While the Women are Sleeping by Javier Marias

Author:Javier Marias
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-04-20T23:00:00+00:00

a kind of nostalgia perhaps

It is quite possible that the main aim of ghosts, if they still exist, is to thwart the desires of mortal tenants, appearing if their presence is unwelcome and hiding away if it is expected or demanded. There have, however, been instances of pacts made between ghosts and mortals, as we know from various documents collected by Lord Halifax and Lord Rymer in England and by Don Alejandro de la Cruz in Mexico.

One of the most modest and touching of these cases is that of an old lady living in Veracruz, around 1920, when she was not an old lady, but a young girl who knew nothing of such visitations and waitings—or are they perhaps a kind of nostalgia? In her youth, this old lady had been the companion of a wealthy widow of advancing years, to whom, among other services rendered, she used to read in order to ease the tedium of her mistress’s lack of visible needs and preoccupations, and of a premature widowhood for which there was no remedy: for, according to people in that port city, Señora Suárez Alday had suffered the occasional illicit disappointment in love after her brief marriage, and it was probably this—rather than the death of her slightly or entirely unmemorable husband—that had made her seem curt and withdrawn at an age when such characteristics in a woman are no longer considered intriguing or charming or a fit topic for teasing. Boredom made her so lazy that she was barely able to read by herself, in silence and alone, so she had her companion read out loud to her details of affairs and feelings which, with each day that passed—and they passed very quickly and monotonously—seemed more and more alien to that house. The lady always listened very intently, utterly absorbed, and only occasionally asked her companion (Elena Vera by name) to repeat a passage or a piece of dialogue to which she did not wish to bid farewell forever without, first, making some attempt to hold on to it. When Elena finished reading, her only remark was: ‘Elena, you have a lovely voice. You will find love with that voice.’

And it was during these sessions that the ghost of the house first made his appearance. Every evening, while Elena was speaking the words of Cervantes or Dumas or Conan Doyle, or verses by Dario or Martí, she could just make out the figure of a young man of somewhat rustic appearance, a man of about thirty or so, who politely removed his broad-brimmed hat and whose perfectly decent clothes were, nevertheless, full of holes, as if he, or, rather, the short jacket, white shirt and tight trousers that clothed his absent body, had been riddled with bullets. The latter, however, seemed quite unscathed, and his face, barricaded behind a bushy moustache, had a healthy glow. The first time she saw him standing there—leaning his elbows on the back of the chair occupied by her mistress, occasionally playing

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