Your Face Tomorrow. Fever And Spear by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online Page B

even about the one who has been here twice.
    The beggars have withdrawn after devouring their booty — they are a mere interregnum of ash and shadow — and the square is almost empty, someone crosses it now and again, no one is ever the last person anywhere, there is always someone who crosses later on. Lights are on in the smart hotel and in a few of the houses, but in my field of vision no one, at that moment, appears. The unfathomable dancer opposite has stopped and turned out the lights, he started at too late an hour to be able to withstand much prancing about. So here I am, all alone like a boyfriend or a lover, substantial and insignificant, here I am still awake. 'Sí?'
    I picked up the phone almost before it had rung, it was so close. I spoke in Spanish, having been thinking in my own language for some time.
    'Deza.' Luisa sometimes called me by my surname, when she wanted to be forgiven or to get something out of me, but also when she was in a very bad mood, because of something I had done. 'Hi, you've probably been trying to get through, I'm sorry, my sister has had me on the phone for an hour playing psychiatrist, she's going through a really rough patch with her husband and she considers me to be an expert on the subject now. Honestly. And the children are asleep now, I'm really sorry, I put them to bed at the usual time, the fact is that I'd completely forgotten it was Thursday until this very moment, when I put the phone down, you know what it's like when what's perfectly clear to you isn't at all clear to the other person, so you repeat yourself about ten times and end up getting more and more exasperated, and my sister's the same, I mean, she only really wants to hear what she's telling herself and not what I might think about the matter or advise her to do. Anyway, how are you?'
    She sounded very tired and slightly absent, as if talking to me was a final, additional night-time chore she hadn't counted on, and as if she were still in conversation with her sister and not with me, always assuming that the conversation did take place. It's always the same, every day and with anyone, constantly, in any exchange of words, trivial or grave, we can believe or not believe what we're told, there aren't that many options, too few and too simple, and so we believe almost everything we're told, or, if we don't, we usually keep quiet about it, because otherwise everything becomes so tangled and difficult, staggering forwards in fits and starts, and nothing flows. And so everything that's said is taken, in principle, as the truth, the true and the false, unless the latter is obvious, that is, obviously false. This wasn't the case with Luisa now, what she was telling me could be what had really happened or it could be a mask for something else — a different phone call, a supper out under the protection of a talkative babysitter, a prolonged visit from someone and then a prolonged goodbye, it wasn't my business, and what did it matter — I had to accept it, in fact, I shouldn't even be thinking about it. Besides, there is another option, everything is full of half-truths, and we all take our inspiration from the truth in order to formulate or improvise lies, so there is always a pinch of truth in every lie, a basis, the starting-point, the source. I usually know, even if they don't concern me or there is no possible way of checking (and often I couldn't care less, it doesn't really matter). I detect them without any need of proof, but, generally speaking, I say nothing, unless I am being paid to point them out, as was the case when I was working in London.
    'Fine,' I said, and even that one word was false. I didn't really feel like talking at all. Not even to ask about the children, there probably wouldn't be anything new to report. Nevertheless, she gave me a rapid summary as if to compensate me for not having heard their voices that night: perhaps that is why she had called me Deza, so that I would forgive the