Fever and Spear

by Javier Marías

  At the time, I didn't quite know what was meant by certain frequently used expressions, which cropped up in both written and oral reports, and even in the spontaneous and apparently trivial comments exchanged while studying photos or videos or the flesh-and-blood people that Tupra had invited or, as was often the case, summoned, or even, it occurred to me, ordered to come. If we were commissioned to do this work by others, if we had no interests of our own and were merely giving our opinions, airing our views and making judgements, I assumed that the people we observed and who could be 'useful' or 'not useful', 'of great service' or 'of no service' (I myself quickly picked up these expressions, and grew accustomed to the concept without actually understanding it, practice makes up for so many things, as does unreflective habit), would be designated as such by the commissioners of the various tasks, depending on their specific needs and their particular investigations or problems, which must be more varied than I had imagined to begin with, when Wheeler spoke to me about the past or prehistory of the group, as he called it in order not to call it anything, lacking as it did a real name ('You won't find anything about this in any books,' he had warned me, 'don't even bother consulting them, you'll just waste your time and your patience').

  I rarely knew the source or origin of each commission, and it was rarely alluded to, I tended to think that all of them or the great majority came from official, state, governmental or administrative authorities within Britain, or, on a few occasions (given the remote or repeated nationalities of the subjects under study), from their equivalents in friendly countries or in countries which, out of self-interest or circumstance, were their allies: I was surprised how many Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Egyptians, Saudis and Americans crossed our screens, especially the last. Nor could I really explain why some of these people were being submitted to our vigilance and judgement (because that was the predominant feeling, that we were watching and judging them), especially when we were not questioned afterwards regarding any particular area or subject or characteristic. That woman, Judge Walton, for example. Neither Tupra or Mulryan or Rendel asked me any specific questions about her after my turn on watch (although perhaps they did ask young Nuix, who had caught so much of her character), and I found it hard to imagine what possible point there could be in watching, interpreting, deciphering, unravelling or unmasking a woman as decent, intelligent and solid as she seemed to be. At other times, the type of question gave me some idea as to what was going on, as to what it was they were after, Tupra, Mulryan, Rendel, Nuix, or, more likely, what the superior or inferior authorities — the clients — were after, the people who contracted them and made use of them, that is, of us and our supposed gift, of our presumed abilities, or perhaps, merely, of our audacity, which was always on the increase, always growing.

  As the weeks passed and then the months, I gradually broadened the spectrum of my responses, as well as my sheer bare-faced cheek.

  'Do you think this woman is being unfaithful, even though she swears she's not and there's not a scrap of proof?' Mulryan asked me of a well-dressed woman with a slightly hooked nose who was there in her living-room denying any such infidelity to her husband, the two of them sitting on a sofa in front of the television, which was on at the time, and who were clearly being filmed by a hidden camera, possibly installed in the set by her very own spouse (a man with a broad face and a propensity for smiling, even when, as at that moment, this was entirely inappropriate), who had presumably come to us for advice, because he felt he could no longer distinguish her honest tones from her deceitful ones, custom and cohabitation do sometimes tend to level these things out, a certain lacklustre quality, a certain lethargy overtake dialogues and responses, and there comes a day when the important and the insignificant, the true and the false, all receive the same scant degree of emphasis.

  'Yes, I think she is,' I replied. 'Her denial was too brazen, too eloquent, almost sarcastic. For all her gesticulating, his question didn't really take her by surprise. She wasn't offended by it either. She had been expecting this to happen for some time and had her response ready, had learned the words she was going to use almost by heart, had rehearsed precisely the tone and expression she would use when she spoke them. Not in front of the mirror, perhaps, but mentally. Her imagination was so imbued with it beforehand, all she had to do was to activate it. She was almost longing for the unpleasant moment to arrive.'

  'You think. You think. Is that all, Jack? Or are you sure?' insisted Mulryan, ignoring what we all know: that no one can be sure of anything, unless they have acted or taken part or been a witness (and on many occasions, not even that: the drop of blood).

