Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (6 page)

The English voice took a while to answer, five rings, the porter had probably dropped off to sleep, it was a Tuesday night in winter, and before returning to consciousness, he would have imagined that he was dreaming he could hear a phone ringing, his head perhaps resting on the counter like a future decapitee, his ankles wrapped around the legs of the chair, one arm hanging limply down.

“Wilbraham Hotel, good morning,” that voice said in English, rather indistinctly, but in keeping with the clock.

“May I speak to Mr Dean, please?” I said.

“What room number, sir?” replied the voice, which had recovered its harsh, neutral, professional tone, the voice of a factotum.

“I don’t know his room number, his name’s Eduardo Dean.”

“One moment, please.” I waited a few seconds during which I heard the porter whistling quietly, rather odd in an English person who has just been woken up in what, for him, would be the middle of the night, the small hours. The next thing I would hear, when the whistling stopped, would be the hoarse voice of Marta’s husband startled awake. I prepared myself, prepared myself mentally rather than the precise, gabbled words I would have to say before hanging up, without a goodbye. But that isn’t what happened, instead the English voice came on again and said: “Hello, I’m afraid there’s no Mr Dean in the hotel, sir. Is it spelled D-E-A-N, sir?”

“D-E-A-N, that’s right,” I repeated. In the end, I had had to spell it out. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir, there’s no Mr Dean in the hotel tonight, sir. When is he supposed to have arrived?”

“Today. He should have arrived today.”

“You mean yesterday, Tuesday, isn’t that right, sir? Just a moment,” said the porter, for whom the day and the night that for me seemed endless were already distant entities, and again I heard him whistling, he was obviously a jovial man, a man of spirit, possibly a young man despite the dignified, professional tone he adopted; or perhaps he had been sleeping soundly until shortly before and was feeling refreshed, the night shift. Appropriately and ironically enough, he was whistling “Strangers in the Night”, now I had time to recognize it, which meant that he couldn’t be that young, young men don’t whistle Sinatra songs. After a few more seconds he said: “There was no reservation in that name for yesterday, sir. He might have cancelled, of course, but there was definitely no reservation in that name yesterday.”

