Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

‘Yes, I felt he knew more than he was telling us. But then it’s only normal that he should tread rather carefully, always allowing for a degree of indiscretion. After all, he’s often worked with him.’ Muriel shook his head, amused by the memory of that conversation, distracted. Yes, he had probably forgiven Towers, just as he had completely forgiven Van Vechten, without knowing exactly what he was forgiving, which always makes things easier, and without wanting to know either. If he wasn’t a man to bear a grudge, or to pass judgement on matters that didn’t affect him, and was even playing down the importance of having a film taken away from him, then his gross behaviour towards Beatriz for all those years was utterly inexplicable. But he had been about to explain and had got diverted. I grew impatient, afraid again that, at any moment, he might think better of it. I decided to lead him back to the matter in hand. ‘But you were saying that just months before your wedding, some grave incident occurred, some serious problem. I presume involving her father.’

He raised his head a little to look at me more directly. I had a sense that he was enjoying keeping me hanging on: now that he had agreed to tell me the story, he would do so at his own pace and in his own way. That is the prerogative of the one doing the telling, and the person listening has none at all, or only that of getting up and leaving. But I was not going to leave just yet.

‘I don’t know what could have got into the man. By this time, he was in his late forties, so hardly in the first flush of youth, but ardour takes a long time to fade. Or perhaps he just got fed up and lowered his guard. Anyway, after all those years of moderation, a university colleague caught him in Boston giving a blow-job to a man in some public toilets or maybe it was a cinema toilet, I’m not sure. Like any good liberal, this colleague didn’t rush off and report him to the police, but to the Board of Professors or whatever it’s called, or to the Chairman, although now I think they call him, absurdly enough, the Chairperson, so as not to seem sexist. Those New England colleges are so proud of their moral rectitude they end up being positively inquisitorial. You can imagine the scandal. Not that it was leaked to the press or anything, college rectitude wouldn’t allow that, and, besides, they didn’t want to frighten off any future students. But in those isolated places, in their little bubbles of lakes and woods, everyone knows everything. Not only was he dismissed, other universities in the area were warned about him, making it impossible for him to find a similar post. He was left without a job and without an income, depressed and stuck at home, shunned by most of his friends. And so Beatriz flew there urgently to see what she could do, not quite knowing what had happened. The telegram she received left her no choice; I can remember it clearly: ‘Dismissed from university. Situation desperate. Long story. Don’t phone. Come quickly.’ Her aunt and uncle helped her out with the air ticket, I couldn’t help much at the time because I still hadn’t come into the family money and lived more or less from day to day. She didn’t find out the details until she got there, and the people at the college had no alternative but to explain what had happened and her father had no alternative but to own up to her about his sexual proclivities, and about the fact that her mother wasn’t dead, although we’ve never found out anything more than that, because Beatriz never wanted to go looking for her. The lady, who would be in her sixties now, is probably out there somewhere, perhaps having had more children. Beatriz told me all this by letter, because, at first, we wrote to each other almost every day, or she did anyway. Her father was in a dreadful situation: either he had to move to the other side of the country, to some insignificant university that his colleagues had failed to notify, or … in short, disaster. We even discussed bringing him to Spain to live with us when we got married. Not the ideal start to married life, but we had to consider it as a possibility. Her aunt and uncle, her father’s sister and brother-in-law, who were both loyal franquistas , were outraged when they learned the nature of the offence. They made some comment that included the word “incorrigible”, so they must have known about him before, about his tastes, I mean. Anyway, probably as a result of the shame and the shock, Noguera had a heart attack about a week or so after Beatriz arrived. He survived, but was left very weak and in need of care. She stayed by his side, well, she was always a devoted daughter and continued to be, as daughters brought up solely by their father tend to be, regardless of how that father may have behaved. At least they weren’t in dire financial straits initially: they drew on the savings Noguera had accumulated during years of earning good American wages and making only modest expenditures, and hoped he would recover sufficiently for him to try his luck in Michigan or Oklahoma or New Mexico, or to return to Spain; no firm decision was made, and, besides, he was in no fit state to travel. Months passed. Her father was very slowly and gradually recovering, but he was still very frail, and Beatriz’s return continued to be postponed. Hand me a cigarette, will you, and an ashtray.’

