'You're getting warm,' I said. 'I'll explain tomorrow.'
'Just have a look around when you get here and take whatever you want.' These weren't mere empty words, he really was a very generous man. His name was Miguel Yanes Troyano, nicknamed 'Miquelin,' and he was the son of a banderillero.
The following morning, up to date now on his latest triumphs, thanks to the Internet, and bearing a gift, I arrived at his vast apartment in the area which, in my childhood, was known as 'Costa Fleming,' rather closer to Real Madrid's Chamartin stadium—which I prefer to call by its old name—than to Las Ventas, the bull ring through whose gates he had often been borne shoulder high. I would have preferred to speak to him alone, but that was impossible since he always had company. However, having been forewarned that I was going to ask him for a favor or a loan, he had been considerate enough not to embarrass me with too many witnesses, apart, that is, from his lifelong manager, who was always there, a discreet taciturn man of about the same age, and whom I scarcely knew at all even though I had known him since forever.
'I hope Señor Cazorla won't find our conversation too boring, Maestro,' I said tentatively, just in case.
'Not at all,' replied Miquelin, making a gesture with his hand as if sweeping aside such an idea. He had greeted me with a warm embrace and a kiss on the cheek, as if I were his nephew. 'Eulogio never gets bored, but if he does, he simply thinks, isn't that so, Eulogio? You can say whatever you like in front of him, because he'll neither tell on you nor judge you. Anyway, how can I help?'
I found it hard to begin, because I felt slightly ashamed of what I was about to ask. However, the best way to overcome this was to say what I wanted and get it over with. Everything seems more embarrassing before than it does afterwards and even during.
'I wondered if you could lend me one of your swords. I'd only need it for a couple of days.'
I saw that my request took them both by surprise and that Cazorla started slightly and tugged at one sleeve. He was wearing a suit, complete with a waistcoat, in rather too pale a shade of grey; he had a handkerchief in his top jacket pocket and wore a flower in his buttonhole; he was, in short, old school. But he would not speak unless Miquelin invited him to do so, and Miquelin managed to conceal his surprise very well and replied at once:
'As many as you want, Jacobo. We'll go and have a look at them right now and you can choose the one you like best, although they're all pretty much the same. But forgive me, if you'd wanted to borrow some money, it would never even have occurred to me to ask what you wanted it for, but borrowing a sword is a bit more unusual. Is it for a costume party?'
I could have lied to him, although a sword on its own wouldn't be much of a disguise. I could have invented some absurd excuse and said, for example, that I had been invited to a private bullfight, but it didn't seem right to deceive such a kindly man, and I don't think I would have succeeded. I felt, too, that he would understand my reasons for borrowing it and wouldn't judge me either.
'No, Miquelin. I want to give someone a fright. It's to do with my wife, well, my ex-wife, we've been separated for a while now, although we're not yet divorced.' I always made a point of saying that, I realized, as if it were important. 'That's why I moved to London, so that I wouldn't be hanging around here while we gradually drifted apart. Given what I've found out, though, I'm not sure it was a good idea. We have two kids, a boy and a girl, and I don't want them to come to any harm. The guy's no good for anyone, least of all her.'
Miquelin understood, I didn't need to say any more, I could see this from the way he listened to me, as if he were in agreement. He didn't ask any questions, friends were friends and you didn't poke your nose into their business. Then he gave an affectionate amused chuckle, he was a man much given to laughter, and age had not changed that or made his laughter less frequent.
'And what are you going to do with a sword?' he said. 'Did you hear what he wants it for, Eulogio? Are you actually going to use it, Jacobo? Are you going to stick the whole blade in or just the point? Or do you simply want to wave it around a bit and scare the living daylights out of him?'
'I was hoping not to have to use it,' I replied. I had no idea what I was going to do with it; having heard Tupra on the subject, I had thought only of the effect it would have when I produced the weapon.
'You have to bear in mind two things, my friend. Firstly, the estoque only wounds with the point, by sticking it in, and that's why you need considerable momentum to drive it in really deep; the bullfighter's sword has almost no blade at all, so it won't be any use if you just want to cut someone up a bit. Secondly, if this sword can kill a bull weighing over 1,300 pounds when you stick it in up to the hilt—always assuming you don't hit a bone of course—just imagine what it could do to a man, one false move on your part and he'd be stone dead. Do you want to take that risk? No, Jacobo, the best way to frighten someone is to pull a gun on them. Preferably a clean one, because you never know.'
