A Heart So White (25 page)

THE REASON I'm remembering all this now is because what happened afterwards, very shortly afterwards and whilst I was still in New York, resembled, in one aspect at least (but I think only in one, although it may have been more), what happened later on (but not much later on), when I'd returned to Madrid to rejoin Luisa and I again began experiencing those presentiments of disaster - only more strongly and perhaps with more reason this time - which had dogged me ever since the wedding ceremony and which have still not dissipated (at least not entirely, and maybe they never will). Or perhaps it was a third feeling of unease, different from the two I'd experienced during the honeymoon (particularly in Havana) and even before that, a new feeling, just as unpleasant, which, nevertheless, like the second, may well have been invented, imagined or discovered by chance, a necessary but unsatisfactory answer to the terrifying question asked by that initial unease: "Now what?" A question that one answers again and again and yet which is always resurfacing or reformulating itself or is simply always there, emerging unscathed after every reply, like the story of the good pipe, guaranteed to drive children to distraction and which was told to me by my Cuban grandmother on the afternoons when my mother left me with her, afternoons spent singing songs and playing games and telling stories and sneaking involuntary glances at the portraits of those who had died, or during which she would watch past time passing by. "Do you want me to tell you the story of the good pipe?" my grandmother would say with gentle mischievousness. "Yes," I would say, as all children do. "I didn't ask for a yes or a no, all I asked was if you wanted me to tell you the story of the good pipe," my grandmother would continue, laughing. "No," I would say, changing my reply as all children do. "I didn't ask for a no or a yes, all I asked was if you wanted me to tell you the story of the good pipe." By then my grandmother would be laughing louder than ever and so it would go on until desperation and weariness set in, capitalizing on the fact that the desperate child never thinks to give the reply that would undo the spell: "I want you to tell me the story of the good pipe," repetition as salvation, or the formulation that never occurs to the child because he still lives in the yes and the no, and has no time for perhaps or maybe. But this other question about then and now is worse and repeating it serves no purpose, just as it served no purpose, or remained unanswered or undispelled, when I turned it back on my father in the Casino de Madrid when he asked me the question out loud, when the two of us were alone in a room after my wedding. "That's what I want to know," I said. "Now what?" The only way of escaping from that question is not by repeating it but by not allowing it to exist, by not asking it or allowing anyone else to ask it of you. But that's impossible and perhaps because of that, in order to answer it, you have to invent problems and feel fears and entertain suspicions and think about the abstract future, and think "so brainsickly of things" as Macbeth was told not to do, to see what is not there in order for something to be there, to fear illness or death, abandonment or betrayal, and to dream up threats, if necessary from a third party, even if only by analogy or symbolically and perhaps that is what drives us to read novels and news reports and to go and see films, the search for analogy, for symbolism, the need for recognition rather than cognition. Recounting an event distorts it, recounting facts distorts and twists and almost negates them, everything that one recounts, however true, becomes unreal and approximate, the truth doesn't depend on things actually existing or happening, but on their remaining hidden or unknown or untold, as soon as they're related or shown or made manifest, even in a medium that seems real, on television or in the newspapers, in what is called reality or life or even real life, they become part of some analogy or symbolism, and are no longer facts, instead they become mere recognition. The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains un- transmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.

