Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (3 page)

“Do you want to phone your husband?” I asked Marta. “It might make you feel better to talk to him and to let him know that you’re not well.” We can’t bear those close to us not to know about our troubles, we can’t bear them to continue to believe that we are more or less happy when, suddenly, we are not, there are four or five people in everybody’s life who must be informed immediately of whatever is happening to us, we can’t bear them to go on believing what is no longer true, not for a minute, for them to believe that we are married when we have just been widowed or that we still have parents when we have suddenly become orphans, that we have company when that company has just left, or are in good health when we have suddenly fallen ill. That they should think us still alive when we are dead. But that was a strange night, especially for Marta Téllez, doubtless the strangest night of her whole existence. Marta turned her face more now, I saw it full on,
as she would have seen mine, for some time now I had seen only the back of her neck, growing ever damper with sweat, ever more rigid, the crisscrossing threads of hair growing ever more matted, as if becoming impregnated with mud; and her smooth, bare back. When she turned round, I saw that her eyes were screwed so tight shut that it was unlikely she could see anything, her eyes almost supplanted by her long lashes, I don’t know if the strangeness of the look which I could only guess at was due to her having momentarily forgotten about me and to her failure to recognize me or my question or my remark, or perhaps to the fact that she had never felt what she was feeling then. I suppose she was dying without my realizing it, dying is a new experience for everyone. “You’re mad,” she said, “how can I possibly phone him, he’d kill me.” When she turned, her bra, which she had been holding in place – intentionally or not – with her arms or armpits, dropped on to the mattress. Her breasts remained uncovered but she did nothing to cover them: I suppose she was dying and I didn’t realize it. And she added, proving that she hadn’t forgotten about me and that she knew what I was talking about: “You’ve switched the television on, poor thing, you must be bored, turn the sound up if you like, what are you watching?” While she was saying this (though she said it as if she were talking to herself) she placed one hand on my leg, the suggestion of a caress she could not complete; then she removed it to return to her previous position, with her back to me, curled up like a little girl, or like her little boy who was sleeping in his room at last with no thought for me and for her, probably in a cot, I don’t know if two-year-olds still run the risk of rolling out of bed in the night on to the floor if they sleep in a bed like grown-ups, or if they sleep in cots where they’re safe. “It’s an old Fred MacMurray film,” I replied (she was younger than me, I wondered if she would know who Fred MacMurray was), “but I’m not really watching it.” In London, her husband would also be asleep, oblivious to her and ignorant of my existence, why did he not wake up, anxious, why did he not guess what was happening, why did he not call her in Madrid, seeking consolation, only to be greeted here by a voice filled by an even greater anxiety, one that would make him forget his own, why did he not save us? In the middle of the night, though, everything was in order for all
the other possible people or characters behind with the news: for the child, close at hand, unaware of the world beneath his own roof, and for the father far off on that island where usually one sleeps so soundly; for the sisters-in-law or sisters who would be dreaming of the abstract future in this city that is never still and where it is always hard to sleep – more a giving in, never a habit; for some overworked, exhausted doctor who might perhaps have saved a life if someone had dragged him from his nightmares that night; for the neighbours in that same building who would be growing increasingly desperate, thinking in their sleep of the next morning coming ever closer, with less and less time before they had to wake up and look at themselves in the mirror and clean their teeth and turn on the radio, another day, how dreadful, another day, how fortunate. Only for me and for Marta were things not in order, I was not oblivious or immersed in sleep and it was already very late, before, I said that it all happened very fast and I know that it did, but remembering it is as slow as witnessing it was, I had the feeling that time was passing and yet only very slowly according to the clocks (the clock on Marta’s bedside table, the watch on my wrist), I wanted to let it pass unhurriedly before each new remark I uttered or each new movement I made, but I couldn’t manage it, barely a minute passed between my remarks and my movements or between movement and remark, when I thought ten minutes had passed or at least five. In other parts of the city something, though not much, would be happening, in orderly and disorderly fashion: I could hear the cars some distance away, there was not much traffic in that street, it was called Conde de la Cimera, and what I did know was that there was a hospital very near, called the Hospital de la Luz, where night nurses would be dozing, head resting on one hand, a superficial sleep born to be broken, legs crossed, wearing whitish stockings with lumpy seams, perched on uncomfortable chairs, whilst, beyond, some bespectacled student would be reading pages of law or physics or pharmacy for some pointless exam in the morning, forgetting everything he had learned the moment he emerged from the exam room; and beyond that, further off, in another part of town, at the bottom of the hill in Hermanos Bécquer, a solitary whore would take a few expectant, incredulous steps towards the kerb every time a car
