Free Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías Page A

her death seem less definitive because I was also there when she was alive, I know how it all happened and I myself have become the thread: her shoes, forever empty now, and her creased skirts, which will never now be ironed, can still be explained, they still have a story, a meaning, because I was a witness to the fact that she wore them, that she had them on – her high-heeled shoes, rather too high for wearing at home, even for the benefit of a guest, a near stranger – and I saw how she pushed them off with her own feet when she got to the bedroom and how she suddenly diminished in height, which made her seem somehow more carnal, more placid, I can tell the story and I can therefore explain the transition from life to death, which is a way of both prolonging that life and of accepting that death: if someone has been present at both things, or perhaps I should say states, if the person dying does not die alone and if whoever is with the person can give witness to the fact that the dead person was not always dead, but was once alive. Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck were still speaking in subtitles as if nothing had happened, and then the phone rang and I panicked. The panic was not instantaneous, it happened in two stages, because, for a second, I wanted to believe that the first ring had issued from the screen, but phones had a different ring then and, besides, there wasn’t a phone in that particular scene and so neither MacMurray nor Stanwyck turned round to look at it or to pick it up, the way I immediately turned towards Marta’s bedside table, the phone in Marta’s bedroom was ringing at three o’clock in the morning. “It’s not possible,” I thought, “I haven’t spoken to her husband, I called him but I didn’t speak to him and nobody knows what has happened, I didn’t say anything to the porter, nota thing.” And more thoughts thronged in as they do in moments of stress: “Perhaps he dreamed about it in his bed in London, intuited or guessed what had happened, and woke up filled with despair and jealousy and loneliness and regret and preferred to call in order to allay his night sweats and to calm himself, even at the risk of waking her up and possibly the child too.” It didn’t occur to me to close the bedroom door in order to avoid the latter happening, and at the third ring, out of sheer panic and to stop the strident ringing, I picked up the phone, but I didn’t say hello or anything and only then, with the receiver in my hand but not to my ear – as if that contact might betray me – I realized that the answering machine was on – I saw a red light vibrate and flicker – and that it would have answered for me and for her. And when I realized that, I immediately hung up, in response to my growing panic when I heard a man’s voice say: “Marta?” and again: “Marta?” That was when I hung up and stood absolutely still, holding my breath, as if someone had seen me, I took three steps towards the door and then I did carefully close it, out of panic and so as not to wake the child, and I prepared myself for the renewed ringing that would not be long in coming, and indeed was not, one, two, three, four, and then the answering machine cut in, I couldn’t hear the recorded voice, I didn’t know if it was her voice recorded when she was still alive or that of her husband who was far away. Then the beep sounded, I checked with my finger that the volume was up high and I heard the man’s voice again, I heard everything he said: “Marta?” he began again. “Marta, are you there?” And this question was impatient or, more than that, irritated. “Did we get cut off before? Are you listening?” There was a pause and some annoyed tutting. “Are you there? What are you playing at? Are you out? When I phoned you just now, you hung up on me! Oh, for Christ’s sake, pick up the bloody phone!” There was another second’s wait, Deán seemed rather foul-mouthed to me, he began to