A Heart So White (23 page)

"Did you notice that at one point you can see his chin?" she said to me. "Here." She froze the image of "Bill" lowering his chin a fraction so that for an instant it appeared on the screen.

"Yes, I noticed it the other night," I replied. "It's almost like a cleft chin."

She held back the question for a second (but only a second).

"You couldn't recognize him from that alone, could you? If you saw him I mean. If you saw that face somewhere else."

"Of course not, how could you possibly recognize him?" I said. "Why?"

"Not even if you knew it was him? If you knew beforehand, I mean, that it must be him."

I looked at the chin frozen on the screen.

"Perhaps if you knew, yes, perhaps then you'd be able to. Why do you ask?"

Berta switched off the video with the remote control and the image disappeared (the image that she could flick back on at will). Her eyes were bright and lively again.

"Look, he really intrigues me this guy. He's a real son-of-a- bitch, but I might just send him what he wants. I've never done it for anyone, no one's ever dared ask straight out like that, in that way, and, as you can imagine, I've never responded with one of my own to any of the filthy videos I've received before. But it could be fun, just to do it once." Berta didn't want to dredge up any more justifications, instead she broke off and changed her tone of voice; she smiled. "My body would be recorded for posterity, even if only for a very brief posterity, everyone always ends up wiping tapes and using them again. But I'll take a copy for my old age."

"You're including your leg in this film for posterity, are you?"

"I'm not sure about the leg. The bastard!" Her face hardened for a moment when she swore (but only for a moment). "But before deciding, I need to see him, to know something more about him, it's really creepy that faceless bathrobe. I need to know what he looks like."

"But he says you can't see him until you send him your video and, even then, you can't be sure. He'll have to give you the OK, the swine." My face, I imagine, had been set hard from the beginning of the conversation and not only when I swore. And had been for three nights perhaps.

"I can't do anything because he's seen my video and knows my face. But he hasn't seen you, he doesn't even know you exist. We know the number of his mailbox, which he must visit every now and then. I've already found out where it is, it's at Kenmore Station, it's not that far. You could go there, identify the mailbox and keep a watch on it, wait there and see his face when he goes to pick up his mail."

Berta had said, "We know", she was including me in her curiosity and her interest, or perhaps there was more to it than that. She was assimilating me into herself.

"Are you mad? Who knows when he'll go there next, days might go by without him turning up. Are you expecting me to spend the whole day at the post office?"

Berta looked irritated. This didn't often happen. She'd decided what she had to do and would brook no opposition, not even an objection.

"No, that isn't what I meant. I just want you to go there a couple of times over the next few days, when you've nothing else to do, when you leave work, just for half an hour, and just see if you have any luck, that's all. At least give it a try. If you don't have any luck, fine, we'll forget it. But it's no big deal to try. He'll be waiting for my reply at the moment, the video that I'm not yet going to send him, he might drop by every day just to see if it's arrived. If he's here on business, he probably works nine to five, so he might well drop by the post office when he leaves work, after five o'clock, that's what I do. We might strike lucky." She'd gone back to using the plural, she'd said "we'll forget it". The look I gave her was doubtless more thoughtful than angry, because she smiled and added in a calmer voice: "Please." The half moon, the scar, however, had become very blue; I was almost tempted to try and wipe it from her cheek.

I went to the post office at Kenmore Station three times, the first occasion was on the following evening, after work, the second two days later, on the Thursday of that week, again after an exhausting day of interpreting. I didn't stay for half an hour, as Berta had recommended, but for nearly an hour on both occasions, victim to the fear that always grips people who wait in vain, the fear that at the very moment we leave, the person who's taken so long to arrive, will arrive, as doubtless happened with Miriam on that hot evening in Havana, when she was pacing up and down on the other side of the esplanade and Guillermo didn't appear and she didn't leave. Guillermo didn't appear on Tuesday or on Thursday, nor did "Bill" or "Jack" or "Nick" or Pedro Hernandez. In New York, however, at any time or place, there are enough suspicious-looking people or even people of criminal appearance for no one to take any notice of a man in a raincoat, carrying a newspaper and a book, standing in a post office where other people were busy picking up or delivering parcels and where, from time to time, someone would rush in, key in hand, to open his or her silver mailbox, thrust in an arm and scrabble about and sometimes bring out a booty of envelopes, at others only an empty hand. But none of those men in a hurry went to PO Box 524, which I'd located when I arrived.

"Just once more," Berta pleaded on the Friday night, a week after receiving the video; sometimes what threatened to drown us a week ago might just refloat us now, it can happen. 'Tomorrow morning, at the weekend. He might be so busy he can only go there on Saturdays."

"Or perhaps he has so much free time that he's been there every day at any one of the many times I wasn't. It makes no sense, I've waited an hour each time."

"I know you have and I can't tell you how grateful I am. But do it just once more, please, try it once more at the weekend. If he doesn't turn up, we'll forget it."

