Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (40 page)

“What could you have told me?” he repeated. “Exactly. What would you have said if they had listed me under my first name and had put you through to my room that night? I was there, I would have listened to you.” I didn’t say anything. “You still don’t know.”

“You didn’t save us,” I thought. “You saved neither her nor me.”

“My phone call would have been anonymous,” I said. “I would probably just have said: ‘Phone home.’ No one would have answered here and you would have been alarmed, you would
have sent someone over. Or maybe I would have hung up before I spoke, that’s what I did the following night, when I asked for Mr Ballesteros and someone answered. I hung up without saying anything.”

“Yes, I know someone answered,” repeated Deán. He stroked his cheek with his hand again, this time as if checking to see that he had shaved; but he was extremely well shaven, certainly not half-shaven. “But it didn’t matter by then, it was too late. Everything had already happened and I had just found out about it, two misfortunes instead of one, or instead of what, until then, was not merely a misfortune. Not pure misfortune.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” I said. I felt diminished before that extremely tall man standing opposite me. “I can’t hear you properly. I don’t understand you.”

“I’m fine here, I’ve spent all day sitting down,” he said. He had rather hairy arms, he scratched his right arm with the stiff fingers of his left hand, perhaps it was going to sleep, leaning on the shelf. “You can hear me perfectly well, but it’s true that you don’t understand me, you don’t know my rôle in all this just as I didn’t know yours, up until yesterday, I could only hypothesize. Your rôle and mine do not complement or complete each other, they are not mutually necessary, they merely cross each other unwittingly, or rather yours does, not mine, mine continues along the track of ignorance and yours crosses it, there are some things that one should know about at once, if you had rung someone that night, they would have rung me, don’t you see?”

“We can’t bear those close to us not to know about our troubles,” I thought, “we can’t bear them to go on believing what is no longer true, not for a minute, for them to believe that we are married when we have just been widowed or that we still have parents when we have suddenly become orphans, that we have company when that company has just left or are in good health when we have suddenly fallen ill. That they should think us still alive when we are dead or should believe us dead when we are still alive. But I am not close to him.”

“I don’t understand,” I said again, only this time it wasn’t quite true.

He waited a few seconds, he ran his hand over his hair, he wore it combed to the left like an old-fashioned child (perhaps himself as a child), and when he spoke again, his voice was even deeper, gravelly and hoarse as if he had an asthmatic chest or as if he were speaking from inside a helmet, he said this: “But you will understand. I want you to know what happened during that period when I did not know that Marta had died, what I did and didn’t do and what I was about to do and what happened anyway. It wasn’t your fault, it didn’t happen because of you, I’m not blaming anyone for the way things turned out. Things just happen, that’s all, I know that, perhaps it’s a question of good or bad luck, sometimes no one intends anything or seeks or wants anything. But those things always happen to someone and there is always someone else, their paths cross, often without their realizing it, usually without their even getting the chance to know. It doesn’t matter. No one expects it. You crossed my path, though how, you don’t know, you don’t know me, I’m a matter of indifference to you, now you
can
know all that and it’s best that you do, then you will understand me. It won’t take long, don’t worry, it won’t be a long story, I’ll tell it quickly.”

“Ah, yes,” I thought, “he is weary of the shadows. He too wants to escape from the enchantment, he’s in a hurry to be done now. But what’s he talking about, he’s saying what Solus said, no one dies of their own accord, we don’t usually find out about those who die because we pass too close by or too far off, normally we all follow the course of ignorance, it’s the only course there is, I’ve done my own share of hypothesizing too, but what death is he talking about, everything is continually travelling on, everything is connected, some things drag other things along with them, all oblivious to each other, what death is he talking about?”

“That would be best, I haven’t got much time,” I said, though that wasn’t quite true, all that awaited me the following day was my tedious actor, I would have to phone him, he would give me work. And perhaps I could call Luisa too, a justifiable step, she had asked me to.

Deán picked up the remote control for a moment and switched on the television, at the same time turning down the sound. He flicked swiftly through the channels and turned it off again, a
nervous, mechanical gesture, a habitual gesture for someone on his own, we all do it sometimes to find out what is happening in the world in our perpetual absence.

