Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream (19 page)

This woman goes up to the bathroom on the first floor, the one downstairs is occupied, or perhaps she goes up in search of an empty room in which someone is already waiting or where someone will join her after a minute or never does, an arranged meeting, but snatched and hurried, what is graphically and vulgarly known in Spanish as
'un mete y saca'
and in English as a quickie (very vulgarly: not that it matters, the thought is more vulgar than the word, or it is for those of us who tend to avoid verbal vulgarity so that it at least has some meaning when: we do resort to it), an absence of knickers in such situations is perfect, not that they need be an impediment, they just have to be pushed delicately aside with a couple of fingers — mind you don't pinch anything - at the right moment. This woman in the skirt goes upstairs, her high heels make a noise on the floorboards or no noise at all on the carpeted part, and as ill luck would have it — although, depending on your point of view, the host or the unusually sharp-eyed guest has the worse luck -just at the moment when she gets to the top of the stairs and pauses for an instant looking for the most suitable door or the one agreed upon, her period suddenly starts - she had doubtless had a feeling that it would, but not much or not a strong enough feeling — in the form of a drop that falls to the floor, there being no fabric to prevent it; but it's still in the very early stages and is only a drop, the first, a single drop, there's no trail because it isn't as yet a steady flow and does not immediately continue, and so she might not notice its arrival until a little later, when she has already gone into the bathroom and can improvise a temporary solution or when the man waiting for her notices this different, warmer moistness and has already stained himself the stain on the wooden floor remains there unnoticed, which is why it's not cleaned up until much later that night, when I go upstairs in search of a book and when I come down again carrying that book, I find the stain, I see it, and think that I mustn't leave it there now that I know it exists: it is up to me to remove it, otherwise Wheeler might slip on it in the morning - although, by then, it will have dried - and he can't be allowed to fall over at his age, best to avoid any risk and save him.'

My former schoolfriend Comendador had thought of this menstrual possibility more quickly than I had, but he could actually see the young woman there before him when he saw the blood, and had noticed some minuscule red drops on her T-shirt and another larger one on her sheets, so it was easier for him to come up with the idea, and, besides, we — he certainly and I very probably — would never know if that was the correct explanation for those respective stains, although it would be for the stains left on a tile and on one white shoe by the woman in the toilet cubicle who had behaved with such aplomb. But who knows.

Suddenly I found myself trying to recall which of the women at Wheeler's party had been wearing a skirt (this was half involuntary too, or perhaps it is simply that any kind of inventory brings on partial sleep): Beryl had, of course, been wearing a skirt and a very eye-catching one at that, and she might well have dispensed with any underwear, judging by the eagerness with which De la Garza was trying, from his position on a very low pouffe, to keep his gaze fixed pretty much on a
level with her long legs (thighs you could toboggan down, he had said, the freak); and it would have been just like her to want to embarrass Tupra by such an audacious move (she wouldn't have told him until they were in the car and nearly at Oxford), or else, for all her apparent disdain, she had been trying to re-seduce him in that rough and rudimentary way, barely touching and keeping a certain distance, with no need for any personal, psychological, sentimental or biographical effort, only animal, which requires no effort at all. Mrs Fahy, the wife of the soporific Irish historian, Professor Fahy, had also been wearing a skirt, as had the tragic (by dint of marriage) Labour mayoress of the unhappy towns of Eynsham or Ewelme or Bruern or Rycote, or perhaps of that most ill-famed of places in Oxfordshire since the far-off days of Marlowe, Hog's Norton; but both ladies were long past the age of such regular occurrences, as was Mrs Berry, who was clearly much younger than Wheeler, but not four decades younger or even three or two and a half, indeed, I immediately felt ashamed to be thinking of her or of them (but especially of her, for I had known and respected her for such a long time, ever since she had worked for Toby Rylands) in such circumstances and at her age, I mean in society and with no knickers, I rejected the idea out of hand, largely because it seemed so irreverent, and partly out of hypothetical compassion, I reproached myself for such thoughts. As for the Deaness of York, who had aroused such coarse passions in De la Garza ('Cor, get a load of that,' the idiot had said), it seemed hazardous to make any pronouncement on the current influence of the moon on her body, widowhood blurs age and can be most deceptive, it makes the very young seem older and rejuvenates those no longer in the first flush of youth; nevertheless, she had been wearing a skirt, plus, I would have said, a vintage petticoat and an even more vintage girdle, and I could not, therefore, believe that the unassailable dowager of a clergyman would ever have renounced her more intimate garments (possibly not even alone in her bed, and certainly not in someone else's house and with a lot of other people present).

