In the Night of Time (82 page)

 

He remembered something, staring fixedly into Judith's very wide eyes where the fire was reflected: in the doorway of a church in the Salamanca district, across from the Retiro, which he passed almost every morning, a blind man with a dog played the violin, always Schubert's or Gounod's “Ave Maria” or the “Hymn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” a cap at his feet into which devout women dropped their alms, watched over by the dog, which wagged its tail at the sound of the coins. One day the church was burned and all that remained were the walls. The blind man disappeared, and he thought he wouldn't see him again, but one morning, before he reached the ruins of the church, he heard the pious scraping of the violin: the blind man at the door of the ruined church, as if he hadn't noticed its destruction or didn't care. Now between one “Ave Maria” and another, he attacked “The Internationale” with the same mixture of sweetness and dissonance, or the “Himno de Riego,” or “To the Barricades.” One day as he was walking down the street, approaching the blind man on the sidewalk across from the church, a speeding car pulled ahead of him, an old luxury car with an open driver's seat, a silvery shine on the spokes of the tires, heads and rifles protruding from the windows. He tried to go on, walking naturally, even when the car went into reverse, the tires squealing on the paving stones, the engine forced by an inexperienced driver; the rifle barrel aimed at the spot where the blind man stood; a burst of gunfire and laughter, the dog blown to pieces, transformed into bloody tatters. With his violin in one hand and the bow in the other, the blind man trembled, understood nothing; he kneeled hesitantly and with extended fingers felt the puddle of blood. But I'm not telling you this to discourage you, he told her. You'll do what you have to do. I'm telling you this so you'll have an idea of how things are. It was true: he didn't want to dissuade her; what excited him most about Judith at this moment was what he'd seen glowing in her that disconcerted him so much and frightened him at times when he first knew her, a beautiful woman, independent, confident, smart, like the solitary women he'd seen crossing the avenues or sitting in the cafés of Berlin in their short skirts and high heels, laughing out loud, smoking, removing a shred of tobacco from their red-painted lips. The strong will that separates her from him is what makes him love her more. Judith speaks now, and for the first time she smiles.

 

“I told my mother about you, in the hospital, a few days before she died. There was no way to deceive my mother. When I was writing less and my letters had a different tone, she knew that something was going on. Your letters were travel guides, she said. But this time she didn't want to ask, didn't want to give any sign of being concerned about me, afraid that any kind of censure would make me behave more foolishly. I talked to her about you, I even brought a photograph of you. I was showing it to her as if I'd just become engaged, as if you'd given me a ring. She put on her glasses to see you better.
I'm glad to tell you this one is far more handsome than your former husband.
He looks like a true gentleman to me,
she said, and I felt proud and was annoyed with myself and turned red when she took off her glasses and asked what I knew she was going to ask, what she had guessed from the moment she saw the photo, or long before that, when my letters to her became infrequent.
Is he married?
But instead of scolding me when I told her yes, she moved her head and began to laugh but couldn't; a cough came out instead, and she choked, so small in her nightdress, like a bird, just skin and bones, and her hands that had been so pretty and that she was so proud of as dry as a corpse's. What's the word in Spanish? Like
sarmientos,
like shoots on a vine. But it was clear she liked you, and I thought you would've liked her.
A good man is hard to find,
she said, and I was amazed she hadn't been angry with me.
A good man is hard to find but it can get even harder once you've found him.
She asked me where you were, whether you planned to join me in America or was I thinking about going back to Spain, in spite of what the papers and the radio said was happening there. I'd been so afraid she'd find out about your existence, and now she only regretted not being able to meet you. So much fear and remorse for nothing.”

