Poison, Shadow, and Farewell Read online

  Javier Marias

  Your Face Tomorrow 3

  Poison, Shadow and Farewell

  For Carmen Lopez M, who has been kind enough to hear me out patiently until the end

  And for my friend Sir Peter Russell and my father, Julian Marias, who generously lent me a large part of their lives, in memoriam.

  5 Poison

  6 Shadow

  7 Farewell

  Acknowledgments

  5 Poison

  'While it isn't ever something we would wish for, we would all nonetheless always prefer it to be the person beside us who dies, whether on a mission or in battle, in an air squadron or under bombardment or in the trenches when there were trenches, in a mugging or a raid on a shop or when a group of tourists is kidnapped, in an earthquake, an explosion, a terrorist attack, in a fire, it doesn't matter: even if it's our colleague, brother, father or even our child, however young. Or even the person we most love, yes, even them, anyone but us. Whenever someone covers another person with his own body, or places himself in the path of a bullet or a knife, these are all extraordinary exceptions, which is why they stand out, and most are fictitious and only appear in novels and films. The few real-life instances are the result of unthinking reflexes or else dictated by a strong sense of decorum of a sort that is becoming ever rarer, there are some who couldn't bear for a child or a loved one to pass into the next world with, as their final thought, the knowledge that a parent or lover had done nothing to prevent their death, had not sacrificed themselves, had not given their own life to save them, it's as if such people had internalized a hierarchy of the living, which seems so quaint and antiquated now, whereby children have more right to live than women and women more than men and men more than the old, or something of the sort, at least that's how it used to be, and such old-fashioned chivalry still persists in a dwindling band of people, those who still believe in that decorum, which, when you think about it, is quite absurd, after all, what do such final thoughts, such transient feelings of pique or disappointment matter when, a moment later, the person concerned will be dead and incapable of feeling either pique or disappointment, incapable, indeed, of thinking? It's true that there are still a few people who harbor this deep-seated belief and to whom it does matter, and they are, in fact, acting so that the person they are saving can bear witness, so that he or she will think well of them and remember them with eternal admiration and gratitude; what they don't realize at that decisive moment, or at least not fully, is that they will never enjoy that admiration or gratitude because they will be the ones who, a moment later, will be dead.'

  And what came into my head while he was talking was an expression that was both difficult to grasp and possibly untranslatable, which is why, at first, I didn't mention it to Tupra, it would have taken me too long to explain. My initial thought was: 'It's what we call "vergüenza torera" literally "a bullfighter's sense of shame,'" and then: 'Because bullfighters, of course, have loads of witnesses, a whole arenaful, plus sometimes a TV audience of millions, so it's perfectly understandable that they should think: "I'd rather leave here with a ruptured femoral artery or dead than be thought a coward in the presence of all these people who will go on to talk about it endlessly and forever." Bullfighters fear narrative horror like the plague, that final defining wrong move, they really care about how their lives end, it's the same with Dick Dearlove and almost any other public figure, I suppose, whose story is played out in full view of everyone at every stage or chapter, right up to the denouement that can mark a whole life and give it an entirely false and unfair meaning.' And then I couldn't help saying it out loud, even though it meant briefly interrupting Tupra. But it did, after all, add to what he was saying and was also a way of pretending that this was a dialogue:

  'That's what we call "vergüenza torera."' And I said the two words in Spanish, then immediately translated them. 'I'll explain to you exactly what it means another day, since you don't have bullfighters here.' Although at that moment, I wasn't even sure there would be another day, another day at his side, not one.

  'OK, but don't forget. And no, you're right, we don't have bullfighters here.' Tupra was always curious to hear the turns of phrase in my own language about which I occasionally enlightened him, whenever they seemed relevant or were particularly striking. Now, however, he was enlightening me (I knew where he was heading, and both he and the path he was taking aroused my curiosity over and above the foreseeable revulsion I would feel at the end of the journey), and so he continued: 'From there to letting someone die in order to save yourself is only a step, and trying to ensure that someone else dies in your place or even bringing that about (you know the kind of thing, it's him or me) is just one more short step, and both steps are easily taken, especially the first, in fact, in an extreme situation, almost everyone takes that step. How else explain why it is that in a fire at a theater or a disco more people are crushed or trampled to death than burned or asphyxiated, or why when a ship sinks there are people who don't even wait for the lifeboat to be full before lowering it into the water, just so that they can get away quickly and without being burdened by other passengers, or why the expression "Every man for himself" exists, which, after all, means discarding all consideration for others and reverting to the law of the jungle, which we all accept and to which we return without a second's thought, even though we've spent more than half our lives with that law in abeyance or under control. The reality is that we're doing violence to ourselves by not following and obeying it at all times and in all circumstances, but even so we apply that law far more often than we acknowledge, but surreptitiously, under cover of a thin veneer of civility or in the guise of other more respectful laws and regulations, more slowly and with numerous detours and stages along the way, it's all very laborious but, deep down, it's the law of the jungle that rules, that holds sway. It is, think about it. Among individuals and among nations.'

