A Heart So White (29 page)

Custardoy simply drank his beer and seemed unusually laconic during the short time he was in our apartment, like me perhaps or perhaps like someone in love. His metal-tipped shoes made hardly any noise, doubtless like the shoes "Bill" wore, whose feminine sound I'd heard on the marble floor at the post office but not on the asphalt outside in Berta's street when he came out and got into his taxi, as if his shoes had also agreed to keep his secrets.

How many things are left unsaid in the course of a lifetime or a story, sometimes without our meaning or choosing to do so? I'd kept silent not only about all the things I've mentioned above, but about the feelings of unease and the presentiments of disaster that have afflicted me ever since I got married, over a year ago. They're not so strong now and perhaps, one day, they'll disappear altogether, for a time. I hadn't mentioned those feelings to Luisa, to Berta or to my father, and certainly not at work or, needless to say, to Custardoy. People in love often choose to keep silent, even people who are infatuated. The people who keep silent are those who've found something that they might lose, not those who've lost something or are about to get it. Berta had talked endlessly about "Bill", for example, and about "Jack" and "Nick", whilst they had no physical reality, no face, and while she still hadn't got them (we talk about promises, not about the present but about the future, both concrete and abstract; also about losses, as long as they're not too recent). But then she fell silent. After my four long hours of wandering about, of shopping and anxiety and waiting, I found her in her dressing gown, still up and not in her room. She was alone again, but I noticed that she was still disguising her limp, that is, she hadn't yet settled back into her customary solitude, nor into the trust she felt towards me, not so easily, not so soon. I didn't switch on the light that she'd switched off only minutes before as a signal to me to say "Come up" because it wasn't necessary: she was lying on the sofa in front of the television, the light from which was bright enough, she was replaying "Bill's" brief video, now that she could complete the image with her newborn memory of him, now that she at last knew what went with the triangle of pale blue bathrobe, above and below. When I came into the room without switching on the light, the voice that resembled that of a preacher or a crooner, that saw-like voice, was saying again in English from the screen: "You women care about faces. Eyes. That's what you say. Men care about the face and the body. Or the body and the face. That's how it is." Berta stopped the video when she saw me. She got up and kissed me. "I'm sorry," she said, "you've had to wait ages."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I bought some milk, we'd run out, I'll put it straight in the fridge." I went to the fridge and took the milk out of the bag as well as all the other things I'd bought, the Japanese book, the newspaper, the soundtrack from
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,
I always do that, just as, when I get back from a trip, the first thing I do is unpack my suitcase and put everything away in its proper place and the suitcase away in its cupboard, in order to forget that I've been away, to forget everything about the trip, as quickly as possible, so that peace appears to be restored. I threw the bag in the rubbish bin, in order to forget about my purchases and my wanderings. I went back into the sitting room with my booty in my hand, Berta wasn't there, but the television was still on, a programme full of canned laughter that had replaced the video once it had finished. I heard her moving about in her bedroom, she'd be airing it, making the bed or changing the sheets, given my prompt return, she wouldn't have had time to do so. But that wasn't what she was doing, not changing the sheets anyway, because when she came out she wasn't carrying a pile of bed-linen in her arms, instead she had her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown, a salmon-pink silk dressing gown, with nothing on underneath I think, perhaps she preferred to sleep with the smell of "Bill" still on the sheets; when you want to hold on to certain smells they always seem to evaporate too quickly. She no longer smelt of Trussardi, when she walked past me, she smelt of Guerlain, I saw the bottle (the opened box) on the table where we usually left the mail and on which I had left my newspaper, my book and my record: the bottle whose purchase I had witnessed. It was the only physical trace of "Bill" in the apartment. "How did it go?" I asked, I couldn't not ask, everything was more or less in order, although there are always things that need tidying up. "Fine. How about you? What have you been doing all this time? You must be exhausted, you poor thing." I gave her a quick rundown of my wanderings, but said nothing of my fears, I showed her my purchases, but didn't talk to her about my long wait. I didn't know whether I should ask her any more questions, she seemed to have acquired a modesty she hadn't had in the previous weeks or that same evening when she'd asked if I had any condoms (I'd seen them amongst the rubbish, two of them, when I threw away the plastic bag, which had covered them up, they'd no longer be visible on my next visit, the speed with which forgetting takes place, sometimes you don't have to do anything to speed it up, the new covers the old in exactly the same way as happens in a rubbish bin, each new minute not only substitutes those that have passed, it negates them). My supper with her friends, with Julia, seemed so long ago, and Berta seemed to have forgotten all about it, she didn't even ask me about them and I didn't feel inclined to mention them in the brief chat that we could and usually did have before going to bed, however late it was. It was very late and even though it was a Saturday, it was time we went to bed, to sleep, to forget everything in dreams, or, in Berta's case, to cling on to her memory. But I wanted to know at least something, this was both my story and not my story (I had the right to know and I risked nothing). I'd spent hours wandering about beneath the invisible sky above the avenues and the reddish sky above the streets, on three occasions I'd waited on the marble floor of Kenmore Station, I'd followed his metallic footsteps as far as the Plaza, I'd let him see me, I'd made a video, I did perhaps deserve to know something without having to wait for time to pass. "Come on then, tell me about it," I said. "There's nothing to tell," she said. She was barefoot and yet she wasn't limping, her eyes looked dreamy or perhaps just sleepy. She seemed calm, like someone engaged in an unhurried meditation and upon whom that meditation weighs but lightly. Her smile was hesitant, foolish, the smile of someone remembering things in a vague, indulgent way. "But he is Spanish, isn't he?" I said. "Yes, he is Spanish," she replied, "we knew that."

"What's his name? What does he do?"

"His name's Bill, which suits him, and he hasn't told me what he does. We didn't talk about that."

"Tell me a bit more about him, what he's like? Did you like him? Were you disappointed? Were you afraid? He was horrible in that video," and I indicated the programme with the canned laughter, which I could still hear even with the sound down. "I'm not sure yet," Berta replied, "that will depend on what happens next."

"Have you arranged to see each other again?"

"Yes, I suppose so. We know each other's mailbox numbers and he can call me, I've given him my phone number." Berta was being laconic, like a person in love who doesn't want to share, who hides things, stores them away; she couldn't be in love, it was ridiculous, perhaps she was infatuated or perhaps she didn't want to talk about it just then, when he'd just left after more than four hours in his company, or rather, four plus four, since they'd arranged to meet at half past eight. Perhaps she wanted to think about it on her own, about what had happened, to reinforce the memory which, now that Bill had left, would already have begun the slow process of disappearing, and which must have been why she'd put on the video which I had interrupted. "Tomorrow perhaps," I thought, "perhaps she'll feel more like talking about it tomorrow, the truth is that it's not that important to me, in fact my mission is over, I had to take seriously what she took seriously, to help her reach the person she wanted to reach and perhaps to win him. That's all. Besides, my stay here's almost over, I'll be gone in a week and I may not be back for another year, and that will be when she tells me everything as if it were something that belonged to the past, something venial and ingenuous that we'll laugh about and which we'll experience rather as if we weren't the people who'd participated in it or made it happen, something that can perhaps be told in its entirety, from beginning to end, not like now, when it's still happening, and we don't know how it will turn out." But I knew I couldn't go to bed without asking her two things, at least two. "Did he have condoms with him?" I asked. In the shadows it seemed to me that Berta blushed, she was looking at me with a flushed face she definitely hadn't worn when she asked me for them, nor — or, at least, so I believe, for I only saw her through the camera lens — when I was filming her. "I don't know," she said, "I didn't give him the chance to offer, I got mine out first, the ones you gave me. Thanks, by the way." And that "Thanks" was spoken with a distinct blush. "And what about Miriam? Did you get a chance to ask him about her?" Berta was no longer interested in that, she'd forgotten all about it, she made a face as if to say: "Why bring that up after all this time?" The name "Miriam" must have got lost at some point near the beginning of their date and had thrown up no new information. "Yes, I did," she said, "I mentioned the name, as being that of a friend in Spain. But it didn't seem to mean anything to him, so I didn't insist. You did say that I shouldn't make a big thing of it." Now she didn't ask me what that was all about or what I suspected or knew (she didn't say to me "Come on, out with it" or "Explain yourself" or "Tell me everything"), too much time had passed, erasing my imaginings, my idea. She was lying down on the sofa again, she must be tired after that long night of getting to know him and of disguising her lameness. I looked at her long-toed feet on the sofa, they were pretty feet, very clean, for "Bill's" benefit — they hadn't stood on the asphalt - I felt like touching them. I'd touched them before, a long time ago (had I reminded her of that, she would have pulled that face that meant: "Why bring that up after all this time?"), they were still the same feet, even after the accident, how many steps must they have taken, how often would they have been touched in the past fifteen years? Perhaps, only a short time before, "Bill" had touched them, perhaps while they were talking, having first driven me out into the street, but what had they talked about, they hadn't discussed his visible arena, what then, maybe they'd talked about me, maybe Berta had told him my whole story just to talk about something, on the pillow we betray and denigrate others, we reveal their greatest secrets and offer the only opinion that flatters the listener, which is the disparagement of everyone else: everything outside that territory becomes unnecessary and secondary if not despicable, it's there that one so often abjures friendships, past as well as present loves, as Luisa would have denied and decried me had she shared a pillow with Custardoy, I was far away in another country on the other side of the ocean, my memory vague, my head absent, leaving no trace on the pillow for eight weeks, she would have got used to sleeping across the bed, there was no one there for some time, and it's easy to deny the importance of someone who isn't there, with a remark, just as it was easy for Guillermo to speak with such indifference of his sick wife on another continent, when he thought no one else was listening, in a hotel room in Havana beneath the mellow moon and with the balcony doors ajar, to speak of killing her or at least of letting her die: "I'm letting her die," he'd said. "I'm doing nothing to help her. I'm pushing her towards death." And later on: "I take away from her the little will to live that she has. Don't you think that's enough?" But Miriam didn't think it was enough, she'd spent too long waiting, and waiting is the one thing guaranteed to bring on despair and wild talk, it corrodes and makes one say things like: "I'll get you" or "You're mine" or "I'll see you in hell" or "I kill you". It's like a vast piece of cloth with no stitching, no ornament, no folds, like an invisible, reddish sky with no angles to limit it, an undifferentiated, immobile whole in which one cannot see the weave and there is only repetition, but not the repetition that occurs after some time has passed, which is not only tolerable but pleasant, not only tolerable but necessary ( you can't accept that certain things are not going to be repeated), but a continuous, uninterrupted repetition, an unending whistle or a constant levelling out of what is happening. Nothing is ever enough when you're waiting, something needs to be ripped asunder with a sharpened blade or burned with a lighted cigarette or a flame, nothing is ever enough after the disparagement and the abjuration and the disdain, afterwards you can only allow yourself the next inevitable step, the suppression, cancellation or death of the person expelled from the territory delineated by the pillow. The mellow moon, the balcony doors ajar, the bra cutting into the flesh, the damp towel, the concealed tears in the bathroom, the hair or the lines across the forehead, the sleeping woman and the woman about to go to sleep, the soft singing of someone still hoping: "You must kill her," Miriam had said. And Guillermo had replied, forswearing his sick wife on the other side of the ocean and like a weary mother who'll say the first thing that comes into her head, it's easy to condemn someone verbally, nothing happens, everyone knows that you're not responsible for what you say, even though at times the law punishes people for it, the tongue in the ear, the tongue doesn't kill, it commits no act, it can't: "All right, all right, I will, but for the moment just keep doing that with your hand." And later on, she'd insisted, in a neutral, but not a faint tone: "If you don't kill her, I kill myself. Then you get one woman's death on your hands, either her or me."

"You didn't tell him I followed him, did you?" I asked Berta. "No, I didn't, but I might tell him later on, if you don't mind. But I did talk to him about you, about our conjectures and suppositions."