Yes, the tone was one of lamentation now, not scornful or aggressive, although there was still perhaps a hint of rancour. Beatriz Noguera immediately adopted that same tone, perhaps knowingly, perhaps sincerely.
‘I’m so sorry, my love, I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could turn back the clock,’ she said, not making it clear whether she would like to turn it back to the moment before she deceived him, in whatever way that was, or to the moment before she had undeceived him. Whether she wished not to have done the former or the latter. And after all the barbarous things he had said to her, she still had courage enough to call him ‘my love’, that’s what she said, I heard her.
Then Muriel, doubtless seeing the slow tears that I could not see, leaned forward very slightly and embraced her, gave her the embrace she had asked for and which he had denied her. I imagine she could not then contain herself, for she flung herself into his arms and pressed him to her tempting bosom; and not only that, she pressed her belly against his, her thighs against his, her whole, firm, abundant body wrapped around him, she clung to him with her whole self, as if desperate to relive something from the remote past she had almost given up for lost. I felt almost envious of him, even though there was nothing sexual about his embrace, whereas, despite the circumstances, there had been something sexual about his earlier gropings. On the other hand, I saw instantly that her embrace was overtly sexual, which is doubtless why it was so short-lived, with him firmly pushing her away, he must have noticed too, only far more viscerally; and it seemed to him outrageous and he couldn’t allow her that or perhaps he feared contagion, that she might transmit to him her sensuality, her lust, her unfettered adoration. Muriel again placed one hand on her shoulder and thus kept her at a distance, an authoritarian gesture worthy of Fu Manchu.
‘Go on, clear off. I need to sleep and so do you. And don’t forget, Juan is sleeping here night, he might have heard us.’
I again jumped at the mention of my name, especially given my role at the time, that of gossip and spy. I had been crouching for a while now and longed to get up, although when I did, my legs and feet would probably have gone to sleep. However, sheer dread of being discovered helped me not to move a millimetre, to remain inaudible and undetected in the dark, to avoid making the floorboards creak by any movement of mine.
‘Eduardo, Eduardo,’ she said, and she placed one hand on that distancing arm, squeezing and rubbing it with a mixture of boundless affection and fear. It was a clumsy, untimely gesture. That was all she said, but it came across as importunate and would not, therefore, be well received. And it was not.
‘Look, I’ve told you already, you fat cow, just leave me in peace.’ It wasn’t just that the term ‘fat cow’ was in bad taste, inappropriate, hurtful and humiliating. His tone was once again harsh, insulting, bordering on the irascible. ‘I opened the door to you and I embraced you, but, no, you always want more. You don’t know when to stop. You simply can’t tell when enough is enough. Just piss off, will you, and don’t come back.’
He took a step back and closed the door, calmly but quickly. I heard him slide the bolt across. Beatriz stood for a few moments staring at the door, as she had at the start. She had left her pack of cigarettes and her ashtray on the floor. She picked them up and, this time, when her nightdress rode up higher, I did see the beginning of her buttocks. Or perhaps I imagined it — wishful thinking — and I didn’t actually see anything. She took out another cigarette and lit it. She remained there smoking for a while longer, recovering, waiting until her breathing had calmed. She took a few steps back and forth, I couldn’t tell if she was simply bewildered or if she was resuming her prowling, reluctant to abandon her post as sentinel. I could see her face more clearly. She had, as I thought, shed a few tears, but she seemed not so much disconsolate as relieved, almost serene, I’m not sure. Perhaps resigned, as if she were thinking that ever-comforting thought: ‘We’ll see.’ Then she walked unhurriedly back to her room, her half-smoked cigarette in one hand and the packet and the ashtray in the other, leaving not a trace of her incursion. She returned to her woeful bed as she did every night, but this time, unlike on other nights, she was taking with her a small trophy, a sensation. Sensations are unstable things, they become transformed in memory, they shift and dance, they can prevail over what was said and heard, over rejection or acceptance. Sometimes, sensations can make us give up and, at others, encourage us to try again.