I hadn't made the connection until I heard Miquelin talking about what a sword could do to a man, but when I did, I felt a shudder of disgust run through me, although, oddly, strangely, not self-disgust; I must still have seen myself as quite separate from what I was planning to do, or felt that my plan was still empty of content, or was it just that one never experiences genuine self-disgust, and it's that inability that makes us capable of doing almost anything as we grow accustomed to the ideas that rise up in us or take root, little by little, or as we come to terms with the fact that we're really going to do what we're going to do. 'I would be like that vicious malagueño, that nasty piece of work, that bastard,' I thought, 'the one who killed Emilio Mares on the outskirts of Ronda some seventy years ago, helped and urged on by his comrades, the one who went in for the kill and cut off Mares' ears and his tail, held them up in one hand and with the other doffed his red beret as if it were a bullfighter's hat, there in those sweet lands. The one who brutally murdered my father's old university friend, who, as my father told me, was rather vain, but in a funny self-consciously frivolous way, a really lovely man, always in a good mood, whom he had very much liked and who had refused to dig his own grave before being shot, thus allowing his executioners to bait him like a bull as well as to kill him. And then they had, literally, baited him with banderillas and pikes and swords. It's fortunate that Miquelin, all unknowing, has alerted me to that connection.'
'Clean?' I asked. I didn't understand the term.
'Yes, a gun that no one knows about, that hasn't been registered, and, above all, that hasn't been used in any crime. As I say, you never know' Miquelin, like all bullfighters I suppose, was all too aware that one never could know what might happen.
'What do you mean "you never know," Miquelin?'
'What do you think I mean, child? Listen to him, Eulogio!' And he chuckled again, he must have considered me a complete novice, which I was in such matters. 'Because if you put a gun in your pocket, there's always a chance you might end up firing it. You just want to give someone a fright, fair enough, but you never know how the other fellow's going to react. He might not be frightened, and then what will you do?'
'Fine, but where am I going to get a gun like that?' I knew that the Maestro owned various weapons, which he used when he went hunting on his estate in Caceres, where he'd spend longish periods of time. And perhaps other kinds of weapons too, the shorter variety that are of no use for hunting. However, it was likely that he had licences for them all, and therefore no entirely 'clean' ones.
'I'll lend you one, man, just as I would have lent you the sword or whatever else you might want. But where were you going to put a sword, my friend, I mean, really, what an idea! A gun, on the other hand, fits in your pocket.' This hadn't occurred to me either, that I didn't own an overcoat with a sheath in the lining at the back or even a raincoat. And it wasn't the weather for overcoats. Miquelin added: 'I'll get you one now. Eulogio, would you mind fetching me my father's Llama. And the other one as well, the revolver.'
'Where
do you keep them now?' asked Cazorla.
'They're in the library, behind The Thousand and One Nights and a little to the left, behind several books with brown bindings. Go and get them for me, will you?'
The manager left the room (I wondered what kind of library the Maestro would have—I had certainly never seen it during those nights spent playing cards; but he was, like other bullfighters, quite well-read) and returned shortly afterwards carrying two boxes or packages wrapped in cloth which he placed before Miquelin on the coffee table.
Would you be so kind as to bring some gloves for Jacobo, Eulogio?' he said. Then turning to me: 'If you're going to use one of them, it's best you don't touch them. Not being used to handling guns, you might forget to clean it afterwards.'
Cazorla was as helpful as ever, his admiration for the Maestro being infinite, bordering on devotion. He again left the room and came back with a pair of white gloves, like those a head-waiter might wear, or a magician. They were made of very fine cloth; I put them on, and then Miquelin unwrapped the boxes carefully, almost solemnly, less perhaps because they were guns than because they had belonged to his father. Many fathers who had lived through the Civil War still had a gun or two, standard-issue and otherwise, indeed my own father had a Star or an Astra, of the sort that used to be made in Eibar. I had never seen it myself, however, and I wasn't going to ask him about it now or start rummaging through his apartment. 'He must have taken a risk after the War,' I thought, 'by keeping it and not surrendering it. Given that he was on the losing side and had been in prison.' Miquelin's father, who would, of course, have been older than mine, might well have been on the winning side, but we had never spoken about this, after all, it didn't matter any more. In fact, we had never talked about anything serious or personal. These Madrid-style friendships really are most unusual, often inexplicable.
