Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  ‘And yet you have a child by her,’ said Mr Southworth, taking advantage of that pause. ‘How did that happen?’ He was at least intrigued now, crossing and uncrossing his legs as a sign that he was interested, creating waves with the skirts of his gown.

  ‘Well, after some time had passed, she played a trick on me. Yes, a trick. However careful you are, if a woman wants to become pregnant, she will. As long as she’s fertile, of course, and I already knew that I was. And so she broke the news to me one day (“I don’t know how it happened, it was an accident”), and then I had no choice but to move in with her, because of the child. It wouldn’t have been fair to leave her to cope alone when we were both living in the same town. Oh, I suggested she have an abortion, but how could she possibly agree to that, when she’d deliberately wanted to get pregnant? Had planned it. I was definitely not amused, but it didn’t really change anything, and, in a way, had its advantages: the more normal my life seemed to be, the less danger I was in, and what could be more normal than moving to a town, finding a girlfriend and having a child with her? What could be more commonplace, something anyone could do? I still resisted marriage, though; I fobbed her off with various excuses. She became suspicious of my silences, the absence of any concrete past, because my past remained a mystery to her. I had to improvise a little to fill in the gaps, inventing episodes I would sometimes have difficulty remembering later on. In general, though, I wasn’t much of a talker, and so I got by. And she put up with it; she was forgetful and she forgot.’

  ‘Why did you resist marriage? As you yourself said: you were someone else and you were single, and, when the time came, you could always make yourself scarce, tomar las de Villadiego. With no qualms, I mean.’ Here Mr Southworth revealed the Hispanist in him, because all Hispanists have a liking for the kind of colloquial expressions they’ve read in books and which almost no one actually uses.

  ‘I was someone else because I had to be, but I was also me. I’d been many people in those twenty years, that was, in part, my job, but I’ve always been me as well as all those other people, and I was married to Berta. That probably won’t make much sense to you: I’ve been with quite a number of women, sometimes because I liked them, sometimes out of loneliness or desperation and sometimes because it suited me, because it made things easier or provided me with a cover or with certain information. But if you don’t maintain some symbolic loyalty, if I can put it like that, you’re entirely lost and you forget who you are, who you really are. And however many anomalous situations you may experience in your life, you always hope to go back to being that person one day. That identity can become very shaky when you pretend to be someone else for a long time and settle into a borrowed life. As I said, you need something symbolic to cling to, anything more is almost impossible. I don’t know, it’s like the exile who refuses to change his nationality even though, for the last thirty years, he’s lived outside his own country, a country that abused him and threw him out. I know several such examples.’ He raised his glass for more wine, and added, as if not wanting Mr Southworth to take him for a sentimentalist or a fool, ‘Oh, I would have married Meg if I’d had to, if my survival had depended on it. It’s not as if I’d vowed never to marry again. But it wasn’t necessary and I didn’t have to. I just preferred not to. Fortunately, no one nowadays frowns on couples who live together without getting married, even in a provincial town, even in a school. Anyway, I managed. The little girl was born and everything followed its normal course. Totally normal. I felt safer with each day that passed; each day took me one day nearer to being able to climb out of that hole, however slowly things moved. That, at least, is what I told myself.’

  ‘But Berta was officially a widow,’ said Mr Southworth. He wasn’t sure whether to pour Tom any more wine, but he could hardly refuse him either. The drink seemed to have no effect on Tom, who, if he was accustomed to beginning so early in the day, was clearly a seasoned drinker, or else an alcoholic, because some alcoholics can remain completely unaffected even after several drinks. ‘According to you, she could have got married whenever she liked. Your loyalty, as you call it, would have counted for nothing. Didn’t that give you pause for thought?’

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly. I’m me and she is she, and she’s been told that I’ve been dead for years, which is quite a different matter. But she hasn’t got married, not as far as I know. That’s what Tupra told me anyway, and he checks up on her regularly. Not that I entirely trust him. On the contrary, after what happened two weeks ago, I don’t trust him an inch. He’s capable of anything, but he would gain nothing by lying to me about that. He’s someone who really does have no scruples, no qualms. He’s better than I am at our job, at what is no longer my job. I bet you he’s been married several times, under his many different names. Even that grotesque fellow Blakeston might have done the same when he was a field agent. There are plenty of women desperate to find a man, any man. As many as there are men desperate to find a woman, any woman. They usually end up getting together, and then no one’s happy.’ He was suddenly uncertain as to whether he’d already mentioned Blakeston by name, because he added: ‘As I mentioned before, Blakeston was my other recruiting officer. The one disguised as Montgomery.’

  Mr Southworth didn’t reply, but said:

  ‘I see. And now what? What was it that happened two weeks ago and that brought you here?’

