Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

I waited and waited and felt as if I had been waiting a long time. I went into the shop and left again over and over, I browsed around inside without buying anything, avoiding the solicitous assistants as best I could (‘No, thank you, I’m just looking, I’ll come back when I’ve made a decision’). I gazed up at the windows of the building opposite, but saw no one, and it was impossible to know which floor Beatriz had gone to. I was tempted to peer in and ask the porter, but that would have been inappropriate and he would have answered in rude, patronizing tones: ‘What’s it got to do with you, young man, why do you want to know? It’s no business of yours who the lady is visiting. Who sent you, anyway? I’m going to tell Señor Gekoski, Dr Arranz, Señor Mollá, Mr Holmes, Señor Kociejowski, and the Devernes, so that they can take action and know all about your meddling.’ Of course, by threatening me with a name, he would have answered my question. I continued to wait, and the more time passed, the more likely it seemed to me that Beatriz’s meeting was a carnal one; then, a few seconds later, I thought exactly the opposite, it takes longer to talk than it does to have a prearranged fuck, forgive the vulgarity, but it’s best to call a spade a spade.

She did not reappear for nearly an hour, but which of those men had she been with and what had she done? At first, I noticed no change in her attitude or her appearance, although there was perhaps a change in her expression, which seemed to me — how can I put it? — disjointed or blurred, as if one part of her face expressed pleasurable intensity and the other disgust, as if she had just had a thrilling but somehow distasteful experience. She began walking back the way she came. I followed her at a distance, to see where she was going, until she went into a very classy clothes shop on Calle de Ortega y Gasset, or, rather, Lista. And it was while she was walking that I noticed the enormous ladder in her tights, almost a tear, and her skirt, obviously disarranged in the fray, was slightly caught up at the back, despite her efforts to smooth it into place while she walked. I know now and knew then how very easily tights ladder, you only have to brush against something, but it confirmed my suppositions: whoever she had just gone to bed with — well, not bed, of course, but there are always ledges and walls and tables on which to lean — the man had not been as careful as Van Vechten; if you keep your clothes on, they can easily become dirty or torn. When she left the shop, she had changed her tights and her skirt swung freely, any obstacle removed. She must have bought them there and then, and gone into the shop for that purpose.

No one had sent me, contrary to what the porter would have thought had I inquired who Beatriz Noguera was visiting, asked the name of her visitee. No, no one had ordered me to follow her when she went out alone, and at the time, I myself didn’t really know why I was doing it, or felt no need to explain to myself or preferred not to recognize the real reason, despite my naturally reflective nature. That is one of the advantages of youth: you allow yourself to act far more impulsively and obliquely, it makes you feel terribly original somehow — even though this turns out not to be the case at all, and what you’re doing is actually supremely banal — because you’re prepared to take rash, instantaneous decisions, thinking you can get away with a certain degree of eccentricity or irresponsibility or even a touch of feigned madness, or, rather, you’re of an age that allows for that — only a little sporadic madness, because flirting with insanity is never risk-free — without incurring any real consequences, and you rarely do slide into a more serious, more enduring madness; and you are still very close to childhood and adolescence, when you see yourself as a character out of a novel or a comic or a film and try to emulate them; perhaps I was imitating Hitchcock’s creations, suggested by that season of films to which Muriel had taken me, unresisting, and in which there are often long sequences during which no one says a word, no dialogue at all, just people coming and going from one place to another, and yet you sit, eyes glued to the screen, feeling increasingly intrigued and anxious, even when sometimes there’s no objective reason to feel that. The mere act of watching creates that feeling of anxiety, that sense of intrigue. We just have to lay eyes on someone for us to begin to ask questions and fear for their fate.

That is how I explained my own behaviour: pure curiosity, I was intrigued and I did feel somewhat anxious about Beatriz’s fate and the company she was keeping; or perhaps, despite my youth and the general freedom of the times, I found her visits quite frankly exciting, visits of which Muriel would know nothing. Not that he would have cared, he might even have been pleased had he known. She was much older than me, and yet my attitude towards her was tinged with a strange, respectful desire to protect her, even if only as an unseen companion and invisible witness, tinged too with an incongruous paternalism, as if she were a fictional character, for when a character captures our imagination, we observe her with unease and fear, indeed, in the field of fiction, it’s not unusual for a child to watch out for an adult, from his seat in the dark or from his startled eyes as he turns the pages with bated breath. In the land of fiction, there are no adults and children, there are no ages. We worry about those who are stronger, wiser, cleverer, older and more experienced than us, and the child, who, in his elemental state, can still not see this clearly, aches or struggles to warn someone that he’s being tricked or is in grave danger, even though that someone cannot hear; he can see what’s happening, because he is the chosen witness (absorbed in contemplation or in reading, the child really believes he is the sole witness). And Beatriz did seem disoriented and helpless, although not in any obvious or self-pitying way, as I said, I liked her and felt sorry for her — ‘poor unhappy woman, sad and affectionate; poor soul, poor wretch’ — not that she intentionally sought my pity. Had I thought this was her way of getting through life, a tactic intended to attract kindness and gain advantages, I would never have worried about her in that passive, distant, silent manner — although ‘worried’ is not perhaps the right verb — it would, instead, have provoked a certain irritation and suspicion in me. I don’t like victims who are too keenly aware of their victimhood.

It was only days after Muriel’s return from that absence that he finally gave me my orders. One morning, when there was no one else in the apartment, we went into the living room next to the office and he closed the door, something he didn’t normally do. Then he lay down full length on the floor, as he had on other occasions, with his forearm cushioning his head: I came to think this was his way of avoiding looking directly at me, of keeping his lost eye trained on the ceiling, or on the highest shelf in the library, or on the painting by Casanova’s brother, a way of saying things without really saying them, of seeming to be talking to himself or of allowing me to pluck his words — his indications, digressions, confidences, his mildly spoken orders — out of the air and not directly from his one eye or from his lips. It seemed to me that he was directing his gaze at the oil painting, which depicted an exotic horseman with a drooping moustache and an unusual plumed cap or hat, who was half-turning, so that his right eye, and only that eye, was fixed for ever on Catherine the Great of Russia or on some other viewer, the left almost hidden or perhaps sightless — from what one could see, it appeared to be defective, half-closed or perhaps simply clumsily painted — he could have been one-eyed like Muriel, having lost his eye in battle, for, unlike Muriel, he was a soldier. I sometimes suspected that Muriel wore his patch so as to resemble John Ford, Raoul Walsh, André de Toth, Nicholas Ray or possibly Fritz Lang, a strange plague among individuals whose work depended in large measure on their sight. But in the background could be seen another six horsemen, all riding away on their horses, all with their backs to us and wearing less unusual hats with broad brims — they looked vaguely Velázquezian — whereas the red figure in the foreground had paused, looking over his shoulder, as if wishing to retain, before he rode off, the image of the deaths he had caused, as if he were the only one listening to the dumb plea of the dead, who, in all wars, seem to send out a murmur from their bodies that lie as still as figures in a painting: ‘Remember us. Or at least, remember me .’