The Infatuations (23 page)

Now the same thing was happening, except that this time I felt only apprehension. I would glance at the tiny screen in alarm, hoping not to see his name and number and – this was the strange, disquieting thing – also hoping that I would. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him or risk another of our usual encounters, during which I had no idea how I would react or how I should behave. Were we to meet face to face, he would be more likely to notice any evasiveness or reluctance on my part than if we only talked on the phone and, of course, more likely to do so if we talked than if we didn’t. But not answering or returning his call would have had the same effect, given that I had never neglected to do so before. If I agreed to go to his apartment and he proposed having sex, as he usually did in that tacit way of his, which allowed him to act as if what was happening wasn’t happening or wasn’t worthy of recognition, and I gave some excuse and declined, that could make him suspicious. If he phoned to make a date with me and I put him off, that would give him food for thought too, because I had, as far as possible, always gone along with
his suggestions. I considered it a blessing and a boon that he had remained silent since that last evening, that he hadn’t sought me out, that I was free from his wheedlings and his trick questions and his attempts to sniff out the truth, free from having to meet him again and not knowing what to do or how to behave with him, from feeling that mixture of fear and repulsion, doubtless mingled with attraction and infatuation, because those two things cannot be eliminated suddenly or at will, but tend to take a while to disappear, like a period of convalescence or like the sickness itself; indignation doesn’t really help, it soon loses its impetus, you can’t maintain that same level of virulence, or else it comes and goes, and when it goes it leaves no trace, it isn’t cumulative, it does no real damage, and when it dies down it’s forgotten, like intense cold once it abates or like fever or grief. The time it takes for feelings to change is slow and infuriatingly gradual. You settle into those feelings and it becomes very difficult to prise yourself out of them, you get into the habit of thinking about someone – and of desiring them too – in a particular, fixed way, and it’s hard to give that up from one day to the next, or even over a period of months and years, that’s how long the feelings can last. And if what you feel is disappointment, then you fight it at first, however ridiculous that might seem, you try to minimize, deny, bury it. I would think sometimes that perhaps I didn’t hear what I heard, or the feeble idea would resurface in my mind that it must all be a mistake, a misunderstanding, that there must even be some acceptable reason why Díaz-Varela had arranged for Desvern to die – but how could that ever be acceptable – I realized that, during this waiting period, I avoided even thinking the word ‘murder’. And so while I considered it fortunate that Díaz-Varela didn’t phone me and thus allowed me to compose myself and catch my breath, the fact that he didn’t get in touch also worried me and made me suffer. Maybe it
seemed impossible – an insipid, maladroit ending – that everything should just dissolve once I had discovered his secret and, after a brief interrogation, aroused his suspicions, and that there should then be nothing. It was as if the play had ended too early, as if everything were left up in the air, unresolved, floating, lingering in its lack of resolution, like an unpleasant smell in a lift. My thoughts were confused, I both wanted and didn’t want to hear from him, my dreams were contradictory too and, when I spent a sleepless night, I hardly noticed, aware only that my head was crammed with thoughts and that I was miserably incapable of emptying it.

