Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (5 page)

I obeyed, I waited, I did nothing and I phoned no one, I just returned to my place on the bed, which was not really my place, though it was mine that night, I lay down by her side again and then, without turning round and without looking at me, she said: “Hold me, hold me, please, hold me,” meaning that she wanted me to put my arms around her, so I did, I put my arms around her from behind, my shirt was still unbuttoned and my chest came into contact with her hot, smooth skin, my arms went around her arms, covering them, four hands and four arms now in a double embrace, and that was clearly still not enough, while the film on TV proceeded soundlessly, in silence, oblivious to us, I thought that one day I would have to see it properly, in black and white. She had said “please”, our vocabulary is so deeply embedded in us that we never forget our manners, we never, for a moment, relinquish our language and our way of speaking, not even in time of desperation or in moments of anger, whatever happens, even when we are dying. I remained like that for a while, lying on her bed with my arms around her as I had not planned to and yet, at the same time, as I had known I would, it was what I had been waiting
for from the moment I entered the apartment and from before then, ever since we arranged to meet and she asked or suggested that we should meet at her place. This was something else, though, a different, unexpected kind of embrace, and now I was certain of what until then I had not even allowed myself to think, or to know that I was thinking: I knew that this was not something that would pass and I thought that it might well be final, I knew that it was not due to regret or depression or fear and that it was imminent: I thought – she’s dying in my arms; I thought that and, suddenly, I had no hopes of ever leaving her, as if she had infected me with her desire for immobility and stillness, or perhaps with her desire for death, not yet, not yet, but then again, I can’t take any more, I can’t take it. And it may well be that she couldn’t take it any more, that she couldn’t stand it, because a few minutes later – one, two, three or four – I heard her say something else, she said: “Oh God, the child” and she made a sudden, slight movement, almost certainly imperceptible to anyone watching us, but I noticed it because I was so close to her, it was like an impulse from her brain that her body only registered as the faintest flicker, a cold, fleeting reflex, as if it were the tremor, not entirely physical, that you experience in dreams when you think you’re falling, falling over a precipice or plummeting earthwards, your leg kicks out as it misses its footing and tries to halt the feeling of descent and weight and vertigo – a lift hurtling downwards – of falling and gravity and mass – a plane crashing, a body leaping from a bridge into the river – as if, just at that moment, Marta had felt an impulse to get up and go and find the boy, but had only managed it in her thoughts, in that tremor. And after another minute – and five; or six – I noticed that she was lying very still, even though she was already still, that is, she lay even stiller and I noticed the change in her temperature and I no longer felt the tension in her body, pressed against me, as if she were pushing back hard, as if she wanted to find refuge inside my body, to flee from what her own body was suffering: an inhuman transformation, an unknown state of mind (the mystery): she was pressing her back against my chest and her bottom against my belly and the back of her thighs against the front of mine, the bloody, muddy back of her neck against my throat and her left cheek against my right cheek,
jaw against jaw, and my temples, her temples, my poor temples and her poor temples, her arms beneath mine as if one embrace were not enough, and even the soles of her bare feet against my shoes, resting on them, she laddered her stockings on my shoelaces – her dark stockings that came to mid-thigh and which I had not removed because I liked that old-fashioned image – all her energies thrown back and against me, invading me, we were glued together like Siamese twins who had been born joined the whole length of our bodies, so that we would never see each other except out of the corner of one eye, she with her back to me, pushing, pushing, almost crushing me, until all that stopped and she lay still or stiller, there was no pressure of any kind, not even that of leaning against me, and instead I felt the sweat on my back, as if a pair of supernatural hands had embraced me from in front while I was embracing her, and had rested on my shirt leaving yellowish, watery marks on it, leaving the cloth stuck to my skin. I knew at once that she had died, but I spoke to her and I said: “Marta,” and I said her name again, adding: “Can you hear me?” and then I said to myself: “She’s dead,” I said, “this woman has died and I’m here and I saw it and I could do nothing to stop it, and now it’s too late to phone anyone, too late for anyone to share what I saw.” And although I said that to myself and I knew it to be true, I felt in no hurry to move away or to withdraw the embrace that she had requested, because I found it or, rather, the contact with her recumbent, averted, half-naked body pleasant and the mere fact that she had died did not instantly change that: she was still there, her dead body identical to her living body, only more peaceful, quieter and perhaps softer, no longer tormented, but in repose, and I could see again out of the corner of my eye her long lashes and her half-open mouth that were still the same, identical, her tangled eyelashes and her infinite mouth that had chatted and eaten and drunk, and smiled and laughed and smoked, that had kissed me and was still kissable. For how long? “We are both still here, in the same position and occupying the same space, I can still feel her; nothing has changed and yet everything has changed, I know that and I cannot grasp it. I don’t know why I am alive and she is dead, I don’t know what either of those words means any more. I no longer have any clear understanding of those two
terms.” And only after some seconds – or possibly minutes, one, two, or three – I carefully removed myself from her, as if I did not want to wake her or as if I might hurt her by moving away, and had I spoken to someone – someone who would have been a witness there with me – I would have done so in a low voice or in a conspiratorial whisper, born of the respect that the mystery always imposes on us if, that is, there is no grief or tears, because if there is, there is no silence, or else it comes only later. “Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die.”

