‘And how did it go, your re-encounter with Beatriz? Given where you’d just come from, I mean.’ I spoke again because he had fallen silent. I shot a quick glance at the glass door, where the pink face had resumed its vigil.
‘The flight arrived punctually, almost on the dot, and I got there just in time. When Beatriz appeared, she looked really lovely, I would be lying if I said otherwise, nothing at all like the way she looks now. Not that it was any kind of compensation, but it was better than nothing. It’s best if you like the person you’re going to spend a long time with, in the most elemental, epidermal way, I mean. She flung her arms around me with a smile the like of which I’ve never seen in my life, radiant, luminous. I’ve tried to get a few actresses to reproduce that smile in my films, but, however good, they’ve never managed to come up with anything but a pale reflection of it. She smiled as if she couldn’t believe her luck, as if she couldn’t believe that she was back with me again. And then she burst into tears, buried her face in my chest and stayed like that for a while; I remember she left a wet patch on my raincoat. She must have been really longing to see me again. And that can’t fail to touch your heart, the other person’s ignorance and their happiness too, I mean, when it’s clear that you’re the cause of that happiness. You feel responsible, or more responsible. When we collected her luggage and she’d recovered a little, one of my first questions — I couldn’t help myself — was: “Didn’t you ever receive my letter? The one I mentioned in my telegram?” “No!” she said in a pained voice. “And I was so looking forward to it. I thought it would be a real consolation, that you would talk to me about my father, about his death, that it would help me to accept it. I was so furious that it got lost, the letter I most needed to read.” She had assumed my letter would be a letter of condolence in a way. That I’d written it as soon as I heard the news, quickly, so that she wouldn’t be left with just a few compressed, laconic sentences. If I had sent it then, though, too few days would have passed for her to give it up as hopelessly lost: nine or ten at most. I hadn’t been explicit enough in my telegram. “Urgent letter on way. Important. Read first,” I had said. At the time, she wouldn’t have been in any state to decipher subtleties or ponder meanings. I should have added “before you travel” or “before you make any decision”. “Read before you travel”; I imagine that would have been enough to bring her up short, to make her think, to investigate further and not rush into anything; or even to phone me when the letter failed to arrive.’ He paused, took a sip of his drink and smiled, this time with a certain self-mockery or a touch of bitterness. ‘But everyone then saved on words when sending telegrams.’
‘You don’t think then that things would have turned out very differently if you hadn’t saved on words?’ I said.
Then he grew weary of lying down or else wanted to see me face to face, because not only did he get up, he gave himself a good stretch, arms taut, sat down on one of the sofas, the one with its back to the door (when he got to his feet, the smudge, doubtless startled, again disappeared), and told me to leave my post at the desk, indicating that I should sit on the other sofa.
‘Sit over there, will you, so that I don’t have to crane my neck. Why is it that you always forget that my field of vision is not the same as yours? As if this eyepatch wasn’t enough of a clue.’ And he drummed on it briefly. And when I’d done as he asked, he said, ‘Who knows? Probably not. She would doubtless have found another way to play the innocent, to feign ignorance. I know that now, but I didn’t then. Well, the idea did occur to me, and even more so to the other woman, but I thought that was just her despair speaking and dismissed it out of hand. To be honest, I didn’t think anyone so young would be capable of acting in such an underhand, cold-blooded manner.’ — ‘I’m slightly older than she was then,’ flashed through my mind, ‘and I’ve acted in an equally underhand manner, but not, I think, cold-bloodedly.’ — ‘Especially not in the midst of her grief, but we often confuse vulnerability with innocuousness and believe victims are somehow harmless — a widespread misconception. I didn’t believe she was capable of basing her whole future life on a lie. Of mortgaging her life and placing it on such a precarious footing. Of course, the more all-embracing the lie, the more likely the liar is to forget about it. She knew me intimately, had spent years studying me from when she was a child, when I was too distracted to even notice or realize. I was too ingenuous, too trusting. I always felt that one couldn’t go through life full of suspicion and mistrust. It took me a long time to learn my mistake. I’m not even sure I’ve learned it now. But what can you do? Life may teach you some bitter lessons and force you to be more cautious, but if that’s not in your nature, those lessons may have an attenuating effect, but little more.’
‘And it was years before you found out.’
‘Twelve years more or less,’ he said, ‘imagine that. Twelve years and four children later. And I didn’t find out for myself either, she blurted it out in a fit of anger, to wound me. I could have died without ever knowing, which would have been better, I think.’ — ‘If only you’d never told me. If only you’d kept me in the dark,’ I recalled him saying.
‘Do you really think so? Are you serious?’ However precocious in other respects, I was too young to understand that. Young people are overly attached to the truth, the truth that affects them, that is. They themselves are frequently rather less than truthful, but you can’t expect them to question those truths that concern or touch them. They can’t bear to be mocked or taken for fools, when that, in fact, is a minor matter and the common fate of all men and women, without distinction.
‘Yes, I really do. I had, after all, made an effort, a huge effort. I’d taken absolutely seriously the advice of that other woman, whose words you recalled. Hers was a rhetorical, not to say dramatic recommendation, yes, a final theatrical flourish. Quite right, given the abrupt, unexpected nature of that farewell, a way of preserving her dignity. But I took it literally, I saw the sense in it. And so I did exactly as she said, I forgot all about her and me, insofar as that was possible, that is, superficially: a nostalgia for the life you discarded always lingers on in the inner depths of your being, and, during bad times, you seek refuge in it as you might in a daydream or a fantasy. But once I’d made that decision, or on that morning when I left the airport with Beatriz on my arm, as if we were a real couple setting out towards our future, I decided that I would follow that path. “I’m going to love her,” I told myself over and over, “I’m going to be always by her side. I’m going to be faithful to her, I’m not going to fail her or abandon her. I didn’t choose her, but she’s the person who it’s fallen to me to marry. It doesn’t matter, though, I’ll stay by her side, I’ll protect and support her and care for her children, and I’ll love her as if I had chosen her. I’ll forget what was lost along the way, it’s too late to go back and, besides, that path is no longer mine to follow. I will walk this path without looking back and will try not to complain.” That’s what I told myself and repeated to myself endless times, over many years.’