Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

Two days later, regardless of the untimeliness and even eccentricity of my question, I phoned Luisa. It's more embarrassing talking about such things to a sister: our sister may be our first girlfriend, but that is when there has as yet been no blood, a sister is only ever our child-bride. I phoned Luisa and found her at home, I had no need to feel anxious; she sounded a bit surprised (after all, it wasn't a Thursday or a Sunday), but not put out. I asked a few routine questions about the children, about their health and hers, and immediately justified my call by saying: 'I'm phoning to ask you something.' 'Ask away,' she replied good-humouredly. And so I asked her, after a brief preamble and a few words of apology, if a drop of blood could fall from a woman wearing no undergarments and whose period had come on unannounced while she was standing up or walking ('Yes, or else going up the stairs,' I added pointlessly, to complete the already absurd image). There was a brief silence during which I was afraid she might simply hang up on me or suggest I go in search of my lost wits, but what I heard next was a friendly chuckle, I knew that laugh well, amused and genial, the laugh she always laughed when something really tickled her. At that moment, I could see her face clearly, and what a pleasant face it was (I saw it in my mind's eye, there in London, or, rather, in my memory's eye, as I stared out through my window).

'What kind of question is that?' she said, still laughing. 'Are you writing a novel or something, or an ad for sanitary towels perhaps? Or are you keeping very trashy company now? I hope not, because a woman would have to be very trashy indeed for what you're describing to happen.' And her merry laughter rang out again.

I had time to wonder if the reason she seemed so happy was because she had not been expecting to hear my voice or because the figure who would replace me was now clearly delineated -the kindly flatterer who wheedles his way in, the irresponsible raver who stays outside, the suspicious authoritarian who ends up imprisoning her; I preferred the second, hypothetically speaking, despite his bird-brain; but one thing was sure, she wasn't going to ask my opinion on the subject. I never questioned her about it, just as she never asked me what I was up to, only once had she said: 'I hope you're not too lonely there in London,' and that had not really been a question. 'No more than can be expected,' I had replied at once, answering neither yes nor no, and in any case making light of the whole thing. And I had time to wonder if her mention of 'trashy company' could mean that she was curious to know if I mixed with women in situations intimate enough for them to walk around in my presence without their knickers on (although I could, of course, be totally oblivious of any such manoeuvre). And that could, in turn, mean either that she was not entirely indifferent to this news and found it a little irksome, or that she couldn't care less, which is why she could speak so blithely, perhaps urging me to frequent or to recruit a few such trashy women, of whom she was sure there would be no shortage. I no longer had the slightest idea what her feelings for me were, if she merely harboured a quiet affection or if there was still some lingering passion there, or what place she assigned me, if she was still waiting for the smell of me to disappear entirely and for me to become a ghost (one with whom she got on well, or the sort who remains friends and makes no demands and agrees not to appear too often) or if the process was already complete and my sheets torn up to make rags or dusters. The truth is that we almost never know anything about what touches us most directly, however much we interpret and conjecture, as I did endlessly, perhaps I was wasting my time in the building with no name, I thought I was making a contribution there, but perhaps I was unwittingly doing harm: perhaps I was working in a vacuum. And in short, I was afraid, afraid of Tupra and afraid of failing him, and I was filled, too, with self-distrust (I had discovered all this only a couple of nights before, the night spent with the Manoias). I was paid to make guesses about the future behaviour of people and their probabilities, and I could not even see the face – today's or tomorrow's; I saw only yesterday's face with my one mind's eye – of the person I knew best, I had lived with Luisa for quite a number of years and, through my children, continued to receive further complementary information, they were a prolongation of her, and children are transparent as long as they are still our children, later, they grow a shell or run away or wrap themselves in their own mists. I didn't even know what her hair was like now (and the way a woman's hair is combed or cut says so much about her), indeed, I could not even see myself; but that was of less importance, because the report about me that I had read half secretly in the filing room was quite right: this had never interested or worried me in the least. A rather unworthy enigma, a waste of time.

