While the Women are Sleeping

what the butler said

‘ON A RECENT brief stay in New York, one of the two things that Europeans most dread happening to them happened: I was trapped for half an hour in a lift between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors of a skyscraper. I don’t, however, want to talk about the fear I felt nor the more than justified claustrophobia that made me shout out (yes, I admit it) every few minutes, but about the man who was riding with me when the lift stopped and with whom I shared that half-hour of confidences and terror. He was immaculately dressed and extremely circumspect (in that difficult situation, he only shouted once and stopped when he realised that we had been heard and located). He looked exactly like the butlers you see in films and, as it turned out, he was a butler in real life. In exchange for a little incoherent, disparate information about my country, he gave me the following account of his life while we waited in that large vertical coffin: he was working for a wealthy young couple comprising the president of one of the largest and most famous American cosmetic companies and his recently acquired European wife. They lived in a five-storey mansion; they travelled around the city in an eight-door limousine with smoked-glass windows (like the one belonging to the late President Kennedy, he added), and he, the butler, was one of their four servants (all of them white, he said). The butler’s hobby was black magic, and he had already managed to obtain a lock of his young mistress’s hair, having cut it off while she was taking a nap in an armchair one very hot, very sleepy afternoon. He told me all this quite calmly and despite my own panic, I managed to listen to him relatively calmly. I asked him why he had so cruelly cut off that lock of hair. Had she perhaps mistreated him?

‘”Not yet,” he replied, “but sooner or later she will. It’s a precautionary measure. Besides, if something does happen, how else could I exact my revenge? How can a man avenge himself these days? Besides, the practice of black magic is very fashionable in America. Isn’t it in Europe?” I told him that, with the possible exception of Turin, it was not and asked if he couldn’t use his black magic to get us out of that lift. “The kind of magic I practice can only be used for acts of revenge. Who do you want us to take our revenge on, the lift company the architect, Mayor Koch? We might succeed, but that wouldn’t get us out of here. Besides, it won’t be long now. “It wasn’t long in fact, and once the lift was moving again and we had reached the ground floor, the butler wished me a pleasant stay in his city and vanished as if our half hour together had never existed.’

Thus began an article which, under the heading ‘Vengeance and the Butler’, I published in the Spanish newspaper El País on Monday; 21 December 1987. Then the article lost sight of the butler and turned its attentions to the subject of revenge. It was not, therefore, the right place in which to transcribe in detail everything that my travelling companion had told me, indeed, on that occasion, I altered one fact completely and said nothing about the rest. Perhaps I did this because the queen of the cosmetics company was also Spanish. She might, I thought, be a reader of El País, or perhaps, if I stuck too closely to the facts, some acquaintance of hers in Spain might recognise her and pass on the article. I confess that I was guided more by the desire not to get the butler into trouble than by any desire to alert the queen to some hypothetical danger. This is perhaps the moment though, now that my gratitude towards the former has somewhat faded and the chances of the latter ever reading this story are infinitely fewer. Not that I have any other means of alerting her, not at least discreetly. While she may read newspapers, I doubt very much that she reads books, certainly not stories written by a compatriot. But that won’t be my fault: the books we don’t read are full of warnings; we will either never read them or they will arrive too late. Anyway, my conscience will be clearer if I give her the possibility, however remote, of taking precautions, but without my feeling that I have also betrayed the butler who so kindly reassured me and helped make that wait in the lift more bearable. The one fact I had changed in my article was that the marriage was not so very recent and so the butler was not, as I had him say, awaiting any possible future affronts from his mistress: he was in fact, according to him, already a constant victim of such affronts. What follows are his words, insofar as I can now remember and set them down, although not in any very orderly fashion, since I no longer feel able to reproduce that conversation accurately, and can only recall a few of the things he said.

THE BUTLER SAID:

‘I don’t know if all Spanish women are the same, but the one example I’ve known is truly horrible. She’s vain, rather dim, and very rude and cruel, and I hope you’ll forgive me speaking like this about a woman from your country.’

