Fever and Spear

by Javier Marías

  That is how Sir Peter Wheeler was and still is — that simulacrum of an old man, by which I mean that his venerable, docile appearance often conceals certain energetic, almost acrobatic machinations, and his absent-minded digressions an observant, analytical, anticipatory, interpretative mind, which is constantly judging. For several interminable minutes he had directed my attention towards Bertram Tupra, on whom I would find myself obliged to focus during the buffet supper, which had doubtless been Wheeler's main aim, that I should focus on him I mean. But he had not, in the end, explained why, nor had he actually uttered a single descriptive or informative word about the individual or fellow in question, only that he had been a pupil of Toby Rylands's and that he had a new girlfriend, the rest had been nothing but idle disquisitions on and conjectures about his absurd name. He had not even been able to bring himself, after all those unexpressed vacillations, to specify what his 'line of work' was, the one in which he would never have prospered had he been called Pavel or Mikka or Jukka. Finally, he had even diverted me from any possible interest I might have had about that by referring for the first time in my presence to his own New Zealand roots, to his rather late transplantation to England and to his changed or apocryphal surname, and had, at the same time, prevented me from asking him about this by adding immediately 'But then you know all that, and it's hardly relevant', when the truth was that I had known nothing at all about it until that very moment.

  'Something else he has in common with Toby,' I thought after I'd put down the phone, 'it was rumoured, among other things, that he was originally from South Africa; yet another reason for them to become friends when they were young, both of them British foreigners or British by virtue of citizenship alone, both of them bogus Englishmen.' Rylands had never thrown any light on these rumours and I had never asked him about them, as he didn't much like talking about the past, at least so people said and so it was with me; and it seemed to me disrespectful to make my own investigations after his death, it would have been like going against his own wishes when he was no longer there to maintain or revoke them ('Strange to no longer desire one's desires,' I quoted to myself from memory, 'strange to have to abandon even one's own name'). I wondered whether I should dial Wheeler's number immediately, so that he could flesh out these new facts about himself, about his past, and explain to me why the devil he had talked so much about Tupra, almost to the point of exasperation on my part. Just before he called I had been trying the number in Madrid that was still fisted under my name, but was now no longer mine but the children's and Luisa's, and which had remained so insistently engaged that I wanted to try it again as soon as possible, if only to gauge the length of time it took me not to get through. That's why I didn't phone Wheeler back at once, as soon as I'd hung up, because I was in a hurry to continue dialling that now-lost number of mine, the number I'd had to abandon, and which I often used to answer when I was at home. Now I never answered it because I wasn't at home any more nor could I go back there to sleep, I was in another country, and although not as alone as Wheeler believed me to be, I was sometimes a little alone, or perhaps I merely found it hard not to be always in company or occupied, and then time weighed heavy on me or I hampered its passing, which is perhaps why it was no hardship for me to listen attentively, first, to Wheeler, at his house, and then to accept Tupra's proposition, which, if nothing else, would at least afford me constant company, even if, sometimes, it was only auditory or visual, as well as keeping me fully occupied.

  Luisa's phone in Madrid was still engaged, there was no fault on the line the Faults Department told me, and neither of us owned one of those snooping devices, a mobile phone. Perhaps she was on the Internet, I'd begged her to get another line installed so as not to block the telephone, but she hadn't got around to it, even though I'd offered to pay for it, true, she only used the Net now and then, so that was unlikely to be the reason the phone was engaged for such a long time on a Thursday night, which was one of the days we had agreed on in principle as a time when I could talk to our son and daughter before they went to bed, it was too late now, an hour later in Spain, gone ten o'clock there and gone nine o'clock here, the three of them would have had supper with the TV on or a video, it wasn't easy for them to agree on what to watch, the age difference was too great, fortunately, the boy was patient and protective towards his sister and often gave in, I was beginning to fear for him, he was even protective about his mother and, who knows, possibly even about me, now that I was far away, exiled, an orphan in his eyes and understanding, those who act as a shield suffer greatly in life, as do the vigilant, their ears and eyes always alert. They would have gone to bed by now, although they would still have had the light on for a few minutes longer, which was what Luisa and I allowed them by way of extra time so that they could read something — a comic, a few lines, a story — while sleep circled over them, it's wretched knowing the precise habits of a house from which you are suddenly absent and to which you return now only as a visitor and always with prior warning or like a close relative and only occasionally, yet remain caught in the web of settings and rhythms that you established and which sheltered you and seemed impossible without your contribution and without your existence, the long-term prisoner of what was seen and done so many times, and you are incapable of imagining any changes, although you know there is nothing to prevent them and that they might well occur and might even be wanted, and you learn, in an abstract fashion, to suspect them, what could they be, those changes that will happen in your absence and behind your back, you cease to be present, you are no longer a participant or even a witness, and it's as if you had been expelled from advancing time, which, seen from the disadvantage of distance, is transformed for you into a frozen painting or a frozen memory.

