Javier Marias - The Man of Feeling

I did not blush this time. I thought: "I could deny that link, I could pretend to be insulted and tell him he's mad, but I've got time to do that later; I can also hear what else he has to say."

"You've been extraordinarily quick and efficient in your investigations, Señor Manur. Who told you all this? Cespedes?" — I was pleased that the name came so immediately to mind: in order to instill respect, it is vital to remember the names of both people and things. "Or does Dato keep an eye on me at night as well as during the day?"

"Dato knows nothing about this. I deal personally with any matters affecting my marriage. But I have not yet finished my exposition of the facts. There is a third anomaly: you did not actually avail yourself of the services of that prostitute, did you?"

This Belgian banker knows everything, I thought in some alarm: about my language and about what I did last night. He had even spoken to the prostitute Claudina. But when? Prostitutes tend not to be early risers. Perhaps her next appointment had been with Manur himself. Or would the prostitute have told Cespedes and then Cespedes told Manur? Why would the Argentinian prostitute have let the cat out of the bag like that? Not, of course, that she owed me any loyalty. Besides— and, as I said, this is something I have been thinking about a lot this morning — I had not exactly been very nice to her and had not treated her well. I felt like laughing.

"It seems absurd to me that we should be talking about such things, Señor Manur."

"It would indeed be absurd if, before these things happened, you had not telephoned my room. But you did not avail yourself of that prostitute's services," — Manur repeated this rather formal phrase somewhat hesitantly, as if he had only recently learned it and wanted to try it out—"and I cannot help but interpret this as confirmation of everything I have been saying to you regarding your interest in my wife. We have reached a point when I feel obliged to tell you not to see her again. We will all go to your first night tonight, we will congratulate you after the performance (we will even have a drink afterwards to toast you), but tomorrow you will not meet. In a few days' time, you can bid each other a polite farewell, and she will thank you for your kindness. That shouldn't be so very difficult, since neither you nor we will be spending many more days in Madrid, and I very much hope you will not come to Brussels. I would be most put out."

"Listen, Manur, aren't you getting things out of proportion?"

"Perhaps. But I am allowed to get things out of proportion."

I remained silent for a moment, a moment that Manur deployed to smooth down with one hand his non-existent hair, to finish his second cup of coffee and to pour himself a third, this time from my coffee pot. A slave to coffee. I, on the other hand, had still not drunk mine. I picked up the glass of orange juice (not freshly squeezed) which was on the tray intended for me and held it in one hand without actually raising it to my lips.

"Do you always make Natalia's decisions for her? I imagine she will have her own views on the matter."

"Let's not play games, Mr. Opera Singer," said Manur, and it bothered me that he should address me like that "At this stage of your friendship with my wife, you must know that our marriage is based on some very unusual conditions. Well, you should know that these conditions, however unfair, are always met, as they will be now."

"Most marriages are run like that, at least in theory."

"Not exactly. It is not the case in most marriages that one of the spouses has," — he paused for a split second—"bought the other, acquired them. My wife belongs to me in the strictest sense of the word 'belong', and that means that what you call her 'views' have only a very relative value."

"Bought? What do you mean?"

For the first time in the conversation, Manur appeared not to have anticipated how I might respond. He raised his eyebrows, a gesture of surprise common to nearly every country I have visited (it seems to be an international gesture).

"Hasn't she told you?"

"She's never spoken to me about you."

"Really?" Manur, I thought, was capable of being quite theatrical. "I don't know whether I should be pleased or worried by that little bit of information. You see, you are not the first man with whom I have had to have such a conversation, you may well not be the last, although my wife is not as young as she was. But the others (believe it or not, there have been quite a few already) were rather better informed. To be honest, I don't quite know what to make of your ignorance. Don't tell me my wife hasn't told you about our marriage! Don't tell me she hasn't complained to you!" — Manur had made an instant recovery from his surprise and now seemed mildly amused. He again straightened his green tie with his hand. He drank more coffee. A tiny drop fell on his tie, but he didn't notice.

"I can assure that she hasn't, no. Besides, Dato has been present at all our meetings. You can ask him."

"I see! That man Dato has gone too far!" exclaimed Manur. And his cognac-colored eyes, and with them all his plebeian features — that is, his expression (that of an actor and a pretender) — underwent an instantaneous transformation and became as grave as those of an animal. Then he went on: "Right then, I'd better explain it to you myself."