slowed down or stopped for the traffic lights: dressed in her best clothes on a cold Tuesday night, in order to be seen from either much too close to or else only from a distance, or perhaps she was a man, a young man dragging the heels of his stilettos because he is still not quite used to them or is ill or tired, his footsteps and his infrequent encounters with men in cars all destined to leave no mark on anyone, or to become superimposed one on the other in his confused, fatalistic, fragile memory. A few lovers would perhaps be saying goodbye to each other, they can’t wait to go back home alone to their own bed, the one rumpled, the other intact, but they still hang back, exchanging kisses at the open front door – he is the one leaving, or she is – while he or she waits for the lift that has remained motionless for a whole hour without anyone calling for it, not since the most noctambular of the other tenants returned home from a discotheque: the kisses of the one who is leaving, standing at the front door of the one who is staying, become confused with those of the day before yesterday and those of the day after tomorrow, there was only ever one memorable first night and it was immediately lost, swallowed up by the weeks and the repetitive months that succeeded it; and somewhere a fight will have broken out, a botde flies or someone slams it down on the table of the person bothering him – grasping the bottle by the neck as if it were the handle of a dagger – and the bottle doesn’t break but the glass table does, although the foam from the beer gushes out like urine; or someone somewhere is committing a murder, or, rather, homicide, since it is unpremeditated, it just happens, an argument and a blow, a cry and the sound of something tearing, a revelation or the sudden realization that one has been deceived, finding out, listening, knowing or seeing, death is sometimes brought on by affirmation and activity, driven away or perhaps postponed by ignorance and tedium and by what is always the best response: “I don’t know, I’m not sure, we’ll have to see.” You have to wait and see and no one knows anything for sure, not even what they do or decide or see or suffer, each moment sooner or later dissolves, its degree of unreality constantly on the increase, everything travelling towards its own dissolution with the passing of the days and even the seconds that appear to sustain things but, in fact, suppress them: the nurse’s
dream will vanish along with the student’s vain wakefulness, the tentatively inviting footsteps of the whore, who is possibly a sick young man in disguise, will be scorned or go unnoticed, the lovers’ kisses will be renounced after a few more months or weeks that will bring with them, unannounced, the final night, the bitter, relieved farewell; the glass table top will be replaced, the fight will disperse like the smoke that harboured it that night, even though the person who started it may continue to make trouble; and, as if it was just another insignificant, superfluous tie or link, the murder or homicide is simply lumped in with all the crimes – there are so many others – that have been forgotten and of which no record remains and with those currently being planned and of which there will be a record, even though that too will eventually disappear. And things will happen in London and all over the world about which neither I nor Marta will have any knowledge, in that respect we will be alike, it’s an hour earlier there, perhaps her husband isn’t sleeping on the island either, but spending a sleepless night staring out of his wintry hotel window – a sash window, in the Wilbraham Hotel – at the buildings opposite, or at other rooms in the same hotel which forms a right angle with its two rear wings that are invisible from the street, Wilbraham Place, most are in darkness, staring at that room where, in the afternoon, he saw a black maid remaking the beds of those who have left, in preparation for those who have not yet arrived, or perhaps he can see her now in her own attic room – those rooms are on the top floor, the narrowest rooms with the lowest ceilings, and are reserved for the employees who have no home of their own – getting undressed after her day’s work, removing her cap and her shoes and her stockings and her apron and her uniform, then standing at the sink and washing her face and under her arms, he too can see a half-dressed, half-naked woman, but, unlike me, he hasn’t touched her or embraced her, he has nothing to do with that woman who, before going to bed, has a perfunctory wash, British-fashion, at the wretched sink of one of those English rooms whose tenants have to go out into the corridor to use a bathroom shared with other people on the same floor. I don’t know, I’m not sure, we’ll have to see, or, rather, we’ll never know, the dead Marta will never know what happened to her husband in
London that night while she lay dying beside me, when he comes home she won’t be here to listen to him, to listen to the story, possibly fictitious, that he has decided to tell her. Everything is travelling towards its own dissolution and is lost and few things leave any trace, especially if they are never repeated, if they happen only once and never recur, the same happens with those things that install themselves too comfortably and recur day after day, again and again, they leave no trace either.

