Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (32 page)

I
CROSSED THE CASTELLANA
behind Luisa, I had already spent a good while staring at her legs and I no longer felt like a scoundrel or ashamed to be looking at them, perhaps because I did so at my leisure, unhypocritically and without witnesses, perhaps because, as I followed her, I could not do or want anything else, what more could I want? She went down the street full of embassies in which, during the day, there are no parked cars with people inside them, nor are there transvestites waiting patiently and fatalistically on benches, she walked four blocks, moving from one side of the street to the other, and on the fifth block, she went in through the door of the house she had been heading for, from the way she walked it was clear that she knew where she was going from the moment she left the shop, preferring a zigzag route to the strait and narrow, a way of making a familiar route more interesting. It was the most modest and neglected doorway in a good street, an expensive area, and so was not, therefore, particularly modest or particularly neglected, just a little run-down, in need of renovation. There were no bars nearby where I could sit and wait and watch for her to come out, however long that took, perhaps it was her own apartment and she would not emerge for the rest of the day, although it didn’t seem like that to me from the way she had gone in, you’re usually already feeling for your keys in your pocket, or in your handbag if you’re a woman, I suppose, if you’re Luisa or Marta Téllez. I remembered Luisa’s last words to Deán in the restaurant, “I’ll see you at home,” I had assumed she meant Conde de la Cimera, in fact it was ambiguous, “home” could also be Luisa’s home which this perhaps was. I decided to wait, I set myself a limit of half an hour which I knew would stretch to three-quarters of an hour if necessary, I moved a little further from the door, I leaned on a corner so as not to be too obvious and so that
I could disappear in an instant, I lit a cigarette and started reading the foreign newspaper I had bought, it was
La Repubblica
, at least I could understand it, Italian and Spanish being related languages, and I let my thoughts drift. And I waited. I waited.

I was reading an article about the crisis in Juventus’ game in Turin, possibly due to a widespread and growing interest in Satanism in that city, or perhaps I had let myself be misled by the apparent similarities between the two languages – that probably explains my loss of concentration and why I was not as alert as I should have been, or perhaps it was simply because I didn’t have to wait as long as I had expected, not even a quarter of an hour had passed, which is why I wasn’t on my guard – and when I glanced up at the doorway for the umpteenth time in those eleven or thirteen minutes and, instead of a blank – the door was open – or some unknown neighbour – two had come out in that brief space of time – I saw the face and astonished eyes of Luisa Téllez only a few steps away and another face and another familiar pair of eyes looking up at me from infinitely lower down, from the height of a two-year-old: Eugenio was well wrapped up and was wearing a quilted gaberdine cap with a strap buckled under his chin, reminiscent of those worn by pilots in the old days, although his cap had a small peak. He was holding Luisa’s hand and she was far less loaded down now, in her other hand she was carrying only a handbag and one of the two Armani bags, she had left the other one upstairs – Téllez’s birthday present, the top or the skirt – along with the bag containing
Lolita
, perhaps her own present, not much, a paperback book; either that, or a most unusual commission – and the beers and the sausages and the ice cream, those were doubtless the ingredients for the quick and simple supper that María Fernández Vera would not have had the time to buy having spent part of the morning and part of the afternoon looking after the boy, her sister-in-law must have promised to do some shopping for her and Guillermo on her way to collect their orphaned nephew. They were standing there before me, the aunt and the boy, they were two steps away, they must have come out just after I last glanced at the door and that had given them time to walk over, without my noticing, to where I was standing, reading about Satanism and soccer in Italian: they were about to
turn the corner. Or perhaps there was a simpler explanation and I had actually allowed myself to be seen, tired of moving in the shadows. I wondered if the boy would recognize me, I don’t know how much small boys remember or if it varies from individual to individual, it had been more than a month since he had seen me, but he had been with me over a period of a good few hours and on a night that for him had proved catastrophic, the end of his world: throughout the whole of a seemingly interminable supper during which he had played the role of guardian to his mother and had refused to go to sleep precisely because I was there. He had heard my name several times as I had heard his (“Come on, Eugenio, love,” Marta had said at one point, “off to bed now, otherwise Víctor will get angry,” and it wasn’t true that I would get angry, although I was getting impatient), and he had seen me again when his simple dreams had been interrupted and he had pushed open the bedroom door that had been left ajar and, without his mother realizing, he had leaned in the doorway clutching his dummy and his rabbit, he had placed one hand on my forearm and I had led him away from there, concealing the bra, or trophy, which I still have, and preventing him from saying goodbye when he did not even know that he would have to, the end of his world and the last time that he would have seen her alive. Had it been otherwise, I would have let him come in, even though she was half-naked.