  Tupra had used the English equivalent of 'Sálvese quien pueda,' which means literally 'Save yourself if you can,' whereas 'Every man for himself denotes perhaps even fewer scruples: let each man save his own skin and worry only about himself, save himself by whatever means are available to him, and let others look after themselves, the weaker, the slower, the more ingenuous and the more stupid (and the more protective, too, like my son Guillermo). At that moment, you can allow yourself to shove and trample and kick others out of the way, or use an oar to smash in the head of anyone trying to hold onto your boat and get into it when it's already sliding down into the water with you and yours inside it, and there's no room for anyone else, or you simply don't want to share it or run the risk of capsizing. The situations may be different, but that commanding voice belongs to the same family or type as three other voices: the voice that issues an instruction to fire at will, to slaughter, to beat a disorderly retreat or to flee en masse; the one that orders to shoot at close range and indiscriminately whoever you happen to see or catch, the voice urging us to bayonet or knife someone, to take no prisoners, to leave not a soul alive ('Give no quarter,' is the command, or worse 'Show no mercy'); and the voice that tells us to fly, to withdraw and break ranks, pêle-mêle in French or pell-mell in its English form; soldiers fleeing en masse when there are not enough escape routes to flee alone, each listening only to his own survival instinct and therefore indifferent to the fate of his companions, who no longer count and who have, in fact, ceased to be companions, even though we're all still in uniform and feel, more or less, the same fear in that shared flight.

  I sat looking at Tupra in the light of the lamps and in the light of the fire, the latter making his complexion more coppery than usual, as if he had Native American blood in his veins—it occurred to me then that his lips
could perhaps be Sioux—his complexion now not so much the color of beer as of whisky. He had not yet reached his destination, he had only begun his journey and would not be slow about it, and I was sure that sooner or later he would ask me that question again: 'Why can't one do that? Why can't one, according to you, go around beating people up and killing them?' And I still had no answers that would convince him, I had to keep thinking about something we never do think about because we take it as universally agreed, as immutable and normal and right. The answers going round in my head were fine for the majority, so much so that anyone could have given them, but not for Reresby, if he still was Reresby or perhaps he never ceased being him and was always all of them, simultaneously, Ure and Dundas and Reresby and Tupra, and who knows how many other names in the course of his turbulent life in all those different places, although now he did seem to have settled down. Doubtless his names were legion and he wouldn't be able to remember every last one or, indeed, every first one, people who accumulate many experiences tend to forget what they did at a particular time or at various times. There's not a trace in them of who they were then, and it's as if they had never been.

  'But in those situations, there are always people willing to lend a hand,' I murmured feebly. 'People willing to help someone else into the boat or risk their own life by rescuing someone from the flames. Not everyone flees in terror or runs for cover. Not everyone simply abandons strangers to their fate.'

  And my eyes remained fixed on the flames. When we'd arrived, there had still been the embers of a fire in the grate, and it had taken Tupra little effort to revive it, doubtless because he enjoyed an open fire or else to save on heating, which, I noticed, was turned down low—a lot of English people, even the filthy rich, like to economize on such things. This meant either that he must have servants or else didn't live alone, there in his three-storey house which was, as I'd speculated, in Hampstead, a very plush area, a place for the wealthy, perhaps he earned much more than I imagined (not that I'd given it much thought), he was, after all, only a functionary, however high up he was in the hierarchy, and I didn't think he was particularly high up. So perhaps it wasn't his house, but Beryl's and he was there thanks to their as yet unannulled marriage, or more likely thanks to his first marriage and to an advantageous divorce settlement, Wheeler had told me that Tupra had been married twice and that Beryl was considering trying to win him back because, since their separation, her life had signally failed to improve. Or perhaps Tupra enjoyed other sources of income apart from that of his known profession, or perhaps the extras that this brought him ('the frequent pleasant surprises, paid in kind,' as Peter put it) far exceeded my imaginative capabilities. It seemed to me improbable that he would have inherited such a house from the first British Tupra or, indeed, from the second, one or the other must have been immigrants from some low-ranking country. Although who knows, perhaps his grandfather or father had been quick off the mark and swiftly amassed a fortune, anything's possible, by dirty dealings or through usury or banking, it comes to the same thing, such fortunes appear in a flash, like lightning, but with one difference, they persist and grow, or perhaps those first Tupras had married into money, unlikely, unless they already possessed the gift of making themselves irresistible to women and that gift was the legacy they bequeathed to Tupra, their descendant.

