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

'How are you?' I asked. 'You seem a bit down. Has something happened in the last few days?'

'No, nothing,' she replied, shaking her head slightly. 'A minor disappointment, nothing important. I'll get over it soon enough.'

'Can I do anything about it? Is it about anyone I know?'

'No, not at all. It's someone you don't know, someone new. And anyway, it's not his fault either, it was unavoidable.' She paused for a second, then added: 'It's odd; now there'll be more and more of my people whom you don't know, not even by name, and so there'll be no point in my telling you about them or mentioning them. The same thing will happen with your people. And that hasn't happened for years, or only rarely. It's strange, when you live with someone, you keep up to date without any difficulty at all, without making any special effort, and then suddenly, or, rather, gradually, you know nothing about the people who come after. I know nothing about your friends in London, for example, or about the colleagues you work with every day. You said it was quite a small group, didn't you? And that one of them was a young woman, half-Spanish, is that right? How do you get along with them? I'm not even entirely sure what it is you do.' And as she said this, she waved her arm in the direction of the living room, not in order to show me the door so that I could leave, but as if she were suggesting we go in there for a moment before I left so that I could tell her about my work, or maybe simply so that she could listen to me talking. Perhaps she had realized that I could help her get through a few minutes of her waiting or lift the lead that weighed ceaselessly upon her soul. I thought of asking about the young gypsy mother and her children, who were, in a sense, her people and whom I knew about from when she and I were still living together and sharing a daily life, and whom I'd thought about while in that other country.

We started walking in that direction, with her leading. We were about to sit down at home and talk, and, while it lasted, this would seem the most natural thing in the world, with none of the artificiality that would have surrounded an arrangement to meet at a restaurant or anywhere else. Then her cell phone rang, the phone whose number other people knew and I did not, and she hurried on into the living room, almost ran, she had left it there, in her handbag, and I had left my raincoat and gloves in the room too, draped on the back of an armchair. I let her go ahead, of course, I didn't hurry, but since we had been walking along together, I didn't stop or hold back either, my discretion being limited to not actually going into the room, to lingering on the threshold, looking at the books on a shelf, my books, which I might, on one not too distant day, have to take away with me, although where I didn't yet know.

'Hello?' I heard her say, her spirits suddenly buoyant, as if the voice at the other end had managed to drive away her melancholy (or was it sorrow?) with just a word or two. I was sure it was Custardoy, calling for the penultimate or antepenultimate time. 'Yes. Are you OK?' A pause. 'Yes, I understand. Although, to be honest, your leaving like that, so suddenly, did throw me a bit… And you've no idea how long you're going to be away? That's a bit odd, isn't it? Them not giving you a fixed deadline, I mean.' She instinctively moved away from me and lowered her voice, so that I would hear as little as possible. However, since she didn't want to be rude and close the door on me or go into another room, her murmured comments were still audible. I missed a few words, but not her tone of voice. She wasn't saying much, Custardoy was the one doing most of the talking, and the conversation was rather brief, as if he were in a hurry (he was obeying my instructions to be distant and abrupt and concise). 'But that just leaves me completely in the dark. And what am I supposed to do if I can't even call you?' said Luisa almost pleadingly and raising her voice, only to lower it at once and add by way of explanation: 'Look, Jaime's here at the moment, he came to say goodbye, he's flying out tomorrow, he was just about to leave, why don't you call me back in five minutes?' Another longer pause. 'No, I don't understand. You mean you've got to go out right now, this very minute?' For a few moments I couldn't hear what she was saying, only intermittent words and odd phrases. 'No, I don't understand the situation; first of all, that rushed departure and now all these difficulties. I'm perfectly aware that we haven't known each other very long, and I don't presume to think that I know you inside out or anything, but I'm not used to this kind of behavior from you, it's never happened before. And you sound strange, different.' She fell silent again, then spoke almost in a whisper, before raising her voice to say: 'Look, I don't know what's going on with you, it's as if I were talking to someone else entirely. It's as if you were suddenly afraid of me, and I'd hate to be any kind of burden to you.'-'It isn't you he's afraid of, my love,' I thought. 'It's me.'-'Fine. If that's how you feel. It's up to you. You're the only one who can know how you feel. I'm not a mind-reader.' And her last words, which followed immediately after, were spoken coldly. 'Fine. If that's what you want. Goodbye.'

In other circumstances I wouldn't have enjoyed hearing that conversation at all, hearing Luisa pleading with that other man, very nearly begging him, before reacting with wounded dignity to his evasiveness or indifference. But I had prepared that scene, almost set it up and dictated it, as if I were Wheeler, who doubtless devoted no small part of his time to the preparation or composition of prized moments, or, so to speak, to guiding his numerous empty or dead moments towards a few pre-planned and carefully considered dialogues in which he had, of course, memorized his own part. Except that I hadn't intervened in that conversation, or, rather, Custardoy had spoken for me, for he was, after all, not using his own words, but those which I, like an Iago, had led him to say or obliged him to pronounce. Knowing that I was there, close by, must have increased his fear as well as his hatred of me. My presence had been a complete coincidence, but he would not have experienced it like that, he would have thought I was watching over the whole process, keeping an eye on things. So much the better for me.

Luisa came over to where I was standing, the cell phone still in her hand, and the look on her face was a mixture of puzzlement, resignation and annoyance. 'You've still got a long way to go,' I thought, 'you'll know worse despair yet. And then you'll seek me out, because I'm the person you know best and the one who will always be here.'

'Right, I'd better be going,' I said, picking up my raincoat and gloves. She had initially asked the caller to phone back in five minutes, ready, at a moment's notice, to sacrifice our conversation, the one we had unexpectedly been about to have. Missing that conversation, having it or not, was only of secondary importance to her. And at that point, it was to me as well. My chance would not come on that trip, I would have to wait quite a while longer.

'I'm sorry,' she murmured. 'Problems at work. People behave in the strangest way. They say they'll do one thing, then forget all about it and disappear.' She didn't need to give me any false explanations. The conversation had clearly been of a personal nature, and nothing to do with work. I knew what was going on, and she as yet did not. I didn't mind being so far ahead of her, I didn't mind deceiving her. 'This isn't the Jaime I know,' Cristina would say to me later on, and I had already thought the same thing: 'No, I'm not. I am more myself.'

Luisa accompanied me to the door. We kissed each other on the cheek, but this time she embraced me too. I sensed that she did so more out of a feeling of vulnerability, or a sudden sense of abandonment and loss, than out of genuine affection. Nevertheless, I returned her embrace warmly and enthusiastically. I certainly didn't mind embracing her, I never had.