We did not wait for the ferocious piece of music to end. We immediately rushed onto the dance floor and, grabbing them firmly and carefully by the shoulders (Tupra grabbed Flavia and I grabbed the moron, we did not need to discuss who would grab whom), we brought them both to an abrupt halt. We saw the look of bewilderment on their faces and saw too - now that we were closer - that Mrs Manoia had a line across one cheek, a welt left by the rope, a weal left by the whip, it was not bleeding but it was, nevertheless, noticeable, like a scratch, it reminded me of Westerns I had seen, of the mark that remained on the neck of a hanged man (one who had been reprieved, of course; well, it wasn't perhaps that bad, the mark on her face would soon fade). Manoia wouldn't like it one bit when he found out, I saw from the expression on Tupra's face that he was thinking the same thing and heard him click his tongue, she had not even noticed, perhaps she was too caught up in the excitement of the dance, I just couldn't understand it.
'I'll take her to the Ladies' room and see if she can do something about that or at least conceal it,' he said to me, pointing at the mark. Then he turned to her: 'You've hurt your face, Flavia.' And he drew his finger across his own cheek. 'Let's go to the Ladies, I'll wait for you outside. Make sure you wash that scratch and see if you can cover it up with some make-up, all right? Arturo will be worried if he sees it. He wants you back over at the table. Does it hurt?' She raised her hand to her cheek and shook her head, she seemed pensive or perhaps she was merely stunned. Tupra then turned to me again and gave me this order, he spoke rapidly but calmly: 'Take him to the Cripples' toilet and wait for me there, I won't be long. Let's hope we can do something about that wound, it doesn't seem to be an actual cut, and then restore her to her husband. Hang on to this cunt meanwhile, I'll be five minutes at most, well, say, seven. Keep him there until I come back. This moron has got to be neutralised, stopped.'
He referred to him first as 'cunt' and then as 'moron', at the time I only knew the first word in the sense of coño, the crude name for the female sexual part when spoken or merely thought, that night I only inferred its other meaning and confirmed it later in a dictionary, a slang dictionary. It wasn't so very different from the way I referred to him mentally, as capullo, 'cunt' probably meant pretty much the same, while mamon was less exact and possibly more aggressive. But what you think and even what you say are not the same as hearing someone else saying it; with an insult that you yourself think and even utter, you know exactly how serious it is, that is, usually not very serious at all, you know that it serves largely as a way of letting off steam, and most of the time you don't worry about it or think it important because you know how little importance it has; you are in control of your own vehemence, which, generally speaking, can be pretty artificial, if not entirely false: a rhetorical exaggeration, a performance for your own benefit or for that of other people, a form of bragging. On the other hand, an insult proffered by someone else is always troubling, whether it is directed at us or at a third: party, because it's difficult to gauge its true intention — the intention of the person doing the insulting — the degree of anger or resentment, or if there is any real likelihood of violence. And that is why it made me uneasy to hear Tupra use these words, especially, of course, because I had never heard him use them before and because we do not like to discover in others what we carry within ourselves, our worst potentialities, things which, in us, seem acceptable (what can you expect); what we want is to believe that there are men and women who are better than us, people who are beyond reproach and who might, furthermore, be our friends, we would like, at least, to have them near, but never confronting us, never in opposition to us. Obviously, I don't often say the word capullo - to seek no further examples — and yet I had thought it that night over and over, just as I had during supper at Wheeler's and afterwards, when we were alone. But I did not, I think, actually say it, not in his presence, because, again, it is not the same to think something but keep it to yourself, to think it strenuously and yet remain silent, as it is to say it out loud before witnesses or to the person at whom it is directed, even if only because by doing so you are allowing others to attribute certain words to you and for those words ever after to be held as typical of you or as something you might well say ('I heard you, you said it, you've resorted to precisely that kind of language before'). That involves giving far too much away, showing far too many cards.