“I wasn’t alone in London,” he said then, “it’s not difficult to imagine, nor is it hard to imagine that I was alone, I could have been either of those things, no one knows about it. I’ve had a lover for a year now, a young nurse who works in the hospital next door,” and with one restless hand he pointed vaguely outside, towards the balcony. “It was nothing special at first, she was no one special, just as you wouldn’t have been particularly special to Marta that first night, you were still no one and, for good or ill, that’s how you remained, you didn’t get any further than that, you didn’t even get as far as that, I didn’t know that until yesterday, I only had suspicions, hypotheses. Anyway, there were the uniforms, a few words exchanged in a nearby pub, a drink paid for from the other end of the bar, some shared laughter, the hugely influential laughter of her colleagues, a brief walk together (“Those inoffensive footsteps,” I thought from my enchanted state, the incessant beating in my thoughts), the feet that stroll along together and stop at the traffic lights where the faces suddenly meet in a kiss, and so the next day you go and pick her up when she comes off her shift, you take her out to supper and you end up back at her apartment (“She takes off her white stockings with the lumpy seams”). Nothing special, nothing important, a reaction against the daily grind until, foolishly, those steps are repeated, with no witnesses now, no encouraging laughter and, imperceptibly, they become habits, minimal habits that consist in almost nothing, in phoning at around the same time whenever you phone her, in always having the same thing to drink when you’re with her, in inadvertently memorizing her work schedules, there is always someone who sees such things as signs, as meaningful data, the other party has no hidden agenda, he or she means nothing by them, at least sometimes. But each of us understands things as we choose to, we tell our own stories, no two stories are the same even if they recount a common experience (“And, besides, they don’t belong only to those who were present or to those who invent them, once a story has been told, it’s anyone’s, it becomes common currency, it gets twisted and distorted, and we all tell
our own version”). And far too often you end up back at her apartment and it takes longer and longer to say goodbye, what burdens things with significance is repetition and secrecy, not any one gesture or word, the flesh makes people over-confident, and then habits become confused with rights, people call them acquired rights, ridiculous, you long to go home and yet, a few days later, you return to the very place you wanted to leave and where you were detained by caresses and kisses and protestations of love and lamentations, I suppose it pleases and cheers us to know that we are loved (“One’s eyes already wearing the face of the other: I stay too long by you, I weary you”).”

Deán stopped talking and went over to the coffee table to pour himself another whisky, he was drinking as he talked, he wasn’t talking slowly now, he really was telling the story quickly.

“Did your wife know?” I ventured to ask, taking advantage of the clatter of ice and liquid. But I didn’t dare call her Marta in his presence. He returned to his post by the shelf.

“No,” he replied. “No, no.” People always answer questions thrown in like that. “That is, I don’t think she did, I don’t know, she and I never asked each other questions, we waited for the other to tell us whatever there was to tell. Naturally, I did everything possible to ensure that she didn’t know, as soon as the affair became a habit, I never again walked down a street with Eva, I never went to meet her at the end of her shift, I didn’t take her out to supper after that first night, nothing, we met only in her apartment, she wasn’t allowed to call me at mine, our affair was an area closed off from everyone, hermetically sealed, especially from her colleagues, I had my life and I couldn’t run any risks, I didn’t want to continue the affair, although it did continue (“And now I too will have to remember that name,” I thought. “Eva”). I don’t know, I don’t think so, although, recently, on a couple of nights, I did hear Marta crying into her pillow thinking that I wouldn’t hear her, I didn’t say anything the first time, it didn’t last long, the second time I asked her: ‘What’s wrong?’ and she said: ‘Nothing, nothing.’ ‘But you’re crying,’ I said. ‘Sometimes, at night, I have dark thoughts, fears.’ ‘Fears about what?’ I said. ‘Uncontrollable fears,’ she said, ‘that something bad will happen to us, to you or me or the child.’ ‘But what could possibly happen to us?’ I said.
‘I know, I know, I’m just tired at the moment, weak, it will pass, when you’re feeling like this everything looks black, don’t worry, it doesn’t happen during the day.’ I didn’t give it any further thought, but who can say, maybe she did know in some way and that’s why you’re here.” And Deán stood looking at me with his chin slightly raised as if he had asked me a question. But he hadn’t.

