Your Face Tomorrow 3

by Javier Marías

  I briefly regretted that the plane had no low, sensationalist rag like The Sun on board, The Sun belonging, of course, to the same Antipodean empire as The Times and being therefore more given to scandal, moralizing and rumor: such newspapers would be rubbing their hands with glee and prepared to risk breaking any law if it meant selling more copies. I had a glance at El País, just in case, but its treatment of the matter was sober and concise and revealed nothing more than its London colleagues claimed to know. My regret was short-lived or was, I should say, merely a moment of naiveté, because I didn't need to know the details or the circumstances or the background or the motives, or even the psychological explanations being pondered by journalists or whoever. It was clear to me that Tupra had projected onto that idol the maximum biographical horror, had plunged him into narrative disgust as if into a butt of disgusting wine, had lit a torch for him and inscribed him in letters of fire on the list of those afflicted by the K-M or Killing-Murdering or Kennedy-Mansfield curse, as it was known in our little group with no name and who knows, by a process of mimesis, in some other loftier place; that Reresby or Ure or Dundas had condemned Dearlove not just to a few years in prison, which, for someone as famous as Dearlove, with such a sordid crime behind him, would be a slow incessant hell—I mean slower and more incessant than for other people—unless, and this was the best-case scenario, those years were interrupted by a swift death at the hands of other prisoners; he had condemned him also to seeing his entire life story and achievements lost beneath a quick lick of grey or off-white or off-color paint, its whole trajectory and construction plunged into immediate oblivion, condemned him to knowing that whenever anyone mentioned or read or heard his name, he or she would always instantly associate it with that final crime. Mothers would even use his name to warn their unwary offspring and, even worse, the message they gave would become distorted and exaggerated over time: 'Be careful who you mix with and who you go around with, you can't trust anyone. Remember what Dickie Dearlove did to that young Russian lad—he took him to his house and slit him open.' And I was as sure of this as I was that Tupra would already have in his possession a recording, a film of these events about which the press were now hypothesizing and which were known to almost no one else; it would doubtless show the whole sequence, from the point where the young Bulgarian, R.D, arrived at Dearlove's house up to the furious, fearsome moment when the latter stuck a spear in him, causing his instant death, although it must have taken two blows—one in the throat and the other in the chest, or possibly the other way round—to silence him completely and put an end to him; and then, perhaps, still blinded by rage and gripped by a childish sense of triumph (a very shortlived emotion and one that he would deplore for the rest of his days), searching the young man's body for the cell phone or tiny camera with which he would have taken his compromising photos and which Dearlove had failed to find when he playfully frisked him on arrival, perhaps because Tupra had told the boy he wouldn't need to carry a phone or camera because a camera would have been hidden somewhere in the house prior to that amorous or commercial assignation, like the gun that was famously waiting for Al Pacino in a restaurant restroom in the first episode of that great masterpiece in three parts, each part better than the last.

  Tupra wouldn't need to make use of that tape or DVD (he hadn't, on that occasion, recorded and kept it for future use) in order to persuade Dearlove later on to do or not do something; the important thing had been to make Dearlove aware of just one of the deceptions of which he was the victim and of the irreparable act he had committed in response, so irreparable and unconcealable that his punishment would not be long in coming. Tupra would keep that video simply in order to have it and to watch it when he was alone or to revel in the perfect execution of his plan, the prize item in his collection. It wouldn't be of any further use to him, given that the main deed had been revealed as soon as it was done: Dearlove had done the deed, and the whole world knew about it. He had killed a young man with a spear.

