The Infatuations by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online

to be there on temporary loan, I mean on loan to life. She no longer talked vivaciously as she used to with her husband, but with a false naturalness that betrayed a sense of obligation and indifference. It occurred to me that she might be on medication. They had sat down quite close to me, with only an empty table between us, which meant that I could hear scraps of their conversation, mostly what her friends said, rather than her, for she spoke only in muted tones. They were consulting or questioning her about the details of a memorial service, doubtless Desvern’s, although I couldn’t tell whether this would be a service held to commemorate the three-month anniversary of his death (which would, I calculated, be around that time) or if it was the first such service, which had not been held after the usual one- or two-week interval, as is still sometimes the custom, at least in Madrid. Perhaps she hadn’t felt strong enough so soon after the incident, or the gruesome circumstances had made such a service inadvisable – people can never resist poking their nose into such public ceremonies, or spreading rumours – and so, assuming the family liked to keep to the traditional way of doing things, it was still pending. Or perhaps some protective figure – a brother, for example, or her parents or a woman friend – had whisked her away from Madrid after the funeral, so that she could become accustomed to her husband’s absence from a distance, without the usual familiar,domestic scenes that only underlined his absence or made it all the more poignant: a pointless postponement of the horror awaiting her. The most I heard her say was: ‘Yes, that’s fine’ or ‘If you say so, you’re thinking more clearly than me’ or ‘Make sure the priest keeps it short, Miguel wasn’t too keen on priests, they made him a bit nervous’ or ‘No, not Schubert, he’s too obsessed with death, and we’ve had quite enough of that.’
    I noticed that the two waiters at the café, after a moment’s discussion behind the bar, went over to her table together, stiffly rather than solemnly, and although they spoke shyly and very quietly, I heard them offer their brief condolences: ‘We just wanted to say how very sad we were to hear about your husband, he was always very kind to us,’ said one. And the other contributed the usual old, vacuous phrase: ‘Please accept our deepest sympathy. A real tragedy.’ She thanked them with her lacklustre smile and that was all, and it seemed perfectly understandable to me that she should prefer not to go into detail or to comment or to prolong the conversation. When I got up, I felt an impulse to follow their example, but did not dare to further interrupt her desultory conversation with her friends. Besides, time was getting on, and I didn’t want to arrive late at work, now that I had mended my ways and arrived punctually at my post every day.
    Another month passed before I saw her again, and although the leaves were falling and the days were growing cooler, there were still those who preferred to breakfast al fresco – speedy breakfasts eaten by people in a hurry, people who would subsequently spend many hours shut up in an office and who didn’t linger long enough at the café to get cold; most, like me, ate in sleepy silence – and so the tables were still outside on the pavement. This time, Luisa Alday arrived with her two children and ordered them each an ice cream. I imagined – basing myself on a remote childhood memory – that she hadtaken them to the doctors for a blood test without letting them have any breakfast beforehand and was giving them a treat to make up for both the jab and for having had to go hungry, a treat that included allowing them to miss the first hour of school. The little girl was very attentive to her brother, who was about four years younger than her, and I got the impression that she was also, in her fashion, looking after her mother, as if they occasionally