III
The Muriels, as people knew and referred to them, gave suppers and small parties, and this was presumably part of the diurnal pact by which they had agreed to live. These occasions were not that common, but nor were they a rarity. The suppers were less frequent and required more organization, that is, when they were arranged ahead of time rather than being impromptu affairs, as happened when a good friend — or several — stayed longer than expected and ended up sharing a meal with them. Every now and then, however, Muriel would invite a professional or amateur producer — plus his wife or mistress — who needed to be feted, or an impresario — and his wife — whom Muriel was trying to persuade to invest in a project, or an ambassador or cultural attaché — and their wives — to whom he had to cosy up, indulging in that Spanish mania for mixing business deals with a semblance of incipient friendship; Muriel had to explore every possible source of finance, and he knew from experience that when foreigners promised to lend a hand or to intercede, they proved far more trustworthy than our fellow Spaniards, who were much given to putting on airs, yapping on gratuitously and incomprehensibly, then disappearing without handing over any money at all and without explanation. This was why he had made a number of his films abroad or as co-productions, the good, the average and the feeble, the ones that were all his own work and those that weren’t, and, of course, the bits of nonsense he’d been commissioned to make in the late 1960s and early 70s by the prolific Harry Alan Towers, although most of those were directed by Jesús Franco, aka Jess Frank, Towers’s favourite Spanish director, with whom Muriel enjoyed an intermittent and superficial friendship. He had, you might say, inherited or been bequeathed any film — only two or three — that Frank or Franco had been too busy to make, which was hard to imagine since the latter usually made time for everything that was thrown at him, indeed, according to legend, that ubiquitous, tireless, supernatural creature sometimes worked on three films at once, using the same actors on two of them, but without the actors realizing they were doing double the work for a single fee, and using an entirely different cast and location for the third.
Muriel met these people (although not Towers or Franco) at receptions and suppers, at premieres, gala dinners and cocktail dos, at poker evenings, at parties and even at the occasional literary gathering, where he also met some of the inexperienced politicians of the day, one of whom — a fairly prominent figure — he once managed to inveigle into having supper at his apartment. On first meeting, Muriel made an instantly good impression, he could be friendly and pleasant and slightly enigmatic — playing down his bitter, melancholic or misanthropic side as best he could and instead bringing to the fore his natural joviality — and not only was he good at social chit-chat, he had a reputation for being able to banish boredom from any soirée, for, in those days, people still had a taste for social occasions where relatively theoretical or abstract topics were raised, inviting serious discussion, even if it was only around the dinner table. He also had a way of being impertinent without causing any real offence, or only to pompous fools; and he was aware that his presence was sought after at meetings and parties by people eager to hear his good-humoured jibes or to watch him pulling the leg of some vain, puffed-up individual — well, we all have our wares to sell, a contribution to make to the general gaiety, and it’s best to know this and accept that everyone who goes into society has a role to play as jester, even a banker or the King, who, as well as playing the fool like everyone else, has to pay for the feast, where everyone is everyone else’s jester, including those who believe they were the ones who hired the entertainment. The other almost equally undignified reason for these invitations was his fast-fading prestige, but he was happy to take advantage of this, knowing that people still liked to say: ‘We had Muriel over to supper the other night’ or ‘Muriel has invited us to one of his private parties’; and in his more pessimistic moments, he wondered how much longer this would last, given that his films hadn’t met with any real critical or public success for five or six years, which is an eternity in the world of cinema. When someone becomes known merely by his surname, he usually considers this a triumph — especially in France, where it’s proof of one’s uniqueness — but, in actual fact, it’s an act of depersonalization, reification, commercialization, a cheap medal that others can pin on themselves in exchange for almost nothing: a little flattery, a small investment of money or a few vague promises. In Spain, oddly enough, it’s considered far more prestigious to be known by one’s first name, and this applies to only four or five or six people: ‘Federico’ is always García Lorca, just as ‘Rubén’ is Rubén Darío, ‘Juan Ramón’ is the Nobel Laureate Jiménez, ‘Ramón’ is Gómez de la Serna, ‘Mossèn Cinto’ is Verdaguer and, five centuries on, ‘Garcilaso’ is Garcilaso de la Vega, and this list has remained unchanged for ages, perhaps because in order to join it, you need to have a surname that is either too long or too commonplace or might lead to confusion (the existence of Lope de Vega must have helped all three, ‘Garcilaso’, ‘Lope’ and ‘El Inca Garcilaso’, the latter owing his absurd designation to the need to differentiate him from his more important namesake), as well, perhaps, as a touch of pseudo-popular affection that encourages familiarity.