Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me Read Free Page A

did not cast enough light on them for me to see. On one of the chairs I saw some men’s clothing, a jacket slung over the chairback as if the chair were a clothes hanger, a pair of trousers with a large-buckled belt (the zip was open, as it always is on trousers that have not been put away), a couple of pale, unbuttoned shirts, the husband had only recently been in that room, that morning he would have got up from that very place, from the pillow I was now leaning against, and he would have decided to change his trousers, he was in a hurry, maybe Marta had refused to iron them for him. Those clothes were still breathing. On the other chair there were women’s clothes, I saw a pair of dark stockings and two of Marta’s skirts, they weren’t like the skirt she was still wearing, they were smarter, perhaps she’d been trying them on, unable to decide, until a minute before I had knocked at the door, one never knows what to wear for romantic assignations (I had had no such problems, I wasn’t even sure if it was a romantic assignation and my wardrobe tends to be rather monotonous anyway). In the posture she had adopted, the chosen skirt was now horribly creased, Marta was doubled up, I could see that she was squeezing her thumbs with her fingers and had drawn upher legs as if trying to use that pressure to calm her stomach and her chest, as if trying to contain them, that posture revealed her knickers and, in turn, part of her buttocks, they were very small knickers. Out of a sudden sense of modesty and to avoid her skirt becoming still more creased, I thought perhaps I should smooth it and pull it down, but I couldn’t help liking what I saw and it was doubtful that I would go on seeing it – seeing any more of it – if she did not get any better, and, besides, Marta had possibly expected those creases, they had begun to appear already, as usually happens on those first nights, which are no respecters of the clothes you take off or of those you leave on, although there is a certain respect for the new, unknown body: perhaps that was why she hadn’t ironed any of the clothes draped over the chairs, because she knew that the next day she would have to iron the skirt she put on tonight, which one, which is the most flattering, the night on which she would receive me, in such cases everything becomes creased or stained or crumpled and momentarily unusable.
    Before switching on the television, I turned the sound down with the remote control, and, just as I had intended, a voiceless image appeared and Marta did not notice, even though the room immediately grew brighter. A subtitled Fred MacMurray appeared on the screen, it was an old movie on late at night. I flicked through the channels and returned to MacMurray in black and white, to his rather unintelligent face. And at that point, I could no longer keep myself from thinking, although no one ever thinks very much or in the order in which those thoughts are later retold or written down: “What am I doing here?” I thought. “I’m in an unfamiliar house, in the bedroom of a man I’ve never seen, a man I only know by his first name, which his wife has mentioned – naturally and irritatingly – several times throughout the evening. It’s also her bedroom which is why I’m here, watching over her illness after having removed some of her clothes and having touched her, I do know her, although not very well, I’ve only known her for two weeks, this is the third time I’ve seen her in my whole life. Her husband phoned a couple of hours ago when I was already having supper in his house, he called to say that he’d arrived safely in London, that he’d dined extremely well at theBombay Brasserie and that he was in his hotel room getting ready to go to bed, he had work to do the following morning, he’s away on a short business trip.” And his wife Marta didn’t tell him that I was there, here, having supper. That made me almost certain that this was a romantic supper,