  We were in a large sitting room, which was clearly not the only one in the house (I'd glimpsed another from the corridor, unless it was just a billiards room, for it contained a green baize table), well furnished, well carpeted, with very expensive bookshelves (something I do know about) and on them some very fine and costly books (I can tell that, too, from afar, at a single glance), and I spotted on the walls what was certainly a Stubbs equine portrait and what looked to me like a Jean Beraud, a large-scale work depicting some elegant casino of the time, at Baden-Baden or Monte Carlo, and a possible De Nittis of rather more modest dimensions (I know about paintings as well), society people in a park with thoroughbreds in the background, and none of these pictures, it seemed to me, were copies. Someone in that house knew or had known a thing or two about art, someone keen on horse-racing or on betting in general, and my host, of course, was keen on the former, as he was on soccer or at least on the Chelsea Blues. To acquire such works one doesn't necessarily have to be a pound or euro multimillionaire, but you do need either to have some surplus cash or to be absolutely sure that more money will be forthcoming after each extravagance. The place felt more like the home of a well-to-do diplomat or some eminent professor who doesn't depend on his salary—the kind who works not so much to earn a living as to gain recognition—than the home of an army employee appointed to carry out certain obscure and indefinable civilian tasks, I couldn't forget that the initials MI6 and MI5 meant Military Intelligence; and then it occurred to me that Tupra might be a high-ranking officer, a Colonel, a Major or perhaps the Commander of a frigate, like Ian Fleming and his character James Bond, especially if he was from the Navy, from the former OIC, the Operational Intelligence Centre, which, according to Wheeler, had provided the best men, or from the NID, the Naval Intelligence Division, of which it was part. I was gradually reading and learning about the organization and distribution of these services from the books that Tupra kept in his office and which I sometimes leafed through when I was alone, working late at the building with no name, or arrived early to start or to finish some report, and when I might find the young Pérez Nuix drying her bare torso with a towel because she'd spent the night there, or so she said.

  I fixed my weary eyes on the fire that Reresby had lit and which contributed in no small part to transforming his sitting room into a story-book setting, a place of enchantment, and there came into my mind the image of a more welcoming and, in fact, unusual, but, how I can put it, not entirely non-existent London, the London of Wendy's parents in the Disney version of Peter Pan, with its square windowpanes framed by strips of white lacquered wood and its equally white bookshelves, its clusters of chimneys and its peaceful attic rooms, at least that's how I recalled the home I had seen in the dark in my childhood, cartoons so comforting that one wanted to live in them. Yes, Tupra's house was cosy and comfortable, the kind of house that helps you to forget about things and relax, it also had something about it of the house inhabited by Professor Higgins, as played by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, although his was in Marylebone and Wendy's in Bloomsbury, I think, and Tupra's was there in Hampstead, further to the north. Perhaps he needed these benign, tranquil surroundings in order to cancel out and isolate himself from his many intersecting, murky and even violent activities, perhaps his background as a low-born foreigner or his origins in Bethnal Green or in some other depressing area had made him aspire to a mode of decor so opposed to the sordid that it's almost only ever found in fiction, intended for children if they're by Barrie or for adults if they're by Dickens, he was bound to have seen that film based on the work of the former, the dramatist, when it came out, as did every child in our day in any country in this world of ours, I'd seen it dozens of times in my own childhood world.