As I lay unable to sleep, I wondered if I should speak to Luisa, who no longer had breakfast in the same café as me, she must have given up the habit so as not to increase her grief or else to help her forget more easily, or perhaps she went there later, when I had already gone to work (maybe it was her husband who had had to get up early and she had only gone with him in order to postpone their parting). I wondered if it wasn’t my duty to warn her, to let her know who he was, that friend of hers, that possibly unnoticed suitor, her constant protector; but I lacked any proof, and she might think me mad or spiteful, vengeful and unhinged, it’s awkward going to anyone with such a sinister, murky tale, the more bizarre and complex the story, the harder it is to believe; this, in part, is what those who commit atrocities rely on, that the sheer magnitude of the atrocity will make it hard for people to credit. But it wasn’t so much that as something far stranger, because it’s so rare: the majority of people would be glad to tell, most take delight in pointing the finger in secret, in accusing and denouncing, in grassing on friends, neighbours, superiors and bosses, to the police, to the authorities, uncovering and revealing those guilty of something or other, even if only in their imaginations; in destroying the lives of those other people if they can, or at least
making things awkward for them, doing their best to create outcasts, rejects, discards, leaving casualties all around and excluding them from their society, as if it were a comfort to be able to say after each victim or each piece of silver: ‘He’s been broken off, detached from the bunch, he has fallen, and I have not.’ Among these people there are a few – we grow fewer by the day – who feel, on the contrary, an indescribable aversion to taking on the role of betrayer. And we take that antipathy so far that it is not always easy for us to overcome it even when we should – for our own good or for that of others. There is something repugnant to us about dialling a number and saying, without giving our name: ‘I’ve seen a terrorist the police are after, his photo has been in the newspapers and he’s just gone through that door.’ Well, we would probably do so in a case like that, but more with an eye to averting crimes than to meting out punishments for past crimes, because no one can put those right and there are so many unpunished crimes in the world; indeed, they cover an area so vast, so ancient, so broad and wide that, up to a point, what do we care if a millimetre more is added to it? It sounds strange and even wrong, and yet it can happen: those of us who feel that aversion would sometimes prefer to act unjustly and for someone to go unpunished than see ourselves as betrayers, we can’t bear it – when all’s said and done, justice simply isn’t our thing, it’s not our job; and that role is still more odious when it’s a matter of unmasking someone we have loved or, even worse, someone who, however inexplicable this might seem, we have not entirely ceased to love – despite the horror and the nausea afflicting our conscience or our consciousness, which, nonetheless, grows less troubled with each day that passes and is gone. And then we think something that we can’t quite put into words, managing only an incoherent, reiterative, almost feverish murmur, something like: ‘Yes, what he did is very grave, very grave, but he is
still him, still him.’ During that time of waiting or of unspoken farewell, I just couldn’t see Díaz-Varela as a future danger to anyone else, not even to me, although I had felt a momentary fear and still did intermittently in his absence, in retrospect or in anticipation. Perhaps I was being overly optimistic, but I didn’t think he would be capable of doing the same thing again. I still saw him as an amateur, an accidental transgressor, as an essentially ordinary man, who had done one anomalous thing.

On the fourteenth day, he phoned my mobile when I was in a meeting with Eugeni and a semi-young author recommended to us by Garay Fontina as a reward for the adulation bestowed on him by the former in his blog and in a specialized literary review of which he was editor, ‘specialized’ meaning pretentious and marginal. I left the office for a moment and told Díaz-Varela that I would call him back later; he, however, seemed not to believe me and kept me on the phone for a moment longer.

‘It won’t take a minute,’ he said. ‘How about getting together this evening? I’ve been away for a few days and it would be good to see you. If you like, come over to my apartment when you finish work.’

‘I might have to stay late this evening, things are absolutely crazy here,’ I said, inventing an excuse on the spur of the moment; I wanted to think about it or at least give myself time to get used to the idea of seeing him again. I still didn’t know what I wanted, his simultaneously expected and unexpected voice brought me both alarm and relief, but what immediately prevailed was my pleasure at feeling wanted, at knowing that he had not yet shelved me, washed his hands of me or allowed me silently to disappear, it was not yet time for me to fade into the background. ‘Look, I’ll let you know later, and depending on how things go, I’ll either drop by or phone to say I won’t be able to make it.’

Then he said my name, something he didn’t usually do.

‘No, María. Come and see me.’ And then he paused as if he really wanted what he had said to sound imperative, which it had. When I didn’t immediately say anything in response, he added something to mitigate that impression. ‘It isn’t just that I want to see you, María.’ He had used my name twice now, which was unheard of, a bad sign. ‘I need to discuss an urgent matter with you. It doesn’t matter if it’s late, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait in for you anyway. If not, I’ll come and fetch you from work,’ he concluded firmly.

I didn’t often say his name either, and I did so this time only because he had said mine and so as not to be caught on the back foot, hearing your own name often makes you feel uneasy, as if you were about to receive a warning or as if it were the prelude to some mishap or to a farewell.

‘We haven’t seen each other in days, Javier, can it really be so urgent that it can’t wait a day or two longer? I mean, if it turns out that I can’t make this evening.’

