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

'Come today. There's a game tonight.'

'Would tomorrow morning suit you?' I asked. 'I'm only here for a few days. I live in London now, and I'd arranged to go and see my father today. He's getting on a bit and hasn't been too well.'

'Of course, say no more. Tomorrow it is then. But make it around one o'clock, for a drink before lunch. Tonight's game is sure to run late.'

'I want to ask you a favor,' I said, preferring to give him due warning. 'I need a loan, but not of money, don't worry. I have no problems in that department.'

'"Don't worry," he says,' he replied, laughing. 'You would never give me cause to worry, Jacobito.' He was one of the people who called me Jacobo, I can't remember why. 'Ask me for anything you like. As long as it's not my suit of lights.' I didn't really follow the bullfighting scene, certainly not from London, but I assumed from his comment that he was currently active. I had better find out before going to visit him, so as not to seem rude.

'You're getting warm,' I said. 'I'll explain tomorrow.'

'Just have a look around when you get here and take whatever you want.' These weren't mere empty words, he really was a very generous man. His name was Miguel Yanes Troyano, nicknamed 'Miquelin,' and he was the son of a banderillero.

The following morning, up to date now on his latest triumphs, thanks to the Internet, and bearing a gift, I arrived at his vast apartment in the area which, in my childhood, was known as 'Costa Fleming,' rather closer to Real Madrid's Chamartin stadium-which I prefer to call by its old name-than to Las Ventas, the bull ring through whose gates he had often been borne shoulder high. I would have preferred to speak to him alone, but that was impossible since he always had company. However, having been forewarned that I was going to ask him for a favor or a loan, he had been considerate enough not to embarrass me with too many witnesses, apart, that is, from his lifelong manager, who was always there, a discreet taciturn man of about the same age, and whom I scarcely knew at all even though I had known him since forever.

'I hope Señor Cazorla won't find our conversation too boring, Maestro,' I said tentatively, just in case.

'Not at all,' replied Miquelin, making a gesture with his hand as if sweeping aside such an idea. He had greeted me with a warm embrace and a kiss on the cheek, as if I were his nephew. 'Eulogio never gets bored, but if he does, he simply thinks, isn't that so, Eulogio? You can say whatever you like in front of him, because he'll neither tell on you nor judge you. Anyway, how can I help?'

I found it hard to begin, because I felt slightly ashamed of what I was about to ask. However, the best way to overcome this was to say what I wanted and get it over with. Everything seems more embarrassing before than it does afterwards and even during.

'I wondered if you could lend me one of your swords. I'd only need it for a couple of days.'

I saw that my request took them both by surprise and that Cazorla started slightly and tugged at one sleeve. He was wearing a suit, complete with a waistcoat, in rather too pale a shade of grey; he had a handkerchief in his top jacket pocket and wore a flower in his buttonhole; he was, in short, old school. But he would not speak unless Miquelin invited him to do so, and Miquelin managed to conceal his surprise very well and replied at once:

'As many as you want, Jacobo. We'll go and have a look at them right now and you can choose the one you like best, although they're all pretty much the same. But forgive me, if you'd wanted to borrow some money, it would never even have occurred to me to ask what you wanted it for, but borrowing a sword is a bit more unusual. Is it for a costume party?'

I could have lied to him, although a sword on its own wouldn't be much of a disguise. I could have invented some absurd excuse and said, for example, that I had been invited to a private bullfight, but it didn't seem right to deceive such a kindly man, and I don't think I would have succeeded. I felt, too, that he would understand my reasons for borrowing it and wouldn't judge me either.

'No, Miquelin. I want to give someone a fright. It's to do with my wife, well, my ex-wife, we've been separated for a while now, although we're not yet divorced.' I always made a point of saying that, I realized, as if it were important. 'That's why I moved to London, so that I wouldn't be hanging around here while we gradually drifted apart. Given what I've found out, though, I'm not sure it was a good idea. We have two kids, a boy and a girl, and I don't want them to come to any harm. The guy's no good for anyone, least of all her.'

Miquelin understood, I didn't need to say any more, I could see this from the way he listened to me, as if he were in agreement. He didn't ask any questions, friends were friends and you didn't poke your nose into their business. Then he gave an affectionate amused chuckle, he was a man much given to laughter, and age had not changed that or made his laughter less frequent.

'And what are you going to do with a sword?' he said. 'Did you hear what he wants it for, Eulogio? Are you actually going to use it, Jacobo? Are you going to stick the whole blade in or just the point? Or do you simply want to wave it around a bit and scare the living daylights out of him?'

'I was hoping not to have to use it,' I replied. I had no idea what I was going to do with it; having heard Tupra on the subject, I had thought only of the effect it would have when I produced the weapon.

'You have to bear in mind two things, my friend. Firstly, the estoque only wounds with the point, by sticking it in, and that's why you need considerable momentum to drive it in really deep; the bullfighter's sword has almost no blade at all, so it won't be any use if you just want to cut someone up a bit. Secondly, if this sword can kill a bull weighing over 1,300 pounds when you stick it in up to the hilt-always assuming you don't hit a bone of course-just imagine what it could do to a man, one false move on your part and he'd be stone dead. Do you want to take that risk? No, Jacobo, the best way to frighten someone is to pull a gun on them. Preferably a clean one, because you never know.'

I hadn't made the connection until I heard Miquelin talking about what a sword could do to a man, but when I did, I felt a shudder of disgust run through me, although, oddly, strangely, not self-disgust; I must still have seen myself as quite separate from what I was planning to do, or felt that my plan was still empty of content, or was it just that one never experiences genuine self-disgust, and it's that inability that makes us capable of doing almost anything as we grow accustomed to the ideas that rise up in us or take root, little by little, or as we come to terms with the fact that we're really going to do what we're going to do. 'I would be like that vicious malagueño, that nasty piece of work, that bastard,' I thought, 'the one who killed Emilio Mares on the outskirts of Ronda some seventy years ago, helped and urged on by his comrades, the one who went in for the kill and cut off Mares' ears and his tail, held them up in one hand and with the other doffed his red beret as if it were a bullfighter's hat, there in those sweet lands. The one who brutally murdered my father's old university friend, who, as my father told me, was rather vain, but in a funny self-consciously frivolous way, a really lovely man, always in a good mood, whom he had very much liked and who had refused to dig his own grave before being shot, thus allowing his executioners to bait him like a bull as well as to kill him. And then they had, literally, baited him with banderillas and pikes and swords. It's fortunate that Miquelin, all unknowing, has alerted me to that connection.'