The order seemed so impossible to carry out that I said to Tupra straight out: 'What do you mean, take him there? On what pretext? And what for, what are you going to do?' 'Tell him you're going to suck him off.' Reresby had lost patience with me, but only for a second: the look of surprise on my face must have been so intense (my anger would have shone through, irrepressible, immediate) that he doubtless read it as potential rebellion or even as a possible threat. And so he immediately added, suppressing his previous crude words (perhaps Reresby was the only foul-mouthed one, not Tupra or Ure or Dundas, and maybe each night he was who he was, to all intents and purposes and regardless of the consequences): 'Ask him if he wants a line of cocaine, top-grade stuff. He'll be bound to wait for me then, with his nose watering. He won't mind at all.'
'How do you know?' I asked. Then it occurred to me that this was a pointless question to ask Tupra, one to which any answer would be redundant. He devoted his life principally to knowing, or so I thought, and to knowing in advance, to recognising future faces; and unlike myself or Mulryan and Rendel, or possibly, occasionally, Jane Treves and Branshaw (although probably not Pérez Nuix), he did not need to be guided towards that knowledge or to have the path ahead pointed out to him. He was the one who led us, who decided which aspects of people were of interest or concern to us, the person who questioned us about those particular areas: for example, if the singer Dick Dearlove would be capable of killing and in what circumstances, or if an anonymous man had any intention of returning a loan, all kinds of situations on all kinds of occasions. He had never asked me if I thought De la Garza was into cocaine or glue or opium, in fact, I couldn't recall his ever asking me anything about him. It was only now, therefore, that I stopped to consider. And when I thought about it, it seemed to me probable that De la Garza would be into everything: he was so eager, so arrogant and impetuous, as well as highly excitable.
'Yes, just tell him and you'll see,' Tupra answered, while he delicately offered his arm to Mrs Manoia and they set off together for the Ladies' toilet. They would doubtless find a queue. 'I'll be back within about seven minutes. I'll join you there. Keep him entertained until then.' And with that same finger, like the short barrel of a gun, he pointed at the hook painted on the door, and I could not help thinking of Peter Pan.
So I told Rafita, who, like Flavia, had been rendered temporarily speechless. My words made him recover, revive; he seemed interested, or, rather, somewhat over-eager.
'All right, let's go,' he said at once, and off we went through the door bearing the sign of the hook. Once we were inside the toilet for the mutilated, which was as deserted as it had been a short while before, he could not conceal a certain impatience at the prospect, he must have thought the cocaine might mitigate his drunkenness, he had started feeling slightly dizzy, fortunately nothing very grave, he was unlikely actually to throw up, but he was not in full command of his feet during the short walk with its many human obstacles, I put this down in part as well to his demented dancing and, of course, to his consequent breathlessness, then I realised that his shoelaces were undone, both of them, he could have had a really nasty fall and been left for dead on the dance floor, the hordes would have finished him off and saved us a few problems. 'So you haven't got it, then?' he wanted to know.
