Javier Marias - When I Was Mortal

I heard the bolt on the door and scuttled off to the left, just managing to disappear round the corner of the house before I heard a woman’s voice saying goodbye to some people who were leaving (“Bye then, come back and see us again sometime,” as if she were an American): a literary critic I know by sight, with a pure primate face and wearing red trousers and hiking boots, another jerk, if that was a whorehouse it didn’t surprise me in the least that he should visit it, he always has to pay, like his friend, a fat guy with a greying crewcut, a head like an inverted egg and a reptilian mouth, wearing glasses and a tie. They swaggered out and ostentatiously slammed the gate shut, no one would see them, the street was empty and dark, the second guy sounded as if he came from the Canaries, another jerk to judge by his appearance and his behaviour, a bit of a flash harry. When I could no longer hear their footsteps, I returned to my post, a couple of minutes or three or four had passed and now the man and Estela were no longer intertwined, they had not changed position, but they had stopped, the end or a pause. The man was standing up, or kneeling on the mattress, the beam of light illuminated him more than it did her, reclining or sitting, I could see the back of her head, the coarse man grabbed her head with his two hands and made her turn it a little, now I could see both their faces and his erect body with its proliferating hair and his ridiculous hat, it seemed to me he was starting to squeeze Estela’s face with his two thumbs, how strong two thumbs can be, it was as if he were caressing her, but hurting her too, as if he were digging into her high cheekbones or giving her a cruel massage that went ever deeper, becoming more and more intense, he was pushing into her cheekbones as if he wanted to crush them. I felt alarmed, I thought for a moment that he was going to kill her and he couldn’t kill her because she was already dead and because I had to see her breasts and talk to her about something, ask her about the spear or the wound — the weapon wasn’t left impaled in her, someone had pulled it out — and about my friend Dorta who had received her blood on that spear. The man eased the pressure, let her go, he squeezed his knuckles and cracked them, muttered a few words, then moved away, perhaps it was nothing, perhaps it was just the reminder some men like to give women that they could hurt them if they wanted to. He took off his hat, threw it on the floor as if he no longer needed it, and picked up his clothes from a chair, he would be the one to leave. She lay back, absolutely still, she didn’t appear to be hurt, or perhaps she was used to being treated violently.

“Victor!” I heard Ruibérriz’s voice calling to me quietly from the other side of the gate. I hadn’t heard him arrive, or his car.

With my head turned towards the house — sometimes it’s hard to make yourself look away — I went to meet him as daintily as I had come, I took him by the sleeve and dragged him over to the other pavement.

“So,” I said, “what did you find out?”

“The usual, it’s a whorehouse, open all hours, they advertise in the newspapers, superchicks, European, Latin American and Asian, they say, amongst other things. I warn you there’ll be hardly a soul in there. In the phone book it’s listed under the name of Calzada Fernández, Monica. So the man will be the one to leave, if he hasn’t already.”

“He must be about ready to, they’ve finished and he’s getting dressed. A couple of punters with pretensions to being literary types have just left, they probably fancy themselves as real Renaissance men,” I said. “We’ll have to skedaddle in a minute, but I’m going in there as soon as he comes out.”

“What, have you gone mad? You’re going to follow in the footsteps of that hick? What is it with you and that woman?”

I again tugged him by the sleeve and dragged him further off, beneath the trees, where we would be invisible to anyone coming out. A lazy neighbourhood dog barked and immediately fell silent. Only then did I answer Ruibérriz.

“It’s not at all what you’re thinking, but I have to get a look at her breasts tonight, that’s all that matters. And if she is a whore then all the better, I’ll pay her, I’ll have a good look at them, we might talk for a bit, and then I’ll leave.”

“You might talk for a bit and then leave? You can’t be serious. She’s nothing very special it’s true, but she’s worth more than just a look. What’s with her breasts?”

“Nothing, I’ll tell you tomorrow because there may well be nothing to tell anyway. If you want to follow the guy in the car when he leaves, fine, although I don’t think you need bother. If not, thanks for the research and now please go, I’ll be all right on my own. Is there nothing you can’t find out?”

Ruibérriz looked at me impatiently despite that final bit of flattery. But he usually puts up with me, he’s a friend. Until the day he ceases to be.

“I don’t give a damn about the guy, or her for that matter. If you’re OK, then stay, you can tell me about it tomorrow. But be careful, you’re not used to these places.”

Ruibérriz left and this time I did hear his car in the distance while the door of the house opened (maybe the woman again said “Come back and see us again sometime”, I couldn’t hear from where I was). I saw that the coarse man was outside the house now, I heard the noisy gate. He walked wearily in the opposite direction — his night of pretence and effort over — I could approach now behind him while he disappeared off amongst the black foliage in search of his car. I felt intensely impatient, and yet I waited a few moments longer, smoking another cigarette before pushing open the gate. There was still a light on in the bedroom where the encounter had taken place, the same lamp, the blind still lowered, but with the slats open, they didn’t air the rooms immediately.

I rang the bell, it was an old-fashioned bell, not chimes. I waited. I waited and a large woman opened the door to me, I’d seen her on the third floor, she was like one of our aunts when we were little, Dorta’s aunts or my aunts, fresh from the 1960s even down to her platinum blonde, flying-saucer hairstyle or her make-up, courtesy of eyebrow pencil, powder and even tweezers.

“Good evening,” she said interrogatively.

“I’d like to see Estela.”

“She’s having a shower,” she said quite naturally, and added guilelessly, displaying an excellent memory: “You haven’t been here before.”

“No, a friend of mine told me about her. I’m just passing through Madrid and a friend of mine spoke well of her.”

“Ah,” she said, drawing out the vowel, she had a Galician accent, “I’ll see what we can do. You’ll have to wait a moment, though. Come in.”

A small room in near darkness with two sofas facing each other, you walked straight in there from the hallway, all you had to do was to keep walking. The walls were almost empty, not a book or a painting, just a blown-up photo stuck on a thick piece of board, like they used to have in airports and travel agencies. It was a photograph of white skyscrapers, the title left no room for doubt, Caracas, I’ve never been to Caracas. I immediately thought, perhaps Estela is Venezuelan, but Venezuelan women don’t have soft breasts, at least they don’t have that reputation. Perhaps Estela didn’t either, perhaps she wasn’t the dead woman and it was all just a mirage born of alcohol and the summer and the night, a lot of beer with a dash of lemon juice and too much heat, if only it was, I thought, stories already absorbed by time should not subsequently change, if in their day, they’ve been filed away without explanation: the lack of any explanation ends up becoming the story itself, if the story has already been absorbed by time. I sat down, Aunt Mónica left me alone, “I’ll go and see how long she’ll be,” she said. I awaited her return, I knew that she would return before the person I wanted to see, the lady was her aide-decamp. And yet that isn’t what happened, the lady didn’t come back for ages, she didn’t come back at all, I felt like looking for the bathroom where the prostitute was having a shower and simply going in and seeing her without waiting any longer, but I’d only frighten her, and after I’d smoked two cigarettes, she was the one who came down the stairs with her hair uncombed and wet, wearing a bathrobe but still in her street shoes, open-toed, her nails painted, the buckles loose as the only sign that her feet were also at home, off duty. Her bathrobe was not yellow, but sky blue.