  And life did continue for the person who had been Tomás Nevinson, brought up in Madrid, and who had studied, first, at the British Institute in Calle Martínez Campos, and, later, at the Studio in Calle Miguel Ángel, a lad from Chamberí, who, now, at forty, was living in a medium-sized English town with a dental nurse called Meg and a little girl called Val or Valerie. In a way, he enjoyed that quiet, monotonous life, it was a relief after all his vicissitudes and endless wanderings, and who doesn’t now and then long to retreat to one of those towns where you can feel the hours passing and become a provincial gentleman with methodical habits and no hidden secrets, plain Mr Rowland, the name he’d been given for his time in hiding and in flight, for that vital period of exile.

  Tom Nevinson loved the little girl right from the start, indeed, he totally adored her, especially when she was a few months old and began to smile at him with something resembling consciousness or at least a kind of animal recognition, rather than just vaguely making a face at no one in particular. He didn’t hold back his feelings either, even though he knew that, sooner or later, he would have to part with her, possibly never to see her again, or perhaps precisely because of that. ‘While it lasts, I have to make the most of this,’ he told himself. ‘What does it matter if I leave no trace, no memory in her, that will be tomorrow, and today is today, and it’s today that matters, the only thing that has ever mattered to me. I’ve lived my whole life from day to day and from night to night. She’ll leave both trace and memory in me, I’ll preserve those images and the memory of her soft, smooth touch. I had so little to do with Guillermo and Elisa, and by now they’ll be really grown up; I was present so rarely in their early years, and, given that I’m marooned here now, imprisoned, I’m not going to waste the years I have with Val. And even though she won’t remember, no one will be able to take her first love story from her, so that it can be said of her: “Elle avait eu, comme une autre, son histoire d’amour” – even if she turns out to be a stern, cold woman, or a soulless creature like me, even if she drives people away, for it’s impossible to know how a child will turn out, they can prove very disappointing and it might be best not to see that, or so I tell myself as some sort of consolation. How mean-spirited it is, though, that comme une autre – “like anyone else”. Mr Southworth had murmured those words in his almost perfect French, on my last morning of freedom, my last morning of innocence. And then he’d added: “We don’t always know about other people’s love stories, not even when we’re the object, the goal, the aim.” I’ve had plenty of opportunities since to find out how true that is, and to suffer the consequences.’
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br />   And so Tom would eagerly await going home after school. As soon as the child could walk, as soon as she discovered speed, she would race towards the front door the moment she heard his key in the lock, stumbling, falling, getting to her feet again with incredible determination, levering herself up on her tiny hands, until she recovered her ephemeral balance and excitedly staggered onward, to launch herself into his arms. He would pick her up and throw her into the air a couple of times and catch her, both of them laughing, while her mother stood watching, concerned that her daughter might fall, but pleased to see the two of them together. It was a pretty good life really, almost a blessing in comparison with the other lives he’d known. He sometimes wondered if, unbeknown to him, he had other children elsewhere, another girl or boy of another nationality, speaking another language, or living on that other island, brought up by his enemies, and taught to hate people like him, indoctrinated. He shrugged: if there were any children, they weren’t his responsibility, even though he might have casually engendered them. Val wouldn’t be his responsibility either, when he left. Children soon forget, only grown-ups remember.

  At the same time, though, Tomás despaired. Patiently and silently, like people who wait hopelessly, knowing there’s no escape: those who must wait to be rescued. When Val wasn’t there, when she was at nursery or asleep, he felt each passing hour weighing on him. The quietness, the greyness, the repetitiveness, the slowness, the feeling of being useless and marginalised, of being cut off from what moved the world, from everything that was meaningful – of being expendable and replaceable – all these things tormented and consumed him. He didn’t delude himself: he knew the day would come when he would have to retire completely, like so many of his colleagues and all his predecessors since the days of Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, since 1909, and that day was not far off either; the clandestine life eats away at body and soul and corrodes your personality, yet it’s addictive too, and almost everyone finds it hard to give up. Yes, he was tired, and had only realised just how tired when he stopped, but he also still felt young, forty is no age at all in other fields, in most fields. He didn’t accept that his present enforced retirement would be definitive. He was too involved in his work to comply with an order to stop altogether. That order had not yet been given, and so, despite the indifferent passing and passing of time, he could still fantasise about leaving there and returning to his old life. Even if that meant sitting at a desk and dreaming up strategies and tactics, as was doubtless increasingly the case with Tupra. He’d be quite happy planning operations, although it was true that these were fewer in number since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. MI6 had been left feeling somewhat vacant, in a vacuum, and certain agents were already offering their services to the private sector, to multinationals, political parties, big foreign companies. Marooned in his adoptive town, he had missed those two great historic events, but he simultaneously consoled himself with and brooded on the fact that he had in some way contributed to them, except, of course, no one would remember him now.