"You've spilled a drop of coffee on your tie."

MANUR STARED IN BEWILDERMENT at the tiny drop I was pointing at, my index finger just touching his green tie: the drop was exactly the same color as his coffee-colored suit.

"Do you mind if I use your bathroom?" he asked.

I used the few seconds that Manur remained in my bathroom (he did not even close the door, I could hear the hot water running) to push my chair right back in order to take fullest advantage of the backlighting and to cast a rapid glance at myself in the full-length mirror opposite the beds. Despite my half-shaven chin, I no longer felt quite as dirty or nervous. I saw too that I was not so very badly dressed, and this comforted me.

When Manur came back, he sat down again as if nothing had happened (nothing had happened, but now there was on his tie a stain left by the water, considerably larger than the drop of coffee) and he began to talk. Everything that he said I heard in this morning's dream exactly as it was spoken then, but, on the other hand, I do not think I could repeat it with the same exactitude, at least not this evening when I am tired and hungry (it's getting dark outside and I still haven't had any lunch and will not have any lunch, but will probably wait until suppertime before I decide whether or not to go out). I can only reproduce fragments of what Manur said, but with the exception of myself shortly afterwards (except I cannot make an exception of myself), I have never seen anyone with such a will to persevere in his choice and in his love. More than that, I now know that it was Manur who infected me, or, rather, that I was the one who exposed myself to contamination or chose to imitate him. For until then, there had been only my desire to go on seeing Natalia Manur every day, my physical desire for Natalia Manur and my desire to destroy Manur. And it was from then on that I began to understand better, in the same way that a man writing can begin to understand what he is writing from one chance phrase that tells him — not suddenly, but slowly — why all the other phrases were as they were, why they were written in that way (which he will see now as having nothing to do with either intention or chance), when he thought he was just feeling his way forward, merely playing with paper and ink to pass the time, because he has been asked to do so or out of the sense of duty felt by all those who have no duty. Have you never discovered in the attitudes or words or gestures of other people what you had never previously been able to put your finger on? Have you never seen in them the brilliance that we ourselves lack, the inconceivable clarity, the firm hand and the assured touch that we will never have, what once was known as "grace." Have you never aspired to be them, precisely because of that transcendent quality, because of their sheer infectiousness, their natural annihilating radiance? Have you never felt the temptation, or more than that, the need scrupulously to copy someone else's being in order to take it from them and appropriate it for yourself? Have you never experienced an uncontrollable desire for usurpation? An unbearable envy at their cheerfulness or their suffering, at their stamina or their will power? At the jealousy felt by another, at their fatalism, their determination or their doom? Who has not wanted to be doomed once and for all and to enjoy the fixity of death in life? Who has not longed to be the object of a curse? Who has not yearned to remain very still and simply to persevere? I am Léon de Nápoles, the Lion of Naples, and my face is still flushed with triumph: I want to continue being what I am. But I know that it was not always so and that I did not always have that name. Manur, by his unexpected example, taught me to persevere: Manur persevered in his love. And now, when hunger is gnawing at me, and now that, even though it is spring time, I have had to turn on the light, I see again, as I did four years ago and as I did this morning, his suddenly grave, animal eyes (he said: "I have waited fifteen years to be loved by Natalia Monte, my wife; you, sir, are a mere upstart"), which incomprehensibly did not turn away from the merciless morning light of Madrid pouring in through the window onto his face, lighting it up ("It was purely a business transaction, Natalia's father was facing absolute ruin after years of mismanagement and waste, and his children, Natalia and her brother, Roberto, came to fear that their father might put an end to his depression and his irritability by either shooting himself or shooting his wife, their mother, if his business fortunes did not revive and allow him to return to full activity. He was one of those men for whom activity is everything") and filling his eyes with metallic reflections that made them harder still, although, at one moment, there was just a flicker of grief in them ("It was Roberto's idea, he was the one who persuaded his sister to accept me, and to see that our marriage was an urgent necessity, that an immediate alliance with my family's powerful bank was the only solution; and he personally brought her to Brussels, where, appropriately enough, he was best man at our wedding, since he was, in fact, the one who was giving her away to me. But that was years ago now, far too many years") and that made him look suddenly like his wife, as if not even Natalia and Manur, despite what he was saying, had been able to free themselves entirely from those alarming similarities that time prides itself on developing between those non-blood relatives who are brave enough to see each other every day ("I had met her