‘I don’t know, Eduardo, you didn’t ask me. What’s wrong? What does it matter? That was hours ago. It never occurred to me to mention it,’ I stammered, already feeling guilty of some grave fault, although I had no idea what.
But Muriel hadn’t really expected an answer to his question: I don’t even know if he heard what I said.
‘Quick, Jorge,’ he said to Van Vechten. ‘You come too, Juan.’ Then he turned to Rico and said: ‘Paco, please, keep our guests entertained, will you, and invent some explanation. We may have to cancel supper, I’m not sure. I’ll let you know as soon as possible, or else I’ll send Juan.’
This time, he called all three of us by our proper names, which meant that there was no room for so much as a hint of a joke, as there normally was when he was surrounded by his usual spectators and accomplices, of whom I was now one. He only had room in his mind now for anxiety and a deadly seriousness.
I had never seen Muriel run any distance at all. ‘Running is undignified, young De Vere,’ he had said to me once, telling me off after seeing me race for a taxi when the lights were about to change, or when he saw other people, either painfully struggling or brimming with health, as they engaged in what at the time we Spaniards called footing — as a nation, we are as useless at languages in general as we are eager to adopt foreign terms we can neither understand nor pronounce. As I say, I had never before seen him run and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone run as swiftly and desperately as he did, covering the few metres between his house and the Hotel Wellington in no time at all, so at least the indignity lasted only briefly, and besides, in such an extreme situation, that would have been the last thing on his mind. He ran so fast for a man of fifty — jacket flapping open, its tails and his tie flying like flags — that even I, at half his age, would have been unable to keep up with him for another two hundred metres, and Dr Van Vechten certainly wouldn’t, for despite all those hours spent working out in gyms, he was still a good ten years older than Muriel. However, the distance between house and hotel was so short that all three of us arrived pretty much at the same time, with Muriel at the head, of course, not only because he was running as if the devil himself were after him — an expression used and understood by everyone, even though no one has ever actually seen the devil — but because he knew why he was running and what he had to do. During that brief race, I also guessed what had happened, as doubtless Dr Van Vechten had, if he hadn’t done so earlier: Muriel wasn’t afraid that Beatriz had forgotten the time or that supper had completely slipped her mind because she was too consumed by her needs or her passions or her sexual appetites — a regular lover, the manager perhaps; a guest, maybe Baringo Roy, our friend Roy’s extraordinary Andalusian cousin; a bellboy or a casual waiter, or whoever — I don’t think he even imagined such a scene; what he imagined was what I had entirely failed to notice when I was trying to peer into the hotel foyer: Beatriz must already have reserved a room, perhaps that very morning or even the previous night, which is why she hadn’t had to go to reception to pick up her key or fill in a form; they would have handed her the key as soon as she appeared or she would have had it with her, depending on the hotel rules; she would have gone up to the room whose window she had stopped to gaze up at from the street, already imagining herself inside it, like someone contemplating her own coffin; she would have ordered something to drink or plundered the minibar and begun swallowing pills, lying on the bed, barefoot, possibly in her underwear so as to be more comfortable and with the television on so as to feel less alone, to see faces that would not see her or be able to intervene, to hear voices in the background to make more bearable the transition from being in the world to ceasing to be in the world — that irreversible transformation — just as children fall asleep more easily to the distant murmur of conversation between their parents and a guest, if there is one: as if they were lingering for a while in the waking, adult world they are reluctant to leave, not yet, not yet. The moon would not have been present, or perhaps Beatriz would have waited to see it rise — still very pale, still intimidated by the late-setting sun — so as to die in the dim glow of its deathly pallor.
Or perhaps she would have calmly and slowly filled the bathtub and then climbed in before slitting her veins — if you cut them before, the blood will start to flow at once and stain the towels and the hotel’s immaculate bathrobe, very few suicides are entirely indifferent to the mess they make or the image they leave behind — and what happened once she was in the water would depend on various factors: the number, length and depth of the cuts, whether on one wrist or on both; whether the water was really hot or not hot enough, because the cold would make the incisions close up, thus delaying death, not yet, not yet, although the cold is sure to come sooner or later; and two other things would determine the speed or otherwise of that death: if the person lost consciousness and her head slipped beneath the water, then she would drown, unless her body became wedged in the tub, her nose and mouth unsubmerged; in that case, if she didn’t drown, she would lie there unconscious until her heart stopped, incapable of pumping the little remaining blood around the body. It would, therefore, be a question of when she had sliced into her veins with the razor and how often and how deeply, whether she had done this at just gone six, shortly after going up to the room, or had waited and amused herself anticipating and savouring what would happen at home when the guests had all arrived and she had still not appeared; or if she had hesitated for a long time, knowing there would be no turning back, no possible postponement, once the skin was cut and the flesh opened, now, yes, now, it’s not easy to remain calm enough to staunch your own blood once it has started to flow; or if she had wanted to wait and see which complete stranger would win the latest TV quiz show — sometimes the most insignificant of things can detain us — and the minutes would have passed without her noticing, or she’d be thinking all the time that it wouldn’t be much longer until the dimmest contestant was eliminated or else declared the winner. It would be the same if she had taken pills, it would be crucial to know when she had started swallowing them and how quickly — the throat rebels and you have to stop now and then — and how much alcohol she had drunk. And depending on all these things, we three would arrive in time or too late, although the presence of the Doctor meant there would be not a moment’s vacillation or horror, he would know precisely what to do in any circumstance, Beatriz’s life would probably be in his hands, assuming there was still life in Beatriz. There was also a third possibility that could not be ruled out, for the fact that she had not, up until then, jumped off the balcony didn’t mean that even as we were still running, still on our way, she might not be climbing on to the balustrade and jumping — I didn’t look up as I was running, if I had, I might have seen her crouched on the ledge, ready to let herself fall — or even as we were asking at reception for her room number or persuading the staff that, given the imminence or actual occurrence of a tragedy, they would have to break down the door or use the master key, the staff would have resisted at first and called the hotel manager so that he could take charge and authorize such an intrusion, thus wasting possibly vital minutes. There was also a chance that Beatriz had hanged herself by using strips torn from the sheets, then climbing on to a chair that she herself would have kicked away, in which case, there would be no delay, no margin, nothing to be done, she would be dead when we finally entered the room as daylight was fading, or as night had already fallen, or so it would appear from inside the room, where all the lights would be on so that she wouldn’t have to kill herself without being able to see properly or perhaps so as not to have to die in the dark: it’s impossible not to imagine that, afterwards, there will be only blackness and so why torment yourself with the idea beforehand, unless you prefer to become accustomed to it with your eyes wide open, with your failing, fading consciousness, clinging on to life’s last threads.