Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías

body, pressed against me, as if she were pushing back hard, as if she wanted to find refuge inside my body, to flee from what her own body was suffering: an inhuman transformation, an unknown state of mind (the mystery): she was pressing her back against my chest and her bottom against my belly and the back of her thighs against the front of mine, the bloody, muddy back of her neck against my throat and her left cheek against my right cheek,jaw against jaw, and my temples, her temples, my poor temples and her poor temples, her arms beneath mine as if one embrace were not enough, and even the soles of her bare feet against my shoes, resting on them, she laddered her stockings on my shoelaces – her dark stockings that came to mid-thigh and which I had not removed because I liked that old-fashioned image – all her energies thrown back and against me, invading me, we were glued together like Siamese twins who had been born joined the whole length of our bodies, so that we would never see each other except out of the corner of one eye, she with her back to me, pushing, pushing, almost crushing me, until all that stopped and she lay still or stiller, there was no pressure of any kind, not even that of leaning against me, and instead I felt the sweat on my back, as if a pair of supernatural hands had embraced me from in front while I was embracing her, and had rested on my shirt leaving yellowish, watery marks on it, leaving the cloth stuck to my skin. I knew at once that she had died, but I spoke to her and I said: “Marta,” and I said her name again, adding: “Can you hear me?” and then I said to myself: “She’s dead,” I said, “this woman has died and I’m here and I saw it and I could do nothing to stop it, and now it’s too late to phone anyone, too late for anyone to share what I saw.” And although I said that to myself and I knew it to be true, I felt in no hurry to move away or to withdraw the embrace that she had requested, because I found it or, rather, the contact with her recumbent, averted, half-naked body pleasant and the mere fact that she had died did not instantly change that: she was still there, her dead body identical to her living body, only more peaceful, quieter and perhaps softer, no longer tormented, but in repose, and I could see again out of the corner of my eye her long lashes and her half-open mouth that were still the same, identical, her tangled eyelashes and her infinite mouth that had chatted and eaten and drunk, and smiled and laughed and smoked, that had kissed me and was still kissable. For how long? “We are both still here, in the same position and occupying the same space, I can still feel her; nothing has changed and yet everything has changed, I know that and I cannot grasp it. I don’t know why I am alive and she is dead, I don’t know what either of those words means any more. I no longer have any clear understanding of those twoterms.” And only after some seconds – or possibly minutes, one, two, or three – I carefully removed myself from her, as if I did not want to wake her or as if I might hurt her by moving away, and had I spoken to someone – someone who would have been a witness there with me – I would have done so in a low voice or in a conspiratorial whisper, born of the respect that the mystery always imposes on us if, that is, there is no grief or tears, because if there is, there is no silence, or else it comes only later. “Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die.”
    I still did not dare to turn up the sound on the television, because of that silence, but also because of an absurd thought: it suddenly occurred to me that I should avoid touching the remote control or anything else, in order not to leave my fingerprints anywhere, when I had already left them everywhere and, besides, no one would be looking for them. The fact of someone dying while you remain alive makes you feel, for a moment, like a