Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (13 page)

I
N ONE SENSE
I stopped being no one a month later, in another, it took me a little longer, in Deán’s case a few days and in Luisa’s a few hours. I mean that after a month, I became someone for Téllez and his son-in-law and his third and only daughter (the third to be born and now the only one left alive), I became a name and a face for them and I had lunch with them, but the man who had been present at Marta’s death, though he had achieved little by that presence, continued to be no one throughout the whole of that lunch, even though I was that man, of that I was sure, for them, on the other hand, that man was only one of various suspects with or without a name, with or without a face: not for Téllez, though, from whom they had managed to hide the manner and the circumstances of the death, he had no need to suspect anyone.

I made the almost simultaneous acquaintance of his two children through their father, Téllez, and I tried to get to know him and did, in fact, meet him through a friend whom I have impersonated on more than one occasion, to whom I have often lent my voice and, in this instance, my physical presence, but unlike on those other occasions, this was precisely what I wanted. That friend’s name is, or so he claims, Ruibérriz de Torres, a man of indecorous appearance. He is a hardworking writer with a good ear, average talent and rather bad luck (in the literary field), since other less hardworking people with a terrible ear and no talent at all are held to be great men and are praised and given prizes (literary prizes). When he was still a young man, some years ago now, he published three or four novels; he had some success with the first or the second, but that success never came to anything, it simply dribbled away, and although he’s still not exactly old, his name is only known to older people, that is, he’s forgotten as an author except by those who have already been in the profession
for some time and never really keep up with all the changes and alternatives, they are rather inattentive people with entrenched views, the civil servants of literature, ancient critics, resentful professors, resting academics susceptible to flattery, and publishers who find in the endless complaints about the insensitivity of the modern reader the perfect excuse for simply loafing around and doing nothing, which they continue to do with each new wave of writers. Ruibérriz has not published anything for years now, I don’t know if that is because he has given up or because he’s waiting until he has been completely forgotten in order to begin again (he doesn’t usually talk to me about his plans, he’s neither confidential nor prone to fantasy). I know that he always has various shady deals on the go, I know that he’s very much a nightbird, that he lives, in part, off various women, and that he’s immensely likeable; he tones down his caustic comments in the company of people he knows can’t take it, he flatters those who need to be flattered, he knows all kinds of people in all kinds of fields, and the majority of those who know him have no idea that he is or has been a writer, he’s not boastful, neither is he given to attempts at salvaging what is lost. He only looks indecorous in certain places, though not all: he looks all right in cheap bars, in cafes at night, as long as they’re not too trendy, and at open-air dances; he looks acceptable at private parties (preferably summer parties with a garden setting and a swimming pool) and he looks very good at bullfights (he usually has a season ticket for the bullfighting festival of San Isidro); he can get by amongst people in film, television and the theatre, although he does look a touch old-fashioned; he cuts a plausible figure amongst coarse, surly journalists of the old Franco and anti-Franco schools (the former are coarser, the latter surlier), although he’s obviously not one of them, since he’s always immaculately turned out and even rather vain about his appearance. But amongst his true colleagues, other writers, he seems like an intruder and they treat him as such, he’s too jokey and good-humoured, he tends to talk a lot and, with them, makes no attempt at tact. At official occasions or at a ministry, his presence causes genuine alarm, which presents him with a real problem, given that part of his income comes from that world of officialdom and ministries. His written style is as solemn
as his talk is uninhibited, he is one of those people who feel such reverence for literature that, confronted by a blank sheet of paper, and regardless of his own scurrilous nature, he’s incapable of transmitting one iota of that irreverence and cynicism to that venerable page, to which he will never commit a joke, a four-letter word, a deliberate mistake, let alone some bold, impertinent remark. He will never allow himself to give expression to his true personality, perhaps considering it unworthy of being recorded, and fearful of defiling such a high office, and it is there, in a manner of speaking, that the scoundrel finds his salvation. Ruibérriz de Torres, who has little respect for anything, sees writing as something sacred (and, doubtless, therein lies the reason for his lack of success). His grandiloquent style, combined with a sound background in the humanities, is perfect for the kind of speeches that no one listens to at the time and that no one reads when they’re summarized in the press the next day, that is, the speeches and talks (including lectures) made by ministers, directors-general, bankers, prelates, presidents of foundations or professional bodies, much-talked-about or lazy academics, and other great men overly preoccupied with their image and their abilities as intellectuals, something which passes unnoticed by everyone