  I foolishly believe that they will wait faithfully for me to return, not in essence, but at least symbolically, as if it were not infinitely easier to lay waste to symbols than to actual past events, when these are suppressed or erased with no effort at all, one has only to be resolute and to subdue one's memories. I cannot believe that Luisa will not soon have a new love or lover, I cannot believe that she isn't waiting for one now without knowing that she is, or maybe even looking for one, neck straining, eyes alert, without even knowing that she's looking, nor that she isn't passively anticipating the foreseeable appearance of someone who as yet lacks a face and a name and therefore contains all faces and all names, the possible and the impossible, the bearable and the repugnant. And yet, illogically, I believe that Luisa will not take this new love or lover back to the apartment where she lives with our children or into our bed which is now hers alone, but that she will meet him almost secretly, as if respect for my still recent memory imposed this on her or implored it of her — a whisper, a fever, a scratch — as if she were a widow and I a dead man deserving to be mourned and who cannot be replaced too quickly, not yet, my love, wait, wait, your hour has not yet come, don't spoil it for me, give me time and give him time too, the dead man whose time no longer advances, give him time to fade, let him change into a ghost before you take his place and dismiss his flesh, let him be changed into nothing, wait until there is no trace of his smell on the sheets or on my body, let it be as if what was had never happened. I cannot believe that Luisa will admit that man into our habits and into our picture just like that, that she will allow him suddenly to be the one helping her to prepare supper — it's all right, I'll make the omelette — and who sits down with her and the children to watch a video — has anyone got any objections to Tom and Jerry — nor that he should be the one to tiptoe in afterwards — no, don't you move, you're exhausted, I'll go — to turn out the lights in their two bedrooms, having first checked that my children have fallen asleep holding a Tintin book that has now slipped quietly to the floor or with a doll on the pillow that will be smothered by the tiny embrace of innocent dreams.

  But we must get used to the idea that there is no mourning and no respect for our memory nor for whatever we belatedly decide now to
erect as symbols, apart from anything else because Luisa is not a widow and we have not died and I have not died, we were simply not attentive enough, and no one owes us anything, and above all because her time, the time that wraps around and steals away the children, is already very different from ours, hers advances but without including us, and I don't quite know what to do with mine, which advances without including me, or perhaps it is just that I have still not worked out how to climb aboard, perhaps I will never catch up and will always follow along behind alone in the wake of my own time. There will soon be someone by her side cooking omelettes and always on his best behaviour with her and the children, for months he will conceal the irritation he feels at not having her all to himself and whenever he wants, he will play the patient, understanding, supportive partner, and through hints and solicitous questions and retrospectively pitying smiles he will dig my grave still deeper, the grave in which I am already buried. That is one possibility, but who knows . . . He might be a jolly, laid-back fellow who will take her out on the town every night and won't even want to know about the children or to step over the threshold of our apartment, where he'll stand dressed and ready to party, drumming his fingers impatiently on the door frame; who will force her to distance herself from them and to neglect them, who will expose her to dangers and lure her into the kind of cheerful excesses I quite often indulge in here ... Or he might be the poisonous, despotic sort, who subjugates and isolates her and, little by little, quietly feeds her his demands and prohibitions, disguised as infatuation and weakness and jealousy and flattery and supplication, a devious sort who, one rainy night, when they're stuck at home, will close his large hands around her throat while the children — my children — watch from a corner, pressing themselves into the wall as if wishing the wall would give way and disappear and, with it, this awful sight, and the choked-back tears that long to burst forth, but cannot, the bad dream, and the strange, long-drawn-out noise their mother makes as she dies. But no, that won't happen, that doesn't happen, I won't have that luck or that misfortune (luck as long as it remains in the imagination, misfortune were it to become reality) . . . Who knows who will replace us, all we know is that we will be replaced, on all occasions and in all circumstances and in whatever we do, in love and friendship, as regards work, influence, domination, even hatred, which also wearies of us in the end; in the houses we live in and in the cities that receive us, in the telephones that persuade or patiently listen to us, laughing into our ear or murmuring agreement, at play and at work, in shops and offices, in the childhood landscape we thought was ours alone and in the streets exhausted from seeing so much decay, in restaurants and along avenues and in our armchairs and between our sheets, until no trace of our smell remains, and they are torn up to make strips or rags, even our kisses are replaced, and they close their eyes as they kiss, in memories and in thoughts and in daydreams and everywhere, I am like the snow on someone's shoulders, slippery and docile, and the snow always stops . . .

