Your Face Tomorrow

by Javier Marías

  The train stopped at the usual places, Slough and Reading, as well as Maidenhead and Twyford and Tilehurst and Pangbourne, and after more than an hour, I got off there, in Didcot, where I had to wait several minutes—on that so-familiar platform—for another weary and reluctant train to appear. And it was there, while I was vaguely recalling that young nocturnal woman whose face I soon forgot but not her colors (yellow, blue, pink, white, red; and around her neck a pearl necklace), that I understood what had made me get up so early in order to catch a train and visit Wheeler in Oxford without delay; it wasn’t simply a desire to see him again nor mere impatience to watch his eyes when they alighted with surprise on those ‘careless talk’ posters from Spain, it was, secondarily, a need to tell him what had happened and to demand an explanation. I don’t mean tell him about what had happened to me in Madrid, for which he wasn’t remotely to blame (to be accurate, nothing had happened to me, I had done something to someone else), but about what had occurred with Dearlove; after all, Peter was the person who had got me into that group to which he had once belonged, the person who had recommended me; he had made use of my encounter with Tupra and submitted me to a small test that now seemed to me innocent and idiotic—and which in no way prepared me for the possible risks of joining the group—and then reported to them on the result. Perhaps he himself had written the report on me in those old files: ‘It’s as if he didn’t know himself very well. He doesn’t think much about himself, although he believes that he does (albeit without great conviction) …’ He it was, in any case, who had revealed to me my supposed abilities and who had, to use the classic term, enlisted me.

  Once in Oxford, I walked from the station to the Randolph Hotel and phoned him from there (now that I knew Luisa used a cell phone, perhaps I ought to get one too, they may be instruments of surveillance but they have their uses). Mrs. Berry answered and didn’t even think it necessary to hand me over to Peter. She would ask him, she said, but she was sure my visit would make his day. A few seconds later, she was back: ‘He says you should come at once, Jack, as soon as you like. Will you be staying for lunch? I’m sure the Professor won’t let you leave before then.’

  When I went into the living room, I experienced a moment of alarm—but not quite panic—because Peter’s face had taken on the gaunt look of those whom death is pursuing although without as yet too much haste, not yet holding the hourglass in his hand, but keeping a close eye on it. That impression soon diminished, and I decided it must have been a false one, but it may also have been due to a rapid adjustment, as when we meet a friend who is much fatter or thinner or older than the last time we saw him and we are thus obliged to carry out a kind of rectification process, until our retina gets used to our friend’s new size or new age and we can again fully recognize him. He was sitting in his armchair, like my father in his, with his feet on an ottoman and the Sunday papers scattered on a low table beside him. His stick was hooked over the back of his chair. He made as if to get up to greet me, but I stopped him. Judging from the way he was settled in his armchair, it seemed to me unlikely that he would find it as easy to sit down on the stairs as he had done very late on the night of his buffet supper. I placed one hand on his shoulder and squeezed it with gentle or restrained affection—that was the most I dared to do, for in England people rarely touch each other. He was impeccably dressed, with tie and lace-up shoes and a cardigan, as was, I believe, customary among men of his generation, at least I had noticed the same tendency in my father, who, when he was at home, always looked as if he were about to go out at any moment. Then, impatient to begin, I sat down on a nearby stool and the first thing I did, after exchanging a few words of welcome and greeting, was to remove from my bag the package containing La Guerra Civil en dos mil carteles—The Civil War in Two Thousand Posters—the next time I went to Madrid I would have to track down another copy for myself; it really was a marvelous book, and I was sure that Wheeler would appreciate and enjoy it greatly, as would Mrs. Berry, whom I urged to stay and leaf through it with us. However, she preferred not to (‘Thank you, Jack, I’ll look at it properly when I have more time’). And she left us on the excuse that she had things to do, although throughout the morning, she came back into the room several times, came and went, always near, always on hand.

  ‘Look, Peter,’ I said, opening the first volume, ‘the book also reproduces various foreign posters too, and I’ve stuck post-its on any pages that have posters connected to the “careless talk” campaign. It seems that, as a recommendation, it was pretty much a constant in all kinds of places. The British campaign was imitated by the Americans when they finally entered the War, but theirs sometimes verged on the kitsch and the melodramatic.’ And I showed him a drawing depicting a dog grieving for its dead sailor master ‘…because somebody talked!’ or as we would say in Spanish: ‘¡ … porque alguien se fue de la lengua!’; another in which appeared a large hairy hand wearing a Nazi ring and holding a Nazi medal and the words: ‘Award for careless talk. Don’t discuss troop movements, ship sailings, war equipment’; and a third more somber one, in which a pair of intense narrow eyes peer out from beneath a German helmet: ‘He’s watching you.’ ‘And there are two English posters that I don’t think you showed me, but that you’re bound to remember.’ And I turned to a page displaying a very succinct poster bearing only the words ‘Talk kills,’ the lower half of which showed a sailor drowning as an indirect or possibly direct result of someone talking; and another signed by Bruce Bairnsfather, which revived his famous soldier from the First World War, ‘Old Bill,’ alongside his son who has been called up for the Second. At the top are the words: ‘Even the walls …’ next to a swastika and above a huge ear; and underneath are written the young man’s words: ‘S’long Dad! We’re shiftin’ to … Blimey. I nearly said it!’ And I pointed out to him a French poster, signed by Paul Colin: ‘Silence. The enemy is listening in to your secrets’ and a Finnish one, although the words were in Swedish, that showed a woman’s full red lips sealed shut by an enormous padlock, and the text of which apparently said: ‘Support our soldiers from the rearguard. Don’t spread rumors!’; and a Russian poster in which one half of the listener’s face and shoulders was much darker and had acquired a monocle, a mustache and a military epaulette (had taken on, in short, a very sinister appearance). ‘And here are the Spanish posters,’ I added, leafing through the second volume where most of them were to be found, although they were scattered throughout both. ‘You see, these must have predated the British ones and the others too.’

  Wheeler studied them closely and with evident interest, even fascination, and after a moment’s silence, said:

  ‘They’re different. There’s more hate in them.’

  ‘In the Spanish ones?’

  ‘Yes, if you look at ours and even those from the other countries, they were warning people above all of the danger and urging them to keep silent, to maximize discretion and caution, but they didn’t demonize the hidden enemy or stress the need to hunt him down, to pursue and destroy him. It’s odd, they hardly condemn him at all. Perhaps because we were conscious that whenever possible, we were doing exactly the same thing, spying in Germany and in occupied Europe and were aware that in wartime, it’s only to be expected (and so, propaganda apart, one can’t really be too reproachful) that each side will do whatever it can to win that war, with no limits, or only those demanded by public opinion, which doesn’t, of course, mean that the limits we’re told, officially, that governments won’t cross are never crossed, only that they cross them furtively, in secret, without acknowledging the fact and even denying it, if that’s what’s required. But look at this: “Find him out and denounce him,” and they depict the spy as a monster with elephantine powers of sight and hearing as well as smell, and they associate him with Italian fascism, and I’m not sure, but he may even be wearing a priest’s biretta on his bald head, what do you think that is? Not to mention this other one: “Find and ruthlessly crush the Fifth Column” whose members are sho
wn as a handful of plundering, bloodthirsty rats caught in the light of a torch, with the sole of a giant shoe about to flatten them and a spiked bludgeon about to batter them. The poster was obviously published by the Communist Party, which was dominated by Soviet Stalinists, and they called for both the enemy and the halfhearted to be mercilessly hunted down and unceremoniously killed, just as the Francoists on the other side did. And look at this next one: they refer to the eavesdropper as “The beast”: “The beast is listening. Watch what you say!” and the beast is wearing a crown on his head and a cross dangling from a necklace, which makes him look rather effeminate, don’t you think? It’s describing the ambushee, it’s saying who he is and what he’s like, it’s pointing him out. The other posters, though, the ones by the celebrated artist Renau with the eye and the ear and the one published by the Dirección General de Bellas Artes addressed to militiamen, are more like ours, less aggressive, more to do with defense and prevention, more neutral perhaps. They are simply a warning against spies. The text of the latter could easily have appeared on one of the later British posters: “Don’t give away any details about the situation at the front. Not to your comrades. Not to your brothers or sisters. Not to your girlfriends.” Those wretched girlfriends again. One tended to confide in them and they, in turn, confided in you, too much really, at a time when no one could trust anyone. It really is a most fascinating book, Jacobo, thank you so much for thinking of me and bringing it all the way from Spain, especially given that it weighs a ton.’ He thought for a few seconds, then added: ‘Yes, that hatred is very striking. Quite different. I’m not sure we experienced it in the same way here.’

  ‘Perhaps in our War it was necessary to describe and characterize the spy like that,’ I said, ‘because they had fewer distinguishing marks and it was easier for them to pretend and to hide. Don’t forget, for example, that we all spoke the same language, not like here, where you were fighting the Nazis.’

  Wheeler shot me one of those occasional looks of fleeting annoyance and displeasure—those mineral eyes, like two marbles almost violet in color, or like amethysts or chalcedony or, when narrowed, like the seeds of pomegranates—that made you feel you had said something stupid. That was when he most resembled Toby Rylands.

  ‘I can assure you that most of those who spied here could speak English as well as you or I. In fact, probably better than you. They were Germans who had lived here since they were children, or who had an English father or mother. Some were renegade purebred Englishmen, and there was quite a large number of fanatical Irishmen too. It was the same with those who spied for us in Germany or Austria. They all spoke excellent German. My wife Valerie’s German, for example, was impeccable, without a trace of accent. No, that wasn’t the reason, Jacobo. I may have had only a very brief experience of your War, but I felt that hatred when I was in Spain. It was a kind of all-embracing hatred that surfaced at the slightest provocation and wasn’t prepared to consider any mitigating factor or information or nuance. An enemy could be a perfectly decent person who had behaved generously towards his political opponents or shown pity, or perhaps even someone completely inoffensive, like all those schoolteachers who were shot by the beasts on one side and the many humble nuns killed by the beasts on the other. They didn’t care. An enemy was simply that, an enemy; he or she couldn’t be pardoned, no extenuating circumstances could be taken into consideration; it was as if they saw no difference between having killed or betrayed someone and holding certain beliefs or ideas or even preferences, do you see what I mean? Well, you’ll know all this from your father. They tried to infect us foreigners with the same hatred, but, needless to say, it wasn’t something that could be passed on, not to that degree. It was a strange thing your War, I don’t think there’s ever been another war like it, not even other civil wars in other places. People lived in such close proximity in Spain then, although it’s not like that now.’—‘Yes, it is,’ I thought, ‘up to a point.’ ‘There were no really big cities and everyone was always out in the street, in the cafés or the bars. It was impossible to avoid, how can I put it, that epidermal closeness, which is what engenders affection but also anger and hatred. To our population, on the other hand, the Germans seemed distant, almost abstract beings.’