‘That’s fine, feel free, say anything you like,’ I replied generously, although without paying much attention.

The butler said:

‘I realise that what I say will have little authority or value, and could simply be interpreted as my getting something off my chest. I wish the world was made in such a way that there could be some direct confrontation between us — between my accusations and hers, or between my accusations and her defence — without grave consequences for me, by which I mean dismissal. There aren’t that many families who can take on a butler, not even in New York — there aren’t a lot of jobs out there — very few people can afford one servant, let alone four, as my employers can. Things were pretty much perfect until she arrived, for my boss is very pleasant and hardly ever at home, and he was single when I started working for him five years ago. Well, he was divorced actually, and that’s my one hope really, that he’ll end up divorcing her too, sooner or later. But it might be later, and it’s best to be prepared. I’ve finished my course in black magic now. Most of it was by correspondence initially, and then I had a few practical lessons. I have my diploma. Not that I’ve done much with it. We get together occasionally to kill a chicken, very unpleasant, as you can imagine — you get covered in feathers, the bird puts up quite a fight, you know, but we have to sacrifice something now and then, because, if we didn’t, our organisation would lose all credibility.’

I remember that this last comment worried me briefly and made me listen much more closely, and that’s why, hoping my fear might be dissipated by another greater fear, I banged on the lift door again, pressing the alarm button and the buttons for all the other floors and shouting out several times: ‘Hey! Listen! We’re still trapped in here! We’re still in here!’

The butler said:

‘Take it easy, nothing’s going to happen to us. It’s a big lift, there’s plenty of air, and they know we’re here. People may be pretty callous these days, but they’re not likely to forget two people trapped in a lift, and besides, they need to get it working again. Now, my mistress, your compatriot, she really is callous, she mistreats everyone, or, worse, ignores them. She has the ability, which is perhaps more common in Europe than in the United States, to talk to us as if we weren’t there, without looking at us, without noticing us, she speaks to us without actually addressing us, exactly as if she were talking about us to a friend. A little while ago, an Italian girlfriend of hers came to stay, and although they were talking in one of their languages, neither of which I understand, I could tell that a lot of their conversations were about us, and about me in particular, because I’ve been there the longest, so I suppose in a way I’m in charge of the other servants. She can make a remark about me in my presence without giving the slightest hint that she’s talking about me, but her friend, lacking that talent, couldn’t help shooting me the occasional furtive glance with her green eyes as they chatted away in their Latin languages, whichever one it was. On the other hand, during the weeks that her friend was in the house, she did, at least, have other things to think about and took less notice of me. Let me explain, she’s been here for three years now, but she still speaks English really badly, with a very strong accent, so much so that sometimes I find it hard to understand her, and this irritates her of course, because she thinks I do it on purpose to offend her, which is partly true, but I can assure you that most of the time it’s simply because I don’t always make the necessary effort to understand her, that effort of comprehension and listening, or sometimes guessing. The truth is that after three years, even a city like New York can become wearisome and tedious if you have nothing to do. My boss goes to work every morning and doesn’t get back until late, until the Spanish time for supper, which she has imposed on him. You may not realise it, but cosmetics are a complicated business: like pharmaceuticals, you constantly have to research and perfect them, you can’t just settle for a fixed range of products. According to him, there are incredible advances made every year, every month, and you have to keep up to date, just like with drugs. Anyway, he works for twelve hours or more, and is only home at night and on the weekends, and that’s about it. Naturally, she gets pretty bored, because she’s bought just about everything she can buy for the house, although she still keeps an eye out for any novelties: any new product or gadget or invention, any new fashion, any new Broadway show or exhibition or film, she immediately homes in on them, more quickly than even a city like this can cope with.’

