The Invitation(58)

*

The next evening I am determined to ask him about himself. This time I notice a definite resistance to my probing. It is subtle, but it is there. He begins to turn everything towards me again, but I have already talked enough; feel hollowed out with it. So I persevere.

‘Why are you here, in Spain?’

He takes a sip of his whisky, savours it. ‘Have you heard of the International Brigades?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you know of them?’

I tell him. They are men who have come from around the world, American, Englishmen, French – even German and Italian – to fight against Fascism. They say that their bravery is unparalleled. There is talk of how, last month, they met the rebels in the Jarama Valley and fought them off with suicidal valour.

He nods.

‘You’re one of them?’

‘Yes. In a way, I am.’

Suddenly I am seeing him in a new light. His reticence becomes something heroic. ‘Why are you here, in Madrid?’ What I really mean is: why isn’t he in uniform, as his compatriots are? Why is he staying in a hotel, drinking wine with me, rather than on a battlefield somewhere?

‘Ah,’ he smiles, and seems to understand my meaning. ‘My work is unusual. It’s … somewhat clandestine. That’s about all I can tell you, I’m afraid.’

I nod. I want him to know that he can trust me not to press him for information. That his secret is safe in my keeping. I think how much my father would have liked him, this man who is here, in a country not his own, out of a sense of moral duty.

I notice details that fascinate and disturb me: the triangle of pale chest revealed by the open neck of his shirt. The coppery hairs that scatter the skin there. The largeness and elegance of his hands, the way he fills his clothes – indeed his own skin – with such confidence and grace. He is not a tall man. But there is such a sense of conviction about him, of condensed energy, that he gives the impression of height.

In the mirror in the powder room I find myself (how can I be thinking of such things at a time like this?) combing my hair back from my face, holding it up, to see if it might make me look older, more sophisticated. I rinse my face. I pinch my cheeks and watch them fill with colour. But all that I can see is a grubby girl. I think of the female journalist I have seen in the bar, cutting through the room like a blade through silk: tall, effortlessly elegant, in military-issue clothes that fit her so well they might as well have been couture. By comparison, the reflection I see in the mirror is that of a shabby, unfinished person. A not-quite woman.

‘Where are you staying?’ he asks me, on our third meeting.

I tell him.

‘Oh,’ he says, shocked. ‘That’s not good. You should move here.’

I’m not exactly sure what he means by this. He must know that I can’t afford it. I feel a little stupid, from the wine. ‘With you?’

He smiles his charming, impossible-to-read smile. ‘In a room near to mine, if you’d like. I’m on the best side. It’s funny, the rooms that were the most expensive – the rooms at the front, are those that nobody wants now, because they’re in the line of fire. I have one of the smaller rooms at the back of the hotel – which are the most sought-after. I could have you set up in one of those.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Come, it can’t be a difficult choice, surely? You know,’ he says, ‘in this hotel we have running water. Hot and cold. They say it is the last supply in the whole city.’

I am encrusted, now, in a thick layer of the city’s grime. It hasn’t troubled me at all, before this moment – but suddenly the idea of being able to sluice it from myself is almost as enticing as the food. But it won’t come for free: I’m sure of that. I’m not like Maria, I’m not one of them. Not yet, not quite. And yet, like the madwoman in the Gran Vía metro, it does not seem such a long fall. Does it matter much, anyway?

‘No, thank you.’ I stand.

‘I’ve offended you,’ he says.

‘No.’

He reaches across the table to me, and lets his hand fall a few centimetres from my own. ‘Just a bath,’ he says. ‘I offer it because I can, and I would like to do something to help you. Not because I expect anything in return.’

I sit in the bathtub and take in my surroundings. A gilt mirror, elaborately wrought. I catch sight of myself in it: a pale face, eyes that look darker than they are. The protuberance of my spine.

The walls are painted a very pale green. Seafoam, I think this hue is called. Is the sea ever this colour? I wonder if I will live to see the real thing, to compare it with. A fresco of fat cherubs on the ceiling, rosy flesh. What a strange, sickly creature they must think me. This bathroom speaks of plenty, of permanence. Impossible to imagine it rendered into so much mortar and dust by a bomb. Except, looking closer, I find a long crack running from one corner of the ceiling to the centre. It is, I am sure, a fresh destruction. It severs the shoulder of the sixth cherub from his neck. Here is another victim of this war.

‘How is the water?’

He sounds so near that for a second I think he is in the bathroom with me. I cover myself. No, he is outside the door: but he must be right next to it.

‘It’s good,’ I say, ‘thank you.’ Suddenly, to linger any longer seems too much like an invitation. I step from the bath, find the towel. I dress, quickly, as though there are eyes on me.