“Ictor,” said the boy, pointing at me, he said it with a smile, he remembered my name. I think I found that rather touching.

Having recovered from her surprise, Luisa Téllez stood looking at me curiously, fixedly. Then it occurred to me how ridiculous both my presence and my appearance must seem, standing there reading a foreign newspaper with, next to me, on the ground, a bag containing a video of
101 Dalmatians
, which didn’t interest me in the least, and an ice cream that would soon be melting, indeed, it probably already was, I realized then that it would be some time before I went home. I also had one sodden shoe that squelched every time I took a step, it was a sound more suited to the deck of a ship.

“What on earth are you playing at?” she said pityingly, and now she addressed me unhesitatingly as “tú”, the way young people do
and the way we all do when we address someone mentally, even when it is not to insult them or curse them or desire their ruin, shame and death, or to put them under a spell.

I felt embarrassed, I must have blushed a bit as she had when she opened the freezer door and was enveloped for a moment in that cold air, but I know that I also felt happy and relaxed, it meant an end to dissembling and an end to secrecy, at least as far as she was concerned, one less area of darkness for Luisa the sister.

“So, what did you choose in the end, the skirt or the top?” I asked, at the same time making as if to peer into the bag she was still carrying. I equally unhesitatingly addressed her as “tú” as well.

You can tell when anger could just as easily tip over into laughter, you spend your whole life watching for it, trying to get back into someone’s good graces, in the broadest sense of the word “grace”, trying to make sure that they don’t notice your faults, outrages and abuses, the mistakes one makes and the disappointment they represent for those who trusted in you, the minor betrayals and minor insults. You can always tell who is going to forgive you, at least for a time, who is going to take no notice or turn a blind eye, to use a colloquial expression gradually falling into disuse, even idioms fade and disappear. Luisa would be like that, benevolent and lighthearted and practical and even frivolous if necessary, I saw it at that moment, I hadn’t seen it before, during lunch, but then she had hardly paid me any attention at all and she was finding her brother-in-law and father somewhat irritating, the former with his inability to reach a decision on something that affected her directly, and the latter with his irksome, backward-looking view of life, a man from another time who didn’t understand much and didn’t try to, he was no longer of an age to make changes or to make an effort, in keeping with the character or person he had ended up as. And yet even then, I must have glimpsed something of her natural cheeriness and helpfulness, her tacit defence of Deán, the compassion she felt for him, even though she did not perhaps actually feel much sympathy or liking for him, her sense of duty towards the boy, her readiness to help and to change her habits – her life – her desire for reconciliation between the people close to her, her silence during the argument between the two men who got on so badly, her need for
clarity and probably for harmony too, her ability to imagine the worst aspects of another person’s death despite her own limited experience (“What would be frightening would be to think it,” she had said, “and to know it”). She had paid me no attention, but during that lunch I had been merely an employee, an intruder, an inappropriate presence that had facilitated Téllez’s careless indifference. Now, on the other hand, I was someone, not only my name had taken on considerable meaning in the boy’s truncated pronunciation, I had suddenly become more interesting and had acquired, so to speak, a new place in the hierarchy. Now I was someone chosen by her older sister, Luisa had no way of knowing that I had played second or even third fiddle: I was someone with whom Marta had been in intimate contact during her last hours, hours which she could not have imagined would be her last, but which were, and that final moment had, in part, defined her for ever, we end up seeing our life in the light of the latest or most recent event, the mother believes that she was born to be a mother and the spinster to be single, the murderer to be a murderer and the victim a victim, and the adulteress an adulteress if she realizes, in the middle of the adulterous act, that she is dying and, assuming too, that the word “adulteress” has not also fallen into disuse. Marta did not know it, but I did and I am the one who counts, the one telling the story and the one who decides who will speak, “None that speak of me know me, and when they do speak, they slander me”. It was also possible that Luisa had given her own partial, subjective, mistaken or even false version of the two sisters’ adolescence, that was now her privilege as this is mine, there was no one now to contradict her, therein lies the pathetic superiority of the living, our temporary motive for triumph. Had Marta been present, she would doubtless have denied what Luisa had said and would again have called her a copycat, she would have said that Luisa was the one who could never decide and that she had only to show an interest in a boy for her younger sister immediately to become interested too, and thus the mechanism of usurpation would be set in motion. Either of the two things could be true, just as one might say: “I never sought it, I never wanted it” or “I sought it, I wanted it,” in fact, everything is at once one thing and its contrary, no one does anything convinced of its injustice, which
is why there is no justice and why justice never prevails, as the Lone Ranger said in his litany of disordered ideas: society’s view is never that of the individual, it is only the view of the time and time is as slippery as sleep and compacted snow and always gives one licence to say: “I am not the thing I was”, it’s easy enough, while there’s still time.