He paused and I handed him my pack of cigarettes and put an ashtray on the floor beside him. He put aside his pipe, now extinguished, and took a cigarette, which he lit, inhaling deeply, then exhaling and aiming a couple of smoke rings up at the ceiling. He was one of those men who knew how to do that, like Errol Flynn and those other actors whose moustache he had copied as a young man and kept. He had combed his hair back with water, a clear parting through his thick hair. He lay there in silence, thinking. I decided to give him a prod, just in case:

‘Poor Beatriz,’ I said. ‘I still can’t see that she did anything deserving of punishment. On the contrary, she seems to have been an affectionate, loyal young woman.’

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at me rather haughtily, as if I’d said something impertinent.

‘You don’t see because we haven’t got there yet. If you’re going to be impatient and prejudge the situation, we’d better just drop the whole subject.’ I raised both my hands, palms open, as if surrendering or as though to protect myself, meaning: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ or ‘Truce, truce’ or ‘Take no notice of me.’ Again, in that gesture so characteristic of him, he tucked his thumb under his armpit like the tiny riding whip of a British officer, and added: ‘Of course, when we do get there, you, like her, will doubtless consider it to have been nothing, mere nonsense. You’re perhaps expecting something dramatic or terrible. Possibly even a crime, like in the movies. Well, it’s nothing like that. Just a lie and her vengeful, no, her impetuous subsequent revelation, far too many years later, when she would have done much better to keep it to herself. The tenuous facts of married life can also be very serious. And there are hundreds of such facts, so many that people often overlook them, because otherwise the relationship would collapse. I’m not one of those people. Well, I’ve overlooked others, like everyone else, but not that one.’

‘Tell me then, go on. Don’t worry, I’m not going to prejudge anything. I have no reason to, no right.’

He lay down again, feeling reassured, and it was then that I saw the smudge of a face, or someone’s head and shoulders, through the glass panes of the door, and because the panes were frosted I couldn’t make out who it was. When Muriel had summoned me to his side of the apartment, there had been no one else at home. The children had gone to a swimming pool, Flavia was out shopping and running various errands, and Beatriz had left as soon as she’d had breakfast without saying where she was going, certainly not to me. From Muriel’s supine position on the floor, that face lay outside his field of vision, that pink stain, which was not pressed against the glass, but a step or two away, so as not to attract attention or in the belief that it would remain undetected. But I could see it from where I was sitting at the desk. I wondered if that person could hear us, the doors were closed, but not completely; it was possible. I wasn’t sure whether to warn Muriel of that ghostly, distorted presence. ‘He’ll stop talking at once if I tell him,’ I thought, ‘and I still won’t know the story, and he may never again be in storytelling vein. I mustn’t risk it.’ When I looked harder at the pink smudge, I seemed to recognize the oval of Beatriz’s face, which I had seen once before through glass, except that then her face had been squashed against it and the glass had been clear, and her eyes had been tight shut while someone fucked her from behind: it hadn’t been me on that occasion, but the two memories combined and filled me with sudden shame — for Van Vechten in the Sanctuary and for me in my cubbyhole — so much so that I may have blushed. ‘Even if it is Beatriz,’ I thought, ‘there’ll be nothing new about Muriel’s version of events, nothing that he hasn’t flung in her face a thousand times for eight long years, it will be an old wound, if it is a wound.’ She had even admitted her guilt on that night of prowling and pleading, my first act of espionage: ‘I’m so sorry, my love, I’m so sorry I hurt you,’ she had said, and she had perhaps been sincere, or was it just a ploy? ‘I wish I could turn back the clock.’ That’s what we all wish sometimes, my love, to go back, have our time over, to change what that time held, all too often we’re the ones who decide what time holds and who determine how time will see us once it’s gone and has been definitively relegated to the past, and yet, as it’s happening, we can’t see it and can’t, therefore, picture it. In the end it will become an immutable image, full of hasty, random, twisted lines, and that’s how it will always appear to our eyes, or to the one eye in the back of our head, maritime blue or midnight blue. I decided not to warn him, not to tell him about the smudge, the face, the stain.