Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

And so, for Alberto Augusto Roy, it was a pleasure and an honour to make himself available to the maestro’s wife, and she would, I imagine, turn to him when there was no more fascinating or enjoyable company on offer. As I said, Roy was quite short (strikingly so when Beatriz wore high heels, which she usually did), but by no means weedy, indeed, he was well built and in proportion to his height, and he had a nice face too when he took off the large, pale tortoise-shell spectacles that made his greenish eyes seem smaller and covered most of his face and made it seem more uniform and more seriously myopic; they also gave him a slightly professorial air, which did not fit well with his very tanned complexion, the same colour as his thick, almost brown lips, as though both complexion and lips were part of a continuum of tones and had both, since birth, been left exposed to a powerful, perpetual sun. Sometimes — in an attack of ill-judged coquetry — he would let his hair grow very long and comb it back so that it lay plastered to his head and coiled over his collar in a few brazen curls, whether deliberately or naturally I couldn’t tell; this quite ruined that professorial air and made him look instead half like an aspiring, ageing, greasy rich kid and half like a strange, bespectacled flamenco singer. Until, that is, Muriel called him to order, holding his fingers as if they were the barrel of a gun and wagging them at the offending area: ‘Alberto Augusto, that curly endive of yours has sprouted again, making you resemble nothing so much as a swarthy, small-time crook or an ex- franquista nostalgic for the good old days. What will people think if we’re seen together?’ Alarmed, Roy would raise one hand to the back of his neck; he would stroke the curls in a farewell gesture and head straight to the barber’s to have them cut off and his hair unplastered from his head. Anything to avoid getting told off by Muriel.

He always seemed contented, or else he was one of those people who, precisely because their lives are so empty, have no difficulty in finding reasons to be happy, I mean, they pass lightly from one day to the next, buoyed up by the most modest of promises, which they transform into thrilling prospects (although basically that’s what we all do, however few or many demands we have on our time), from the premiere of some particularly appetizing film — in his case — to an imminent supper with an old, often seen friend or — in his case — a cousin from Málaga, who visited every four to six weeks — oddly enough, Roy always referred to his cousin by his two family names, Baringo Roy — and whom Roy admired for his busy sex life and his prowess in that field, about which he would occasionally tell us (Rico would sometimes mischievously pump him for details) and while these tales always sounded to us like pure invention, he believed every word; dazzled and deliciously scandalized, he wasn’t going to give up a titillating pleasure like that, far less a fantasy. And, of course, equally vital to his happiness was being part of Muriel’s circle, if it could be called that, even though it wasn’t a circle at all, but a random amalgam. There was a very kind, generous, magnanimous side to Muriel, for he never prevented or inhibited the people around him from forming friendships among themselves or establishing ties other than with him. He had no sense of ownership or precedence, nor did he fear what others might be plotting when he wasn’t looking. He was not one of those agglutinative individuals who wants to control and supervise all contact between those closest to him and who happen to have met through his mediation, and to be kept abreast of any alliance or rapprochement or encounter that might occur, no, he was very hands-off in that respect and even took pleasure in seeing his friends get on well together and develop their own friendships. And in keeping with that, he had no objections to each of his friends forming whatever kind of relationship with Beatriz they chose and to which she was agreeable; on the contrary, this was, I think, a boon and a relief to him. And so Rico and Roy, for example, despite being so different and even opposite, were also fond of each other, amused each other, chatted and joked together, as, to a greater or lesser extent and with the occasional inevitable exception, they did with the other regulars.

I was among those regulars, as were Dr Van Vechten and Beatriz’s two troubling female friends, but not the others so much or not at all. I even suspected some promiscuity — real or purely hypothetical or merely hanging in the air — between one or other of them and some of our habitual visitors, perhaps not behind Beatriz’s back (it seemed to me that the three women told each other everything, even too much), but probably behind Muriel’s back, although he initially gave the impression that he knew nothing, more out of choice than because he couldn’t or hadn’t noticed, as if he had long ago decided that he really didn’t care about other people’s entanglements and the passions that provoked them, their infatuations and suspicions and susceptibilities; as if he’d decided that he had quite enough of such feelings to deal with in his own past, feelings that don’t always vanish when they cease, but continue to accumulate and to weigh on one.

