Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 3 - Poison, Shadow and Farewell

I shut the window and came back into the room. I decided to go out to a nearby grocery store and buy a few basic things to fill up the nearly empty fridge; the store also sold magazines and newspapers, but I no longer wanted to buy a copy of The Sun or any other paper of that ilk; and when I returned, I chose not to turn on the TV, sure that some program, if not most, would be discussing the horrible crime of Dr. Dearlove, former odontologist, now transformed into the new Hyde who could never go back to being plain Dr. Jekyll: he would be a lascivious murderer from now until the Final Judgment, at which, in other times-the times of steadfast faith-people would have expected a Bulgarian or Russian boy called Danev or Deyanov, Dimitrov or Dondukov to confront him and accuse him with the bitter words of someone who died too young. Or perhaps he would address Tupra or even me. I preferred not to know too much, about him or about Dearlove, mainly because I didn't need to and because it would only increase my sense of sadness. I already knew enough, and the press would be full of ghoulish, misleading speculations. What no one would know was that there was someone behind it all, an expert on narrative disgust or horror and on the Kennedy-Mansfield complex and its all too effective curse, and that the murder had nothing to do with chance or a bad night or a moment of mental derangement. Danev or Dondukov could no longer tell who had hired him or how, nor what he had been hired to do, and I was in no position to prove anything. Nor, indeed, was I even considering the possibility.

I phoned young Pérez Nuix, who was at home, told her I had just got back and asked if we could meet that evening or the following day ('It's urgent, important; but it'll only take a moment,' I said, as she had once said to me, and on that occasion, 'it' had lasted until morning; an experience that had not been repeated). She said that would be fine, made no attempt to find out in advance what it was about and was happy to come over to my part of town ('It'll do me good to get a bit of fresh air, I've hardly been out all day, and besides I need to walk the dog'), we shared a kind of unconfessed loyalty. We arranged to meet in the bar of the luxury hotel I could see from my window ('Give me an hour and a half, no more, long enough for me to take the dog out and then come over'), and when she was installed there, with a drink before her, I told her about Dick Dearlove and the interpretations Tupra had elicited from me after the celebrity supper in London and, later, in Edinburgh. I laid out to her my arrogant reports, my hypotheses, my theories, my mise-en-scenes, and my predictions. As things had turned out, they appeared to indicate a high degree of prescience on my part.

'It's too much of a coincidence, don't you think?' I added, and I did not for a moment imagine she would contradict me.

I noticed that she seemed slightly uncomfortable, as if for some reason she felt impatient with or displeased by my anxieties, and she took a slow sip of her drink as you do when you need to think a little longer about what you're going to say. Finally, she said:

'Coincidences do happen, Jaime, as you well know. In fact, I think they're part of normal life. But not, I guess, where Bertie is concerned. Where Tupra is concerned,' she corrected herself, 'you're right, it's unlikely. With him almost nothing is coincidental.' She fell silent for a few seconds, giving me, I thought, almost a commiserative look, then she went on: 'But what is it that you find so troubling? Giving him the idea to lay a trap that you don't like? That someone else was harmed, rather than the person who should have been hurt by that trap? That someone, an instrumental victim, died? Yes, of course, what else do you want me to say, of course I understand your unease. But we've talked about this before,' she reminded me. And seeing my bewildered expression, she added: 'Yes, I told you that what Tupra did or decided was not our responsibility. Everyone, regardless of who they work for, occasionally provides their boss with the occasional idea, and if he thinks it's any good, that boss then takes up the idea and, a mere two minutes after hearing it, believes he was the one who thought of it in the first place. Sure it's irritating, they don't even give you a pat on the back, but it also means that we're absolved of all responsibility. At the time, I said that worrying about what happened with our reports was like a novelist worrying about what potential buyers and readers of his book would understand and take away from it.'

I remembered that, and I also remembered saying that I didn't think the comparison worked. She had made further comparisons, none of which had convinced me. Again, she seemed to me more experienced and, in a way, older than me. She was looking at me as if she were idly witnessing the end of time, something that she had already experienced and left behind. Perhaps that was the origin of her impatience, displeasure or discomfort: it's disheartening having to explain to someone else what it took blood, sweat and tears to learn and with no help from anyone. Or perhaps she had been able to count on Tupra's help, who was no mean arguer.

'I didn't think the comparison worked,' I said. 'Besides, a novelist should take care what he puts in his book, don't you think?'

'I doubt that any writers do,' she said firmly. 'If that were the case, no one would ever write anything. It's just not possible to live that cautiously, it's too paralyzing. As you say in Spain, son ganas de cogérsela con papel de fumar. You just can't be that persnickety. And anyway, keep things in proportion. What do you expect, there are people in our field who do far worse things and get their hands dirty too. Or, depending how you look at it, perhaps they do better things because they're being of service to the country' Since we were speaking in Spanish, I was grateful that she didn't use the word 'patria but 'país' but it nonetheless sounded horribly like one of the first things Tupra had said to me at Wheeler's buffet supper. Perhaps those who stayed longest by his side, of whom I would not be one, ended up adopting his ideas. Pérez Nuix, however, said the phrase in such a neutral tone that I couldn't tell if she was serious or quoting our boss or being sarcastic.

'Don't tell me that by arresting Dearlove, putting him inside for several years-if, that is, he doesn't get bumped off during his first few days there-has been of some service to this country. Or, for that matter, the death of that Russian boy; he'd probably only just arrived in England and was here illegally, thus ensuring that no one will dig too deep or kick up much of a fuss. What did you call him, "an instrumental victim"? I thought the usual term was "collateral victim," although in Spanish it should be "lateral" rather than "collateral" I couldn't resist adding this pedantic clarification.

'They're different things, Jaime,' she pointed out. 'Victimas co-laterales or laterales aren't usually instrumental, they occur more by chance or by mistake or by mere inevitability. Instrumental victims, on the other hand, always perform a function. They're necessary for something to succeed.' She paused again, took another sip of her drink, and remained silent. It occurred to me that perhaps she had often been through what I was going through now. When she did speak again, she did so hesitantly: 'Look, I don't know, I simply don't know; Tupra doesn't confide in me anymore and hasn't for a long time now, and he didn't ever tell me much even when we were on better terms, I mean when he trusted me more or had more of a soft spot for me; he always keeps pretty much to himself. It seems unlikely that the State or the Crown or them,' and she pointed upwards, by which I assumed she meant the bigwigs in the SIS or Secret Intelligence Service, who, at least in the past, embraced both MI5 and MI6, 'would have ordered such a trap to be laid, such an operation, for a rock singer, a celebrity. But you never know: in America, declassification has uncovered the most ridiculous things-reports on people like Elvis Presley or John Lennon who were being kept under surveillance by the CIA or the FBI-so anything is possible. We don't know what Dearlove was doing, what he might have been getting up to, who he was involved with and who he might have blackmailed, who he could frighten with threats which, coming from him, would seem quite credible (insofar as someone like him can have any credibility, of course) or on whom he bestowed his favors. Insignificant, inoffensive and apparently purely ornamental people can prove to be full of surprises. Singers and actors often turn out to be real nutcases, they join weird sects or convert to Islam, which nowadays is no joke, as you know. One of the first lessons you learn in this job (although it's better still if you know it before you start) is that no one is insignificant, inoffensive and purely ornamental.'