Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (11 page)

'Why are you so sure that I'll be the one chosen to interpret this fellow Incompara? It could be you, and then you'd have no problem and wouldn't have to ask anyone for a favor.'

'I've worked with Bertie for several years now,' she replied. 'I usually know who's going to be assigned to whom, when it's not routine work and I'm told about it beforehand. When there's a lot of money involved or if, for whatever reason, special tact is required—for example, if we had to make a study of the Prince's current girlfriend (and it will happen, we'll be asked to do that sooner or later)—he would use me for the task. To help him out, shall we say, for a second opinion, as a contrast, because he wouldn't delegate such a task to just anyone. Otherwise, he follows a complex system of turn-taking, depending on our individual characteristics. He doesn't stick to it rigidly, but according to that system and to my calculations, it's your turn. I'd love it if he chose me to interpret Incompara. If only . .. And if I'm wrong and that's what happens, I can assure you I'll be the first to celebrate, more than you or him, more than anyone. That would make things much easier for me, I'd prefer not to have to depend on you. Not to have to bother you with this or get you mixed up in it all. I gave all this a lot of thought before asking you. I've been thinking about it for the last few days, and just now, during the walk over here, more than once I was on the verge of turning around and going home. What I can't do is offer myself for the job, or show a particular interest in taking it on, because Bertie would immediately wonder why and ask me questions and get suspicious; he never shies away from suspicions or brushes them under the carpet, he never thinks anyone is above suspicion. Not even his own mother, if she's still alive, although, as I said, I've never heard him mention his family. And there's another element too: from what I know, Incompara must have a finger in a lot of pies. Bertie will probably think that, among other factors, you are the least exposed to previous chance contaminations because you haven't been in London all that long.'

I sat looking at her and then poured her the glass of wine I'd denied her before, the fourth. I could see that she was tired, or perhaps beginning to feel the effort of having to persuade and to ask, which takes a lot of energy, and that she was tense too, which is exhausting, and there's always a moment when, however enthusiastically we might have begun an assault, we doubt that we'll get what we want, that we'll succeed. The whole thing suddenly seems pointless, we're convinced people will say 'No' or even take pleasure in saying 'No' and refuse, and that they'll be able to come up with cast-iron reasons for doing so: 'I'm a bit hard up at the moment,' 'I don't want to get involved,' 'Sorry, you're asking too much of me,' 'It won't work, I'm no good at that kind of thing,' 'I have my loyalties,' 'It's too big a risk,' 'If it was up to me, I'd do it, but there are other people involved'; or more clearly, 'What's in it for me?' Perhaps young Pérez Nuix, in a sudden loss of faith, was already asking herself which of these formulae I would opt for. Yes, what was in it for me? I could see no benefit at all, and she would know that I couldn't, because there was none. She hadn't even tried that route, at least not yet, and hadn't even attempted to invent some benefit. During those moments when she seemed distracted, almost resigned, I again glanced at the run in her stockings, at her ever more naked leg. I hoped she would do something before her tights exploded (that would be a shock) or went all baggy and loose (that would be repellent) or suddenly dropped to the floor (that would be humiliating), none of these three possibilities appealed to me, but they would break the spell of that torn but still taut fabric. And so I indicated her thighs with a lift of my chin and said (the words just came out, my will did not intervene, or appeared not to):

'I don't know if you've noticed, but you've got an enormous run in your stockings. It must have happened while you were walking. Or perhaps the dog did it.'