"But even if he does turn up, what good is it going to do you for me to see him? Do you want me to describe him to you? I'm no writer. And how am I supposed to know if you'd like him or not. Besides, I could lie to you and tell you that he was handsome when he's ugly or ugly when he's handsome, what difference does it make? You're not going to send him or not send him what he asks you because of that, because of my description of what he looks like. What will you do if I tell you he's a monster or looks weird? It'll make no difference. I might say that anyway, so that you don't send him anything and have nothing more to do with him."

Berta didn't respond to my last words, I assume because she didn't want to know why I'd rather she had nothing more to do with him, or rather because she knew and couldn't be bothered to hear why.

"I don't know, I don't know yet how I'll react to what you tell me. But I need to know more, I can't bear the idea that this guy has seen my face, in my apartment, and I haven't seen his, and that no one else has either, you, I mean. This Visible Arena guy is really smart. Once you've seen him I'll decide. I don't know what yet, but I'll decide then. I'd go myself, but he'd recognize me and then he wouldn't want to have anything more to do with me."

At that point, I would have paid good money to have nothing more to do with the whole affair.

The following morning, the Saturday of my fifth week there (it was October), I took a copy of the mammoth
New York Times
with me to Kenmore Station prepared to wait for another hour, or perhaps longer: people who wait, even if they do so unwillingly, always want to exhaust all possibilities, in other words, waiting is addictive. I placed myself, as I had done on Tuesday and Thursday, next to a column that served both as a support and as something to hide behind or to rest my foot against every now and then (bending my leg as though I was about to kick something), and I began to read the newspaper, but not so closely as not to notice the presence of each individual as he or she approached the mailbox, opened it slowly or impatiently and shut it again with satisfaction or repressed rage. Since it was Saturday there were fewer people and the footsteps sounded less timorous or more individual as they crossed the marble floor, so all I had to do was to look up every time some user of the mailboxes appeared. After some forty minutes (by then I was on the sports pages) I heard some footsteps that were more strident and individual than the others, like someone with metal tips on the soles of their shoes or like a woman in high heels. I looked up and saw a man approaching, the minute I saw him I knew he was Spanish, more than anything because of his trousers, Spanish trousers are unmistakable and have a very particular cut, I don't know exactly what it is about them, but they tend to make most of my compatriots look as if they have very straight legs and a very high bum (I'm not entirely sure that the cut flatters them). (But I thought all this later on.) Without even needing to look he went straight to
my
mailbox, no. 524, and got his key out from the pocket of his patriotic trousers. He might have been going to open no. 523 or no. 525, or so I thought while he was searching for his key (he tried first his lighter pocket, then the pocket in his waistband, but it took only a matter of seconds). He had a moustache, he was well-dressed overall but unmistakably European (although he could also have been a New Yorker or from New England), he was about fifty (but a young or, rather, a well-preserved fifty), he was quite tall and he passed by me so quickly that when I tried to catch a glimpse of his face he already had his back to me, looking for his key and turned towards his mailbox. I folded up my newspaper (a mistake) and stood there watching him (another mistake). I saw him open Box 524 and put his arm inside as far as he could. He took out various envelopes, three or four, none of which could have been from Berta, so he presumably exchanged letters with a lot of people, perhaps they were all curious women, people who write to the personals don't limit themselves to just one attempt, although at a given moment, as Berta was doing now (but as "Bill" perhaps was not), they might concentrate on one particular individual and forget about the rest, strangers all of them. He closed the mailbox and turned round looking at the envelopes with neither satisfaction nor rage (one of them looked to me like a package, possibly a video, given its shape and size). He stopped after taking a couple of steps forward, then walked on again as rapidly as he had before and when he passed me, his eyes met mine, for my eyes were no longer on the newspaper. Maybe he recognized me as being a fellow Spaniard, perhaps because of my trousers. He took a good look at me, I mean, he fixed me with his gaze for a moment and would, I thought, recognize me if he saw me again (as I would him). Any likeness to the actor, Sean Connery, apart from the hairy chest which he wasn't displaying at the time (he was wearing a jacket and tie and was carrying a raincoat over one arm, like someone who's left a car that they themselves aren't driving), was limited to the receding hair which he made no attempt to disguise and the eyebrows, which arched steeply and reached down as far as his temples, giving him, as it does to Connery, a piercing look. I was unable to see his chin or to compare it, but I did notice that he had deep lines on his forehead, although they didn't make him look old, he was doubtless an expressive man. He wasn't ugly, on the contrary, of his type he was doubtless attractive or even handsome, the kind of man who's busy, mature, determined, a rich man with a certain degree of sophistication (perhaps recently acquired): he'd make deals, perhaps go to places where you dance very close, he'd doubtless speak of Cuba like someone in the know, if he was Guillermo, Miriam's Guillermo. But he'd draw the line at injecting himself with silicon, his piercing gaze would never condone that.

