Your Face Tomorrow

by Javier Marías

  ‘But if this man won’t even write off the debt of a defenseless old man,’ I said to Pérez Nuix after we had both fallen silent for a few seconds; I had rested my right cheek on my fist while I listened to her, and I was still in that same position; and I realized that she had done the same while she was talking to me, both of us in that identical posture, like an old married couple who unconsciously imitate each other’s gestures,‘ and if you believe him capable of brutal acts and if that’s what you most fear about him in your father’s case; and if he’s not the dissembling type, as you said a little while ago (“I know this, I know him,” you said), then I don’t see how I could possibly persuade Tupra not to see what is glaringly obvious. Maybe you’re attributing to me gifts I don’t possess, or too much influence, or else you take Bertram for a scatterbrain and a greenhorn, which I find hard to believe. He’s far more experienced than I am, not to mention more knowledgeable and more perceptive. Probably even more than you, more experienced, I mean.’ I made this unnecessary clarification, thinking of Tupra’s own views on her abilities, at least according to Wheeler, and also because I didn’t want to downgrade her. She didn’t, however, pick up the indirect compliment.

  ‘No, you haven’t fully understood me, Jaime,’ she replied, again with that instantly suppressed note of desperation or exasperation. ‘I didn’t explain myself properly when I said that. I’ve been with Incompara, I’ve met him a couple of times now, to see what I could get out of him or what could be done for my father, to try and calm him down and gain time, to see what he’s interested in and to see if I have some bargaining chip in my hand I wasn’t aware of, and it turns out I do have one. If you will help me. It’s true, he’s not the dissembling type. By which I mean that you can tell at once that he’ll have no scruples he can’t set aside if he needs to. And that he’s probably brutal about it. Not personally perhaps (I can’t imagine him beating anyone up himself), but in the orders he might give and the decisions he might take. There’s his rigidity about any agreements he makes, the obsessive importance he gives to obligations being met, in a way he’s a stickler for the rules, although that might just be an act he’s putting on for my benefit to justify his intransigence in my affair. He only cares about other people meeting their obligations, of course, not about meeting his own. A characteristic he shares with far too many people nowadays, never have so many eyes been so contented to wear their beams with pride.’ She didn’t use the Spanish word ‘vigas’ here, but the English ‘beams’; this happened very rarely, but it did happen now and then; as she herself said, she was, after all, English. ‘But none of these things is necessarily bad or negative or off-putting in a prospective colleague. On the contrary, and that’s precisely why he’s used by people like Mr. Vickers, an honorable man who simply doesn’t want to bother with or know anything about the confusing or unpleasant details. Bertie will, of course, see all of that in Incompara, and you won’t say anything to contradict it, because you’ll observe that too and there would no point in arguing over something so obvious. No doubt about it, Incompara is a frightening guy (if he wasn’t, my situation wouldn’t be so serious), and in that respect it’s not a matter of him dissembling, that would be extremely hard for him to do. I’m not really asking you to lie about anything very much, Jaime, especially when there would be no point. There’s no point to any lie unless it’s believable. Well, unless it’s believed. Forgive me for insisting so much on this, but while I’m really not asking you for very much, I would gain enormously.’

  ‘What would you gain exactly?’

  ‘Vanni Incompara would be willing to write off the entire debt in exchange for this.’

  ‘In exchange for what exactly?’ I asked, repeating the word “exactly.” ‘What would satisfy this man? What would the consequences be? What would your part in all this be? And do you believe him?’

  ‘Yes, I do in this case. He wouldn’t hesitate to teach my father a lesson or anyone else who didn’t keep his word, but I’m also sure that he would always rather save himself the bother. He won’t mind not getting the money back if he’s compensated for it with something worthwhile; he’s got plenty of money. He knows that someone has asked our group to assess him, I mean, that they’ve asked Bertie, since he’s the one who receives instructions from above as well as most of the private commissions, those of any substance. I don’t know who has asked for the report, Incompara hasn’t told me, but that doesn’t matter to us, does it? We don’t usually know anyway. Whoever they are, it’s important to him that he wins their approval and that they don’t reject him, or that he reaches an agreement with them or strikes a deal or gets to participate in their projects. He’d consider the debt paid off entirely if I made all or any of those things happen—if he’s accepted by the people who are submitting him to this examination, that’s all he needs. He would, he says, put it down to my intervention, to my collaboration, however partial, as long as it did the trick; he’s obviously not a hundred percent sure of himself, he must know what his weak points are and will imagine a trained eye would detect them, well, we all feel that way under scrutiny. It would take a few days to know the result, perhaps a week or more, but meanwhile … well, at the worst, we would have bought my father a deferment.’ Yes, her Spanish was decidedly bookish: she didn’t manage ‘vigas,’ but she did use ‘escarmentar’—to teach someone a lesson —‘entablar negocios’—to strike a deal—and ‘enjundia’—substance. She had made the matter her own, she wanted to leave her father out of it as much as possible, to spare him even the negotiations, she had taken on his debt, which is why she had said ‘He’d consider the debt paid off entirely’ and ‘my situation’ and ‘my affair.’ No ‘we’ or ‘our.’