'Yes,' she replied easily, unsurprised, 'I noticed it a while ago, but didn't want to interrupt you. I'd better just nip to the bathroom and take them off. How embarrassing.' She stood up (farewell, vision) and picked up her bag, the dog got to his feet as well, ready to follow her, but she stopped him with two words in English (he was, of course, a native English dog), persuaded him to lie down again, and disappeared. 'How embarrassing,' she said again when she was already in the corridor, out of my field of vision. But she didn't seem in the least embarrassed. 'She isn't really that tired or discouraged or depressed,' I thought. 'Interrupt me? That can't have been a mistake or a slip. Not even after all the wine she's drunk. She's the one doing the talking, the telling, the one who came here to plead with me, although she hasn't really done that yet, neither by her tone of voice or her choice of vocabulary nor by being tedious or insistent. Yet she is, nevertheless, pleading, only without actually running the risk of provoking a flat refusal, which would be counterproductive. She's asking me something, but without a hint of pathos and without humiliating herself, almost as if she weren't asking for anything, but she isn't doing so out of pride. She's simply setting out the information.' When she returned, she was no longer wearing any stockings, so she wasn't one of those far-sighted women who always carry a spare pair; or perhaps she was, but had decided not to put them on, preferring boots against her bare skin, and it wasn't cold in the apartment. She crossed her legs as if nothing had happened (the vision returned, rather improved in fact), she picked up two olives, nibbled a chip and took a timid sip of her wine, perhaps she was watching what she was drinking more closely than I thought. 'So, Jaime, what do you say? Can I count on your help? It's a big favor I'm asking you.'

I had been sitting down for too long. I got up and went over to the window, I opened it for a few seconds and put my head out and looked up at the sky, at the street, my cheeks and the back of my neck got slightly wet, the rain wouldn't stop for several days and nights, it looked as if it were going to hang over the city for some time, or over the country which for her was 'pats' or perhaps also '
patria
,' the dangerous, empty concept and the dangerous, inflammatory word, which would allow a mother to say in justification of her son's actions:
'La patria es la patria'
— one's country is one's country—and when it comes to defending one's country, lies are no longer lies. Poor trapped mother, the mother of the man who betrayed not his country, but his former friend, it's always safer to betray an individual, however close to them we might be, than some vague, abstract idea that anyone can claim to represent, for then, at every step, we might find ourselves accused by strangers, by standard-bearers we have never seen before, who will feel betrayed by our actions or lack of action; that's the bad thing about ideas, their self-declared representatives keep crawling out of the woodwork, and anyone can take up an idea to suit their needs or interests and proclaim that they'll defend it by whatever means necessary, bayonet or betrayal, persecution or tank, mortar or defamation, brutality or dagger, anything goes. Perhaps it would be easier for me than for Pérez Nuix to try and betray Tupra. For me he was a single individual and nothing more, while for her, he might, in some measure, represent her country or at least embody an idea. The deception would come from her, but via an intermediary, namely me, and such intermediaries help enormously to diffuse blame, it's as if one were less involved or, once the thing is done, almost not involved at all, in the eyes of others, but also in one's own eyes, which is why people so often resort to front men, hired assassins, soldiers, thugs, straw men, paid killers and the police, and even the courts, which often serve as the executive branch of our passions, if we first manage to draw them in and later convince them. It's easier to do away with someone or bring about their ruin if you only give the order or set the appropriate mechanisms going, or pay the money or hatch a plot or approach the appropriate person with a tip-off, or if you merely make a formal complaint and conspire and have other people lead your victim to the cell, not to mention execute him once he has passed through the hands of innumerable intermediaries, all of them legal, who share the blame out among themselves as they follow that long road and return to us only the lukewarm leftovers, a few insubstantial crumbs, and all we receive at the end of the process that we originated are a few terse words, a mere communiqué and sometimes only an enigmatic phrase: 'Sentence has been passed,' or 'It's done,' or 'Problem solved,' or 'No need to worry any more,' or 'The torment's over' or 'You can sleep easy now' Or even 'I have done the deed' (in the words of that ancient Scotsman). It would be less sinister in my case, merely a matter of phoning Patricia one day or not even that, of whispering to her in the office, when we met or passed: 'He fell for it.' The first traitor's name, Del Real it was, had also used intermediaries against my father: first, he recruited the second traitor, that Professor Santa Olalla who lent his signature to back up a complaint against someone he didn't even know, and then . . . Those two men did not go in person to get Juan Deza on the feast day of San Isidro in 1939, they sent Franco's police to arrest him and put him in prison, and then others intervened, witnesses, a prosecutor, a sham lawyer and judge, almost nothing is ever done directly or face to face, we don't even see the face of the person bringing about our ruin, there is almost always someone in the middle, between you and me, or between me and the dead man, between him and her.

