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A Heart So White by Javier Marias, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, Php609 at National Bookstores.

Probably both.

That’s the unfortunate thing about what happens to us and remains unrecorded, or worse still, unknown or unseen or unheard, for later, there’s no way it can be recovered. The day we didn’t spend together we will never have spent together, what someone was going to say to us over the phone when they called and we didn’t answer will never be said, at least not exactly the same thing said in exactly the same spirit; and everything will be slightly different or even completely different because of that lack of courage which dissuades us from talking to you. But even if we were together that day or at home when that person phone or we dared to speak to them, overcoming our fear and forgetting the risks involved, even then, none of that will ever be repeated and consequently a time will come when having been together will be the same as not having been together, and having picked up the phone the same as not having done so, and having dared to speak to you the same as if we’d remained silent. Even the most indelible things are of fixed duration, just like the things that leave no trace or never even happen, and if we’re far-sighted enough to note down or record or film those things, and accumulate loads of souvenirs and mementos and even try to replace what has happened by a simple note or record or statement, so that, right from the start, what in fact happens are our notes or our recordings or our films and nothing more, even in that infinite perfecting of repetition we will have lost the time in which those events actually took place (even if it were only the time it took to note them down) and while we try to relive it or reproduce it or make it come back and prevent it becoming the past, another different time will be happening, and in that other time we will doubtless not be together, we will pick up no phones, we will not dare to do anything, unable to prevent any crime or death (on the other hand, we won’t commit or cause any) because, in our morbid attempt to prevent time from ending, to cause what is over to return, we will be letting that other time slip past us as if it were not ours.