three months before, when I was on holiday here in Madrid, through her brother, who had done some business courses with me in Brussels; and not only did I court her diligently, I also proposed marriage to her in a last act of desperation dictated by the old-fashioned idea— I had a very conventional upbringing — that her rejections and refusals might be due to the lack of a formal proposal. I have been in love with Natalia Monte, sir, almost since the first moment I saw her"). Those eyes, apparently translucent in the sunlight, cast occasional rapid glances at my unmade bed: there, in desolation, lay my hand mirror and my electric shaver ("I have waited fifteen years for her to love me. And as long as there is no one else, as long as she harbors no hopes and does not love anyone else, I know that I can go on waiting, or at least, year after year, keep to my old plan of spending the rest of my life with her. That is why I will not permit, in anyone, the excessive and irregular interest that you have now begun to show. Most women— and some rather odd men too — love by reflection or, if you prefer, by imitation: they love and desire the other person's love, as has often been shown to be the case and as you yourself will know. That is why I married Natalia Monte and saved her father from absolute ruin and destruction even though I knew this was the only reason she was marrying me, or, rather, because this was the plan of salvation that her brother Roberto had decided upon. And that is also why I have always prevented her from having any other model to inspire her or for her to imitate, any 'other person's love' that might tempt her, and whose existence would constitute — believe me, I'm not lying when I say this— the greatest possible danger for me"); and then invariably, as they had done the first time, his eyes shifted to my chin, reminding me of my abandoned beard and the fact that tonight was the first night of Verdi's Otello and that I had still not been able to cover my mouth with sticking plaster — as I usually do on the day of a performance — so that I would be unable to talk during the hours prior to the curtain and could thus nurture and preserve my voice ("For years she was bound to me simply because one word from me or even a signature would have meant returning her calamitous father to the very situation from which she had rescued him by her marriage, or, rather, as I had by mine, by becoming his beloved son-in-law, as wealthy as I was accommodating. Much later, when her father died, followed not long afterwards by her mother, my safeguard was and continues to be Roberto Monte, who is as catastrophic in his business affairs as his father was and to whom my wife is even more devoted"). His thick, pale, fleshy lips moved at extraordinary speed, with his usual fluency in my language, making scarcely a mistake: an unnatural perfection ("Only a few months ago, I had no option but to send him to South America because he was on the point of being arrested and tried here for capital flight, tax evasion and who knows how many other financial misdemeanours. He is my safeguard, sir, and I am perfectly well aware that my wife is anxiously awaiting the moment when her brother Roberto — Roberto rather than I — will release her from her agreement with me by telling her that he is no longer in any danger, that he is no longer dependent on me, that he can fend for himself without fear of reprisals on my part and with no need of my protection. My wife believes that I manipulate things so that this can never happen, and that belief has only helped to fuel her feelings of resentment towards me and become a further obstacle to what I have been waiting for all these years, her wholehearted and unconditional love. In fact, it seems most unlikely that Roberto Monte will ever achieve financial independence or peace, but that will be through no fault of mine: there is no need for me to hinder his plans or to devote myself to laying traps for him: he is perfectly capable of maintaining himself in a permanent state of imminent arrest. But despite that more or less lifelong guarantee, I also require that my wife should have no amatory shadows in her life. You're probably thinking how unhappy she must be, but bear in mind that I am too"). Manur was speaking with great composure and with little show of emotion, but he kept restlessly crossing and uncrossing his legs in a gesture that, in a way, brought him closer to Natalia Manur, as if he had copied it from her or perhaps she from him ("I count for little in her life today, but then there is no one else — nor should there be — who counts for more. I did once count and I will again; and believe me, it will not be long now before she will find herself unable to do without me. For the moment, at least, I see her every day, spend every night in the same bedroom, after my day of work and her day of diversion or self-absorption or perhaps meditation on her own dark fate. But diversion too, don't forget: and that is what we all aspire to, isn't it, to be diverted? I mean, the life she leads would be the envy of many women, not to mention, for example, that prostitute who came to see you last night. Do you think my wife, Natalia Monte, would want to change places with that prostitute? I don't really know that someone in her position has a right to complain, just as I do not consider that someone in my position has a right to complain either. Would I, for example, change places with you?") and while he was talking, he continued pouring and drinking black coffee from the two coffee pots which he had commandeered, until he discovered, with