83

'Why haven't you gone straight to Tupra and asked him? Surely if you explained, as you have to me, about your father he'd understand and grant you this one favor? He'll be sure to make an exception.You know him much better than you know me, you seem quite close, you share a kind of ironic affection, if I can put it like that, as if you had an out-of-office relationship too.' I didn't want to continue along that route, I didn't want to insinuate what I suspected existed between them; although I didn't believe that it still existed, I imagined it to be more a thing of the past, and possibly only a very transient thing, or only half-voluntary. I was speaking to her now from more of a distance, with my back against the open window, I could feel the air through my shirt, fortunately it wasn't raining hard, I would have to shut the window as soon as the smoke cleared. 'In fact, you hardly know me at all. What made you think I would be more accessible than him, readier to agree to what you're asking, more helpful? I'm sure he must owe you some debt of gratitude, even if only for the years of collaboration and the good work you've done. I, on the other hand,' I hesitated for a moment, did a swift recap and found nothing, 'I as yet have no reason to be grateful to you, as far as I know or can recall.'

'You're Spanish,' she said, 'and therefore less rigid when it comes to principles. You're new to the job, you might leave soon and you're on a salary. Not that Bertram has that many principles—in the usual understanding of the term—nor are they of the noblest kind; obviously he's capable of making exceptions, he has no alternative in his job, or indeed in most jobs. But the principles he has, he holds to, and one of them is not to mess around in any way with his work. If a mistake occurs, he'll accept that, but not if it's due to negligence or if it's a deliberate, a false mistake. He only accepts unavoidable errors, when we really are misled or are wrong or we miss something, it happens to us all from time to time, not seeing clearly and getting things totally wrong. No, this is one favor he wouldn't grant. He'd urge me to find other solutions, he'd think that there must be some other way, but I know there isn't, I've gone over and over it in my head. More than that, if he knew about the situation, he'd take it as just another bit of information on Incompara, he'd use it in the report and possibly to Incompara's disadvantage, I would run the risk of everything turning out exactly as I don't want it to, and it would be all my fault. He cares about his own prestige and fancies himself as an expert. He doesn't think he's infallible, but he does believe he renders a real service to the State and to our clients, I mean, the people who come to him aren't just anybody. He also believes he has a very good eye when it comes to choosing the staff he works with. He doesn't take on just anyone, in case you hadn't noticed. You started as an interpreter of languages. The fact that you've gone on to other things is because he saw that you had real ability and because he trusts you. You've risen really fast. The last thing he would expect would be for one of us to deliberately distort an interpretation or ask him to do so. I get the impression with you, though, that none of this really matters. I have the feeling you're just waiting and meantime earning some money, doing something that you find fairly easy, and more fun than working for the radio. Waiting to know what to do, to see what to do, or to be summoned to Madrid, waiting for someone to say "Come back." Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think your heart is really in this job. That's why I'm asking you and not Bertie. What does it matter to you? And it really is a big favor.'

'Come, come, I was so wrong about you before,' I thought. 'Sit down here beside me, somehow I just couldn't see you clearly before. Come here. Come with me. Come back and stay here forever.' The nights continued to pass and I heard no such words, nothing like them, not even a contradictory murmur or a false echo. Perhaps Pérez Nuix was right, perhaps I was just there waiting, 'waiting without hope,' in the words of an English poet whom so many have copied since. But if the voice never came, over the phone or in some unexpected letter, or in person when I finally went to see my children, there would come a day when I would wake up with the feeling that I was no longer waiting. ('Last night I was still all right, but today? I'm another day older, that's the only difference and yet my existence has changed. I'm no longer waiting.') On that morning, I would discover that I had become used to London, to Tupra and to Pérez Nuix, to Mulryan and to Rendel, to the office with no name and to my day-to-day work and, from time to time, to Wheeler, who had known Luisa and would soon become a link with my forgetting. I would discover that I had got used to everything—I mean to the point of not feeling surprised when I opened my eyes or not even thinking about any of them. These others would become my everyday and my world, the thing that requires no reason to exist, my air, and I would no longer miss Luisa, or my former city and life. Only my children.