I could not resist joining in her laughter, nor did I want to resist, on the contrary: I had missed it intensely and therefore made the most of this opportunity; she had long since withdrawn her laughter from me, but, before, we used to set each other off, or would burst out laughing almost simultaneously, that laughter – when she laughed with me and I with her – was of the kind that is never forced and never preceded by a decision or a calculation, although this time I did join in afterwards, I had lost the habit and had not even noticed the comical nature of my enquiry, I suppose I was too sunk in myself, especially during the days that followed that night of new fear and not-so-new distrust; but she had found it funny at once or almost at once, after a few seconds' disbelief, unable to credit that I would phone her up to ask such a question. (An old but far from ephemeral flame from Italy, someone from my now remote past, to whom I largely owe my knowledge of Italian, used to exclaim: 'Che vanto ridere insieme.' I don't know quite how I would say that in English: 'What a glorious thing it is, laughing together' or perhaps 'What a joy.’)

'You are silly,' I said, 'you really are,' and while I was saying it, we laughed together, and I felt something like vanto. 'I'm not quite so stupid as to devote myself to the advertising world or, like everyone else, to writing novels. Although, who knows, more ridiculous things have happened, and I never rule anything out. But, honestly, you are so silly, even after all these years, you're just as silly as you always were.’

'All right, then, perhaps you could tell me why you're asking me this perfectly natural, perfectly normal question. A question, of course, that my colleagues at work ask me daily.' And she continued or we continued laughing that easy laugh, there is nothing like a bit of mutual leg-pulling, the sort that never offends and always gives pleasure, to show one's affection for someone, I mean that preliminary affection, when she and I were still together, and when, after a few such phrases, we would touch and kiss and embrace, lying down and wide awake. But we wouldn't have wanted to do that now, if we had really been able to see each other. 'What's wrong? Has someone made a mess of your floor? Surely not.’

I finally stopped laughing, just for a moment. 'No, it's not my floor. It was Wheeler's. But it's too long a story to go into now. Is it possible, do you think? Could that happen?' 'Peter's floor? At his age? I'm going to have to tell him off. I can understand the temptation, but I really don't think it's right. Why doesn't Mrs Berry put a stop to it, why doesn't she chase the filthy creatures away?' And she gave another gust of laughter, she was clearly in a good mood. This both pleased and displeased me, it might be because of me or because of some other man who had, perhaps, just left, or was about to arrive, or whom she was getting ready to go out and meet, or else he was already there in my house, listening to the conversation and waiting impatiently for it to finish, listening only to her side of it, to Luisa's, not mine. I didn't believe this last possibility, she sounded as if there were no witnesses and as if she were free of constraints or threats. But who knows, no one ever does, it could be a foreigner who didn't understand the language, and when you're sure you won't be understood, you do speak as if there were no witnesses or even do so on purpose to make yourself appear attractive or to make someone fall in love with you, at least that is what you conceitedly hope, to show yourself as you supposedly are, to allow the person watching to admire the way you are with others, so nice and jolly, there is in it just a pinch of pretence and another of exhibitionism, I've done it myself, in times of weakness of course, and I was beginning to think that this was one of those times. Besides, it wasn't my house. These embryonic thoughts made my laughter abate and allowed me to insist, not in a serious tone of voice, but in one of obvious haste: 'All right, I'll warn them both that you're going to tell them off and that they're in big trouble. But is it possible, the drop of blood, I mean, the stain?' She knew me well, she was probably the person who knew me best, she realised that it was time either to answer my eccentric question or to drop it altogether, to forget about it, that was easy enough, we were not as close as we used to be and she owed me nothing, not even a polite answer. At least, I didn't feel she was in my debt, and in these matters (whether one feels oneself to be a debtor or a creditor), it is what one feels that counts and is important, much more so than facts or money, or than favours and damage done.