  That mention of his wife, Val or Valerie, hadn’t escaped me, but I was even more interested in the fact that, for the first time, he should refer openly to his presence in my country during the War; it wasn’t that long since I had first found out about his participation, of which he had never spoken to me before. I looked at his suddenly gaunt face. ‘Yes, his features have grown sharper and he has the same look in his eyes as my father,’ I thought or regretfully acknowledged, ‘that same unfathomable gaze’; and it occurred to me that he probably knew he did not have much more time, and when you know that, you have to make definitive decisions about the episodes or deeds which, if you tell no one, will never be known. (‘It’s not just that I will grow old and disappear,’ poor, doomed Dearlove had said in Edinburgh, ‘it’s that everyone who might talk about me will gradually disappear too, as if they were all under some kind of curse’; and who could say any different?) It is, inevitably, a delicate moment, in which you have to distinguish once and for all between what you want to remain forever unknown—uncounted, undiscovered, erased, nonexistent—and what you might like to be known and recovered, so that whatever once was will be able one day to whisper: ‘I existed’ and prevent others from saying ‘No, this was never here, never, it neither strode the world nor trod the earth, it did not exist and never happened.’ (Or not even that, because in order to deny something you have to have a witness.) If you say absolutely nothing, you will be impeding another’s curiosity and, therefore, some remote possible future investigation. Wheeler must, after all, have remembered that on the night of his buffet supper I had asked him by what name he had been known in Spain, and that, had he told me, I would have immediately gone to look up that name in the indexes of all his books, in his War library, on his west shelves, and later on in other books as well. In fact, he was the one who had put the idea in my head, it hadn’t even occurred to me until then: perhaps he had done so out of mere congenital pride and vanity, or perhaps, more deliberately, so that having once inoculated me with the thought, I would not be satisfied and would not let go of my prey, something which, as he knew perfectly well, I, like himself and Tupra, never did. Perhaps now he was ready to give me a few more facts and to feed my imagination before it was too late and before he would cease to be able to feed or direct or plot or manipulate or shape anything. Before he was left entirely at the mercy of the living, who are rarely kind to the recent dead. ‘That’s asking an awful lot, Jacobo,’ he had said then in reply to my direct question. ‘Tonight anyway. Perhaps another time.’ Maybe that ‘other time’ had come.

  ‘What did you do in Spain during the Civil War, Peter?’ I asked straight out. ‘How long were you there? Not long, I imagine. Before, you told me that you were just passing through. Who were you working with? Where were you?’

  Wheeler gave an amused smile as he had on that earlier night, when he had played with my newly aroused curiosity and said things like: ‘If you’d ever asked me about it … But you’ve never shown the slightest interest in the subject. You’ve shown no curiosity at all about my peninsular adventures. You should have made the most of past opportunities, you see. You have to plan ahead, to anticipate.’ He raised his hand to the back of his armchair and felt around without success. He wanted his walking stick and couldn’t find it without turning round. I stood up, grabbed the stick and handed it to him, thinking he was going to use it to help him get to his feet. Instead, he placed it across his lap or, rather, rested the ends on the arms of his chair and gripped the stick with both hands, as if it were a pole or a javelin.

  ‘Well, I went twice, but on both occasions I was there only briefly,’ he said, very slowly at first, as if he did not entirely want to release the information or the words; as if he were forcing his ton
gue to anticipate his actual decision, the not entirely definite decision to tell me all: he might want to tell me, but, as he had explained with some embarrassment, he might not yet be authorized to do so. ‘The first time was in March of 1937, in the company of Dr. Hewlett Johnson, whose name will mean nothing to you. However, you might be familiar with his nickname, “the Red Dean,” by which he was known then and later.’ We were speaking in English. Of course I knew the name, of course I had heard of it. In fact, I could scarcely believe it.

  ‘El bandido Deán de Canterbury!’ I exclaimed in Spanish. ‘Don’t tell me you knew him.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, momentarily disconcerted by that sudden intrusion in Spanish and by that strange way of referring to the Dean as ‘the bandit Dean of Canterbury.’

  ‘As you may well remember from what I’ve told you before, my father was arrested shortly after the end of the Civil War. And several false accusations were made against him, one of them, as I’ve often heard him say, was that he had been “the willing companion in Spain of the bandit Dean of Canterbury.” Imagine! That strange cleric was very nearly responsible—albeit indirectly, unwittingly and involuntarily—for my not being born, nor any of my siblings either. I mean that in the normal course of events my father would have been summarily condemned and shot; they came for him in May, 1939, only a month and a half after the Francoists entered Madrid, and in those days if you denounced someone, even if you did so as a mere private individual, you didn’t have to prove their guilt, they had to prove their innocence, and how could my father possibly have proved that he had never in his life seen that Canterburian Dean’ (I was speaking in English again and so didn’t need to resort to the strange Spanish equivalent ‘cantuariense’) ‘or the falsity of the other charges, which were far graver. He was immensely lucky, and after a few months in prison was acquitted and released, although he suffered reprisals for many years afterwards. But imagine …’