Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías Page B

where she had put them. That too could wait, I didn’t want to go into the living room just yet because my shoes would make a noise and the child hadn’t long since got back to sleep, and anyway, the idea of going past his room and making the aeroplanes tremble with my footsteps made me feel awkward, his whole life had changed, the world had changed, and he didn’t yet know it, more than that: his present world had ended, because, after a short while, he wouldn’t even remember it, it would be as if it had never existed – brittle, erasable time – the memories of a two-year-old do not last, at least I remember nothing from my own life when I was two years old. I looked down at Marta, from the viewpoint of a man standing up and looking down at someone lying on a bed, I saw her firm, round buttocks beneath her scanty knickers, noticed how her skirt had ridden up, observed the hunched position that allowed me to see all that, though not her breasts which were still covered by her arms, she was a remnant, a cast-off, something not to be kept, but discarded – to be burned, to be buried – just as so many of the things that had belonged to her would suddenly become redundant, like the things that get thrown out with the rubbish because they continue unstoppably to change and to rot – the skin of a pear or some fish that’s gone off, the outer leaves of an artichoke, chicken giblets, the fat from the Irish sirloin steak that she herself had scraped off our plates into the bin only a short time before, before we went into the bedroom – a lifeless woman, not even covered up, not even under the sheets. She was mere detritus and yet for me she was the same woman as before: she hadn’t changed, I still recognized her. I should put her clothes back on so that they wouldn’t find her like this, I immediately rejected the idea, it was too difficult, too dangerous, I might break one of her bones putting her arm in the sleeve of whatever I put on her, where was her blouse anyway, perhaps it would be easier just to pull back the sheets and cover her over, you could do anything with her now, poor Marta, manipulate her, move her, at the very least, cover her up.
    I stood for a few moments paralysed, immobilized by my own mental haste, doing nothing, haste makes us think verycontradictory things, it occurred to me that, had she foreseen this or known about it, it would have distressed her that those close to her should be left in ignorance, that they should believe her still alive when she wasn’t, and for how long, that they would not be informed immediately, that everything would not be thrown into instant disarray by her sudden death, that those imprudent telephones would not at once start to ring, talking about her, and that everyone who had known her would not be exclaiming over her, thinking about her; and, later, those who had known her would find unbearable their ignorance of the fact of her death, an ignorance of which they were about to be or already were the victims, for the husband remembering, later on, that he was peacefully asleep on an island – for how long, and that he got up and had breakfast and went to a business meeting in Sloane Square or in Long Acre, and perhaps even went for a walk – while his wife was dying and was dead with no one at her side, no one to tend to her, first the one and then the other, because he would never know for sure that there had been no one else with her, although he might suspect it, it would be difficult for me to cover up every trace of the hours I had spent there, should I decide to do so. He must have left his London telephone number and address somewhere, next to the phone, I saw that there was no paper next to the phone on Marta’s bedside table, a phone and answering machine combined, perhaps by the phone in the living room, where she had spoken to her husband before, with me there in the room. It would be a good idea for me to have that address and that telephone