By this point, I was sitting on the lift floor. He, on the other hand, immaculate and circumspect, remained standing, still in coat and gloves, one hand resting on the wall and one foot elegantly crossed over the other. His shoes were unnaturally shiny.

The butler said:

‘So generally speaking, she’s at home, with nothing to do, apart from watching television and making long-distance calls to her friends in Spain, inviting them to visit, not that they often do, which is hardly surprising. When she can’t talk any more, when she’s tired from so much talking and her eyes hurt from watching so much TV, then the only thing she can think of is to fixate on me, because I’m always home, or almost always, I’m the one who knows where everything is or where to find things if we have to send out for something. She fixates on me, you see, and there’s nothing worse than being someone’s sole source of distraction. Sometimes she betrays herself, or, rather, betrays her usual disdainful self: without realising it, she’ll find that for some minutes she hasn’t been giving me orders or asking me pointless questions, but has actually been talking to me — imagine that, conversing.’

I remember that, at this point, I got up and pounded on the door again with the flat of my hand. I was about to shout out again too, but decided to follow the example of the butler, who spoke very calmly, as if we were, in fact, outside the lift, waiting for it to arrive. I remained standing, like him, and asked:

‘What do you talk about?’

The butler said:

‘Oh, she makes some remark about something she’s read in a magazine or about some contest she’s seen on TV. There’s one particular show that’s on every evening at half past seven, just before my boss gets home, Family Feud, she’s crazy about it and everything has to stop at half past seven so that she can give it her full attention. She turns out the lights, leaves the phone off the hook, and during the half-hour that Family Feud lasts, we could do absolutely anything, even set the house on fire, and she wouldn’t notice; we could go into her bedroom, where she watches TV, and burn the bed, and she wouldn’t notice. During that time, the only thing that exists is the TV screen. I’ve only seen that capacity for total concentration in children, but then she is rather like a child. While she’s watching Family Feud, I could commit murder, I could slit the throat of one of our chickens behind her back and scatter its blood and feathers over her sheets, and she wouldn’t notice. When the half-hour was up, she’d get to her feet, look around her and scream: “Where has all this blood and feathers come from? What’s happened?” But she wouldn’t have noticed me slitting the chicken’s throat. We could steal paintings, furniture, jewellery, we could bring our friends over and have an orgy on her bed while she’s watching Family Feud. We don’t, of course, because it’s also our boss’s bed, and we like and respect him. But I’m not exaggerating when I say that we could even rape her while she’s watching Family Feud, and she wouldn’t notice. Before I realised this, I always had to find an opportune moment, as I explained, to snip off a lock of her hair or steal an item of clothing, underwear or whatever, a handkerchief or some stockings. But now, if I wanted to steal some personal possession of hers, I’d just wait until half past seven from Monday to Friday and take what I wanted while she watched her show. I’ll tell you something, just so you can see that I’m not exaggerating. I conducted an experiment once, which is why I say that we could rape her and she wouldn’t notice. On one occasion, I went up behind her while she was watching Family Feud. She sits very close to the screen, very upright on a kind of low stool, probably thinking that the discomfort will help her to concentrate. One evening, I approached her from behind and touched her shoulder with my gloved hand, as if I wanted to get her attention. She insists that I always wear gloves, you see, I only have to put on full livery when there are guests for supper, but she likes me to wear my white silk gloves all the time, in the belief that a butler should be constantly running his finger over every surface, over the furniture and along the banisters, to check for dust, because if there is any dust, the gloves will pick it up immediately. Anyway, I always wear them, but they’re so fine that it’s almost like not wearing gloves at all. So, I touched her shoulder with my sensitive fingers, and when she took no notice, I left my hand there for a few seconds and gradually increased the pressure. So far, nothing very out of the ordinary. She didn’t turn round, didn’t move, nothing. Then I moved my hand — I was still standing up — stroking rather than squeezing her shoulders and collarbone, and she remained utterly impassive. I began to wonder if perhaps she was inviting me to go further, and I have to admit that I’m still not sure; but I don’t think so, I still believe she was just so absorbed in watching Family Feud that she didn’t notice anything. And so I slid my gloved hand towards her cleavage, she always wears very low-cut tops, too low-cut for my taste, but my boss, on the other hand, likes it, I’ve heard him say so. I touched her bra, which was a bit rough to the touch to be honest, and it was that, rather than any desire on my part, that persuaded me to avoid the bra or, shall we say, arrange things so that its fabric only rubbed against the back of my hand, which is less sensitive than the palm, even though I was wearing my gloves. I’m not much for the ladies, I barely have anything to do with them, but skin is skin, flesh is flesh. And so for several long minutes I stroked one breast and then the other, left and right, breast and nipple, it was very pleasant, and she didn’t move or say anything, didn’t even change position while she was watching her show. I think I could have carried on if Family Feud lasted longer, but then I saw that the host was about to say goodnight and I withdrew my hand. I was able to tiptoe backwards out of the room before she emerged from her trance. My boss got home that night at eight o’clock on the dot — and the theme tune was still playing on the TV.’

