The Infatuations by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online Page A

swapped roles, or, if they didn’t perhaps go quite that far, as if they both occasionally competed for the role of mother, in the few areas where such competition was possible. I mean that, while the little girl was eating her ice cream from a glass, wielding her spoon with childlike meticulousness, she was also making sure that Luisa did not let her coffee go cold and urging her to drink it. She kept one eye on her mother all the time, watching her every gesture and expression, and if she noticed that her mother was becoming too abstracted and sunk in her own thoughts, she would immediately speak to her, make some remark or ask a question or perhaps tell her something, as if to prevent her mother from becoming entirely lost, as if it made her sad to see her mother plunging back into memory. When a car drew up and double-parked outside the café, very faintly sounding its horn, and the children sprang to their feet, grabbed their satchels, quickly kissed their mother and walked, hand in hand, towards the car, knowing that it had come to pick them up, I had the feeling then that the daughter was more concerned about leaving Luisa than the other way around (she it was who fleetingly stroked her mother’s cheek as if counselling her to be good and not to get into any trouble, or wishing to leave her some small tactile consolation until they saw each other again). The car had probably come to pick them up and take them to school. I looked to see who was driving, and could not help a sudden quickening of the pulse, because although I know nothingabout cars, which all look the same to me, this one I recognized instantly: it was the same car Deverne used to drive when he went off to work, leaving his wife to stay on for a while in the café either alone or with a friend. It was doubtless the same car he had driven and parked next to the college, the car he should never have got out of on that day, his birthday. There was a man at the wheel, and at first I thought it must be the chauffeur with whom Deverne occasionally alternated as driver and who could have replaced him on that fateful day, could have died instead of him, and who was perhaps the person the gorrilla actually wanted to kill, the intended murder victim, and who had, therefore, narrowly escaped death – by pure chance, who knows, perhaps he had a doctor’s appointment that day. If he was the chauffeur, he wasn’t wearing a uniform. I couldn’t quite see him, half-concealed as he was by the other cars parked alongside the pavement; nevertheless, I thought he looked rather attractive. He didn’t resemble Miguel Desvern, but they had certain characteristics in common or were at least not complete opposites; it was easy to see how a mistake could be made, especially by someone mentally disturbed. From her table, Luisa waved goodbye, or waved hello and goodbye, from the moment he arrived until he left. Yes, she waved three or four times, slightly absurdly, while the car was parked. She repeated the gesture with an absorbed look in her eyes, eyes that saw perhaps only a ghost. Or was she only waving goodbye to her children? I didn’t see if the driver waved back or not.

 
    That was when I decided to go over to her. The children had left in what had been their father’s car, and she was alone, with no one for company, no work colleague or fellow mother from school or friend. She was using the long, sticky spoon that her son had left in his glass to absent-mindedly stir what remained of his ice cream, as if she were intent on instantly reducing it to liquid, thus accelerating its inevitable fate. ‘How many small eternities will she experience in which she will struggle to make time move on,’ I thought, ‘if such a thing is possible, which I doubt. You wait for time to pass during the temporary or indefinite absence of the other – of husband, of lover – as well as during an absence which is not yet definitive, but that bears all the marks of being so, as our