There was no laughter, not as such, just a half-repressed smile, I knew that, as well as being surprised and indignant, Luisa also felt flattered, I had followed her and spied on her, I had taken an interest in her, taken trouble over her, I had observed her and commented on her clothes and her purchases, I was someone chosen by Marta who was now turning all his attention on her, how that death gladdens me, saddens me, pleases me. “How easy it is to seduce someone or to be seduced,” I thought, “we are satisfied with so little,” and I felt safe and sound, my blushes and my embarrassment vanished, and I thought further, I thought something which, only a few seconds before, would never have occurred to me: “If Deán decided not to live with his son and Luisa went to live in his apartment, this child could, if I wanted, end up being mine, and then I would not be for him what I, at first, thought I would be, a shadow, a nobody, an almost unknown figure who watched him for a few moments from the door of his bedroom without his knowledge, without him ever knowing, and never therefore able to remember it, the two of us travelling slowly towards our dissolution. It wouldn’t be quite like that, the reverse side of his time, its dark back. Or, rather, it would be, but it would not only be that, it would be other things too, the partial substitution of his doomed, lost world, the secret and compensatory legacy of one fateful night, a vicariously paternal figure – the usurper in short – the two of us nevertheless travelling towards our dissolution, only much more slowly and creating more work for the waiting oblivion. And thus I will perhaps be able to speak to him one day about what he was that night.” And I thought further, I thought also of Luisa herself: “Perhaps I am the vague figure of the husband who has not yet arrived and who will help her to continue for many more years amongst the inconstant living, in a world of men, a world configured by comics and coloured prints and storybooks (and, above them, their model
planes). We are united by more than one thing, we have both tied the same shoelace.”

“Ah, I see,” she said thoughtfully, her smile still hidden, “so you were there too.”

“The skirt really suited you,” I said. “Well, the top did too, but the skirt suited you best.” I did not hide my smile, I had to get into her good graces, I had been a bachelor again for some time now.

“And now what? Now what do we do?” she said. She had grown serious again or had succeeded in making her angry feelings prevail, but she was betrayed by that use of the first person plural, “Now what do we do?”, in the midst of her exasperation and severity which were simultaneously sincere and insincere.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk quietly,” I replied.