I don't know quite what it was that occurred on my return, or rather, I'm not sure that I'll know what occurred in my absence until many more years have passed. I only know that one rainy night, at home with Luisa, when I'd been back from New York for a week, after eight weeks of work and keeping Berta company, I got out of bed and left our shared pillow and went to the fridge. It was cold or the fridge made me feel cold and I went to the bathroom and put on a dressing gown (I was tempted to use my bathrobe as a dressing gown, but I didn't), and afterwards, whilst Luisa in turn visited the bathroom for a wash, I paused for a moment in the room where I work and looked at a few texts, standing up, a Coca-Cola in my hand, already feeling sleepy. As is so often the way in clear-skied Madrid, a weary, uniform rain was falling, untroubled by any wind, as if it knew it was going to last for days and there was no need for fury or haste. I looked out at the trees and at the beams of light from the curved street- lamps that illuminate the falling rain and turn it to silver and then, on the same corner at which, later, the old organ-grinder and the gypsy woman with her saucer and her plait would stand, the same corner you can see only partially from my window, I saw the figure of a man who, unlike them, I could see because he was leaning against a wall, away from the road, sheltering unsuccessfully from the rain beneath the eaves of the building opposite, the building that doesn't block my light; there was little chance of him being knocked down by a car and, besides, there was little traffic. He was sheltering beneath a hat as well, a rare sight in Madrid, although less so on rainy days, a few older people, like Ranz, my father, wear them. That figure (you could tell at once) was not that of an older man, but of a still-young man, tall and erect. Beneath the brim of his hat, and given the darkness and the distance, I couldn't make out his face or rather his features (I could see the anonymous white smudge of a face in the dark, his face was far from the nearest beam of light), because what made me stop and look at him was the fact that he had his head raised and was looking upwards, he was looking, or so I believed, directly at our windows, or rather at the window that was now to my left, our bedroom window. From where he was standing, the man wouldn't be able to see into the room, all he would be able to see, and this was perhaps what he was after, was whether or not the light was still on, or perhaps, I thought, the shadows cast by our figures, by Luisa and me, though whether we were close enough or had moved close enough, I couldn't remember. He might have been waiting for a signal, from time immemorial people have used the lighting and extinguishing of fires to send signals, just as they have used their eyes, opening and closing them, or the brandishing of torches in the distance. The fact is that I recognized him at once despite not being able to see his face; figures from one's childhood are unmistakable in any place or at any time, one glance is enough, even though they might have changed or grown taller or older since then. But it took me only seconds to recognize him, to recognize that beneath the eaves and the rain the figure I recognized was Custardoy the Younger looking up at our most private window, waiting, watching, just like a lover, a little like Miriam and like myself a few days before, Miriam and I in different cities on the other side of the ocean, Custardoy here, on the corner opposite my house. I hadn't waited like a lover, but I had perhaps waited for the same thing as Custardoy, for Luisa and I to turn out the light so that he could imagine us asleep, with our backs to each other, not facing, or perhaps lying awake in one another's arms. "What's Custardoy doing there?" I thought, "It must be a coincidence, he must have got caught in the rain when he was walking up our street and decided to shelter under the eaves of the building opposite, he doesn't dare ring or come up, it's late, but that can't be, he's waiting there, he must have been there for some time, that's what it looks like and that's why he's got his coat collar turned up, gripped by his bony hands whilst he gazes up with his huge, dark, wide-set, almost lashless eyes, gazing up at our bedroom, what's he looking at? what's he looking for? what does he want? why is he looking? I know he's been here with Ranz sometimes to visit Luisa during my absence, my father brought him, what people call "dropping by", a visit from the father-in- law and a friend of his and, in theory, a friend of mine, he must be in love with Luisa, but he never falls in love, I don't know if she knows anything about this, how odd, on a rainy night like this, now that I'm back, standing there in the street getting drenched, like a dog." Those were my immediate thoughts, rapid and disorderly. I heard Luisa coming out of the bathroom and going back to our bedroom. From there she called out my name and said to me (there was a wall between us but both doors were open on to the corridor): "Aren't you coming to bed? Come on, it's late." Her voice sounded as natural and cheery as it had every day since my return, a week ago, as it had a few minutes before while she was murmuring vaguely amorous things to me on our shared and mutual pillow. And instead of telling her what was happening, what I was seeing, what I was thinking, I stopped, just as I didn't go out on to the balcony and call Custardoy by name and ask him straight out: "Hey, what are you doing down there?" Almost the same question which, not knowing who I was, Miriam had asked from the esplanade, as naturally as you would address someone you know and trust. And I gave a furtive reply (the furtiveness of suspicion, although I didn't yet know it): "You can turn out the light if you like, I'm not sleepy yet, I think I'll just check over a bit of work."