At the time, though, I still did not know to which category of event my first visit that night to Conde de la Cimera – an unfamiliar street – belonged, I considered leaving and not coming back, it really was bad luck on my part, but then again it was possible that I might come back the next day, today according to the clocks, and whether I did or did not come back, from the moment I left there and as the day advanced, there would soon begin to be no trace of this first or, rather, this unique night. “My presence here will be erased tomorrow,” I thought, “when Marta is well again and recovered: she’ll wash the dirty dishes from our supper and iron her skirts and air the sheets, even those I didn’t use, and she’ll prefer not to remember her folly or her failure. She’ll think of her husband in London and feel comforted and long for his return, she’ll look out of the window for a moment while she tidies up and re-establishes order in the world – in yesterday’s hand one unemptied ashtray – although there is still perhaps a slightly dreamy look in her eyes, growing weaker every moment, a look that belongs to me and to my few kisses, the memory and the temptation and the effect all cancelled out now by malaise or fear or regret. My presence here, so apparent now, will be denied tomorrow with a shake of the head and a turning on of a tap and, for her, it will be as if I had never been here and I won’t have been, because even the time that refuses to pass in the end does pass and is washed away down the drain, and I need only imagine the coming of morning to see myself leaving this house, I might leave it even sooner, when it’s still night, crossing Reina Victoria and walking for a while along General Rodrigo in order to clear my head before hailing a taxi. Perhaps all it needs is for Marta to go to sleep and then I’ll have a reason and an excuse to leave.” Suddenly the bedroom door opened, it had been left ajar so that Marta
could hear the child if he woke up and cried. “He never does wake up, whatever happens,” she had said, “but, that way, I feel more relaxed.” I saw the child in his pyjamas leaning in the doorway with his inevitable rabbit and his dummy, he had woken up without crying, possibly sensing the imminent death of his world. He was looking at his mother and looking at me out of the simplicity of the dreams he had not quite abandoned, uttering none of his few, truncated words. Marta didn’t realize he was there – her eyes tight shut, her long lashes – although I made a rapid, alarmed move to do up my shirt which I had not yet taken off, but which she had unbuttoned for me (too many buttons then and now too many to do them all up). Marta Téllez must be very ill indeed not to notice the presence of her son in her bedroom in the middle of the night, or not to sense it, since she wasn’t looking in his direction, nor anywhere else. For a few seconds, I was afraid that, at any moment, the child might enter the room screaming and clamber on to the bed next to his sick mother or burst into tears to attract her attention – her attention was focused entirely on herself and on her disobedient body. He looked at the television and saw Fred MacMurray who, in this scene, as he had been in other scenes for some time now, was accompanied by Barbara Stanwyck, a woman with a cruel, rather disagreeable face. He must have felt disappointed that it was in black and white and that there were no voices, or that it was Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck instead of Tintin and Haddock or one of the other important characters from his cartoon, because his eyes did not remain fixed there, as children’s eyes normally do when they alight on a television screen, instead he looked away at once, back at Marta. I blushed to think that it was my fault he was seeing his mother half-naked – almost half-naked, her bra had slipped off and she had made no attempt to cover herself – although perhaps he was used to it, he was too small for this to be a matter of importance to his parents and, besides, some parents consider it proof of a healthy lack of inhibition to share their own nakedness with the inevitable nakedness of their children, so frequent when they are very young. I still blushed despite this modern thought, however, and very awkwardly scooped up the bra from where it had fallen – it lay on the bed like a cast-off – in order, in a feeble, half-hearted
manner, to cover up its owner’s breasts. I did not, in fact, do so, because I realized that any movement, the touch of the fabric on her skin, would wake Marta up if she had gone to sleep or that she would, at any rate, open her eyes, and I thought it better for her not to know that the child had seen us, as long as the child allowed, I mean, as long as he did not cry or climb on to the bed or say anything. He obviously didn’t sleep in a cot or, rather, if he did, the bars must be quite low, just high enough so that he wouldn’t roll out in his sleep, but not high enough to prevent him from getting up if he wanted to. So I remained for a few seconds with that undersized bra in my hand, like a pale, paltry trophy, as if highlighting a conquest I had been unable to make, and which, in fact, was