Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

Her tone was still cautious, even in those final, slightly challenging words, although they were spoken modestly, more in order to encourage herself than with any real expectation that Muriel would respond. I was nonetheless struck by the fact that she had summoned up the necessary courage and vanity to say them, bearing in mind how disagreeable he could be in his comments, or insults, about her physical appearance: ‘Isn’t it time you lost some weight? Your backside’s the size of a bus!’ he would say for no reason. Or ‘You’re looking more and more like Shelley Winters, not facially, which is something, but otherwise, you’re the spitting image; put a short, blonde wig on you and in a three-quarter shot or from behind, you could get a part as her double.’ He often made cinematographic comparisons, holding his hands as if he were framing a shot, doubtless an occupational habit. She took these very sportingly sometimes — at others, she was almost reduced to tears — and was undaunted, knowing as she did all his references: ‘She can’t have been that ugly, after all, she married two good-looking actors, Vittorio Gassman and Tony Franciosa,’ she would say. Beatriz bore no resemblance at all either to a bus or to the poor, clumsy, albeit excellent actress Shelley Winters, who, broad in the beam as a young woman, and heavy-set in her mature years, almost always played touching characters worthy of our pity. To start with, Beatriz was very tall, almost as tall as her husband and, with heels on, even taller. She was also strongly built and large-boned, which meant that she aroused neither female solidarity nor male compassion, for it was hard to imagine that someone so strong and healthy would ever need any kind of protection or consolation. As for her supposed fatness and her figure, in this — give or take some obvious differences, and bearing in mind that Beatriz had had children — she was more like Senta Berger, an Austrian actress who had been at the peak of her fame in the decade just drawing to a close and in the preceding one, perhaps more because of her green eyes and her prominent bust than because of her talent as an actress, although she hadn’t actually ruined any films either. Perhaps that figure and those breasts would be considered excessive by today’s more parsimonious young men, but, at the time, she was merely regarded as buxom and considered to be a real stunner by most male filmgoers, including me and my friends, who, when she was in her heyday, were young men or boys. For a woman like that, however (almost bursting out, shall we say, not from her clothes, of course, but from her own flesh that completely fills her skin, leaving not a fold or wrinkle), it’s hard to be sure that she isn’t somehow excessive and to accept, fully and unselfconsciously, the way she looks, especially if the person closest to her, the person she most wants to please, is constantly bombarding her with denigratory and sometimes almost ingenious comparisons — there’s no defending oneself against the latter without appearing ridiculous — or with out-and-out insults. (The praise and flattery of other men count for nothing, they neither counteract the insults nor help, vanishing as soon as they are spoken.) I assumed that to have said what she said (‘If you could see me now … Go on, look at me. And then go back in, if you can.’), Beatriz must have spent a long time studying herself in the mirror in her skimpy nightdress, from every angle; she must have persuaded and convinced herself of her own desirability, emboldened perhaps by a couple of drinks; she must have dredged up sufficient pride and self-approval. That takes a lot of willpower or, in her case, a lot of passion or neediness, both of which distort our perceptions and our understanding, and tend to lead to errors when calculating probabilities. I would have said that, in theory, everything was in her favour. I was still not so very far from my boyhood, and as I crouched there, enjoying her figure, I remembered the childish, slightly coarse word we used to describe any beautiful woman, macizo , which means both ‘gorgeous’ and ‘solid’ or ‘well built’ (it’s considered old-fashioned now and rather frowned upon), but it seemed to me then that it fitted her exactly.

Muriel did not speak again for a while. I wondered if he was perhaps considering opening the door. As a spectator, I would have preferred him to appear and thus add to the spectacle, because once you begin to look and listen, you always want the performance to continue. It’s an instantaneous addiction if your curiosity is aroused, a stronger and more irresistible poison than acting and taking part. If you do take part, you have to make decisions and invent, which is hard work and depends on you ending a conversation or a scene, it brings with it responsibilities; if you merely look, everything is done for you, as in a novel or a film, you simply wait to be shown or told about events that haven’t actually happened, and sometimes you get so caught up in them that no one can shift you from your sofa or armchair and you would curse the first person to try. Except that the events were happening that night, and despite the unreality of the dark corridor, a little light was coming in from the street, the pale, indirect light from the street lamps or from the sentinel moon was slipping into the rooms and was reflected more palely still on the waxed floorboards, on which stood the apparently bare feet of a tall, anxious, well-built woman of about forty or perhaps a little more by then, who, having knocked on her husband’s door, was humbly waiting, begging him for a little sex or a little affection, I couldn’t be sure, or perhaps she wanted both things, or to her they were indistinguishable, I couldn’t be sure of that either; at any moment, I thought, she might lose her initial fearlessness and feel ashamed, ugly, pathetic and fat, if he did open the door, it was, I thought, possible that Beatriz would suddenly feel too skimpily dressed, too exposed, with her voluptuous figure covered only by the brief nightdress she had chosen after trying on all her other night attire, that she might see herself as a shameless beggar and cover herself with her arms in a sudden fit of modesty, when she was at last given her opportunity, when she was at last seen as she had wanted to be seen. She would certainly have done so had she noticed my presence and my admiring eyes drinking in every detail — they did not, I think, dare to be covetous, insofar as one can control such things. What I had seen and heard was enough for me to hope the scene would not end, not yet, I at least wanted to find out if Muriel would soften or would keep his door as blank and shut as a wall, as if there were no door, only a wall, however flimsy, because I had been able to hear his voice through the door’s constraining thickness. I saw Beatriz lean forward again to study the crack under the door — a clearer view of buttocks and thighs, my gaze sharper — and heard her utter an expectant or triumphant or relieved ‘Ah’. I deduced from this that the light in Muriel’s room had been turned on and then I thought I heard his footsteps, or perhaps I was merely anticipating, as one does in the cinema. Or perhaps he had got up and was going over to the door, to look at his wife as she had asked, and then go back in or not, if he could.

This did not happen as quickly as I expected. He must have made some minimal preparations, or perhaps more than that, put on his long, dark navy-blue dressing gown and rinsed out his mouth or, who knows, had a pee — both he and Beatriz had small private bathrooms in their respective bedrooms. Perhaps he had already removed his patch in order to go to sleep and had to put it on again and adjust it in front of a mirror, because when he did finally emerge, he was wearing it as usual, which slightly disappointed me, because I was hoping to see what was hidden underneath, even though I could only do so in very dim lighting and from a distance, after all, there was no reason why he should cover his eye in his wife’s presence, she must often have seen it or what remained of his eye, at least before he suddenly broke off their relationship, before he had begun to find her presence boring and before their relationship had languished, according to what Beatriz had said, and there was no reason why this should not be true, there had been no witnesses and, normally, where there are no witnesses, the two interlocutors are unlikely to lie about the facts, not in principle, unless one of them does so without really knowing what they’re doing, because they’ve told themselves the only version of events they find bearable, for example: ‘I can’t believe you’ve stopped wanting to have sex with me. It must have been a decision taken against your own instincts, self-imposed, and now you’re sticking to it blindly because you feel a hostage to your own words. One day or one night of frustration and yearning, you’ll forget them, you’ll rebel and believe you never spoke them. Perhaps tonight or else tomorrow or the day after, and I’ll be here to help you erase them.’