“I’ll know how it went for him, but not for you. It’s different.”
That left the way open for us to see and phone each other again, to talk, how unfortunate and how lucky, one step leads to another step quite innocently and, in the end, they become poisoned, not always, perhaps not the steps that I might take towards her or Luisa towards me, perhaps not this time, we think and go on thinking until the end of the time allotted to us, our conclusion. I hung up, we hung up and I sat down to wait for the phone call. I didn’t just sit by the phone, I got up, I moved around, I went to the fridge, I opened a bottle, I took a sip, I went back to the living room, I picked up the tape in order to throw it out as I had told Luisa I would, but I didn’t, I left it where it was, on a shelf, you don’t always have to do what you say you’ll do, there’s always time, later on, no period of waiting is long once it’s over. After three minutes, the phone rang, I let the machine answer first, I was sure it would be Deán. Instead, I heard Celia’s voice beginning to leave me a message. We’re talking to each other again, we even see each other occasionally, but we talk fairly often, a telephonic relationship now that cohabitation is over, that way the only temptations are verbal ones. Apparently, she’s going to marry again, then I’ll stop sending her cheques or giving her cash when we do see each other, she’ll have a wealthy husband of whom I am doubtless already a co-bridegroom, he’s the owner of an expensive restaurant which I will never visit, or so I think, no needs unmet, or so I hope. I picked up the phone and spoke to her, my line was busy again and I was safe for a few more moments, just a few, she was about to go out and just wanted to tell me something that I already knew: the tedious actor for whom I sometimes work had left me five messages on the answering machine, he was trying to get in touch with me urgently – I didn’t want him to find me that day – when there’s no other way of getting hold of me, some people still try to locate me through Celia as if she were still my wife (just as Ferrán tried phoning Marta when Deán had gone to London without leaving his address, I was a later ear-witness to that). Now we know little about each other’s lives, Celia and I, we don’t ask each other any questions, we wait until the other tells us something, perhaps the last time any concrete questions were asked was two and a half years ago, the day after my furtive night-time visit to her home which was once my home, she called me despite having suggested the previous night that I should be the one to call her in the morning to arrange to have lunch together and then talk about whatever it was, not at half past three in the morning as I wanted. That’s what she had said, but she didn’t mention any possible meeting when she phoned, she wanted to talk about one thing only, she asked me very seriously: “Listen, Víctor, you’ve still got the keys to the apartment, haven’t you?” “No,” I lied, “I threw them in the rubbish ages ago, in a fit of rage, one day when I got angry. Why?” “Are you sure?” she said. “Are you sure that you didn’t use them to get into the apartment last night?” Normally, I would have hit the roof or asked her if she had gone mad, it was one thing phoning her at some unearthly hour after months of silence, saying that I wanted to see her and quite another that, despite her refusal, I should turn up there with no warning, without even ringing the doorbell, I could have answered her in an offended tone: “Are you mad? That’s hardly my style.” Instead I replied soberly, too soberly not to betray myself, I think: “No, why, what happened, it wasn’t me.” Sometimes I lie and not always very well, I still have those keys, although she would doubtless have immediately had the locks changed, that very day. I still have the tape too, I haven’t thrown it out, and Marta Téllez’s bra that I took with me by mistake, from time to time I sniff it, but it doesn’t smell of anything now, and the yellow post-it that says “Wilbraham Hotel”, I might stay there next time I happen to go to London. What doesn’t remain, though, is Marta’s smell that lingered after her, smells don’t last very long and are hard to remember, although one does remember other things through them very intensely when they reappear, though it’s unlikely that the smells associated with the dead will ever be repeated. Celia didn’t insist, she just said “Fine” and hung up, just as I said “I know, if he bothers you again, just tell him that you’ve no idea where I am,” when she told me about how impatient the tedious actor had been, and then I didn’t hang up, we both hung up at the same time, we get on well now, at a distance. I don’t usually like talking about Celia.
