Your Face Tomorrow 2

by Javier Marías

  And we might ask then how would the dead who died a violent death speak to the dead who killed them or who had issued the order to finish them off— they might never even have seen each other - once they were all on a level and all alike, although only in one respect, that of having died, which, in reality, is nothing, therefore the deceased, no less than the living, would be able to tell each other apart. And one might ask which version they would give, not to the Judge who has not yet appeared and to whom no one lies, and who is perhaps taking so long to arrive because there is no Judge nor ever was and never will be, mass suggestion will not summon him up nor mere insistence (or it may be that he does not dare to confront such a vast, querulous or possibly offended or, even worse, mocking multitude, and so he himself puts off until tomorrow, always tomorrow, the ghastly experience to which he committed himself out of pride; he places it infinitely on hold out of a sense of invincible fear or idleness), yes, which version would they tell each other and what would the two of them tell everyone else, martyr and executioner or instigator and victim, knowing that the present time, if I can call it that and as I have been calling it for a while now, would be too long, too unbearably long for that which did not happen, but was said to have happened, to be believed.

  I only had time to say a few things in reply, I had time to smile to myself and to feel a pang of pity, to be amused by his comments on the sharp, stylised features that Botox gave certain faces, the faces of both divas and earthlings, and to think that there might be some unexpected cracks in De la Garza's global stupidity; and even to want to hear a little more from him, more chatter and more nonsense and more comical descriptions, and even to wonder fleetingly if how I was feeling about him was similar to how Tupra felt about me (although obviously there was no real comparison): I amused Tupra, and he enjoyed our sessions of conjecture and examination, our conversations or merely listening to me. ('What else?' he would demand. 'What else occurs to you? Tell me what you're thinking and what else you noticed.')

  This lasted almost no time at all, or perhaps everything happened at once, which meant there was time for everything, or maybe I retrieved and rethought it later on, in the pause provided by my doze in the chair or by the sense of unease that persisted when I did finally go to bed, once that long, erroneous, disagreeable night was over. De la Garza had, in his own way, enlightened me about that product which once was poisonous, but was now possibly innocuous, and he had come out with a few amusingly impertinent remarks about its users or addicts with their wild expressions, the last thing he had said was this: 'It makes her look slightly unhinged, don't you think?' referring to someone he had called 'the ex-wife of that guy who's hitched up now with one of our Spanish actresses', I had understood him perfectly, one of the drawbacks or advantages of compatriotism, a tall woman who also had the face of someone very tall; it was a problem, having that kind of face, regardless of whether one was tall or short. 'They must inject it into her cheekbones and into her crow's feet by the litre, I'd be surprised if she can even close her eyes, she probably sleeps with them wide open. Just like this Flavia woman. I mean, depending on the angle, she looks like some kind of sprite.' There he was in his carnival get-up and with his shoelaces untied, long shoelaces too, they could easily get wet, even in a toilet that wasn't used very much, the floors in public toilets are always wet. It was a miracle he hadn't had an accident, especially during the last dance, when he had danced almost like one possessed, and which we had interrupted in order to save Mrs Manoia from the flailings of his fake hair and, according to what Tupra told me later on at his house, to save De la Garza himself from something far worse.

  'Perhaps all sprites sleep with their eyes open.' That was all it occurred to me to say in response, as a preparation for a joke or a quip; I could feel laughter bubbling up inside me, and I didn't want him to take it as a pardon or a homage (he was a very arrogant attaché), and so I looked for and improvised another outlet for it: 'Well, you should know, Rafael, seeing as how you know such a hell of a lot about literary fantasy — including the medieval stuff.' And I pretended to laugh at my own comment, when in fact I was laughing at his outrageous remarks. Nevertheless, I immediately introduced another element to dissipate the possibly wounding effects of my sarcasm (so I obviously had time to say four or five things to him): 'By the way, your shoelaces have come undone.' And I pointed at his feet.

  Without changing his posture, De la Garza looked down too; he had got over his dizziness or frenzy or vertigo, he must have thought it somehow chic to stand there, half leaning and half hanging onto a strange, cylindrical metal bar, despite the prosaic nature of the place and the complete absence of spectators (he could hardly imagine that I was likely to be impressed). He gazed at his shoes from afar, with an inexplicably commiserative look on his face, as if they were not his, but someone else's — mine - and he did not make the immediate movement one would expect, that of crouching down and tying them up. He had an ability to surprise, as does every major idiot, and, of course, to irritate, all in the space of a single second, and to erase at a stroke my open laughter, my inner smile, my incipient sympathy and that tiny pang of pity.

  'Tie them up for me, will you, I'm still a bit too drunk to crouch down like that, anyway, where's that frigging friend of yours frigging got to with his frigging waistcoat and the frigging line of cocaine he promised me. And maybe make it a double knot, just in case. Go on, it won't hurt you.'