else or which everyone assumes to be non-existent. Ruibérriz has no shortage of commissions and, although he doesn’t publish anything, he writes constantly, or rather he used to, for recently, thanks to a stroke of genuine good fortune with one of his shady deals and to his assiduous cultivation of a wealthy woman who indulges and genuinely idolizes him, he has opted for a life of leisure and has allowed himself the luxury of rejecting most commissions or, rather, he accepts them and passes them on to me, along with seventy-five per cent of the profits, so that I am the one who carries them out in the shadows and in secrecy (though not in the utmost secrecy), my education being in no way inferior to his. He is what is known in the literary world as a ghostwriter and I have therefore become the ghost of a ghost, a double ghost, a double no one. There is nothing very unusual about this in my case, since the majority of the scripts I write (especially those for television series) rarely carry my name: the producer or director or actor or actress usually makes me a large
additional payment in exchange for the removal of my name from the credits in favour of theirs (that way they feel they are the true creators of their films), which, I suppose, also makes me a ghost as regards what is my main current occupation and the source of considerable sums of money. This is not always the case though; there are occasions when my name does appear on the screen, in company with those of four or five other scriptwriters who, generally speaking, I have never seen amend or add a single line, I have never even seen their faces: they are usually relatives of the producer or the director or the actor or the actress who, by adding their names, are extricating themselves from a temporary difficulty or making up symbolically for some previous swindle that swallowed up all their savings. On a couple of jobs about which I was imprudent enough to feel anomalously proud, I refused the bribe and demanded that my name should appear separately, beneath the pompous rubric: “Additional Dialogue”, as if I were Michel Audiard at the peak of his popularity. So I know that in the world of television and cinema and in that of speeches and perorations almost nobody writes what people think they write, although – and this is the most serious aspect, and not as rare as you might think – once these usurpers have read the speeches in public and received the polite or sparse applause, or have seen on television the scenes and dialogues to which they put their names, but which they did not themselves create, they become convinced that their borrowed or rather bought words truly are the product of their own pens or imaginations: they adopt them (especially if someone praises them, be it an usher or a bootlicking choir boy) and they will fight tooth and nail to defend them, which is rather sweet of them really and, from the ghostwriter’s point of view, flattering. This conviction runs so deep that the ministers, directors-general, bankers, prelates and all the other habitual givers of speeches are the only citizens who actually listen to and take an interest in the speeches given by others, and they are as fierce and pernickety about other people’s work as the more celebrated novelists can be about the work of their rivals. (Sometimes, without realizing it, they speak insultingly of a text written by the same person who writes their own speeches, attacking not only its content or ideas, which obviously vary, but the style as well.)
They take their oratorical side so seriously that they even demand exclusivity from their ghostwriters in exchange for an increase in fees and a bonus, or else they try to appropriate – or make off with – other people’s ghostwriters, for example, if a minister felt jealous of the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain speaking at a charity supper, or if the president of a shareholders’ meeting turned green with envy watching the television news on which a harangue delivered by some rabid military man was greeted with hurrahs. (This exclusivity, it should be said, is but a vain hope in a job based on secrecy and anonymity: all ghostwriters accept it and commit themselves to it; then, in double clandestinity, they happily work for the enemy.) Some people commission the services of famous, practising writers (almost all of them are for sale, or may even lend their services free in order to make contacts and gain influence and put across a particular message), in the belief that the style of these writers, in general, pretentious and florid, will enhance their speeches, embellish their slogans, not realizing that these famous, veteran writers are the least suitable people for this kind of abject task, in which the writer must not only erase his own personality, he must also interpret and embody the personality of the national hero he is serving, something which such writers are not usually prepared to do: that is, rather than trying to imagine what the current minister might say, they think what they would say if they were the minister, an idea they find not in the least displeasing and a hypothesis they have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting. Many dignitaries, however, understand the problem and feel extremely uncomfortable uttering crass, lofty phrases such as: “Man, that sad, unfortunate animal” or “Let us carry out our work with the forbearance of the world”. It makes them blush. So writers like Ruibérriz de Torres or myself are the most suitable people for the task, cultivated and anonymous, with a knowledge of syntax, a wide vocabulary and a talent for simulation; as well as a capacity for getting out of the way when necessary. Neither overly ambitious, nor blessed with a great deal of luck. Although luck can change.

