yen yen yen" in order to fill me with a fear that was both transitory and tinged with humour, a very female fear, the fear of daughters and mothers and wives and mothers-in-law and grandmothers and nannies. Perhaps Ranz was afraid that Luisa, his daughter-in-law, might make some gesture to him that meant "Go away" or, rather, "Clear off". But what Luisa said in the end was this: