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

Suddenly, it bothered me that he should speak of my compatriots in these terms, in that offhand manner, like sex-mad hordes. It bothered me to think that this famous fool should take young women and young men to his bed-through no merit of his own and with no effort-in Barcelona, Gijon, Madrid or Seville or wherever, each time he set foot in Spain, and he'd given quite a few concerts there over the years. I was even glad to hear that he'd had a harder time of it in San Sebastian and Bilbao, that was some consolation; and when I noticed this puerile idiotic reaction of mine, I realized that we never entirely free ourselves from patriotism, it all depends on the circumstances and where we're from and who's speaking to us, for some vestige, some remnant, to burst to the surface. I can think and say dreadful things about my country, which, personally, I consider now completely debased and coarsened in far too many respects, but if I hear those criticisms in the mouth of a despicable fatuous foreigner, I feel a strange, almost inexplicable pang, something similar to what that primitive creature De la Garza must have felt when he saw that I was not prepared to defend him from the sword-wielding Englishman who was about to decapitate him, and he perhaps considered squealing on me to the Judge later on 'when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, "We died at such a place,'" at the end of the uncountable centuries: 'This man killed me with a sword and cut me in two, and this other man was there, he saw it all and didn't lift a finger; and the man who watched and did nothing spoke my language and we were both from the same land, further south, not so very far away, albeit separated by the sea; he just stood there like a statue, his face frozen in horror, a guy from Madrid, can you believe it, a fellow Spaniard, one of us, and he didn't even try to grab the other guy's arm.' It does make it worse being from the same country, and that's how I always felt when my father told me terrible tales from our own War: they were both from the same country, the militiawoman and the child whose head she smashed against the wall of a fourth-floor apartment on the corner of Alcala and Velazquez, so were Emilio Mares and the men who baited him like a bull in Ronda, and even more so the man from Malaga in the red beret who killed him, gave him the coup de grace, and then couldn't resist castrating him too. Del Real the traitor and my father were, as was Santa Olalla, the professor who contributed his weightier and more authoritative signature to the formal complaint, and even that novelist who enjoyed a certain degree of tawdry commercial success, Dario Florez, who appeared as witness for the prosecution and delivered that sinister warning to the betrayed man via my mother, when she wasn't yet my or anyone else's mother: 'If Deza forgets that he ever had a career, he'll live; otherwise, we'll destroy him.' For me they had always been the names of treachery, which should never be protected, and they were traitors because they all came from the same country, my father and them and, in two of the cases, because they had been friends before and he had never given them any reason to withdraw or cancel their friendship, on the contrary.

I brushed aside my absurd feelings of bruised patriotism. I had to-not only to carry out my assignment from Tupra (broaching the subject had been much easier than expected; and I could see my boss's grey eyes in the distance, near the head of the table, observing me, intrigued, wondering how I was getting on), but also because there was no sense in clinging on to bruises. Dearlove's comments could have been made by a compatriot of mine, De la Garza to look no further, had he been a pop idol and able to choose on tour from among dozens of girls to sleep with, and I would have been equally put out by such arrogant and disrespectful comments. And yet, and yet… there was an added bitterness, I could not deny it, something irrational, disquieting, disagreeable, atavistic. Perhaps Tupra felt the same when, in his presence, people spoke scornfully of Great Britain or of the British, especially when those people were from the Continent or from across the Atlantic or from the green isle of Erin, where such talk is almost the norm. And perhaps for that reason, which would be logical, he had no hesitation in doing what he did, possibly with more dedication and diligence than I thought, and perhaps it was true what he had said to me shortly after we met, albeit tempered with a touch of cynicism: 'Even serving my country, one should if one can, don't you think, even if the service one does is indirect…' I understood then, rather late, that he probably served his country ceaselessly as long as it was in his own best interests, and that in time of need, in time of war, or when the moment came, I would be no more to him than another useless Spaniard whom he wouldn't hesitate to have shot, just as, during my burst of patriotic feeling, Dearlove had been for me merely a conceited English bastard I'd happily have slapped.

