While the Women are Sleeping (2 page)

They spoke little and only occasionally, in short sentences that never became conversation or dialogue, any hint of which died a natural death, interrupted by the attention the woman was giving to her body, in which she was utterly absorbed, and by the indirect attention the man was giving to her body too, through his camera lens. In fact, I don’t recall him ever stopping to look at her directly, with his own eyes, with nothing between his eyes and her. In that respect, he was like me, for I, in turn, viewed them either through the veil of my myopia or through my magnifying hat. Of the four of us, only Luisa could see everything without difficulty or mediation because I don’t think the woman looked at or even saw anyone, and she herself mostly used her mirror to scrutinise and inspect, and she often donned a pair of extravagant space-age sunglasses.

‘The sun’s hot today, isn’t it? You should put more sunscreen on, you don’t want to burn,’ the fat man would say, in an occasional pause in his circular tours of his adored one’s body; and when he didn’t receive an immediate answer, he would say her name, the way mothers say their children’s names: ‘Inès. Inès.’

‘Yes, it’s definitely hotter than yesterday, but I’ve put on some factor ten, so I won’t burn,’ replied the body, Inès, reluctantly and barely audibly while, with a pair of tweezers, she plucked out a tiny hair from her chin.

And there the conversation would end.

One day, Luisa—because we did have conversations—said:

‘To be honest, I don’t know whether I’d enjoy being filmed like poor Inès. It would make me nervous, although I suppose if someone was doing it all the time, like the fat man, I’d get used to it in the end. And then perhaps I’d take as much care of myself as she does, although she’s probably only so vigilant because she’s constantly being filmed or because she’ll see herself later on screen or maybe she does it for posterity’s sake.’ Luisa rummaged around in her bag, took out a small mirror and studied her eyes, which, in the sun, were the colour of plums, with iridescent flecks in them. ‘Then again, what kind of posterity would want to waste its time watching those tedious videos. Do you think he films her during the rest of the day, too?’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Why limit yourself to the beach? I doubt he needs an excuse to see her naked.’

‘I don’t think he films her because she’s naked, but all the time, perhaps even when she’s sleeping. It’s touching really, he obviously thinks only of her. But I don’t know that I would like it. Poor Inès. Not that she seems to mind.’

That night, when we got into our double bed at the hotel, both at once, each on our own side, I lay thinking about the things we had said and which I have just set down in writing, and, unable to sleep, I spent a long time watching Luisa sleeping, in the dark, with only the moon to light her. Poor Inès, she had said. Her breathing was very soft, but still audible in the silence of the room, the hotel and the island, and her body didn’t move, apart from her eyelids, beneath which her eyes were doubtless moving about, as if they couldn’t get used to not doing at night what they did during the day. Perhaps the fat man is awake too, I thought, filming the beautiful Inès’ perfectly still eyelids, or maybe he’ll lift the sheets off her and very carefully arrange her body in different positions so as to film her sleeping. With her nightgown pulled up perhaps or with her legs apart if she isn’t wearing a nightgown or pyjamas. Luisa didn’t wear a nightgown or pyjamas in summer, but she did wrap the sheet around her like a toga, clasping it to her with both hands, although one shoulder or the nape of her neck would sometimes come uncovered, and then, if I noticed, I would always cover her up. I sometimes had to struggle a little to make sure I had enough of the sheet on my side of the bed. But this only happened in summer.