I was on the point of insisting and asking him if perhaps there was a reservation for today, Wednesday. I didn’t, though, I merely thanked him, he said: “Goodbye, sir” and I hung up, and only after hanging up did a possible explanation occur to me: in England, as in Portugal and in America, if someone has three names, what counts is the last name, Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, is usually listed under Doyle. When they saw Deán’s identity card or passport, they would probably have registered him under his second surname, Ballesteros, which, for a Spaniard, barely counts at all. I could have tried asking for Mr Ballesteros and then I realized that I shouldn’t and that I shouldn’t even have asked for Mr Dean and that I had had a narrow escape. If I had managed to leave him my tragic message, Deán might have called not only a sister-in-law, a sister or a friend, but a neighbour or even the porter, who would have been up to the apartment in no time at all and would have discovered me going down in the lift or down the stairs or right there: by the time they had arrived, it was more than likely that I would not even have left. I had to leave soon though, I shouldn’t waste time, even though, as yet, no one knew anything and no one was likely to turn up at that time of night. But there were still things I needed to sort out: I took my shoes off again and went back to the bedroom. When I passed the boy’s room, I clearly thought what had been in my mind all the time, throbbing, postponed, Marta’s last words, “Oh God, the child.” I walked on and, now, having made contact with the
outside world, even if it was only with a foreign porter about whom I knew nothing and never would know anything, I saw the situation differently when I went back into the bedroom, for the first time I felt ashamed at the sight of Marta’s half-naked body, ashamed of the part I had played in that nakedness. I went over and pulled back the cover and the sheets on the unoccupied side of the bed, the side occupied by me that night and by her husband on other nights, I pulled the sheets right back, from the pillow down to the foot of the bed, then I walked around the bed and, from the other side, I managed to push her, with due consideration for what had passed between us, then rather harder when I noticed the resistance put up by the slight mound formed by the puckered sheets down the middle of the bed and this time I did feel a certain repugnance towards her dead flesh (one hand on her shoulder, my other hand on her thigh, pushing), that contact no longer felt pleasant, I think I averted my gaze as much as possible as I was moving her. I had to roll her over, there was no other way of getting her across the ruck of woollen cover and sheets, and when she was on the side of the bed where she never slept (she rolled over twice and remained as she had been before, lying on her side, looking to her right), I pulled up the sheets and the bed cover that I had previously drawn back and I managed to lay them over her. I covered her up, I tucked her in, I drew the sheets right up to her neck, to the nape of her neck, which now no longer looked as if she had just emerged from the shower, and I even wondered if I should perhaps cover her face too, as I have seen people do countless times in films and on the news. That, however, would be evidence that someone had been with her, when, at present, there would be only a suspicion, which, however strong (and suspicion was inevitable), was still not a certainty. I looked at her face, still so like the face it had been, still instantly recognizable to herself had she been able to see her reflection, much as it would have been day after day when she looked at herself in the mirror on every countable morning of her life – when things come to an end they have a number, and nothing forewarns us of this and nothing changes from day to day – still recognizable to me too when I compared it to the face in the photo on the dressing table, the photo of her wedding that would have remained there for
reasons of implacable, enforced inertia ever since it was first placed there and which neither of the bedroom’s inhabitants would have looked at in ages: five years ago, she had said, a little younger and with her hair up, the back of her neck, old-fashioned somehow, would have been on view throughout the whole ceremony, and on her face is a look of mingled joy and surprise – the laughter of alarm – she’s wearing a short dress, but she’s wearing white (though it might be cream, it’s only a black-and-white photo), her arm linked conventionally through that of her serious and rather inexpressive husband, like all husbands in wedding photos, the two of them seemingly isolated in the picture when, in fact, they would have been surrounded by people, Marta is holding a bouquet in her hands and is looking neither at him nor straight ahead, but at the people who must have been standing to her left – sisters, sisters-in-law and girlfriends, the amused and excited girlfriends who remember her from when she was a little girl, from when they were all little girls, they’re the ones who can’t believe that she’s getting married, the ones who still see everything as a game whenever they get together and are thus a source of relief, they are her confidantes, her best friends because they are like sisters, and her sisters are like friends, all of them both envious and supportive. And I look at her husband, Deán, he isn’t just serious, with his long, strange face, he looks rather uncomfortable, as if he had landed up at a party held by the neighbours of some acquaintances or at a celebration that has nothing to do with him because it is a purely female occasion (weddings are the province of women, not just of the bride, but of all the women present), a necessary intruder but, ultimately, mere decoration, someone who can be dispensed with at any moment, apart from at the altar – just the back of a neck – throughout the whole of that celebration which might last all night, much to his despair and his jealousy and his loneliness and regret, knowing, as he does, that he will only become necessary again – an obligatory figure – when all the guests have gone or when he and the bride leave and she does so unwillingly, looking back, still wearing in her eyes the dusky night. Eduardo Deán has a moustache, he’s looking directly at the camera and biting his lip, he’s very tall and thin and, although his face struck me as memorable, I didn’t remember it once I had left
the apartment and left Conde de la Cimera and that part of town. I could no longer see him.

