Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

Those are also thoughts appropriate to youth, when you are too new to the world to be able to believe in the things that happen to you or in your own actions, when everything seems improbable and as if it belonged to someone else, as if our experiences were not really ours and were simply on loan to us. It’s not just a young man’s heart that is on hold, it’s also his consciousness. It takes a while, a long while, for it to find its proper place and settle in, and it’s years before we realize that what is happening to us really is happening to us, and that we are not just spectators in the dark, staring at a stage or a screen or at a book lit by a lamp.

It had to be now, so that it would actually happen and not run the risk of failing to happen, for it to cease being a promise or the future or mere imminence. I proceeded cautiously — spurred on by my impatience — and gently, so as not to frighten her, I drew Beatriz towards my chambre de bonne , into the small room that would be almost unknown to her, for no one tended to visit me in my place of exile; it was best if the irreversible — although it was not as yet irreversible, not yet — didn’t happen in the kitchen, where someone might come in or peer round the door, for wakefulness could assail any of the apartment’s inhabitants who wanted to drink or eat something or stand at the open fridge door for a few seconds to cool off; we were too exposed there, it was a communal area, Flavia’s territory and a transit point. I closed the door of my cubbyhole, but did not hear the usual click: I didn’t bother to close it properly, though, since nothing could be seen from the outside, and matters were now urgent. Almost in the same movement — it’s odd how we become so deft and efficient when it comes to preventing another person from reacting or retreating or waking — I removed her knickers and took off my jeans, but not my boxer shorts, there was no need, the fly was already open and in use, or indeed my shirt, since I hadn’t buttoned it up, and my chest would touch whatever there was to touch without impediment. I gave her another gentle push so that she fell backwards on to the bed and let me do as I pleased, just reaching out her arms — the bandages visible, those bandages — waiting to clutch me to her again, as soon as I had completed my minimal preparations. I slipped off the straps of her nightdress so as to see her bare breasts and to touch them with whatever part of my body she or I chose. But I saw that she wasn’t going to choose anything or guide me in any way. Then I drew back slightly and looked for a moment at her gleaming thighs, so close together. I parted them, carefully and resolutely, if such a combination is possible, and, while she once again enfolded me in a tight embrace, I thought: ‘Now it’s happened, my cock is inside her, nothing can now stop this happening, can prevent it from having happened.’ I wanted to see her face, although she clearly wasn’t interested in seeing mine, she couldn’t, with her eyes tight shut as they had been when she was with Van Vechten in the Sanctuary, except that there, he had been behind her when I saw her face, while I was in front. I tried to drive away that image, but for a few moments, it remained unpleasantly vivid, troubling and distracting me. The first physical sensations succeeded in repelling it a little, as did my thoughts, which were intent on convincing themselves of what was happening with their coarse, crude language: ‘Yes, I’m fucking Beatriz Noguera, my cock’s inside her cunt and there’s nothing to stop it now.’ She had denied me her mouth and continued to do so, but she kept kissing my eyelids, thus obliging me to keep them closed. I could see nothing and perhaps that sharpened my other senses, definitely my sense of touch, but also my hearing. I heard rapid footsteps close by, as if someone were running. I stopped for a moment so as to hear better, Beatriz noticed this, but obviously didn’t know the reason, lost in her own depths or thoughts, perhaps as she had been in the bathtub in the Hotel Wellington, who knows. Then I heard nothing more, they were evidently the footsteps of someone hurrying away — bare feet on the wooden floor — not of someone approaching. I turned my head to look at the door, it was closed, but not completely, it was open the tiniest crack through which no one could have seen anything.

‘What is it? Is something wrong?’ Beatriz asked quietly.

‘No, no, it’s nothing.’ I didn’t want to alarm her, to put her to flight, that would have been disastrous.

But someone might have heard something. There had been no words spoken between us, but perhaps some louder-than-usual breathing and a faint interjection or groan, despite Beatriz’s discreet silence and my efforts to make not a sound, because I had not, for a moment, forgotten that there were three children in the apartment. I hoped desperately that the footsteps had been Flavia’s and not the children’s; she was of an age not to be shocked or to be less shocked, or perhaps she already knew or suspected or assumed. I was aware, though, that those fleet, barefoot steps were more like those of a child or an adolescent than of a grown woman. ‘Damn,’ I thought, ‘one of them probably woke up and went looking for Beatriz, if so, I hope it was Tomás or, if not him, then Alicia, they probably wouldn’t have fully understood what was going on, wouldn’t have put two and two together; if it was Susana, though, she will have sized up the situation and will now be lying awake in her bed, her cheeks burning, listening for her mother to return to her bedroom. Whatever the truth, there’s no undoing the situation; I’ll feel embarrassed tomorrow, but today is not tomorrow. This is my moment, and I have to get back to the business in hand.’

The body lying underneath me required my attention, indeed it was demanding or hijacking it, and in those circumstances, it was impossible to remain absent for very long, not even after a brief fright. I took advantage of the fact that I had raised my head, thus preventing Beatriz from kissing my eyelids, and I looked down at her face, the better to retain the moment, the bold eyebrows, the very thick eyelashes, which were neither turned back on themselves nor curled, the straight nose so charmingly retroussé, the full, wide mouth that revealed — a dreamy half-smile — the slightly widely spaced teeth that unwittingly lent her a vaguely salacious air, in marked contrast to her otherwise childish face, one of those mouths that would instantly lead many men to imagine unexpected and inappropriate scenes, often quite against their perfectly respectful efforts to suppress such scenes entirely, except that I didn’t need to suppress or imagine anything, I was performing one of those scenes with her, and she looked even more attractive than usual, as happens with so many women who, in such situations, grow more beautiful and more youthful, her lips fuller and redder and more porous, her skin so young and firm that I again had to curse those footsteps that had forced me to think of Susana, because for a few seconds I had the disquieting feeling that I was with her and not with her mother, of whom she was the very image: the same features, the same candid expression, the daughter already promising — already blossoming into — the same intimidating, explosive body that was now so closely connected to mine. And I was once more assailed by a feeling of incongruousness: when I looked at Beatriz’s face and, where my perspective allowed, at her breasts, hips, thighs and buttocks, I realized that her features were not in keeping with her curvaceous body; they seemed to demand a less powerful, more moderate trunk, abdomen and legs, and her insolent curves a less innocent, ingenuous face. And in Susana, who was so much younger, that divergence would become more marked as soon as she was a little older. I don’t know what was wrong with me: the mother led me to think about the daughter at that most inopportune of moments. However, I did not forget about the former, not at all, not for an instant: I carefully noted everything so that I could file it away in my memory. It’s still there, as clear as clear, even though many years have passed, even though it’s accompanied by many other memories, and even though she has been dead for nearly the same number of years.