A Heart So White by Javier Marias

Author:Javier Marias [Marias, Javier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Family Life
ISBN: 9780811214520
Google: G0PwVLB5QL0C
Amazon: 0811214524
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2000-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

"Fine," I said. "And what if he wants to stay the night?"

"I'm sure he won't. Take something with you to read," she added in a more motherly tone.

"I'll buy tomorrow's paper. Where is he, by the way?" I asked. "Don't forget he's seen me before. If he sees me leaving here now and he recognizes me, it could look bad."

Berta went over to the window and I followed her. She looked to left and right and finally spotted Bill, to the right. "There he is," she said, pointing. My chest brushed against her back, she was breathing fast, with haste or distress or fear or perhaps it was just the night. The night sky was overcast and reddish in colour, but it didn't look like rain. I saw "Bill", standing with his back to us, waiting quite some way from the street door and out of reach of the one beam of light in our field of vision (Berta lives in a street of brownstones, on the third floor, not in an avenue of skyscrapers).

"Don't worry," she said "I'll go down with you to warn him. He's the one who doesn't want to be seen by anyone. All you have to do is head off to the left when you leave, he won't turn round until I tel1 him to. Are you sure you don't mind?" And Berta stroked my cheek with the affection women always show towards you when they're nursing some illusion, even if that illusion is only going to last an instant or might even be ending at that very moment.

I left: and wandered around for a bit. I went into various shops, which were still open, there are always shops open in New York, Berta had thought for a moment like a true Spaniard, perhaps because one Spaniard was waiting for her and she was speaking to another. In a Korean shop that never closed I bought the New York Times, in its mammoth Sunday edition, and some more milk because we'd run out. I went into a record shop and bought a record, the original soundtrack of an old film, not available on compact disc, only on uncatalogued vinyl. It was Saturday night and the streets were full of people, in the distance I could see the drug addicts and the future delinquents. I went into an all-night bookshop and bought a Japanese book purely for its title: House of the Sleeping Beauties it was called in English, I didn't like the tide but that, nevertheless, was the reason I bought it. I was accumulating a lot of small packages so I put it all in a plastic carrier bag, the largest one containing the record, and discarded the rest, the handle-less brown paper bags you get in shops are awkward and require both hands to hold them, they fill them, the way a man's hands — and a woman's - are filled on the wedding night, which in today's terms is equivalent to the

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