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

This lasted only a few seconds, then the door was flung open-a glimpse of grass, a pleasant field-and three other men came in, closing the door behind them, and the first man, the man in charge, was Arturo Manoia. There he was with his glasses-the glasses of a rapist or of a civil servant-which he kept pushing up with his thumb even when they had not slipped down, I noticed that he was doing the same thing there, while standing up and active and occupied, and his gaze, almost invisible due to the reflected light and to his incessantly shifting, lusterless eyes (the color of milky coffee), as if he found it hard to keep them still for more than a few seconds, or else could not stand for people to be able to examine them. I recognized him at once, I had just spent a whole unforgettable evening with him and he didn't look very much younger, so it must have been a recent video or else he was one of those men who don't age and who, unlike his wife, don't change either, there he was with his invasive, too-long chin, perhaps not long enough to be termed prognathous, but still meriting the word bazzone. And there he was, with his evident readiness to take revenge. The moment I met him, I thought he would be likely to lash out without the slightest provocation or on the slightest pretext or even with no need for either, that he was an irascible man, although he would doubtless be considered, instead, as measured, because he would almost never give vent to that anger. But I had also thought that on the few occasions when his rage did surface, it would doubtless be terrifying and best not witnessed. And now, having said goodbye to him and seen the last of him in person, there, unexpectedly, at the end of the night, I was about to witness one of his attacks of rage on screen. It was almost, it seemed to me, a curse and I knew this as soon as I saw him, in suit and tie, come in through the door of the cowshed. I prepared myself, I told myself that, whatever happened, I would not look away or cover my eyes. I wanted to show Tupra that I had toughened up during our late-night session or had created inside myself an antidote to his poison, or at least some resistance.

The music didn't stop when the three newcomers arrived, they didn't even turn down the volume, and so I heard little of what Manoia was saying to the bound man and understood still less, he seemed to me to be speaking with an exaggerated southern accent or else mixing dialect and Italian. I could tell, though, that he was speaking to him proudly, indignantly, scornfully-his wounding voice raised in anger now-waving his hands around and giving the man the occasional smack across the face as if this were simply another gesture made in passing, a way of underlining each reproof, almost involuntary or as if he were barely aware of what he was doing, which is a sure sign that the person being slapped is now worthless and has become a mere thing. The other man answered as best he could, and he was definitely speaking in dialect, because I couldn't understand a word, he managed only truncated sentences, constantly interrupted by the swift ceaseless flow of words from Manoia, I tried not to look too much at the prisoner, the less I perceived him as an individual, the less it would matter to me what happened to him in the end, because something horrible was about to happen, that much was certain, the situation demanded it and, besides, the scene was part of that specially chosen and edited DVD of embarrassing or downright vile episodes, but I did look at him despite myself, out of habit, he was a plump man, with a small mouth and a large head, short, curly, straw-colored hair, bulging eyes, and the weather-beaten skin of a small landowner who still walks his own fields, well-dressed in a country way, and about forty or so years old. Finally, Manoia's cascade of words ceased-but not his rage-or else he made a brief pause, and then I did understand what he said: 'Tappategli la bocca,' he ordered his henchmen, although it sounded more like 'Dabbadegli la bogga,' with unvoiced consonants converted into voiced, or perhaps I understood this a posteriori from the images, when I saw how the man with the pistol and the man with the shotgun stuffed two wads of cloth into the man's mouth, one after the other, I don't know how there was room, and on top of that placed a large strip of adhesive tape, from ear to ear, so that he couldn't cough freely as he needed to, his face grew red and inflamed, his eyes seemed, for a moment, about to pop out of their sockets, his cheeks puffed up like boils, the henchmen used red-and-white checked cloths, perhaps napkins from a trattoria, and the ends stuck out above and below the tape, what could he have done that was so very terrible or so grave, had he been an informer like Del Real, had he betrayed someone, lost his nerve, failed, fled, fallen asleep, he did not seem like a mere enemy, although he could well have been, perhaps someone had died because of him, some agent from the Sismi who wasn't due to die, always assuming Manoia belonged to the Sismi. Manoia then took an object out of his jacket pocket, I couldn't see what it was, something short, a small penknife, a teaspoon, a sharp metal file, a pencil. 'Adesso vedrai,' he said, 'Now you'll see,' and those words I did hear clearly despite the music. The seated man's head was at the same height as Manoia's chest and arms. Manoia moved closer, only a couple of steps, and with whatever he was holding in his hand he made two rapid movements over the man's face, the gesture of an old-fashioned dentist preparing to pull out a tooth by main force, first one, then the other, and he did pull them out, he really did, by the roots, but not the man's teeth, he sliced them out the way someone uses a dessert knife to cut out the stone from a peach half, or the seeds from a watermelon, or walnuts from their shells after the initial struggle to open them, and then I had to close mine, despite my earlier resolution, what else could I do, but I tried not to cover them with my hand so that Tupra might think that I had kept them open, while Zappulla kept singing and I caught only the occasional word, 'sfortunate,' 'mangiare,' 'cerco,' 'soffro,' 'senza capire,' 'malate,' 'unhappy,' 'eat,' 'I seek,' 'I suffer,' 'without understanding,' 'sick,' not enough to make any sense of them, although one can always give meaning to anything, unhappy the empty sockets of my eyes, they force me to eat napkins or cloths, I seek to save myself and I suffer mutilations, without understanding the cruelty of these sick beasts … 'E quando son le feste di Natale,' that didn't help in the least even though it was the longest phrase my ears had caught, because I could still hear the inhuman snorts of incredulity and despair and pain, but no screams, there could be no shouts with those checked cloths stuffed in his mouth, but at least I couldn't see, which was something, even though I was trying to make Reresby believe the opposite and possibly succeeding.

And in short, I was afraid ('O that I could forget what I have been or not remember what I must be now'). Afraid of Manoia and afraid of Tupra and also vaguely afraid of myself, because I was mixed up with them ('Yes, O that I could not remember what I must be now'). Tupra used the remote control to freeze the image, he had inoculated me with the last drop of his poison and through the eyes too, as indicated by its etymology. I knew he had stopped the film because I could no longer hear the sound. I opened my eyes, I dared to look, fortunately the film was frozen at a moment when Manoia's back was covering the face of the now blind man.

'You've seen enough,' said Tupra, 'although the scene isn't over yet: our friend heaps further insults on his victim and then slits his throat, but I'll spare you that-there's a lot of blood-just as he could have spared that man, I mean, why make someone suffer like that when you're going to kill him anyway, and only a few seconds later?' He said this in a tone of genuine perplexity and horror, and as if he had given much thought to that 'why' but never managed to get beyond it. 'I don't understand it, do you, Jack? Do you understand it, Jack?'