Poison, Shadow, and Farewell

by Javier Marías

  Wheeler responded at once, but this time he was more sympathetic than annoyed:

  'Yes. It disappointed and angered me a little when you told me that. After all, how were you to know? Nothing like that ever happened to him, but he enjoyed playing the man of mystery and hinting at a more turbulent or more tragic past than he actually had; not that his past didn't have its moments, but that's true of almost anyone who lives through a long war. He must have stolen my story when he told you that, to make his own more interesting. That's the trouble with telling anything—most people forget how or from whom they found out what they know, and there are people who even believe they lived or gave birth to it, whatever it is, a story, an idea, an opinion, an anecdote, a joke, an aphorism, a history, a style, sometimes even a whole text, which they proudly appropriate—or perhaps they know they're stealing, but push the thought to the back of their mind and thus hide it away. It's very much a phenomenon of the times we live in, which has no respect for priorities. Perhaps I shouldn't have got angry with poor Toby like that, retrospectively' Wheeler stopped, took a couple of sips of sherry and then murmured almost reluctantly, almost with distaste: 'Fortunately for him, he didn't ever have to see that. It's not a scene that is easy to bear, I can assure you. It's best to avoid tragedies. Nothing can ever make up for them. Certainly not talking about them.'

  'What happened?' And out of politeness I added as I had on another occasion, although this time I had to force myself to do what I had been taught as a child, never to put the screws on anyone. 'If you don't want to tell me, Peter, don't.'

  I was afraid that, at any moment, Mrs. Berry might close the piano and come downstairs and, so to speak, break the spell, although we could still hear her music; she seemed to have moved on to Scarlatti; she always played cheerful pieces, which that afternoon just happened to be by people who had changed countries, Scarlatti having spent half his life in Spain, although no one knows how or where he died or even if he had a grave, just like Boccherini: they probably both died in Madrid and both now lie in unmarked graves. A country indifferent to merit and to services rendered. A country indifferent to everything, especially to anything that no longer exists, or to matter in the past.

  'It's not pleasant to remember, Jacobo, nor to hear either. But I think, nevertheless, that I can tell you. I suppose there comes a point when one has to tell things, after a lot of time has passed, so that it doesn't seem as if they simply never happened or were just a bad dream,' Peter answered. '"I don't know how," Maria had said in her letter, and Valerie, from the moment she read those words, kept repeating, even in German sometimes as if she were talking to Maria: "I know how, oh, I know how, I know very well, in fact, I was the one who told the SS." And she repeated over and over: "The children. How could I have forgotten about Ilse and the children? I should have thought of them, why didn't I? I didn't take them into account at all." She spent the last days of her life in torment, in hell, and at no point did she consider answering her friend's letter. "I'd rather she believed me dead," she said. "I couldn't possibly tell her what happened." "And what if you didn't tell her, but just helped her," I said, trying to convince her: "Perhaps we can do something for the boy, get him some kind of permit to enter the country and a scholarship, I don't know, I could talk to people about it and give him a hand financially." I've always had family money. My maternal grandfather, Thomas Wheeler, sold the newspaper companies he owned in New Zealand and Australia for a large profit, and Toby and I, when we were still very young, each received a large legacy when he died. I even suggested adopting young Rendl, even though I hated the idea myself. But Val was paralyzed with horror and grief, she didn't want to hear any of those ideas, and she didn't respond. She lay awake at night, and even if, for a moment, she did drop off out of sheer exhaustion, she would soon start awake, crying and drenched in sweat, and would say to me in distraught tones: "Those girls. If I had just found out what happened on my own, I might have had some right, possibly, although I don't believe so. But I found out through Maria, and I betrayed her without a thought; how could I have done that, why didn't I realize? And those girls, who died because of me in a concentration camp, they wouldn't have understood anything, and their mother who got into the car with them, what else could the poor woman do, oh, dear God . . ."' Wheeler stopped for a moment and bit his forefinger, thoughtful, tense. ('Sorrow haunted thy bed,' I quoted to myself.) Then he said: 'Treachery just wasn't in her nature, still less betrayal. More than that, those were the very last things she would have been capable of in normal circumstances. She was a fine person, someone you could trust absolutely. She was the antithesis of bad faith, of deceit; she was, how can I put, a clean person. But war turns everything upside down or creates irreconcilable loyalties. It wasn't in her nature either to spare any effort in helping her country when its very survival was at stake. She was still smarting because she had lacked the courage to infiltrate enemy territory, and so it would have been impossible for her to hold back that information about Hartmut Rendl once she was convinced that revealing it was important and could save English lives. Now, though, her perspective had changed, as always happens in peacetime, except for those of us who know that war is always on the prowl, always just around the corner, even though no one else believes it, and that what seems to us reprehensible, horrific and extreme in peacetime could happen again tomorrow with the consent of the entire nation. "War crimes" is the term they apply nowadays to almost anything, as if war did not consist precisely in the commission of crimes, which have, for the most part, received prior absolution. Now, though, Val couldn't see in what way the information she had given, the idea she had put forward, could possibly have contributed to victory. Or, rather, she was sure that if she had kept quiet the result would have been the same. And she was probably right in thinking that, as, with very few exceptions, would all the other Britons who had added their grain of sand. That's another thing that happens in time of war, Jacobo. You do everything that's necessary, and that includes the unnecessary. But who is capable of distinguishing one from the other? When it comes to destroying the enemy, or even merely vanquishing him, it's impossible to gauge what really is doing harm and what is merely a matter of shooting his horse from under him, or, as you say, lancing dead Moors or making firewood from a fallen tree.' And he said these last two expressions in my language: 'alancear moros muertos' and 'hacer leña del árbol caído'. 'I tried every means I could to make her see this: "Valerie," I would say, "it was wartime and in a war, soldiers sometimes even kill their comrades, you've heard of friendly fire, haven't you? Or those in command sacrifice their own troops, send them to be slaughtered, and that doesn't always serve any useful purpose either: think of Gallipoli, Chunuk Bair, Suvla, and you can be quite sure that in years to come we'll find out about similar and equally bloody cases in this recently won War of ours. In every war innocent people are killed, there are mistakes and frivolous, foolish acts, there are imbecilic or cynical politicians and military leaders. In every war there is waste. Do you imagine that I haven't committed repugnant acts, things which, if I think about them now or in the future, could perhaps have been avoided? I committed them in Kingston, and even more in Accra and in Colombo. They're repugnant to me now and will seem more so as time passes, the farther off they get, but they weren't then. And that's what you mustn't do, view these things out of context and coldly. You can't look back after a war, don't you see? Not if you want to go on living.'"