  In the final analysis, though, the person who had instigated that killing was me. Or perhaps not exactly: I had invented, conceived, described or dictated it, imagined the mise-en-scene. I had given Tupra the idea—no one is ever fully aware of how dangerous it is to give other people ideas, and it happens all the time, at all hours and in all places—and I couldn't help wondering how many more of my interpretations or translations might have had consequences of which I knew nothing, how many and which ones. I had spent a long time passing judgment on a daily basis and with ever greater ease and unconcern, listening to voices and looking at faces, in the flesh or hidden in the station-studio or on video, saying who could be trusted and who could not, who would kill and who would allow himself to be killed and why, who would betray and who would remain loyal, who would lie and who would meet with failure or with only average success in life, who irritated me and who aroused my pity, who was a poseur and who I warmed to, and what probabilities each individual carried in his veins, just like a novelist who knows that whatever his characters say or tell, whatever is attributed to them or whatever they are made to do, will go no further than his novel and will harm no one, because, however real they may seem, they will continue to be a fiction and will never interfere with anyone real (with anyone in his right mind, that is). But that was not my case: I wasn't using pen and paper to write about those who have never existed or trod the earth or traversed the world, I was describing and deciphering flesh-and-blood people and pontificating and making predictions about them, and I saw now that regardless of whether I was right or wrong, what I said could have disastrous consequences and determine their fate if placed in the hands of someone like Tupra, who, on this occasion, had not restricted himself to being only Sir Punishment or Sir Thrashing, but Sir Death and Sir Cruelty and, possibly, Sir Vengeance. And I had not been his instrument, but something less common and perhaps worse, his inspiration, an innocent whisper in his ear, an imprudent and unwitting Iago. I didn't care nor was I particularly interested in what grudge he bore Dearlove or if he had laid that trap for him—my trap—on his own initiative or as part of some outlandish State mission or on the well-paid orders of some private private individual. That was the least of it. What troubled me most was the thought that he had put into practice my plan, which wasn't a plan at all, and that in order to ensure its success, he had shown no qualms about sacrificing the life of a young man: 'Strange to leave even one's own first name behind,' indeed, and the victim didn't even have a name, only the initials R.D Worryingly or improbably, I hadn't until then noticed the most serious implication of all and—as I realized at once, with the three newspapers unfolded on my lap in that plane—the one that would torment me for the rest of my life. And however tenuous I tried to make and succeeded in making that link later on, and however tenuous it did in fact become—for that is what would happen, it would seem to me remote and accidental, on my part at least, and my feelings of responsibility would diminish, and it would all seem like a dream, and with luck I would deceive myself entirely and make it disappear, especially when the last stubborn rim was finally erased and I was able to say to myself one day: 'But that was in another country'—that young Russian man who did not even know of my existence, just as I had known nothing of his while it lasted, had died because of my prediction or hypothesis or fantasy, because of what I had said and reported, and now, in my head, I would always have the words: 'For I am myself my own fever and pain.'

  The first thing I did when I walked through the front door of the apartment, which, for a while, came to be my home, ingenuously furnished by an Englishwoman I never met, was to dial Tupra's home number. It was the weekend and no one would be at the building with no name, at least in theory, for I knew I wasn't the only one who went there out of office hours, to finish off some task or report or to rummage around or investigate. As had happened when I phoned him from Madrid, a woman's voice answered. I uttered the name I found repellent to use, Bertie, in order to show my familiarity with him—not th
at I needed to; my knowing his home number was indication enough.

  'He's out of London at the moment,' the voice said. 'May I ask who's calling?' I didn't have his cell phone number, which Tupra guarded jealously, and, besides, he was of the opinion that everything could wait 'as used to happen in the old days.'

  'Jack Deza,' I said, and I unintentionally pronounced the 'z' as a Spaniard would, having got used to doing so again while in Spain, it would have sounded like 'Daetha' or 'Deatha' to an English ear. 'I work with him, and it's very important. Would you mind giving me his cell phone number? I've just got back from Madrid and I have something urgent and of great interest to tell him.'

