Javier Marías: A Heart So White

My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white. Lady Macbeth says to her shaken husband, inmediately after he murdered the king, his hands full of blood from the regicide.

Marias likes giving his novels titles taken from Shakespearian lines. And the title chosen usually refers to something essential in the narration, playing with the possible meaning(s) of the original line, though re-interpreting it according to his own purposes.

In the Macbeth line above, we deal with hands and hearts, that could be white or coloured. Coloured here means guilty, or having done the deed, as Macbeth himself states to his wife, or having been finally bold enough to carry out the villainy. Or, in Ladymacbethian terms, having gathered the resolution to go beyond traditional human moral. Even if that implies a bloodbath, as is the case.

And hands may be coloured, as Macbeth's after de (mis)deed, but the heart may remain white. That is the lady´s accusation. Her husband´s heart remains white, after the murder, which she finds shameful. He is shaken, he fears even the surrounding shadows, devastated by apparent guilt. His hands (and hers, as she helped him to disguise the slaughter) are coloured, but the heart is still a prisoner of a narrow, small morality.

In Marias's narration, a white heart could also mean a heart that doesn´t know or doesn´t wish to know. One that chooses not to know. Since knowledge is a path of no return. One that can colour your heart (darken it), and you will never be able to wash it away, the colour of knowledge. Darkening one´s heart, knowing, is a serious decision, because once we make it, we will have to co-exist with knowledge for the rest of our lives. As total oblivion is impossible. And our view of reality may change accordingly.

I first read A Heart so white in its original Spanish, in Barcelona, many years ago. The novel has haunted me ever since. Written in a rich and hypnotic language, full of nuances, insights, philosophical especulation. And all within the frame of a smart noir plot.

The novel is about secrets, old family misteries, misunderstandings, silences within the couple, esential material "lost in translation". The decision to know, to colour one's heart, will never be pondered enough. Pity our ears have no lids like our eyes. The consequences. To know or not to know. A matter of the same entity of that hamletian to be or not to be. Though perhaps, carefully considered, they are both one and the same thing.

A heart so white, 1992. Javier Marías