Fever and Spear

"I was now cleaning up the stain in Wheeler's house with some cotton wool balls soaked in alcohol, the blood was not very fresh, but neither had it completely dried or hardened, and the varnished, waxed and polished wood made it fairly easy to remove or eliminate it, although not without some effort and by dint of rubbing repeatedly and using up more alcohol and cotton wool balls than I had expected, I placed them - the bloodstained ones - in Peter's ashtray, all the while taking care not to damage the floorboards or to replace one stain with another, you can never be too careful with alcohol. What is hardest to get rid of with bloodstains is the rim, the circle, the circumference, I don't know why that should stick to the floor so much more obstinately than the rest, or to the porcelain of the sink or the bath, where drops or stains tend to fall, in fact, it happens immediately, even when the blood is fresh, as soon as it's spilled, there's doubtless some physical law that explains it, although I don't know what it is. 'Perhaps,' I thought, 'perhaps it's a way of clinging on to the present, a reluctance to disappear that exists in objects in the inanimate generally, and not just in people, perhaps it's an attempt by all things to leave their mark, to make it harder for them to be denied or glossed over or forgotten, it's their way of saying "I was here", or "I'm still here, therefore I must have been before", and to prevent others from saying "No, this was never here, never, it neither strode the world nor trod the earth, it did not exist and never happened." And now, while I continue my cleaning, and the stubborn ring of blood starts to give and fade, I wonder if, once it has gone completely and not a trace of it is left, I will begin to doubt I saw it... And when there is not the slightest trace left, perhaps then I will start to think that this stain was just a figment of my imagination, caused by lack of sleep and too much reading and too much drink and too many contrary voices and by the indifferent, languid murmur of the river."

Javier Marias 'Your Face Tomorrow'

1:51 p.m. - 2012-02-27