I got up and went over to the balcony to kill time until sleep came, and from there, leaning on the balustrade, I looked up at the sky and then down, and that was when I thought I saw the fat man sitting alone by the swimming pool, in darkness now, the water reflecting only the stars. I didn’t recognise him at first because he wasn’t sporting the moustache I’d become used to seeing every day, as I had that very morning, and because our eyes have to accommodate themselves to seeing, fully clothed, someone we have been used to seeing undressed. His clothes were as ugly and ill-coordinated as his two-tone swimsuits. He was wearing a baggy shirt, which looked black from my balcony (from a distance) but was probably patterned, and a pair of light-coloured slacks that appeared to be a very pale blue, possibly a reflection from the near-invisible water, so close it would have splashed him had there been any waves. On his feet he wore a pair of red moccasins, and his socks (imagine wearing socks on the island) seemed to be the same colour as his trousers, but again that might have been the effect of the moon on the water. He was resting his head on one hand and the corresponding elbow on the arm of a floral-patterned sun lounger—there were two models available at the poolside, striped and floral. He didn’t have his camera with him. I hadn’t realised they were staying at our hotel, since we had only ever seen them at the nearby beach, to the north of Fornells, in the mornings. He was alone, as motionless as Inès, although now and then he changed that drowsy, laid-back pose of head and elbow and adopted another apparently contrary position, his face buried in his hands, his feet drawn in, as if he were exhausted or tense or possibly laughing to himself. At one point, he took off one shoe or accidentally lost it, but he didn’t immediately reach out his foot to retrieve it, but stayed like that, his stockinged foot on the grass, which gave him a helpless look, at least from my fourth-floor viewpoint. Luisa was sleeping, and Inès would be sleeping too; she probably needed at least ten hours’ sleep to maintain her immutable beauty. I got dressed in the dark, taking care not to make any noise, and checked that Luisa was well wrapped up in her sheet-
cum
-toga. Unaware that I wasn’t in the bed, she had yet somehow sensed it in her sleep, for she was lying diagonally now, invading my space with her legs. I went down in the lift, not having looked to see what time it was, past the night porter sleeping uncomfortably, head on the counter, like a future decapitee; I had left my watch upstairs, and everything lay in silence, apart from the slight noise made by my black moccasins (
I
wasn’t wearing socks). I slid open the glass door that led to the swimming pool and closed it again, once I was outside on the grass. The fat man raised his head, glanced over at the door and immediately noticed my presence, although he couldn’t make me out, I mean, couldn’t identify me in the dim light. For that reason, because he had spotted me at once, I spoke to him as I walked towards him and as the reflections of the moon in the water began to reveal me and change my colours as I approached.

‘You’ve shaved off your moustache,’ I said, running my index finger over the place where a moustache usually grows and not quite sure that I should make such a comment. By the time he could reply, I had reached his side and sat down on another sun lounger, next to him, a striped one. He had sat up, his hands on the arms of his sun lounger and was looking at me slightly nonplussed, but only slightly, and without a hint of suspicion, as if he wasn’t in the least surprised to see me—or, indeed, anyone—there. I think that was the first time I had seen him face on—without a camera to his eye and without a hat to mine—or simply from close up, and my sight was already accustomed to the dim light after the brief time I’d spent gazing out from the balcony. He had an affable face, alert eyes, and his features weren’t ugly, simply fat, and he struck me as one of those handsome bald men, like the actor Michel Piccoli or the pianist Richter. He looked younger without his moustache, or perhaps it was the red moccasins, one of which lay upturned on the grass. Yet he must have been at least fifty.

‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognise you at first with your clothes on, we usually only see each other in our beach-wear.’ He had said exactly what I had thought earlier, when I was upstairs. We had spent nearly three weeks seeing each other every day, and it was impossible that his busy eyes would not at some point have lingered, despite everything, on me or on Luisa. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The air-conditioning in the room doesn’t always help. You’re better off out here, I think. Do you mind if I join you for a while?’

‘No, of course not. My name’s Alberto Viana,’ and he shook my hand. ‘I’m from Barcelona.’

‘I’m from Madrid,’ I said and told him my name. Then there was a silence, and I wondered whether I should make some trivial remark about the island or about vacations or some other almost equally trivial remark about the activities we had observed on the beach. It was my curiosity about those activities that had led me to his side by the pool, well, that and my insomnia, although I could have continued to struggle with that upstairs or even woken Luisa, but I hadn’t. I was speaking almost in a whisper. It was unlikely anyone could hear us, but the sight of Luisa, and of the night porter, sound asleep, had given me the feeling that if I raised my voice I would disturb their slumbers, and my hushed tones had immediately infected or influenced the way Viana spoke.

‘I’ve noticed that you’re very keen on video cameras,’ I said after that pause, that hesitation.