  I look out of the window of an apartment, ingenuously furnished by an Englishwoman I have never seen, while I put down the phone, then pick it up again, dial and hang up, I look out at the lazy London night across the square that is emptying of active beings and their resolute steps, to be filled for a while — an interregnum — by the inactive and their erratic steps, which lead them now to the waste-paper bins and dustbins into which they plunge their ash-grey arms, rummaging for treasures invisible to us or for the fortuitous wages of another day survived, when it is still not yet night but certainly not day either, or when it is still today for those going home or getting dressed up to go out again, but is already yesterday for those who come and go and never find their bearings. I look up to seek out and to continue seeing the living world that knows where it's going and to which I imagine I still belong, which finds shelter in its illuminated interiors from the crepuscular ash of the air, so as to distance myself from and not be assimilated by the disoriented world of these ghosts who plunge in among the rubbish and become one with it; I look out across the traffic that is growing quieter now and beyond the shadowy beggars and the stragglers — they run five or six steps and leap on to the back of the double-decker bus just pulling away, the women's high heels scrape on the ground, they're taking a real risk — I look up and past the trees and the statue on the other side of the square, at the smart hotel and the vast offices and the private houses that are homes to families, but not always, just as I was not always part of a family, but sometimes still am — 'I'll be more myself,' I murmur. 'I'll be more myself now,' I say, by being and living alone; I sometimes see people who look like me, people who don't live with anyone and receive, at most, visitors, some of whom occasionally stay the night, as also happens in my apartment, should anyone be watching me from some observatory.

