The Infatuations (32 page)
‘Why didn’t he just commit suicide?’
Díaz-Varela again looked at me as if I were a child, that is, as if I were an innocent.
‘What kind of question is that!’ he said. ‘Like most people, he was incapable of committing suicide. He didn’t dare, he couldn’t bring himself to decide the “when”: why today and not tomorrow, if today I see no further changes in myself and feel quite well? If that decision were left up to each individual, hardly anyone would ever find the right moment. He wanted to die before the effects of the illness took hold, but there was no way he could put a date on that “before”: as I said, he had a month and a half or two months, possibly a little longer, no one could tell. And, again like most people, he didn’t want to know for certain beforehand when that would happen, he didn’t want to wake up one morning and say to himself: “This is my last day. I won’t see another night.” Even if he got others to help him, he would still know what was going to happen, what they were up to, he would still know the date in advance. His friend mentioned a serious-minded organization in Switzerland called Dignitas, which is run by doctors and is, of course, totally legal (well, legal there), and people from any country can apply to them for an assisted suicide, always assuming there’s sufficient reason, a decision taken by the doctors, not by the person involved. The applicant has to submit an up-to-date medical record,
and its accuracy and authenticity are then checked; apparently, except in cases of extreme urgency, they put you through a meticulous preparatory process and, initially, try to persuade you to remain alive with the help of palliative care, if that’s available but for some reason hasn’t already been offered; they make sure you’re in full possession of your mental faculties and aren’t merely suffering a temporary depression, it’s a really excellent place, Miguel told me. Despite all these requirements, his friend didn’t think there would be any objections in his case. He spoke to him about this place as a possible solution, as a lesser evil, but Miguel still felt unable to contemplate it, he just didn’t dare. He wanted to die, but without knowing how or when it was going to happen, not at least with any exactitude.’
‘Who is this doctor friend?’ it occurred to me to ask, forcing myself to suspend the belief that tends gradually to invade us when we listen to someone else’s story.
Díaz-Varela didn’t seem overly surprised, well, perhaps just a little.
‘Do you mean his name? Dr Vidal.’
‘Vidal? But which Vidal? That’s not exactly telling me much. There are loads of Vidals.’
‘What’s wrong? Do you want to check up on him? Do you want to go to him and have him confirm my version of events? Go ahead, he’s a really friendly, helpful guy. I’ve met him a couple of times. His name is Dr Vidal Secanell. José Manuel Vidal Secanell. He’ll be easy enough to find, you just have to look him up on the register of the Medical Association or whatever it’s called, it’s bound to be on the Internet.’
‘And what about the ophthalmologist and the consultant?’
‘That I don’t know. Miguel never mentioned them by name, or if he did I’ve forgotten. I know Vidal because, as I say, he was a childhood
friend of Miguel’s. But I don’t know the others. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t imagine it would be that difficult to find out who his ophthalmologist was, if you really want to. Are you going to turn detective? Best not ask Luisa directly, though, unless you’re prepared to tell her the whole story, to tell her the rest. She knew nothing about the melanoma or anything else, that was how Miguel wanted it.’
‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? You’d think it would be less traumatic for her to find out about his illness than see him stabbed to death and bleeding on the ground. You’d think it would be harder to recover from such a violent, vicious death. Or to move on, as people say nowadays.’
‘Possibly,’ said Díaz-Varela. ‘But although that was an important consideration, it was a secondary one at the time. What horrified Miguel was having to go through the phases Vidal had described to him, and having Luisa see him in that state, although, admittedly, that thought wasn’t uppermost in his mind, it was a minor consideration by comparison. When you know your time has come, you tend to be very sunk in yourself and have little thought for other people, even those closest to you, even those you most love, however much you try not to ignore them and not to lose sight of them in the midst of your own tribulations. The knowledge that you’re the only one who’ll be leaving and that they’ll be staying can give rise to a certain degree of annoyance, almost resentment, as if they were somehow removed from and indifferent to it all. So, yes, while he wanted to save Luisa from being a witness to his death, more than that, he wanted to save himself from it. Bear in mind, too, that he didn’t know what form his sudden death would take. He left that to me. He didn’t even know for sure that he would meet a sudden death or would, instead, have no option but to endure the evolution of his illness until the end, or hope that he might get up the courage to throw himself
out of a window when he got worse and began to notice his face becoming deformed and to experience terrible pain. I never guaranteed him anything, I never said Yes.’
