Javier Marias: The Man of Feeling

When we stay in cities, therefore, we generally try — and even if we didn't, things couldn't easily be different — to deal only with those in our own profession: the other performers in the opera in which we are going to appear, the members of the chorus (if there is one), the extras, and the orchestra, all of whom are sufficiently much of a muchness everywhere for them likewise not to underline for us the unfortunate and troubling fact that we find ourselves in a place which is not at all the same place we were in a few days ago or even a few weeks or months or years ago. But the problem with carrying this illusion through to its logical consequences lies in the fact that, were the place really the same on all occasions (as we try to pretend in our conscious mind), we would surely, in that case, have made friends there, and would feel as if it were our second home; more than that, we would actually have a second home there and would not be staying in a hotel. But since this is not the case, our lives, despite all the efforts of our imagination and all the conveniences, despite all the money we earn, despite the bouquets, the applause, the ovations and the acclaim, are ultimately just like those of traveling salesmen — who, however, are becoming extinct — at least during each of our sad and solitary sojourns in the great capitals of the world. And our lives are one long sojourn.

But I am not like most singers. After the long, unsatisfactory and often irritating rehearsals, the last thing I want is the company of my colleagues and of the members of the orchestra (first violin and conductor included), not just because staying with them is in many ways an unconscious prolongation of work, but because you really cannot talk to them about anything else but work or about the world surrounding work, which means music or the world of music, and I have never seen the point of talking about music, it has always struck me as either exhausting and arid or frustrating and stupid. Either you talk about the technical aspects, which is exhausting and arid, or you talk in sentimental terms, which is just frustrating and stupid, mere chatter. Indeed, music aside, my colleagues' conversation is no better than that of office workers, because they have the souls of office workers. Besides, unlike most of them, I enjoy the feeling that I am in a new and unfamiliar city; going into public places and being aware that the people there speak a language I know only imperfectly or not at all; studying the clothes and hats (though nowadays one sees fewer of the latter) that the good citizens choose to wear in the street; finding out if shops are full or empty during office hours; seeing how the news is treated in the newspapers; looking at certain examples of domestic architecture that one can only find in that particular part of the world; noting the typefaces that predominate in shop signs (and reading these like a savage, understanding nothing); scrutinizing the faces in the metro and on the busses which I frequent for that very reason; picking out particular faces and wondering whether I might or might not meet them elsewhere; deliberately getting lost in parts of the city where I have already learned to find my way, that is, with map in hand if I need it; observing the inimitable passing of each languishing day at each point on the globe and the uncertain and variable instant when the lights are lit; setting foot in places where our feet leave no trace, on the luminous asphalt of the morning or on some dusty, ancient stone pavement illuminated by a single street lamp as evening falls; visiting bars full of indistinguishable, blithely insignificant murmurings that cover and erase everything; mingling with the people in the white streets of the south or in the grey avenues of the north at the declining hour when people are going out for a stroll or coming home from work, that brief respite; seeing how the women go out in the evening or perhaps at night, all dressed up, and seeing the cars in their many colors waiting for them; imagining the parties they are going to; wasting time. And in each city I visit I would like to meet people, to meet those smartly dressed women, who are perhaps climbing into their glossy, impeccable cars to drive to the opera to hear Léon de Nápoles: to go and see me.

Now that I am reasonably famous, because I appear now and then on the televisions of the world, I usually get to know someone or other, albeit superficially, wherever I go; such people, however, are nearly always admirers, whose questions and sameness bore me. But four years ago, when I still had to make do with roles like Spoletta, Trabuco, Dancaïro and even Monostatos (it's a good role, but I hated having to make myself up like a bald negro), I found it impossible to form any kind of relationship with the inhabitants of those cities, who would merely look at me the way one looks at an advertisement for a performance in a foreign newspaper which one reads at home. That is why, despite my inclinations, curiosity and non-conformity, I would often have to give in and lead the same kind of monotonous, lax and rather unimaginative life led by other singers. I found it exasperating not being able to blend in with the local population except on a purely physical and incidental level (sharing the same space or, at most, rubbing shoulders with them in various forms of public transport), not being able to take part in the deals and the desires being cooked up right there in front of me, nor in the determined, almost mechanical movements — denoting an objective, a plan, a job, haste — of the passers-by and the drivers who were continually passing before my gaze wherever I was in the city and whenever I chose to go on one of my rambles. It irritated me not to be one of them; it irritated me not being able to share their souls. Even the hotel foyer, by definition plagued with strangers, with people — like me — who were just passing through, filled me with infinite unease and envy: everyone, even those who clearly are just waiting, resting or killing time, gives the impression that they know exactly what they want, they all seem so busy, so determined, as if they were just about to set off to some place whose existence takes on real meaning because it is expecting them, so absorbed are they in their present or imminent or dreamed-of or planned activities that my awareness of my own dead hours used to depress me immensely, so much so that during my stays in hotels, I came to enjoy only the moment in the morning when I would stride across the foyer carrying a file full of scores and notes in order to step out into the street and head for the rehearsal hall, plus the few minutes that it took me to get there: the only moment in the day when my appearance and my gait and my gestures could become assimilated with those of everyone else, the only moment when I too, like those fortunate settled citizens, was obliged to direct my feet, I had no other option, towards a particular, pre-established place, a place — even more importantly — arranged beforehand by members (the opera impresarios) of that mysterious and elusive community. En route I would walk quickly and determinedly, head up and eyes front, stopping only for the traffic lights, not noticing faces or buildings, immersed in the self-absorbed, anonymous, ever-changing morning flood of people, knowing — for once — where I was going and where I had to go. I really savored that moment, as brief as it was coveted, in which I could at last pass among the crowd as one of them and, consequently, feel no desire to know anyone I did not already know. For one takes it for granted that someone who lives in a city all the time has — for good or ill, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily — filled his quota of acquaintances.

In my leisure time, however, once I had returned to the hotel and, above all, when, after rehearsals, I had already spent a long time wandering fruitlessly through the city — always feeling an integral part of what in the great capitals of the world is known as the floating population — the only possibility remaining to me of meeting someone, even another foreigner or visitor like myself, was in the foyer or bar of the hotel, where, as I have said, the only person generally available and eager to strike up some sort of conversation (with no monetary or sexual interest involved, for, with the odd exception, these are not the best conduits to a sharing of souls) was the traveling salesman who, on those particular dates, has decided to lodge in that particular luxury hotel in order to prove fleetingly that, even far from home and among those who travel, there exist other lives in which suits are always pressed, and thus be confirmed in his utter despair and reaffirmed in his rebellion or death.