Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 3 - Poison, Shadow and Farewell

That's a long time for the person left behind, longer than for the one who leaves. Neither you nor I know what she's like in that situation, and she was still very young when she met you. People are unpredictable when they've just split up with someone. Some might closet themselves at home and not want to see anyone, others might hit the streets and climb into the first bed that's offered. Some might do first one thing and then the other, or the other way round, I mean, who knows what foolishness you've been getting up to in London, fancy-free and with no family obligations. There are half-measures too, of course. Luisa won't have hit the streets because, to start with, there are the children to consider. But she won't simply have wept into her pillow. She must feel slightly impatient, excited, curious to meet another man and see how it works out, and curiosity leads to all kinds of silliness and to persisting in that silliness until the curiosity wears off. She hasn't told me a great deal, about her feelings, I mean, or her expectations; she probably doesn't have any great expectations and is simply letting time pass until she can see more clearly what she wants or, indeed, if she wants anything. From what Ranz told me, and given Custardoy's reputation, it's highly unlikely that he'll put any pressure on her to move in with him or to get divorced or whatever, if he isn't the sort to fall in love. Not that I've asked her much about it either, I suppose: you know what I'm like, I'll listen to what others tell me, but I'm not that interested really, unless things get serious. All I know is that she's going out with this guy, has a good time with him and obviously likes him. How much she likes him I don't know, possibly a lot, she might be crazy about him, which is why she's being discreet and keeping quiet about it. She doesn't try and hide their relationship, but she's not shouting it from the rooftops either. Not with me, I mean, and I would think with other people she says even less. She didn't announce it to me with a great fanfare, as if it were headline news. And I've only seen them together once, very briefly and from the car, so I haven't spent time with them or anything. I get a sense of reserve, modesty almost, as if after all those years as a married woman, she was embarrassed to have a boyfriend.'

'How did you happen to see them?' Even if it was as brief as she said, that would provide me with the only image I had of the two of them together, apart from the indirect and imprecise one provided by my brother-in-law via my sister. And I needed to be able to imagine them. It was odd to imagine Luisa being with anyone other than me. It seemed not so much repugnant or offensive as unreal, like a performance, a farce. Yes, it was more unreal than painful. Separations like ours make no sense, however commonplace they have become in the world and have been for a long time now. You spend years orbiting round a particular person, depending on her at every turn, seeing her every day as if she were a natural prolongation of yourself, including her in all your comings and goings, in your aimless thoughts and even in your dreams. Thinking of telling her the slightest thing seen or experienced, for example, a Romanian mother asking for a packet of baby wipes for her children. You are with that person, just as the Hungarian gypsy was with her children or Alan Marriott's dog was without a leg. You have a detailed, constant and permanently refreshed knowledge of her thoughts and preoccupations and activities; you know her timetable and her habits, who she sees and how often; and when you join her each evening you tell each other what has happened and what you've been up to during the day, during which neither of you has ever entirely left the consciousness of the other for a single moment, and sometimes those reports are quite elaborate; then you go to bed with her and she's the last thing you see that day and-even more extraordinary-you get up with her too, for she's there in the morning, after those hours of absence, as if she were you, someone who never goes away or disappears and of whom we never lose sight; and so on, day after day over many years. Then suddenly-although it isn't sudden, it just seems like that once the process is over and distance has been established: in fact it happens very gradually and both parties know when it began, even though they prefer not to-you cease to have any notion of what that person's daily thoughts, feelings or actions are; whole days and weeks go by with almost no news of her, and you have to resort to third parties-who used to know much less than you, well, nothing really, in comparison-to find out the most basic things: what kind of life she's leading, who she sees, how the kids are taking it, who she's going out with, if she's in pain or ill, if she's in good or low spirits, if she's still looking after her diabetes and taking her long prescribed walks, if anyone has upset or hurt her, if she's finding work exhausting, if it's getting her down or is a real source of satisfaction, if she's afraid of growing old, how she sees her future and how she views the past, how she thinks of me now; and who she loves. It makes no sense that it should go from all to almost nothing, even though we never cease to remember and are basically the same person. It's all so unbearably ridiculous and subjective, because everything contains its opposite: the same people in the same place love each other and cannot stand each other; what was once long-established habit becomes slowly or suddenly unacceptable and inadmissible-whether slowly or suddenly it doesn't matter, that's the least of it, someone who helped set up a home finds he's forbidden from entering it, the merest contact, a touch, once so taken for granted that it was barely conscious becomes an affront or an insult, it's almost as if you were having to ask permission to touch yourself, what once gave pleasure or amusement becomes hateful, repellent, accursed and vile, words once longed for would now poison the air or provoke nausea and must on no account be heard, and those spoken a thousand times before seem unimportant. Erase, suppress, take back, cancel, better never to have said anything, that is the world's ambition, that way nothing exists, nothing is anything, the same things and the same facts and the same beings are both themselves and their reverse, today and yesterday, tomorrow, afterwards and in the long-distant past. And in between there is only time that does its best to dazzle us, the only thing with purpose and aims, which means that those of us who are still traveling through time are not to be trusted, for we are all foolish and insubstantial and unfinished, with no idea of what we might be capable nor of what end awaits us, foolish, insubstantial, unfinished me, no, no one should trust me either…

'We'd arranged to have lunch one day,' Cristina said. 'This was a few months ago now, before the business with the bollard and that ugly cut, I had no anxieties or concerns at the time, in fact, I really didn't care what she did or who with as long as it cheered her up a bit, she is the older sister, don't forget, and I've never tended to be very protective of her, although she is of me, which is only normal. Luisa had arranged to meet him afterwards, at his apartment or studio, I don't remember which now. Anyway, lunch went on longer than expected, and it got a bit late and she was really alarmed when she saw the time, because they hadn't arranged to meet actually in his apartment or studio or whatever, but outside in the street and they would then go up together or perhaps go on somewhere else, I don't know, but she was horrified at the thought of keeping him waiting. So I gave her a lift in my car, because she hadn't brought hers; she'd planned to take the metro, she said, which, normally, would have been quicker, but it was quite a way from the nearest station to his place and so would have taken too long, anyway, I dropped her off at the door. It's impossible to park in that part of town, I could barely stop, just long enough to let her out, I dropped her almost on the corner. She didn't introduce him or anything, although, as I say, I knew him by sight already from seeing him out and about in bars at night. I only saw them together from the car, for a matter of seconds, while I waited for the lights to change, from the corner.'