Poison, Shadow, and Farewell Read online

  I glanced down at his feet, his shoes, as I had during one of our first meetings, fearing that he might be wearing some abomination, short green boots in alligator skin, like Marshal Bonanza, or even clogs. This wasn't the case, he always wore elegant brown or black lace-ups, they were certainly not the shoes of a yokel; only the waistcoats he was rarely seen without were questionable, although now they looked more old-fashioned and dated than ever, like a leftover from the seventies, at the time when he would have been starting to take life more seriously, I mean, to be fully aware of his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions, or with a proper sense of the options available to him. Nevertheless, there was something about him that did not quite ring true: his work, his gestures, his surroundings, his accent, even that very comfortable English house, so textbook perfect, like something out of an expensive film, or a picture in a storybook. Perhaps it was the abundant curls on his bulging cranium, or the apparently dyed ringlets at his temples, perhaps the soft mouth seemingly lacking consistency, a piece of chewing gum before it goes hard. Many people doubtless found him attractive, despite that slightly repellent element I could never entirely identify or isolate or pin down with any exactitude, perhaps it didn't depend on just one characteristic, but on the whole. Perhaps I was the only person to see it, women clearly didn't pick it up. Not even perceptive women like Pérez Nuix, accustomed to noticing and intuiting everything, and with whom he had probably been to bed. That's something we would have in common, Tupra and I, or should that be I and Reresby. Or Ure or Dundas.

  'And because of that you allow yourself to beat up and scare to death a poor inoffensive fool, and with my help too; except, of course, I had no idea what you were planning to do to him. And for no reason, just because, because one shouldn't take death too seriously. Well, I couldn't disagree with you more. By the way, I believe that line is from Rimbaud,' I added to make him feel inadequate, he'd already gained far too much ground. I was taking a risk, though, because I wasn't sure at all.

  He paid no attention; I was cultured, I knew other languages, I had taught at Oxford in the past, and so he didn't give me any credit for knowing that. He would expect me to recognize the quotation. He gave a wry laugh, just one, a mere simulacrum of bitterness.

  'There are no inoffensive people, Jack. None,' he said. 'And you don't seem to take into account that it was all your fault. Think about it.'

  'What do you mean? Because I introduced him to the lady and they hit it off? She was longing to be courted by the first mameluke who appeared, whoever he was. Just think back a bit. You yourself warned me about it.' The word 'mameluco' had been going round and round in my head ever since Manoia confirmed to me that it was the same word in Italian, and words don't go away until you've spoken them, however many times it takes. Of course, 'mameluke' sounded more recherché in English, and inappropriate too, it doesn't even have the same principal meaning as in Spanish, namely 'numbskull.'

  'That wasn't the only reason. I asked you to find them and to bring Flavia back, I told you not to take too long and to remove that De la Garza fellow from the scene. You failed. So I had to go after you and sort things out. And still you complain. By the time I found them, Mrs. Manoia already had a great welt on her face. If I hadn't stepped in, it would have been far worse, you don't know her husband, I do. I couldn't just have that useless Spaniard thrown out.' It occurred to me that he sometimes forgot that I, too, was a Spaniard, and possibly a useless one as well. 'Given that Flavia had a mark, a wound on her face, that wouldn't have been enough for him. He would have gone up to your friend and, if your friend was lucky, torn off his arm, if not his head. You criticize me for some trifling, unimportant thing that I did, but you live in a tiny world that barely exists, sheltered from the violence that has always been the norm and still is in most parts of the world, it's like mistaking the interlude for the whole performance, you haven't a clue, you people who never step outside of your own time or travel beyond countries like ours in which, up until the day before yesterday, violence also ruled. What I did was nothing. The lesser of two evils. And it was your fault.'

  The lesser of two evils. So Tupra belonged to that all-too-familiar group of men who have always existed and of whom I've known a few myself, there are always so many of them. The sort who justify themselves by saying: 'I had to do it in order to avoid a greater evil, or so I believed; others would have done the same, only they would have behaved more cruelly and caused more harm. I killed one so that ten would not be killed, and ten so that a hundred would not die, I don't deserve to be punished, I deserve a prize.' Or those who answer: 'I had to do it, I was defending my God, my King, my country, my culture, my race; my flag, my legend, my language, my class, my space; my honour, my family, my strongbox, my purse and my socks. And in short, I was afraid.' Fear, which exonerates as much as love, and of which it's so easy to say and to believe 'It's stronger than I am, it's not in my power to stop it' or that allows one to resort to the words 'But I love you so much,' as an explanation for one's actions, as an alibi or an excuse or as a mitigating factor. Perhaps he even belonged to those who would claim: 'It was the times we lived in, and unless you were there, you couldn't possibly understand. It was the place, it was unhealthy, oppressive; unless you were there, you couldn't possibly imagine our feelings of alienation, the spell we were under.' On the other hand, at least he would not be one of those who dodged the issue altogether, he would never pronounce those other words: 'I didn't intend to do it, I knew nothing about it, it happened against my will, as if befuddled by the tortuous smokescreen of dreams, it was part of my theoretical, parenthetical life, the life that doesn't really count, it only half-happened and without my full consent.' No, Tupra would never stoop to the sort of pathetic excuses even I have used to justify to myself certain episodes in my own life. Just then, however, I prefered not to go into that aspect of things, and so I replied to the last thing he'd said to me:

  'I work for you, Bertram, I do my job. Don't ask me to do any more than that. I'm here to interpret and to write reports, not to deal with drunken boors. Nor even to entertain ladies in their declining years, clasping them to me, sternum to breast.'