'Is it all right to pick them up now?' I asked. They were very handsome objects, the revolver with its striated wooden grip, and the pistol forming almost a right angle.
'Wait just a moment,' he said. 'They both belonged to my father, and so those thieving bureaucrats have never got their paws on them. If they ever did, they'd probably sell them. The revolver dates from before the War, I think; it's English, an Enfield. It was a present from an English writer who was interested in bullfighting for a time, and my father persuaded one of the matadors in his group to let him travel around with them. He wanted first-hand experience for something he was going to write; his main character was called Biggies, a pilot I think, it was a series, and in one of the books the author thought he might send his hero off to have some adventures in Spain. My father was very proud of this, because apparently this Biggies fellow was very famous in his country' There it was again, that word 'patria'; perhaps it wasn't such a loaded word, Miquelin hadn't laid any special emphasis on it, maybe because he wasn't talking about his own patria, our country. 'The pistol dates from later on, a Llama, which is Spanish, an automatic. The revolver takes six bullets, the Llama ten. Not that this will matter to you if you don't foresee having to shoot. But if push comes to shove, you'll have more than enough with either gun: if not, it will be because you're dead. One magazine should be enough for the pistol. Here's your ammunition. Well-preserved and well-oiled, and all in working order, as my father taught me. The pistol can jam, of course, like all pistols. But on the other hand, look how big the revolver is, with the drum and the long barrel. I think you'd be better off with the Llama. Don't you agree, Eulogio, that a pistol is better for giving someone a fright?' Miquelin handled both weapons with ease.
'If you say so, Miguel. You know more about it than I do,' Cazorla replied with a shrug.
'Do you know how to use it?' Miquelin asked me. 'Do you know how it works? Have you ever held one before?'
'When I did my military service,' I said. 'But not since.' And I thought how odd that was, and how new, for there must have been many periods when it would have been unusual for a middle-class male not to have a weapon in his house, always close to hand.
'The first thing to remember, Jacobo, is never put your finger on the trigger until you know you're going to shoot. Always keep it resting on the guard, OK? Even if the pistol isn't cocked. Even if it's not loaded.'
He used what was to me an unfamiliar, seemingly old-fashioned word for 'guard,' 'guardamonte,' but then Miquelin was himself in the process of becoming old-fashioned too, a relic, like his generosity. I didn't need to ask any questions, though, because he showed me what to do and I could see where he placed his forefinger. Then he handed the pistol to me, so that I could do the same, or copy him. I had forgotten what a heavy thing a pistol is; in the movies, they hold them as if they were as light as daggers. It takes an effort to lift one, and still more of an effort to hold it steady enough to aim.
And then the Maestro taught me how to use it.
I don't know, but I think perhaps by then I had absorbed Wheeler's dictum about how we all carry our probabilities in our veins and so on, and I was more or less convinced that I knew how to apply this to myself; I had, or so I thought, a pretty good idea of what my probabilities were, although not as clear an idea as Wheeler would have of his, given that he could draw on far greater experience: he'd had more time than me, more temptations and more varied circumstances in which to guide those probabilities to their fulfilment; he'd lived through and been involved in wars, and in wartime one can be more persuasive and make oneself more dangerous and more despicable even than one's enemies; one can take advantage of the majority of people, who were, according to Wheeler, silly and frivolous and credulous and on whom it was easy to strike a match and start a fire; one can more easily and with impunity cause others to fall into the most appalling and destructive misfortunes from which they will never emerge, and thereby transform those thus condemned into casualties, into non-persons, into felled trees from which the rotten wood can be chopped away; it's also the best time to spread outbreaks of cholera, malaria and plague and, often, to set in motion the process of total denial, of who you are and who you were, of what you do and what you did, of what you expect and what you expected, of your aims and your intentions, of your professions of faith, your ideas, your greatest loyalties, your motives . . .