There are occasions when the famous man, who always acts and commissions such things through intermediaries (he usually remains a remote figure), wants to meet the ghostwriter to give
him direct instructions or to allow the writer to admire or feed off his illustrious personality, but also out of a rather ill-advised curiosity, and this is where Ruibérriz has run into problems. He is aware of his indecorous appearance and he knows that it is not merely a question of clothes or diction or manners, but of style and character, which is, of course, immutable. It isn’t that he dresses badly or has a strange hairdo (a very low parting to conceal baldness, for example) or that he doesn’t wash and therefore smells or has gold chains slung around his neck, nothing like that. It is simply that his essential scoundrel’s nature is written all over his face, is evident in his every gesture, in the way that he walks, in his character and in his irrepressible gift of the gab. No reasonably observant person would ever be fooled by him, not because Ruibérriz lacks the desire or the ability, but because people can see him coming a mile off, even when his intentions are not fraudulent. Fortunately for him, there is never any shortage of scatterbrains and dupes, so he has deceived more than a few men and women in his time, and he hasn’t finished yet; but he knows that he doesn’t stand a chance with someone who errs on the side of suspicion or caution. (He therefore surrounds himself with charming people, perfect victims, proud men and innocent women.) His inability to disguise himself means that he does not even attempt to do so and trusts to his instincts and to the diaphanous nature of his fraudulent aims, and so on the few occasions on which a great man has asked to interview him for the purpose of lecturing or inspecting him or in order to ask him about some particular aspect of a speech or article, the great man has found himself confronted by someone overly groomed and flirtatious, too perfumed and too handsome and too athletic, with a smile that is too cordial and too continuous and full of extremely white, rectangular, healthy teeth, someone with attractive hair, which he wears combed back and wavy at the temples, rather thick but perfectly orthodox, yet his few grey hairs still fail to lend him respectability because they look as if they were dyed (it’s the kind of hair a musician might have), someone amiable and excessively talkative, not in the least modest and uncommonly optimistic, a jovial person whose one aim is to please, someone full of plans and suggestions, constantly coming up with a welter of unasked-for
ideas, someone altogether too active, too ebullient and who, inevitably, gives the impression that he is after rather more than he is actually being asked to provide, in short, a troublemaker. He has long, curly eyelashes, a sharp, straight, bony nose, and his top lip curls back when he smiles or laughs (and he laughs and smiles a lot) to reveal the moist inner surface, which lends his face a look of undeniable and apparently spontaneous salaciousness (it’s no surprise that all sorts of women find him attractive). He always stands very erect in order to emphasize his washboard stomach and his well-defined pectorals and, when standing up, he usually folds his arms, his hands on either side gripping his biceps, as if he were stroking them or measuring them. Regardless of what he’s actually wearing, he’s just one of those people you always imagine in a polo shirt and high boots; enough said, I think. The fact is that when eminent people clap eyes on him, they usually react with shock and clutch their heads with their hands: “All, mais non!” a former ambassador in France is said to have exclaimed, a man for whom he was about to write a delicate international speech. “You’ve brought me a
marseillais
, a
rnaquerectu
, a Pépéle-Moko, I mean, you want me to put myself in the hands of a pimp!” he said, finally hitting on the exact word. The ambassador wouldn’t listen to reason and refused to read anything Ruibérriz had written, he took the job away from him and punished the intermediary. After receiving him in his office one day, a Director-General of Culture for whom he had done some excellent work (three impeccable speeches, boring and vacuous as is the norm, but full of intriguing quotes from some quite unusual sources) decided not to commission anything else from him. The meeting had lasted only a matter of minutes but Ruibérriz, in order to ingratiate himself, mentioned the writers from whom he tended to quote on his behalf, which irritated the Director-General, because it reminded him that he was not the actual author of those competent speeches, as he had come to believe until that very moment, thanks to a remarkable process of dissociation (that is, despite having his ghostwriter there in front of him), it also meant that he could contribute nothing and was reduced to a few mumbled remarks, since, lacking all curiosity, he still knew absolutely nothing about the writers whose names had been on
his lips and whose mention had brought him much applause, especially from his subordinates. Apparently, he remarked later to those same inferiors: “There’s something fishy about that Rui Berry, I think he’s a fraud” (and he pronounced the name “Berry” with an English accent), “I want nothing more to do with him, he’s a namedropper, that’s what he is; he does nothing but talk about obscure, insignificant authors that no one’s heard of, he could be putting anything in those speeches just to make us look foolish. Tell Señor Berri” (and this time he pronounced it as if it were a French word, with an acute accent) “that his services are no longer required or necessary. Pay him enough to make sure that he keeps his mouth shut, and see if you can find me a ghostwriter who looks rather less like a beach boy.” Ruibérriz had to wait for the subsequent removal of that Director-General before he received any further commissions from that particular ministry. He learned his lesson and, for some time now, he has avoided any interviews with his employers, or rather, he agrees to them, when there’s nothing he can do about it, and has me go in his place with the connivance of the intermediaries who understand that a senator or nuncio might feel inhibited or irked to find themselves in the presence of a handsome chap who looks as if he should be wearing a bathrobe or a polo shirt (my appearance is more discreet and not in the least alarming). That is why, sometimes, I have been not only his voice, but also his physical presence, albeit reluctantly, since any encounters with people in power tend to be rather humiliating.