Are you sure they’re going to get us out of here? They’re taking forever,’ I said as my only response, and again shouted out and beat the metal door. ‘Hey! Come on!’

The butler said:

‘I’ve told you, they won’t be much longer. Each minute may seem like an hour to us, but in reality a minute only ever lasts a minute. We haven’t been in here for as long as you think, just take it easy.’

I again slid down to the floor and stayed there, leaning my back against the wall (I had taken off my overcoat and draped it over my arm).

‘Did you ever touch her again?’ I asked.

The butler said:

‘No. That was before the little girl died, and she disgusts me so much now that I wouldn’t even stroke her finger. A year ago, she became pregnant. My boss had no children from his previous marriage, so this would be his first child. You can imagine what the pregnancy was like, a real nightmare as far as I was concerned: it meant double the work and double the attention that she always demands of me — she was constantly summoning me to ask the most stupid, useless things. I really considered quitting then, but, as I say, there’s not much work around. When she gave birth, I was pleased, not just for my boss, but because the child would become her main source of distraction, relieving me of that role. The little girl, however, was born with a serious defect. She would only survive a matter of months, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into detail. As I say, it was clear from the start that the child was doomed, that she wouldn’t live for more than a few months, three, four, six, or, at the most, a year. Now I realise how hard that is, I understand how, knowing this, a mother might not want to grow too attached to her child, but for as long as the baby lives, she deserves to be cared for and loved, don’t you think? After all, the only thing that marked the baby out from the rest of us was that she had a known expiration date, because we all expire at some point, don’t we? When the mother found out what was going to happen, she wanted nothing to do with her. She more or less handed the child over to us, the servants, she even brought in a woman to feed her and change her nappies, so there were five of us in the house during those months, but now there’s just the four of us again. My boss didn’t get very involved either, but then that’s different, he works such long hours he wouldn’t have had the time anyway, even if the child had been healthy.

She, as usual, was mostly at home, more than she would have liked, and yet she never went into the baby’s room, not even with her husband to say goodnight to her, well, hardly ever. He used to, though, on his own, before retiring to bed. I would go with him and stand on the threshold, my white hand holding the door open so as to let in a little light from the corridor; he didn’t dare turn on the light in the room, probably so as not to wake her, but also, I think, so that he would only just see her in the half-dark. But at least he saw her. He would go and stand by the crib, although not too close, a few feet away, and from there he would watch her and listen to her breathing, just for a while, a minute or less, enough to say goodnight. When he left, I would stand to one side, I would push open the door for him with my gloved hand and watch him walk to his bedroom, where she would be waiting. I, on the other hand, did go into the baby’s room and I’d sometimes stay there for a long time. I’d talk to her. I don’t have any children of my own, but it just seemed natural to talk to her, even if she couldn’t understand and even without the excuse that she needed to grow accustomed to the human voice. The sad thing is that she didn’t need to grow accustomed to anything, she had no future, nothing awaited her, she had no reason to get used to anything, it was a waste of time. In the house, no one talked about her or mentioned her, as if she had already ceased to exist before she died — that’s the unfortunate thing about knowing the future. Even we, the servants I mean, didn’t talk about her, but most of us would go up and visit her, on our own, as if we were visiting a shrine. My black magic, of course, couldn’t cure her — as I said it can only be used for revenge. She, the mother, got on with her life, phoning Madrid or Seville, which is where she’s from, talking to her friend when she was here, going out shopping and to the theatre, or watching television and Family Feud from Monday to Friday, at half past seven. After that time when I touched her without her realising, I had, how can I put it, begun to feel almost fond of her. Contact does create affection, a little, no matter how minimal that contact is, don’t you think?’

