Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  ‘Where was he the last time you heard from him? Where did he go? Where was he sent?’

  Tupra spread his hands wide in that universal gesture denoting impotence in the face of the inevitable.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that, not until more time has passed and all this is ancient history. Until we know for sure what has happened.’

  ‘You mean you can’t even tell me that?’ I asked, half-surprised and half-indignant. As tends to happen, my indignation helped me keep my composure. I hadn’t yet assimilated the news, nor could I believe it (I was still in the land of unreality), but, at the same time, I realised that my eyes were filling with tears and my chin was quivering and that, if I wasn’t careful, I would break down in heart-rending sobs that would prevent me from speaking, from holding a conversation, and understanding what this man had to tell me. If I cried, he would feel obliged to put his arms around me, and the English don’t do that kind of thing; at most, he might pat me on the back; then again, he wasn’t a very typical Englishman, his gaze not veiled, but all-absorbing. I was determined not to give in to uncontrollable sobbing, not until I was alone; I bit my lower lip. Tupra seemed a considerate man, albeit cold and efficient. He could not have been clearer: he didn’t want to ruin my hopes or feed them either. He was neither softening the blow nor hardening it. He was telling me the truth, telling me what he knew, what he was authorised to tell me, and I didn’t intend to collapse in a heap in his presence. I imagined he still had things to say, possibly even on practical matters. ‘I think I should have the right to know where he died, if he has died. Or, if he is a prisoner, where he’s being held. Are you going to leave me to speculate on that for the rest of my life? At least tell me if he was sent to the Falklands. He left here just as the war was beginning.’

  He ignored my last question, as if it hadn’t existed.

  ‘Believe me, Mrs Nevinson, I do understand, but Tom wasn’t the only person to be sent where he was sent and where he may still be, against his will or as a precaution, or perhaps simply keeping out of our way. Others are still there, and any leak could put them at risk. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but our general rule is not to trust anyone and not to tell anyone anything. But you won’t be left to speculate about it for the rest of your life, I promise. Sooner or later, we’ll hear one way or another. We won’t find out everything, but enough. And Tom could walk through that door tomorrow, I wouldn’t exclude that as a possibility either. Or, as I said, you might never see him again.’ On the one hand, he wouldn’t allow me to fall into absolute pessimism, and, on the other, he was careful to curtail my optimism. ‘If that is the case, and I very much hope it isn’t, we’ll tell you as much as we can about his disappearance, but we can, alas, say nothing until we’re certain.’

  ‘So what should I do meanwhile? Should I go into mourning or continue to wait? Should I consider myself a widow or still a married woman? Do my children have a father or are they fatherless? How long will it take? Even you don’t know that. I’m not sure you realise just how difficult this is, Mr Tupra. Just how …’ I couldn’t think of the word. ‘Just how unmanageable. How impossible.’

  ‘You can call me Bertram if you like. May I call you Berta?’ Spoken one after another like that, our names sounded absurdly similar. ‘Listen, Bertram.’ ‘Yes, Berta.’ It would almost be better if we didn’t bother.

  ‘Call me what you like,’ I said. At that point, I really didn’t care, and besides, in Spain, everyone addresses everyone else as tú at the first opportunity.

