The Man of Feeling

by Javier Marías

  The three of us were coming into the hotel as he was going out, but he decided to retrace his steps and even suggested having an aperitif with us in one of the reception rooms (“I have precisely twenty minutes before my luncheon appointment,” he said. He had removed his fedora. He looked at his watch). He spoke irritatingly perfect Spanish, with barely a trace of an accent and devoid of any syntactical or grammatical errors (although he did perhaps say “yo” too much). Now and then he stammered over a word, seeking confirmation, but he gave the impression that this was just a childish form of coquetry that merely emphasized the difficulty of the achievement and which is a ploy often used by those who set out to impress. He did not translate from his language or languages (“I’m Flemish and I learned French as I learned Spanish, only when I was much younger, of course; I’m used to learning,” he said. He rejected with a glance one of my cigarettes, and took one of his own). He thought in my language as quickly or more quickly than I. He was pedantic, correct, sententious—possibly unintentionally. He sat down on a sofa, beside his wife, and I remained—stiff and uncertain, hoping that he would be with us for precisely twenty minutes and no more—in an armchair next to him. While he addressed himself mainly to me in my condition as novelty (as one does with foreigners, although he was, in fact, the foreigner), he stroked Natalia Manur’s left hand with his right hand. Sitting together like that (how was it possible that I hadn’t realized this in the train, I thought during those precisely twenty minutes, and I kept thinking this morning in my dream) it was patently obvious that they were married and had been for a long time. Manur, the Belgian banker, was one of those people, and there are many like him among those who invite me to sing (that is, among impresarios), who mitigate their intrinsic coldness with a perfect knowledge of the formal details that can transform a proud, unfeeling individual into someone attentive and seductive. It was not just that it occurred to him to order the slightly exotic drink for which everyone else immediately opted too (it was, I think, Natalia Manur who blurted out: “Oh, what a good idea”) nor that his movements revealed not only the absorbing activity from which he had just emerged and which still awaited him, but also the spirit of insouciance that he had resolved to allot to that precise period of twenty minutes, nor that his smile, calculated to the millimetre, varied depending on whether he was raising his glass to Dato (just enough of a smile to be polite and magnanimous, just enough to underscore his position), to Natalia Manur (just enough of a smile to be ardent and masterful, just enough to underscore her position) or to me (just enough of a smile to be admiring, distrustful and paternal, just enough to underscore my position as clown). It was above all his skill in giving importance to everything that was mentioned in his presence and that was going on around him (“What a useless waiter, doesn’t he know that one should pick up a glass by the stem not the bowl,” he said; “That’s a very bold tie you’re wearing, Dato, tell me where you bought it,” he said. He speared a pitted olive and ate it. “You might not think so now, but it’s time they had these sofas reupholstered: you’ll see, in a couple of months’ time they’ll be starting to look worn,” he said. “The human voice is the most extraordinary and complex of musical instruments, in which, contrary to what most people think, the actual quality of the instrument is far less important than the intelligence—the musical intelligence, I mean—of the person using it,” he said. He cast a furtive glance at the nails on one hand), all of which revealed how very difficult it was for him to give real importance to anything. Or perhaps only to Natalia Manur, I thought, for during the precisely twenty minutes he afforded us, he made not the slightest reference to her nor to how she was dressed nor to the delicate glow in her cheeks that day nor to her expression which had grown even more melancholy than usual the moment she spotted Manur in the lobby. He limited himself (but to define it as a limitation might be an attempt at attenuation or a mere inexactitude) to looking at her occasionally with unsettling devotion and to stroking her hand gently but doggedly, a gesture whose very lack of ostentation only made it appear all the more possessive; and she, who formed part of that rambling conversation and who had undergone only the change I have just referred to when she came through the door and saw, advancing towards her, his robust figure crowned by that unequivocally un-Spanish fedora, allowed herself to be touched by that Belgian banker with his rough features and studied manners (a tycoon, a man of ambition, a politician, an exploiter) for precisely twenty minutes. For five or six days, Natalia Manur—despite the married name she had when I met her and with which I will always identify her—had been my companion, and in turn brought along her own innocuous companion, the diligent, indispensable, perfumed Dato. And now, suddenly, despite there having been no misunderstanding between us, despite the fact that the implied promise or idea we had been in the process of becoming had not been denied or suffered a sudden deterioration or been overshadowed by some breach of faith, despite our not having changed city or hotel, there I was, watching her allowing herself to be touched by a charming, bald, moustachioed authoritarian, who, like her, was called Manur. Up until then, Manur’s existence had been only a fact, assimilated and filed away; or, if you like, had also been a face, interpreted and forgotten. I remember that when we said goodbye, and all four of us got to our feet, Manur kissed his wife on the corner of her mouth, shot his secretary a sideways glance, and shook my hand for the second time, with a distinct lack of cordiality. Then he raised that threatening forefinger again and repeated my name, to indicate that from now on he would know exactly who I was (“I’ll think of you the next time I go to the opera,” he said. “Although that might not be for a few years: the truth is that I have very little time to myself.” He put on his fedora. He looked at his watch.)

  That was the second of only three occasions on which I saw Manur, although, shortly after that, I took his place, and since then I have not ceased to see him in my dreams, as always happens in cases of supplantation. It was that raised, rather plump forefinger that made me realize that what I wanted above all else was to destroy that man and to continue seeing Natalia Manur every day: not just in Madrid, not just with Dato, not just while I was rehearsing Verdi’s Otello in the Teatro de la Zarzuela in what had once been my own city.

  I HAVE NOT THOUGHT FOR FOUR years. By this I mean that I have not thought about myself, the only mental activity to which I previously used to devote myself. I used to think about myself preferably at night, before I turned over, once I was in bed, turning my back on Berta or on no one, depending on whether I was at home or staying in some luxury hotel room. When I was at home, the last thing I would see just before falling asleep was a wall because Berta preferred to sleep facing the window and, although I would have preferred that too, I always gave in on those occasions when there was only one of something. My character had largely consisted of giving in, and it still does now. I have only been able to reject things or to fight for them with my thoughts and, lately, as I say, I do not even think. Perhaps that is why I would be best off on my own, so that there is no possibility of my rejecting anyone or fighting with anyone. Nevertheless, there has almost always been someone near, and one of my last thoughts before closing my eyes used to be that no one, not even Berta who was lying beside me, would really be watching over my sleep, and that during that prolonged state of unguardedness and oblivion, I would be lost if anything bad were to happen to me. Not that Berta neglected me (she would say goodnight and give me a kiss), but she was incapable of understanding my sleep or of understanding me in my sleep. It is terrifying how people are simply abandoned with an absolutely easy conscience on the part of others, as if it were perfectly natural, to long, hazardous hours in which it is taken for granted that they do not need anything because they are sleeping, as if sleeping were in effect what so many literati have liked to say it was: a suspension of all vital needs, the closest analogy with death. People sometimes struggle to understand each other, not that anyone is really equipped to understand, that is, to see the totali
ty of what exists or does not exist. But at least they pretend to be struggling to do so during the day. On the other hand, no one bothers or makes the slightest effort to understand our sleep, for although, in Spanish, the word for “sleep,” “sueño,” also means “dream,” our sleep is not the same as our dreams, which have already been subjected to far too many explanations. Berta, at any rate, had not even paused to consider the idea that our mind and our body continue the same in the nocturnal realm, indeed for her—as I saw quite clearly from the first night we spent together—my whole person ended or was interrupted, ceased to exist, was cancelled out, the moment we fell asleep, especially the moment when she fell asleep; whereas I, conscious that Berta required as much attention and care asleep as awake, would lie for a long time with my eyes open, vaguely thinking about myself and staring at that wall decorated only by an enormous Italian calendar (febbraio, maggio, luglio), in order to accommodate as best I could her sleeping mind and body, and trying to accustom myself to the idea that my own sleeping thoughts should understand her sleep, that is, understand her as she slept. Sometimes, for that reason, I would lie awake for two or three hours, watching over Berta. The bedroom in our apartment in Barcelona in which I thought and watched and slept was rather on the small side, because, as I have heard so many other couples say, it’s a shame to waste space in an apartment on the bedrooms, when they only need to be big enough to take a bed. I wasn’t then as famous as I am now beginning to be, I didn’t earn much money, the apartment was small too, at least in comparison with where I live now. Now my bedroom isn’t small, nor am I faced, as I go to sleep, by a wall, because there are windows on three of the four walls. It is full of light and there is more than enough space. I sleep in a larger bed, in a vast bed with lion’s feet carved in wood. Now I am the Lion of Naples, León de Nápoles, however ridiculous it is for me to say so, especially when I no longer know whether the sobriquet flatters or offends. And while I have been transformed into the famous León de Nápoles, Berta is dead and has been transformed into nothing. About three weeks ago, I heard from a man whom I do not know and who, as he explained in his letter (written in a neat, troubling, sloping hand), had married her and lived with her (that is, he had done almost the same as I had done for one year, five years before) for eighteen months, which turned out to be the last eighteen months of Berta’s life. He assumed that I would want to know that this person no longer existed. Indeed, he gave me only facts (he refrained from describing to me his state of mind, his despair or his relief), for which I was grateful, for in that way, Berta’s death—just facts, detailed but dispassionate—seems to me rather like those deaths shown on television or reported in the newspapers, and so, although it is true, I can allow myself not to understand it. They lived, he told me, that man whom I do not know and whose name I cannot even remember now (but it began with an N, Noriega or Navarro or Noguer), in one of those houses in Barcelona known to us as towers, and which are two or three stories high and are found mainly in the upper part of the city. One day (“a day like any other, exactly eleven days ago”), Berta had fallen on the stairs “as she was going down them carrying some books of yours that she still had from the time when you used to live together,” and she had fallen so hard and so spectacularly that she had vomited blood “as soon as she stopped falling.” A doctor friend or neighbor, evidently incompetent, had failed to establish a link between the two things, instead he had advised them not to worry too much and, after treating Berta for a few minor bruises on her arms and legs, had merely told her to rest for a couple of days, to see how things progressed and to make sure she got over any concussion. Berta did appear to have suffered only minor bruising, apart from the momentary shock of the fall and the sight of her own blood, which shot out of her mouth like a flame and stained three or four steps and which, what with the worry, they had not cleaned up until the following day, by which time it had already dried and darkened, just as my books had not immediately been picked up and indeed had not been put in order “until today.” Berta made an immediate recovery and resumed her usual duties, but on the ninth day after the fall, and only two days before that man, Noriega, had sat down to write me the letter, she did not wake up. When her husband awoke (“at half past seven, in order to go to work,” although he did not specify what he did), he found her curled up in the bed, with her nightdress all rucked up and her thighs uncovered, facing him and dead, with a smudge of semi-coagulated blood still trickling out—more slowly with each minute that passed—from her pale, half-closed lips. Her husband, Navarro, gave no further explanations, as if the medical causes of her death no longer mattered to him and should not matter to me. Nor did he vent his anger on the negligent doctor or on himself. “I buried her today,” he said in the singular, as if he had buried her alone and with his own hands, as if Berta were a pet. “I thought you might want to know.” Once one knows the things one knows it is impossible to know whether one wants to know them or not. I don’t honestly know if I wanted to know that Berta was dead, but now I do know and that’s that, and if I dream about it, it is no longer something imagined or allegorical, merely a repetition of what actually happened. Noguer’s letter concluded with those words, although he added a postscript in which he asked me if I wanted to come and collect the books of mine that Berta was carrying when she fell down the stairs; and meticulously, on a separate sheet, he included a list of fifty or so titles, of which I only remembered owning or reading three or four or five: The Fall of Constantinople, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Wagner Nights, Our Ancestors, and Pnin. That is how the titles appeared on Noriega’s list, with no mention of the authors. He clearly must have heard a lot about me to decide to write when he did not know me at all, which meant that, while I had not thought about Berta (nor indeed about myself) during the last four years, so much so that I did not even want to remember that I had lived with her for a whole year, she, during the last eighteen months of her life and during her only months as a married woman, must have thought about me often enough to have mentioned me to her husband, Navarro, enough for him, on the same day that he buried her, to write to me, giving me all that unsolicited information which I certainly did not deserve, given all those years of total silence and lack of interest on my part. The news, however, must have affected me, otherwise Berta would not have appeared in my dream this morning. And although I have not retained in my memory Noguer’s precise name, I can recall fragments of his letter, which I re-read several times two weeks ago, when I received it, trying to imagine what he did not tell me. I cannot help thinking about Berta’s furtive death, which occurred without witnesses or warning and in her sleep, something which would never have happened while she lived with me. There is only one thing more solitary than dying without anyone knowing and that is dying without knowing oneself what is happening, without the dying person being aware of his or her own dissolution and end, as may have been Berta’s case. There is no doubt, though, that Noriega must have been an inattentive husband, one who did not watch over her sleep with as much constancy and alertness as I did, and in that sense he is as at least as guilty as he tried to make me feel by twice mentioning the books which I carelessly, but with no ill intent, long ago left behind in another apartment in Barcelona, the one that Berta shared with me, the books which—as I understand it—were responsible for her fall. I had never stopped to think about those books, which were destined to occupy a millimeter in the great mound of my forgettings and which, nevertheless, I now learn have been leading, without my knowing or suspecting it, a life of their own “until today,” and were the indirect cause of the death of a person whom I know was very close to me and, even more surprising, that they are still mine, since Navarro is offering to restore them to me. Why did Berta not get rid of them, rather than take them with her when she moved to begin a new life in the tower where she found her death “on a day like any other”? Why did she not appropriate them and mix them up with hers and those of Noguer, her husband, as married couples do with the remna
nts of their single lives? Were they—are they—so unequivocally mine? I barely recognize them. And where was she taking them on that very ordinary day? Perhaps down to a smelly, crumbling, rat-infested cellar in order to abandon them there as proof that the hurt I must have caused her was finally over? Or was she perhaps going to dump them out in the steep street, beside the rubbish bins in that unfamiliar neighborhood, so that suddenly, on that day like any other, they would finally be crushed to nothing along with the burst plastic bags full of leftovers, peelings and boxes containing medicines, after years of being kept separate and apart like relics? Or was she, on the contrary, rescuing them from some dusty, gloomy attic on a day which was like any other apart from a feeling of intense and unconfessable nostalgia for the life with me that she had lost four years before? It is Noriega who says that it was a day like any other. Was I present in the unknown life of Berta Viella until the last moment? What would she have been dreaming about when death came to her? And what can Navarro be like, what can he be like, this chosen one who speaks of “commitments” and beside whose sleeping form his chosen one could die spitting blood while still immersed in nightmares and with half her body (“her thighs uncovered”) exposed to a bedroom which might have been spacious or cramped, squalid or welcoming, light or dingy, which might have been well-heated or just damp and warm like the whole city of Barcelona? A bad city to die in. I wonder if that bedroom has more than one window and, if it doesn’t, would Noguer have been considerate enough to let Berta have the side of the bed that faced it? I should write to Noguer in order to find all this out, but from his letter he did not seem to me a very understanding person nor exactly high class. I would have woken up that night, sensing death with my sleeping thoughts, and then I would have woken her up so that she would not die in such anguish, so that she would not die in her dreams.