When I was twenty-three, I was still living like that, or possibly even more autonomously: alone in my parents’ apartment, with a backdrop of ever-changing daily helps, who would leave me food in the fridge and do the cleaning, who saw very little of me and of whom I saw even less. My parents were not so much wealthy — although they had no financial worries, they lived pretty much from day to day — as superficial and casual. Despite my father’s vague aspirations to originality or greatness, his diplomatic career had not been particularly dazzling, his main achievement being his appointment to the consulate in Frankfurt, which happened rather late; however, he retained the kind of deep-seated youthful optimism typical of the frivolously minded, an optimism he shared with my mother. I often had the feeling that I was slightly superfluous to their lives, or not superfluous exactly, more as if I were an old acquaintance over whom they watched from a distance, with no great enthusiasm or concern, but with undeniable affection; they behaved like a childless couple or as if they were my aunt and uncle or my godparents; I never had any cause for complaint, for they were charming if inconstant companions, or is it simply that we accept as normal whatever world or situation we’re born into? At any rate, I couldn’t rely on receiving much in the way of an inheritance (although they did own their apartment), and so, despite the privileges I’d enjoyed in childhood and adolescence, I was aware from early on that I would have to earn my own living like everyone else; that was why I was so delighted to have a job and an income, however temporary, and even though I had no idea what I would do when Muriel eventually dispensed with my services, as was bound to happen at some point. At the time, I felt no need to gain my independence, since I’d been living entirely independently for a long time, perhaps from too young an age, which is possibly why I began spending more and more hours at Muriel’s apartment, where there was, at least, a family, people companionably coming and going, entering and leaving, and some nights I even slept in that isolated bedroom, beyond the kitchen, which was, up to a point, mine, for habitual use makes us tacit owners as long as that habit or use is not taken away from us or expressly forbidden; so many people arrive at some temporary stopping-place from which there’s no uprooting them and where they end up spending half their lives. You should never allow anyone to stay, not even for a day, unless you’re prepared for them to stay for ever.
Anyway, I believed myself to be fully formed and finished and felt that, broadly speaking, I knew my own character. I didn’t know where I’d learned the rules of behaviour by which I tried to live my life (not from my parents, who had no rules at all or else kept changing them, but then maybe that’s part of being a diplomat), but I never behaved in a solemn or ostentatious manner; I’ve always loathed pompous, bombastic individuals, or recriminatory types, who insist on imposing their guidelines on others instead of keeping them to themselves. Perhaps I’d gleaned those rules from films, novels or comic books, which is how it was, up until fairly recently, for boys and young men who lacked any clear role models in real life (and in real life nothing is ever very clear; it doesn’t even tell a story), especially when those stories were troubling and ambiguous and not mere edifying nonsense. I considered myself to be fairly respectful and loyal and a man of scruples, capable of guarding any confidence entrusted to me and of keeping a secret if asked to do so; what I feared most was disappointing those I loved or admired. Muriel belonged to the latter group right from the start and gradually became one of the former — no, not gradually, quickly: unless you really take against someone, you inevitably grow fond of them over time (there isn’t any happy medium, indifference barely exists, however many struggle to achieve it); and that is what happened to me with him and, of course, with Beatriz Noguera, and with their children, especially their oldest daughter, Susana, partly because of her resemblance to her mother, but also partly because of her kind heart and friendly nature; and even with Flavia and Rico and Roy, and with Gloria and Marcela, however much they irritated me and made me feel uneasy and however much I felt they were a bad influence on their friend. And even with Van Vechten before that afternoon in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Darmstadt; after that, for no objective reason, I couldn’t stomach the man, although it was no business of mine what Beatriz did, let alone what he did — that was up to them. One of the rules I was trying to follow was more or less this: to judge other people as little as possible and not to meddle in their lives, still less intervene in them. My wish was to see no shape in the ocean, and not to have to come to any decision as to what it was, but that’s impossible, because I, too, was a shape which others might recoil from or aim for or collide with.
V
And so I didn’t at all like the task Muriel had set me, because of its very nature. I had withdrawn some of the superficial esteem I had felt for Van Vechten, both equally arbitrary acts, but we allow ourselves such absolute arbitrariness with those we know only slightly, whom we see as provisional or circumstantial and not of our choosing, mere ramifications of or bequests from someone else; the problem arises if that someone else is important to us, because then we feel under an obligation to accept those inherited friends and even to care for and protect them, especially if the person who bequeathed them to us is still alive and can find out if we have done as he asked, can thank or reproach us with his quick eye, can, at the very least, notice. Sometimes someone we really care for makes an explicit request (‘Treat that person as you would treat me, as if he were me; give him whatever he asks for and help him in every way possible’), sometimes this isn’t even necessary and we mentally anticipate that request (‘I get the message, I understand and will ask no more questions’). If we are staunch supporters of a lover, a friend, a teacher, we tend to welcome all those who surround them, not just those people who are essential to them: idiot children, demanding or poisonous wives, boring, even despotic husbands, dubious or disagreeable friends, unscrupulous colleagues on whom they depend, people in whom we can detect not a single good quality, not the slightest attraction and who lead us to wonder about the origin of the admiration expressed by those beings whose approval we ourselves crave: what past events bind them together, what shared suffering, what common experiences, what secret knowledge or vengeful motives; what strange, invincible nostalgia. We try to appear friendly, pleasant and intelligent and gain a pat on the back — from our lover a kiss or what usually follows kisses, or at least a look that prolongs our hopes a little longer — and cannot understand why these shrill or dull or inadequate or limited people, who, in our eyes, are entirely without merit, should obtain gratis and for nothing what costs us such invention, brio and vigilance. The only possible answer is often simply that these people came before us, date back to long before we entered the life of the lover, friend or teacher and that we know nothing of what happened between them and probably never will; that they may have travelled many possibly muddy paths together, without us there as companion or witness. We always arrive late in people’s lives.