Dark Back of Time

by Javier Marías

  The professor was pensive a few seconds, not wondering what his answer should be but whether he should give one. He pursed his elastic and continually fluctuating lips.

  “Frankly,” he said at last, “I’m sure not one reader will ever think of it again after putting it back on the shelf. If they read it to the end. I’m surprised you remember it.”

  “I don’t remember much any more, and only because I know you, professor. And there you have it,” I said. “You need a more solid author, one with a better chance of lasting. It’s not that I think my chances are all that great, but in the end it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to put your chips on some more promising numbers.” The professor is so deliberately vain that you can only feel comfortable with him if you’re as tractable as his acolytes or match him with a vanity of your own, be it forced or false: he takes it very well, feels right at home, on solid ground, and sees it as an invitation to give himself free rein, in some respects he has a childish disposition, excessive in its gratitude. “I’d like to propose a deal.”

  Rico adjusted his glasses with his middle finger and looked me up and down, wrinkling up his nose like the sort of accountant who wears an eyeshade.

  “And what sort of deal would that be, young Marías? I’m warning you that by my standards you don’t yet have much to offer.” What’s true of his vanity is also true of his impudence—he doesn’t mind anyone else’s if the other person allows him his own without stiffening up at the first sally.

  “I’m writing a novel and would have no problem putting you in it, if you can demonstrate sufficient merit.”

  “Oh really, how’s that?” he asked with interest, then quickly switched to an air of indifference. “What would someone like me be doing in a novel of yours? Are you writing about scholars? Seducers? Illustrious men? Seems implausible to me.”

  The professor amused me, he almost always does, with his vast knowledge, except for once over the telephone.

  “It’s more about scholars than about seducers,” I answered. “Look: this novel takes place in Oxford and nothing could be simpler than for me to include an elegant Spanish professor, there on a visit—invited to deliver a lecture, for example.”

  “You must mean a virtuoso and possibly inaugural lecture. Something extremely erudite and stimulating, on the House of the Prince at El Escorial, for example, or the Libro del caballero Zifar,” he interjected with great conviction. “An extremely distinguished man and a dazzling speaker, no? His Oxford colleagues will drink in his words as if being granted a revelation, no? And handsome, ça va sans dire.”

  “Let me handle the character and the setting, professor, don’t you be clichéd, too. Maybe that romance novel was all you deserved and I’m wasting my time. The Oxford University faculty has never drunk in anyone’s words, that would go against their principles. They merely tolerate. And anyway, what would your speech be inaugurating?”

  “The school year, of course,” answered the professor opening his hands wide at shoulder level to underscore the obviousness of the thing. “The opening of the academic year for the entire university. And none of this limiting me to the department of Spanish and Portuguese, careful there, none of your crumbs, no. Michaelmas is what they call the first quarter there, isn’t that right? Well then, for the inauguration of that Michaelmas of yours.”

  Since we were both being pedantic, I corrected his pronunciation: this particular “Michael” is pronounced Basque-fashion. “Míkelmas,” I said. “Professor, don’t be absurdly ambitious. To do that, you’d have to give your speech in English, in which case it would not be a terribly virtuoso performance, I’m afraid your vast knowledge doesn’t extend that far, nor does that of your potential fictional character. In any case, you haven’t earned it yet.”

  Professor Rico reined in his aspirations. It was clear the idea had attracted him and was tempting him, or at least the joke of the idea. Making a couple of remarkable movements with his flexible mouth, he recovered his natural disdain.

  “Oh yes, your deal.” But he immediately left off with his pretence and his interest returned, he’s too impatient a man for hypocrisy or haggling. “Tell me, how much of a role will I have?” he asked, as if he would be acting in a play.

  “Not much of one, for the moment, not much, Professor. We could just give it a try this time, and if we’re both happy with it who knows what future books may bring? For the moment a small role, a secondary character, incidental, but distinct.”

  “Me? Incidental? Me?”

  “No, not you, the character in the novel. As I’m sure you’ll understand, I’m not going to rewrite the entire book to make you the protagonist. I have no heartbreak to work through, you know.”

