With Beatriz Noguera, he was often sharp and malicious, even cruel and hateful, verbally that is. He could be really foul. I had known bickering couples — who hasn’t? — who often traded wounding comments, almost casually, as though they couldn’t help themselves. People who stay together out of sheer habit, because they’re as much a part of each other’s existence as the air they breathe, or at least as the city they live in and which, however unbearable, they would never dream of leaving. Each spouse has about the same value as the view from the living room or bedroom of their apartment: they are neither good nor bad, loathsome nor pleasant, depressing nor stimulating, beneficial nor harmful. They are simply what’s there — the envelope, the setting, the day’s normal grey pallor — we never question them or consider the possibility of dispensing with their breathing or with their permanent nearby murmurings, never consider making them change or improving the terms of our relationship. We take them for granted, they seem to be an utterly natural part of our existence, and we continue in their company, but not because we have decided to, nor do we even consider ceasing or reversing or suppressing our relationship, as if this were quite impossible, as if it were fate, just as we happened to be born in a particular country or in the bosom of a particular family or ended up with those particular parents or siblings. Such couples completely forget that they ever made a choice, albeit only partial or apparent and tinged with resignation, they forget that the presence of the other could be eliminated quite easily, unless, of course, they chose to use violence, and then the ensuing complications would be either infinite or non-existent, depending on the skill with which they rid themselves of the obstacle, or sometimes they have merely grown bored with looking at the same scenery. Otherwise, there are complications, but not that many, especially if divorce is legal, as it is in Spain today and has been for more than thirty years. Nevertheless, a few melodramatic scenes are pretty much inevitable.
This was not the case with Eduardo Muriel and Beatriz Noguera, his was not, to put it in pedantic terms, a quotidian or perfunctory aggression. There was on his part a deep-seated antagonism, vital and pulsating and far from ordinary, and a kind of strangely inconstant desire to inflict frequent punishments. It was as if he had to force himself to remember (once the right ice-cold button had been pressed) that he must behave towards her with a complete lack of consideration, with revulsion and scorn, to make it clear to her what a curse and a burden it was to endure her presence; to mistreat and even abuse her, and certainly to undermine her and make her feel insecure and even hopeless about her personality, her work, her body, and he was doubtless successful; after all, anyone can do that, even the most stupid of us, it’s the easiest thing in the world to destroy and wound, you don’t have to be especially wily or astute, still less intelligent, a fool can easily crush someone cleverer, and Muriel was a clever man. You just have to be ill-natured, ill-intentioned, ill-disposed, qualities to be found in abundance among the brutish and the dim. I sometimes had the feeling that, at some point in his married life, Muriel had decided to embark on a revenge that would never end, never be sated, and I wondered about his possible motives, what unforgivable offence Beatriz Noguera might have committed. Not that I was convinced she had. I was already aware that the cruellest of individuals depend a great deal on the puzzlement of others, trusting that their assaults will seem so disproportionate that other people, rather than judging the assailant severely and trying to placate him or get him to stop, will merely shrug and wonder what terrible crime the object of his cruelty could have committed, and conclude, even though they have no idea if they’re right or wrong, that ‘it must have been something really bad, otherwise how explain such venom; whatever it is must justify such extreme behaviour’. And the cruel beast does his best to ensure that no one uncovers the truth, that nothing leaks out about that ‘whatever it is’, the mysterious alibi, which, up to a point, protects the perpetrator and, odd though it may seem, even saves him.
So I was greatly alarmed by what I saw and heard, because it made me think that, when no witnesses were around, his irritation would only increase, his wounding words would become still more cutting, and he might even use foul language, which he rarely did in my presence or even when we were with his friends. I trusted that it never went beyond words, that he never raised his hand to her (I was less alarmed by the thought that she might slap his face, for she had more than enough reason to), and I didn’t believe he would ever do that. My belief, however, was also my wish, which meant that my belief was necessarily a qualified one, and this did not entirely reassure me. At first, I didn’t dare ask Muriel what lay behind the sharp, sullen, scornful way in which he treated his wife, he had already warned me once that he wasn’t paying me to ask questions about matters that were none of my business, and on that occasion I’d been asking him about something far less delicate than his wretchedly unhappy relationship with his wife, namely, the silencing of his now silent eye. And in those early days, I rarely or almost never saw Beatriz on her own; she viewed me from afar as a mere appendage of her husband, which I suppose I was. And yet, doubtless because of my youth, she looked on me kindly. Besides, I was always solicitous and attentive, which is how I was brought up to treat all women (initially), and I was in no way infected — as would have been equally inappropriate — by my boss’s rough ways. On the contrary, I tried to oppose them, insofar as I could, without stepping out of line or butting in where I wasn’t wanted. I mean that I would always, without fail, stand up whenever Beatriz entered the room, although Muriel never followed my example, but then, between a married couple, that might have been a touch excessive; I would greet her with a slight nod, as if we were still living in the nineteenth century, and with a broad, spontaneous smile, making it clear by my amiable attitude that, should she ever need me, I would always be glad to help. She was, after all, the wife of my employer, a man whom I admired. As such, she deserved my utmost respect and all I could do was to demonstrate this to her, regardless of what great rifts lay between them. And Muriel would doubtless have ticked me off had he noticed the slightest negligence in my treatment of his wife. I should add that there were also times when he spoke or listened to her with deference, interest and even affection. As I said, I found it very easy to be nice to her. In fact, I liked Beatriz Noguera right from the start.