Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

‘No, you don’t have the right,’ said Muriel, ‘but you won’t be able to help yourself. You will make a judgement, even if you don’t pronounce it. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, what is it that you keep looking at?’ He had noticed that I kept staring to my right, at the door.

‘Oh, nothing. There are a few books over there that need putting back on the shelves. You know what a fiend I am for order. I’ll just go and tidy them up. Sorry.’

I got to my feet and went over to a small revolving bookshelf to the left of the door, where Muriel, who was something of a bibliophile, kept a few of his favourite first editions, or ones signed or inscribed by the author. The bookshelf was on a lower level than the glass panes I was looking at, but my excuse worked. As I walked past the door, the figure on the other side immediately retreated or disappeared briefly from view. I was pretty sure it was Beatriz; she must have come in without our noticing, and when she heard the murmur of our voices, she must have stopped to see if she could glean something of our conversation. I pretended to put the books back on the shelves and then returned to my place at the desk. A moment later, I saw the pink smudge reappear, like an unfinished pastel portrait.

‘For heaven’s sake, leave them be.’

‘Sorry. Do go on, please. What happened? What fault did she commit?’

‘Um,’ he said, ‘um’, as if he were a hesitant Englishman. ‘Well, the first fault was mine, if falling in love is a fault, given that it’s almost always involuntary. It can sometimes be deliberate, but that’s pretty rare. Months passed and more months, and Beatriz still couldn’t leave her father on his own. We postponed the wedding or decided, at any rate, not to fix a date, not until the situation was resolved, although it was quite hard to see how that would happen. Her father was feeling weak, bewildered, ashamed and indecisive. He had aged ten years, according to Beatriz; his hair had turned white, lines had appeared on his face as if by magic, he had lost both his physical and mental agility and seemed to be making no progress at all. And of course I carried on with my life here, you can’t go on endlessly waiting for someone, especially when they’re such a vast distance away and you can’t see them or even hear their voice from time to time, something that’s so easy now … I must confess, too, that misfortunes have a cooling, distancing effect, and if they continue for too long, you end up fleeing them … I was given the chance to make my second film and threw myself into that — films were made very quickly then, in three or four weeks, sometimes less, but five at most, apart from the editing and all that … Anyway, I fell madly in love with another woman, it doesn’t matter who she was.’ — ‘A woman who deserves my complete confidence. A former friend, a former actress, although she wasn’t an actress when I met her, that came later,’ I remembered or thought. ‘A former love. The love of my life, as people say,’ he had said. But I preferred not to interrupt him with an unnecessary question. — ‘I experienced a passion I had never known until then. I’m not going to explain to you what it feels like. If you haven’t yet experienced it yourself — and it rarely appears before you’re thirty — it will sound to you like certain fervid pop songs, shrill ballads, cheap, trite literature. And if you have, well, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s very dull to describe, just as sex is. Actually experiencing those things is fascinating, but talking about them is tedious, the same tired old story, with the occasional change of character or cast, but few variants. It’s a very bothersome thing, when you look back at it, when you’ve got beyond it. Later on, it’s even hard to imagine yourself in that state. But while it lasts, it’s all-absorbing. You feel sucked in, you’re under the illusion that real life consists entirely of that, and everything else pales into insignificance. You even rather look down upon those who don’t feel passion, you fall into a kind of hubris. I was quite clear that not only did I want to be with that woman, I wanted to be with her for ever, imagine that. And she felt the same. Our passion grew and showed no signs of diminishing. I had no choice but to break off my engagement and put an end to our relationship. Once I had discovered passion, staying with Beatriz would have meant unhappiness for us both. It would not be a pleasant task, it never is. But, given her situation, it became a mountain I couldn’t climb.’

Muriel was not studying the painting now, but the ceiling. He was speaking almost as if to himself. He stopped. I glanced to my right, quickly so that he wouldn’t notice. The smudge was still there behind the glass, Beatriz’s legs must have been getting tired, weary of standing, she had been there a while. Although she did have strong legs, which would help; and she had probably taken off her shoes too. She must have been able to hear some of our conversation, she would hardly have stayed there all that time, if, as well as being barely able to see us, she couldn’t hear us either. I thought she would probably catch only fragments, for Muriel’s voice scarcely rose above floor level and I hardly spoke. ‘It must be worth her while though,’ I thought, ‘to catch the odd thread of this story that she knows already.’

‘And I assume you didn’t climb it, the mountain, I mean,’ I said.

‘And what makes you think that, may I ask?’ Muriel retorted angrily.

‘Well, Eduardo, because you married Beatriz. You had children together. You’ve been married for years. What other conclusion could I come to?’

‘Don’t push your luck, young De Vere, don’t push your luck,’ he repeated, audibly offended, and he sat up again like a spring; I thought he was going to get up altogether, and that he would then notice the blurred face at the door and not finish his story. ‘Do you really think all my resentment stems from my having lacked the courage to speak, that I ruined my life out of delicatesse? That I avoided an unpleasant scene out of cowardice? How could I possibly have blamed her for that situation, man? Who do you take me for?’ I said nothing, and he calmed down and resumed his supine position on the floor, his liking for which never ceased to surprise me. He recovered his serene tone, grave, almost mournful, a feeling he could barely disguise. ‘No, I behaved honourably, as far as I could, although no one can be expected to do so indefinitely. I wrote her a long letter explaining what had happened, what was happening to me. I tried to word it as affectionately as possible, regretting the pain I was causing her, explaining that this was the last thing I would ever have wanted, well, the usual things one says when giving someone painful news. I couldn’t conceal it from her. I told her to stay in America, not to come back. Or not to come back because of me, because I wouldn’t be here for her, that it was all over between us. I assumed that if she stayed in America, she would soon forget about me and get on with her life. After all, she’d been brought up there and it was more her home than Spain was. The very people who had ousted her father would consider her an innocent victim and help her with scholarships or find her a job or whatever. Not that I felt comfortable about it, how could I? I marked the letter “Express” and prepared to wait. I half-expected an urgent call, not that it would have made any difference, you can’t talk about something like that with the meter ticking implacably onwards. In those days, you thought carefully before making a long-distance call, and tended to speak as quickly as possible, “You’re going to bankrupt yourself,” you’d say if someone was dragging things out. When I assumed the letter must have arrived, though, there was no phone call, but after a few days, I received a telegram. I opened it, convinced it was her reply, a scream, an insult, an entreaty, a reproach, a threat, a plea to wait until we saw each other again, to give her a chance to win me back, because distance distorts and displaces. But no. The telegram said: “Dad died last night. Another heart attack. Things to sort out here. Home in two weeks. Get everything ready. Love you.” ’