  'I'm sure in so far as my sureness is based on what I see and perceive, on what you give me,' was my convoluted reply, a last attempt to protect my back slightly and not dive headfirst into further boldnesses. 'For example, she said she found his suspicions "hysterically funny". She wouldn't have used that adverb if she hadn't already considered, chosen, foreseen it. Nor would she if they really did strike her as funny. In that case, she wouldn't have used any adverb, or, at most, a more everyday one, like "terribly", less emphatic, less mocking. And if the accusation was false, she wouldn't have described it as "exhilarating", nor would she have lowered herself so much as to say how she, "little me", wished she could arouse the desires of other men. Few women, regardless of their age or physique, really and truly believe that they cannot still arouse someone's desire. I'm referring here to the wealthy, of course, to which class this lady apparently belongs. They might pretend that they believe it, they might complain in public so that others can contradict or reaffirm them, they might wonder to themselves and even doubt it in rare moments of depression or following a rejection. Rarely more than that. They soon recover from that kind of depression. They soon put the rejection down to a heart already taken, that usually provides them with a decorous, acceptable explanation.' — 'Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd,' I said to myself. And I thought: 'A bit of an exaggeration.' — 'And if they do one day believe it, they don't talk about it. Least of all to their partner.'

  'But he believed her,' Mulryan objected or pointed out.

  'Then he needs to be cured of his credulity,' I replied with more aplomb now. 'He can always choose to ignore our verdict, he can always tell us where to stick our verdict, assuming that the verdict is intended for him, assuming he's the one who commissioned it.' — By then, I knew that, during the sessions, there was no need to be overly careful with one's vocabulary. — 'But she's being unfaithful to him, I'll stake my life on it.' You always ended up putting your head on the block. Perhaps it was simply provoked pride, perhaps you really did see things more clearly as you talked; or convinced yourself that you did. Speaking is so dangerous. It isn't just that others can then no longer help but take account of what you've said. It's also that you yourself feel obliged to believe it, once it is there, floating in the air and not just in your head, where everything can still be ruled out. Once it has been heard and has gone on to form part of the knowledge of those other people, who can now make use of it and appropriate it, and even use it against us.

  Or it could have been Tupra questioning me in his cosy office, the morning after a celebrity supper I had been drafted into as a guest — 'An old Spanish friend of mine who's just flown in, a real artist, I couldn't possibly leave him all alone in his hotel room': 'Being an artist is the perfect passport nowadays,' he used to say, 'because it doesn't commit you to anything, you can be an artist in any field, be it interior design, footwear, the stock market, tiling or confectionery' — because a couple of my compatriots were also going to be there — the man was an artist in the world of finance, and the woman in the world of theatre — whom he wanted me to entertain, at the same time finding out a little about our host, while Tupra took care of the host himself and a few other major British players:

  'Tell me, Jack, what did you think of our buffoon of a host last night, yes, that ridiculous singer, do you think he would be capable of
killing someone? In some extreme situation, for example, if he felt really threatened? Or would he be simply incapable of it, would he be the sort who would just give in and allow himself to be knifed to death, rather than get his blow in first? Or, on the contrary, do you think he could kill, even in cold blood?'

  I paused to think for a moment, I never now answered straight off 'I don't know; how could I possibly know that?', I never replied like that to any question, however strange or convoluted or fantastical or overly precise, not even one as arcane as that, after all, who knows who would be capable of killing, or when, and whether in hot or cold or lukewarm blood. And yet I always ventured some answer, trying to be honest, that is, trying to see something before actually saying it, and avoiding talking for talking's sake, or simply because I was expected to talk. I tried at least to place myself in the situation or the hypothesis thrown at me by every question asked by my superiors or my colleagues. And the strangest or most terrifying thing was that I always managed to see or glimpse something (I mean I didn't invent it, they weren't visions or mere cunning tales), and therefore was able to suggest something, that is doubtless the process by which audacity advances, and so much depends on practice, on pushing yourself. Most people are limited by their own lack of persistence, because they are lazy or too easily satisfied, and also because they are afraid. Most people will go only so far and then apply the brakes, they suddenly stop and sit down to recover from the fright or else drop asleep, which is why they always fall short. Someone has an idea and normally that one idea is enough, they pause, pleased with that first thought or discovery and do not continue thinking, or, if they're writing, do not continue writing more profoundly, they do not drive themselves onwards; they feel satisfied with that first fissure or not even that: with the first cut, with piercing a single layer of people and events, intentions and suspicions, truths and quackery, the times we live in are the enemy of inner dissatisfaction and, therefore, of constancy, they are organised so that everything quickly palls and our attention becomes frolicsome and erratic, distracted by the mere passing of a fly, people cannot bear sustained investigation or perseverance, to immerse themselves properly in something in order to find out about that something. The prolonged gaze, Tupra's gaze, the gaze that ends up affecting everything it gazes at, is not permitted. Nowadays, eyes that linger offend, which is why they have to hide behind curtains and binoculars and telephoto lenses and remote cameras, to spy from their thousands of screens.

