Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  Wheeler’s Spanish was excellent, as one would expect given his speciality and his eminence in the field, but he was less confident when it came to writing Spanish, and so when he had finished a text that was to be published in that language, he would ask Tom, as a native speaker he trusted, to check over what he had written and point out any possible imperfections or awkwardnesses and get rid of any expressions which, although correct, sounded inelegant or inappropriate in Spanish. Tomás was very proud to be asked and only too happy to help: he would go to Wheeler’s house by the River Cherwell, where Wheeler, who had been a widower for many years, lived with a housekeeper who attended to domestic matters, and together they would read through the texts. (His wife, now so remote, had suffered a mysterious death: he mentioned her sometimes, Valerie was her name, but he never said a word about her death, the cause or the circumstances, and no one else knew anything about it either, which was strange in a city as prone to creating and keeping secrets as it was to uncovering and gossiping about them.) Tom would read out loud, and his tutor would listen contentedly, and they, especially Tom, would stop whenever anything grated. Tom felt honoured to be invited to visit him and be alone with him, not to mention being the first to find out about his new discoveries, even though these concerned erudite matters of little interest to him.

  On one such occasion, at the beginning of Trinity, or the third short term, they took a break, and Wheeler offered him a drink; despite Tom’s youth, Wheeler did not hesitate to pour him a gin and tonic. Wheeler sat for a while rubbing his thumbnail back and forth on the scar on his chin, as if stroking it – something he often did. The scar began near the left-hand corner of his mouth and continued on a slight diagonal as far as the bottom of his chin, which made it look as if that side of his face never smiled (although it did), and gave him a somewhat sullen, sombre look. He was doubtless aware of this, and so, when he could, he tended to offer people his right side. However, on that particular day, he did not bother; he looked straight at Tomás with his blue eyes slightly narrowed, and so penetrating they were like sparks, as if they could not help scrutinising everything with a degree of suspicion, to the point that the blue seemed to metamorphose into yellow, like the eyes of a tired, but very alert, lion, or perhaps some other feline. His abundant wavy hair was now very white, and when he smiled or laughed he revealed teeth that were rather widely set, giving him a mischievous air. And he could be mischievous, there was no doubt about that, the mischievousness of someone who is too intelligent not to notice the often comical side of people – the more solemn or stern or serious they were the more risible – but one that was basically benign. He had probably already inflicted enough harm in his life and wasn’t prepared to continue to do so, unless such harm were to prove extremely useful, and that usefulness could compensate for any pain caused, although we never really know if someone has been harmed until their story is complete, and that takes time.

  ‘Have you had any thoughts about what you’re going to do, Tomás? When you graduate, I mean. I understand you want to go back to Spain.’ He liked to call him by his Spanish name, even though they usually spoke in English. ‘You won’t have many options there, only teaching, publishing or politics, really. Franco will die eventually, and then, I imagine, various parties will spring up. But with no democratic tradition, it will be very off the cuff and chaotic. Always assuming no se arma la de San Quintín, as you Spaniards say.’ And that last expression he said in Spanish of course, meaning ‘always assuming all hell doesn’t break loose’.

  ‘I don’t know, Professor.’ In Oxford, that is both a form of address and a title, and applied only to those who have reached the highest academic rank, and never to other teachers, however distinguished. ‘I wouldn’t even consider going into politics, certainly not as long as the dictatorship lasts, what would be the point of being a mere puppet, not to mention soiling my hands. And as for talk of when it will end, well, that’s a bit premature, it’s still almost unimaginable. When things go on and on like that, they stop you even imagining the future, don’t you think? I don’t know, I’ll talk to my father and to Mr Starkie. He’s come back to Madrid after his years in America, and even though he’s retired, he still has influence. Something interesting might come up at the British Council, and then we’ll see.’