  A man lives opposite, beyond the trees whose tops crown the centre of this square and on exactly the same level as me, the third floor, English houses don't have blinds, or only rarely, sometimes lace curtains or shutters which are not usually closed until sleep begins its wild circling, and I often see this man dancing, sometimes with a partner, but nearly always alone and with great enthusiasm, using, as he dances or, should I say, bops, the whole length of his sitting-room which is long enough to accommodate four large windows. He is definitely not a professional dancer busy rehearsing, that much is clear: he's usually wearing street clothes, sometimes even a tie and everything, as if he'd just walked in through the front door after a day's work and was too impatient to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves (although he normally wears an elegant sweater or a long- or short-sleeved polo shirt), and his dance steps are spontaneous, improvised, not without a certain harmony and grace, but without, I would say, much control or rhythm or thought, he makes whatever movements he's inspired to make by the music I cannot hear and which perhaps only he can hear; I've seen him through my horse-racing binoculars putting on some sort of headphones or other such contraption — or so I believe: I occasionally use them at home myself — obviously cordless, otherwise he wouldn't be able to leap about and move as freely as he does. That would explain how it is that on some nights he begins these sessions quite late, especially for England, where no neighbourhood would put up with loud music after eleven o'clock at night, or even an hour earlier, though I don't know what he does to dampen the sound of his dancing feet. Perhaps, when he begins so late, he's trying to summon up sleep: to wear himself out, to numb or stun himself, to distract the desires of his conscious mind. He's about thirty-five, thin, with bony features — jaw and nose and forehead — and has an agile, athletic build, with fairly broad shoulders and a flat stomach, all of which seems perfectly natural rather than the product of working out at a gym. He has a thick but well-groomed moustache, like that of a boxer from the early days, except that it's cut straight with no nineteenth-century curlicues, and he wears his hair combed back with a middle parting, as if he had a ponytail, although I've never seen it, perhaps one day he'll reveal it. It's odd seeing him moving about to different rhythms without my ever hearing the music that guides him, I amuse myself trying to guess what it is, to supply it mentally, in order — how can I put it — to save him from the ridiculous fate of dancing in silence, dancing before me in silence that is, it's an incomprehensible, illogical, almost crazy sight if you don't supply the music with your own musical memory — or even get out the record you think he's playing and put it on, if you have it to hand — the tune controlling or guiding this man, but which is never heard, sometimes I think, 'Judging by the frantic way he's moving his upper body, he might be dancing to Chubby Checker's "Hucklebuck" or perhaps something by Elvis Presley, "Burning Love" for example, with all those fast head movements, like a puppet nodding, and those short steps, or it could be something more recent, maybe Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that famous song of theirs, the one about Alabama, he lifts his thighs up a lot like the actress Nicole Kidman did when she unexpectedly danced to it once in a film; and now perhaps it's a calypso, he has a certain
sway to his hips, absurdly West Indian or something, he's even picked up some maracas, I'd better look away at once or else immediately put "I Learn a Merengue, Mama" or "Barrel of Rum" on the record-player, the guy's mad, but so happy, so oblivious to everything that wears the rest of us down and consumes us, immersed in his dances danced for no one, he'd be surprised if he knew that I sometimes watch him when I'm waiting or have nothing to do, and I might not be the only person watching from my building, it's fun and even rather cheering to watch, and mysterious too, I can't imagine who he is or what he does, he eludes — and this doesn't happen very often — my interpretative or deductive faculties, which may or may not be right, but which never hold back, springing immediately into action to compose a brief, improvised portrait, a stereotype, a flash, a plausible supposition, a sketch or snippet of life however imaginary and basic or arbitrary these might be, it's my alert, detective mind, the idiotic mind that Clare Bayes criticised and reproached me for in this same country years ago now, before I met Luisa, and which I had to suppress with Luisa so as not to irritate her or fill her with fear, the superstitious fear that always does the most damage and yet serves so little purpose, there is nothing to be done to protect ourselves from what we already know and most fear (perhaps because we are fatalistically drawn to it, and we seek it out so as to avoid disappointment), and we usually know how things will end, how they will evolve and what awaits us, where things are going and what their conclusion will be; everything is there on view, in fact, everything is visible very early on in a relationship just as it is in all honest, straightforward stories, you just have to look to see it, one single moment encapsulates the germ of many years to come, of almost our whole history — one grave, pregnant moment — and if we want to we can see it and, in broad terms, read it, there are not that many possible variations, the signs rarely deceive if we know how to read their meanings, if you are prepared to do so — but it is so difficult and can prove catastrophic; one day you spot an unmistakable gesture, see an unequivocal reaction, hear a tone of voice that says much and presages still more, although you also hear the sound of someone biting their tongue — too late; you feel on the back of your neck the nature or propensity of a look when that look knows itself to be invisible and protected and safe, so many are involuntary; you notice sweetness and impatience, you detect hidden intentions that are never entirely hidden, or unconscious intentions before they become conscious to the person who should be concealing them, sometimes you foresee what someone will do before that person has foreseen or known or even become aware of what this will be, and you can sense the betrayal as yet unformulated and the scorn as yet unfelt; and the feelings of irritation you provoke, the weariness you cause or the loathing you inspire, or perhaps the opposite, which is not necessarily any better: the unconditional love they feel for us, the other person's ridiculously high hopes, their devotion, their eagerness to please and to prove themselves essential to us in order to supplant us later on and thus become who we are; and the need to possess, the illusions built up, the determination of someone to be or to stay by your side, or to win your heart, the crazed, irrational loyalty; you notice when there is real enthusiasm and when there is only flattery and when it is mixed (because nothing is pure), you know who isn't trustworthy and who is ambitious and who has no scruples and who would walk over your dead body having first run you down, you know who has a candid soul and what will happen to these last when you meet them, the fate that awaits them if they don't mend their ways, but grow still worse and even if they do mend their ways: you know if they will be your victims. When you are introduced to a couple, married or not, you see who will one day abandon whom and you see this at once, as soon as you say hello, or, at least, by the end of the evening. You detect too when something is going wrong or falling apart, or flips right over and the tables are turned, when everything is collapsing, at what moment we stop loving as we once did or they stop loving us, who will or will not go to bed with us, and when a friend will discover his own envy, or, rather, decide to give in to it and allow himself to be led and guided from that moment on by envy alone; when it starts to ooze out or grow heavy with resentment; we know what it is about us that exasperates and infuriates and what condemns us, what we should have said, but did not, or what we should have kept silent about, but did not, why it is that suddenly one day they look at us with different eyes — dark or angry eyes: they already bear a grudge — when we disappoint or when we irritate because we do not as yet disappoint and so do not provide the desired excuse for our dismissal; we know the kind gesture that is suddenly no longer bearable and that signals the precise hour when we will become utterly and irredeemably unbearable; and we know, too, who is going to love us, until death and beyond and, much to our regret sometimes, beyond their death or mine or both . . . against our will sometimes. . . But no one wants to see anything and so hardly anyone ever sees what is there before them, what awaits us or will befall us sooner or later, no one refrains from striking up a conversation or a friendship with someone who will bring them only remorse and discord and poison and lamentations, or with someone to whom we will bring all those things, however clearly we perceive this at the very first moment, or however obvious it is made to us. We try to make things different from the way they are and from how they appear, we foolishly insist that we like someone we never liked much to begin with, and insist on trusting someone who inspires our intense distrust, it is as if we often went against our own knowledge, because that is how we tend to experience it, as knowledge rather than intuition or impression or hunch, this has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what's mysterious is that we pay no heed to it. And the explanation must be a simple one, since it is something shared by so many: it is simply that we know, but hate knowing; we cannot bear to see; we hate knowledge and certainty and conviction; and no one wants to be transformed into their own fever and their own pain . . .'