  Professor Rico muttered something unintelligible, as if so enthralled with his hastily imagined portrayal that it pained him badly to renounce any part of it. So he muttered something like “Ertsz.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing, nothing.” He went on muttering a while longer as if tallying up sums in his head. He straightened his glasses, pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and finally began speaking clearly again, resolutely even, like a man accepting a bet in poker, and saying, “I see you” or “I raise you.” “Very well, young Marías, let’s skip the preliminaries and get down to business. What do you want in return? Let’s have it.”

  I thanked him for his confidence and felt like a trafficker in false immortality.

  I won’t say what I asked for, only that he thought it was a reasonable enough request for a try-out, agreed to do it, and never did. When the time came, he frivolously claimed that while gratified by certain sartorial details and two or three adjectives, he had been thoroughly displeased by the character’s behavior and degree of resemblance to him and the amount of space he was allotted. (Nevertheless, I learned from other sources that he was happy and even proud, particularly because people he knew mentioned the brief appearance or cameo to him in apparent envy: Toby Rylands really was onto something.) I didn’t hold it against him, after all he had had the kindness to grant me some credit in a hypothetical posterity, I had enjoyed myself, and the character in question—an incidental character—was only partially inspired by him, though there were many people who wanted to see in my Professor del Diestro a dead-on portrayal of Don Francisco Rico Manrique, which wasn’t the case either (he never visited Oxford during my stay there). I had the character appear in a discotheque and the text describes him as, “the famous Professor del Diestro, the greatest and youngest Cervantes expert in the world, according to himself, invariably known in Madrid as Dexterous Del Diestro or Del Diestro the Sinister (depending on the level of antipathy), who, invited by our department, was to give us a dexterous and virtuoso lecture the next morning. I recognized him from his photographs.” Then the text adds some farther description: “The professor, a distinguished and disdainful man of forty-odd years, in a shirt by Ferré and with a hairline in advanced retreat (‘A distinguished Spanish professor,’ I thought in astonishment when I saw him, and immediately understood his success), was already nuzzling and allowing himself to be nuzzled by one of the fattest of the girls.” As the reader can verify, I made him distinguished, famous, young, hated, successful, a wearer of Italian designer shirts, erudite and a seducer. The professor shouldn’t have had any complaints, even if in the end I did not allow him to inaugurate the academic year, in his bad English, before the entire University of Oxford, at Michaelmas or rather Míkelmas.

  A few years later, while I was writing my next novel, which was ultimately titled Corazón tan blanco or A Heart So White, I spoke to him over the phone one morning and mentioned the new book. He immediately asked, “Am I in it?”

  His brazenness was so funny I saw no reason not to make him an immediate offer, this time with no strings attached.

  “Do you want to be?” I asked. “There’s still time. I’m getting close to the end, but I’m just starting a chapter that includes a character who could easily be transformed into
you, I mean into Professor del Diestro. All things considered, I think you’d be just right for me in this scene.”

  “I’d be just right for you? I? For you? Don’t flatter yourself, I can’t be just right for anyone. Why? What kind of malicious scene is it?” He’s a wary man.

  “Well, let’s say I could slip you in without the book’s being at all the worse for it; on the contrary, it might gain something.”

  “But this time I have to show my good side.” His request had already become a demand. “What are you going to say about me? Let’s have it.”

  “All right, maybe I can read you something now.” The scene was partially written, so I picked up a page and read, “Let’s see, here it says: ‘Suddenly over dessert he fell silent for a few minutes, as if overwhelmed by fatigue from all the frenzy and exaltation, or as if he were immersed in dark thoughts, perhaps he was unhappy and had suddenly remembered it.’ ” I paused. “So. Interested?”

  Professor Rico didn’t answer right away, then conceded, “It’s not bad, it doesn’t displease me. I liked the part about exaltation. Is this character melancholy? I think he must be, since he’s immersed in thought, isn’t he?

  “Yes, professor; immersed.”

  “In dark thoughts, right?”

  “Yes, professor, very dark thoughts.”