  'No, I'm sorry, I don't think I can. He's the only one who can do that,' replied the woman. And she added slightly impertinently, which made me suspect that she was Beryl, although I hadn't spoken to her for long enough at Wheeler's supper to be able to recognize her voice, which wasn't particularly young, although not old either: 'If you don't have it, it must be because he didn't consider it necessary.'

  'Are you Beryl?' I asked, at the risk of causing my boss some domestic or conjugal upset if she wasn't. Not that I cared any more; he would soon cease to be my boss—I had made my decision. Or almost, nothing is sure until it's over and done with.

  'Why do you ask?' was her reply. And in a tone of voice that seemed half-stern and half-mocking, she said: 'You don't need to know who I am.'

  'Perhaps Tupra has forbidden Beryl, if she is Beryl and she must be,' I thought, 'from telling anyone that they're an item again, still less that they're living together, or perhaps they prefer to think of themselves like that, rather than as married, enjoying the clandestine nature of their situation.' I remembered her long legs and her unusual smell, pleasant and very sexual, which were perhaps the things that drew Tupra back to her again and again; sometimes our weaknesses are for the simplest of things, the things we cannot give up. I was about to say: 'If you are Beryl, we've met before. I'm a friend of Sir Peter Wheeler's. We were introduced at his house some time ago now' I resisted, however, thinking that if I said any more, it would only make matters worse.

  'I apologize, I didn't mean to be impertinent,' I said. 'Could you perhaps tell me when Bertie will be back?'

  'I don't know exactly, but I imagine that if you work with him, you'll see him in the office on Monday. I assume he'll be there.'