I took a sip from my bottle, I went to light a cigarette but the gas in my lighter had run out, I looked for matches in my bedroom and from there I heard the phone ring again, I reached it at the same time as the answering machine leapt into action with my voice saying: “This is a recorded voice. If you want to leave a message, please do so after the tone. Thank you.” That’s what Deán heard before he began speaking and he said this, which was recorded on the tape: “It’s Eduardo Deán. I’ve spoken to Luisa and now I want to speak to you.” I realized at once that he was addressing me as “tú” the way one does when one feels superior to someone or one is owed something or one feels insulted, then, one tends to do so only mentally. “I know you’re there, lurking somewhere, a few seconds ago the line was busy, it’s up to you if you pick the phone up or not.” He paused to give me time to do so and I took advantage of that pause, I picked up the phone and said ridiculously: “Yes, hello, who is it?”
“I’ve just told you who it is,” said the exceptionally deep and now rather irritated voice, perhaps he had grown irritated while I was on the phone and he had tried to dial several times, or perhaps the irritation was more deepseated than that, it was as if he had said: “I’ve just told you who it is, you idiot,” it made no difference that he had omitted the last couple of words, he was clearly thinking them. Perhaps he was going to continue treating me like an employee, like an underling, his voice on the telephone had more depth and weight than that of Vicente Mena, his co-fornicator, it was like fingers playing a double bass, he kept his composure, his irritation was well under control.
“I’m sorry, I was in the other room and I didn’t manage to hear what you said to the machine. Who is this?” Perhaps this time I lied better, the truth was not so far from the lie.
“It’s Eduardo Deán. I’ve spoken to Luisa and now I want to speak to you.” He said exactly what he had said before: perhaps he had been rehearsing it for a while before dialling my number. “Could we meet tomorrow?” It wasn’t really a question, more of a communique: “We could meet tomorrow,” like someone making a concession, not consulting or asking.
“Fine. What time? I’m free in the late morning and then for a while after lunch.”
“That’s impossible,” he replied, “I’m working all day. It would be best if you could come to the apartment at about eleven o’clock at night, the boy will be in bed by then.” Those were clearly orders, I could either refuse or obey. “You know where it is,” he added.
“All right,” I said obediently. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
But he had already hung up. It was exactly the opposite of what Luisa had recommended I do, I was tempted to call her later on to tell her about our failure and thus make it hers too in effect, but it was best to take no further steps unless they were entirely justified (any courtship looks pathetic, the false front covering up something that is pure instinct), I would prefer her to take any unjustifiable steps.
I got out of the taxi in Conde de la Cimera, like the first time I had gone there and unlike the second time, both times at night. I had arrived a little early, at ten to eleven, I looked up and I saw the now-familiar lights in the living room and the bedroom, the balcony illuminated from within, I preferred to wait until the exact time arranged in case Deán was still putting Eugénio to bed, although that night the child would have no reason to delay things or keep guard, he would not have to fight against sleep again for the sake of a woman until he was grown up, or at least an adolescent. Using my matches, I lit a cigarette and went over to the doorway, and walked calmly up and down in front of it, I h
ad spent a week preparing myself for this, possibly longer. I had snorted a line of coke before leaving the house so as to feel more alert, I’d slept very badly, I hardly ever use cocaine, but I had asked Ruibérriz for a quarter of a gram when we were at the races, he’s usually got some (“Do you want a snort?” he asks me sometimes), unusual situations or situations you have simply thought about too much call for unusual measures. The effect wouldn’t last, the alertness would wear off after a while, perhaps precisely when the conversation became more difficult and when I most needed to be alert. I stood in the fog smoking, then flicked the cigarette end away. I was just getting ready to press the intercom button, when I saw the lift doors open and two figures emerge from it in the half-darkness, they turned on the light in the doorway and came towards me, I didn’t press the button, I waited for the young woman with the gracefully centrifugal gait and the beige gloves to open the door for me after pressing the bell which, some nights before, at a much later hour, had taken me a while to find, she was accompanied by the same man who had said he couldn’t take it any longer and whom she had told to piss off, words are nearly always rhetorical or exaggerated or metaphorical and, therefore, inexact, he obviously could take it and she both clung on to and put up with him, they were still together, they were going out together while I was going in, the opposite way round this time, she must be the most active of the tenants, always up and down, by this time she must take me for a fellow tenant, she recognized me and said spontaneously, smiling: “Hello,” and I said “Hi,” the good-looking man didn’t greet me today either, he was either extremely unfriendly or just distracted, perhaps he was still absorbed in the kisses they had exchanged upstairs and even while they were waiting for the lift, still with the front door open, even though neither of them would be staying behind this time or separating, they were going out together. Perhaps he was thinking of the rumpled bed from which he had just emerged and about his own neat bed.