  Perhaps the worst thing was that final remark, 'Go on, it won't hurt you'. His childishness, his rich-kid manners enraged me. The very idea that I would kneel down on a toilet floor, however clean and luxurious the toilet might be, and tie the shoelaces of a great dickhead like him who made all entirely artificial show of being foulmouthed (four 'friggings' in one sentence is too much, it's bound to seem put on) and had blithely landed me in all kinds of trouble; just because the idea occurred to him or presented itself to him as something perfectly natural and possible, and he saw nothing unseemly or unusual about it; and he said it as if it were a whim of his or almost as if it were an order, and in that chic, idiotic place, I had already been given quite enough orders by others, by those who paid me and were allowed to give me orders, or not, or only up to a point; and he wasn't even disabled or crippled or anything, he just couldn't be bothered to crouch down . . . There are people who have no sense of boundaries and who always catch you unawares, however forewarned you might be, such people are simply impossible. I don't know what I would have replied or done, or done to him, I don't know because I didn't have time to do anything; although perhaps, after a few seconds of initial stupefaction, who knows, I would simply have laughed even more, at his sheer nerve. I didn't have time, though, because, at that moment, Tupra came in, or Reresby as he was that night. I think that when he came in, I had, at most, the same brief, simple thought that had filled my mind when I saw De la Garza's flailing hairnet in action on the dance floor: 'I'd like to smash his face in,' and that is what I must have been thinking when the door opened.

  Seven of the minutes announced by Tupra must have passed or perhaps ten or even possibly twelve, he would have had various things to deal with, sorting out Flavia and cleaning her up, restoring her to her husband, offering him some kind of explanation, apologising for having to absent himself again and, since I was occupied elsewhere, leaving the two of them alone, he would, I thought, take over from me now and stay with the attaché — but what would they talk about — and send me back to the table to look after the Manoias. I saw at once, however -his whole figure appeared, as if we could see both the front and the back of him — that he was carrying his overcoat, he did not have it on, but wore it draped over his shoulders like an Italian or a particularly vain Spaniard or perhaps a wealthy Slav, and that he had another slung over his arm, there were two overcoats, his light one and a dark one, it occurred to me that the latter was mine, and so I thought that perhaps we were leaving and that he had picked them up before keeping our absurd ad hoc appointment in the Disa
bled toilet, so that we would not waste time in the cloakroom on our way out ('Don't linger or delay', perhaps that was Reresby's motto).

  'Are we leaving?' I asked.

  He did not reply at once, but did not take long to do so. I saw him remove something from his pocket and jam the door shut with it, a much-folded sheet of paper, a wooden wedge, a small piece of cardboard, I couldn't see what it was at first, he did it in a matter of seconds, as if he had been jamming doors shut since he was a boy. No one would be able to open it until he removed the wedge, I saw him testing it by pushing and pulling hard at the door, two rapid movements one after the other, I noticed a particular firmness and confidence and even economy in each and every movement he made. 'No, no one's leaving just yet,' he said. He seemed distracted, or, rather, still preoccupied, he was very businesslike in his attitude. He slung the darker coat over one of the metal bars, a low one at about hip-height, while he hooked his own coat carefully over the end of another higher one, he took his coat off as if it were a cape, not that it was particularly full, it did, however, seem to me somewhat heavy and stiff, like the filthy coats worn by beggars or as if it had been starched. But no one uses starch any more, certainly not on overcoats. His was clearly very new and expensive, of the kind that underlines its owner's respectability, possibly too emphatically, to the extent that one begins to doubt it.

  'At last,' De la Garza said in a whining voice. And he added in his hideous English accent, addressing Tupra directly (it was provoking and positively incendiary that he should have passed comment on the latter's waistcoat given how extreme or, rather, offensive he himself was to the eye): 'It's about time too, you know.' Set phrases were always the only recognisable words in his mouth, precisely because they were so fixed and set, and he was one of those people who add 'you know' to everything, which is always a sign of someone who knows nothing at all; and as I knew all too well, the oaf was incapable of holding a conversation in English, he would get lost at the first subordinate clause, if not before, and he was only comprehensible to a fellow Spaniard, which it was my misfortune, and not my only one, to be. It was as if he had forgotten the real reason he was there, as if he had forgotten that we had separated him from Flavia to prevent him from turning her face into a holy shroud, that he was indebted to us and had, in a sense, insulted us as her companions and guardians; I, after all, had been the one to introduce her to him. That is the good fortune of the arrogant, they never feel responsible or have a bad conscience because they have no conscience and are totally irresponsible, they are bewildered and taken aback by any punishment or slight, even one they have determinedly brought on themselves, they are never at fault, and often convince others, as if by contagion, of that spontaneous conviction of theirs and end up getting off scot-free. I wasn't sure that this time he would. Tupra would not, I thought, like that carping tone; De la Garza had been offered a line of cocaine, not even directly, but through a third party (his compatriot and, very nearly, his interpreter), and in his happy, fatuous mind that meant he could justifiably demand to have it seven minutes later, or ten or twelve, it was tantamount to registering a complaint about a favour done or a gift given.