No, you are never what you are—not entirely, not exactly— when you're alone and living abroad and ceaselessly speaking a language not your own or not your mother tongue; but nor are you what you are in your own country when there's a war on or when that country is dominated by rage or obstinacy or fear: to some degree you feel no responsibility for what you do or see, as if it all belonged to a provisional existence, parallel, alien, or borrowed, fictitious or almost dreamed—or, perhaps, merely theoretical, like my whole life, according to the anonymous report about me that I'd found among some old files; as if everything could be relegated to the sphere of the purely imaginary or of what never happened, and, of course, to the sphere of the involuntary; everything tossed into the bag of imaginings and suspicions and hypotheses and, even, of mere foolish dreams, about which, when you awake, all you can say is: 'I didn't want that anomalous desire or that murderous hatred or that baseless resentment to surface, or that temptation or that sense of panic or that desire to punish, that unknown threat or that surprising curse, that aversion or that longing which now lie like lead upon my soul each night, or the feeling of disgust or embarrassment which I myself provoke, or those dead faces, forever fixed, that made a pact with me that there would be no more tomorrows (yes, that is the pact we make with all those who fall silent and are expelled: that they neither do nor say anything more, that they disappear and cease changing) and which now come and whisper dreadful unexpected words to me, words that are perhaps unbecoming to them, or perhaps not, while I'm asleep and have dropped my guard: I have laid down my shield and my spear on the grass.' What's more you can repeat over and over Iago's disquieting words, not only after taking action, but during it too: 'I am not what I am.' A similar warning is issued by anyone asking another person to commit
a crime or threatening to commit one himself, or confessing to vile deeds and thus exposing himself to blackmail, or buying something on the black market—keep your collar turned up, your face always in the shadows, never light a cigarette—telling the hired assassin or the person under threat or the potential blackmailer or one of many interchangeable women, once desired and already forgotten, but still a source of shame to us: 'You know the score, you've never seen me, from now on you don't know me, I've never spoken to you or said anything, as far as you're concerned I have no face, no voice, no breath, no name, no back. This conversation and this meeting never took place, what's happening now before your eyes didn't happen, isn't happening, you haven't even heard these words because I didn't say them. And even though you can hear the words now, I'm not saying them'; just as you can tell yourself: 'I am not what I am nor what I can see myself doing. More than that, I'm not even doing it.'
What I had absorbed less well, or simply didn't know, was that what one does or does not do depends not just on time, temptation and circumstance, but on silly ridiculous things, on random superfluous thoughts, on doubt or caprice or some stupid fit of feeling, on untimely associations and on one-eyed oblivion or fickle memories, on the words that condemn you or the gesture that saves you.
And so there I was the following morning—the day was threatening rain—with my borrowed pistol in my raincoat pocket, ready to take some definitive action, but without really knowing what exactly, although I had a rough idea and knew what I was hoping to make clear: I had to get rid of Custardoy, get him off our backs, make sure he stayed out of the picture; not so much out of my picture, which was little more than a daub at the time or perhaps a mere doodle—'You're very alone in London,' as Wheeler used to tell me—but out of Luisa and the children's picture, into which that unwholesome individual was trying to worm his way and where he was perhaps about to take up long-term residence, or at least long-term enough to become an affliction and a danger. Indeed, he already was both those things, for he had already spent far too much time prowling round and circling the frame and making incursions into the picture or canvas, and he had already laid a hand on Luisa and given her a black eye and left her with a cut or a gash—I had been told about the second and had myself seen the first— and nothing would stop him closing his large hands around her throat—those pianist's fingers, or, rather, those fingers like piano keys—one rainy night, when they were stuck at home, when he judged he had subjugated and isolated her enough and little by little fed her his demands and prohibitions disguised as infatuation and weakness and jealousy and flattery and supplication, a poisonous, despotic, devious type of man. I was quite clear now that I didn't want to have the luck or the misfortune (luck as long as it remained in the imagination, misfortune were it to become reality) of Luisa dying or being killed, that I couldn't allow this to happen because once a real misfortune has occurred there's no going back and it cannot be undone, or, contrary to what most people believe, even compensated (and there is, of course, no way of compensating the person who has died or even the living left behind, and yet nowadays the living often do ask for money, thus putting a price on the people who have ceased to tread the earth or traverse the world).
Poison, Shadow, and Farewell Page 37