‘Said Yes to what? Never said Yes to what?’
Díaz-Varela gave me his usual hard look, which somehow never felt hard, but, rather, drew one in. I thought I caught a glimmer of irritation in his eyes, but, like all glimmers, it didn’t last, because he answered me at once and, as he did so, that hard look vanished.
‘What do you think? To his request. “Get rid of me,” he said. “Don’t tell me how or when or where, let it be a surprise, we have a month and a half or two months, find a way and do it. I don’t care what method you use. The quicker the better. The less suffering and pain the better. The sooner the better. Do what you like, hire someone to shoot me, or to run me down as I’m crossing the street, or have a wall collapse on top of me or make my brakes fail or my lights, I don’t know, I don’t want to know or think about it, you do the thinking, whatever you like, whatever you can, whatever occurs to you. You must do me this favour, you must save me from what awaits me otherwise. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m incapable of killing myself or flying to some place in Switzerland knowing that I’m going there in order to die among strangers, I mean, who could possibly agree to such a grim journey, travelling towards your own execution, it would be like dying over and over while you were on the plane and while you were there. I prefer to wake up here each morning with at least a semblance of normality and to carry on with my life while I can, but always with the fear and the hope that this day will be my last. With the uncertainty too, that above all, because uncertainty is the only thing that can help me; and I know I can bear that. What I can’t bear is knowing that it all depends on me. It has to depend on you. Get rid of me before it’s too late, you must grant me this favour.” That, more
or less, was what he said to me. He was desperate and terribly afraid too. But he wasn’t out of control. He had thought about it a lot. Almost, you might say, coldly. And he could see no other solution. He really couldn’t.’
‘And what was your answer?’ I asked, and as soon as I had, I realized again that I was thus giving his story some measure of credence, however hypothetical and transient, however much I told myself that my question had really been: ‘And always supposing that what you say is true, and let’s imagine for a moment that it is, what was your answer?’ The truth is, of course, that I didn’t put it that way.
‘At first, I refused point-blank, and wouldn’t even let him continue. I told him it was impossible, that it was simply too much to ask, that you couldn’t expect someone else to perform a task that only you could do. That he should either get up the necessary courage to end his own life or else hire a hit man, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had commissioned and paid for his own execution. He said he was perfectly aware that he lacked the necessary courage, but also that he couldn’t bring himself to hire his own killer and then, inevitably, be aware of the how and, almost, the when: once contact had been established, the hit man would set to work, they’re efficient people and don’t hang about, they do what they have to do, then move on to the next job. That wouldn’t be so very different to making the trip to Switzerland, he said, it would still be his decision, it would mean fixing a specific date for his death and renouncing the minor consolation of uncertainty, and the one thing he was incapable of deciding was whether it should be today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. He would keep putting it off from one day to the next, the days would pass and he still wouldn’t have screwed up the necessary courage, the right moment would never come and then the full force of the disease would fall on him, which was what he wanted to avoid
at all costs … And I did understand what he meant; in those circumstances, it’s very easy to say to yourself: “Not yet, not yet. Perhaps tomorrow. Yes, definitely tomorrow. But tonight I’m going to sleep at home, in my bed, with Luisa by my side. Just one more day.”’ – ‘I should die hereafter, and meanwhile linger on a little,’ I thought. ‘After all, there’ll be no coming back. And even if I could come back: the dead should never return.’ – ‘Miguel had many virtues, but he was weak and indecisive. Perhaps we all would be in those circumstances. I imagine I would be too.’
Díaz-Varela stopped talking and looked away as if he were putting himself in his friend’s shoes or remembering the time when he had done so. I had to shake him out of his stupor, regardless of whether he was faking it or not.
