The Man of Feeling

by Javier Marías

  Dato paused to take a sip of his drink. Although he had just begun what appeared to be a litany of complaints, his voice, his gestures, his ingratiating smile had barely altered. It was as if he too were reciting something—a lamentation, the introduction to an aria. And there was not the slightest trace of mockery in his voice, nor even irony. He took that woman utterly seriously and felt no rancour either, perhaps because—or so I thought—she seemed to be his sole occupation in life, even if he would rather she were not.

  “The only place in the world where she used to feel comfortable, where she didn’t need anything, not even me (volontiers), the only place where she had independent memories that predated her disastrous marriage, was Madrid, where she comes from and from where she was uprooted some twelve or fifteen years ago and where, up until only a few months ago, her brother used to live. Whenever we came to Madrid (and since Manur & Co. has traditionally had many dealings here, we used to come here frequently), I could have a rest and devote myself to other things. Señor Manur, as he always is everywhere, would be busy with his many financial deals (he’s a banker, you see), and Natalia, his wife (her name’s Natalia, you see), would spend all day with her brother. That was the only time when she seemed happy, when she seemed almost to have forgotten her melancholy and seemed almost indifferent to Manur, indeed she was almost nice to Manur when their paths occasionally crossed in the hotel lobby or when they had to go out to some formal supper, to which her brother, Monte, would nearly always go along too. And now what? Monte is no longer in Madrid, he’s gone to live in South America (South America of all places!), and for the three days we’ve been here, Natalia has been even more unhappy and depressed than ever; it’s the first time she’s been to Madrid without Monte being here, and she’s even more bored and lethargic and miserable than she usually is (and for two reasons now), and just at a time when my reserves are at an all-time low, when I simply don’t know how to distract her or even how to bring a smile to her face, least of all during those formal suppers. I simply don’t know what to say to her any more. I can be quite resourceful when I put my mind to it, you know. I can be extremely resourceful, but she knows all my jokes, all my pithy sayings, the kind of remark I’m likely to come out with, she can even tell when I’m about to make some quip. She knows all my mechanisms and she knows the city, well, she was born here. I can’t take her to the Prado or to the Plaza Mayor as if it were a novelty for her. And I haven’t got anyone else to fall back on: she’s lost contact with all the friends from her youth, because she left here when she was nineteen or twenty, and anyway everyone’s always so busy; she hasn’t written to or phoned anyone in years and you have to make an effort to keep in touch; all she knows is that in this city, her own city, she doesn’t exist: she only used to exist (when she came here) through Monte. She knows the people her brother introduced her to, but they won’t want to see her without her brother, you know what social conventions are like and how lacking in curiosity most people are. And I’m finding that here, where I used to have a break, a break from being a companion, I have to work and strain my imagination to the limit; I have to be with her almost all the time, especially during her interminable walks around areas she has probably seen thousands of times before and knows like the back of her hand. It wears me out. I’m too old for all that walking. And besides, Madrid, when it wants to be, is a very hostile city, and here I am obliged to spend hours at a time walking through this hostile city; walking and stopping again and again (she’s always looking at shop windows and buildings), which is the most tiring part of all. What was traditionally my rest period has become the worst time and the worst journey of the year.”

  Dato finished his second glass of whisky and asked for a single. The suppressed agitation with which he had been speaking seemed to have caused his voluminous, curly hair to fill out or rise. There was still no one else in the hotel bar, just him and me sitting before the invisible presence of the barman. Dato pointed towards the door with one of his small, eighteenth-century hands.

