Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

‘We had a falling-out. Harry’s a slave-driver, of course, but I can hardly claim I didn’t know that already,’ was all he would say. Then he had the decency to add: ‘In large part, it’s my fault. And Beatriz’s, needless to say, she couldn’t have chosen a worse time for her “performance”, and I fell for it; she really chose her moment. But don’t ask me any more questions, I don’t want to talk about it. Oh, and you’d better start thinking about looking for another job, Juan.’ The succession of verbs indicated a certain delicacy, or a desire to break the news gently and not put me under any pressure. ‘I doubt I’ll be offered another project for a while, and I’m afraid you’re not going to be needed. But there’s no rush, I don’t want to cause you any problems. You can stay here until you find something else, and when you do, tell me when it would suit you to leave, I leave it in your hands. I just felt it was fair to give you plenty of notice.’

His bad mood lasted for weeks. All consideration or concern, his sudden show of affection (if you can call it that), all solicitude ended. Instead, he was abusive and loathsome to her on the slightest excuse, as if he regretted the truce he’d called after the fright she gave him at the Hotel Wellington, after the panic that had obliged him to go haring down Calle Velázquez and suffer the indignity of having to run even that short distance. Fortunately, he had few opportunities to wound her, because he was rarely at home; every day he summoned the telephonist-cum-accounts-clerk-cum-representative-cum-housekeeper, Mercedes by name, with whom he shared his office. He went there straight after breakfast, but I have no idea what he did or if he stayed there. I had the impression that Towers’s insulting behaviour and his own foul mood had spurred him on, for far from giving up, he was in furious pursuit of finance for another film; perhaps he and Mercedes spent all day making phone calls and arranging meetings with more curers of ham and more breeders of fighting bulls, with canners of cockles and representatives of drinks manufacturers, whose drinks he promised would appear in every shot, with the label clearly visible, or perhaps he would again resort to the imperial Cecilia Alemany, to try to win her over with some clever and less pedantic tactic, as well as courting all kinds of professional and amateur producers, the former all thieving megalomaniacs, the latter all delusional megalomaniacs. Perhaps he spent the day chasing after such individuals. He didn’t usually come home until late anyway, sometimes not until the small hours (poker games and nightclubs, I assumed), and he rarely took me with him. I didn’t know if he preferred me not to see him humbling himself before the wealthy or if he wanted to get used to no longer having me there, or if his anger also extended to me, because I had been the unwitting instrument of his wife’s salvation, perhaps he thought she might finally have succeeded on the third attempt. There were times when it occurred to me that Muriel would have liked to see her dead. This was doubtless a passing phase, but while it lasted, his fury and spite only intensified.

What there couldn’t be, though, was any suspicion on his part that my relations with Beatriz had changed, because they didn’t change at all. After that insomniac night, even before Muriel came back, Beatriz treated me exactly as if nothing had happened or as if that night had never existed. As though she had retreated into the painting again, into that flat, long-past dimension, and had never become flesh — texture and tremor — nor had pressed foot, thigh or breast against me in my present dimension. And I never dared to attempt another approach or to mention what had occurred: I sensed that, if I did, I might be confronted by a response along the discouraging, disconcerting lines of: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Juan. You must have dreamed it, young De Vere. You youngsters tell yourself such stories. Don’t be silly.’ I didn’t find this so very hard to accept. Although I treasured and still retain the images and sensations of what went on in my little room and in the kitchen, I knew that certain looks and attitudes were not allowed and would be deemed inappropriate given my age, position or rank, and it wasn’t that difficult to give them up, to dismiss rather than repress them, and to adopt a veiled, neutral gaze. Beatriz gradually went back to her normal life, resumed her teaching, her outings with Rico or with Roy or with her women friends, from whom she managed to conceal that suicidal episode, telling them that she had been away for a few weeks with Muriel in Barcelona. She also resumed her solitary walks, smartly dressed and in her high heels — the very image of misery, I always thought — but I felt less inclined to follow her, less curious, because I already had what I wanted, although up until then I had never admitted to myself that I did want what I now had — sometimes we discover this only once we have it. I imagined — no, I was sure — that she would continue occasionally to visit Van Vechten at the Sanctuary of Darmstadt — there was now an added link between them, that of saviour and saved, although not necessarily a very alluring one — and whoever it was in Plaza del Marqués de Salamanca, or to drive to El Escorial or La Granja or Gredos on her Harley-Davidson; on some afternoons, I would watch her from the balcony as she rode off. She was, it seemed to me, doomed.

