Javier Marias - The Man of Feeling

It was not an act of instantaneous despair or of basic spite, nor was it dictated by the impossibility of satisfying my desire for Natalia Manur (I would like to believe that there was nothing in the least compensatory about my decision), rather, I was resorting to a swift, sure way of giving vent to the agitation provoked in me by my hanging up the phone and of filling the sleepless hours that awaited me because I had hung up straight away. The idea of calling a prostitute on the eve of a first night performance was really most unusual, so rarely did I use their services, despite what I said earlier. (And never on special days.) I decided that it would be best to sort the matter out in person, so I went down to the night porter at the reception desk and, very discreetly, although, at the same time, placing some money on the counter, I asked the well-turned-out, respectable-looking fellow who was on duty what chances there were of finding some pleasant company at that hour of the night either on the street or elsewhere. This is a neat way of not involving a reputable hotel in such services by making offensive assumptions, but, equally, giving its employees the opportunity to provide them (I know from experience that even the most venerable hotels, in terms of clientele and years in the business, can provide such a service, which is, indeed, much sought-after by the potentially suicidal or homicidal traveling salesmen who occasionally stay in them, not to mention businessmen like Manur when they are alone). The night porter looked at me entirely unconspiratorially, recognized me and, with the same care with which he would have explained to a tourist how to get to the Royal Palace, he immediately dissuaded me from going out into the streets ("May I be frank? If you don't know the area and you don't have your own car," he said, pausing slightly to give me the chance to shake my head to both these things, "you could waste a lot of time walking up the Castellana," and, taking out from beneath the counter a map which he kept there already unfolded, he pointed to the Paseo de la Castellana and ran one impeccable finger all along it, "before finding anything worth bothering with, apart from transvestites and drug addicts, because I don't imagine you want anything too central or too popular, do you?" I was struck by his use of the word "popular," which was a polite way, then and now, of referring to the riffraff in the most central part of the city center) and suggested that he might be able to get one of the staff masseuses (he emphasised the word "staff" as if that provided some kind of real guarantee, and added "if, of course, you are agreeable") to come up to my room in fifteen or twenty minutes, if I could wait that long. I said, "Yes, I'll wait," and asked him if I should pay for the service separately or if they would add it to my bill, forgetting that the second option was impossible, since it was not I, but the organizers of Verdi's Otello, who would be paying. He, more on the ball than I was, opted for the first solution and informed me that the young woman (that was what he called her now—"young woman") would herself furnish me with a bill. Only when he said the word "bill," did he finally pick up the note I had placed on the counter and which had remained there during the whole of our brief conversation, like a mark on the wood — polished, indelible and ancient, and which no one even notices any more. I went back up to my room.

Today, while I am writing this with barely a break (although, driven by hunger, I have just paused at last to have breakfast, thus risking abandoning for ever the nocturnal realm), I very much regret not having behaved in a more relaxed and gentlemanly fashion with the woman who knocked at my door a quarter of an hour later, just as the night porter had told me she would. Perhaps if I had been more attentive and less fussy, things would have turned out differently, with her and with the Manurs. Today (but it's too late now) I offer her my arm when she comes in, I introduce myself, giving my name, surname and profession, I help her off with her coat, I ask her to sit down, I pour her a drink from the so-called minibar in my room, I compliment her on her dress and her smile and the color of her eyes and, when she leaves — perhaps not, as really happened, only ten or fifteen minutes after her arrival, but half an hour or an hour later — I give her two tickets for the first night of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela and insist that, at the end, she must drop by and see me in my dressing room with her companion, who might well, I think, have been the highly efficient night porter-cum-emissary. In fact, I feel far more curiosity now than I did then about that willing prostitute who had left her sleep or her work (the latter, since she had put off an engagement) to satisfy the whim of a poor anxious, enamoured guest, although, of course, she knew nothing of my enamoured state or of my anxiety.

I remember very clearly that the first thing I noticed when I opened the door was the black coat she was wearing. It seemed odd to me, because people were no longer wearing overcoats at that time of year in Madrid, where, as everyone knows, one passes effortlessly from winter cold to almost summer warmth. Under that overcoat, the prostitute was wearing a minuscule mauve dress which looked as if it were made out of satin, but which might well have been just rayon, and the shortness of the dress may well have explained the coat: you couldn't go walking along the corridors of a venerable hotel in a brief, clinging garment like that. She took it off and put it down on an armchair (the coat, I mean) while I looked her over and asked her straight out, without even offering her a seat:

"What's your name?"

"Claudina. What's yours?"

"Emilio," I lied, absurdly, since the night porter not only knew my name and doubtless my status, he also had all my details at his disposal, including my Barcelona address: if he wanted, he could even blackmail me on my return home. And what would Berta say if she found out? Then I remembered that Berta was no longer going to be part of my life.

I looked more closely at the face emerging from the mauve. This prostitute was rather attractive at first glance, with large, sinuous features and a suitably dissolute, somewhat salacious look on her face. To judge by the little attention she was paying me (she was not looking at anything in particular, and certainly not at me), she did not, however, seem overly enthusiastic; I mean that she did not seem prepared to pretend an enthusiasm for her job which some clients expect and for which they are extremely grateful. She was the type, I thought, who thinks it enough simply to be. I closed the balcony doors and then the silence grew still longer.

"Where are you from?" was the next thing it occurred to me to say, or the next thing I wanted to know. This is the kind of question one can only ask in capital cities.

"I'm from Argentina. What about you?" asked Claudina the prostitute without the slightest trace of an Argentinian accent.

But I was the one who was going to pay and I wanted to direct the conversation, and although I was in the mood to ask questions, I certainly wasn't in the mood to answer them.

"Ah, I see. From Buenos Aires?"

"No, I was born in the pampas, in the province of Cordoba."

This statement, just in case there was any doubt, was made in an unequivocally "popular" Madrid accent, which is why it began to seem pointless to continue a conversation in which the person being questioned was not only systematically lying (which was perfectly normal), but was not even making the slightest attempt to lend verisimilitude to the deception. Nevertheless, I wanted to see how this undeniably Spanish prostitute with her modest fantasies would cope. She had an acceptable figure, and her face — as I was able to confirm on somewhat closer inspection — was quite attractive, although, as is often the case with women in that profession, it was spoiled by the exaggerated mouth movements she made each time she spoke.