Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

I saw my boss emerge from the bathroom and grab the receiver of the phone on the bedside table. He was already spattered with blood, with numerous watery drops on his shirt along with other darker drops, pure and undiluted. The Doctor would be even more soiled and sodden, and both men were dressed for a quiet supper party. I was glad they hadn’t let me into the bathroom, to have been spared that, I would very likely have had to throw away my clothes afterwards.

‘How do I get an outside line?’

‘Press zero, wait for the tone and then dial,’ said the sympathetic receptionist.

After a while, I assumed that the haemorrhaging must have stopped or at least diminished, because Muriel came back out of the bathroom, looking calmer now and said:

‘Look, there’s nothing for you to do here, young De Vere.’ The fact that he was once more calling me ‘young De Vere’ meant that he had recovered from his shock and that Beatriz’s life was probably not in danger. ‘Go back to the apartment and send our guests home, those who haven’t already got fed up with waiting, that is.’ He looked at his watch, then briefly tapped the face with his middle finger — a gesture of grim resignation. ‘Yes, tell them all to go home. Send them my apologies and say that I’ll phone them as soon as I can tomorrow.’

‘And what if they want to know what happened?’

‘Don’t even wait for them to ask, just tell them the truth straight away. As soon as you explain, they’ll see it was an emergency, they’ll understand, they’ll be fine. The world of cinema is accustomed to suicide attempts, even successful ones; no one will be shocked. But don’t go into detail or describe the scene in all its gory drama.’ And he gestured with his head to where Beatriz would still be lying, and where she must have been getting cold unless Van Vechten had covered her with a dressing gown or some towels. ‘If they ask how, just say you don’t know.’

I remembered that, not long before, when Lom had told us about the events in 1961 at the home of the singer Vic Damone, which had supposedly provoked a failed suicide attempt and caused Kennedy to bolt, Muriel had even made fun of the women Beatriz had just imitated. ‘Oh, I can believe that,’ he had said disdainfully. ‘It’s a classic female ploy — locking themselves in the bathroom and slashing their wrists. The amazing thing is that they can almost never find their veins.’ He probably didn’t even remember saying that. Or perhaps he did — bitterly reproaching himself for being so ingenuous — if Beatriz had missed her veins; after all, you only have to graze your skin to make it bleed.

‘OK, but what if the children are there? Do I still say what happened?’

‘Take the little one out of the room, if he isn’t already in bed. The girls can hear what you have to say, I mean, they won’t be that surprised.’

‘Really? Why not?’

I immediately thought that I had again asked too much for my boss’s taste. But it was done now, I couldn’t un-ask the question, that was impossible, and I felt I had a right to know, since Muriel had involved me in something that was beyond my capabilities, if anything was for someone of my age; you’re so pliable then, so biddable, prepared to do whatever you can to please, and there comes a point when anyone can ask or order you to do anything, even commit a crime. Besides, it was high time Muriel answered a few of my questions. Not at that precise moment, of course, but soon. He looked me up and down for a moment with his maritime eye, as if registering my tacit demand and accepting it.

‘Well,’ he said, as if what he were about to say was of no importance, ‘with a mother like theirs, they’d better get used to the idea that one day they might lose her. The girls already know this, I’m sure. But off you go now. Towers will be confused if not furious. Not to mention his wife.’

‘How is Beatriz?’ I asked before I left. And mimicking him, I gestured with my head towards the bathroom, the interior of which was outside my field of vision. I had seen very little of Beatriz’s calamitous state, only that initial flash when I first entered the room. Nor did I manage to see her only in her underwear (her bra straps slipping off her shoulders) and, to my shame, I realized that I would like to have seen that, even in those dramatic circumstances, or now that the greatest danger seemed to have passed. Seeing a dead woman is not the same as seeing one unconscious or badly injured, or perhaps it’s not so very different if the woman has only just died and remains unchanged, by which I mean that there hasn’t been time for her to lose her attraction. I did what I could to drive away these thoughts or imaginings or whatever, for while I may have been young, I wasn’t completely heartless. Although most young men’s hearts are, so to speak, on hold.

Then Van Vechten emerged from the bathroom for the first time since we had arrived; he was heavily stained with blood and his sleeves were soaked up to his shoulders, doctors quite often get totally filthy, they must need a very large wardrobe of clothes, that suit, for example, would have to be thrown away, even though he’d removed his jacket early on. It was he who answered my question, being more au fait with the situation:

‘Fortunately, there aren’t that many cuts and they’re not very deep, the pain must have been enough to frighten her, not enough for her to regret doing it, you understand, but to pull her up short, instinctively, involuntarily. And the water wasn’t particularly hot either. I think she probably did it about an hour ago. She’s not in any danger or won’t be once that damned ambulance finally gets here and we can give her a transfusion.’

‘It’s probably stuck in the damned traffic,’ I said — swear words are infectious.

No sooner had I said this than we heard the siren, and the ambulance must have been travelling very fast for, an instant later, it was there outside the hotel. Van Vechten went over to the balcony to check that it was ours.

‘They’re here,’ he said.

‘Did Beatriz manage to find her veins? Did she actually cut them?’ I asked, one foot already out in the corridor, which I saw was still full of guests and commotion, held in check by the fat, hesitant, awkward manager. Yes, I was leaving, preferring not to have to see the stretcher-bearers and all that, and, besides, Muriel had urged me to go back to the apartment.

‘Of course she did,’ answered the Doctor, frowning. ‘What kind of a question is that?’

It’s always a bad thing to have sudden gratitude thrust upon us, it makes us forget all previous affronts or abandon our plan of revenge, it numbs our rancour and blunts our desire for justice; we overlook offences and are prepared to ignore suspicions or to renounce curiosity and suspend our investigations, to shrug our shoulders and appease our feelings by resorting to false justifications for giving up: ‘What does it matter if I forget all about it, so many crimes go unpunished that no one’s going to notice one more, the world won’t be any different. What does it matter if no one remembers?’ It’s always a bad thing to feel indebted to someone who has hurt us or hurt others either close to us or unrelated, sometimes it makes no difference, someone who has behaved in an indecent manner or committed the unspeakable and the unforgivable, the lowest of the low, because that can all be abruptly cancelled out by the feeling that we owe them something really crucial, really important. Offenders sometimes resort to this consciously and deliberately and even calculatingly: ‘I can’t fight on every front, so I’m going to neutralize this particular person who loathes me and has a grievance against me by doing him an unexpected favour, getting him out of a real mess, flattering him and thus confusing him, lending him money when he most needs it, or sending it to him through a third party if he won’t take it from me (that third party will be sure to blab once the money’s spent and it’s too late to reject my gift, and then it’s in my power to increase the beneficiary’s gratitude still further by not asking for the money back), by ensuring that he keeps his job, which is hanging by a thread, by helping one of his children who has got himself into trouble and for whom he cares more than anything else in the world, or by saving the life of a suicidal wife.’