'No, Mr Reresby has it,' I replied, and it occurred to me that Reresby could as easily have some as none at all; it wouldn't be difficult for someone like him to get hold of it, being able to hand around a bit of cocaine can prove very useful these days and he knew how to handle himself in any territory. 'He said he wouldn't be long. He was going to see if he could
do something about the whipping you gave our bit of pussy with that whacko string bag you've got on your head, that basket.' At this point, I had no hesitation about telling him off, besides, when abroad one acquires a rapid and baseless intimacy with one's compatriots, usually to ill or even worse effect, but it has the advantage that, when necessary, you can come straight to the point. De la Garza was causing me too many problems, all of which, and this was the worst of it, had been entirely avoidable. I had instantly adapted my speech to his customary brand of fake slang (normally, I would never myself use words like 'whacko' or 'pussy'); in terms of gaining familiarity, this was the equivalent of the hundred-yard dash. 'I mean imagine wearing a ridiculous thing like that and then whipping your dance partner across the face with it, I dread to think how her husband will react when he sees that welt on her face.' Horrified, I suddenly remembered one of the words Manoia had asked me about — 'uno sfregio'. 'We're going to return her to him with a kind of sfregio, if, that is, I understood his gesture correctly, the thumbnail drawn across his cheek; this could be very tricky, he's not going to like it one bit, although it would have been worse if the scratch had been on her bazza rather than on her guancia, then Manoia might have taken it as an allusion, a joke, a revenge on my part for his rudeness, although poor Flavia's chin isn't at all protuberant and so isn't properly speaking a bazza.' — 'He'll crucify you, De la Garza. I told you the guy had a lot of influence at the Vatican, well, in the whole of Italy really, including Sicily.' — I myself was surprised to find myself using that expression (about crucifying), one I would never normally use, it must have been an association of ideas with the Vatican, I suppose, which must be crammed with crucifixes, at least one in every room — 'You wouldn't want to cross him, he's a real snake in the grass' — I was clearly still making associations, and slipping into the mode of speech, part crude, part high-flown, of that terrible perfumed boor — 'I just hope Reresby can explain it away: that it wasn't deliberate, that you didn't realise. You didn't do it on purpose, did you, Rafita?' — I had never before, it seemed to me, addressed him like that directly; in fact, I had first heard Peter use the diminutive form of his name only after the attaché had left his house that night empty-handed and without dipping his wick, to drive off and crash his car on the road somewhere, along with the Mayor and Mayoress of Thame or Bicester or Bloxham or Wroxton (except that we did not have such luck).
'Of course I didn't do it intentionally, come off it, I don't I want to miss out on dipping the old wick, you know, I don't want to ruin my chances of a quick fuck. I hope you two haven't screwed things up for me, you've broken my concentration, you have, all that hard work down the drain, you arseholes. I was just going in for the kill too.' — That's what he said, he had a real knack for mingling vulgarity and prissiness, 'dipping the old wick' and 'broken my concentration', and 'down the drain' and 'going in for the kill', that terrible jumble of registers and references so typical of Spanish nowadays, and much in vogue with many Spanish writers, including certain depressingly old-fashioned young people, who positively reek of the old days, perhaps because contemptible traditions are so easy to adopt, they're very tenacious. I wasn't prepared to go that far, to adapt to such a fashion, to join in: imitating such an affectation would be a concession too far.
'What quick fuck are you talking about? God, De la Garza, you're obsessed with dipping your wick. Just forget it, will you? It doesn't make any difference to you who it is, does it? It could be your old aunt, for all you care — and I warned you that her husband was watching. Why don't you just go to a prostitute now and again, I'm sure your salary would stretch to that. I mean the idea wouldn't even have occurred to her. And then, to top it all, you lash her face with that hairnet of yours. She won't even want to say goodbye to you.'
'Bah,' he said disdainfully, 'of course I didn't mean to, in fact, I think I'm going to take this snood off, it's no good if you're dancing, a bit of a bummer, really.' He ran his whole hand over the hairnet from top to bottom, as if squeezing out a cloth. 'Not that she'll have noticed anyway, not with her face packed with Botox like that. In any case, I don't know what you're talking about, she was there for the taking, man. It was just a question of manoeuvring her into position and then in I'd go, the coup de grâce, in with sword, up to the gunnels. Two ears and a tail to me and fuck everyone else.' He mimed a bullfighter driving the sword in. He was beginning to string together total non sequiturs, a sign that he was recovering. I wondered if he actually knew what 'gunnels' meant, but I had no intention of asking him.