  ‘Why are you so sure that I’ll be the one chosen to interpret this fellow Incompara? It could be you, and then you’d have no problem and wouldn’t have to ask anyone for a favor.’

  ‘I’ve worked with Bertie for several years now,’ she replied. ‘I usually know who’s going to be assigned to whom, when it’s not routine work and I’m told about it beforehand. When there’s a lot of money involved or if, for whatever reason, special tact is required—for example, if we had to make a study of the Prince’s current girlfriend (and it will happen, we’ll be asked to do that sooner or later)—he would use me for the task. To help him out, shall we say, for a second opinion, as a contrast, because he wouldn’t delegate such a task to just anyone. Otherwise, he follows a complex system of turn-taking, depending on our individual characteristics. He doesn’t stick to it rigidly, but according to that system and to my calculations, it’s your turn. I’d love it if he chose me to interpret Incompara. If only … And if I’m wrong and that’s what happens, I can assure you I’ll be the first to celebrate, more than you or him, more than anyone. That would make things much easier for me, I’d prefer not to have to depend on you. Not to have to bother you with this or get you mixed up in it all. I gave all this a lot of thought before asking you. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few days, and just now, during the walk over here, more than once I was on the verge of turning around and going home. What I can’t do is offer myself for the job, or show a particular interest in taking it on, because Bertie would immediately wonder why and ask me questions and get suspicious; he never shies away from suspicions or brushes them under the carpet, he never thinks anyone is above suspicion. Not even his own mother, if she’s still alive, although, as I said, I’ve never heard him mention his family. And there’s another element too: from what I know, Incompara must have a finger in a lot of pies. Bertie will probably think that, among other factors, you are the least exposed to previous chance contaminations because you haven’t been in London all that long.’

  I sat looking at her and then poured her the glass of wine I’d denied her before, the fourth. I could see that she was tired, or perhaps beginning to feel the effort of having to persuade and to ask, which takes a lot of energy, and that she was tense too, which is exhausting, and there’s always
a moment when, however enthusiastically we might have begun an assault, we doubt that we’ll get what we want, that we’ll succeed. The whole thing suddenly seems pointless, we’re convinced people will say ‘No’ or even take pleasure in saying ‘No’ and refuse, and that they’ll be able to come up with cast-iron reasons for doing so: ‘I’m a bit hard up at the moment,’ ‘I don’t want to get involved,’ ’sorry, you’re asking too much of me,’ ‘It won’t work, I’m no good at that kind of thing,’ ‘I have my loyalties,’ ‘It’s too big a risk,’ ‘If it was up to me, I’d do it, but there are other people involved’; or more clearly, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Perhaps young Pérez Nuix, in a sudden loss of faith, was already asking herself which of these formulae I would opt for. Yes, what was in it for me? I could see no benefit at all, and she would know that I couldn’t, because there was none. She hadn’t even tried that route, at least not yet, and hadn’t even attempted to invent some benefit. During those moments when she seemed distracted, almost resigned, I again glanced at the run in her stockings, at her ever more naked leg. I hoped she would do something before her tights exploded (that would be a shock) or went all baggy and loose (that would be repellent) or suddenly dropped to the floor (that would be humiliating), none of these three possibilities appealed to me, but they would break the spell of that torn but still taut fabric. And so I indicated her thighs with a lift of my chin and said (the words just came out, my will did not intervene, or appeared not to):