  Wheeler’s mischievous side immediately made an appearance:

  ‘Ah, poor Starkie,’ he said. ‘He’s probably still casting voodoo spells on me, and sticking pins in a little doll whose hair must be turning grey by now. He and an eminent Hispanist from Glasgow, Atkinson, both applied for my post in 1953, when Entwistle died. They never could accept that the King Alfonso XIII chair should go to a thirty-nine-year-old with hardly any publications, compared with them, that is. And, of course, poor Starkie had wasted so much time on those gypsies of his, and I’m not sure how well that would have gone down in the Oxford of the day, because, as you know, this is a very snobbish place,’ he added with a smile, because in the early 1970s, Oxford was only marginally less snobbish than it had been in the eighteenth century or even the fourteenth. ‘At least he learned a bit of voodoo, or do gypsies not practise voodoo? Anyway, it didn’t help him in my case, neither that nor any curse or whatever it was he put on me. But that looks like a very dull and boring future, Tomás, if you’re going to depend on what Don Gypsy has to offer. A waste of your talents.’ There was presumably still a degree of mutual resentment between those two former rivals. ‘If you were to stay in England, on the other hand, every door would be open to you after doing so brilliantly here: finance, diplomacy, politics, business, even here at the university if you fancied it. Although I can’t really see you teaching and doing research. You’re a man of action, I would say, keen to influence the world directly or indirectly. You do have dual nationality, don’t you? Or not? If not, I hope you’re British. You could choose whichever career you wanted. What you actually studied is purely secondary. With your record, you’d be welcomed with open arms anywhere. They’d wait until you’d been trained in whatever field you chose.’

  ‘Thank you for your confidence in me, Professor, but my life is in Spain. I was born there, and that’s where I’ve always imagined myself settling down.’

  ‘Anyone’s life can be lived anywhere, wherever you happen to go or end up,’ said Wheeler succinctly. ‘Let me remind you that I was born in New Zealand, but of what relevance is that, I ask? Given your gift for languages and mimicry,’ he went on, ‘have you considered becoming an actor? Obviously, you’d need other abilities too, and I can’t honestly see you going on stage night after night and repeating the same words in exchange for rapturous applause, which would soon grow monotonous. That doesn’t shape the world. Nor would spending your life making films here, there and everywhere, because filming takes for ever. And to what end? To be the idol of the undiscerning, who are as likely to worship Olivier as a Californian dog?’ Yes, snobbery in Oxford was clearly a thing of the past. Wheeler belonged to the old school and clung to the idea that Laurence Olivier was still the greatest living actor when no one else thought so, not even in his proud country of birth.

  Tom laughed. It was true that he was restless – although his was a rather diffuse kind of restlessness, the sort that abates over time – but not like your average man of action, not in the way we usually understand the expression. He wasn’t adventurous enough or ambitious enough, or else didn’t yet know how to be either or wasn’t tempted to be – nor indeed did he need to be. At the age he was then, he didn’t see himself influencing the world, as Wheeler had put it, regardless of what country he lived in. He didn’t see anyone doing that, not even the great financiers or scientists or politicians. The first group could face setbacks and brutal competition; the second could make mistakes, and their inevitable fate was, sooner or later, to have their work refuted or superseded; the third group would pass, fall from power and vanish into obscurity (the democratic politicians, that is; even Churchill had lost in 1945, after all his great deeds), an
d as soon as they vacated their seat, others would come along to erase what they had done, and few would remember them after a matter of years or months (with the odd rare exception, Churchill being a case in point). It amused him that someone as sharp and experienced as Wheeler should use that concept; it revealed a certain innocence on his part, from Tom’s youthful point of view, that is, but then the young do tend to believe themselves to be more blasé and more in the know than anyone, including their mentors.

  ‘No, I don’t really see myself as an actor. Still less as another Olivier. My generation find him very old-fashioned.’

  ‘Oh, really? So, he’s seen as old hat now, is he? Forgive me, I don’t go to the cinema or the theatre very much. It doesn’t matter, it was just an example.’

  ‘But who does shape the world, Professor?’ Tomás asked him, for those words had stuck in his mind; and he was expecting Wheeler to trot out the usual professions, the big financiers, the scientists and politicians, possibly the military, capable of destroying the world with their weapons. ‘Certainly not actors or university lecturers,’ he added. ‘Or philosophers or novelists or singers, I imagine, however many of us young people rush to imitate the latter, and however much they may change certain customs. Just look at what happened with the Beatles. We’ll get over that, though. And television is too inane, generally speaking, despite its influence. So who does shape the world, then? Who is in a position to do that?’

