Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online

be run through by that of my enemy: but not yet,not yet, and as long as it is not yet, the trench hides and protects me, even though we’re in open country and I can feel the cold air on my ears not quite covered by my helmet; and that knife that approaches me in someone else’s hand has still not reached its destination and I’m still sitting at my table and nothing has yet been torn or pierced, and, contrary to appearances, I will still take another sip of beer, and another and another; since that tree has not yet fallen and won’t fall even though it’s been snapped in two and is falling, it won’t fall on me, its branches won’t slice off my head, it’s not possible, I’m just a visitor to this city, I simply happened to be walking along this avenue, I might so easily not have done so; and I can still see the world from on high, from my Supermarine Spitfire, and I still have no sense of descent and weight and vertigo, of falling and gravity and mass which I will have when the Messerschmitt at my back, who has me in his sights, opens fire on me and hits home: but not yet, not yet, and as long as it is not yet, I can go on thinking about the battle and looking at the landscape and making plans for the future; and I, poor Marta, can still see the glare from the television that continues to broadcast and the warmth of this man who has lain down beside me again and keeps me company. As long as he is by my side, I won’t die: let him stay here and do nothing, I don’t want him to talk or to phone anyone, I don’t want anything to change, just let him warm me a little and hold me, I need to be still in order not to die, if each second is identical to the previous second, it makes no sense that I should be the one to change, that the lights should still be lit here and in the street and that the television should still be broadcasting – an old Fred MacMurray film – while I lie dying. I can’t cease to exist while everything and everyone remains here and alive and while, on the screen, another story follows its course. It doesn’t make sense that my skirts should remain alive on that chair if I’m not going to put them on again, or that my books should continue to breathe on the shelves if I’m not going to look at them any more, my earrings and necklaces and rings waiting in their box for their turn which will never come; the new toothbrush that I bought just this afternoon will have to be thrown away because I’ve already used it now, and all the little objects that one collects throughout one’s life will bethrown away one by one or perhaps shared out, and there are so many of them, it’s unbelievable how many things each of us owns, how much stuff we accumulate in our homes, that’s why no one ever makes an inventory of their possessions, not unless they’re going to make a will, that is, not unless they’re already contemplating those objects’ imminent neglect and redundancy. I haven’t made a will, I haven’t got much to leave and I’ve never given much thought to death, which it seems does come and it comes in a single moment that upends and touches everything, what was useful and formed part of someone’s history becomes, in that one moment, useless and devoid of history, from now on, nobody will know why or how or when that picture or that dress was bought or who gave me that brooch, where and from whom that bag or that scarf came, what journey or what absence brought it, if it was a reward for waiting or a message from some new conquest or intended to ease a guilty conscience; everything that had meaning and history loses it in a single moment and my belongings lie there inert, suddenly incapable of revealing their past and their origins; and someone will make a pile of them and, before bundling them up or perhaps putting them in plastic bags, my sisters or my women friends might decide to keep something as a souvenir or a spoil, or to hang on to a particular brooch so that my son can give