  “In a few moments, she’ll appear at that door and she won’t let me go to bed or continue my conversation with you. No, she’ll ask me or, rather, order me to go for a last walk around the block with her, because it’s such a fine evening, or she’ll want to have a drink with me somewhere so that she can tell me what a terrible time she’s had over supper (tonight Señor Manur has taken her to a supper for wives and husbands, part business engagement, part formal supper). And meanwhile he, Señor Manur, will go off to bed so that he can rise refreshed in the morning and dedicate himself busily to his many tasks and occupations. And since I’m no use to him whatsoever (for that’s the truth of the matter), he can manage perfectly well without my purely theoretical services; Manur can do everything without my help and I serve a far more useful purpose, a far more valuable role, keeping Natalia company and making sure she doesn’t get bored and doesn’t suffer and isn’t entirely miserable. Do you understand? Do you see? I am a companion, nothing more, and both of them, Natalia and Manur, know that that is what I’m paid to do, and they make that quite clear. And I know it too. So you see, you complain about being too alone; I, on the other hand, complain about having too much company. You complain that your life is too scattered and diverse; I, on the other hand, complain that my life is too concentrated and monotonous. Keeping Natalia Manur company, that is what my life has been these last few years, that is the actual content of my present existence. She’s a lovely person, of course, if somewhat on the melancholy side, but only a husband or a lover or possibly a brother can keep a woman company indefinitely and unconditionally, don’t you think? And I am not her husband or her lover or her brother. Señor Manur is her husband and Monte is her brother, and she, incredible though it may seem, has no lovers. It’s completely illogical in her situation, but that, alas, is how it is.”

  Dato had spoken these last words with utter conviction, as if—as I think now—he were using them to provoke my incredulity.

  “How can you be so sure? Does she really tell you everything?” I asked with due incredulity.

  “Well, I don’t know if she tells me everything, but, in a way, anything she doesn’t tell me doesn’t really exist. If it doesn’t exist for me, then it doesn’t exist for Señor Manur either, and if it doesn’t exist for him, then it doesn’t exist for me. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  Dato did not seem to have any sense at all that he might be talking too much. In this morning’s dream, throughout this repeated conversation, he struck me as a patient and determined man. Determined to tell me, patiently and all in good time, anything I did not know.

  “Señor Manur is the one who pays my salary, and, as you can imagine, he expects me to pass on to him any important news regarding his wife. He takes it for granted that if anyone knows what does or does not happen to Natalia Manur, that person is me (since I have been her almost constant companion and probably her only confidant for several years now, he has absolutely no doubt that that person is me). At the same time, Natalia knows what my obligations and loyalties, both theoretical and official, entail, and you will say to me (quite rightly) that she won’t tell me anything that she doesn’t want Señor Manur to know. Looked at from the other side, though, he assumes that I will know everything about Natalia, at least everything of importance. And since I don’t know that she has any lovers (which, generally speaking, is something one would deem to be a fact of some importance), the only possible conclusion one can draw is that she does not. Because the truth is that, suppositions apart, I only know what she tells me. That is all I can know and all I can be expected to know. Now do you see what I mean?”

  “Not entirely,” I said, although I was beginning to understand the confession of duplicity that Dato was offering me. He seemed slightly impatient with my response, but that impatience lasted only a matter of seconds (his mouth suddenly inexpressive and closed, as I had seen him on the train; his inquisitive eyes bulging even more than usua
l), but his beaming smile soon returned.

  “Are you married?”

  “No,” I said at once, and although it was true that, in the eyes of the law, I wasn’t married, I immediately thought that I had lied and immediately thought about Berta, who, at the time, four years ago, I had been living with for a year. (Yes, although I prefer not to think about it now, it is true that Berta lived with me for some time: and she was always there waiting for me at home when I got back from my operatic travels, which, as I have said, were already quite frequent.) That is, although I didn’t lie, I did lie and, as I said earlier, I cannot help wondering if it did not prove to be a decisive lie. Perhaps not. At any rate, it has mattered little during the last few years or, to be precise, now that I’m not dreaming and my dream has ended, it does not matter very much this morning.

  “You mean you’ve never been married?”

  “No,” I said again, and I suppose I wasn’t really lying at all.