  The feeling of heaviness that had overwhelmed me when I first got up from the table and headed for the toilets increased at that moment; I hadn't lost it, but now it grew stronger, became almost oppressive; various combinations triggered it: alarm and haste, the sense of tedium experienced at the prospect of having to carry out some cold-blooded act of reprisal, or the invincible meekness one feels in a threatening situation. That third blend would not apply to Rafita at the moment, he was unaware of any threat. I, on the other hand, was aware more of the second than the first, there was no alarm or haste now as there had been when I stood up and pushed back my chair in order to go in search of him and of Flavia, but a presentiment (I wouldn't go so far as to use the word 'prescience') of some near-inevitable act of reprisal hovering over us, as if the arrow had been placed in the bow and the latter, however lethargically, was now drawn tight, even if the arm drawing it tight was yawning. All this was emanating from Tupra, even though I was the one feeling it: the malaise, the pinprick and the sense of menace and of some impending misfortune. Yes, Reresby was clearly the kind to give no warning or only when it was of no use at all, how can I put it, when the caveat was just part of the punitive action already being taken.

  'Don't worry, I'll reward you for the wait,' he said affably, he was still sending out no message, not verbally at least. I don't know if the attaché understood, but it didn't matter because, at the same time, Tupra slipped two fingers into the breast pocket of his reprehensible waistcoat and drew out a neatly folded sachet. With those same two fingers, index and middle, he held it out to De la Garza; or, rather, he did not take a step forward or extend his arm, he merely showed the little packet to him, dangling it in mid-air, pincered between his fingers, the way an adult displays the prize a child has won, so that the undiplomatic diplomat was obliged to come and take it; and Reresby invited him to do so: 'Help yourself,' he added, and that can be understood by any fool who has ever set foot in England. 'But don't take too much. It's got to last all night.' He still sounded distracted, like someone going through the motions or else gearing up to something. And although there is no indication of this in English, I sensed that he was addressing De la Garza as 'tu'.

  'So it was true, he does have some,' I thought, without feeling it was in any way strange: indeed, there was nothing unusual about a man like him having one or two grammes or more, possibly even obtained from the police, confiscated goods; and it wouldn't even necessarily be for his personal consumption, it might serve for just such a situation as this, using the substance as a lure or as a symbolic reward, in order to get something in exchange. 'Comendador, in his day, used it as a bait for getting some pussy,' I suddenly recalled, 'they'd get into his car or go back to his apartment with him and in one of those two places he would frequently, but not always, end up having it away with them, even though they might not have foreseen that when they first got into his car. This was the kind of language — "getting some pussy" and "having it away" - that Comendador normally used, and although very different, it coincided in part with the slang of this imbecile here, and it had been my language too in other, younger, more subjective times and still can be on odd occasions - one never forgets a way of speaking, I can recall all the ones I've known and used — when a woman decides to be just pussy and nothing else and to let you screw her without more ado and without any sudden, subsequent show of affection, or if she screws you, it comes to the same thing, most women have known a night in their life when they felt like playing the role of pure, mindless flesh, of being either plunderer or spoils, it makes no difference, even Luisa had known such nights in her youth, although I don't know the details, and she might know such nights again now, just as I occasionally have here, perhaps, indeed, Luisa is experiencing such a night tonight; and Pérez Nuix must have known such nights too, she isn't old enough to have called a halt to them for good, that is, a temporary or apparent halt, because nothing is ever definitively over. With his cocaine Tupra has managed to have me lure this cunt into a Disabled toilet, and it's quite something to have got him to stay in here for ten or twelve minutes without complaint. So for the moment, he has managed to achieve his most urgent aim, to neutralise him, to prevent his making the situation with Mrs Manoia still worse and thus reassuring her Arturo or, still more important, assuaging his anger, that is doubtless the main thing.' But now that he was offering him the little packet, I wondered what else he wanted in exchange for handing it over, perhaps it was a bribe (he would say afterwards: 'No, it's OK, you keep it') to make him disappear for good, so that he would go straight from that toilet out into the street with no stopovers en route, but that would be impossible, he would have to go and collect or warn his partying companions, unless they had left without him when they saw his wild behaviour on the dance floor. Reresby had also said: 'This moron has got to be neutra
lised, stopped,' which meant, sensu strictu, rendering him null and void, something not dissimilar to annihilating him.