“I don’t think she did,” I allowed myself to say, more than enough, I think. “She talked about you quite naturally all the time, I don’t think there was any premeditation on her part. When you called from London and spoke to her, neither of us had any firm intentions, I’m sure. As you yourself said, things just happen.”

“I’m not asking you about that, Luisa told me everything yesterday, I don’t want to know any details,” said Deán, instantaneously angry, gripping his glass harder, but without quite showing his anger fully. “I’m not asking you about that,” he repeated and loosened his grip. “Remember, I’m just telling you a story, all you have to do is listen to me.” He could be violent that man, like Jack Palance.

“I’m well aware of that. Go on, I’m listening.”

Deán seemed a little ashamed of his reaction. He paced across the room, drumming his short, hard nails against his whisky glass, doubtless trying to distance his story from that interjection, to avoid contamination. The wooden floor creaked. Then he went on and I continued listening, his lips seemed to grow thinner, from where I was sitting, I could barely see them: “The night I called her, everything was as it should be, in so far as that was possible. Three weeks before, the nurse had told me that she was pregnant, you can imagine, we’d always been very careful, but there’s no such thing as absolute safety, I thought it had been a deliberate mistake on her part, I wanted to stop the affair, the prearranged visits and the endless goodbyes, I didn’t want Marta to cry any more or to have any reason to be afraid, even if she didn’t know what it was she needed to be afraid of, everything was becoming more and more complicated with Eva, I couldn’t manage to leave either, the flesh exercises a great pull as long as that pull lasts, a year isn’t long enough for it to wear thin, for it to give, I still hadn’t made the break, I hadn’t said I was
leaving, and then I was faced with that pregnancy, she was a nurse too, so there was no possible room for doubt. Women traffic in their own bodies, they manipulate them, they have that extraordinary capacity to transform them, to have something grow inside them as a result of their dealings with any man, anyone, even the most inhuman or most abject of men, their bodies can do that, can you imagine (“
Ġe·licgan
,” I thought, “If that was the verb, it disappeared; perhaps it isn’t easy to accept the act that it describes and it’s therefore better not to name it”), something that wasn’t there before and that is not only there now but is changing, and then they expel it when it has done its duty of making them mothers and of providing them with a link that will last for ever in another form which, though changing, is visible, for an indefinite period and which, under normal circumstances, will survive them, they’ve always got that as a last resort, it’s not just their prolongation, it’s their grasp on the world, I’ve seen it, I have a son and he doesn’t mean the same to me as he does to his mother (“The mother believes that she was born to be a mother and the spinster to be single, the murderer to be a murderer and the victim a victim: they all believe this from their ghostly positions”). I begged her to have an abortion and she didn’t want to at first, she threatened to talk to Marta, I told her I would deny everything, I would even deny knowing her (“I know you not, old man, I know not who you are, nor have I ever seen you before”), she laughed because today a child’s paternity can be proved beyond doubt, so I threatened her with the only thing I had left, with never seeing her again and with not loving her. I don’t mean to boast, but she loved me a lot, in fact, she would have done anything for me, it’s inexplicable, sometimes we take irrevocable decisions about a person and no one can change our minds, she would have done anything for me, but first, she had to play her hand and see what she could get.” Deán paused for a moment and cadged a cigarette from me, I had put the packet on the table, I was chainsmoking. He picked up my matches and held one in his large hand; before lighting it, he went on: “She didn’t get very much, feelings enfeeble us, you know, they’re our ruination (“Feelings or loyalty or inexplicable decisions”), so she backed down in exchange for a few vague promises, and we decided to
take advantage of a business trip of mine to London, being a nurse she knew that London is still the safest and most hygienic place for these things, and that way I could accompany her. It sounds ridiculous, but it occurred to me too that there we would be able to walk down the street together again and eat in restaurants, although it seemed prudent to me that we should stay in different hotels, I found her one near mine, in Sloane Square, better than mine in fact, my stay was being paid for by the company and I might have to receive the occasional colleague at my hotel, it made sense for us to stay in separate establishments. I gave her money to pay her bills, for the hospital too, the trip didn’t cost her a penny. No one knew we were together, not even her colleagues, they would have been worried and they would have asked her to bring things back for them. The first night I took her out to a very amusing Indian restaurant in order to distract her as much as possible from what awaited her the following day.”