I still did not dare to turn up the sound on the television, because of that silence, but also because of an absurd thought: it suddenly occurred to me that I should avoid touching the remote control or anything else, in order not to leave my fingerprints anywhere, when I had already left them everywhere and, besides, no one would be looking for them. The fact of someone dying while you remain alive makes you feel, for a moment, like a criminal, but it wasn’t just that: it was that suddenly, with Marta dead, my presence in that place was no longer explicable or only barely so, I couldn’t even invent a story that would explain it, I was more or less a stranger and now it really didn’t make sense to be spending the early hours of the morning in a bedroom that was perhaps no longer hers, since she no longer existed, but her husband’s, in a house to which she could only have invited me in his absence; but who could now affirm that she had invited me, since there was no one there to witness it? I leapt off the bed and then I felt panicked, mentally rather than physically, it wasn’t so much that I had to do things as to think about them, to set in motion everything that had until then been muffled by the wine, the expectation and the kisses, by our flushed faces and our fantasies, by perplexity and alarm, although I don’t know if in that order; and by the present grief. “No one knows that I’m here, that I was here,” I thought, immediately correcting the tense of the verb because I could already imagine myself outside that room, that apartment, that building, and even in a different street, I saw myself hailing a taxi after crossing Reina Victoria or in the avenue itself, there are always taxis passing, however late, it forms the final stretch of an old boulevard that ends up lined by houses
and the first of the university campus trees. “Nobody knows that I’ve been here and there’s no reason why anyone should,” I said to myself, “therefore, I’m not the one who should warn anyone or run in a panic to the Hospital de la Luz and wake up the nurse sitting in her chair asleep, with her legs crossed or, grown forgetful, slightly apart, I won’t be the one to drag her from her ephemeral, avaricious sleep, nor will I be the one suddenly and prematurely to drive out everything that the anxious, bespectacled student has managed to learn, nor will I be the one to interrupt the farewells of the satiated lovers lingering at the door of the one staying behind and, at the same time, longing to part, perhaps on this very floor; because no one must know nor will yet know that Marta Téllez has died, I won’t make an anonymous phonecall to the police either or ring at the door of the neighbours opposite, I won’t go out and buy a death certificate at the local late-night chemist’s, for all those who know her she will remain alive tonight while they dream or lie sleepless here or in London or anywhere else, no one will know of the change, the inhuman transformation that has taken place, I will do nothing and speak to no one, I should not be the one to break the news. Were she still alive, no one would know today or tomorrow or perhaps ever that I was here, she would have concealed it and that’s how it should be, even more so now that she’s dead. And the child, oh God, the child.” But I decided that I would think about that afterwards, after a few moments, because another thought interposed itself, in fact, two thoughts, one after the other: “Perhaps there’s someone, a friend or a sister, whom she would have talked to about me tomorrow, possibly blushing and smiling. Perhaps she already has talked to someone about me, someone to whom she announced my visit – news travels fast by telephone – and confessed her hesitant desire or her certain hope, perhaps she was talking about me and only hung up when she heard me ring the doorbell, he’s here already, you never know what was happening in a house the second before you rang the bell and interrupted it.” I buttoned up the shirt that Marta’s now stiff fingers had undone when they were still agile and cheerful, I unzipped my trousers and tucked my shirt in, my jacket was in the living room, draped over the chairback as if the chair were a clothes hanger, but where were my
