eye, I noticed that what had been the beginnings of a smile hardened into a tight line I had seen before on those thin, apparently bloodless lips.
Then I looked straight into Clare's face and, though I didn't know her, I saw her as if she were someone who already belonged to my past. I mean like someone who no longer belonged to my present life, like someone we once found enormously interesting but who has ceased to interest us or has died, like someone who was or whom one day, long ago now, we condemned to having been, perhaps because that someone condemned us to the same fate long before. As is often the case with evening wear in England, the low-cut dress visible beneath her gown (the indirect cause of all that fuss) seemed to belong to another era. Even her face was somewhat old-fashioned, with its full lips and unusually high cheekbones. But that wasn't the reason. It was that she was looking at me too, and she was looking at me as if she knew me of old, almost as if she were one of those faithful but ancillary figures from our childhood who, later on, are never able to see us as the detestable adults we've become but instead, fortunately for us, will only ever see us as the children we were, their inert gaze distorted by memory. That providential handicap is more frequent in women than in men, insofar as for men children are just irritating rough drafts of adults, while for women they're perfect beings destined to become battered and coarsened, and so their retina struggles to retain the image of that transient deity condemned to lose his godliness and, when they haven't known a man as a child, they pour all the effort involved in getting to know someone into imagining the child whom they can know now only from photographs or from the traces of the child that remain in the sleeping image of the grown man, or even perhaps of the old man, or from the idly told tales the usurper will have ventured to confide to them in bed, the only place men willingly recall out loud things from the distant past. That was how Clare looked at me, as if she knew all about my childhood in Madrid and hadwitnessed in my own language my games with my brothers, my night-time fears and the inevitable after-school fights. And her seeing me like that made me see her in a similar way. I found out later - once I knew all about her - that in those final seconds of a minute that only truly exists now, scenes from her childhood in India had flashed upon my mind, and I saw the pensive look of the girl with little to occupy her in those southern cities, who watched the passing of a river and was watched over in turn by the dark voices of smiling servants. I didn't know I was seeing that (and perhaps I'm mistaken or lying or simply didn't see it and should not, therefore, speak of it), but I have to say that through those deep blue eyes flowed a river gleaming brightly in the blackness, the River Yamuna or Jumna that crosses Delhi, dotted with the rudimentary barges that carry on its current cereals, cotton, wood and stone, a river that is lulled from its own shores by trifling songs, its surface dimpled by the pebbles that fall from its banks as it leaves the city behind, just as perhaps my eyes were full of images of Madrid, of calle de Génova, calle de Covarrubias, calle de Miguel Ángel, streets that she had never walked or seen: perhaps the image of four children walking down those streets accompanied by an old maidservant. And there too would be the huge railway bridge that crosses the River Yamuna where it passes through the city, always there in the distance, and from which, according to tales told by her nanny when they were alone together, tales told in a voice full of mystery, many a pair of unhappy lovers had thrown themselves: the wide river of blue water broken by the long bridge of crisscrossing iron girders, deserted for the most part, in darkness, idle and shadowy, just like one of those faithful but ancillary figures from our childhood
Then I looked straight into Clare's face and, though I didn't know her, I saw her as if she were someone who already belonged to my past. I mean like someone who no longer belonged to my present life, like someone we once found enormously interesting but who has ceased to interest us or has died, like someone who was or whom one day, long ago now, we condemned to having been, perhaps because that someone condemned us to the same fate long before. As is often the case with evening wear in England, the low-cut dress visible beneath her gown (the indirect cause of all that fuss) seemed to belong to another era. Even her face was somewhat old-fashioned, with its full lips and unusually high cheekbones. But that wasn't the reason. It was that she was looking at me too, and she was looking at me as if she knew me of old, almost as if she were one of those faithful but ancillary figures from our childhood who, later on, are never able to see us as the detestable adults we've become but instead, fortunately for us, will only ever see us as the children we were, their inert gaze distorted by memory. That providential handicap is more frequent in women than in men, insofar as for men children are just irritating rough drafts of adults, while for women they're perfect beings destined to become battered and coarsened, and so their retina struggles to retain the image of that transient deity condemned to lose his godliness and, when they haven't known a man as a child, they pour all the effort involved in getting to know someone into imagining the child whom they can know now only from photographs or from the traces of the child that remain in the sleeping image of the grown man, or even perhaps of the old man, or from the idly told tales the usurper will have ventured to confide to them in bed, the only place men willingly recall out loud things from the distant past. That was how Clare looked at me, as if she knew all about my childhood in Madrid and hadwitnessed in my own language my games with my brothers, my night-time fears and the inevitable after-school fights. And her seeing me like that made me see her in a similar way. I found out later - once I knew all about her - that in those final seconds of a minute that only truly exists now, scenes from her childhood in India had flashed upon my mind, and I saw the pensive look of the girl with little to occupy her in those southern cities, who watched the passing of a river and was watched over in turn by the dark voices of smiling servants. I didn't know I was seeing that (and perhaps I'm mistaken or lying or simply didn't see it and should not, therefore, speak of it), but I have to say that through those deep blue eyes flowed a river gleaming brightly in the blackness, the River Yamuna or Jumna that crosses Delhi, dotted with the rudimentary barges that carry on its current cereals, cotton, wood and stone, a river that is lulled from its own shores by trifling songs, its surface dimpled by the pebbles that fall from its banks as it leaves the city behind, just as perhaps my eyes were full of images of Madrid, of calle de Génova, calle de Covarrubias, calle de Miguel Ángel, streets that she had never walked or seen: perhaps the image of four children walking down those streets accompanied by an old maidservant. And there too would be the huge railway bridge that crosses the River Yamuna where it passes through the city, always there in the distance, and from which, according to tales told by her nanny when they were alone together, tales told in a voice full of mystery, many a pair of unhappy lovers had thrown themselves: the wide river of blue water broken by the long bridge of crisscrossing iron girders, deserted for the most part, in darkness, idle and shadowy, just like one of those faithful but ancillary figures from our childhood
Similar Books
