A Heart So White (Vintage International)

by Javier Marías

until he doesn’t seem quite so awful and even his defects begin to seem attractive, that’s the one advantage of repetition, it distorts everything and makes it familiar, what repels you in real life you end up finding attractive if you see it often enough

victim to the fear that always grips people who wait in vain, the fear that at the very moment we leave, the person who’s taken so long to arrive, will arrive,

the world seems so innocuous when you don’t, wouldn’t it be better if we all just stayed very still. But even if we were to do that, the problems and coercions and humiliations and insults continue, as do the obligations, sometimes we oblige ourselves, a sense of duty it’s called, perhaps my duty is to help Berta do what she’s asking me to do, you should give importance to the things that are important to your friends; if I refuse to help her I’ll offend her, humiliate her, any refusal is also an offence, an act of coercion,

what happened between us both happened and didn’t happen, it’s the same with everything, why do or not do something, why say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, why worry yourself with a ‘perhaps’ or a ‘maybe’, why speak, why remain silent, why refuse, why know anything if nothing of what happens happens, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered,

we pour all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven’t already been, and that’s why we’re so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost.

perhaps that is what drives us to read novels and news reports and to go and see films, the search for analogy, for symbolism, the need for recognition rather than cognition.

with the affection women always show towards you when they’re nursing some illusion,

laughing, sometimes laughter is the prelude to a kiss and the expression of desire, its mode of transmission, without one quite knowing why, laughter disappears afterwards during the kiss and the fulfilment of the desire, there’s rarely any laughter when two people lie awake in one another’s arms, their heads on the pillow, no longer watching the other person’s mouth (the mouth is always full, abundance itself),

the secret that remains unspoken harms no one,

a secret isn’t characterized by any one thing, it’s shaped out of concealment and silence or out of caution or forgetting, out of not saying anything or not telling, because listening is the most dangerous of acts and cannot be avoided,

That’s why sometimes it’s better not to know even the beginning of something nor to hear the voices telling the story, the voices against which one is so defenceless, those narrative voices that we all know and which go back to the remote or the recent past and uncover secrets that are no longer important but nevertheless influence one’s life or one’s future years, our knowledge of the world and of people; you can trust no one once you’ve heard them, anything is possible, the people we know are as capable as we are of the worst horrors and the greatest atrocities. And everyone is absorbed in this ceaseless talking and ceaseless concealment, only what is unsaid remains untold or unconcealed. But what remains silent becomes a secret and, sometimes, the day arrives when that secret will be told.

The people who keep silent are those who’ve found something that they might lose, not those who’ve lost something or are about to get it.

I always do that, just as, when I get back from a trip, the first thing I do is unpack my suitcase and put everything away in its proper place and the suitcase away in its cupboard, in order to forget that I’ve been away, to forget everything about the trip, as quickly as possible, so that peace appears to be restored.

when I threw away the plastic bag, which had covered them up, they’d no longer be visible on my next visit, the speed with which forgetting takes place, sometimes you don’t have to do anything to speed it up, the new covers the old in exactly the same way as happens in a rubbish bin,

she’d spent too long waiting, and waiting is the one thing guaranteed to bring on despair and wild talk, it corrodes

What is impossible to distinguish is what happened to others and the things they tell us about themselves as if they were fictitious or real but remote, the reality of people we don’t know or the reality of the past. Let’s just say that, except in certain extreme cases, one’s own memory still remains quite safe, untouched, you remember what you yourself have seen and heard in a different way to how you remember books or films, but the difference is less marked when it comes to what others have seen and heard and witnessed and known and then told us about. And then, of course, there are the things you invent.”

Perhaps he’d again recalled that he was unhappy and that his unhappiness wasn’t just something someone had told him about, something he’d read, something he’d invented, nor anything to do with any intrigue.

Hardly anyone imagines anything, not when you’re young, and you’re young for much longer than you think. The whole of life seems a sham when you’re young, what happens to other people, unhappiness, calamity, crimes, it all seems utterly alien, as if it didn’t exist.

And we hurt people. It would be impossible not to make a mistake. It’s strange that words don’t have worse consequences than they do. Or perhaps we just don’t see it, we just think they don’t have any consequences and, in fact, the world’s in a permanent state of disaster because of what we’ve said.

I could have kept silent for ever, but we believe that the more we love someone, the more secrets we should tell them, telling often seems like a gift, the greatest gift one can give, the greatest loyalty, the greatest proof of love and commitment.

“I have done the deed and I have committed the act, the act is both deed and exploit, which is why, sooner or later, it has to be told, I have killed for you and that is my exploit and telling you now is my gift to you, and you will love me even more knowing what I have done, even though knowing it stains your heart so white.”)

“Listening is the most dangerous thing of all,” I thought, “listening means knowing, finding out, knowing everything there is to know, ears don’t have lids that can close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late. Now we know and it may well stain our hearts so white, or are our hearts merely pale or fearful or cowardly?”)

(“Don’t think too much about things, father,” I thought, “don’t think about things with so brainsickly a brain. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures, father. These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad”).

I felt that uncontrollable irritation you feel when you stop loving someone who continues to love you despite everything and won’t give up, we always want everything to end when we choose to end it.

whether feigned or not, nothing is as exhausting as grief.

It’s odd the way sometimes a thought comes to us with such force and clarity that nothing can stand between it and its execution.

(“And I watched for a few seconds,” I thought, “watched how the circle grew and widened, a stain that was at once black and fiery, consuming the sheet”),

“Now she’ll have to come in here to change her clothes or to pick up something. I’d love to see her. When they’ve gone I can clean my teeth and have a drink of water and there might still be some olives left.”