The butler paused long enough for his last comment not to appear rhetorical, and I stood up and said:

‘Yes, that’s why you have to be careful who you touch.’

The butler said:

‘Exactly, you might not think much of someone or even think very badly of them, then suddenly, one day, by chance, on impulse, out of weakness, loneliness, fear or drunkenness, one day, you find yourself caressing the person you’d thought so little of. That doesn’t mean you change your mind about them, but you do grow fond of someone you’ve caressed or who has allowed themselves to be caressed. And I had acquired a little of that elementary affection for her, after caressing her breasts with my white gloves while she was watching Family Feud—that was at the beginning of her pregnancy, during which, because of that incipient affection, I was more patient than usual and brought her whatever she wanted without complaint. Afterwards, I lost that affection, well, after the baby was born. But what made me lose it once and for all — what caused me to feel only disgust for her — was the death of the child, who survived for even less time than expected, two and a half months, not even three. My boss was away, he still is, I told him about the death yesterday by phone, he didn’t say much, just: “Oh, so it’s happened.” Then he asked me to take care of everything, of the cremation or burial, leaving it to me to choose, perhaps because he realised that, in the end, I was the person closest to the child. I was the one who picked her up from her crib and called the doctor, I was the one who, this morning, removed her sheets and her little pillow — I don’t know if you realise this, but they make tiny sheets for newborn babies, and tiny pillows too. This morning, I told her, the mother, that I was going to bring the child here, to the thirty-second floor, to have her cremated: they offer a very high-quality service, one of the best in New York; they really know their business; they occupy a whole floor. And what do you think she said? “I don’t want to know anything about it.” “I thought you would want to come with me, to accompany her on her last journey,” I said. And what do you think she said? She told me: “Don’t be so stupid.” Then, since I would be in this part of town, she asked me to get some tickets to the opera for some friends who are coming over in a few weeks’ time. She, of course, has a season ticket. She has a future, you see, unlike the baby. So I came on my own with the baby inside her little coffin, as white as my white silk gloves. I could have carried it in my own hands, white on white, my gloves on the coffin. I didn’t need to, though. The very efficient company on the thirty-second floor had thought of everything, and they came for us this morning in a hearse and brought us here. She, the mother, leaned over the banister, on the fourth floor, just as I was about to leave with the child and the coffin, because I was already going out of the door with my coat and my gloves on. And do you know what her final words were? She shouted down at me in that strong Spanish accent of hers: “Make sure they have lots of carnations, lots of carnations, and orange blossom!” That was the only instruction she gave. Now my hands are empty, I’ve just come from the cremation.’ The butler glanced at his watch for the first time since we’d been stuck in the lift and added: ‘We’ve been here nearly half an hour.’

Orange blossom, he had said: the flowers that brides in Andalusia wear, I thought. But just then the lift began to move again and, when we reached the ground floor, the butler wished me a pleasant stay in his city and vanished, as if the half hour that had brought us together had never existed. He was wearing black leather gloves, which he kept on all the time.

(1990)