 

He goes to the kitchen for a glass of water and to leave the tray with the remains of Judith's supper. When he returns to the library, he doesn't see her. Her shoes and socks are in the same place, in front of the fireplace, but the suitcase she'd put by the door is no longer there. A candle burning weakly on the table, wax dripping down the candlestick. The flame inside the oil lamp is a dull blue tongue. The music still plays on the radio, but is more distant, with whistles of interference. If Judith is upstairs now, she's barefoot and he won't hear her footsteps. He turns off the radio and hears the wind in the trees, and a short while later the gush of water filling a bathtub. Now he's reached the second floor, and since he no longer hears the sound of water, he's guided only by the line of light under a door at the end of the hall where his room is. His right hand trembles slightly as he feels his way along the walls. His fingertips are cold. He swallows a great deal of saliva, and a moment later his mouth is dry again, his tongue as rough as his lips. Each time he pushes a door, he's afraid he'll find it locked. He goes into the bedroom and sees Judith's suitcase open on the floor, next to the night table, where a lamp is lit beneath a corolla of blue glass. Behind the bathroom door he hears the sound of a body moving in water. He'll probably find it locked if he pushes it. He'll try to turn the porcelain handle and it won't move. The door is only half closed; he pushes it and hot steam comes out. With her wet hair lying straight back, Judith's forehead is larger and the shape of her face changed. He sees her body submerged in water and foam but doesn't dare lower his eyes. He sees her shoulders jutting out, her knees shiny and together. Her clothes are on the damp tile floor. “Hand me the towel,” says Judith, and he looks around and doesn't understand. “It's behind you, hanging on the door.”

 

He has left the bathroom without closing the door all the way and is sitting on the bed, his back to the window where the shadows of the trees oscillate, and in the distance a train's straight line of lights becomes visible. He's heard her sink all the way into the water, emerge again, the foam perhaps spilling out of the tub, her eyes closed, her body brilliant when she stands, feeling for a towel. Then the rub of thick cloth against her reddened skin. He sees what he hears, his eyes fixed on the bathroom door where Judith will appear at any moment. He's still wearing his jacket and tie. From an iron radiator with curved feet comes heat, but the cold he had felt before only in his fingertips has spread to his hands. He shivers. If he tried to stand up, he'd feel vertigo, be afraid of vanishing, of waking. No matter how much he tries to take a deep breath, the air doesn't fill his lungs. He hears a knock against the glass shelf, the porcelain sink. Judith has been combing her hair and brushing her teeth. A faucet stops running. But no sound of the door opening. He looks up and Judith is in front of him, her shoulders bare, the towel knotted under her armpits.
Long time no see:
how long has it been since he's heard that expression, which she'd say ironically and sweetly every time they were naked in front of each other. He makes an awkward effort to stand, but she dissuades him with another familiar gesture. She kneels in front of him and begins to untie his shoelaces. She removes a shoe, and when she lets it drop it bounces on the wooden floor. In the light of the lamp he sees her solid, lightly freckled shoulders, her face leaning forward, her collarbone, her breasts encircled by the towel. She removes the other shoe, letting it drop, and then his socks. She caresses his foot between her hands, and as she does so the towel loosens. Her slim body emerges and she doesn't attempt to cover herself. She looks up, searching for his eyes, and holding his foot between both hands, she presses the broad, rough sole against her breasts. As much as the touch of her flesh, the intimacy of this act, no longer a figment of memory, moves him. She stands, he is about to say something, but she covers his lips with her index finger. We've talked enough. Everything is the same as before and much better than in memory. He tries to take off his clothes, but she doesn't let him. She arouses him and at the same time controls his urgency.
There's time, plenty of it. We're not in a hurry, not anymore.
Aloud she recalls:
Time on our hands.
Her hands tousle his hair, loosen his tie, pull it off, unbutton his shirt down to his belt. A train passes with a long, distant whistle, and he wonders how long ago he entered the house, returning from that dinner lost now in time, his intoxication and dizziness in Stevens's car and the rain lashing the roof and windshield; how long since he heard the knocking and walked to the door.
Time on our hands:
his hands hold her breasts still damp from the bath, and Judith's hands caress his face as if to recognize it, feeling the hard stubble of his beard. But now he's not afraid and not dizzy and his hands aren't cold. His heartbeats are just as strong but not rushed. She must be aware of them when she kisses his chest, pressing her lips softly. Judith pulls the blanket and lies down, the towel on the floor with his clothes and shoes, and remains motionless, covered up to her chin. He lies down on his side next to her, not completely eluding embarrassment at his own nakedness, and a moment before embracing her can't remember or predict the exact sensation of her body, revealed simultaneously from the taste of her mouth to the softness of her abdomen and hips and knees and heels and the tips of her toes, from the hardness of a nipple to the scant, somewhat coarse hair on her pubis, coarse in contrast to her skin. He raises the blanket to see her in the light of the lamp. Judith's knees and feet are cold, her eyes closed, her lips parted and sensuous, with a taste as singular as her eyes or her voice. Still awkward, he takes her in his arms, and after a few minutes she's stopped shivering but continues to press against him, entwined in his legs. When his hand goes down to her stomach, she brings her thighs together and holds his wrist. There's no hurry, she says in his ear, my whole body is here for you to caress.

