Poison, Shadow, and Farewell

by Javier Marías

  'It's pronounced koh-ah-wee-lah,' I said, unable to resist the desire to correct him, a further example of that mysterious impulse to impose good order and unnecessary precision at all costs. I said this while looking at him. But he wasn't looking at me, he still kept his eyes glued to the screen for a few more seconds, almost half-closed now, his expression one of scorn and disgust for what he was seeing, his wasn't the face of a man unmoved by cruelty and by the suffering of others, he was judging them severely; then he fast-forwarded again and, after a while, froze the image.

  'It's all right, you can look now. I've stopped at another scene, the next one. But Jack,' he added with barely suppressed irritation, yet almost kindly, 'I'm not showing you all this in order for you not to look at it, quite the opposite. Otherwise, what's the point?'

  'I don't want to see any more, Bertie,' I said. 'If it's all like that, I don't want to see anything. I think I understand where you're going with this, and I don't need to know any more; besides, why don't you use these images to do something about it? You could use them to find out, through that fat man you appear to know so well and who's been so very successful, just what's going on in that place and to stop it. I don't understand your passivity, the organization's passivity.'

  'Do you really think that the Mexicans and the Americans don't already have a copy of this tape? If they don't intervene in the matter, there's not much we can do at our end; and it's not always easy to take action; in some countries, such a video would be unacceptable as proof, the way it was obtained would invalidate it. And what would we accuse our fat friend of? Attending an illegal event? Doing nothing? Refusing to help? Bah. I can understand why they might simply keep it filed away for a better occasion, just in case. I can't criticize them for that, we do the same with most of the footage that concerns us and our territories. You might save more lives by forcing one individual to do something later on than by immediately coming down hard on the less important people. And we're always interested in saving lives. We're always making calculations, weighing up whether it's worth letting one person die now if that will mean many others will live. Our priority, understandably enough, is saving British lives. As it would be in time of war. We have to get the most benefit out of everything, even if that means waiting a few years. It's the same with the day-to-day work in the office, sometimes you have to wait until someone is in a position to carry out what we have predicted that he or she is capable of doing. Including the things you predict, Jack, the things you tell us about. Everything you tell me counts, nothing is wasted. And it's the same with this.' He did finally look at me as he spoke these last few sentences, his eyes—grey in the gloom—no longer half-closed, his now wide-open, absorbent eyes that made anyone they alighted on feel worthy of attention and of interpretation; and it seemed to me that his words had been intended to increase that feeling in me. I had still not yet turned back to the screen again, despite his reassuring words. 'Go on, look. You must see at least one more recording. I'll fast-forward more quickly, I'll jump over a few, since you find them so upsetting.' Here he did not spare me his sarcasm.

  I didn't care. I held up my hand to indicate that it was not yet the moment, that there was something I wanted to clear up first. Perhaps I needed a minute to recover from what I had seen and another to get myself used to the idea that there were doubtless still more unpleasant things to see, more poison. However, I disguised this by asking, as if my curiosity needed to be urgently assuaged:

  'Where do you get them from? How do you find them? The things you've shown me up until now, I mean. None of them is a situation where cameras would be permitted.'

