Javier Marias - Dark Back of Time

Rico adjusted his glasses with his middle finger and looked me up and down, wrinkling up his nose like the sort of accountant who wears an eyeshade.

“And what sort of deal would that be, young Marías? I’m warning you that by my standards you don’t yet have much to offer.” What’s true of his vanity is also true of his impudence — he doesn’t mind anyone else’s if the other person allows him his own without stiffening up at the first sally.

“I’m writing a novel and would have no problem putting you in it, if you can demonstrate sufficient merit.”

“Oh really, how’s that?” he asked with interest, then quickly switched to an air of indifference. “What would someone like me be doing in a novel of yours? Are you writing about scholars? Seducers? Illustrious men? Seems implausible to me.”

The professor amused me, he almost always does, with his vast knowledge, except for once over the telephone.

“It’s more about scholars than about seducers,” I answered. “Look: this novel takes place in Oxford and nothing could be simpler than for me to include an elegant Spanish professor, there on a visit — invited to deliver a lecture, for example.”

“You must mean a virtuoso and possibly inaugural lecture. Something extremely erudite and stimulating, on the House of the Prince at El Escorial, for example, or the Libro del caballero Zifar ,” he interjected with great conviction. “An extremely distinguished man and a dazzling speaker, no? His Oxford colleagues will drink in his words as if being granted a revelation, no? And handsome, ça va sans dire .”

“Let me handle the character and the setting, professor, don’t you be clichéd, too. Maybe that romance novel was all you deserved and I’m wasting my time. The Oxford University faculty has never drunk in anyone’s words, that would go against their principles. They merely tolerate. And anyway, what would your speech be inaugurating?”

“The school year, of course,” answered the professor opening his hands wide at shoulder level to underscore the obviousness of the thing. “The opening of the academic year for the entire university. And none of this limiting me to the department of Spanish and Portuguese, careful there, none of your crumbs, no. Michaelmas is what they call the first quarter there, isn’t that right? Well then, for the inauguration of that Michaelmas of yours.”

Since we were both being pedantic, I corrected his pronunciation: this particular “Michael” is pronounced Basque-fashion. “Míkelmas,” I said. “Professor, don’t be absurdly ambitious. To do that, you’d have to give your speech in English, in which case it would not be a terribly virtuoso performance, I’m afraid your vast knowledge doesn’t extend that far, nor does that of your potential fictional character. In any case, you haven’t earned it yet.”

Professor Rico reined in his aspirations. It was clear the idea had attracted him and was tempting him, or at least the joke of the idea. Making a couple of remarkable movements with his flexible mouth, he recovered his natural disdain.

“Oh yes, your deal.” But he immediately left off with his pretence and his interest returned, he’s too impatient a man for hypocrisy or haggling. “Tell me, how much of a role will I have?” he asked, as if he would be acting in a play.

“Not much of one, for the moment, not much, Professor. We could just give it a try this time, and if we’re both happy with it who knows what future books may bring? For the moment a small role, a secondary character, incidental, but distinct.”

“Me? Incidental? Me?”

“No, not you, the character in the novel. As I’m sure you’ll understand, I’m not going to rewrite the entire book to make you the protagonist. I have no heartbreak to work through, you know.”

Professor Rico muttered something unintelligible, as if so enthralled with his hastily imagined portrayal that it pained him badly to renounce any part of it. So he muttered something like “Ertsz.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, nothing.” He went on muttering a while longer as if tallying up sums in his head. He straightened his glasses, pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and finally began speaking clearly again, resolutely even, like a man accepting a bet in poker, and saying, “I see you” or “I raise you.” “Very well, young Marías, let’s skip the preliminaries and get down to business. What do you want in return? Let’s have it.”

I thanked him for his confidence and felt like a trafficker in false immortality.

I won’t say what I asked for, only that he thought it was a reasonable enough request for a try-out, agreed to do it, and never did. When the time came, he frivolously claimed that while gratified by certain sartorial details and two or three adjectives, he had been thoroughly displeased by the character’s behavior and degree of resemblance to him and the amount of space he was allotted. (Nevertheless, I learned from other sources that he was happy and even proud, particularly because people he knew mentioned the brief appearance or cameo to him in apparent envy: Toby Rylands really was onto something.) I didn’t hold it against him, after all he had had the kindness to grant me some credit in a hypothetical posterity, I had enjoyed myself, and the character in question — an incidental character — was only partially inspired by him, though there were many people who wanted to see in my Professor del Diestro a dead-on portrayal of Don Francisco Rico Manrique, which wasn’t the case either (he never visited Oxford during my stay there). I had the character appear in a discotheque and the text describes him as, “the famous Professor del Diestro, the greatest and youngest Cervantes expert in the world, according to himself, invariably known in Madrid as Dexterous Del Diestro or Del Diestro the Sinister (depending on the level of antipathy), who, invited by our department, was to give us a dexterous and virtuoso lecture the next morning. I recognized him from his photographs.” Then the text adds some farther description: “The professor, a distinguished and disdainful man of forty-odd years, in a shirt by Ferré and with a hairline in advanced retreat (‘A distinguished Spanish professor,’ I thought in astonishment when I saw him, and immediately understood his success), was already nuzzling and allowing himself to be nuzzled by one of the fattest of the girls.” As the reader can verify, I made him distinguished, famous, young, hated, successful, a wearer of Italian designer shirts, erudite and a seducer. The professor shouldn’t have had any complaints, even if in the end I did not allow him to inaugurate the academic year, in his bad English, before the entire University of Oxford, at Michaelmas or rather Míkelmas.

A few years later, while I was writing my next novel, which was ultimately titled Corazón tan blanco or A Heart So White , I spoke to him over the phone one morning and mentioned the new book. He immediately asked, “Am I in it?”

His brazenness was so funny I saw no reason not to make him an immediate offer, this time with no strings attached.

“Do you want to be?” I asked. “There’s still time. I’m getting close to the end, but I’m just starting a chapter that includes a character who could easily be transformed into you, I mean into Professor del Diestro. All things considered, I think you’d be just right for me in this scene.”

“I’d be just right for you? I? For you? Don’t flatter yourself, I can’t be just right for anyone. Why? What kind of malicious scene is it?” He’s a wary man.

“Well, let’s say I could slip you in without the book’s being at all the worse for it; on the contrary, it might gain something.”