visible annoyance, that there was not a drop of coffee left ("She's a wealthy woman, she has everything she needs — that presents no problem — she has her own bank account which I keep topped up, even a permanent companion whom she likes very much and who seems to keep her amused and with whom she gets on well and to whom she can open her heart whenever she wishes. I don't mind, just as I would not have minded in the least if she had opened her heart to you: I make no secret of any of this, especially not to perfect strangers who will vanish completely from our lives. Why should I care? And if she doesn't have much of a social life, that is because, generally speaking, she prefers not to accompany me to my various suppers and meetings: but that is her choice, just as it has been her choice not to work, perhaps to punish me with her inactivity. Listen, would you like a little more coffee? These hotels are so cheap with their coffee nowadays"). Then he got up and, after asking me if he could use my phone when he already had it in his hand, he requested— or rather commanded — that more coffee should be brought to my room; then he sat down again, first taking advantage of a fleeting moment in front of the full-length mirror, just as I had done, to cast a rapid glance at his own reflection to check that the water stain and the drop of coffee had both now disappeared. ("You will be wondering what has gone on in our bedroom at night during those fifteen years, but I am not prepared to satisfy your curiosity on that subject. All you need to know is that the conditions on which our marriage is based exclude — independently of what may have happened in the past in our bedroom or what may still happen now — the possibility of our leading separate lives, which is, I believe, the current rather unimaginative euphemism. A failure to meet any one of these conditions would constitute for me a casus belli of the most serious kind. As serious as if she were to leave me, do you understand?") On more than one occasion throughout his speech — especially after that Latin tag, I seem to remember — I felt a desire to interrupt him, to ask him a question or to make a point, but his weary, overbearing, alert tone was that of a punctilious, reliable company director whose turn has come to read out a report written with such effort or with such pleasure that he will not allow the members of his board even the most insignificant of interjections or give them the slightest opportunity to object ("You, sir, cannot understand, you will only have experienced ordinary love affairs. The reason I am telling you this is so that you can see exactly what the situation is and what my position is; so that you will know that I am not prepared to let these fifteen years pass by in vain just because of some last-minute slip; so that you will be good enough to leave my wife alone from tomorrow onwards and purge from your thoughts all trace of the excessive and irregular interest of which you gave me ample evidence last night. I am not a neglectful husband. Those who have shared your interest previously have understood this very well: they gauged the obstacles, weighed up the difficulties, saw that it really wasn't worth the effort, gave up and backed off, only once did I have to pay out any money. You should follow their example. Don't complicate my life and don't make things complicated for yourself. Believe me, my wife is not a good deal, not a profitable concern"). When someone knocked at the door and I went to open it, there was not only the waitress bringing more coffee, but also the maid, who, following her own trajectories and her own timetable, had come to make my bed and air the room; Manur, turning round in his chair, invited the former to come in and dismissed the latter ("Come back later, can't you see we're still having breakfast?"), without stopping to think that I might want to have my bed made and my room aired, and to see my beard completely shaven and my mouth covered by the protective strip of sticking plaster reserved for special days like this. While I was signing the tab and paying for the smile, the couple from Cuba or the Canary Islands who were staying in the room next door walked past. They were not early risers. I did not see their faces, only the grey or blue jacket of a suit and a brightly colored dress. She was taller than he was and walked behind him. I caught a whiff of flowery perfume and heard him say "You'll just have to put up with it!" to which she replied "I'm telling you I can't go on like this!" I shut the door and returned to my place, opposite Manur. ("At the moment, you are at a stage when all you have are your thoughts. And what are those thoughts? Nothing, sir, they are so simple that anyone can guess them, so transitory that you can count them as they go by. I can guess yours and you know mine, isn't that so?") Despite having ordered the new coffee with such resolve, Manur did not pour any of it out. Perhaps he had only ordered it so as to give me back the coffee that was due to me and which I had not yet tasted — the coffee he had poured into my cup was now cold — ("I will applaud you tonight"). He uncrossed his legs. He got up to go. He stroked his tie. He smoothed his bald head. He picked up his fedora. He looked at his watch ("She smells very good" and I did not know if he was referring to his wife, Natalia Manur, to the woman from Cuba or the Canary Islands who had just walked past and who could not take any more or to Claudina the prostitute, whose cheap, pleasant perfume — the room had still not been aired — might still be perceptible to him). He said: