Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and I felt as if I were agreeing with a couple of mad people in order to placate them, something that the mad always notice and dislike intensely, it often irritates them and makes them still angrier, but I didn’t know what else to say, what other tone of voice to use. ‘Of course,’ I said again, ‘I’ll talk to Tomás as soon as I can, I’ll ask him about it and try to convince him, don’t worry. If there’s any truth in the rumour, which there probably isn’t, it’s doubtless just another false rumour, a case of mistaken identity, and he isn’t him at all.’ This last statement made no sense, but I assumed they would understand what I meant. Prolonged fear makes us think and speak as if we were in a fog.

  ‘Yes, but what if he denies it?’ said Mary Kate.

  ‘If he denies it, that’s because it’s not true.’

  ‘How would you know? He could deny it even if it were true. If he’s working for MI6, they will have trained him to deny even the undeniable, that’s just how it is. He could be standing in one place and yet swear blind that he isn’t.’

  My mind was incapable of following this exchange, however brief. I was entirely occupied with my defenceless child and that open lighter, for if Ruiz Kindelán flicked the wheel with his thumb and, this time, a flame did emerge, just one, the next step could be catastrophic, whether by accident or intention. The anxiety of knowing that I was incapable of protecting or saving Guillermo was becoming unbearable. My eyes were fixed on that thumb, my treacherous breathing ever louder and faster, and the fact is I was prepared to do anything, they could have ordered me to commit the most humiliating, indecent or abject act and I would have obeyed. I would certainly have betrayed my country – which, after four decades of dictatorship, I didn’t hold in very high esteem – or my parents, or Tomás; I wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant if it meant removing the threat of fire from my child. I wouldn’t allow myself even to imagine him burning, because if I had, I would have fainted and not even have been able to keep watch.

  Ruiz Kindelán continued smiling his usual sunny smile, he even giggled as if amused by Mary Kate’s last words.

  ‘Why ever did Thomas get involved in the first place,’ he said, not so much as a question, but taking for granted that it was true and as if he found it interesting or diverting to speculate. ‘Having spent most of his life here in Spain, he can hardly be such a great English patriot. And no one ever emerges from that business well, dear Berta, if, that is, they do emerge. I’ve known a couple of men like him, and studied a few more, and they usually come out either mad or dead. And those who aren’t brought to justice and don’t go entirely mad, end up not knowing who they are. They lose their life or it splits in two, and those two parts are irreconcilable, mutually repellent. They lose their identity and even their earlier memories. Some try to return to normality years later and just can’t do it, they don’t know how to reintegrate themselves into civilian life, if we can call it that, into ordinary passive life, with no sudden shocks or tensions, into enforced retirement. It makes no difference what age they are. If they’re no good any more or are burned out, they’re withdrawn from service, just like that, sent home or left to vegetate in an office, and some individuals don’t even reach thirty before feeling that their time has passed – like football players. They miss their days of action, of villainy, deceit and falsehood. They remain attached to their murky past, and are sometimes overwhelmed by remorse: when they stop, they realise that what they did was utterly vile and achieved little or nothing; that they were, at best, dispensable; that anyone could have done what they did and with the same result; that all their hard work and the risks they ran were pointless, almost futile, because no one individual ever plays a truly decisive role or makes a truly radical difference. They also discover that no one will thank them for their efforts or their talent, their astuteness or their patience, that they will receive no gratitude, no admiration. What was important, no, crucial, for them is of no importance to anyone else. How could Thomas have been so stupid as to get involved in that? And so imprudent. As I said, no one comes out of that world in a good state. No one.’ I wasn’t paying much attention, but I did think: ‘As long as he goes on speechifying, it will be all right. He’ll be distracted and forget about his cigarette, and won’t try to light it.’ And then I thought: ‘But who is he? Who are they? Perhaps he’s referring to himself when he says all this, because he knows that one day the same fate will await him, the tasks he’s charged with must be similar to those he attributes to Tomás, otherwise he wouldn’t be warning me, he wouldn’t be urging me to distance him from those tasks. Not that I believe that this is what Tomás does, there must be some mistake, and they’re confusing him with someone else. But how little I actually know.’ – ‘And he’s putting you and yours in danger too. Don’t you realise that, dear Berta? The people he’s trying to harm will do their best to deflect that harm. They’ll try to neutralise him by any means possible. They’ll take their revenge.’ – ‘He’s talking about himself now,’ I thought, ‘about him and Mary Kate, who are a team, not just a married couple, but he speaks as if those taxed with dissuading or taking their revenge were other people, not them. He has the cheek to talk like that when he’s just spilled lighter fuel into Guillermo’s cradle and is holding an open Zippo lighter in his hand; true, it’s nearly out of fuel, but it might yet have a drop left that could ignite at any moment, because something can appear to be empty and yet not be, I’ve seen it happen in films when someone gives an apparently empty water canteen a good shake, and, finally, a drop, like a drop of sweat, slips slowly out …’

