It was very difficult to incite Beatriz or rouse her to rebellion. She always seemed more sad than angry, more afflicted than indignant, at least when she was with him, but also when he was the main topic of conversation. She was calm and long-suffering, not so much because she hoped her patience would make him change his attitude towards her as because she was sure that any show of impatience would only make matters worse, that shouting, raging, rebelling, returning his insults and making a scene would only strengthen his case and make him more splenetic, thus ensuring that he would be forever incapable of uttering a momentarily gentle, grieving, almost mournful word, like the words I’d heard him say: ‘I’ll grant you that.’ I don’t know, but it was as if Beatriz loved Muriel so much and felt so deeply in his debt that she found it as hard to face up to him as to tear him to pieces behind his back, but that she found relief in talking about him and complaining, without the need to spit venom or get overly worked up. Yet when she wasn’t with him and wasn’t talking about him, Beatriz didn’t just lie doggo like some pitiful victim. She led a separate, independent life, as if she didn’t care about her husband or had formally renounced him.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Gloria responded, ‘it could cost him an arm and a leg, so he’d think long and hard before asking for a divorce. We don’t know what the terms of the law will be, but the spouse with the least money is sure to come out well. Especially if the children stay with her.’ She took it for granted that all wives would earn less than their husbands and that the children would automatically stay with them, which is how it usually was in 1980, and as it still is now with a few exceptions, nothing much has changed really. ‘As far as we know, he has no other stable relationship. No woman pressurizing him to marry her. Besides, do you really see him marrying again? I don’t. He couldn’t stand being close to anyone else, and new wives tend to be jealous and clinging, and he couldn’t bear having someone asking him all the time where he was off to and keeping a note of his various trips. Basically, he’s very comfortable with the way things are, however much he spurns you and hates the sight of you. Threatening him with the new divorce bill will scare the pants off him. He’ll moderate his behaviour then and stop all the insults, well, the worst ones. Sometimes I find it hard to believe the things he says to you, but I’m sure you’re not inventing it. You shouldn’t have to put up with it, no one should. And you’ll soon find someone else to take you in.’
I sensed a certain malicious edge to those words ‘take you in’, as if, when Beatriz divorced, she would inevitably fall into the void or be cast out into the wilderness, and would need another man to protect her from the nothingness or the cold. Beatriz ignored her comments and did not respond, probably inured to her friends’ smiling sideswipes.
‘I don’t know how you, a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic, can advise me to get a divorce, and as soon as possible too, the moment the bill is passed.’
‘Yes,’ said Gloria, ‘but I’m perhaps not as dyed-in-the-wool as all that, besides you don’t want to be the only one to lose out. If divorce is made legal, you can bet your boots it won’t be only agnostics and atheists taking advantage of it. Do you really think that the people who are so fiercely opposed to it now won’t end up embracing it too? They fight it because they have to, but we all know how open to interpretation God is and that he’ll understand if we just explain properly and provide him with some solid arguments. They’ll each make their peace with him, don’t you worry. After all, that’s what we’ve been doing all our lives: pacts and compromises, bargains and pay-offs. God is more than used to that, at least with the people he knows best, namely, religious folk.’
‘That makes him sound like some stallholder desperate to sell his wares,’ said Beatriz with a little laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you would have divorced Roberto, because I don’t believe you.’
‘Sadly, I haven’t had to consider it, I only wish he were still alive. But yes, if he had carried on as he was, I would have felt justified in doing so. It would have been his fault, not mine. And his initiative too, which is what really matters. I might have been the one to start divorce proceedings, but he would have sown the seed. Oh, I’d have given him a second chance, I’d have waited. But that Ávila business, assuming it had been a serious affair, would have provided me with sufficient grounds. But I’ll never know for sure now, and not knowing is a real curse, believe me. Not knowing if your husband died because he was seriously in love, the kind of love that would have left you sidelined, or because of some mad, insignificant fling. He would probably never have seen her again. Or even thought about her. What a waste!’ ‘That Ávila business’ was how she used to refer to her husband’s death and its circumstances. And she added: ‘Just as in your case, the fault lies with Eduardo, not with you. Whatever you did afterwards is another matter, you could hardly be expected to sit on your hands for ever.’
There was a long silence, as if Beatriz were thinking or hesitating. I hadn’t typed anything for a while, and I was afraid they had noticed and prudently fallen silent, imagining that if I was typing I wouldn’t hear their voices clearly. I typed a few more lines to inspire them with confidence, even if only at a subconscious level, as people used to say then. Not that it mattered, they had clearly forgotten I was even there.
‘It’s odd,’ Beatriz said at last. ‘It’s odd that for me, a non-believer, the bond is stronger than it is for you, a believer, albeit a rather flexible, rather lax one, luckily for you. I could never get divorced or even separated, not on my initiative; blaming him for it wouldn’t help at all, because I would be the one starting the proceedings and setting it all in motion. It would be quite different if Eduardo began proceedings, then I would just have to lump it. I don’t care what he does or doesn’t do to me, what he says, I don’t care that he avoids me like the plague, that the mere sight of me, at best, irritates him and, at worst, fills him with despair and rage, because there was a time when it wasn’t like that, and as long as I hang on to that memory, I can also hang on to the hope that things will go back to the way they once were, and permanently too. Of course I care how he treats me, it’s dreadful, I can feel myself shrivelling up, and every night I go to bed in such a state of anxiety I can barely sleep; but I still won’t leave. You can’t just erase memories at will, and as long as those memories last, the person you shared the good times with continues to be the person closest to them, the person who best embodies them. He’s both their representative and their witness, if you see what I mean, as well as being the only person capable of bringing those good times back, the only person who can possibly restore them to me. I wouldn’t want a new life with another man. I want the life I had for quite a number of years and with the same man. I don’t want to forget or get over it or move on, as they say, but to carry on in exactly the same way, like a prolongation of what was. I was never dissatisfied, I never longed for change, I was never one of those women who gets bored and requires movement, variety, arguments and reconciliations, moments of euphoria and terrible shocks. I would have been happy for everything to have stayed eternally the same. Some people are content and satisfied, and hope only for each day to be the same as the previous day and the next. I was one of those people. Until everything went wrong. If I distanced myself from him now, if I left or threw him out, then I really would be giving up what I most want, and that would be the end of me, the final sentence.’