I thought that I could perhaps follow him for a while, it was a way of prolonging the waiting which was, in fact, over. When I saw him leave the post office, when I reckoned that the closing of the swing doors would disguise the sound of my shoes on the indiscreet marble floor, I set off, keeping the same swift pace in order not to lose him. From the street door I saw him go over to a waiting taxi, which he paid off and sent away, he must have decided to walk a little, it was a nice day (he didn't put his raincoat on, he had it draped over his shoulder now, I could see that it was a posh shade of pale blue, mine, which I was wearing, is the traditional raincoat colour of beige). He was walking along looking at the envelopes from time to time then, without slowing his pace, he opened one, read its contents, ripped up the two things, contents and envelope, and tossed them into a litter bin he was passing. I didn't dare stop to rummage around in it, the idea filled me with shame and I was afraid of losing him. He continued walking. He was looking straight ahead, one of those men who always walk with their head held high, in order to seem taller than they are and to appear more dominant. In his hand he was carrying the other envelope and the package containing the video (I was sure it was a video). Then, when I looked at that right hand, I noticed the wedding ring, he wore it on the opposite hand to me, for I'd been wearing my wedding ring on my left hand for some months now, I was beginning to get used to it. Then, again without slowing down, he opened another envelope and did the same as he had with the first one, but this time he put the torn pieces in one of his jacket pockets, perhaps because there was no litter bin to hand (a civic-minded gentle- man). He stopped to look in the window of a bookshop on Fifth Avenue, Scribner's, if I remember rightly, but presumably nothing interested him or he was just attracted by the shop, because he continued on his way. When he stopped, he put his raincoat on, or rather he threw it over his shoulders without putting his arms into the sleeves, as Ranz, my father, has done all his life and still does, but as many Americans would not (only gangsters, like George Raft). I was following him, doubtless more closely than was prudent in such cases, but then I'd never followed anyone before. He had no reason to suspect anything, although he wasn't exactly strolling along, he was keeping up a good pace, stopping only for traffic lights, and not always for them, there's not so much traffic on Saturdays. He seemed to be in a hurry, although not in enough of a hurry to have kept the taxi. He was on his way back somewhere, but it was obvious that he knew where he was going, perhaps both his haste and the need to wait were linked to the package he was carrying in his hand, the video probably had no return address of any kind on it, just a card inside, perhaps "Bill" thought it might be from my friend Berta, whom he knew as "BSA", perhaps he believed he was carrying her naked in his hand at that very moment. He paused again outside a superperfumery, perhaps intoxicated by the multitudinous smell created by the mingling of all the different brands as they wafted out on to the street. He went in and I followed (I felt that waiting outside would make me more conspicuous). There were no shop assistants, the customers wandered about as they pleased, chose their bottles of cologne and paid on the way out. I saw him stop by the Nina Ricci stand and there, leaning for a moment on the glass counter, he opened the third envelope and read the letter it contained: this time he didn't tear it up but placed it instead in the pocket of that pretentious raincoat (the torn-up letter had been consigned to his jacket pocket, he was a very orderly man). He picked up a small tester of Nina Ricci and sprayed his left wrist, bare of any watch or any other adornment. He waited the required few seconds, sniffed it but was not apparently impressed, since he moved on to another less prestigious counter, on which various brands of perfume were displayed. He sprayed his other wrist with Eau de Guerlain - his large black watch must have got wet too. He sniffed it (the watch strap), after the requisite few seconds allowed for by those who know about such things, and he must have liked it, because he decided to buy the bottle. He lingered a while longer in the men's section, trying two scents on the back of each hand, soon he'd have no uncontaminated areas left. He picked up a bottle of an American make bearing some Biblical name, Jericho or Jordan or Jordache, I can't remember now, he obviously wanted to try the local products. I picked up some Trussardi for women, now that I was married it would never go amiss I thought (I often thought of Luisa), I could even give some to Berta (and, when I thought that, I picked up a second bottle). It was then, standing in the queue to pay (each of us in a separate queue with another between us, though he was nearer than I was to his corresponding checkout), that he turned his head and looked at me and recognized me. He had piercing eyes, just as they'd seemed when I first looked into them in the post office, but though penetrating they revealed nothing, neither curiosity nor unease nor fear (neither terror nor threat), they were piercing but opaque as if their penetrative qualities were blind, as if he were one of those television personalities who think of themselves as very intense, forgetting that they can't be, given that they spend all their time looking at a camera and never at a person. He left the shop and continued walking and, despite everything, I followed, despite the fact that I knew he'd seen me. He stopped more frequently now, pretending to be looking into shop windows or checking his watch against the clocks in the street, and when he turned round to look back at me, I had to act normal, buying magazines and hot dogs I didn't want from street vendors. But his walk lasted only a little while longer, for when he reached 59th Street, "Bill" turned sharp left and I lost sight of him for several seconds and, when I reached the corner and he might again have entered my field of vision, by a miracle I glimpsed him running up the canopied steps of the luxurious Plaza Hotel and disappearing, at the same swift pace, through its doors, greeted by uniformed, behatted porters whom he ignored. In one hand he was carrying his video and a bag containing the perfume he'd bought, I was carrying my magazines and the gigantic
New York Times,
the bag containing my bottles of perfume and a hot dog. He must have run the distance from the corner, hoping to reach the hotel in time to prevent me from seeing where he'd gone, the famous Plaza Hotel, the discreet initials "PH", the bathrobe was borrowed and his name wasn't Pedro Hernandez.