‘Video cameras?’ he said, slightly surprised or as if to gain time. ‘Ah, I see. No, not really, I’m not a collector. It isn’t the camera itself that interests me, although I do use it a lot, it’s my girlfriend, whom you’ve seen, I’m sure. I only film her, nothing else, I don’t experiment with it at all. That’s fairly obvious, I suppose. You’ve probably noticed.’ And he gave a short laugh, half-amused, half-embarrassed.

‘Yes, of course, my wife and I have both noticed. I think she feels slightly envious of the attention you lavish on your girlfriend. It’s very unusual. I don’t even have a regular camera. But then we’ve been married for some time.’

‘You don’t own a camera? Don’t you like being able to remember things?’ Viana asked me this with genuine bemusement. As I had imagined, his shirt did have a pattern, a multicoloured blend of palm trees and anchors and dolphins and ships’ prows, but nevertheless the predominant colour was the black I had seen from above; his trousers and socks still appeared to be pale blue, bluer than my white trousers, which, like his, were exposed now not just to the moonlight, but to the moon’s faint reflection in the water.

‘Yes, of course I do, but you can remember things in other ways, don’t you think? We all have our own camera in our memory, except that we don’t always remember what we want to remember or forget what we would prefer to forget.’

‘What nonsense,’ said Viana. He was a frank fellow, not at all the cautious type, and he could say things without offending the person he was talking to. He gave another short laugh. ‘How can you compare what you can remember with what you can
see,
with what you can see again, just as it happened? With what you can see again over and over, ad infinitum, and even hit the pause button, which you couldn’t do when you saw whatever it was for real? What nonsense,’ he said again.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘But you’re not telling me that you film your girlfriend all the time so that you can remember her later, by watching her on the screen. Or perhaps she’s an actress. She wouldn’t have time really, given that you appear to film her every day. And if you film her every day, there isn’t time for what you’ve taped even to begin to resemble forgetting and for you to feel the need to recall her in that faithful manner by watching her again on video. Unless you’re keeping it for when you’re both old and want to relive your stay here in Minorca hour by hour.’

‘Oh, I don’t keep all my footage, no, only a few brief fragments, maybe amounting to one tape every three or four months. But they’re all filed away in Barcelona. And, no, she isn’t an actress, she’s still very young. What I do here (and at home too) is wait for a day before I erase the previous day’s tape, if you see what I mean. In all this time, I’ve only used two tapes, always the same ones. I record one today and keep it, then record another one tomorrow and keep that, and then, the day after, I record over the first one, erasing it that way. And so on and so forth, if you see what I mean. Mind you, I shouldn’t think I’ll have time to record much tomorrow because we’re going back to Barcelona, my holiday’s over.’

‘Oh, I see. But then, once you’re home, what will you do, make a montage of everything you’ve filmed?’

‘No, you don’t see. Artistic videos are one thing, made in order to be filed away. They get put to one side, one tape every four months or so. But the daily recordings are a separate matter. Those get erased every other day.’

It may have been the lateness of the hour (I had left my watch upstairs), but I had the feeling that I still didn’t entirely understand, especially the second part of his explanation. Also I wasn’t that interested in the direction the conversation had taken, about artistic videos (that’s what he’d said, I heard him) and erased tapes, the day-to-day ones. I considered saying goodnight and going back up to my room, but I still wasn’t feeling sleepy and I thought that, if I did go back, I would probably end up waking Luisa just so she’d talk to me. That wouldn’t be fair, and it seemed best to talk to someone who was already awake.

‘But,’ I said, why do you film her every day if you erase it afterwards?’

‘I film her because she’s going to die,’ said Viana. He had stretched out his stockinged foot and dipped his big toe into the water, moving it slowly back and forth, his leg stretched right out, for he could only just reach, just far enough to touch the surface. I fell silent for a few seconds, and then, as I watched him slowly stirring the water, I asked:

‘Is she ill?’

Viana pursed his lips and ran his hand over his bald head, as if he still had hair and was smoothing it, a gesture from the past. He was thinking. I let him think, but he was taking an awfully long time. I let him think. Finally, he spoke again, not to answer my last question, but my previous one.