Javier Marias - When I Was Mortal

“The police called me. The inspector called me, he said he needed me to pose with the body of a man who had died a violent death. You have to do all kinds of things sometimes, even lie down next to a dead man. The dead man was already dead, I promise you, I didn’t do anything with him.”

Dorta was dead. For a few moments he had returned to life in my suspicious mind, not so very strange really: habit and the accumulated past are enough for the feeling of presence never to fade, not seeing someone can be accidental, even insignificant, and there isn’t a day when I don’t remember my childhood friend with whom no woman ever did anything, either alive or dead, that worried Estela, the poor thing: “The dead man was already dead, I promise you”; and there was no mingling of blood, no semen, no anything, it had all been invented by Gómez Alday to tell me or any other interested party or busybody so that I would absorb it in time, newspapers soon tire and they didn’t give that many details, they said only that sex had taken place between the two corpses before they had become corpses.

“They made a fine mess of you, didn’t they? Those great gobs of blood and everything.”

“Yes, they put tomato ketchup on my chest and waited for it to dry and then they took the photos later. It didn’t take long, it was hot, it soon dried, the young man did it. They gave me a few thousand pesetas and told me to keep my mouth shut.” She made a gesture with her thumb closing her mouth, as if with a zip. She went on talking, but she was less frightened now, she wouldn’t stop talking because of that, although she would have noticed that the expression or thought “poor thing” had passed through my mind, we all notice that, and that makes us feel easier. “It happened ages ago. If you talk, I’ll have you flogged and send you back to Cuba in a slave ship, he said, the inspector that is. And now what will happen, now what, they’ll send me back to Cuba.”

“The young man,” I said, and my voice sounded even odder, she might not yet be entirely safe from me, “What young man. What young man?”

“The boy who was there with him all the time, he was doing his military service, he had to get back to the barracks, they talked about that.” And Gómez Alday, I thought, had had the nerve to say that the spear-thrower might be someone used to sticking bayonets in people, may your heart rot full of iron, even though we’re not at war, just another sack, a sack of flour sack of feathers sack of meat, kretek kretek. “That’s all I know, I arrived and left again in the evening, with my money and the cigarettes, I stole those from the house on my way out, when they weren’t looking, two cartons. I’ve still got three or four packets left, I smoke them slowly, it impresses people, they still smell really strong.”

Her motive for smoking them was not very different from Dorta’s, they had something in common, he and Estela. I sat down beside her on the low bed and I stroked her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “The dead man was my friend and I saw those photos.”

Ruibérriz de Torres is right far too often, he knows us all too well. After all, every now and then, over a long period of time, I had seen that pained face and those still, dead, bloodstained breasts, and I was glad to see them moving and alive and newly showered, although my friend, on the other hand, was still dead and there had been so much deceit. It was also a way of paying her and recompensing the woman for the bad time I’d given her, although I could also have just given her the money anyway, in payment for the information. But then again, I wouldn’t be able to sleep until it was time for offices and police stations to open, although some police stations stay open all night.

I left money in the waiting room on my way out, perhaps too much, perhaps too little, Aunt Mónica would have gone to bed hours ago. When I left, the woman was sleeping. I don’t think they’ll be sending her back to Cuba, as she feared.

Gómez Alday looked even better than the last time I’d seen him, nearly two years before. He had improved with time, they’d promoted him, he must have been feeling more at ease. Now that I knew that he did not share my foolish masculine pride, I realized that he looked after himself, those of us who do have that pride take rather less care of ourselves; I had neither the time nor was I in the mood for friendly questions. He didn’t refuse to see me, he didn’t get up from his revolving chair when I went into his office, he merely looked at me with his veiled eyes that showed no great surprise, only, perhaps, annoyance. He remembered me.

“So what’s new?” he said.

“What’s new is that I’ve spoken to Estela, your dead woman, and not through her photograph either. I’d like to know what you have to say to me now about your spear-thrower.”

The inspector passed one hand over his Roman head on which the hair seemed to be growing ever thicker, he obviously earned enough money to pay for his implants, I thought for a second, inopportune thoughts surface all the time. He picked up a pencil from his desk and drummed with it on the wood. He wasn’t smoking now.

“So she decided to talk, did she?” he replied. “When she arrived she was called Miriam, if, that is, you’re talking about the same Cuban whore.”

“What happened? You’re going to have to tell me. You didn’t want to go and question those poofters, why waste time? I don’t know how you had the nerve to call them that.”

Gómez Alday gave a faint smile, there was perhaps even the ghost of a blush. He seemed about as alarmed as a boy who’s been caught out lying. A white lie, something that will have no consequences beyond that telling off. Perhaps he knew that I wouldn’t go to anyone else with the story, perhaps he knew that even before I did. He took some time to reply, but not because he wasn’t sure what to say: it was as if he were considering whether or not I deserved to hear his confession.

“Well, you have to put up a front, don’t you?” he said at last, and paused, he was still not sure. Then he went on: “I don’t know if you’re familiar with those boys, your friend probably told you something about them. If they’re very young, they have no sense at all of loyalty or propriety, they’re anyone’s for a night, they can be seduced with a few flattering remarks, never mind if it’s someone famous or they’re promised a tour of a few expensive places. They hang around, they have nothing else to do, they hang around waiting to be seduced. They’re much vainer than women, you know.” Gómez Alday stopped, he was talking as if none of what he was saying had the least importance, as if it belonged to the remote past, and it’s true that the past becomes more remote more quickly all the time. “Well, going back to the one I was with at the time. Your friend picked him up one night, in the street, I was on duty. I don’t want to speak ill of him, he was your friend, but he went too far with the boy, that wretched spear, and the boy got frightened, your friend’s little games got him rattled, you said as much, I remember, it happens sometimes, there are things people wish they’d never started, they can wish that for all kinds of reasons, and they get frightened by anything unexpected. He lost his nerve and bashed your friend on the head, and then he speared him, as if he was sticking a bayonet in him. He wasn’t a bad boy, really he wasn’t, he was doing his military service, I haven’t heard from him for some time, they come and go, they’re not in the least bit sentimental, not like pimps or husbands. He phoned me, he was terrified, we had to set something up to avoid suspicion falling on him.” Gómez Alday seemed momentarily vulnerable and weak, the past becomes suddenly remote when the person who constitutes our present disappears from our life, the thread of continuity is broken and suddenly yesterday seems a long way away. “What can I say, what could I do but help him out, what would be gained by ruining two lives instead of just one, especially if one of those lives was over and done.”