I went upstairs and rang the bell and Deán immediately opened the door as if he had been waiting for my arrival and spying on the comings and goings of the lift through the spy hole. He was in shirtsleeves but still wearing a tie – slightly loosened – like a husband who has just got in from work and has only had time to take off his jacket. If Marta had been alive, I thought, she would perhaps have been in the kitchen with her apron on (I saw her in an apron), scraping off the plates or bustling about the house, with him following her from room to room while he told her things or they argued or he asked her something, I haven’t always lived alone. He ushered me in without greeting me, although he offered me his left hand to shake and said “Sit down”, pointing to the sofa on which the boy, small as an ant, had watched his videos of Tintin and Haddock and had fallen asleep after his long and finally fruitless battle, he asked me if I wanted a drink, I said I’d like a whisky with ice and water if possible. The apartment hadn’t changed, I thought, men never change anything, I didn’t want to look too hard, it didn’t seem proper, I didn’t want to remember or recall her there. At the table at which Marta and I had eaten our slow supper, there was still a pudding plate, empty – the dirty teaspoon still in it, askew – on a small table cloth the size of a large napkin: Deán still had enough energy and was in good enough spirits to sit down and eat whatever was left for him by the disgruntled cleaning lady or by his solicitous sisters-in-law, I almost never have lunch or supper at home, but if I do make myself something, I eat it quickly, standing up in the kitchen, a sign of debility and depression, it’s bad for the stomach. He cleared away the plate and the table cloth before pouring me a whisky, all I’d had to eat was a McChicken at McDonalds, I lack his aplomb or perhaps it’s just that my cleaning lady is lazy and I don’t have any sisters-in-law, nor do I have a child to inspire pity and to make me a participant in the feelings he inspires. Deán returned from the kitchen and poured me a whisky, he rolled up his shirtsleeves – usually a threatening gesture, or so it always was traditionally – he poured another for himself, without water, he still didn’t sit down, he remained standing up, with one elbow resting on a shelf, looking at me, I tried to hold his gaze, all this had happened in silence, silence is permissible as long as one of the people keeping silent is busy doing things, even if they’re only getting out a bottle and a couple of glasses, he was holding his glass in his hand. From the moment I’d walked through the door, my eyes had drifted involuntarily towards the corridor, towards the open door of the boy’s bedroom, he would be sleeping now, dreaming the weight of his father, utterly alone, and, perhaps, of his young aunts, of his eternally young mother, growing increasingly tenuous, her image ever more nebulous. Deán suddenly asked me if I wanted to take my raincoat off, I still had it on, creasing the seat of it, the suggestion made me lose all hope – this wouldn’t be a matter of minutes – I handed it over to him together with my scarf, he went out and hung them in the wardrobe where the scarf had hung once before along with my overcoat, it had been colder then, on these misty days you only need a raincoat. I remembered the pith helmet I had seen in that wardrobe, Teobaldo Disegni de Túnez, it was from the 1930s, I was on the point of asking him where he had got it, but I didn’t, a remark like that would be tempting fate. He came back into the living room, he leaned one elbow on the shelf again, he was looking at me in exactly the same way as he had in the restaurant, when I was still no one, and there was a silence between us then too, a silence made more bearable because the others were talking, Luisa and Téllez. He looked at me, therefore, as if I held no secrets for him, or perhaps he was weighing me up, he was doubtless trying to view me through Marta’s eyes, when she was alive, he was trying to find out where my attraction or charm lay, trying to understand what his wife had sought and wanted that night. For the moment, there was no sign of scorn or anger or mockery, nor of curiosity either, he looked at me with penetration and apprehension, as if, from his great height, he were absorbing or verifying something and taking it all on board, I was looking up at him from the viewpoint of a low-angle shot in the cinema – Orson Welles was the master of that – his Tartar eyes, the colour of beer, seemed expectant and incredulous, the kind of eyes that force one to go on talking – except that I had not yet started – his cleft chin tilted as if he were awaiting a response, the lines or threads or incisions in his woody skin clearly visible, it would be like tree bark one day or was already on the way to that, his comminatory face gradually coming to resemble the scarred surface of a schooldesk.
But when he finally spoke (and he began with a question), the irritation or tension of the previous night’s telephone conversation instantly reappeared, as if he had kept it alive and intact during the twenty-four or more hours since he had hung up, as if he had not gone to bed or been to work or seen anyone in the meantime and had merely been waiting for me all night and all day, pacing up and down, occasionally peering through the spy hole and punching the palm of one hand like a boxer before a contest or as a film director told me once that the actor Jack Palance used to do between takes during filming so as not to lose concentration and energy, whilst another famous actor with whom he worked, George Sanders, would smoke cigarettes, reclining in a hammock, one hand behind his head, two very different methods, one born of nervousness and the other of indolence, but both produced excellent results on film; Sanders ended up committing suicide in Barcelona, having written a note in which he told everyone to go to hell (a horrible death, a foreign death, “Stay where you are, in the shit,” was what he was saying), I think Palance is still alive or else enjoyed a long life.
“So she didn’t die alone, then?” Deán said at last, and immediately took a sip of his whisky: it was a gesture intended to cover his mouth and make it seem as if he himself had not spoken, as if the words had been uttered by no one or by the television, although that was switched off. The way he asked the question meant that I couldn’t be sure what answer he was looking for.
“No, I was with her, surely Luisa told you that,” I answered, and I, in turn, took a sip of my whi
sky, doubtless in order to cover my mouth too and to get my turn over with as quickly as possible.
“What was the last thing she said, can you remember?”
“Oh God, the child,” I thought.
“She expressed her concern for the child,” I said.
Deán stroked one cheek with his hand, as if pretending to think deeply.
“Ah, the child,” he said, “that’s logical. And then you neither called me nor anyone else. It didn’t occur to you, which is perfectly understandable, isn’t it? Perfectly understandable.”
There was an example of Deán’s infinite understanding or he may have been putting it on, enough time had passed for him to be able to resort to irony.
“Look, the fact is I did call you, perhaps Luisa didn’t tell you that.” I decided to continue to address him formally as “usted”, at that point I didn’t foresee insulting him in word or thought, and I could always start calling him “tú”, as he had done with me from the start, if I needed to. It was a great help being able to refer to Luisa. “I found your number, you know that, I got through to your hotel in London even though it was very late, they said that there was no one by the name of Deán staying there, that there was no room reserved in that name. Only later did it occur to me that they might have booked you in under your second surname, if you give two surnames in England, the one that counts is the last one, you know, on your driving licence or your visa. But I didn’t dare to ring again that night.” I could have lied, I could have said I didn’t know his second surname (there was no reason why I should know even the first) and that, therefore, it would have been impossible for me to try again anyway, that way I would have been free of all responsibility as would everyone else, I wasn’t in fact responsible, nobody was, and that is why, perhaps, I told the truth. “What could I have said to you?” I added. “Think about it for a moment. What could I have said to you?” It didn’t seem to matter much to him that I had been with Marta (I was the one who alluded to her), or perhaps he had simply had much more time to come to terms with that fact than to acquire understanding or irony, and he merely took his anger for granted, that is, there was no need to express it or show it, no need for any dramatic gestures.