I was playing hard to get, but nevertheless hoping that he wouldn’t give up, that he wouldn’t be satisfied with a ‘we’ll see’ or a ‘perhaps’. I found his impatience flattering, even though I could sense that this was not a merely carnal impatience. Indeed, it was likely that there wasn’t an ounce of carnality in it, but had to do only with his haste to bring something verbally to a close: because once it becomes clear that things cannot simply drift on, that they are not going to dissolve of their own accord or quietly die or come to a peaceful conclusion, then, generally speaking, it becomes very difficult, almost impossible, to wait; one feels a need to say the words, to come out with them immediately, to tell the other person and then vanish, so that she knows where she stands and won’t continue living in a fool’s paradise, so that she won’t still think that she matters to us when she doesn’t, that she occupies a place in our
thoughts and our heart when she has, in fact, been replaced; so that we can erase her from our existence without delay. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Díaz-Varela was summoning me simply in order to get rid of me, to say goodbye, I hadn’t seen him for fourteen days and had feared that I might never see him again and that was all that mattered to me: if he saw me again, it might be harder for him to keep to his decision, I could try, I could give him an inkling of what the future would be like without me, persuade him by my presence to reverse his decision. I thought this and realized at once how idiotic it was: such moments are unpleasant, when we don’t even feel ashamed to realize how idiotic we are, but abandon ourselves to our idiocy anyway, fully aware of what we are doing and knowing that soon we will be saying to ourselves: ‘I knew it, I was sure of it. How stupid can you get?’ And that reaction, which came to me as surely as iron to magnet, was even more inconsistent and idiotic, given that I had already half-decided to break off with him if he ever got back in touch. He had arranged to have his best friend murdered and that was too much for my awakened conscience. Now, however, I discovered that it wasn’t too much, at least not yet, or that my conscience had grown murky or else simply fell asleep if I let my attention wander for an instant, and that made me think precisely those words: ‘God, I’m stupid!’

Díaz-Varela was, at any rate, not used to me putting any obstacles in the way when he suggested that we meet, apart from my work, that is, and there are few tasks that cannot be left until the following day, at least in the world of publishing. Leopoldo was never an obstacle for as long as that relationship lasted, he was in the same position as I was vis-à-vis Díaz-Varela, or perhaps in an even worse position, because I had to make a real effort to enjoy being with him, whereas it never felt to me that Díaz-Varela had to make such an effort of will when he was with me, although that may have been a mere illusion
on my part, for who ever really knows what anyone else feels. With Leopoldo, I was the one who decided when we could and couldn’t see each other and for how long; for him, I was always a woman absorbed in an inexhaustible string of activities about which I didn’t even talk to him, he must have imagined my small, unhurried world as being a barely sustainable maelstrom, so rarely did I make time for him, so burdened with work did I seem. He lasted for as long as Díaz-Varela did in my life: as often occurs when you have two relationships on the go at once, the one cannot survive without the other, however different or even opposed they might be. Lovers often end their adulterous affair when the married party divorces or is widowed, as if they were suddenly terrified of finding themselves face to face or didn’t know how to continue without all the usual impediments, how to live or how to develop what had, until then, been a circumscribed love, comfortably condemned to not manifesting itself in public, possibly never even leaving one room; we often discover that what began purely by chance needs always to cleave to that way of being, with any attempt at change being experienced and rejected by both parties as an imposture or a falsification. Leopoldo never knew about Díaz-Varela, I never so much as mentioned his existence, why should I, it was none of his business. We parted on good terms, I didn’t wound him deeply, and he still phones me from time to time, but we don’t talk for long, we bore each other and after the first three sentences find we have nothing else to say. His was merely a brief hope cut short, a hope that was inevitably tenuous and somewhat sceptical, because an absence of enthusiasm is not something that can be easily concealed and is obvious even to the most optimistic of lovers. That, at least, is what I think, that I barely hurt him at all, that he never knew. Not that I’m going to bother finding out now, what does it matter, or, rather, what does it matter to me? Díaz-Varela certainly
wouldn’t take the trouble to find out how much harm he had done me or if he had wounded me: I had, after all, always been sceptical about our relationship, I couldn’t even say that I ever had any hopes of him. With others I did, but not with him. If I learned one thing from him as a lover, it was not to take things too seriously and not to look back.