  ‘Everything is manageable, Berta, everything, at least in the long run. Think of the wives of sailors in past centuries, whose husbands were away for years at a time or never came back, their fate forever unknown. Or the wives of soldiers whose bodies were never recovered from the scene of an ambush or from a battlefield, or who might have been deserters relieved to be taken for dead. Or the wives of captives for whom no ransom was paid. Or the wives of kidnap victims. Or of explorers who never returned, whose bodies were never found and whose deaths went unrecorded. It was highly likely, but not certain. Something must have told those women whether they should cling on to hope or abandon it. When and for how long. Something must tell the wives of today, although such cases are far less common. Need, for example, or a lack of need, or a feeling that they’ve had enough, or perhaps a growing sense of detachment from or resentment towards the disappeared husband for having gone off, thus exposing himself to all kinds of dangers, like Ulysses. Even if the man who left was obliged to do so, those feelings of resentment could still arise. So you forget when you want to forget, when you’re ready or when remembering brings no pleasure or consolation and is just a weight that stops you moving forwards or even breathing. You can’t imagine that now, Berta, but you’ll find out. Obviously, it’s a long process, it’s not like an arrow heading straight for the bullseye, there are advances and retreats and times when it wanders off down side streets. Until, that is, you do find out what happened, if you ever do. Then the arrow hits the target and shatters in the air, I suppose.’ ‘This is the death of air,’ I thought. English, of course, makes no distinction between formal and informal modes of address, but I imagined that, had Tupra been speaking to me in Spanish, he would still be addressing me as usted not tú, despite now calling me Berta. ‘As for being a widow,’ he went on, adopting a more administrative tone. ‘The English law varies according to the circumstances and the probabilities, but when a person disappears with no irrefutable, definitive proof of his demise, the usual rule is that before he can be declared officially dead, seven years and a day have to pass since the last known sighting or communication. Only then can his heirs inherit or the widower or widow remarry. Unless there’s been a divorce in absentia, that’s something I haven’t as yet looked into as a possibility, but it might be of interest to you later on. Anyway, after that period, the person is declared legally and to all intents and purposes dead. Yes, death in absentia it’s called. Needless to say, if the disappeared person turns up alive later on, that declaration is, in most cases, deemed invalid.’

  I found this absurd statement unexpectedly interesting. There’s nothing like curiosity and comedy to distract us – if only for an instant – from our sorrows and anxieties.

  ‘In most cases? Does that mean there are cases when someone undeniably alive is still considered to be dead? Even if he’s speaking and breathing, walking and protesting, the law says: “Shut up, you can neither allege nor demand anything because you’re officially dead and it says so on this piece of paper”?’

  Tupra gave a broad, sympathetic smile, and understood at once why I was amused, insofar as I could be in that state of stunned desolation, which overwhelmed everything, apart from that brief exchange.