Some of the women present had been wearing trousers, but not Harriet Buckley, the newly divorced medical doctor, who, according to Tupra, might have been more interested that night in making investigations in that area than Beryl or Mrs Wadman (not, of course, her real name); I had paid no attention to her nor spoken with her beyond the introductions, but she was not lacking in a certain basic attractiveness, indeed, it was a miracle she did not burst out of her skirt, not because she was fat, but because her skirt was so tight, so close-fitting, so figure-hugging (these apparent redundancies are necessary to give an idea of just how tight it was), and she kept her glasses on throughout the evening, which gave her a vaguely lascivious air, like a spry, young secretary out of a 1950's American comedy (a pure fantasy figure); the knickerless doctor seemed to me an acceptable idea, well, at least it didn't set my teeth on edge or prick my conscience (or only slightly), nor did the idea of an equally naked Beryl or a young woman who had drifted around all evening looking bored and whose identity I never discovered, she was doubtless the student daughter of one of the guests, possibly even of Buckley herself: at any rate, I had judged her from afar to be capricious and bold and had noticed a hint of licentiousness about her mouth (wide-spaced incisors; lips that never managed entirely to close nor, consequently, to conceal those lewd teeth); I did not feel it was unfair of me to imagine her to be flighty, I mean, when it came to what she wore or did not wear under her skirt.

One of these three women must have chosen an unfortunate moment to go up to the first floor and must have lost or released without noticing that one drop of blood, as had the Central American woman who had thanked me, which meant that she had not noticed the drop on her shoe until I had pointed it out to her. It was, however, an unlikely conjunction of factors at Wheeler's party, and I did not even know if such unpreparedness and the consequent stain on the floor were technically possible (technically or physiologically, if I can put it like that). I realised that in London I had no close female friend or regular
lover whom I could ask about this, no one I knew well enough; in Madrid I had, and in my normal life I would immediately have consulted Luisa, then there was my sister, and old female friends and former girlfriends, 'old flames' as Beryl was to Tupra, or Tupra was to Beryl, she being more indifferent to their past. 'My normal life': I could not get used to the idea that it was no longer normal, I had been expelled from it or else my tomb was there, dug down deep inside it; I still had the illusory feeling that this other country was just a parenthesis, that my second sojourn in England was a life not entirely lived, a life that does not really matter and for which I was barely responsible, or only when the time came to hold that ever more improbable great dance - it has doubtless been abolished now, cancelled until further notice or, more likely, until further belief- a time that is no longer time or is frozen and motionless.
('Cuan largo me lo fiais' –
'I'll believe it when I see it' - we Spaniards used to exclaim ironically when confronted by such a prospect, paraphrasing Don Juan in a line written by a contemporary of Marlowe; people say it less often now, but it's still used, when the times are not too fearsome and when it seems that what has been predicted is so far off it will never arrive.) Perhaps that period of my life would, in the end, prove merely provisional, but nothing is ever provisional nor is it even a period until it is finished and closed, and until that happens, the parenthesis becomes the main, dominant clause, and when you read it, you forget that there ever was an opening parenthesis.

Two days later, regardless of the untimeliness and even eccentricity of my question, I phoned Luisa. It's more embarrassing talking about such things to a sister: our sister may be our first girlfriend, but that is when there has as yet been no blood, a sister is only ever our child-bride. I phoned Luisa and found her at home, I had no need to feel anxious; she sounded a bit surprised (after all, it wasn't a Thursday or a Sunday), but not put out. I asked a few routine questions about the children, about their health and hers, and immediately justified my call by saying: 'I'm phoning to ask you something.' 'Ask away,' she
replied good-humouredly. And so I asked her, after a brief preamble and a few words of apology, if a drop of blood could fall from a woman wearing no undergarments and whose period had come on unannounced while she was standing up or walking ('Yes, or else going up the stairs,' I added pointlessly, to complete the already absurd image). There was a brief silence during which I was afraid she might simply hang up on me or suggest I go in search of my lost wits, but what I heard next was a friendly chuckle, I knew that laugh well, amused and genial, the laugh she always laughed when something really tickled her. At that moment, I could see her face clearly, and what a pleasant face it was (I saw it in my mind's eye, there in London, or, rather, in my memory's eye, as I stared out through my window).