  Dato took another sip of his drink and looked across at the mirrors at the back of the bar, and reflected in them he doubtless saw Natalia Manur come in, because he immediately turned to me and said in a low, hurried voice: “(Here she is.) Perhaps that is why you don’t understand: dealing with a married couple is like dealing with one very contradictory and forgetful person”; and he took a few steps towards the entrance to the bar to greet that woman whom I had seen deep in tormented sleep a few days before. She hesitated on the threshold, half smiling, as if uncertain (as if her uncertainty was not mere politeness, as if, indeed, that was the uncertainty) whether to regret my presence there, which would prevent her from telling Dato about the supper, or to feel pleased at the possibility of meeting a stranger. Her companion accompanied her to where I was sitting at the bar, suddenly very upright, my glass of hot milk long since empty.

  WHILE I REHEARSED MY ROLE as Cassio in Verdi’s Otello, they were both nearly always there before me, sitting—like the other invited guests—in rows ten or twelve in the stalls, so as not to distract us too much by their presence. Whenever there was a pause and I was listening to the director’s advice (pure tokenism really, since, in the end, every singer sings the way he or she thinks best and takes not the least bit of notice), I would look at them, especially at Natalia Manur. I asked myself over and over how they could bear these long, repetitive sessions which I myself would have found tedious if they had not been there, if she had not been there. Moreover, the role of Cassio, although an important one, is not a very large part, and very often they were not listening to me (which had been the initial reason for them coming), but to the great but now ageing Gustav Hörbiger playing Otello or to the ghastly, ambitious Volte playing Iago, or to the pair of them in one of their interminable dialogues. If I had to remain on stage, I would just switch off from what was going on there and gaze, fascinated, at those two accidental devotees who had appeared out of the blue in the city of Madrid. Dato, who clearly had absolutely no interest in or even liking for music, seemed, nevertheless, to be permanently absorbed in what was happening on stage, leaning forward, his hands resting on the back of the seat in front and his eyes fixed perhaps on me: as fixed as his eyes had been in the train in protracted contemplation of either the landscape or his own face. Natalia, more relaxed, leaned back (probably with her legs crossed), following our actions with close attention when I was on stage acting and with curiosity—but, I would venture, no more than that—when I was not involved. And when my presence was not required up there, I would come down and join them for however many minutes I had at my disposal. Dato would then almost invariably get up and, so he said, go out to smoke a cigarette, and Natalia Manur, in my opinion—and even though there was no real evidence to substantiate this—would forget all about the illustrious Hörbiger, the grotesque Volte and the lovely Priés (who was playing Desdemona) as completely as I did. I do not know nor did I ever know if Dato took advantage of those moments when I kept Natalia Manur company in order to take a rest from his obsessive duties as companion or if, in his unacknowledged role as Pandarus, he was using that excuse to leave us alone so that we could each gradually become accustomed to the silent breathing of the other or to the way our sleeves occasionally and very lightly touched, so that we could each get used to the faint odour of the other. For the former to be true, he must have smoked three or four cigarettes in succession. However long my break lasted, he never came back until I had rejoined my colleagues on stage: he was probably watching—one swift, bulging eye glancing every few seconds through the crack—hidden behind the curtains that opened onto the auditorium, for Natalia Manur was never left alone for even half a minute: as soon as I resumed my rehearsal, he, with rapid steps and hands behind his back as if still concealing in his fingers the butt of his everlasting cigarette, would return to his seat, and would again, apparently, bestow on me his undivided attention.

  Those were extraordinary days. For the first time in my operatic career I did not feel sad and solitary in the big city. On the contrary, in a very short space of time (perhaps only a couple of days) we achieved that wonderfully beneficent state of being in which two or three people take it so much for granted that they will meet up each day that the first question of the morning tends to be “So what shall we do, then?” not “What are you going to do today?” That state, proper to adolescents and to the newly in love, is not without its demands, and one of these, however contradictory it may seem, given one’s acceptance of another person or persons as extensions of one’s own self and therefore of one’s freedom too, consists in the immediate establishment of the strictest possible routine, which leaves no room for any disconcerting improvisations and allows for no catastrophic gaps that might cast doubt on that union and allow room for thinking. Thinking, thinking. Now that I’m telling you this dream and this story, I realize that I have abstained from thinking for the past four years. The “I” that existed before meeting Dato and the Manure has been absent or damped down during all that time, and I would go so far as to say that it had died, were it not for the fact that this morning, which is advancing as I write, I seem to recognize that “I.” In these pages that I have been filling (without yet having had any breakfast) I recognize a cold, invulnerable voice, the voice of the pessimist, who, just as he sees no reason to live, likewise sees no reason to kill himself or to die, no reason to feel afraid, no reason to wait, no reason to think; and yet he does nothing but those last three things: feeling afraid, waiting, and thinking, endlessly thinking. That was what my mind was like (cold and invulnerable, and perhaps it will go back to being that from now on) before that trip to Madrid. I felt afraid and waited and thought during rehearsals, in hotel rooms, on my walks around cities, in trains and in the few planes I traveled on, in foyers and in bars, as I read scores and studied roles, and (sometimes) during performances, indeed, I remember how, during one performance of Turandot in Cleveland, even when I myself was involved and was singing in that unmistakable voice of mine which was already beginning to make a big impression, heralding that final blossoming in Naples that provided me with my sobriquet, I was thinking intently about Berta and me and about how I didn’t love her. I used to think so much that I even made my few conversations, especially with Berta but also with other people, a mere verbal extension of my thoughts when I was alone; I used to think so much that I grew bored with myself. It was, moreover, an unreflecting form of thought, unguided, fluctuating, with no goal, no starting point, unbearable; and I had been finding it totally unbearable for some time—and that is not just one more characteristic of the pessimist, it is the main characteristic: being unable to bear that for which there is no remedy or, rather, being unable to bear the only thing that is possible—when I found the salvation and miracle of that unexpected Madrid friendship, which very soon—indeed, at once—was not restricted to the hours I will term “musical”: it spread out to fill all the hours of the day, from the leisurely, not too early breakfast taken in the hotel dining room, to the quick or not so quick lunch in some restauran
t near the Teatro de la Zarzuela, to the walks, visits, and shopping expeditions around the city, even to several suppers stolen from Señor Manur or, rather—it would be more accurate to say—indifferently yielded up to us. Dato, Natalia Manur and me. We became an inseparable threesome, without the principle of inseparability or the principle of cohesion becoming in any way visible or capable of being put into words, without the profound attraction that Natalia Manur had for me and I for her even aspiring to be so. For the curious thing about those days was that Dato, the apparently indispensable conduit, turned out, in reality—the reality was those breakfasts, lunches, walks, visits, shopping trips and suppers—to be entirely dispensable and neutral: a continuous presence, not just taken for granted but perhaps necessary, yet somehow barely noticeable. With Natalia Manur (or more likely with her and me), Dato was entirely different from the way he had shown himself to be in the hotel bar, as if—again that same suspicion—he were taking advantage of my enthusiasm and my initiative to give his own a rest, or perhaps he remained scrupulously in the background in order to allow me to shine, to let me make myself known. Sometimes, as we were walking along the suffocating, filthy, chattering streets, he would walk a few paces ahead or hang back on the old excuse of tying his shoe lace or looking in a shop window that would be of no interest to Natalia and me (a shop selling buttons, an ironmonger’s, not even a tobacconist’s or a grocer’s), but we usually caught up with him or waited for him to catch up with us, as if not just the fluency of our conversations, but also our very existence there before each