  In one respect — but only one — Tupra reminded me of my father, who never allowed us, my siblings and me, to be satisfied with what appeared to be a dialectical victory in our debates, or a success in explaining ourselves. 'What else,' he would say when we had assumed, exhausted, that an exposition or an argument was over. And if we replied: 'Nothing. That's it. Isn't that enough?', he would reply, to our momentary wild despair: 'Why, you haven't even started yet. Go on. Quickly, hurry, keep thinking. Having an idea, or identifying it, is something, but then again, once absorbed, it's almost nothing: it's like arriving at the first, most elementary level, which, it's true, is more than most people ever do. But the really interesting and difficult thing, the thing that can prove both truly worthwhile and very hard work, is to continue: to continue thinking and to continue looking beyond what is purely necessary, when you have the feeling that there is no more to think and no more to see, that the sequence is complete and that to continue would be a waste of time. In that wasted time lies the truly important, in the gratuitous and apparently superfluous, beyond the limit where you feel satisfied, or where you get tired or give up, often without even realising it. At the point where you might say to yourself there can't be anything else. So tell me, what else, what else occurs to you, what else can you bring to the argument, what else can you offer, what else have you got? Go on thinking, quickly now, don't stop, go on.'

  Tupra did the same, by pointing out inadequacies, as he had ever since that first meeting with Soldier Bonanza, with his 'What else?', 'Explain that, will you,' 'Tell me what you think,' 'Why do you think that?', 'Go on,' 'Talk to me about those details,' 'Anything else?,' 'Is that all you noticed?' It was a gentle, measured tenacity, by which he nevertheless extracted everything you had thought or seen, even the dream or shadow of thoughts and images, what was not yet formulated or delineated and therefore not entirely thought or seen, but only sketched or intuited or still implicit, still unrecognisable and phantasmagoric, like the sculpture enclosed in the block of marble or the poems contained almost in their entirety by grammar books and dictionaries. He managed to make the illusory acquire speech and put on flesh. And find expression. Sometimes it felt to me like an act of faith on his part: faith in my abilities, in my perspicacity, in my supposed gift, as if he were sure that with just the right degree of insistence — guided by it, trained by it — I would always provide him at last with the drawing or the text, present him with the portrait he wanted from me, or needed.

  Yes, that, more or less, was how it was, if the report I read about myself was authentic, and I had no reason to believe it wasn't. I came across it one morning while looking something up in one of the old filing-cabinets. What was not intended for everyone's eyes must have been kept and stored there rather than on computer, so insecure and unprotected. I saw my name, 'Deza, Jacques', and pulled out the file without even thinking about it. It was dated a couple of months after my first intervention (well, that's how I saw it), after my interpretation of Conscript Bonanza and the subsequent interrogation regarding my impressions of the man, and it wasn't really a proper report, just a few jottings, possibly handwritten — possibly made by Tupra himself — as a result of who knows what actions or interpretations on my part, although someone had clearly judged them of sufficient worth to be filed away and had had them transcribed on to a computer or typewriter — perhaps he had taken the trouble to do this himself. I read them quickly, then buried them again. No one had ever told me not to consult those old files, but I had the distinct feeling that it would be best if I was not found reading things that had been written about me and which I had not been shown. It was a brief report, a few impressionistic notes really, not at all systematic or organised, a bit confused and contradictory, almost indecisive. This, more or less, is what it said: