A Heart So White by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online Page B

Luisa to die, on the contrary, it was precisely the fear of that, provoked by her brief illness, that had been worrying me only a short time before. What I heard through the wall did nothing to calm me or to dispel the feeling of unease which, as I've explained, had been haunting me in various guises ever since the wedding ceremony. That overheard conversation was intensifying my sense of impending doom and I suddenly looked at myself in the dimly lit mirror on the wall opposite (the only light was some way off), at my figure sitting in the half-dark, with my shirtsleeves rolled up, still young if I took a benevolent or retrospective view, willing to recognize in myself the person I had been up until then, but almost middle-aged if I took a long-term or pessimistic view, imagining what I would be like in the not so distant future. In the room next door, beyond the shadowy mirror, was another man for whom I'd been mistaken by a woman in the street and who, therefore, possibly bore some resemblance to me, he might be a little older and, for that reason, it could be assumed that he'd been married longer than I had, long enough, I thought, to desire the death of his wife, to push her towards death, as he'd put it. At some time in his life, whenever that was, he must have gone on honeymoon too, he must have had the same feeling I now had of something that was simultaneously beginning and ending, he must have risked his concrete future and lost his abstract future, until he too felt forced to seek out some hope of his own on the island of Cuba, where he often went on business. Miriam was also his hope, someone to think about, someone to worry about and to fear for and someone, perhaps, to be afraid of (I couldn't forget that grasping, claw-like gesture, when it had been directed at me, "You're mine", "I'll get you", "Come here", "You owe me", "I kill you"). I looked at myself in the mirror and sat up a little, so that I could see my face more clearly in the distant light of the lamp on the bedside table and so that my features would look less sombre, less shadowy, less bereft of a past, less cadaverous; and as I did so, Luisa's head, more brightly lit because nearer the lamp, also came into the mirror's field of vision and I saw then that her eyes were open, her gaze somehow absent, her thumb brushing her lips, stroking them, a gesture typical of someone listening, or rather typical of her when she's listening. When she saw that I was watching her in the mirror, she immediately closed her eyes and stopped moving her thumb, as if she wanted me to continue to believe that she was asleep, as if she didn't want to give rise to any conversation between us, either now or later, about what both of us - I now realized — had overheard between our compatriot Guillermo and the light- skinned mulatto Miriam. She must, I thought, feel the same unease I was feeling, only more intensely, in double measure (a woman aspiring to the role of wife, a wife aspiring to the role of corpse), so much so that she preferred each of us to listen separately, alone, not together, and to keep to ourselves, unexpressed, the thoughts and feelings aroused by the conversation next door and the situation it implied, and to know nothing of what the other thought or felt, even though those thoughts or feelings might well be the same. That aroused the sudden suspicion in me that perhaps, contrary to appearances (she'd seemed so happy during the ceremony, had given me unreserved proof of her excitement, she was enjoying the trip so much, she'd been so angry that her indisposition forced her to miss an afternoon's sightseeing in Havana), she also felt threatened by and concerned about the
loss
of her future, or by its sudden arrival. There was no dishonesty between us and so whatever we said, whatever we might say or argue about or reproach ourselves with (whatever might one day cast its shadow over us), wasn't going to disappear of its own accord or be swallowed up by