'Botox?' That was when I heard the neologism for the first time. 'What's that? What kind of word is that? Botox,' I said it again to get used to it, as one tends to do with words one doesn't know. De la Garza had referred to his dangling hairnet as a snood, although I bet he had never seen one in his life. What with that and his enigmatic 'gunnels', I held out little hope of his offering me the etymology of Botox. He insisted on the bullfighting analogy, with gestures and everything, something typical of our home-grown fascists — I use the word in its colloquial sense, and, indeed, in the analogical. The gestures in themselves, of course, are not necessarily fascistic (even I can manage a fair imitation, as well as a pass made with two hands and a pass made only with the right - when on my own, needless to say), but the sheer presumption of comparing (shall we say) the labour involved in seducing a woman with entering an arena and facing an enraged bull in front of a crowd of spectators definitely was fascistic. Perhaps he was, after all, a fascist at heart, analogically speaking.
'You mean you don't know?' And he said this with the puerile sneer of a hard-bitten thug, as if my ignorance were proof of his greater worldly wisdom (I had no argument with that, there are worldly-wise louts by the thousand, and their numbers are on the increase) and of his permanent place in the land of chic that was so precious to him (he could stay there until the last day for all I cared, I had no intention of disputing the territory with him, or even setting foot in it). 'You mean you don't know,' he repeated. He was delighted to be able to teach me something, if you can call it teach. 'Rich chicks have it injected all the time, and some guys do, too. Your friend's a likely case, if you ask me, he looks like he's had it in his cheekbones, his chin, his forehead and his temples, to ward off crow's feet. Yeah, that Reresby guy's skin is suspiciously tight and smooth, he probably has a hypodermic stuck in him every few months, and the Italian woman every few weeks I would think, assuming they let her.'
It was true that Tupra's skin was disturbingly lustrous and firm for a man of his probable years, and was the lovely golden colour of beer, almost peachy sometimes, but it had never seemed to me that this was due to artifice or to some special treatment, rather, it would simply never occur to me that men would resort to such things, or not then at least. Who knows, though. I was becoming old-fashioned in some respects: I knew nothing about the existence of Botox or, doubtless, about other products, that was just one example. In fact, I still didn't really know about it, and Rafita was hardly the best person to explain it to me.
'A hypodermic? You mean they inject it, real injections, with a needle and everything? What is it? Some sort of liquid presumably. Against wrinkles.' My last sentence was a statement, another way of getting myself used to the idea. It seemed to me inconceivable that anyone would have a needle stuck in their forehead or their chin (I couldn't believe they would inject it into their temples) unless they had some pressing reason to do so, and, besides, that word ... If I have a feeling for anything it is for languages and etymologies, I suppose I got used to having to be alert to them and to deducing them when I taught at Oxford, and the students (who were, generally speaking, malicious and mischievous) were always asking me about the most outlandish words, I often had to improvise, inventing etymologies on the spot; I mean, how, in the middle of a class, is one supposed to know the origin of papirotazo, or moflete, or the roots of coscorron, esgrima or vericueto? Now I could not help but suspect that 'Botox' was a contraction (soothing and camouflagin
g, as well as comfortable and practical) of 'botulinum toxin', that is, a feared and highly dangerous substance, which, according to what Wheeler had told me, had been brought exprofeso by the SOE from America in the middle of the war in order to impregnate and poison the bullets that were fired at Heydrich in the attempt on his life in 1942 in Prague, and which was, in the end, what caused the death he struggled - his will refusing to give in - so hard against. 'Botox,' I thought, 'it must be that, it's too much of a coincidence. But if it is, it's madness to have yourself injected with poison in order not to grow old, or, rather, not to look old, it must be administered in very measured, minimal doses. But it would be so easy for a practicante or visiting nurse to make a mistake. And how old-fashioned that term practicante seems now, yet it was normal in my childhood.' - 'I hope Botox isn't the same thing as botulinum toxin,' I said to De la Garza. When I saw the look of brute ignorance on his face I realised that he had no idea, but the utter idiocy of his reply took me by surprise, so much so that I wondered if he wasn't pretending or if his state of semi-intoxication and his recent jigging up and down to that violent music had perhaps, exacerbated his usual stupidity. But he wasn't such a mule, despite everything, to make a mistake like that unintentionally.
Dance and Dream Page 17