One of the other guests nearby, a designer of extravagant clothes who was getting on in years (she herself was wearing an incomprehensible jumble of petticoats, feathers and rags) unwittingly gave me a helping hand in keeping that conversation going along the path that most suited me:

'Really?' she said. 'And there I was thinking that it was only in Britain that everyone found you irresistible, Dickie, but it turns out that it's Spain where you've got both bed and bathroom jam-packed.' She used that expression 'jam-packed'- 'de bote en bote' or 'a reventar in Spanish.

It was clear that they were friends and knew each other well, or perhaps Dick Dearlove (as also seemed to be the case) spoke openly to almost anyone about even the most intimate things, to me for example; this often happens with the very famous and the constantly praised, they end up thinking that anything they say or do will be well received because it's all part of their ongoing performance, and there comes a point when they can no longer distinguish between public and private (unless there's a photographer or a journalist around, and then they're either more discreet or more exhibitionist depending on the circumstances): if they're so warmly applauded in the first sphere, and so spoiled, why shouldn't they be equally so in the second, given that in both spheres they are the undisputed protagonists every day of their life until the end?

'As you know better than I do, Viva, even though you're a woman,' replied Dick Dearlove, in a tone that was half-ironic and half-regretful, 'at our age, however famous we might be, and I'm much more famous than you are, there are occasions when we have no option but to pay, cash or in kind. There's a certain kind of particularly tasty morsel that I almost always have to pay for here in Britain, I hardly ever get it for free now, although just a few years ago I still did, half the nation has turned into a load of tight-asses; whereas in Spain, you see, I've never had to spend a euro, it's as if the young people in Spain aren't really so interested in the act itself-at my age I'm hardly going to boast about my performance, I mean, my body can no longer keep up with my imagination-that's indefatigable, in fact I rather wish my mind would slow down a bit, oh, if only the two things were more compatible, it's all very badly thought out, at least in my view-no, people are more interested in being able to tell their friends afterwards, or spill the beans on some TV program. It's extraordinary how much people there experience things not because they really want to, it seems, but simply in order to talk about it afterwards, it's a country that really revels in gossip and boasting, isn't it, a country very given to tattle-tales-and absolutely shameless about it.'-These rhetorical questions were directed at me, as someone who knew the territory.-'Everyone tells everything and asks everything, it cracks me up at press conferences and interviews, dodging questions, they're so coarse and brazen and have no sense of shame at all, which is unheard of in a European country. I've fucked a few Spaniards who I could see were simply desperate to get it over with, not because they weren't having a reasonably good time-I haven't entirely lost my touch, you know-but because they couldn't wait to leave and spread the news, I can imagine them striding proudly into their local bar or into school the next day: "I bet you can't guess who's just had me good and hard and every which way too.'" He paused for a moment and smiled rather dreamily, as if he had found the situation so amusing that he was able to retrieve it intact years later, in the middle of a post-concert supper in Edinburgh. But also as if he were recalling something from the past, something lost that might never return. 'I don't know if their friends will believe them, they might not prove that easy to convince, and that could become a problem, because some of them come along now armed with their digital camera or their cell phone, I'm sure they want photographic evidence, although they all say it's because they don't go anywhere without them, so they have to be frisked before I let them in, it would be no joke being photographed in the act. Anyway, now I routinely check them out, I've got one of those gadgets they have at airports, you know a sort of wand-like thing-I touch them up with it in the process, which they love and which makes them laugh like crazy, and you get an idea of what to expect too, although they're all usually pretty well-endowed. And they let you do this, meek as lambs, just to get into your bedroom. In Britain, though, they're much less compliant and less fun too, they don't try to sneak in cameras or anything, but that's the downside: it's not that big a deal, going and telling someone else and boasting about it, though maybe people here have just grown tired of me. That's partly why I have to pay probably, you know how word gets around, and they know I'm a soft touch and that they'll be able to get some money out of me. But sometimes you don't get much even when you pay, we're easy prey-eh, Viva?-in our beloved England, Scotland and Wales. Now don't go depressing me by telling me that you're doing just fine.'