  Guillermo began to cough then, and I could stand it no longer.

  ‘Look, I’ll do anything you want, Miguel. But please put the cover back on your lighter and let me pick up my baby, let me clean him and wash him, he’s probably choking on that strong smell, see how he’s coughing. If I can smell it, imagine how much worse it must be for him. And he’s so tiny, everything about him is so tiny. Please, let me.’

  ‘Best just to mention the smell, rather than a fire, best not give him ideas,’ I thought foolishly, since it was clear what his idea had been from the start of that fake accident; he was trying to frighten me so that I would give in to any demands, would promise what I wasn’t even in a position to promise. I leaned down and held out my arms, determined to lift Guillermo out of the cradle, whether Miguel gave me permission or not. He didn’t give me permission, because it was then, when he saw my determined, but incomplete gesture, that he flicked the thumbwheel of the lighter to light the cigarette that was still between his lips. No flame emerged then either, but I didn’t have time to breathe a sigh of relief – I’d held my breath for a fraction of a second, or my heart had skipped a beat – because he closed the lighter for a moment only to open it again and repeat the threat. I had stopped so abruptly that I remained with my arms outstretched, frozen halfway, as if unable to reach my baby, as though I were separated from him by some invisible barrier, by railings, a glass screen, by the greatest force that exists: fear. Kindelán looked at me, smiling his usual smile and giggling, amused by himself.

  ‘How easily frightened you are,’ he said benevolently. ‘I’ve already told you that nothing bad is going to happen. See?’

  And he again flicked the thumbwheel of his lighter and now, perhaps to his own surprise, a brief, minuscule, fluctuating flame emerged, just as I had foreseen.

  I did what any mother would have done, I suppose. I instinctively blew out the flame and snatched up my baby. It was enough to have seen that feeble flame. I was sure that both Ruiz Kindelán and Mary Kate had finished their business. I was sure that the danger of the day had passed, but it could also return, and this was only an inaugural danger. He snapped the lighter shut – an unmistakable sound –and put it away in his jacket pocket. ‘Yes, I can rest for today,’ I thought, ‘but from now on, I’ll never be able to rest easy again, because these two people might come back. Or perhaps it’s all just a bad joke, which is how I�
��ll see it tomorrow.’ It’s amazing how easily we drive from our mind the things that preoccupy and worry us, that prevent us from living normally; just as in between bombardments, in time of war, people make the most of that parenthesis and pretend the bombardments don’t exist and go out into the street and meet in cafés, I would need to believe that what was still happening hadn’t happened at all; for they were still there, the Kindeláns, and I wondered who they really were; it suddenly seemed to me impossible that two embassy employees could behave like that, despite their efforts to ensure that everything appeared entirely fortuitous, I knew there was nothing fortuitous about it, but how could I prove that, I couldn’t denounce them or write a letter of protest to their superiors, I could only talk to Tomás, tell him what had happened and ask how much of it was true, if any of what they had said was true. And even though I felt safe now, I was still breathing hard, you can’t just stop that agitated breathing, or simply detach yourself from a horror.