'What kind of question is that?' she said, still laughing. 'Are you writing a novel or something, or an ad for sanitary towels perhaps? Or are you keeping very trashy company now? I hope not, because a woman would have to be very trashy indeed for what you're describing to happen.' And her merry laughter rang out again.

I had time to wonder if the reason she seemed so happy was because she had not been expecting to hear my voice or because the figure who would replace me was now clearly delineated -the kindly flatterer who wheedles his way in, the irresponsible raver who stays outside, the suspicious authoritarian who ends up imprisoning her; I preferred the second, hypothetically speaking, despite his bird-brain; but one thing was sure, she wasn't going to ask my opinion on the subject. I never questioned her about it, just as she never asked me what I was up to, only once had she said: 'I hope you're not too lonely there in London,' and that had not really been a question. 'No more than can be expected,' I had replied at once, answering neither yes nor no, and in any case making light of the whole thing. And I had time to wonder if her mention of 'trashy company' could mean that she was curious to know if I mixed with women in situations intimate enough for them to walk
around in my presence without their knickers on (although I could, of course, be totally oblivious of any such manoeuvre). And that could, in turn, mean either that she was not entirely indifferent to this news and found it a little irksome, or that she couldn't care less, which is why she could speak so blithely, perhaps urging me to frequent or to recruit a few such trashy women, of whom she was sure there would be no shortage. I no longer had the slightest idea what her feelings for me were, if she merely harboured a quiet affection or if there was still some lingering passion there, or what place she assigned me, if she was still waiting for the smell of me to disappear entirely and for me to become a ghost (one with whom she got on well, or the sort who remains friends and makes no demands and agrees not to appear too often) or if the process was already complete and my sheets torn up to make rags or dusters. The truth is that we almost never know anything about what touches us most directly, however much we interpret and conjecture, as I did endlessly, perhaps I was wasting my time in the building with no name, I thought I was making a contribution there, but perhaps I was unwittingly doing harm: perhaps I was working in a vacuum. And in short, I was afraid, afraid of Tupra and afraid of failing him, and I was filled, too, with self-distrust (I had discovered all this only a couple of nights before, the night spent with the Manoias). I was paid to make guesses about the future behaviour of people and their probabilities, and I could not even see the face - today's or tomorrow's; I saw only yesterday's face with my one mind's eye - of the person I knew best, I had lived with Luisa for quite a number of years and, through my children, continued to receive further complementary information, they were a prolongation of her, and children are transparent as long as they are still our children, later, they grow a shell or run away or wrap themselves in their own mists. I didn't even know what her hair was like now (and the way a woman's hair is combed or cut says so much about her), indeed, I could not even see myself; but that was of less importance, because the report about me that I had read half secretly in the
filing room was quite right: this had never interested or worried me in the least. A rather unworthy enigma, a waste of time.

I could not resist joining in her laughter, nor did I want to resist, on the contrary: I had missed it intensely and therefore made the most of this opportunity; she had long since withdrawn her laughter from me, but, before, we used to set each other off, or would burst out laughing almost simultaneously, that laughter - when she laughed with me and I with her - was of the kind that is never forced and never preceded by a decision or a calculation, although this time I did join in afterwards, I had lost the habit and had not even noticed the comical nature of my enquiry, I suppose I was too sunk in myself, especially during the days that followed that night of new fear and not-so-new distrust; but she had found it funny at once or almost at once, after a few seconds' disbelief, unable to credit that I would phone her up to ask such a question. (An old but far from ephemeral flame from Italy, someone from my now remote past, to whom I largely owe my knowledge of Italian, used to exclaim:
'Che vanto ridere insieme.' I
don't know quite how I would say that in English: 'What a glorious thing it is, laughing together' or perhaps 'What a joy.')