The Infatuations by Javier Marías

television and in the press, with his wide, expressive mouth, immaculate bald head, which he carries off with great aplomb, his rather large glasses, his casual elegance – slightly English, slightly Italian – his disdainful way of speaking and his half-indolent, half-scathing manner, which is perhaps a way of concealing the underlying melancholia evident in his eyes, as if, already feeling himself to be a man of the past, he hates having to deal with his contemporaries, most of whom are ignorant, trivial individuals, and, at the same time, feels a twinge of anticipatory regret that, one day, he will be obliged to cease dealing with them – dealing with them must also, in a way, be a relief – when hissense that he is a man of the past finally becomes a reality. The first thing he did was to refute what his companion had said:
    ‘Now look here, Díaz-Varela, I am never to be found “hanging around”, as you put it, even when I find myself out in the street without knowing what to do – quite a frequent occurrence as it happens. I often sally forth in Sant Cugat, where I live,’ and he directed this explanation, with an accompanying oblique glance, at Luisa and at me, to whom he had not yet been introduced, ‘and I suddenly realize that I have no idea why I came out. Or I go into Barcelona and, once there, I can’t for the life of me remember the reason for my trip. Then I stand still for a while – I don’t wander around or pace up and down – until I can recall the purpose of my visit. Anyway, even on those occasions, I could not be said to be “hanging around”, indeed, I am one of the few people capable of standing in the street motionless and bewildered without actually giving that impression. Rather, the impression I give is of being very focused, let’s say, on the verge of making some crucial discovery or of putting the finishing touches in my head to a complicated sonnet. If some acquaintance spots me in these circumstances, he would never venture to say so much as a “Hello”, even though I’m standing alone, stock-still in the middle of the pavement (I never lean against the wall, that would look as if I’d been stood up), for fear of interrupting some demanding line of reasoning or a moment of deep meditation. Nor am I ever at risk of being mugged, because my stern, absorbed appearance dissuades all malefactors. They can tell I am a man whose intellectual faculties are on full alert and fully functioning (or “working flat out”, to use a more colloquial expression), and they wouldn’t dare pick a fight with me. They can see that it would prove dangerous to them, that I would react with a rare violence and speed. I rest my case.’
    Luisa couldn’t help but laugh, and nor, I believe, could I. The factthat she could switch so rapidly from being immersed in the anxious thoughts she had been telling me about to being amused by someone she had only just met made me think again that she had an enormous capacity for enjoyment and – how can I put it – for being ordinarily and momentarily happy. Some people are like that, not many, it’s true, people who grow impatient and bored with unhappiness and in whom it rarely lasts very long, even though, for a while, it could be said to have taken a terrible toll on them. From what I had seen of him, Desvern must have been the same, and it occurred to me that had Luisa been the one to die and he the one to survive, it was likely that he would have had a similar reaction to his wife’s now. (‘If he were still alive and a widower, I would not be here,’ I thought.) Yes, there are people who cannot bear misfortune. Not because they’re frivolous or empty-headed. They’re not, of course, immune to grief, and they doubtless experience grief as intensely as anyone else. But they’re designed to shake it off more quickly and without too much difficulty, as if they were simply incompatible with such states of mind. It’s in their nature to be