  ‘You probably haven’t read Balzac’s Colonel Chabert, in which everyone tells the poor wretched colonel that he doesn’t exist, that he’s an impostor, because, according to army records, he fell and perished at the Battle of Eylau, during the Napoleonic Wars. That’s a work of fiction, of course, but bureaucracy can be like that, or, you won’t be surprised to know, even worse. People don’t realise this and think they have inviolable rights and guarantees, but the power of the State must be and is absolute: that’s the only way we can function, in democracies too, whatever claims we make for the separation of powers. There only has to be a change in the law or for new laws to be passed for people to be left without money or work or a home, or to be told they don’t exist; you can be stripped of your nationality and citizenship and be declared an outsider, made stateless, thrown in jail or expelled; you can be declared mad, unfit or dead. People are very rash when they defy us, and very naïve too.’ I picked up on that ‘us’, which had a different meaning from when he had used it before. Then he was referring to MI6 or the all-inclusive SIS, and now he was referring to the omnipotent State that he served and to which he belonged, as Tomás had too, for some time now; I could clearly see Tupra’s influence on him. ‘But what I said ear
lier really means that if the heirs have divided up the inheritance, they won’t be obliged to return it, especially if they’ve already spent it, as they probably will have. Or if the widower or widow has remarried, that second marriage is not automatically invalidated, because everyone acted in good faith and legally, according to a decision made by a judge. Such cases are extremely rare anyway. The Count of Monte Cristo is not the norm – certainly not in England.’ ‘So he reads novels, this fellow Tupra,’ I thought fleetingly. As he spoke, his voice and his tone of voice began to seem familiar, as if this were not the first time I’d heard it. I was watching his soft, fleshy lips, which were moving quickly now, and I was sure that I’d never seen them before, they weren’t the kind of lips you would easily forget. In the midst of my confusion, I became aware that while there was something slightly unpleasant about him, he was also strangely attractive (even when we’re in a state of anguish and distress, we can’t help but notice such things, although without really paying much attention). His unusual face was a magnet, as were his long eyelashes and grey eyes. I think he was taking advantage of my interest to continue distracting me from the main business, or so that I could gradually come to terms with the news, without being overwhelmed by it, that no one had heard anything from my husband for months, not even the people who told him what to do and where to go, and that I might have seen him for the last time on 4 April 1982. ‘The average citizen is convinced that the State protects him, and, normally, that is the case, our key priority, I can vouch for that. What he doesn’t know, though, is that if that same protection demands it or if he puts up any resistance to it (if he strays radically from the straight and narrow), then the State will remove or destroy him. How? It will strip him of everything, and if someone has nothing, then he can do nothing. His goods will be confiscated, any land or property will be expropriated, any money will be seized by the imposition of unexpected taxes or fines, there’s always plenty of room for manoeuvre, all governments and parliaments make sure of that. Whatever they may preach beforehand, they soon change their tune when it’s their turn to be in power and to pass legislation. But let’s not go down that path, I can see I’m alarming you, and yet this all happens for the greater good; in difficult situations, there’s no other choice. Imagine the uproar, the chaos that would ensue if the people were consulted on every vital decision? Everything would grind to a halt, because vital decisions are taken on a daily basis, not just every now and then.’ ‘For the greater good’, that’s what he said. There were moments when he spoke so fast that my English, more passive than active, struggled to keep up. ‘I’ve had a quick look at Spanish law too, the law that would affect you – as regards those presumed dead, I mean – and, if what I’ve seen is correct, then there are some advantages. You don’t have to wait quite so long when it seems clear that the disappeared person has perished. Only two years,’ and he raised two fingers as if giving a V-for-victory sign, entirely inappropriate given the situation, ‘when there’s been a shipwreck or a plane crash in some deserted or uninhabited place, things like that. Or perhaps it was three years.’ This time he raised three fingers. ‘Whichever it is, there’s a clear stipulation that could well apply to us, here it is, in Spanish and translated into English.’ He took two typewritten pages from his jacket pocket, and held out the Spanish version for me to read. ‘This, more or less, is what it says, is that right? “Anyone belonging to an armed contingent, or anyone bound to it in an auxiliary volunteer capacity, or who has participated in a purely informative role, and who has taken part in a campaign and disappeared during said campaign, may be legally declared dead after two years have elapsed’ – he couldn’t resist doing an imitation of Churchill at this point –‘ “calculated from the date of the signing of a peace treaty, or, if no such treaty has been signed, from the date of the official declaration of the end of the war.” Good grief,’ he said, ‘bureaucratic prose is the same old gobbledegook the world over. You’re grateful if you can at least understand it.’

  I had understood it, despite the convoluted language, which is why I said:

  ‘The only recent war is the Falklands War, and you haven’t told me yet if Tomás was sent there or not.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he replied, still without answering my question. ‘In order to have you legally declared a widow as soon as possible, we will state that he was in the Falklands and disappeared while on duty there. On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘under Spanish law, you have to wait longer to inherit.’ He took a third piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Yes, here it is: “Only once five years have elapsed following the official declaration of death,” ’ and this time he held up five fingers, ‘ “no legacies will be handed over nor can the heirs dispose freely (in the form of gifts, donations, etc.) of any goods or chattels thus bequeathed to them.” Well, the cessation of hostilities in the Falklands War took place on 20 June 1982, so, according to that statement, on 20 June next year, in about eight months’ time, Tom could be declared legally dead in Spain. And I don’t think our country would raise any objections; in fact, we’d make sure they didn’t. The only problem, Berta, is that you wouldn’t inherit until 1989, five years on. But don’t worry, we’ve thought of that too. You can’t be expected to live on the little you earn from the university, that wouldn’t be fair, not even if Tom has deserted, and until we find out one way or another, we’ll assume he hasn’t.’