‘That was how you reacted at first, you said. And afterwards? What made you change your mind?’
For a few moments, he remained thoughtful, stroking his chin, like someone checking that he was still clean-shaven or that his beard hadn’t started growing again. When he spoke, he sounded very tired, perhaps worn out by his explanations and by that conversation in which he was doing most of the talking. His gaze remained abstracted, and he murmured as if to himself:
‘I didn’t change my mind. I never did. From the first moment, I knew that I had no alternative, that, however hard it was for me, I would have to grant his request. What I said to him was one thing, but what I had to do was quite another. I had to get rid of him, as he put it, because he would never dare to do so, either actively or passively, and what awaited him was truly cruel. He insisted, he begged, he offered to sign a piece of paper accepting full responsibility, he even proposed going to a lawyer. I refused. If I agreed, he would have the feeling that he had signed a kind of contract or pact, he
would have taken it as a Yes and I wanted to avoid that, I preferred him to believe that I had said No. In the end, though, I didn’t entirely close the door. I told him that I would think it over, even though I was sure I wouldn’t change my mind. I said he shouldn’t count on it, should never broach the subject with me again or ask about it, that it would be best if, for the moment, we didn’t see or phone each other. It would be impossible for him to resist bringing the subject up again, if not in words, then with a glance, a tone of voice, an expectant look, and I couldn’t bear that: I didn’t want to hear that macabre commission, to have that morbid conversation again. I told him that I would get in touch with him from time to time to find out how he was, that I wouldn’t leave him all alone, and that, meanwhile, he should get on with his life – that is, with his death – but without relying on my participation. He couldn’t involve a friend in such a project, it was up to him to solve the problem. But I allowed him a tiny doubt. I didn’t give him hope, but at the same time I did: enough for him to be able to enjoy the saving grace of uncertainty, so that he would neither entirely rule out my help nor feel that there was any real and imminent threat or that his elimination was in train. That was the only way in which he would be able to continue living what remained of his “healthy” life with a semblance of normality, as he had put it and as was his vain intention. But who knows, perhaps, insofar as it was possible, he did do that, at least to some extent. So much so that he perhaps didn’t even connect the
gorrilla
’s attack on Pablo or his insults and accusations with his request to me, I can’t possibly know, I don’t know. I did end up calling him sometimes, to ask how he was and if he had experienced any pain or any other symptoms or not yet. We even met on a couple of occasions and he kept strictly to his word, he didn’t raise the topic again or pester me, we acted as though that other conversation had never taken place. But it was as if he were relying on me, I could
tell; as if he were waiting for me to dig him out of that hole and deliver the
coup de grâce
when he was least expecting it, before it was too late, and still saw me as his salvation, if such a word can be used to describe his violent elimination. I hadn’t for one moment agreed to help him, but basically he was right: from the very first instant, as soon as he explained his situation to me, my brain had begun to work. I asked Ruibérriz to help me out and he took charge of setting things in motion, and, well, you know the rest. My mind had to start working and plotting like the mind of a criminal. I had to consider how to go about killing a friend promptly and within a specified time limit without it looking like a murder and without anyone suspecting me. And so, yes, I delegated, used intermediaries, avoided soiling my hands, other people’s wills intervened, I left plenty of loose ends for chance to do with as it wished and detached the deed from myself and my influence so effectively that I came to imagine I had nothing to do with it or only as its instigator. But I was also always aware that, as the instigator, I had to think and act like a murderer. So it’s not really so very strange that you should see me as one. But frankly, María, what you believe really isn’t as important as you might perhaps think.’
Then he got up as if he had finished or didn’t feel like going on, as if he felt that the session was over. I had never seen his lips so pale, despite the many times I had looked at them. The fatigue and dejection, the retrospective despair that had appeared in him a while before, had grown suddenly very marked. He really did seem exhausted, as though he had made not just a verbal effort, but a huge physical effort too, as he had announced, almost at the very start, by rolling up his sleeves. Perhaps someone who had just stabbed a man nine or perhaps ten or sixteen times would look equally exhausted.