  Wheeler stopped again, this time, more than anything, in order to catch his breath. He clearly needed to. He had a slightly faraway gaze, which was directed at the stairs, although without actually seeing them. He seemed to me simultaneously very tired and very agitated, as if he had relived the words he had spoken to Valerie rather too intensely, words spoken perhaps in their haunted bed, perhaps when she woke him with her crying and with her nightmares that corresponded all too closely to reality, and those are the ones no one can bear, when reality only echoes the dream. 'Let me be lead wi
thin thy bosom, may you feel the pin prick in your chest. Despair and die.' I waited and waited and waited. Finally, I said: 'I assume it was no use.'

  'No, it wasn't, and the worst thing is that, by then, I knew nothing would be of any use, that her life had been twisted out of shape forever and could never be made straight again. I was already part of the group, which was created too late to save her life. Not that my gift, my capacity for interpretation was any less before I joined, of course, but you adapt your vision to the task in hand and you hone that vision; you grow used to deciphering and looking deeper into what tomorrow will bring. You must have noticed the same thing, that increase in perspicacity, since you've been with Tupra, or am I wrong?'

  'No, you're right. I am more alert now. And I tend to interpret everything, even when I'm not working and no one wants me to report on what I've seen.' And I took the opportunity to ask him something that I couldn't quite understand, even at the risk of losing precious time and of Mrs. Berry interrupting us: 'If I remember correctly, Peter, the first time you talked to me about the group, you told me that Valerie was already dead when the idea was first mooted by Menzies or Vivian or whoever. I don't understand, given that the group was formed during the War.'

