Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

I realized that as long as Beatriz stayed in the kitchen, I wouldn’t be able to relax, and so I got out of bed. It was already hot in Madrid and I was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, the kind I’ve worn since I was a young man, having always found so-called Y-fronts unpleasantly macho and even faintly distasteful. I couldn’t and shouldn’t appear dressed like that, I thought — although I would have been justified in doing so, since this was, in a way, my territory — and since I didn’t have a dressing gown, I put on my jeans and a shirt, although without bothering to button the latter up or to tuck it in. I cautiously opened the door of my cubbyhole — I didn’t want to startle her — which Flavia had smartened up a bit since the first time I stayed overnight, making it a little more welcoming, a little less bare; and I saw Beatriz with her back to me, sitting, just as I had thought, on one of the stools in the kitchen, which is where we used to have breakfast, individually and at an hour of our choosing, the only ones who ate together being the children and then only on school days, no one person acted as a kind of agglutinative hub, the family tending to disperse.

The lights were already on in the kitchen, and so the light from my door when I opened it didn’t warn Beatriz of my presence, locked as she was inside her own head. She wasn’t wearing a dressing gown either, even though Muriel was away and there was no one she could tempt with her rather short nightdress, when she was standing it came only to mid-thigh and was identical to the one I’d seen on that now distant night, except that it wasn’t white or cream, but a very pale blue — perhaps she had bought two or three, thinking it was a flattering style. I assumed that the heat had made her leave her room so very lightly dressed, that and her self-absorbed state and her sense of being alone even in an apartment where five other people were sleeping, employees and children, but perhaps we counted for little in her insomnia. Seated as she was, I couldn’t tell whether, as on that night of prowling and pleading, she was wearing any knickers, although obviously, and as is only natural, she wasn’t wearing a bra, well, who would go to sleep in a piece of clothing that controls and constricts; I’ve never in my life met a woman who kept her bra on in bed. I was surprised that the first thing my eyes noticed or tried to discover was whether she had anything on underneath her silk nightdress; or, rather, it didn’t surprise me, but I silently reproached myself for a second, after all, you can’t control your own gaze, it lives a quite separate existence to our instructions and our vetos, or that’s the excuse we use to allow it to disobey us. I realized, moreover — and this was immediate — that I didn’t care that my gaze should have become so uninhibited, as if Muriel’s absence had given me — however irresponsibly, however inappropriately — the freedom to look at anything I wanted, including his wife. That sudden visual incontinence of mine didn’t make much sense really, given how little he cared about Beatriz physically and how violently he rejected her. But we feel more in charge of a place when the owner isn’t there, as if we had temporarily replaced or usurped him. That’s why every servant who has ever lived immediately lounges on the sofas, rolls around on the beds, uncorks the wine bottles and dives into the swimming pool as soon as he sees his employer vanish, or at least he secretly fantasizes about doing such things without being noticed, especially since it would be his job to erase all trace of rebellion. And I was, after all, a kind of servant, albeit in disguised form. I was aware that my brazenness also had something to do with the fact that Beatriz had recently tried to commit suicide; we take strange liberties with someone who might have killed herself: ‘Well,’ we say to ourselves, ‘she’s escaped the worst, fate has smiled on her; this period of time is a gift, and she can’t really complain; she tried to make whatever happens from now on not happen, decided not even to expect it to happen, never to experience it.’ And what I thought there in the kitchen, or what flashed through my mind, although certainly not in such a clearly formulated way, was this: ‘If it weren’t for me, that body would be rotting in a grave, beneath the earth, or reduced to a mere heap of unrecognizable ash, never to be looked at by anyone again; in a way her survival, or part of it — a few minutes or a few hours — belongs to me and I’ve earned the right to enjoy looking at her as much as I want.’ Some cultures believe that if you save someone’s life, you become responsible for whatever happens to them afterwards, for ensuring that the extra time you’ve granted them is neither tragic nor a torment; other cultures believe that you become not that person’s owner exactly, but something like a usufructuary, and the saved person places herself at the disposal of her saviour, entrusts or surrenders herself to him. All of a sudden, I had the conceited thought that if Beatriz was glad to be still alive, then she was in my debt; if she regretted it, though, she would consider herself my creditor. She was holding a glass of whisky in one hand and, in the other, an unlit cigarette, and there were already two cigarette ends in the nearby ashtray. Her bandaged wrists contrasted with the bare arms revealed by her sleeveless nightdress, because her skin was quite dark, which is why it was so worrying when she did occasionally turn terribly pale.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ I asked, after first clearing my throat, so as to warn her of my presence in two stages, one following on from the other.

She turned and gave a faint, wan smile. She didn’t just turn her head, but her whole body, thus revealing much of her strong thighs, since she was sitting with her legs crossed. (Which is also why I didn’t manage to see anything more than that.) Not as much thigh as the civil servant Celia had revealed in the taxi, but quite a lot. She indicated the glass of whisky, as if to excuse herself, for she was not a heavy drinker.

‘Yes, I’m just seeing if this will do the trick,’ she said. ‘But I’m not very used to drinking whisky.’ Then she added: ‘I’m sorry I woke you up. I sometimes forget you’re here at night too, now that you’ve been appointed my sentinel. Although you’ve stayed over on other nights too. You don’t seem very happy at home.’

It had not escaped her notice that I spent more time than necessary in the apartment, but the remark was a neutral one, it didn’t come across as a hint or a complaint about my too frequent presence. She also knew what my role there was in Muriel’s absence, while he was six hundred kilometres away filming his bizarre scenes.

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, ‘but I do sometimes miss a little company, and there’s plenty of that here. I hope I’m not making a nuisance of myself, not bothering you. Do tell me if I am.’

She shook her head as if to say: ‘Of course not, don’t be silly.’ As if my concern were a bit of nonsense not even worth trying to dissipate with words.

‘Now that I’ve woken you up, come and sit here with me for a while, until I get sleepy.’ And she pulled over another stool and placed it next to hers. I sat down to her left and, from that angle, had a partial view of her décolletage, that is, a partial view of her right breast and, of course, her cleavage, I no longer felt ashamed that my eyes should give priority to such things, but I still only looked out of the corner of one eye, it’s best not to be too impertinent initially, a certain degree of dissembling is required on all occasions, even when you know how things will end or why you have come, why two people have come together. Not that this was the case then, not at all. I had no idea (I was merely accumulating elemental desires, if such a thing is necessary when one is young), and at that point, nothing of the sort would have occurred to her either, she was merely fighting against her insomnia and perhaps thinking about nothing; and ignoring everything else and barely noticing the outside world is enough of an occupation in itself. She was forty-one or forty-two, and very few women then bothered to undergo absurd, counter-productive surgical operations, and what I could see of her décolletage was natural, it moved, rose and fell with every breath, was simultaneously firm and soft, still firm and abundant, tremulous and apparently soft, and yet Muriel found this repellent, or perhaps not; after all, on that other night, he had groped her breasts, although his intention then had been to humiliate and belittle. I would never have touched her like that, certainly not, not on that night or this night or any other. The tips of my fingers were itching to touch her just then, no, they weren’t, that’s just a manner of speaking. She remained silent for a few seconds, busy lighting her cigarette, then she inhaled deeply and her breast rose visibly, that is, both breasts rose, but I had to make do with imagining her left breast under her nightdress; and then she referred for the first time to my intervention: ‘So, you saved my life. You were the one who stole me from death.’