nothing of the sort: at that moment, I saw it as proof of my folly and my failure, and of hers. The child was obviously awake because he was there, standing in the doorway with his eyes wide open, but, in fact, he was still almost asleep, or at least that’s what I told myself. He looked at the bra, attracted by my gesture, and I immediately hid it, screwing it up in the hand I had dropped down to the covers, hiding it behind my back. He probably didn’t quite recognize me, he doubtless remembered my face rather as he remembered those of the childish characters in his videos or the faces of the dogs he dreamed about, except that he hadn’t yet put a name to me, or perhaps he had, my name had been spoken several times by Marta during supper, perhaps he knew it but, in his struggle against sleep, could not quite say it. No words came into his mouth, there was no expression in his eyes, I mean, no recognizable expression, nothing that fitted any of the normal adult terms – perplexity, hope, fear, indifference, confusion, anger; the slight frown was due to his fragile wakefulness, nothing more, at least that’s what I told myself. I got up carefully and went slowly over to him, smiling slightly and saying to him in a very low voice, a whisper: “You must go back to sleep now, Eugenio, it’s very late. Come on, you must go back to bed.” From my great height, I placed a hand on his shoulder – I still had the bra in my other hand, as if it were a used napkin. He allowed me to touch him, and placed his hand on my forearm. Then, he turned obediently and I watched him disappear down the corridor taking short, hurried steps, on his way back to his room. Before going in, he stopped
and turned towards me, as if expecting me to accompany him, perhaps he needed a witness to watch him get into bed, to be sure that someone knew where he was when he was asleep. Noiselessly – on tiptoe, I still had my shoes on, I thought that now I would probably not be taking them off – I followed him and stood by the door of the room in which he slept and which was still in darkness, the boy hadn’t switched on the light, perhaps he didn’t know how to, although the blind was raised and the glow of the yellowish, reddish night outside came in through the window – it was not a sash window. When he saw that I was following him, he climbed, still clutching his rabbit, into his bed again, a wooden cot, not a metal one, with the bars lowered as I had imagined. I think I stayed there for some minutes, although I didn’t look at the clock when I left Marta’s bedroom nor afterwards when I went back. I stayed until I was certain that the child had gone back to sleep again and I knew this from his breathing and because I moved closer for a moment to see his face. When I did so, my head bumped against something, though nothing that hurt me, and only then, in the half-light, did I notice that, hanging from the ceiling, out of his reach, were a few toy aeroplanes suspended on long threads. I took a step back and then returned to the door where I stood leaning against the doorframe – as he had done before, not daring to enter his mother’s bedroom – so that I could see them more clearly against the diffuse light. I saw that they were made out of cardboard or metal or were, perhaps, painted models, there were a lot of them and they were all old-fashioned propeller planes that doubtless had their origin in the far-off childhood of the father who was now in London, who would have waited until he had a son in order to get them out and restore them to their proper place, a little boy’s bedroom. I thought I could make out a Spitfire, a Messerschmitt 109, a Nieuport biplane and a Camel, as well as a Mig Rat, as this Russian plane was known during the Spanish Civil War; and there was a Japanese Zero and a Lancaster too, and possibly a P-51H Mustang with the smiling jaws of a shark painted on the lower part of its snout; and there was a triplane too, it might have been a Fokker, which, if it was red, would be Baron von Richthofen’s: fighters and bombers from the First and Second World Wars all
mixed up together, along with some from the Spanish Civil War and others from the Korean War, I had some when I was a child – though not as many, I quite envied him – which was why I recognized them silhouetted against the mottled, yellowish sky in the window, just as I would have recognized them in flight during my childhood had I seen them. With my hand, I had steadied the plane that my head had bumped against: I considered opening the window, it was closed and so there was no breeze, the planes did not move or sway, apart from a very slight toing and froing – a kind of inert, or perhaps impassive, oscillation – inevitable in any light object suspended by a thread: as if above the head and body of the child they were all languidly preparing for some weary night-time foray, tiny, ghostly and impossible, which would, nonetheless, have taken place several times in the past, or perhaps it still anachronistically took place each night, when the child and the husband and Marta were all at last asleep, each one dreaming the weight of the other two. “Tomorrow in the battle think on me,” I thought or, rather, remembered.