  Everything he said seemed to me to show an extraordinary lack of tact. Or perhaps not: perhaps it was a delicate way – delicate because it was so aseptic, measured and pragmatic – of telling me to abandon all hope and stop waiting; to give Tom up as dead and never buried. My eyes again filled with tears, but I didn’t want Tupra to see this. I got to my feet, turned and went over to the balcony, where I rested one hand on my forehead and cheekbone, the better to control my tears (three fingers on my forehead and one thumb on one cheekbone), and looked down at the ugly statue in the square beyond the trees; I knew the inscription by heart: ‘On the initiative of Spanish women this monument was erected to the glory of the soldier Luis Noval. Spain – never forget those who died for you.’ It was dated 1912, and I’d never bothered to find out anything more about that soldier, whose effigy had enjoyed the support of, among others, Queen Victoria Eugenia and the writer, Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose name appeared on the inscription as the ‘Condesa de Pardo Bazán’. Nor did I know in which war he had died, possibly in the Cuban War of Independence, fourteen years earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, where Tomás had also perhaps died: ‘down the sea’s throat or to an illegible stone’. I’d never really taken any interest, and our country is very good at forgetting and allowing its inscriptions and stones to fade and quickly become illegible, something it does tirelessly, not caring in the least who dies for it and having no concept of gratitude, perhaps finding such a concept merely irritating. Luis Noval is a shadow, an empty name, a spectre; he may have a monument erected to him, but no one recognises his name and no one notices him. And Tomás would be even more of a shadow, a ghost, neither living nor dead, who wouldn’t even be remembered by his children – and who, then, would remember him, if they did not? A blade of grass, a speck of dust, a lifting mist, a snow that falls but doesn’t settle, a handful of ashes, an insect, a cloud of smoke that finally disperses.

  ‘I wonder where his body is?’ I thought, and struggled to hold back my tears. ‘No one will have mourned him and no one will have closed his eyes, perhaps no one will have buried him either, or perhaps only hastily and on the run, making sure it didn’t look like a grave, leaving the earth carefully flattened and with no gravestone, of course, hiding him away so that no one will find him, if anyone should ever want to.’ I stopped thinking for a moment, because Tupra was speaking to me again, respecting neither my silence nor my back turned to him, he probably didn’t want me to think too deeply or to abandon myself to grief, he wanted my mind to be occupied with practical matters, with legalisms and curiosities.

  ‘Loo
k, Berta,’ he said, ‘here, in Spanish law, it specifies what would happen if the dead man were to return later on. Listen to this: “If, after being declared legally dead, the disappeared person should appear and his existence be proven, he can recover all his property and goods, but only in the state in which he finds them at the time of his appearance.” I assume they mean “reappear” and “reappearance”. “He will also have the right,” it goes on, “to be given the amount obtained from the sale of his goods or to be given the goods that accrued with said money. However, he may only reclaim the fruits or profits earned from his goods from the time of his appearance.” Again, it should say “reappearance”, I think; that would be more exact,’ he added punctiliously, giving the piece of paper a disapproving flick. ‘In short, if his heirs have spent everything, he won’t see a penny of his former fortune, there’ll be nothing for him to recover. What will he live on, the poor reappeared man (or woman of course)? He’ll not only be dead, he’ll be dispossessed as well. Will he live on the charity of friends? I’m not sure friendship lasts that long; beyond death, I mean. Or on the charity of his offspring? They, of course, might feel horrified, even threatened, to see him resuscitated, and, deep in their hearts, might wish him back in his grave. It would seem that the State has no intention of compensating him in any way, or of giving him a pension. I would say that someone who returns after having been deemed to be dead for years, should, at the very least, be treated like a retiree, or, indeed, better.’