I
N THE DARK, JUDITH'S
voice spoke his name so close to his ear he felt the brush of her breath and lips. But he was half asleep and didn't really understand what the voice was saying: the three syllables of a declaration of love in Spanish or English or only the three of his name, pronounced like the key to a secret, with an inflection that makes the vowels slightly different, less rounded than in Spanish, with a short pause between them, each demanding a different position of the tongue and lips. For a moment the voice, both a call and a caress, has been the only thing that existed in the dark; he doesn't know whether it's in his wakefulness or his sleep, on one side or the other of waking, or when, or where. Around him night is an expanse of blackness with no shores or visual or auditory points of reference, just the voice in his ear pronouncing the name or the phrase with three syllables stressed the same in Spanish and in English. Perhaps he's just fallen asleep and has dreamed with sweet exactitude the same thing that was happening to him. His consciousness and his sensations—the delicious fatigue, the naked body clinging to his, the damp skin—are as delicate a part of this darkness as the sound of the voice, forming and dissolving, slow undulations in the air, stripped of volume, as much a part of nature as the sound of rain and wind in the woods or the nearby squeak of a bat. The clothes on the floor, the open suitcases, the wallet in a pocket of his raincoat, the sketchbook, the pages of drawings left on the table by the window, the passport, restaurant receipts, hotel bills with dates and stamps and handwritten columns of numbers, the postcard for his children he forgot to mail in Pennsylvania Station because he thought he'd miss the train and still doesn't remember, though he'll be surprised to find it tomorrow when he feels in his jacket pockets, looking for a pencil. He's shed everything temporarily in this suspension of time that isn't going to last more than a few minutes, absolved of the past as well as the future, like a swimmer floating on his back in a lake, in the deepest part of a night without lights, holding Judith, who's called him by name to find out if he's awake or asleep, or simply to confirm their presence, his and her own, the name that is an invocation and a recognition, an incantation, air coming out of her mouth and floating and dissolving in the dark, both names, written by hand on an envelope, Ignacio Abel, Judith Biely, typed in the blank space above the dotted line on an official document, on a carbon copy, the letters gradually fading with the passage of the years, as this night in late October of 1936 remains in an increasingly distant past. But it grew dark hours ago—the light faded this evening and he continued to draw beside the great pit filled with underbrush and fallen leaves on whose walls the vertical striations of the steam shovel were visible—and though his eyes are now wide open he detects no sign of the inhospitable dawn, and what's happened and is happening to him tonight has a simultaneous quality of memory and dream. Judith's lips that have just curved to say his name now brush against his neck, and the hand that had grasped his now guides it along her torso, squeezing it lightly just as she parts her thighs, her index finger on his middle finger, the tip wet now and entering very carefully, as cautiously as her other hand searches for him, recognizes, almost squeezing, demanding again, reviving him in spite of his exhaustion with an intensity close to physical pain; again the two of them pressing together, ecstatic, Judith wide open and embracing him with her legs and digging her heels into his back as if she could receive him even deeper, covering with a hand the open mouth that moans above her face, saying things into his ear, words in Spanish and in English they taught each other and only now say into the other's ear, Judith's body shining with sweat in the dark as his shadow grows gigantic over her, his breathing violent in his nostrils, the rasping of a fallen animal, then collapses beside her, not all at once but slowly, tumbling, swooning, and kissing her eyelids, her temples, her cheeks, her lips.