  Alarm bells only rang once during that period of endless stability in the provinces, and that was at the beginning of his time there, before he’d even met Meg and when there was no hint of either disintegration or fall. A woman turned up at school asking for Mr James Rowland, which was how he was known there, although those who were allowed to invariably called him Jim, though not, of course, his pupils; this was before the days of false camaraderie between teacher and pupils. He was in a class at the time, and the caretaker had told her that he couldn’t be disturbed. Tom had another lesson immediately after that one, and when the woman insisted, the caretaker went to his classroom as the first lot of pupils were leaving and the next lot arriving, and told him that a woman was waiting to speak to him at reception, that she hadn’t wanted to come back at a more convenient hour, but had preferred to wait.

  ‘Did she say what her name was?’ asked Tom, or, rather, Mr Rowland.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, you see. First, she said it was Vera Something-or-other, and I didn’t quite catch it, because it was a foreign name. And she has an accent too.’

  ‘What kind of accent?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Mr Rowland. I couldn’t tell. She repeated the name, and when I still didn’t understand, she added that now she was also Mrs Rowland. If you don’t mind my saying, Mr Rowland, I was unaware that you had a wife.’

  ‘And I don’t, Will. You were quite right.’

  ‘So she isn’t your wife.’

  ‘Of course not, Will. Tell me, what does she look like? How old is she?’

  ‘About thirty. Pretty well dressed for a foreigner. I mean she’s not like one of them immigrants. Not exactly proper, though, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I mean, she could be an actress or a television presenter, that kind of thing. Not that I’ve ever seen one off-screen, of course. She’s wearing a lot of perfume too. My room will stink of the stuff for days. It’s a nice smell, mind, a bit strong, but nice.’ He said this as if it were somehow Mr Rowland’s responsibility. ‘What shall I tell her? To wait another hour? It’s a bit awkward having her perched on a stool there. I don’t know what to say to her. I could give her my chair, I suppose.’

  ‘No, tell her I’ve left and won’t be back until tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you sure? She seems dead set on seeing you today.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. It must be some mistake. She must have got the wrong Rowland.’ It wasn’t an unusual surname by any means, nor was it that common either. There were thirty or so Rowlands in the London directory, and six or seven in Oxford. That’s why he’d chosen it; a Smith or a Brown sounded less credible.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Rowland, and I know it’s none of my business, but wouldn’t it be best if you spoke to her?’

  ‘I haven’t got time today. If you wouldn’t mind, Will, would you just do as I ask?’

  Tom didn’t like the sound of this at all, he found it highly suspicious that someone should have tracked him down in that town so soon, when his new identity was known to so few. MI6 had its moles as well, they were everywhere, and, at the time, he still felt in great danger, a feeling that didn’t begin to go away until a good two years of absolute, excessive peace, boredom, routine and waiting had passed, a wait that had no fixed term. At the end of the day, he went cautiously over to Will’s office, and, seeing him sitting alone on his chair, he peered round the door and asked:

  ‘Has my fake wife left? Did she say anything more?’

  ‘She asked where you lived, so that she could visit you. “I’m not authorised to give you that information,” I told her. What about a phone number? “No, sorry, no phone number either.” She said she was staying at the Jarrold and asked if you’d be kind enough to drop by when you finish work.’ The Jarrold wasn’t the best hotel in town, but the second best, and the most traditional, comfortable and old-fashioned. ‘I don’t think she believed that you’d left for the day. If you don’t go and see her at the hotel, she’ll come back here tomorrow.’

  ‘All right. And thanks for everything, Will.’

  No, he didn’t like this situation at all. Even if it was a mistake, the caretaker was now aware of that peculiar visitor, which meant that his colleagues would know about it too, possibly the head teacher and his pupils, and the first commandment was to go unnoticed, to avoid giving rise to any gossip. And since he hadn’t asked Will to keep the matter to himself, because that would only have made him more curious and ask more questions, there was nothing to stop him commenting on it to someone else. Such tiny novelties and unexpected titbits were meat and drink to him.

  Tomás felt he couldn’t risk meeting that woman, because, for all he knew, she might shoot him dead the moment she set eyes on him, even in a public place and with witnesses, it wouldn’t be the first time: a settling of accounts regardless of the consequences; what mattered was that the account was well and truly settled
. It wasn’t advisable to do nothing either and have that Vera Something-or-other or Mrs Rowland coming to the school day after day, when she might not always behave with such discretion, and, besides, it would be impossible to avoid her for ever. So he went back to his flat, picked up his Charter Arms Undercover – which they’d allowed him to take into exile because it was small and easy to hide – slipped it into his overcoat pocket and headed for the Jarrold. It was best to clear up that business as soon as possible, despite the uneasy feeling he had about it.

  He asked for Mrs Rowland at reception. Still holding the phone, the receptionist asked who he should say was calling.

  ‘Mr Rowland.’

  ‘The lady says you should go straight up. Room 38, third floor.’

  ‘No, tell her I’d rather wait down here. I’ll be in that room over there.’ There were two rooms, one on either side of the foyer, and he indicated the one that was busiest.