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve got an enormous run in your stockings. It must have happened while you were walking. Or perhaps the dog did it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied easily, unsurprised, ‘I noticed it a while ago, but didn’t want to interrupt you. I’d better just nip to the bathroom and take them off. How embarrassing.’ She stood up (farewell, vision) and picked up her bag, the dog got to his feet as well, ready to follow her, but she stopped him with two words in English (he was, of course, a native English dog), persuaded him to lie down again, and disappeared. ‘How embarrassing,’ she said again when she was already in the corridor, out of my field of vision. But she didn’t seem in the least embarrassed. ‘She isn’t really that tired or discouraged or depressed,’ I thought. ‘Interrupt me? That can’t have been a mistake or a slip. Not even after all the wine she’s drunk. She’s the one doing the talking, the telling, the one who came here to plead with me, although she hasn’t really done that yet, neither by her tone of voice or her choice of vocabulary nor by being tedious or insistent. Yet she is, nevertheless, pleading, only without actually running the risk of provoking a flat refusal, which would be counterproductive. She’s asking me something, but without a hint of pathos and without humiliating herself, almost as if she weren’t asking for anything, but she isn’t doing so out of pride. She’s simply setting out the information.’ When she returned, she was no longer wearing any stockings, so she wasn’t one of those far-sighted women who always carry a spare pair; or perhaps she was, but had decided not to put them on, preferring boots against her bare skin, and it wasn’t cold in the apartment. She crossed her legs as if nothing had happened (the vision returned, rather improved in fact), she picked up two olives, nibbled a chip and took a timid sip of her wine, perhaps she was watching what she was drinking more closely than I thought. ‘So, Jaime, what do you say? Can I count on your help? It’s a big favor I’m asking you.’

  I had been sitting down for too long. I got up and went over to the window, I opened it for a few seconds and put my head out and looked up at the sky, at the street, my cheeks and the back of my neck got slightly wet, the rain wouldn’t stop for several days and nights, it looked as if it were going to hang over the city for some time, or over the country which for her was ‘ país’ or perhaps also ‘patria,’ the dangerous, empty concept and the dangerous, inflammatory word, which would allow a mother to say in justification of her son’s actions: ‘La patria es la patria’—one’s country is one’s country—and when it comes to defending one’s country, lies are no longer lies. Poor trapped mother, the mother of the man who betrayed not his country, but his former friend, it’s always safer to betray an individual, however close to them we might be, than some vague, abstract idea that anyone can claim to represent, for then, at every step, we might find ourselves accused by strangers, by standard-bearers we have never seen before, who will feel betrayed by our actions or lack of action; that’s the bad thing about ideas, their self-declared representatives keep crawling out of the woodwork, and anyone can take up an idea to suit their needs or interests and proclaim that they’ll defend it by whatever means necessary, bayonet or betrayal, persecution or tank, mortar or defamation, brutality or dagger, anything goes. Perhaps it would be easier for me than for Pérez Nuix to try and betray Tupra. For me he was a single individual and nothing more, while for her, he might, in some measure, represent her country or at least embody an idea. The deception would come from her, but via an intermediary, namely me, and such intermediaries help enormously to diffuse blame, it’s as if one were less involved or, once the thing is done, almost not involved at all, in the eyes of others, but also in one’s own eyes, which is why people so often resort to front men, hired assassins, soldiers, thugs, straw men, paid killers and the police, and even the courts, which often serve as the executive branch of our passions, if we first manage to draw them in and later convince them. It’s easier to do away with someone or bring about their ruin if you only give the order or set the appropriate mechanisms going, or pay the money or hatch a plot or approach the appropriate person with a tip-off, or if you merely make a formal complaint and conspire and have other people lead your victim to the cell, not to mention execute him once he has passed through the hands of innumerable intermediaries, all of them legal, who share the blame out among themselves as they follow that long road and return to us only the lukewarm leftovers, a few insubstantial crumbs, and all we receive at the end of the process that we originated are a few terse words, a mere communique and sometimes only an enigmatic phrase: ‘Sentence has been passed,’ or ‘It’s done,’ or ‘Problem solved,’ or ‘No need to worry any more,’ or ‘The torment’s over’ or ‘You can sleep easy now.’ Or even ‘I have done the deed’ (in the words of that ancient Scotsman). It would be less sinister in my case, merely a matter of phoning Patricia one day or not even that, of whispering to her in the office, when we met or passed: ‘He fell for it.’ The first traitor’s name, Del Real it was, had also used intermediaries against my father: first, he recruited the second traitor, that Professor Santa Olalla who lent his signature to back up a complaint against someone he didn’t even know, and then … Those two men did not go in person to get Juan Deza on the feast day of San Isidro in 1939, they sent Franco’s police to arrest him and put him in prison, and then others intervened, witnesses, a prosecutor, a sham lawyer and judge, almost nothing is ever done directly or face to face, we don’t even see the face of the person bringing about our ruin, there is almost always someone in the middle, between you and me, or between me and the dead man, between him and her.