Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

‘Eduardo.’ Her voice was almost inaudible. There was no reply, and it occurred to me that Beatriz had chosen a bad night to approach him; Muriel would be tired after all his work, possibly already asleep, or else absorbed by thoughts of that urgent script about which he had his doubts. ‘Eduardo,’ she said again, a little louder this time, and she bent down slightly to look at the crack under the door, to see if the light was on in his room. (When she bent down — this lasted only five seconds, which I counted, the better to enjoy them: one, two, three, four; and five — I had an even clearer view of her bottom, which I had noticed before when she was walking around the apartment fully clothed and erect: round or curvaceous, pert and shapely — or ‘firm’, to use the adjective so often used to describe tempting flesh — contrary to what Muriel thought, or said he thought, in order to undermine and humiliate her, I had heard him call her ‘fat’ and a few other more offensive things; and when she bent down, her already brief nightdress rode up another centimetre, revealing more of her sturdy thighs — this time unclothed — although not enough to show her actual buttocks, she would have had to bend further, as if to pick something up from the floor.) Muriel immediately turned off the light, but it was too late for him to pretend to be asleep or to have abandoned wakefulness, this much was clear from what his wife said next: ‘Eduardo, I saw the light under the door, I know you’re awake. Please open the door. It will only take a second, I promise.’ And she knocked again with that one knuckle, more boldly this time. Then she pressed her ear to the door, as if to make sure her husband really was awake, sometimes we need to confirm what we know perfectly well, or to have someone else do so, it’s typical of people who no longer entirely trust their own five senses; perhaps, I thought, because this has been going on for years, night after night, and neither of them is capable now of distinguishing the day before yesterday from yesterday or today or tomorrow. I thought this, I really did, just before there came an unexpected response (I was expecting a continued state of imperviousness, although that is a very slow form of dissuasion), which led me to believe that this was the case, that Beatriz’s possibly frustrated visit was something she repeated each conticinium , as the Romans called the night hour when everything was still and silent, something that no longer exists in our cities, which is perhaps why the word has died out or lies languishing in dictionaries.

‘Don’t you get bored making the same scene over and over? How many more nights are you going to keep it up? I have to sleep, I’m really tired. Juan and I are working against the clock, you know.’ Through the door, Muriel’s voice sounded patient rather than irritated. Although he had spoken quite loudly, I was sure that neither of them wanted this exchange to be heard by anyone else in the house, at least in principle. It could also be that this scene had become so customary that everyone knew about it anyway and paid no attention. Even though there was nothing remarkable about him mentioning my name, it still made me jump. I was, after all, spying, and if the spied-upon refer to the spy, this makes him feel more exposed, a somewhat irrational reflex reaction and, fortunately, short-lived.

‘I don’t want to talk or anything, Eduardo. I won’t go on at you. I won’t take up much time, I promise. I just want to embrace you, it’s been ages since I did. That would soothe me, and then I could go to sleep. Please, open the door.’ She said this meekly, sweetly.

‘It’s a trick,’ I thought. ‘He doesn’t know she’s out here with no dressing gown on, nothing, nothing to cover her nightdress, nothing underneath. Or maybe he does and doesn’t care, maybe it no longer affects him.’ It occurred to me that it would be hard to embrace that voluptuous body and do nothing more, not linger or run your hands over it. ‘But then I’m not Muriel,’ I said again. ‘He’s seen it all before, whereas it’s all new to me. The touch of her flesh will be a matter of indifference to him, possibly even tedious or unpleasant, I mustn’t even think about it.’

There was no immediate reply. I thought Muriel must be considering whether to give in to her request, even if only as a quick way of putting an end to the siege. After a few seconds, he spoke and, from what I heard, his tone of voice had a mocking edge to it.

‘No, I’ve already given myself an embrace, thank you. Consider your embrace duly delivered and go back to bed, off you go.’

He wasn’t angry or at least not yet, it was just one of his witty comments. And those last words, ‘off you go’, had sounded kind, almost affectionate, the words of a long-suffering father to an overly anxious, nervous daughter. After all, he was six or seven or eight years her senior, which was, I would say, a normal age difference between couples at the time, or indeed now, but ultimately, all these things count in how couples treat each other, including who has more experience of the world, who has been in the world longest (and this inevitably strikes a paternalistic note), and the nature of the relationship.

‘Don’t be silly, Eduardo. Just one embrace. I’m so on edge tonight, I can’t sleep.’ And when she said this (the first part), Beatriz Noguera gave a little laugh; even though her husband was mocking her, she still found his joke funny. Perhaps that was her curse, her main problem, and one of the reasons why she still loved him so much: he made her laugh and always had. It’s very hard not to stay in love with or be captivated by someone who makes us laugh and does so even though he often mistreats us; the hardest thing to give up is that companionable laughter, once you’ve met someone and decided to stay with them. (When you have a clear memory of that shared laughter and it occasionally recurs, even if only very infrequently and even though the intervals between are long and bitter.) It’s the tie that binds most tightly, apart from sex when that’s still an urgent need and more than sex as that need grows less.

‘No, really, I gave myself a very warm and tender embrace,’ retorted Muriel, still in joking mode. ‘Yours would be quite unnecessary.’ Then his voice changed suddenly, as if, from one moment to the next, he had grown tired of being humorous or had suddenly recalled some injury or source of resentment, and he added sharply: ‘Look, go away and leave me in peace, will you? Aren’t Roy, Rico and all the others enough for you? You’re not exactly in need of more diversions, so why keep pestering me every night? You’ve known for years what I’m going to say. You’ve known for years what my terms are. I made them quite clear. God, you’re a pain. Unbearable. Just listen to yourself, begging and pleading, how do you stand it? And you’re getting a bit long in the tooth to be permanently on heat.’

Beatriz Noguera clearly lacked all dignity and pride, she must have left them behind long ago, and probably had no use for them during the many years Muriel kept referring to. She neither missed them nor had any plans to recover them, they were absent from her life, at least from her married life. For she gave no sharp retort, did not move or leave, she took not a step, nor did she go back to her own room, as would anyone else after receiving such a cruel, emphatic rejection.

‘You’re so certain, aren’t you? And your certainty is so convenient too,’ she answered, ‘that way you can feel free of all responsibilities and all doubts. You know perfectly well that there is no Rico, no Roy or anyone else for that matter, I just go out with them occasionally, and it’s lucky for you I have them to distract me, because I can hardly count on you to do as much, or only when you want to put a good face on things and not turn up with one of your actresses, or whatever they are, at some place where they shouldn’t be seen.’ She did not say this bitterly or reproachfully, it was, rather, an attempt to be persuasive, and she returned at once to her previous line of attack: ‘You’re the only one I’m interested in, you’re the only one I love, surely I don’t need to tell you that, however hard you try to drive me away. And I don’t do this every night, don’t exaggerate. Why shouldn’t I try or at least make an attempt? It costs me nothing. It wasn’t like this before. I didn’t bore you then, and our relationship wasn’t exactly languishing. You suddenly broke it all off, over some stupid thing that happened ages ago. However determined they might be, people don’t just stop desiring or loving each other from one day to the next, it just doesn’t happen. If it did, it would save everyone a lot of problems and dramas. If you could see me now … Go on, just open the door for a moment and look at me. Put your arms around me. And then go back in, if you can.’