overcoat, my scarf and my gloves, where were they, she had taken them from me when I came in and I hadn’t noticed where she had put them. That too could wait, I didn’t want to go into the living room just yet because my shoes would make a noise and the child hadn’t long since got back to sleep, and anyway, the idea of going past his room and making the aeroplanes tremble with my footsteps made me feel awkward, his whole life had changed, the world had changed, and he didn’t yet know it, more than that: his present world had ended, because, after a short while, he wouldn’t even remember it, it would be as if it had never existed – brittle, erasable time – the memories of a two-year-old do not last, at least I remember nothing from my own life when I was two years old. I looked down at Marta, from the viewpoint of a man standing up and looking down at someone lying on a bed, I saw her firm, round buttocks beneath her scanty knickers, noticed how her skirt had ridden up, observed the hunched position that allowed me to see all that, though not her breasts which were still covered by her arms, she was a remnant, a cast-off, something not to be kept, but discarded – to be burned, to be buried – just as so many of the things that had belonged to her would suddenly become redundant, like the things that get thrown out with the rubbish because they continue unstoppably to change and to rot – the skin of a pear or some fish that’s gone off, the outer leaves of an artichoke, chicken giblets, the fat from the Irish sirloin steak that she herself had scraped off our plates into the bin only a short time before, before we went into the bedroom – a lifeless woman, not even covered up, not even under the sheets. She was mere detritus and yet for me she was the same woman as before: she hadn’t changed, I still recognized her. I should put her clothes back on so that they wouldn’t find her like this, I immediately rejected the idea, it was too difficult, too dangerous, I might break one of her bones putting her arm in the sleeve of whatever I put on her, where was her blouse anyway, perhaps it would be easier just to pull back the sheets and cover her over, you could do anything with her now, poor Marta, manipulate her, move her, at the very least, cover her up.

I stood for a few moments paralysed, immobilized by my own mental haste, doing nothing, haste makes us think very
contradictory things, it occurred to me that, had she foreseen this or known about it, it would have distressed her that those close to her should be left in ignorance, that they should believe her still alive when she wasn’t, and for how long, that they would not be informed immediately, that everything would not be thrown into instant disarray by her sudden death, that those imprudent telephones would not at once start to ring, talking about her, and that everyone who had known her would not be exclaiming over her, thinking about her; and, later, those who had known her would find unbearable their ignorance of the fact of her death, an ignorance of which they were about to be or already were the victims, for the husband remembering, later on, that he was peacefully asleep on an island – for how long, and that he got up and had breakfast and went to a business meeting in Sloane Square or in Long Acre, and perhaps even went for a walk – while his wife was dying and was dead with no one at her side, no one to tend to her, first the one and then the other, because he would never know for sure that there had been no one else with her, although he might suspect it, it would be difficult for me to cover up every trace of the hours I had spent there, should I decide to do so. He must have left his London telephone number and address somewhere, next to the phone, I saw that there was no paper next to the phone on Marta’s bedside table, a phone and answering machine combined, perhaps by the phone in the living room, where she had spoken to her husband before, with me there in the room. It would be a good idea for me to have that address and that telephone number anyway, in case several days passed, not that they would, that was impossible, too long a silence, suddenly the idea terrified me: someone would come, and soon, Marta went to work and would have to leave the child with someone, she couldn’t possibly take him with her to the university, she would have arranged for the child to be looked after by a child minder or a friend or a sister or her mother, unless, another terrifying thought occurred to me, unless she left the child at a nursery and took him there herself before going to her classes. And then what would happen, tomorrow no one would take him, or perhaps tomorrow Marta didn’t even have any classes or only in the afternoon and no one would come to the house until then, she hadn’t seemed