  This was a way of telling me not to phone him again at home on a weekend. I thanked her and hung up; I would have to wait. I opened the window to air the apartment after so many days away, quickly unpacked my bag, did a little dusting, examined the accumulated mail, and then, when evening was coming on and I didn't really know what else to do—when you've just arrived home, life lacks its normal rhythm—I went over to the window and saw my neighbor opposite dancing, beyond the trees whose tops filled the center of that square: nothing had changed—why should it, time deceives us when we go off traveling, it always seems longer than it was. His usual two women friends were with him, the white woman and the black or mulatto woman, a well-matched trio, the women must be each other's ġe-bryd-guma, with him as their link, another similarity with Custardoy, who enjoyed taking two women to bed with him at the same time, although not, I think, with Luisa—where would Custardoy have gone with his shattered hand, where would he really have gone, it was no affair of mine and I didn't care, just as long as he met my conditions and kept away from her and, most important of all, never told her of my intervention. The three dancers were performing some very fast steps, a kind of flamenco-style stamping or perhaps it was tap—I couldn't guess what loud music he would be playing in his living room on a Saturday—because they each had their right arm raised to hold something in place on their respective shoulders, some small and apparently living moving object, and this time I couldn't resist picking up my binoculars and when I managed to focus, I saw to my amazement that each of them did, in fact, have a very tiny dog draped around their shoulders, now I don't know anything about the different brands or, rather, breeds of dog, but the man's dog was snub-nosed and hairy, and the women's were more like rats, with pointed snouts, one of those scrawny dogs with a crest or bun or fringe or toupee on their heads, disgusting creatures whatever they were. The dogs certainly didn't look as if they belonged to them and I wondered where they would have got them from, perhaps they'd hired them especially in order to perform their eccentric dance, but whatever the truth of the matter, the poor creatures must have been feeling horribly dizzy, or indeed positively upset and desperate; the dancers' tapping would feel to them like a permanent earthquake or something similar. It was to be hoped that no member of an animal protection society, which are so fierce and so active in England, spotted what my neighbors were up to, because they'd doubtless be reported for the torture, harassment and bewilderment of small defenseless beasts. 'They must be mad,' I thought, 'they must think there's some special merit in being able to dance and, at the same time, balance a living being on their shoulders; one false move, and a dog could go flying off, hurled against a wall or a window.' I stood watching them for a few minutes until they all stopped abruptly amid urgent gestures of displeasure and alarm: the white woman's little dog had peed on her, spraying her face and hair, and because this had happened in the middle of some particularly frenetic stamping, it had sprayed the other two as well. Finding itself the object of such frenzied movements, the poor dog had doubtless judged that incontinence was its last line of defense. They released all three mutts—who tottered off—and began quickly and disgustedly taking off their soiled clothes, and just as the man was about to remove his elegant polo shirt, he looked straight across at my window and saw me. I immediately hid my binoculars and took two steps back, ashamed to be caught spying. However, they didn't seem angry at all, even though the two women had by then stripped down to their bras, a situation made worse—or better—by the fact that the mulatta wasn't wearing one. As on the previous occasion when they had spotted me, they waved cheerfully, beckoning me to come over. I had felt ashamed on that occasion too, but had managed to see an advantage in that reciprocal visual contact and thought that if one particular night or day proved truly desolate: I at least had the possibility of going in search of company and dancing on the other side of the square, in that happy carefree household whose occupant resisted all my deductions and conjectures, and inhibited or eluded my interpretative faculties, something that happened so infrequently that it bestowed on him a slight air of mystery. And the prospect of that hypothetical visit, that possible future contact, had made me feel lighter and less vulnerable, as if it provided a kind of safety net. That day could not have been more desolate, a whole empty Sunday stretched ahead of me until I could speak to Tupra, one of those desolate Sundays 'exiled from the infinite' or 'banni de l'infini,' as I believe Baudelaire once wrote and as English Sundays tend to be; I knew them well from many years before, from the first time I had lived there, in Oxford, and I knew that Sundays in England aren't just ordinary dull Sundays, the same the world over, which demand that one simply tiptoe through without disturbing them or paying them the least attention, they are vaster and slower and more burdensome than anywhere else I know. So perhaps the moment had arrived to take advantage of the safety net offered by that jovial trio; what's more, the women had no compunction about showing themselves to me, especially the one I had always preferred and who had the most to show. I hesitated for a moment about whether to go downstairs, across the square and up to that other apartment, but instantly dismissed the idea. 'No, now it makes even less sense than ever,' I thought, 'in a few weeks or a month, at most two, I probably won't be living here or looking out on this square any more, and they will become merely a pleasant memory that will gradually fade. And now, alas, I can't help but interpret my dancer, because I can't help associating him with Custardoy and seeing an affinity between the two.' And so, smiling, I went back over to the window and wagged my forefinger at them to tell them 'No.' Then I opened my hand and raised it slightly in a frien
dly gesture, my way of saying 'Thank you' and perhaps also 'Goodbye.'

  I shut the window and came back into the room. I decided to go out to a nearby grocery store and buy a few basic things to fill up the nearly empty fridge; the store also sold magazines and newspapers, but I no longer wanted to buy a copy of The Sun or any other paper of that ilk; and when I returned, I chose not to turn on the TV, sure that some program, if not most, would be discussing the horrible crime of Dr. Dearlove, former odontologist, now transformed into the new Hyde who could never go back to being plain Dr. Jekyll: he would be a lascivious murderer from now until the Final Judgment, at which, in other times—the times of steadfast faith—people would have expected a Bulgarian or Russian boy called Danev or Deyanov, Dimitrov or Dondukov to confront him and accuse him with the bitter words of someone who died too young. Or perhaps he would address Tupra or even me. I preferred not to know too much, about him or about Dearlove, mainly because I didn't need to and because it would only increase my sense of sadness. I already knew enough, and the press would be full of ghoulish, misleading speculations. What no one would know was that there was someone behind it all, an expert on narrative disgust or horror and on the Kennedy-Mansfield complex and its all too effective curse, and that the murder had nothing to do with chance or a bad night or a moment of mental derangement. Danev or Dondukov could no longer tell who had hired him or how, nor what he had been hired to do, and I was in no position to prove anything. Nor, indeed, was I even considering the possibility.