  'From anywhere, from all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways, the opportunities are endless nowadays. On the one hand, we have our own traditional means: our installers and our infiltrators and other people we bribe to do the filming. But people sell images too, there's a whole floating market out there and we just buy whatever might be of interest to us, we get them cheap when the seller doesn't know the identity of the people who appear in them. We usually do know or we can find out, whether they're mere minions or obscure hired assassins or people of a certain importance. It's the same as in the art market: if the buyer knows the true value and the seller doesn't, then the result is a bargain. Now every fool owns and carries a mini-camera in his pocket or has one on his cell phone, and if a tourist chances to capture some serious incident, even a crime, he's more likely to try and make some money out of it than take it to the police. The police don't pay, but we do, as do others, through intermediaries. It's the same if they catch some celebrity naked or screwing someone, they'll put it up for sale to the sensationalist magazines and TV shows, it's good to have someone keeping an eye on such things. At other times, our colleagues in other countries send us videos, and we reciprocate with anything that might be of use to them, satellites pick up a lot too. Nowadays, it's the easiest thing in the world, there are recordings of everything. People no longer have any idea where cameras might be hidden or still don't believe that there are quite that many, the most sensible thing is to assume that they're everywhere all the time, even in hotel rooms and in brothels and in saunas and in public toilets (not in the handicapped toilets, though, they don't tend to put them there), and even in private houses. No one is safe any more from being filmed doing anything and in any circumstances, whether committing a crime or indulging in depraved sexual acts, always good possibilities. We aren't always so lucky, of course, and what we get hold of and watch is a tiny fraction of what's available. We can make immediate use, I mean legal use, of very little. But our archive is pretty good for future or hypothetical use, with a view to reaching private agreements. People really care about their image and can always be persuaded to withdraw or to make some kind of pact. You'd be surprised how much they care, even the non-famous, even businessmen who are unknown to most people, I mean, to those who watch television and read newspapers, because they know they would immediately cease to be unknown. It's very widespread that panic of yours, that narrative panic or horror, as you called it, everyone is convinced that they could have a story or could provide the material for a story, they just need someone to tell it, to decide to tell it. And there's nothing easier than rescuing someone from anonymity. Many people struggle and do their utmost to drag themselves out of anonymity, you know the kind of thing, they offer up their daily life on the Internet, twenty-four hours a day, they plan scandals or notorious frauds, they try to launch themselves into celebrity even of the ugliest kind, they invent some ridiculous piece of tittle-tattle in order to be invited to talk about it on the most obscure and paltry of programs in the small hours, they seek out the indirect contagion of someone else's fame, however vile, or they pick a fight in the TV studio and trade insults, and try to have stupid, inane photos taken of themselves with an actor, a soccer star, a singer, a millionaire, a politician, a member of the royal family, a model. They'll even murder an acquaintance or a stranger in the most gruesome, complicated way, in a particularly cruel or striking or spine-chilling fashion, a child killing a much younger child, an adolescent killing his parents, a young woman killing a weaker colleague, an adult staging a massacre in a public place or secretly doing in seven people, one after the other, hoping to be discovered at last and to amaze the world. Because anyone—even the most stupid person—can kill someone. And they don't know that all they have to do is carry on with their lives until someone finds them interesting and adopts the appropriate point of view and decides to tell their story, or at least takes an interest and pays them some attention. As long as there is in that life some shameful, untold episode, a stain or an anomaly. And that's not so very difficult, Jack, because we all have something of the sort in our past, possibly without even knowing that we do or without being able to put our finger on it. It depends on who's looking at us. And the worst that can happen to anyone is for no one to look at them. People can't bear it and go into a decline. Some people die of it or kill.'

  And he paused lo
ng enough for me to think: 'Tupra has adopted my theory, or snippets of it. He has the delicacy not to use my exact words or, when he does, to acknowledge that he has done so, "as you called it" or "to use your term," he says when he's quoting me verbatim. He has the good taste not to appropriate, at least not in my presence, the idea that people hate being left out or passed over and prefer always to be seen and judged, for good or ill or even for worse, and even need this and yearn for it; the idea that they still cannot do without the supposed eye of God that observed and watched us for centuries, without that companionable belief that some being is aware of us at all times and knows everything about us and follows every detail of our trajectory like someone following a story of which we are the protagonist; what they can't bear and won't allow is to remain unobserved by anyone, to be neither approved nor disapproved of, neither rewarded nor punished nor threatened, to be unable to count on any spectator or witness regardless of whether they are for us or against us; and they seek out or invent substitutes for that eye, which is now closed or wounded, or weary or inert, or bored or blind, or which has simply looked away from what I am doing; perhaps that's why people today care so little about being spied on and filmed, and often even provoke it, through exhibitionism, although that can prove detrimental and draw down upon them precisely the thing they most dread, the conversion of their story into a disaster. It's a contradictory double need: I want it to be known that I exist and have existed, and I want my deeds to be known, but that frightens me too, because it might ruin forever the picture I'm painting of myself. And so when I'm not there, Tupra will probably have no qualms about appropriating wholesale everything I said to him when I talked about Dick Dearlove or indeed on other occasions, and he'll think he thought of it himself (in that regard he'll be like any other boss). Perhaps Pérez Nuix was right and I do have more influence over him than I think, perhaps I do stimulate and amuse him. Maybe that's why he has a soft spot for me and invites or drags me to his house and shows me this collection of horrible videos, and is so patient with me, and lets me get away with so many things, even letting me cover my eyes and not look at what he's generous enough to show me, in an act of great trust, or to watch it with only one eye open.'

  And I immediately went on to think: "But everything has its end, and banks will only honor your checks while there's still cash in your account, so I mustn't take anything for granted.' And then I said:

  'All right, show me what you've got to show me and let's get it over with. It's very late and I want to go home.'