  Wheeler shifted in his armchair, elegantly crossed his legs (he was very tall and long-limbed), and again stroked the scar on his chin with his nail, as if he enjoyed tracing the furrow that had once been there and no longer was, it must have been rather smooth and polished to the touch, that ancient ghost of a brutal cut or serious wound.

  ‘Well, no one can shape it on his own, Tomás, or even with the help of others. If there’s something that characterises and unites most of humanity (and by that I mean all those who have lived on Earth since time immemorial), it’s that the universe influences us without us being able to influence it even minimally, if that. We may believe that we form part of the universe, we may exist in the universe and may struggle to change some tiny detail of it during our lifetime, but we are in fact outcasts of the universe, to use an expression from that famous story about the man who erased himself from the world simply by taking lodgings in the next street and not telling anyone.’ And he repeated those words ‘outcasts of the universe’, as if they gave him food for thought and as if this were the first time in ages that he had recalled them. Tomás didn’t know the story he was referring to, but preferred not to ask so as not to interrupt him, and was, besides, too interested in what Wheeler was saying. ‘Nothing about us changes it, neither our elimination nor our birth, neither our unhurried journey through it, nor our existence or chance appearance nor our inevitable annihilation. Neither does any deed, any crime committed or prevented, any event. In short, it would be exactly the same without Plato or Shakespeare or Newton, without the discovery of America or the French Revolution. Not perhaps without all those things at once, but definitely in the absence of any particular one. Everything that has ever happened could just as well not have happened, and everything would be essentially the same. Or it could have happened differently or with some detour or circumlocution, or at a later date or with different protagonists. It doesn’t matter, we can’t miss what never happened, I can assure you that the average twelfth-century European did not long for the New World, nor did he feel its non-existence as an amputation or a loss, which is how we would feel after five hundred years of knowing it existed. That would be like a cataclysm.’

  ‘So why talk to me then about shaping the world if nothing and no one can, Professor?’

  ‘No, no one can, apart from mass murderers, but we don’t want to be one of them, do we? There are degrees of influence. We are all influenced by the universe, but incapable of influencing it, or even scratching its surface. And as far as nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand are concerned, the universe jostles and shakes them, treats them or regards them as if they were a package, not even a being with an iota of free will or a tenuous capacity to make decisions. The man in that story opted to become – just that – a package, which he probably was anyway, an insignificant Londoner. Or perhaps he stopped being that, just a little, precisely because he dispensed with witnesses by making himself invisible, by erasing himself: he resolved to disappear, at least as far as his wife and those closest to him were concerned, to leave and withdraw. That’s something at least. But there are other, less extreme, less paradoxical ways: the man who stays at home is more of an outcast than the one who leaves; the man who does something less so than the one who doesn’t even move, even if the efforts of the former prove fruitless. An actor or a university teacher is more of an outcast than a politician or a scientist. The latter do at least disturb the universe a little, perhaps tousle its hair, change its expression, make it raise an eyebrow at such impertinence.’ And Wheeler raised a peevish eyebrow, as if pretending to be a very cold, slightly offended universe.

  ‘So what are you suggesting? That I go into politics? Or become a scientist? I don’t have the training for the latter, as you know, and have neither the necessary talent nor the patience for the former. Besides, in Spain, there is no politics, just orders from the Generalísimo.’

  Wheeler laughed, showing his slightly wide-set teeth and narrowing his yellowish eyes, his face filled with a look of amiable mischief.