  Wheeler looked bemused, perplexed. He sat thinking for a few moments and then his face lit up like someone who has found the solution to a minor enigma (right to the end, he enjoyed linguistic curiosities) and he said in Spanish:

  'Ah, I see. It's a problem of ambiguity, or a misunderstanding on your part, Jacobo. If I said it as you said it now, "she was already dead," that would translate in your language as "estaba ya muerta," but in the figurative sense, I meant that she was already doomed, not that she had literally died.' And he moved back into English again, because by then, it was clear that speaking a foreign language tired him more. 'What I probably meant was that by then it was too late, that she had already done the thing that would later lead her to kill herself, that her fate was sealed. And that was the thing, you see; if the group had been formed before, someone might have decided, doubtless I myself with my watchful, trained, alert eye, that just as Valerie wouldn't have gotten very far as a spy, as she herself knew, neither was she equipped for black propaganda, which was too dirty for her scruples and for her dislike of deceit. Still less was she equipped to put at risk or sacrifice the lives of innocent people, however German they might be. As you know, step by step, you start doing things for which you have no stomach or aren't suited, and war stretches people a lot, or they themselves, without noticing, stretch themselves beyond their capabilities and only snap when it's all over. If someone had spotted her limitations in time, they would perhaps have withdrawn her from Milton Bryan. She would have been sent back to the Foreign Office maybe, or been restricted to working on white propaganda.' Wheeler ran his hand over his forehead, almost squeezing it this time. 'Sometimes I tell myself that I should have known anyway. But it's easy to be wise after the event or a tor pasado as you say—once the bull has passed—when you know all the facts. I wasn't altogether sure what kind of work Valerie was doing in the PWE, and we were thousands of miles apart most of the time. And she never even mentioned the term "black propaganda," so she may well have been engaged in it without knowing of its existence, or, rather, without even knowing the concept. She may also have been following orders and divulging nothing, not even to me. I don't know. If Delmer was diabolical, then Jefferys was Lucifer in person.' He paused very briefly, then added: 'I'll never know who he was, who was hiding behind that name. I have very little time left, Jacobo. Almost none.'

  The music stopped, and after a few seconds, I heard Mrs. Berry coming down the stairs. 'That's it, it's over,' I thought. 'I'll never find out how Valerie killed herself and why Peter saw her do it, even though, in principle, I have more time than him, and not almost none. And why, if he saw her kill herself, he couldn't have stopped her.' And I added to myself: 'But I can't complain. I've found out a lot today, and that isn't even why I came.' However, Mrs. Berry didn't come into the living room or call us in to lunch, but went straight to the kitchen, where I could hear her bustling about. Perhaps we would still have time if she was putting the finishing touches to lunch and if I hurried.

  'How did Valerie kill herself, Peter?' I asked, this time with no show of tact. 'And how come you saw her do it?'

  Wheeler shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position, and then he hooked one thumb under his armpit as if it were a tiny riding crop and he seemed to rest the whole weight of his chest on that thumb, at least that was my impression. It was as if he needed to lean on something, even something symbolic: a poor thumb, although he did have long fingers.