  Tupra couldn't help being amused despite himself. Up until then we hadn't had the chance to talk about my torment, still less to laugh about it, or for him to laugh at me, at my bad luck and my imperfect stoicism.

  'Rocky peaks, eh?' And he let out a genuine guffaw. 'There's no way I would have accepted her invitation to dance, not with those bulwarks of hers.' He used the word 'bulwarks,' which might best be rendered in Spanish as 'baluartes.'

  He'd done it again. I myself sometimes laugh at things despite myself. I couldn't suppress my own laughter, my anger vanished for a moment, or was postponed because it was no longer relevant. For a few seconds, we both laughed together, simultaneously, with neither of us hanging back or preempting the other, the laughter that creates a kind of disinterested bond between men and that suspends or dissolves their differences. This meant that, for all my irritation and my growing feelings of apprehension—or was it perhaps unease, aversion, repugnance— I hadn't entirely withdrawn my laughter from him. I might have been on the way to rationing it out, but I hadn't removed or denied him my laughter. Not altogether, not yet.

  Yes, we would have that in common, our having slept with young Pérez Nuix, I was almost sure of it, although it had never occurred to me to ask him, still less her, even though sharing a bed while awake arbitrarily marks the frontier between discretion and trust, between secrecy and revelation, between deferential silence and questions with their respective answers or, perhaps, evasions, as if briefly entering another's body broke down not only physical barriers but others too: biographical, sentimental, certainly the barriers of pretense, caution or reserve, it's absurd really that two people, having once entwined, feel that they can, with authority and impunity, probe the life and thoughts of whoever was above or below, or standing up facing forwards or backwards if no bed was needed, or el
se describe both life and thoughts at length, in the most verbose and even abstracted fashion, there are people who only screw someone so that they can then rabbit on at them to their heart's content, as if that intertwining had given them a license to do so. This is something that has often bothered me following one of my occasional flings, one that lasted a night or a morning or an afternoon, and, in the first instance, all such encounters are just that—flings—as long as they're not repeated, and all encounters start out the same with neither party knowing if it will end right there, or, rather, one of the parties knows, knows at once, but politely says nothing and thus gives rise to a misunderstanding (politeness is a poison, our undoing); they pretend that this relationship isn't going to come to an immediate halt, but that something really has opened up and there's no reason why it should ever be closed again; the most terrible mess and confusion ensues. And sometimes you know this before you've even entered that new body, you know you only want to do it that one time, just to find out, or perhaps to brag about it to yourself or to shock yourself, or you might even make a mental note of the occasion so that you can recall or remember it or, even more tenuously, have it on record, so that you'll be able to say to yourself: 'This happened in my life,' especially in old age or in one's maturer years when the past often invades the present and when the present, grown bored or skeptical, rarely looks ahead.

  Yes, it's often bothered me that the other person involved has then gone on to describe to me her characteristics, her inner world, painted me a portrait of herself, not, of course, entirely true-to-life, or has tried to make out that with me it's different ('This has never happened to me with any other man'), partly to flatter me and partly to save a reputation upon which no one had cast a doubt. I've found it irritating when she's started moving about my house or apartment—if that's where we were—with excessive familiarity and nonchalance and with an appropriative attitude (asking, for example, 'Where do you keep the coffee?' taking it for granted that I do keep coffee and that she can make some herself; or else announcing 'I'm just nipping to the bathroom,' instead of asking if she can, as she would have done a little while before, when she was still dressed and as yet unskewered; although that verb is too extreme). It has infuriated me when one of them has settled down to spend the whole night in my bed without even consulting me, taking it for granted that she has an open invitation to linger in my sheets just because she's lain on the mattress for a while or rested her hands on it to keep her balance while bending over, her back to me, more ferarum, with her skirt hitched up and the heels of her shoes firmly planted on the floor. It has angered me when, a day or so later, that same woman has turned up at my door, to say a fond and spontaneous hello, but really in order deliberately to repeat what happened before and to make herself more at home, on the baseless assumption that I will let her in and devote time to her at any hour or in any circumstances, whether I'm busy or not, whether I have other visitors or not, whether I feel pleased or regretful (though I've more than likely forgotten) that I allowed her to set foot on my territory the day before. When I want to be alone or I'm missing Luisa. And it's really riled me when one such woman has phoned up later saying 'Hi, it's me,' as if yesterday's bit of carnal knowledge had conferred on her exclusivity or uniqueness, or made her instantly identifiable, or guaranteed her a prominent place in my thoughts, or obliged me to recognize a voice that possibly—if I was lucky—uttered only a single groan or a few, purely out of politeness.

  However, what has most enraged me has been the feeling that I was somehow in her debt (absurd in this day and age) for allowing me to sleep with her. This is probably a hangover from the era into which I was born, when it was still considered that all the interest and insistence came from the man and that the woman merely gave in or, more than that, conceded or assented, and that she was the one making a valuable gift or granting a large favor. Not always, but all too frequently, I have judged myself to be the architect or the person ultimately responsible for what has happened between us, even if I hadn't sought or anticipated it—although I've seen it coming on most occasions, suspected it—and assumed that they would regret it as soon as it was over and I'd withdrawn or moved away, or while they were getting dressed again or smoothing or adjusting their clothes (there was even a married woman once who asked to borrow my iron: her tight skirt, by then, looked like a concertina, and she was going straight on to a dinner party with some very proper married couples and didn't have time to go home first; I lent her my iron and she left looking very pleased with herself, her skirt silent and showing no trace of its recent ups and downs), or perhaps later on, when they were alone and in pensive or reflective mood, gazing up at the same moon—to which I would be oblivious—through windows that, for them, had suddenly taken on a nuptial feel, as they dozed in the early hours.