  'Ah, of course,' he replied ironically. 'Those lights. Do you think she'll still be waiting for you? If so, it won't be easy for you to get away afterwards, she'll be very insistent.' He glanced at his watch and added: 'You've certainly kept her hanging around. Do give her my deepest apologies.'

  He was the kind of man who feels excited by the mere thought of women, by the idea of them, whoever they may be, and still more by the thought of his friends' wives or girlfriends and of sending messages to those female strangers through their husbands or boyfriends. That way, he thinks, they'll find out about him, they'll at least know of his existence and perhaps feel curious and imagine what he might be like, and thus indulge in a form of aimless, imaginary flirtation.

  'I've told you already, Bertram, no one is waiting for me and no one has my keys.' I downed my drink in one, as if to show that at least something had been concluded. 'Come on, get on with it, what else do you want me to see?' And I indicated the TV with a lift of my chin.

  He pressed Play again and then the fast-forward button, although he put it on at its second fastest speed, not at maximum, so that I could still see the images fairly clearly, albeit without sound, and they were all of them unpleasant to a greater or lesser degree, the worst kept feeding the poison into me, while others were, at best, boring or sordid, two guys with grey hair and reddish skin lying on a bed in their underpants, sniffing cocaine (drugs really provide a lot of material, perhaps that's why no government wants to legalize them, it would mean reducing the number of possible offenses), people who were of no interest to me and made no impression whatsoever, so I abstained from asking who they were, they were probably well-known or important folk, perhaps British or Canadian or Australian, perhaps police officers, one of them had on an incongruous navy-blue peaked cap worn at a jaunty angle; I very nearly went back on my resolve and came close to giving in to jocular curiosity when there appeared on the screen a Spanish politician, a nationalist, whom we're all heartily sick of seeing (he, of course, would have objected to being described as Spanish), standing before a full-length mirror in the process of meticulously disguising himself as a lady or, rather, as an old-fashioned whore, it took him ages to get his stockings on straight, every time they became twisted or wrinkled he had to take them off and start again, he tore two pairs in the process and glumly flung them down, he was also wrestling with a kind of girdle, it was a half-comic, half-pathetic sight, for which someone in my country would have paid good money; anyway, as I say, I was tempted, but I stopped myself in time and succeeded in not asking Tupra to play it at its proper speed, I wanted to finish as quickly as possible; in a billiard hall, four sinister-looking men were beating up some poor man of advancing years and distinguished appearance, they flung him face down on the green baize and beat him with billiard cues, holding the thin ends and thrashing him with the thick ends, then they rolled him over and immediately set to smashing his glasses and continued hitting him in the face—with glass flying everywhere and doubtless embedding itself in his skin with each new blow—and then they beat him all over his body, his ribs and his hips and his legs and his testicles, yes, they even beat him there, with the cues held upright, they must have broken his kneecaps and his tibia, the man didn't know how best to protect himself, they must have broken his hands too as he tried in vain to cover himself, four billiard cues are a lot when they're raised and lowered and raised and lowered, again and again, like swords. Here, I couldn't help commenting:

  'You're not going to tell me that one of these savages is now a prominent figure in some lofty position. I can hardly believe it of thugs like them.'

  Tupra stopped the film for a moment, he wasn't going to let me miss any of those barbaric acts, even in fast-forward. The image remained frozen on the poor man, his castigators already withdrawn, lying motionless on the table, bleeding from his nose and eyebrows, possibly from his cheekbones and from other cuts, a swollen, wounded heap.

  'That wouldn't be impossible, not at all. But no,' he replied from behind me, this time I hadn't turned round to look at him, just as well, I thought afterwards. 'The important figure here is the old man, who would feel deeply ashamed of this scene. Bear in mind that some people want to hide the fact that they have been the victim as much as or more than if they'd been the executioner. There are people who would do almost anything to keep people from knowing what happened to them, what barbarous, humiliating things have been done to them, and who would go to still greater lengths to prevent that being seen. So that their loved ones, for example, never see or know about it, because they would suffer and be heartbroken and be unable to ever forget it, I mean, imagine if this man were your father. But he's important in a different way from the others you've seen, he's another type altogether. He has little power or influence, at least not directly. Don't you know who he is? Really?' And without even giving me time to answer 'No,' he told me. 'It's Mr. Pérez Nuix, our Patricia's father.' And he pronounced that double-barreled surname English-style, so that it sounded as if he'd said something like 'Pears-Nukes.'