  'We were living then in a house rather like this, but much smaller,' he said, 'with two or three floors, depending on how you looked at it, because the top floor was very small indeed, with only a chambre de bonne I suppose you'd call it, which we used now and then when we had visitors. It was and still is in Plantation Road, near where you lived. It cost a lot more than my salary could stretch to then, of course, but the money I had inherited allowed me such privileges, as it always has. Anyway, after four agitated nights during which she barely slept'—'Yes,' I repeated to myself, 'sorrow did indeed haunt thy bed'—'Valerie persuaded me to go and sleep in the little room on the top floor, so that I could get some rest until she calmed down; she hoped it wouldn't last very much longer, that vicious circle of nightmares and insomnia, of loathing herself when awake and being filled with panic whenever she fell asleep, of being unable to tolerate herself either awake or asleep. It worried me to leave her unaccompanied during those night hours, because they were doubtless the worst and the most difficult to get through, but I thought, too, that perhaps she needed to spend them alone in order to begin to recover, that it might be good for her not to have me by her side to talk to her and try to console her and ask her questions, to reason and argue with her, because this had served no useful purpose in the four days and nights she had spent awake, none at all. I don't know, when a situation doesn't change, you think all kinds of things. I remember feeling very uneasy as I got into bed, leaving the door open so that I could hear her if she called me, so that I could go to her at once—we were only separated by one floor, two brief flights of stairs. But such was my accumulated exhaustion that I soon fell asleep. Sleep must have proved utterly irresistible because I didn't even turn out the bedside light or close the little book I was reading and which lay on the counterpane. I only woke at dawn and I must have been lying very still because it was only then, and not before, that the book fell to the floor, with hardly any noise: it was Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets, the paperback edition published by Faber. I remember that clearly; it had only recently come out and I hadn't been able to read it during the War; books like that didn't reach Ceylon or the Gold Coast.' And he murmured what were doubtless lines or parts of lines: '"Ash on an old man's sleeve . . . This is the death of air . . . the constitution of silence . . . What we call the beginning is often the end . . ." etc' Then he went on: 'So it wasn't the book falling that woke me. I don't know what it was. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was in the chambre de bonne alone and to remember why. I picked up the book and placed it on the bedside table, glanced at the clock—it was almost four—and automatically turned out the light, although not with the intention of going straight back to sleep, because that sense of unease had returned. I preferred or decided to look in at our room first, to see, without going in, if Valerie was sleeping or not, and, if she wasn't, to ask if she needed anything; or if she perhaps wanted me by her side. I put on my dressing gown and went very quietly down the stairs, so as not to wake her if she was asleep, and then I saw her sitting where she shouldn't have been sitting at all, at the top of the first flight of stairs, with her back to me.' Wheeler pointed upwards to his left, towards the top of the first flight of stairs in his current house beside the River Cherwell and not in Plantation Road. 'Just there, where you say you saw a dro
p of blood. It's odd, isn't it? She was still fully clothed, not in her nightdress or her dressing gown, as if she hadn't been to bed at all or was getting ready to go out, and that was what surprised me most of all, in the very brief instant during which I could feel surprise. But I didn't feel alarmed, the fact is that never, never, not during one of those fleeting moments or beforehand, did I ever suspect, did it even occur to me to fear that she was going to do what she did, not once. And there I failed. My gift or my faculty or my ability, whatever you want to call it, the gift that Tupra and you and that young half-Spanish woman have, the gift that Toby had and I have had regarding matters that were of no importance to me, failed me completely on that occasion. How could I not have guessed, how could I not have seen it, how is it that I had not the slightest glimmer? I've been asking myself that since 1946. How could I have been so stupidly optimistic, so trusting, so unaware, how is it that I saw no warning signs? That's a long time, isn't it? When it comes to the things that touch you most deeply, you never want to hear the warnings, but they're always there. In everything. One is never willing to think the worst.' Now Wheeler covered his eyes with one hand, placed it like a pulled-down visor, perhaps as I had done at some point while I was watching and not watching Tupra's horrific videos on that night when he was Reresby. 'I could understand her concern, her bad conscience, even her horror,' Wheeler continued to speak with his eyes covered, 'but I thought that sooner or later she would get over it or it would abate, just as almost everyone else got over what they had seen or done in the War, what they had lost or suffered. Up to a point, of course, enough to be able to live. It's one of the things that peacetime brings to people who are no longer at war, although it falls to some of us to continue and to watch. It brings forgetting, at least a superficial form of forgetting, or the sense that it was all a dream. Even if that dream is repeated every night and lies in wait during the day: just a bad dream. A terrible dream. But we had, after all, won the war. "Valerie," I said, and that was all I had time to say. She had her hair caught up. She didn't turn round, but I saw the back of her neck and her shoulders shudder and saw her fall violently backwards, and at the same time I heard the explosion. And only then, in the midst of my despair and my incredulity, I realized that she had been sitting there, for who knows how long, with the hunting rifle in her hands, pointing at her heart. Perhaps she had been hesitating or waiting until she felt brave enough, she who wasn't brave at all. I was probably the signal, my presence, my voice, hearing her own name.'—'Strange to leave one's own first name behind. Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction. And being dead is hard work . . .'—'She probably thought I would snatch the weapon from her and that there would be no more time later, I don't know'—'And indeed there won't be time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Do I dare disturb the universe? Time to turn back and descend the stair . . . And in short, I am afraid . . .' And so it would be best not to wait.—'She lay there.' And Wheeler again pointed up to the top of the first flight of stairs of his current house, where I had found the drop of blood and cleaned it up with such diligence and difficulty. 'It was very hard to get rid of that blood. It poured out, flowed out, even though I immediately staunched the wound with towels. I knew she was already dead, but nevertheless I covered the wound. She had gotten dressed and put on her make-up, she had put her hair up and put on lipstick to say goodbye to me, it was a matter of politeness, the age we lived in, her now very antiquated politeness, she never received a guest or went out into the street without her make-up . . . And even when there was no trace of blood, I could still see it.'—'The last thing to go would be the rim,' I thought; 'Although there would have been several, because there must have been more than one stain, and perhaps it made a trail.'—'And then I moved house, I couldn't stay there.'