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

'I think you overestimate my influence,' I said, 'the influence I can bring to bear on Tupra and his opinions, in that particularly tricky area or in any other. I don't believe that any view I took of a person would make Tupra abandon or modify his own, I mean assuming he'd already formulated his own, had noticed something, and he always notices lots of things. The very first time I met him, I was struck by his gaze, so warm and all-embracing and appreciative. Those flattering and at the same time fearsome eyes are never indifferent to what is there before them, eyes whose very liveliness gives the immediate impression that they're going to get to the bottom of whatever being or object or gesture or scene they alight upon. As if they absorbed and captured any image set before them. However elusive a quality cowardice may be, it wouldn't escape him. And if I do notice it in your friend, as you suggest, Tupra will notice it too and form his own idea. And I won't be able to shift him from that view, even if I try. Even if I get him drunk.'

Young Pérez Nuix burst out laughing, a pleasant, slightly maternal laugh, with no mockery in it or, if so, only the kind of mockery with which one might greet a child's naive response or angry retort, and I took advantage of that momentary lowering of her guard to direct my eyes to the place at which I'd been trying not to look, at least not fixedly-she had not yet re-crossed her legs.

'I'm sorry' she said, 'it just amuses me that even an intelligent man like you should suffer from the same inability. It's astonishing how wrong our perception of ourselves always is, how hopeless we are at gauging and weighing up our strengths and weaknesses. Even people like us-gifted and highly trained in examining and deciphering our fellow man-become one-eyed idiots when we make ourselves the object of our studies. It's probably the lack of perspective and the impossibility of observing yourself without knowing that you're doing so. Whenever we become spectators of ourselves that's when we're most likely to play a role, distort the truth, clean up our act.' She paused and looked at me with a mixture of jovial stupefaction and unwitting pity. She'd described me as 'intelligent' and had done so quite spontaneously; if this was flattery, she had disguised it very well. 'Don't you realize, Jaime, how much Bertie likes you? How stimulating and amusing he finds you? That he's so fond of you that he'll make a genuine effort to accept your view of things, as long, of course, as it's not arrant nonsense, and to believe what you tell him you can see, even if only to confirm to himself that you are his most magnificent acquisition, his most successful hire? Remember, too, that you came to him recommended not only by Wheeler, but by his teacher Rylands, from beyond the grave. Not that this situation will necessarily last; he'll grow tired of it one day, or get used to your presence; he'll even disapprove of you sometimes or scorn you, Bertie is not the most constant of people and he quickly tires of almost everything, or his enthusiasms come and go. Now, though, you're the latest novelty and, besides, you really do seem to have hit it off, in that sober, masculine, unspoken way of yours-or whatever it is-but I know what I'm talking about. At the moment, you have far more influence over him than you think, and yet it seems to me you haven't even noticed. It's a rather temporary state of affairs, and partial too, because Bertie never entirely trusts anyone and he's not a man to be manipulated or led and certainly not deflected. But there are a few areas where he can be made to entertain doubts, and you're in a position to sow a few doubts now. I know because I've been through the same process and can recognize it. I recognize his pleasure and enjoyment, how being with you amuses and stimulates him, just as he used to find my company enlivening too. We really hit it off as well, and that lasted a long time. Not in the same masculine way in which you and he get on. And it's not as if we don't any more, I have no complaints about the high esteem in which he holds me or his professional respect for me. But I no longer represent for him the small daily celebration that I did at first and even later on too, that's what he felt about me for quite a while, and I know I shouldn't say so, but it's true, ask Mulryan or Rendel, or Jane Treves, who, being a woman, naturally suffered more from jealousy, I'm sure you'll meet her one day, she felt positively neglected when she and I were both there with Tupra. You can persuade him, Jaime. Not about just anything, that won't happen either today or indeed ever, but if it's about some area he's unsure of and in which he believes you to be an expert, as with cowardice and bravery; there, as I said, he's convinced of your expertise. I am too, by the way, you're really very good. Anyway, that's what I'm asking you, Jaime. The man will then cancel the debt and my father will be safe. As you see, it's a big favor to ask.'

She had used the word 'favor' several times, it was a way of saying 'please' or 'por favor ' without actually saying it or not in so many words-words that denote pleading or begging, especially when repeated, 'Please, please, please'- 'Por favor, por favor, por favor, ' She crossed her legs, blocking my view, but I could instead direct my gaze anywhere with impunity, I could still see her bare thighs for example. She took a small sip of wine and put another Karelias cigarette to her red lips-again that flashback to childhood cartoons-without lighting it. The dog was fast asleep, as if he had got used to the idea that he might be staying there all night, and lying down like that, he seemed even whiter. I glanced out of the window, then moved away, nothing had changed, the flexible metal bars or endless spears of the ever more dominant rain continued to fall, as if excluding the possibility of clear skies for good. I took a few steps and then sat down where I had been sitting before. I had the feeling that the silence was not a pause this time, but that Pérez Nuix had finished her presentation; that she considered her plea to be over and done with: her few timid attempts at flattery, her various lines of argument and her deployment of prudent powers of persuasion. I felt that I now had to give an answer, that she was not going to add anything more. To answer 'Yes' or 'No' or 'Possibly' or 'We'll see.' To give her a little more hope without actually committing myself to anything: 'I'll see what I can do, I'll do my best.' 'It depends' would not, of course, put an end to the conversation or the visit. And I wasn't sure I wanted either to end, and so I didn't give her an answer, but asked her another question:

'How much is the debt exactly?'

She lit the cigarette and I thought I saw her blush for a moment, or perhaps it was just the glow from the match, or a lurking embarrassment, as when in the office with no name, I would sense in her a brief gathering of energy before she came over to talk to me, that is, beyond greeting me or asking me some isolated question, as if she had to gather momentum or take a run-up, and that was what gave me the idea that she didn't rule me out, although probably without knowing that she didn't, nor having even considered the possibility. I thought: 'She's embarrassed to tell me how much. Either because it's so low, and then I'll know that she can't afford to pay even that, or because it's so high, and then I'll find out what an enormous sum it is, or how crazy her father is, and perhaps how crazy she is as well.'

'Nearly two hundred thousand pounds,' she said after a few seconds, and she raised her eyebrows in a gesture that was not, of course, English, as if she were adding: 'You see the fix I'm in.' Though what she did, in fact, say was not so very different. 'What do you think?'

I made a rapid calculation. It was nearly three hundred thousand euros or fifty million pesetas, I had still not quite reaccustomed myself to the pound and will perhaps never get used to the euro when it comes to the kind of large quantities one does not deal with every day.