  Then he did the same with the little can of lighter fuel, returning it, safely sealed, to a pocket in his raincoat, the two weapons gone. He picked up his crumpled coat, threw it over his arm as it had been when he arrived, and almost sprang to his feet – he was always disconcertingly agile for such a very fat man – and his wife followed suit. Her lipstick had smudged a little, spilled over the edges of her lips. She noticed this, opened her bag, took out a small mirror and a Kleenex and carefully wiped away the lipstick (she also examined her teeth, in case they had become smeared with lipstick too) as if nothing at all had happened. At most, her eyes swivelled restlessly away from the mirror, flickered here and there about the room, but avoided resting on Guillermo, as if the little cherub had ceased to exist. I was clutching him to me as hard as I could, covering his head with one hand to protect him, keeping him as far away as possible from those two people. Holding him close, I was even more aware of the smell of lighter fuel; poor thing, I feared for his lungs, although he had stopped coughing as soon as I picked him up and took him out of the cradle, and I would, anyway, summon a paediatrician for advice, Dr Castilla or Dr Arranz.

  The Kindeláns were clearly taking their leave, I just hoped they really were being dispatched to Turkey or to Outer Mongolia, once their mission, their repugnant mission, was completed. They walked calmly to the door, but I did not accompany them, the further away they were the better. I waited until they were on the other side of the door, then rushed over and bolted it, a purely superstitious move. Before he pulled the door shut, though, the fat man smiled again and gave that same little giggle:

  ‘You see, dear Berta, we were right, weren’t we? As I said before, you won’t want to see us again after today.’

  IV

  * * *

  That same afternoon, as soon as Dr Castilla had left (he very kindly came as soon as I called, and gave me his usual mumbled assurances), I phoned Tomás’s two telephone numbers, but without success. The switchboard at his apartment building merely put me through to his flat, where no one answered. I dialled again and asked the telephonist to give Mr Nevinson the message that his wife in Madrid needed to speak to him urgently. When I called his work number, I was told to wait, then put through to an extension, where the phone rang and rang to no avail, until it cut out. I realised then how completely isolated I was from him. I didn’t even know who his colleagues were or his closest friends. I racked my brains, and remembered that, on a couple of occasions, he’d mentioned a certain Mr Reresby, and another time a Mr Dundas (he had, in fact, said ‘Dundás’, with the stress on the final syllable) and another time a Mr Ure, a surname whose spelling I couldn’t even imagine (he’d pronounced it ‘Iuah’ or something like that, and then, to my amazement, had spelled it out. ‘Scottish in origin,’ he’d said, referring to the name, not the man, and he’d said exactly the same thing about Dundas when he first mentioned that name too). And so I dialled again and asked to speak to Mr Reresby, but no one of that name worked there; I then asked to speak to Mr Dundas and received the same answer. ‘Can I speak to Mr Ure, then?’ And I tried to pronounce it just as Tomás had done (my English was quite good, but nothing like his, of course). I felt ridiculous saying ‘Iuah’ and then spelling it out just to make sure they would understand what, to me, sounded more like an ejaculation, not that it did me any good, because no one called Ure worked there either. Desperation can bring inspiration, and I suddenly recalled hearing Tomás mention the name ‘Montgomery’, so I asked to speak to Mr Montgomery, although Montgomery could also be a first name, at least in America, except, of course, we weren’t in America. The person on the other end became politely impatient: ‘No, madam, there’s no Mr Montgomery here. Are you sure you’re calling the right number?’ ‘This is the Foreign Office, isn’t it?’ I replied. ‘Mr Nevinson does work there, doesn’t he?’ There was a surprising silence after my first question, as if answering it was neither reasonable nor desirable; and it’s true that whenever anyone answered the phone there, they never gave the name of the institution, but merely a curt ‘Hello’, as if it were a private number. ‘Yes, Mr Nevinson does work here, I’ll put you through to his extension –’ ‘No, you did that before and no one answered,’ I said, interrupting. Then it occurred to me to try another name, that of the Kindeláns’ supposed great friend, Reggie Gathorne, and I had more luck with him, but still not enough. ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Gathorne has been away for a week now, and we don’t know when he’ll be rejoining us.’ So at least the couple had been telling the truth about something, and if a Reggie Gathorne did work there, then it must be the Foreign Office or part of that same ministry. I begged the person to give Mr Nevinson the message that I needed to speak to him as soon as possible. ‘Something very serious has happened. I’m Mrs Nevinson, his wife,’ I added, to give myself a vague air of authority (not that being a wife carries much authority). ‘I should warn you that he, too, has been away for some days, madam,’ said the person on the other end. ‘And we don’t know when he’ll be rejoining us either; I doubt I’ll be able to pass on your message very soon.’ ‘And you don’t know where you can find him, where he is?’ ‘No, madam, I’m sorry, but I don’t have that kind of information.’