  ‘Don’t be so literal-minded. That’s not what I meant at all. They’re not the ones who shape the world, to continue using that rather extreme verb. The ones who most shape the world are those who are not exposed, who can’t be seen; unknown, opaque beings about whom almost no one knows anything. Like the hidden man in the story, except that instead of living a passive vegetable existence, they plot and weave webs in the shadows. Everyone knows who the rulers are, and could even name some of the super rich and a few military commanders, and the scientists who make astonishing advances in their field. Look at that otherwise unknown South African, Dr Barnard, who became famous throughout the world after carrying out the first human heart transplant. Look at General Dayan of Israel, another country that no one pays much attention to, and yet everyone knows his face, with his eyepatch and his bald head. Eminent people are now so exposed to the public gaze that their over-exposure somehow nullifies them, and, in future, this will become more and more the case. They won’t be able to take a step without being followed by journalists and cameras, without being watched, and then they won’t be able to shape or mould anything. Nothing has any weight if it lacks mystery, a surrounding mist, and we are heading towards a reality bereft of shadows, bereft almost of light and shade. Everything and anything known is destined to become rapidly swallowed up and trivialised, and so to lack any real influence. Anything that is visible, a spectacle in the public domain, can never create change. Contrary to what people think, the shape of the universe hasn’t changed one bit just because, a couple of years ago, two astronauts walked on the Moon. Everything continues exactly the same as before, what difference has it made to anyone’s life, let alone to the functioning and configuration of the universe? They even broadcast the event on television, which is still further proof of its complete irrelevance. The truly decisive events are never shown or even described, or not at the time they happen; instead, they’re always kept hidden away, wrapped in silence, at least for a very long time; at most, we learn about them when they’re no longer of any interest, when they already belong to the remote past, and people don’t care about the past, they think it doesn’t affect them and can’t be changed, and in that respect, they’re right. For example, the most important operations during the war, the ones that were fundamental to our victory, are those we know nothing about and that have never leaked out, that don’t appear in the history books and of which there is no trace. The ones that, with admirable coolness and cynicism, people even deny ever happened if some rumour appe
ars in the press or some vain person talks too much, thus breaking his oath, but that’s another matter. Those who act swathed in mist, their backs turned on everyone else, who don’t demand or need recognition, they are the ones who most disturb the universe. Albeit very little, it must be said. But at least they make it shift slightly in its armchair and adopt a different posture. That is the most we individuals can hope for, if we are not to be complete and utter outcasts.’ And Wheeler again stirred in his armchair and uncrossed his legs and changed his posture, having decided to play the part of his imaginary universe.

  ‘I imagine you’re speaking from personal experience,’ said Tom Nevinson cautiously. ‘As you know, there are all sorts of stories about your past activities, not all of them academic …’

  ‘Yes, well, fortunately, not all of them are academic. Although the vast majority of those stories are false, you know. Oxbridge legends dreamed up to make our boring high tables more palatable.’

  ‘Yes, but, if I’ve understood you rightly, you’ve just given a speech in praise of secrecy as the supreme way of influencing the world. And one of the things that everyone holds to be true is that you worked for the Secret Service.’

  Wheeler blew out air between his teeth, with a mixture of sarcasm and impatience, as if to say: ‘Oh really’ or ‘What nonsense’. Or perhaps it was Tom’s use of the preterite tense that struck him as inappropriate.

  ‘Who didn’t work for them, at a time when every last man counted, and every last woman too, of course. Some paid a very high price.’ He fell silent for a moment as if remembering someone. Tom wondered if Valerie, Wheeler’s late wife of whom he rarely spoke, had been one of those to pay a high price. ‘It’s not in the least unusual. Well, when I say “who didn’t”, I mean those who were better suited to that than piloting planes or being part of a naval crew or fighting at the front. I wouldn’t have been much use at any of that. On the other hand, there are people with a special gift for murky, undercover work. A gift, in fact, that most people don’t have: they lack the necessary knowledge or can’t speak another language, or are too transparent and incapable of pretence, or have too many scruples and lack sangfroid and patience, and in time of war, you can’t afford to waste people by sending them off to perform a task for which they’re unsuited. That’s what you Spaniards have traditionally done.’ He suddenly considered Tom to be Spanish, whereas, in general, he thought of him as British. ‘You start by handing over command to a total amateur, an old custom that still persists. I mean, that dictator of yours is an utter incompetent, except, like all dictators, he puts on a fierce front. If it hadn’t been for the British in the Peninsular War, you would continue to be an occupied country …’ The Peninsular War is what the British call the War of Independence against Bonaparte. Tom wasn’t in the least offended, feeling as he did that he belonged to both countries.