Needless to say, following that night of fantasy, I tried to detect any changes in the behaviour or looks or words of the three children or of Flavia, to see which of them might have been the owner of those fleet, barefoot steps, while I was inside Beatriz, deep inside without a condom or anything; as I said, AIDS was unknown at the time and it never occurred to anyone to take such prosaic precautions. I noticed no change in any of them — no hostility or reproach or distrust, no words open to interpretation — although I did occasionally have the feeling that the girls were looking at me with more curiosity or attention than usual, but that might just have been my imagination or simply that I’d never before stopped to look at them looking at me, as I then did. It was not so very odd that a couple of adolescent girls should fancy a slightly older young man who spent so much time in their home. There was nothing strange either in them having a secret crush on him, that’s perfectly normal.

I bumped into José Manuel Vidal one day when Professor Rico had dragged me off to keep him company until his lunch date with two or three academicians whom he judged to be particularly stupid and with whom, for that same reason, he had to be helpful and flattering as long as his patience lasted, which was not very long at all, though he would probably achieve exactly the opposite effect and they would all be sworn enemies by the time dessert was served. These were academicians from the Real Academia Española, of which he planned to be a member within, at most, six years, despite his relative youth; there were other academicians whom he greatly respected, and since he considered them to be intelligent people, he assumed they would admire him equally unreservedly and so felt there was no need for him to win them round. He had dropped in at the apartment to while away the time, but finding that Eduardo was at his office and Beatriz was out teaching, he persuaded me to join him for an aperitif at the Balmoral, although I can’t remember now if that was or is in Calle de Hermosilla or in Calle Ayala, or if it closed a few years ago or remains open, because it’s been many years since I sat at its tables or its bar.

The Professor was in full flow, heaping elaborate insults on some of his Barcelona colleagues (some of whom he had once favoured, but now regretted doing so), when Vidal came over to us, friendly and smiling and slightly teasing, as was his way, at least with me. He was about seven years older than me (so he would have been about thirty at the time) and bore a remarkable resemblance to Paul McCartney: his nose, cheeks, even his eyes were rather like the ex-Beatle’s, except that his skin was a little lined or pockmarked. His Republican family had always been good friends with mine, especially with my aunt and uncle, and he and I had known each other since we were children or, rather, since I was a child and he was an adolescent. The difference in age meant that, while we had never considered ourselves to be friends exactly, that same age difference allowed him to treat me in a fraternal fashion, taking on the role of older brother. He was like one of those people you’ve known all your life and with whom you tend not to make any special arrangements to meet up, but with whom there’s always an immediate sense of deep trust and familiarity whenever you do run into them. His grandfather, an ophthalmologist and lawyer (the first career, oddly enough, didn’t earn him enough to live on in the 1920s and 30s), had ended up in prison at the end of the Civil War, and on his release, he was further punished by being banned from exercising either of his two professions, and so in order to survive, he had to set up one of those agencies that helps people deal with labyrinthine Spanish bureaucracy. His grandmother, for her part, had had all her hair shaved off before being sent to clean the Falangists’ latrines. As for their son, Vidal Secanell’s father, he had been charged with sedition because, as a very young man, he had fought for the Republican side; luckily for him, though, the case against him was dismissed. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, he had set up a branch in Mexico of the record company Hispavox and made a fortune, which meant that he could send Vidal to a good school and to study medicine in Houston, which served him very well when it came to working towards his specialism, cardiology. Despite his family antecedents, Vidal had got on well and met with no difficulties, thanks to hard work, efficiency and a certain astuteness, that is, an ability to dissemble when necessary and not to antagonize those people he despised for professional or political reasons. Unlike Rico, who gloried in proud insolence or frank impertinence or gleeful arrogance, Vidal was one of those people who could put any antipathies, not to mention moral judgements, on ice. Such people reserve such judgements for when they’re needed and bring them out at the propitious moment. And I clearly constituted a propitious moment, even if only because of our long fraternal acquaintance.