  I stood for a long time staring impotently at the telephone. Now and again, I tried the other number, but always without success. The telephonist had said Tomás was away, which suggested that he wasn’t in London. And if he wasn’t in London, then I had no means of locating him, and I really needed to speak to him, to tell him what had happened, and ask him what the hell he was up to and what kind of mess he’d got us into, as well as what his work actually involved, if, that is, they were right, the Kindeláns, whom I did indeed hope never to see again, either in the Jardines de Sabatini or anywhere else. I needed to ask him to arrange matters so that it couldn’t happen again.

  I was still staring at the phone when it rang, half an hour after that whole frustrating experience. I pounced on the receiver. ‘They must have given him the message, it must be Tomás.’ But an English voice asked in English for Mrs Nevinson, that is, for me.

  ‘I’m Ted Reresby,’ the voice said. Right from the start, his tone was relaxed and confiding, nothing like the stiff tones of the person I’d spoken to before. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but it seems you phoned your husband a while ago and then asked for me and for a few other people, and the person you spoke to was quite wrong as regards myself, telling you that I don’t exist. Well, while he was obviously unaware of my existence until a few moments ago, he won’t forget it now. Don’t blame him, though, he’s rather new and doesn’t know everyone here.’ ‘Here’, he said. I would have liked to ask him if ‘here’ was the Foreign Office, so that I could at least be clear about that, but those first words came out in such a torrent that I couldn’t ask anything, and I had to concentrate very hard on trying to understand him, for he spoke in a drawling yet mellifluous voice, not easy for someone only accustomed to listening to diplomats at formal or social events, and the telephone – when you can’t see th
e mouth of the person speaking – only makes understanding even more difficult. ‘Tom isn’t in London,’ he went on, still not allowing me to get a word in edgeways, ‘he’s with a delegation somewhere near Berlin and won’t be back for several days. I hope it will only be a few days, and that no complications arise that will delay his return, but one never knows with these things. They told me you needed to speak to him urgently, which is why I’m returning your call, Mrs Nevinson, in case I can be of any help, since there is currently no way of communicating with Tom.’

  ‘No way of communicating with him?’ I asked at last. ‘How can that be? Can’t you pass a message on to him?’

  ‘No, madam, I’m afraid that’s not possible. The delegation isn’t allowed any contact with the outside world while the negotiations or talks last. That’s how it is sometimes. It’s all slightly absurd, rather extreme. In our defence, I should say that such conditions are usually laid down by the other party. We’re less susceptible to that kind of thing.’

  ‘Are you telling me that the delegation is completely cut off and you can’t contact them for days and days?’

  ‘Not exactly. We can contact the leader of the delegation and he can contact us, but none of its other members are authorised to have any communication with the outside world. We could pass on your problem, your message, to the leader of the delegation, and he might pass that on to Tom, but I’m afraid that could prove counterproductive and possibly troubling, since he could do little or nothing about it while he’s there. But, please, tell me what the problem is, and if it’s a grave or urgent matter, we can see what we could do from here. Have you spoken with the embassy in Madrid?’