As yet, though, I was still there, and, again, I was delaying leaving, as if my presence could remedy something that was entirely irremediable; as if I had qualms about abandoning Marta and leaving her alone on our wedding night – for how long? but I never sought it, I never wanted it; as if as long as I was there things still had some meaning, a thread of continuity, the silken thread, she’s dead, but the scene begun when she was alive continues, I am still in her bedroom and that makes her death seem less definitive because I was also there when she was alive, I know how it all happened and I myself have become the thread: her shoes, forever empty now, and her creased skirts, which will never now be ironed, can still be explained, they still have a story, a meaning, because I was a witness to the fact that she wore them, that she had them on – her high-heeled shoes, rather too high for wearing at home, even for the benefit of a guest, a near stranger – and I saw how she pushed them off with her own feet when she got to the bedroom and how she suddenly diminished in height, which made her seem somehow more carnal, more placid, I can tell the story and I can therefore explain the transition from life to death, which is a way of both prolonging that life and of accepting that death: if someone has been present at both things, or perhaps I should say states, if the person dying does not die alone and if whoever is with the person can give witness to the fact that the dead person was not always dead, but was once alive. Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck were still speaking in subtitles as if nothing had happened, and then the phone rang and I panicked. The panic was not instantaneous, it happened in two stages, because, for a second, I wanted to believe that the first ring had issued from the screen, but phones had a different ring then and, besides, there wasn’t a phone in that particular scene and so neither MacMurray nor Stanwyck turned round to look at it or to pick it up, the way I immediately turned towards Marta’s bedside table, the phone in Marta’s bedroom was ringing at three o’clock in the morning. “It’s not possible,” I thought, “I haven’t spoken to her husband, I called him but I didn’t speak to him and nobody knows what has happened, I didn’t say anything to the porter, not
a thing.” And more thoughts thronged in as they do in moments of stress: “Perhaps he dreamed about it in his bed in London, intuited or guessed what had happened, and woke up filled with despair and jealousy and loneliness and regret and preferred to call in order to allay his night sweats and to calm himself, even at the risk of waking her up and possibly the child too.” It didn’t occur to me to close the bedroom door in order to avoid the latter happening, and at the third ring, out of sheer panic and to stop the strident ringing, I picked up the phone, but I didn’t say hello or anything and only then, with the receiver in my hand but not to my ear – as if that contact might betray me – I realized that the answering machine was on – I saw a red light vibrate and flicker – and that it would have answered for me and for her. And when I realized that, I immediately hung up, in response to my growing panic when I heard a man’s voice say: “Marta?” and again: “Marta?” That was when I hung up and stood absolutely still, holding my breath, as if someone had seen me, I took three steps towards the door and then I did carefully close it, out of panic and so as not to wake the child, and I prepared myself for the renewed ringing that would not be long in coming, and indeed was not, one, two, three, four, and then the answering machine cut in, I couldn’t hear the recorded voice, I didn’t know if it was her voice recorded when she was still alive or that of her husband who was far away. Then the beep sounded, I checked with my finger that the volume was up high and I heard the man’s voice again, I heard everything he said: “Marta?” he began again. “Marta, are you there?” And this question was impatient or, more than that, irritated. “Did we get cut off before? Are you listening?” There was a pause and some annoyed tutting. “Are you there? What are you playing at? Are you out? When I phoned you just now, you hung up on me! Oh, for Christ’s sake, pick up the bloody phone!” There was another second’s wait, Deán seemed rather foul-mouthed to me, he began to bluster. “Oh, I don’t know, anyway, you must have the volume turned down or perhaps you’ve gone out, I don’t understand it, you must have got your sister to look after the boy. Anyway, I’ve just got home and so I only just got your message, honestly, fancy forgetting that Eduardo was going away today, you can’t be very keen to see me, the one night
when we could have seen each other at our leisure, without having to resort to a hotel or the car. Shit, if I’d known about it, you could have come over here or I could’ve come over to you for a bit, instead of wasting the whole bloody night as I just have. Marta? Marta? Are you stupid or something, why don’t you pick up the phone?” There was another pause, a slight groan of exasperation, I thought: “It isn’t Deán, but he’s a bully, and rude with it.” The voice went on talking, quickly, irritably, but firmly, it was like the sound of an electric shaver, steady and hurried and monotonous: “Oh well, I don’t know, I don’t think you have gone out, and then there’s the boy, oh well, if you have gone out and you come back soonish, say, before half past three or a quarter to four, call me if you like, I’m not going to bed just yet and, if you want, I could still come over for a while, I’ve had the most ridiculous night, disastrous, I can’t wait to tell you all about the mess I’ve got myself into, it makes no difference if I go to bed a bit later still, I’ll be wrecked tomorrow anyway. Marta? Are you there?” There was a final, infinitesimal pause, the time it took for him to click his sharp tongue disapprovingly again. “Right then, I don’t know, perhaps you’re asleep, if not, we’ll talk tomorrow. But Inés isn’t on duty tomorrow, so there’s no chance of seeing each other. You might have remembered before, honestly, you’re bloody useless you are.”