  He took out one of his Egyptian cigarettes and offered it to me, he was my host now and was mechanically aware of that, he'd also offered me a drink which, for the moment, I'd declined, he'd poured himself a port not from an ordinary bottle, but from one with a little medal about its neck, like those passed swiftly round in a clockwise direction by the guests (there were always several bottles, they never stopped coming) during the dessert course at the high tables to which I was occasionally invited by colleagues in my distant Oxford days, perhaps his Oxford colleagues still sent him some of that extraordinary port wine from the college cellars and which one can find nowhere else. I hadn't kept up with how much Tupra had drunk during that long, interminable evening which had still not yet ended, although he had, I imagined, drunk no less than I had, and I didn't want and couldn't hold another drop, he, however, seemed unaffected by the alcohol or else its ravages were not apparent. The quantity of alcohol consumed, h
owever, had had nothing to do with his terrorizing and punishing or beating or thrashing of De la Garza, for he had behaved throughout with precision and calculation. Who knows, though, perhaps it had influenced his decision to demonstrate to De la Garza his variant—varying— modes of death and to leave both De la Garza and me alive so that we would always remember them, it's rare for the resolve to do something and the actual execution of that act to coincide, even though the two things may follow on and appear to be simultaneous, perhaps he'd taken that decision when his head was still fuzzy, still hot, and his head had cleared and cooled during the few minutes I'd spent waiting for him in the handicapped toilet along with our trusting victim, for I'd tricked De la Garza into going there with the false promise of a line of cocaine, although I didn't know at the time why I was putting him, the victim, where I'd been asked to put him or that the promise was a mere pretext. I should have imagined it, I should have foreseen it. I should have refused to have anything to do with it. I'd prepared him for Tupra, served him up on a plate, I had, in the end, been a part of it all. I was about to ask him, out of curiosity: 'Was it real cocaine you gave the poor devil?' But, as often happens after long silences, we both spoke at once and he got in just a fraction of a second before me, in order to reply to the last thing I'd said:

  Yes, of course,' murmured Reresby almost lazily. 'You'll always get the kind of person who watches himself acting, who sees himself as if in some continuous performance. Who believes there'll be witnesses to report his generous or contemptible death and that this is what matters most. Or who, if there are no witnesses, invents them—the eye of God, the world stage, or whatever. Who believes that the world only exists to the extent that it's reported and events only to the extent that they're recounted, even though it's highly unlikely that anyone will bother to recount them, or to recount those particular facts, I mean, the facts relating to each individual. The vast majority of things simply happen and there neither is nor ever was any record of them, those we hear about are an infinitesimal fraction of what goes on. Most lives and, needless to say, most deaths, are forgotten as soon as they've occurred and leave not the slightest trace, or become unknown soon afterwards, after a few years, a few decades, a century, which, as you know, is, in reality, a very short time. Take battles, for example, think how important they were for those who took part in them and, sometimes, for their compatriots, think how many of those battles now mean nothing to us, not even their names, we don't even know which war they belonged to, more than that, we don't care. What do the names Ulundi and Beersheba, or Gravelotte and Rezonville, or Namur, or Maiwand, Paardeberg and Mafeking, or Mohacs, or Najera, mean to anyone nowadays?'—He mispronounced that last name, Najera.—'But there are many others who resist, incapable of accepting their own insignificance or invisibility, I mean once they're dead and converted into past matter, once they're no longer present to defend their existence and to declare: "Hey, I'm here. I can intervene, I have influence, I can do good or cause harm, save or destroy, and even change the course of the world, because I haven't yet disappeared."—'I'm still here, therefore I must have been here before,' I thought or remembered having thought as I was cleaning up the red stain I found on Wheeler's stairs and the rim of which I had to work hard to erase (if, that is, there ever had been such a stain, I doubted it more and more), and the effort made by things and people to keep us from saying: 'No, this never happened, it never was, it neither strode the world nor trod the earth, it never existed and never occurred.'—'Those individuals you mention,' continued Reresby, whose voice had gradually and unexpectedly taken on a more elevated tone, 'they're not so very different from Dick Dearlove, according to your interpretation of him. They suffer from narrative horror—isn't that what you called it—or narrative disgust. They fear that the manner in which they end their life will blot and taint everything, that some belated or final episode will cast its shadow over what came before, covering and canceling it: don't let it be said that I didn't help, that I didn't risk my life for the sake of others, that I didn't sacrifice myself for my loved ones, they think at the most absurd moments, when there's no one there to see them or when those who can see them, principally themselves, are about to die. Don't let anyone say I was a coward, a callous swine, a vulture, a murderer, they think, feeling the glare of the spotlight, when no one is shining a light on them at all or ever going to talk about them because they're too insignificant. They'll be as anonymous when dead as they were alive. It will be as if they had never existed.' He fell silent for a moment, took a sip of his port and added: 'You and I will be like them, the kind who leave no mark, so it won't matter what we've done, no one will bother to recount or even to investigate it. I don't know about you, but I don't belong to that type, the ones you mean, the people who are like Dick Dearlove even though they're not celebrities, quite the contrary. The ones who, in our jargon, suffer from some form of K-M complex.' He stopped, gave a sideways glance at the fire and added: 'I know that I'm invisible and will be more so when I'm dead, when I'm nothing but past matter. Dumb matter.'