  “Go on, read more.”

  Professor Rico is not, shall we say, much inclined toward melancholy, perhaps that was why he was interested in appearing melancholic in a work of fiction.

  “All right, but only two sentences more: ‘In any case, he must have been a man of some ability in order to go from self-satisfaction to dejection so suddenly, without seeming affected or insincere. It was as if he were saying ‘What does anything matter now.’ ” I broke off. “Well, are you tempted?”

  “The part about ability is very perceptive,” he answered. “But you could change it to ‘genius.’ Might as well, don’t you think?”

  “Genius is harder to recognize, Professor Rico, and the narrator barely knows this guy.”

  “Don’t call him a ‘guy,’ ” he chided. “Go on, read more.”

  “Professor, I’m not about to read you the whole thing right now. Tell me if you want to be in the book or not. This is the only available role, and I’m warning you I could give it to someone else.”

  Paco Rico was silent for a few seconds. Then he wanted confirmation. “ ‘As if he were saying,” What does anything matter now. “ ‘That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, professor: ‘What does anything matter now.’ ”

  “That part I liked. And I do sometimes think that, in moments of dejection. Yes,” he said, in a tone that wasn’t the least bit dejected. And he added, as if the idea and interest of including him in the novel were entirely mine, “Go ahead, I’ll give it my immediate authorization.”

  So for a few days I went on writing my scene with Professor del Diestro now in it, his name and characteristics all consistent with the Del Diestro of All Souls. The character was more fully developed this time—no longer incidental, but now, at the very least, episodic—speaking at some length over the course of a dinner, which he dominates; I thought Paco Rico would be well pleased. But as I was about to finish the chapter I had another call from him, he was in Barcelona, where he lives.

  “Hear me out on this, young Marías,” he said without preliminaries. Though a few years had gone by, we still hadn’t retreated from our ironic manner of addressing each other. We did so only after the death of the mutual friend through whose eyes we had managed to see each other with some sympathy, Don Juan Benet. “I’ve decided I don’t want to appear in this little novel of yours as Professor del Diestro or what-have-you or anything else. If I’m in it I want to be in it as myself.”

  At first I didn’t understand. “Yourself? What do you mean?”

  The professor grew impatient. “Myself, Francisco Rico, under my own name. I want Francisco Rico to appear, not a fictional entity who acts like him or parodies him.”

  “But Del Diestro doesn’t act all that much like you, he’s not identical to you and I’d have to change him. Rico might not say or do the things he says and does, not all of them, and the character and his role are already fully drawn. I’m not going to change the story to make him more like you, I suppose you can understand that. Besides, how can a single real person appear among all the fictional entities, as you call them. That wouldn’t look right.”

  The professor clicked his tongue a couple of times in irritation. I heard it very clearly, it almost ruptured my eardrum.

  “And why not? That’s nonsense. There are real places and institutions in your novel, aren’t there? There must be one or two, no?”

  “Yes, there’s the United Nations and the Prado, and …”

  “Well, there you have it,” he said.

  “Have what?”

  “There you have it: I want to be like the Prado.”

  I couldn’t help laughing and telling him, “Professor, no one doubts your great merit, you truly are illustrious, but I wonder if that might not be a lot to ask, especially while you’re still alive. Maybe once you’re dead they’ll have a bust made of you.”

  “Don’t play the fool with me, young Marías,” he answered in feigned irritation. “You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re going to call the Prado Museum the Prado Museum in your novel; I don’t suppose you’ll be writing that someone went to the Meadow Museum or the Field Museum or the Leap Museum.”

  Why the Leap? I asked myself.

  “No. Why the Leap?” I asked him.

  “Who cares, the Leap, the Jump, what does it matter? Therefore, just as the Prado is the Prado and not the Leap or the Jump, I must be Professor Francisco Rico with all of my attributes, distinguished professor at the Universidad de Bellaterra and member of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua”—his candidacy had been successful—“and not Del Diestro or Del Fieltro or any other fabrication or illusion, understand? I want to appear as myself. Otherwise not at all, nothing, take me out, I withdraw.”