worried about having to get up early in the morning, and had remarked that she had some classes in the mornings and others in the afternoon, and not every day of the week, which days though, or were they just tutorial times when she had to be there in the morning or the afternoon, I couldn’t remember, when someone has died and can no longer repeat anything, you wish you had listened more carefully to each and every word, other people’s timetables, no one ever pays much attention to them, mere preliminaries. I decided to go into the living room, I took off my shoes and went on tiptoe, I wondered if I should close the door of the child’s bedroom as I passed by, but the door might creak and wake him up, so I continued on, barefoot and on tiptoe, my shoes hooked over the middle and index fingers of one hand, like the villain in a cartoon or a silent movie, still making the floorboards creak despite all my efforts not to. Once in the living room, I closed the door and put my shoes back on – I didn’t tie the shoelaces, already thinking about the return journey, because I would have to go back – there were the bottle and the wine glasses, the only things that Marta hadn’t tidied away, she was particular about such things, and the wine had been left not by accident, but because we were still drinking a little of it as we sat on the sofa that had been occupied and finally vacated by the boy, after eating our Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and before we kissed and moved into the bedroom. That hadn’t happened so very long ago, now that it was all over: everything seems as nothing to us, everything becomes compressed and seems as nothing to us once it is over, then we always feel that we were not given enough time. Next to the telephone in the living room there were a few yellow post-its stuck to the table – three or four had notes scribbled on them – along with the little rectangular block from which they came; on one of them was what I was looking for, it said: “Eduardo” and underneath that: “Wilbraham Hotel”, and underneath that: “Wilbraham Place” and underneath that: “4471/730 8296”. I tore off another post-it from the block and I started copying it all out with the pen I took from my jacket as I was putting it on (the time for me to leave was drawing closer), it was where I had left it, on the back of the chair that had served as a clothes hanger. I didn’t, in fact, copy out
the information, when you first get hold of a telephone number, you always feel tempted to dial it at once, I had the London number of that Eduardo whose surname I still didn’t know, but in his own house it shouldn’t be a problem to find out what his surname was, I looked around, on the coffee table I saw a few letters which I had had no reason to notice before and so hadn’t, it was probably the day’s mail that had arrived after his departure and would have been allowed to accumulate there until his return, except that now he would have to return very soon and nothing would accumulate. “Eduardo Deán”, said two of the three envelopes and the other said even more, an envelope from a bank with his two surnames on it, and if I called London there would be no problem with the surname that counted, the first, rather unusual one, there would be no need to spell it because I would ask for Mr Dean which is how the hotel would know him or recognize him, in spite of the accent on the “a”, which the English would ignore. If I phoned, what would I say, I wouldn’t give my name just the news, I would force him to take charge of the situation now, since he hadn’t saved us before, and then I could wash my hands of the affair, I could simply leave and start to forget, a piece of bad luck, I could start to hone the memory and reduce it to just that, a piece of bad luck, perhaps an anecdote or, more dignified, a story, one I could tell to close friends, not now, but one day, when it had acquired the necessary degree of unreality that would make it all more benevolent and bearable, that particular businessman had spent far too long not worrying about his family (you have to worry ceaselessly about those closest to you), no, that wasn’t true, he had phoned after his supper at the Indian restaurant, but Marta Téllez was not my wife but his, and the boy, Eugenio Déan by name, was not my son, Déan, the father and the husband, would have to take responsibility sooner or later, why not now, why not from London. I looked at the clock for the first time in ages, it was nearly three, but on the island it would be an hour earlier, almost two o’clock, not particularly late for a native of Madrid even if he had things to do the following day, and besides, in England, people don’t get up particularly early. While I was dialling, I thought (one’s dialling finger bypasses one’s will, bypasses any decision one has taken, acting without knowing,
deciding without knowing): “It doesn’t matter what time it is, if I’m going to give him such news anonymously, it’s irrelevant what time it is or if I wake him up, he’ll wake up quickly enough once he’s heard it, he’ll think it must be a joke in the worst possible taste or the product of some enemy’s incomprehensible grudge, he’ll call back at once and no one will pick up the phone; then he’ll call someone else, a sister-in-law, a sister, a friend, and ask them to come over and find out what’s going on, but by the time they arrive, I will have gone.”