"OK, but don't take too long," she said and I saw that she'd turned out the light, I saw it in the corridor. I closed my door and turned out my light, the small lamp that had lit the room in which I work, where I go over texts to be translated, and then I knew that all our windows were in darkness. I again looked out of my study window, Custardoy the Younger was still looking upwards, his face lifted, the white smudge turned towards the dark sky, despite the sheltering eaves the rain was beating down on it, there were drops on his chin perhaps mingled with sweat, but not with tears, the drop of rain that falls from the eaves always on to the same spot, so that the earth becomes softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel, a hole and a channel, like Berta's, which I'd seen and filmed and Luisa's in which I'd lain only minutes before. "Now he'll leave," I thought, "when he sees that the lights have gone out he'll leave, just as I gave up waiting when I saw the lights in Berta's house go out not so many days ago. Then it was a prearranged signal, I too waited for a while out in the street, as Custardoy is doing now, as Miriam did some time before, except that in Miriam's case she didn't know that she was being watched from up above by two faces or two white smudges and two pairs of eyes, Guillermo's and mine, and in this case Luisa doesn't know that two eyes are spying on her from the street without actually seeing her, and Custardoy doesn't know that mine are watching him from the dark sky, from above, while the rain falls, looking like mercury or silver beneath the streetlamps. On the other hand, in New York, Berta and I both knew where each of us was, or we could imagine it. "Now he'll go," I thought, "he has to go so that I can return to my bedroom with Luisa and forget about his presence there, I won't be able to get to sleep or protect Luisa as she sleeps knowing that Custardoy is downstairs. During my childhood, I'd so often seen him looking out of my bedroom window, as I am now, longing for the outside world and desiring the world to which he now belongs and from which he was then separated by a balcony and by glass doors, turning his back on me, his shaven neck, intimidating me in my own bedroom, he was as terrifying a child as he is a man, he's a man who knows instantly who wants to be approached and why, in a bar or at a party or even in the street and doubtless even in a house he's visiting, but he's the one who creates both disposition and intention, they didn't exist in Luisa before I left, unlike in Berta's case, where disposition and intention existed before I arrived and during my stay and will, I'm sure, remain now that I'm gone. Will she still be seeing Bill, whose real name is Guillermo, will she have seen him again? Or will Guillermo have returned to Spain like me after his planned two months' stay? Berta was the only one of the three to stay behind, I should call her, even though I left I'm still both involved and assimilated, the use of the plural becomes inevitable and ends up appearing everywhere, what does Custardoy want of us now, what's he up to?"

I hadn't wanted or been up to anything while I waited outside Berta's house, it had been unexpected, something we hadn't counted on, it was the seventh weekend of my projected eight- week stay, the weekend after the one I've already described and during which I made the video lasting only minutes and, in the days prior to that penultimate weekend, the post had positively flowed, we sent our video on the Monday (Berta didn't bother getting a copy made) and it had had the desired effect, or at least it had proved attractive enough for "Bill" to consider taking a few risks. He'd written a brief note in reply, without a word of apology for not responding in kind and still without showing his face even in a miserable photo, but proposing that they meet next Saturday. His note didn't reach us until the Friday, I knew this for sure because Berta had visited her mailbox at Old Chelsea Station every afternoon that week, after work. Bill's note was, as usual, in English, but it was a very Spanish thing to do, to make an appointment like that for the following evening. "I'll recognize you," it said, in the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel, a place where people meet before the theatre or supper or even the opera, unaware that she knew that was also the place he was staying, that is, where he had his pillow. Berta had arranged some weeks ago to have supper that night with her colleague, Julia, and a few other people, I was supposed to go too and she decided that it would be best not to tell them in advance that she wouldn't be there, in case they insisted on dropping by to see her if she said she was ill, and so it fell to me, once I'd reached the harbourside restaurant, to make her excuses, saying she had a terrible migraine and feeling something of an intruder when I appeared there alone, they were people I hardly knew.