  There was an element of reciprocal ribbing in all his huff and bother, but it was clear that the professor, protected by our friendship, was stipulating futile conditions with which no one could ever comply. In fact, nothing can ever be imposed on a writer of fiction, who doesn’t need to ask permission to introduce any real person or sequence of events he happens to know about into his fiction; if he decides to, then nothing and no one can prevent him. We aren’t trustworthy people and some of us are heartless, though I don’t think I am. The professor was a friend and I wasn’t about to go against his express desires. I tried to convince him, mainly for my own comfort and convenience. It’s not easy to alter a character in a novel once he’s been imagined and described, there’s a price to pay, you feel what is called regret in English, or rimpianto, in Italian; there’s no Spanish word that says it exactly, maybe we’re not much given in these lands to lamenting what has or hasn’t happened, what we did or failed to do; we know more about rancor. Even changing a character’s name isn’t easy. (You never forget the first name, the one you took away and no one else ever knew, as a mother never forgets the name she chose for the child who was born dead, before she could ever speak it aloud to him, the child no one else ever knew.) The professor in A Heart So White already was who he was, and what was more I would have to retype the whole chapter with the new surname, I love marking up a page but hate having any marks on the final version, and I neither own nor use a computer. Therefore a tedious task.

  “Then it will have to be nothing at all, because what you’re asking for won’t work, Professor, and I’m the first to feel it.”

  Paco Rico said nothing, exuded silence. Maybe he was hoping I would give in. He was undoubtedly irked, but fortunately everything passes quickly with him—no, not everything, his romantic passions last, as I’ve seen over the years—he isn’t a tenacious man and doesn’t brood. He did not mutter.

  “Well, in that case, he
can’t be called Del Diestro either,” he ordered, and this second and even more futile demand gave me much to think about. It wasn’t simply that he wanted to get back at me. He was not Del Diestro because he was Rico with all Rico’s attributes, and he wanted to appear in the novel as such, making the distinction. Yet to his mind the name Del Diestro alluded to him, that character could be understood as Rico without in fact being him, as if the precedent of All Souls had impregnated or contaminated him and it would no longer be possible to evade or deny the identification if the character and name were repeated: the proof was that he assumed the authority to prohibit me from using Del Diestro. I had invented Del Diestro, he didn’t belong to Rico, but Rico was taking him over, seizing him. He no longer wanted to be recognized in someone else or to have a replica, he still wanted to figure in a fiction but not as fiction: as an inroad of reality into fiction—an intruder. Perhaps he was now experiencing the fear of being entirely fictitious, of returning to and forever inhabiting a terrain in which all is immutable to the end of time or of literature. In life, you can compensate or fluctuate or rectify, as long as the story hasn’t yet ended—either in death, which arrives to bring everything to a close, or, above all, in the telling of life and death. What’s attributed to you in a work of fiction, however, has little or no remedy, there’s no debate about it, no amendment. Thus it is written and thus it is repeated, identically, without compassion or hope—this is the story and these are its words—telling the same thing in the same way every time it’s read or leafed through or consulted, just as the action of a painting, once it’s “chosen and frozen,” never moves forward or recedes, and we’ll never see the face of the person who was painted from behind, or the nape of the neck of the one whose face was portrayed, or the hidden side of the one in profile. Thus it is written: the frightful, immemorial threat. I said that what truly brings closure isn’t the end but the recounting of that end, and of what transpired before it, the story of life and death, be they fictional or real, though if the life is fictitious then death isn’t necessary: writing takes its place. Telling the story is what kills, what entombs, what secures and delineates and solidifies our face, profile or nape; being told in a story can be the equivalent of seeing oneself immortalized, for those who believe in that, and, in any case, of being dead; I am burying myself by this writing and in these pages, even if no one reads them; I don’t know what I’m doing or why. (It doesn’t matter if anyone else sees them, it’s enough that I narrate myself a little, my own reading is enough.) Maybe that’s what Professor Rico was intuiting: what I might be doing to him by entombing him in my book.