other, the possibility of seeing each other, depended on or required the impetus of that small figure who had brought us together. When we were sitting at a table, as we so very often were, he tended to keep silent as if he really were just an extra or part of our retinue, and he barely passed any comment at all except on the wine and the food. He also (as befits both a subaltern and a gentleman) dealt with the waiters. He was the one who asked for or chose a table, the one who offered us the menu when we were absorbed in talk, the one who, in the presence of the man taking note, would invite Natalia Manur and me, always in that order, to make our choice of one course, another course, and later on, of dessert and coffee. He showed great insight and good taste when suggesting plans and proposing places to visit, clearly accustomed to having to use his imagination in the accomplishment of his more practical obligations. What he did not do, though, was to pay for what we consumed. I usually did that, although on the few occasions when Natalia Manur insisted, in order, I presume, to show me her gratitude, and when, therefore, I did not pay, I could not help observing that she deposited the money on the small tray along with the bill, and that Dato, having first taken charge of deciding how much tip to leave, blithely picked up any change and put it in his wallet, and Natalia Manur seemed neither surprised nor even to notice. In those two gestures, that of the long, gnarled hand placing notes on the table and that of the tiny, greedy hand removing them, I thought I saw, on those two or three occasions (though possibly more often), the sign of a more important transaction, the emblematic form in which the most secret and unmentionable relationships need, now and then, to be rewarded for their stealth and to be made manifest. Natalia Manur, I thought, was buying or at least maintaining the uncertain nature of Dato’s loyalty by paying him considerable sums out of her own pocket; but in that stipulated, periodic payment, the greatest contact between the two of them would possibly be a monthly signature, perhaps not even that. The commercial relationship might be so firmly established—a regular bank transfer made impersonal by habit—that it could almost be forgotten, and those two gestures might well provide a reminder of that link, whereby, for an instant, Dato became the desired one and Natalia Manur the desirer, she became the determinee and he the determinant. Yes, it was obviously a sign, possibly agreed, possibly demanded by Dato: evidence, momentary but repeated, blatant but deniable, of the true nature of their relationship. That was the only possible interpretation one could place on the permitted pillage of (at most) a few thousand pesetas carried out by that man through the indifferent mediation of a waiter’s hand. But it is precisely such actions and such details, sometimes even less perceptible and significant, sometimes in marked contradiction to what they reveal, sometimes deliberate and sometimes involuntary, that allow us to understand, albeit without any proof, the real bias of the relationship between two people, for example, the short, sharp greeting, the fumbled handshake (by hands accustomed to less formal contact), the exchange of excessively opaque glances (painfully censored) between two illicit lovers who happen to coincide at a party accompanied by their respective spouses; or the fearful affability and solicitude (the hand that does not risk bestowing an affectionate squeeze, but instead rests lightly on the other person’s arm to usher them past, the ill-timed smile that both regrets and accepts the impossibility of recovering trust or of softening an insult) with which one treats a person whom one has, though without ill intent, nonetheless harmed; like the hands that suddenly clench, the steps that hesitate and then immediately press determinedly forward, when those who either hate or cannot forget one another pass in the street; like Manur’s forefinger, which stood erect and still for a few seconds before he gave me his hand on the day that we met, when Dato, always master of the situation, took it upon himself to introduce us: it was a warning forefinger that Manur tried to pass off as a moment’s unlikely consideration of my name, which he knew, he said, having seen it in print once or twice (“Once a name has passed before my eyes, I never forget it,” he said, “which is not to say, of course, that I can remember to whom that name belongs, only that I can remember having seen it”), he did not know now whether it had been in the review of an opera, on a record or even—which would have meant that he had actually been to see one of my performances—in some theater program (“But, on the other hand, most faces mean nothing to me; and besides, you performers are always so heavily disguised as to be unrecognizable,” he said). That forefinger was clearly a threatening gesture, masked only by its fleeting nature; but threats never go unnoticed by those being threatened, especially if when they become aware of the threat they realize (as was my case) that they are in turn threatening the threatener.