One of those female friends was related to Muriel by marriage, being the widow of an older brother, who had died in a car crash near Ávila, on a snowy day in deepest winter and in circumstances that were not at all flattering to her: the police found two bodies, his and that of a pretty, blonde Frenchwoman, much younger than him and unknown to the family — Muriel included — or so they all said. However, she didn’t look like a professional prostitute, given the quality of the clothes she was wearing (unless she was a very high-class whore with excellent taste) and which barely covered her: her elegant jacket was unbuttoned — revealing a skimpy bra — and her skirt was up to her navel, despite the low temperatures; this could have been caused by the impact when they hit a truck coming towards them in the opposite lane, into which the couple had strayed while making a foolish, reckless attempt to overtake, but it was rather too much of a coincidence that the brother had his flies open — a buttoned fly as it happened not a zip. One could not help thinking that the laborious business of unbuttoning had been the main cause of the crash, especially if they had each been responsible for undoing the other’s buttons, which would inevitably be highly distracting and might well create the illusion — the pressing prospect of future pleasure — of invulnerability. Muriel told me all this later on, when we were chatting one day — he revealed various details of his life unthinkingly and liberally, as if he didn’t care or it didn’t matter, and yet, on the other hand, was very reserved and guarded when asked a direct question, as happened when I inquired about his eyepatch — to explain why his sister-in-law Gloria disliked him so much.

She had remained calm during the period of mourning, then carried out her own investigation, doubtless with the help of an under-employed detective, and discovered that the Frenchwoman had played a few minor roles in films made in France, in 99 Women by the omnipresent Franco and Towers (they can’t have been very fussy about who they picked, assuming the content matched the title) as well as in a few Spaghetti Westerns shot in Spain, and had auditioned for a larger part in one of Muriel’s projects. And although the woman hadn’t been chosen, Gloria insisted on suspecting that her brother-in-law, contrary to what he said, knew who she was and, not only that, had probably introduced her to his brother, or perhaps offered or leased her to him. Or, at the very least, had told him where and when the auditions for attractive young supporting actresses would be taking place, so that he could cast an eye over all the candidates and then make his own arrangements. Muriel swore he had no memory of the woman (‘How can I possibly remember the faces of all the women who audition for a part and are rejected?’) nor if, by ill luck, his brother Roberto had come to see him at the studio on that particular day and met the poor and now deceased and almost bare-breasted actress. The fact is that Gloria blamed him totally for both misfortunes (and it wasn’t at all clear which she most regretted or which most tormented her), for her husband’s infidelity — fleeting or permanent, there was no way of knowing — as well as for the accident and her loss. ‘You and your films and your actresses,’ she had said reproachfully to him on more than one occasion. ‘Roberto was so envious, he would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven if he’d had your job, and now, of course, he has died, and died making a complete fool of himself.’ Muriel did not respond, so as not to get drawn in, however irritating he found her accusations. He was just grateful that Gloria refrained from giving expression, at least in his presence, to the tormenting sense of her own absurdity that must have assailed her on many nights, for, like so many elegant, frivolous, fairly cultivated ladies, behind her undeniably worldly appearance lay a woman of basic religious beliefs, because even now in Spain one continues to come across such surprises; she made no public display of her beliefs, aware that they belonged in the most private of domains, but she probably thought with horror that, as well as making a complete fool of himself, Roberto had died in mortal sin (or almost). Muriel was convinced that she must often wonder how far the couple had got before the crash, and it must have comforted her to know that he would not have had time to ejaculate while still at the wheel. Or so Muriel would say with a bitter laugh. Or perhaps someone had informed him of his sister-in-law’s casuistic-cum-spiritual preoccupations.