Javier Marias - The Infatuations

JAVIER MARAS

The Infatuations

TRANSLATED BY
MARGARET JULL COSTA

HAMISH HAMILTON
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

Table of Contents

By the same author

All Souls

A Heart So White

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

When I was Mortal

Dark Back of Time

The Man of Feeling

Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear

Voyage along the Horizon

Written Lives

Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream

Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell

Bad Nature, or with Elvis in Mexico

While the Women are Sleeping

To Mercedes Lpez-Ballesteros,

for visiting me and telling me stories

And to Carme Lpez Mercader,

for continuing to laugh in my ear

and for listening to me

The last time I saw Miguel Desvern or Deverne was also the last time that his wife, Luisa, saw him, which seemed strange, perhaps unfair, given that she was his wife, while I, on the other hand, was a person he had never met, a woman with whom he had never exchanged so much as a single word. I didnt even know his name, or only when it was too late, only when I saw a photo in the newspaper, showing him after he had been stabbed several times, with his shirt half off, and about to become a dead man, if he wasnt dead already in his own absent consciousness, a consciousness that never returned: his last thought must have been that the person stabbing him was doing so by mistake and for no reason, that is, senselessly, and whats more, not just once, but over and over, unremittingly, with the intention of erasing him from the world and expelling him from the earth without further delay, right there and then. But why do I say too late, I wonder, too late for what? I have no idea, to be honest. Its just that when someone dies, we always think its too late for anything, or indeed everything certainly too late to go on waiting for him and we write him off as another casualty. Its the same with those closest to us, although we find their deaths much harder to accept and we mourn them, and their image accompanies us in our mind both when were out and about and when were at home, even though for a long time we believe that we will never get accustomed to their absence. From the start, though, we know from the moment they die that we can no longer count on them, not even for the most petty thing, for a trivial phone call or a banal question (Did I leave my car keys there? What time did the kids get out of school today?), that we can count on them for nothing. And nothing means nothing. Its incomprehensible really, because it assumes a certainty, and being certain of anything goes against our nature: the certainty that someone will never come back, never speak again, never take another step whether to come closer or to move further off will never look at us or look away. I dont know how we bear it, or how we recover. I dont know how it is that we do gradually begin to forget, when time has passed and distanced us from them, for they, of course, have remained quite still.

But I had often seen him and heard him talk and laugh, almost every morning, in fact, over a period of a few years, and quite early in the morning too, although not so very early; indeed, I used to delay slightly getting into work just so as to be able to spend a little time with that couple, and not just with him, you understand, but with them both, it was the sight of them together that calmed and contented me before my working day began. They became almost obligatory. No, thats the wrong word for something that gives one pleasure and a sense of peace. Perhaps they became a superstition; but, no, thats not it either: it wasnt that I believed the day would go badly if I didnt share breakfast with them, at a distance, that is; it was just that, without my daily sighting of them, I began work feeling rather lower in spirits or less optimistic, as if they provided me with a vision of an orderly or, if you prefer, harmonious world, or perhaps a tiny fragment of the world visible only to a very few, as is the case with any fragment or any life, however public or exposed that life might be. I didnt like to shut myself away for hours in the office without first having seen and observed them, not on the sly, but discreetly, the last thing I would have wanted was to make them feel uncomfortable or to bother them in any way. And it would have been unforgivable and to my own detriment to frighten them off. It comforted me to breathe the same air and to be a part albeit unnoticed of their morning landscape, before they went their separate ways, probably until the next meal, which, on many days, would have been supper. The last day on which his wife and I saw him, they could not dine together. Or even have lunch. She waited twenty minutes for him at a restaurant table, puzzled but not overly concerned, until the phone rang and her world ended, and she never waited for him again.

It was clear to me from the very first day that they were married, he being nearly fifty and she slightly younger, not yet forty. The nicest thing about them was seeing how much they enjoyed each others company. At an hour when almost no one is in the mood for anything, still less for fun and games, they talked non-stop, laughing and joking, as if they had only just met or met for the very first time, and not as if they had left the house together, dropped the kids off at school, having first got washed and dressed at the same time perhaps in the same bathroom and woken up in the same bed, nor as if the first thing theyd seen had been the inevitable face of their spouse, and so on and on, day after day, for a fair number of years, because they had children, a boy and a girl, who came with them on a couple of occasions, the girl must have been about eight and the boy about four, and the boy looked incredibly like his father.

The husband dressed with a slightly old-fashioned elegance, although he never seemed in any way ridiculous or anachronistic. I mean that he was always smartly dressed and well coordinated, with made-to-measure shirts, expensive, sober ties, a handkerchief in his top jacket pocket, cufflinks, polished black lace-up shoes or else suede, although he only wore suede towards the end of spring, when he started wearing lighter-coloured suits and his hands were carefully manicured. Despite all this, he didnt give the impression of being some vain executive or a dyed-in-the-wool rich kid. He seemed more like a man whose upbringing would not allow him to go out in the street dressed in any other way, not at least on a working day; such clothes seemed natural to him, as though his father had taught him that, after a certain age, this was the appropriate way to dress, regardless of any foolish and instantly outmoded fashions, and regardless, too, of the raggedy times in which we live, and that he need not be affected by these in the least. He dressed so traditionally that I never once detected a single eccentric detail; he wasnt interested in trying to look different, although he did stand out a little in the context of the caf where I always saw him and even perhaps in the context of our rather scruffy city. This naturalness was matched by his undoubtedly cordial, cheery nature, almost hail-fellow-well-met, you might say (although he addressed the waiters formally as usted and treated them with a kindness that never toppled over into cloying familiarity): his frequent outbursts of laughter were somewhat loud, its true, but never irritatingly so. He laughed easily and with gusto, but he always did so sincerely and sympathetically, never in a flattering, sycophantic manner, but responding to things that genuinely amused him, as many things did, for he was a generous man, ready to see the funny side of the situation and to applaud other peoples jokes, at least the verbal variety. Perhaps it was his wife who mainly made him laugh, for there are people who can make us laugh even when they dont intend to, largely because their very presence pleases us, and so its easy enough to set us off, simply seeing them and being in their company and hearing them is all it takes, even if theyre not saying anything very extraordinary or are even deliberately spouting nonsense, which we nevertheless find funny. They seemed to fulfil that role for each other; and although they were clearly married, I never caught one of them putting on an artificial or studiedly soppy expression, like some couples who have lived together for years and make a point of showing how much in love they still are, as if that somehow increased their value or embellished them. No, it was more as if they were determined to get on together and make a good impression on each other with a view to possible courtship; or as if they had been so drawn to each other before they were married or lived together that, in any circumstance, they would have spontaneously chosen each other not out of conjugal duty or convenience or habit or even loyalty as companion or partner, friend, conversationalist or accomplice, in the knowledge that, whatever happened, whatever transpired, whatever there was to tell or to hear, it would always be less interesting or amusing with someone else. Without her in his case, without him in her case. There was a camaraderie between them and, above all, a certainty.