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

No, you are never what you are-not entirely, not exactly- when you're alone and living abroad and ceaselessly speaking a language not your own or not your mother tongue; but nor are you what you are in your own country when there's a war on or when that country is dominated by rage or obstinacy or fear: to some degree you feel no responsibility for what you do or see, as if it all belonged to a provisional existence, parallel, alien, or borrowed, fictitious or almost dreamed-or, perhaps, merely theoretical, like my whole life, according to the anonymous report about me that I'd found among some old files; as if everything could be relegated to the sphere of the purely imaginary or of what never happened, and, of course, to the sphere of the involuntary; everything tossed into the bag of imaginings and suspicions and hypotheses and, even, of mere foolish dreams, about which, when you awake, all you can say is: 'I didn't want that anomalous desire or that murderous hatred or that baseless resentment to surface, or that temptation or that sense of panic or that desire to punish, that unknown threat or that surprising curse, that aversion or that longing which now lie like lead upon my soul each night, or the feeling of disgust or embarrassment which I myself provoke, or those dead faces, forever fixed, that made a pact with me that there would be no more tomorrows (yes, that is the pact we make with all those who fall silent and are expelled: that they neither do nor say anything more, that they disappear and cease changing) and which now come and whisper dreadful unexpected words to me, words that are perhaps unbecoming to them, or perhaps not, while I'm asleep and have dropped my guard: I have laid down my shield and my spear on the grass.' What's more you can repeat over and over Iago's disquieting words, not only after taking action, but during it too: 'I am not what I am.' A similar warning is issued by anyone asking another person to commit a crime or threatening to commit one himself, or confessing to vile deeds and thus exposing himself to blackmail, or buying something on the black market-keep your collar turned up, your face always in the shadows, never light a cigarette-telling the hired assassin or the person under threat or the potential blackmailer or one of many interchangeable women, once desired and already forgotten, but still a source of shame to us: 'You know the score, you've never seen me, from now on you don't know me, I've never spoken to you or said anything, as far as you're concerned I have no face, no voice, no breath, no name, no back. This conversation and this meeting never took place, what's happening now before your eyes didn't happen, isn't happening, you haven't even heard these words because I didn't say them. And even though you can hear the words now, I'm not saying them'; just as you can tell yourself: 'I am not what I am nor what I can see myself doing. More than that, I'm not even doing it.'

What I had absorbed less well, or simply didn't know, was that what one does or does not do depends not just on time, temptation and circumstance, but on silly ridiculous things, on random superfluous thoughts, on doubt or caprice or some stupid fit of feeling, on untimely associations and on one-eyed oblivion or fickle memories, on the words that condemn you or the gesture that saves you.

And so there I was the following morning-the day was threatening rain-with my borrowed pistol in my raincoat pocket, ready to take some definitive action, but without really knowing what exactly, although I had a rough idea and knew what I was hoping to make clear: I had to get rid of Custardoy, get him off our backs, make sure he stayed out of the picture; not so much out of my picture, which was little more than a daub at the time or perhaps a mere doodle-'You're very alone in London,' as Wheeler used to tell me-but out of Luisa and the children's picture, into which that unwholesome individual was trying to worm his way and where he was perhaps about to take up long-term residence, or at least long-term enough to become an affliction and a danger. Indeed, he already was both those things, for he had already spent far too much time prowling round and circling the frame and making incursions into the picture or canvas, and he had already laid a hand on Luisa and given her a black eye and left her with a cut or a gash-I had been told about the second and had myself seen the first- and nothing would stop him closing his large hands around her throat-those pianist's fingers, or, rather, those fingers like piano keys-one rainy night, when they were stuck at home, when he judged he had subjugated and isolated her enough and little by little fed her his demands and prohibitions disguised as infatuation and weakness and jealousy and flattery and supplication, a poisonous, despotic, devious type of man. I was quite clear now that I didn't want to have the luck or the misfortune (luck as long as it remained in the imagination, misfortune were it to become reality) of Luisa dying or being killed, that I couldn't allow this to happen because once a real misfortune has occurred there's no going back and it cannot be undone, or, contrary to what most people believe, even compensated (and there is, of course, no way of compensating the person who has died or even the living left behind, and yet nowadays the living often do ask for money, thus putting a price on the people who have ceased to tread the earth or traverse the world).

As I walked along, I couldn't help touching and even grasping the pistol, as if I were drawn to it or needed to get used to its weight and to feel and hold it in my hand, sometimes lifting it up slightly, still inside my pocket, and whenever I did grip it properly, I always took great care to keep my finger resting on the guard and not on the trigger, as Miquelin had recommended me to do even when the pistol wasn't cocked. 'How easy it must be to use it,' I was thinking, 'once you've got one. Or, rather, how difficult not to use it, even if only to point it at someone and threaten them and just to be seen with it. Firing the thing would be harder, of course, but, on the other hand, it cries out to be brandished about and it would seem impossible not to satisfy that plea. Perhaps women would find it easier to resist, but for a man it's like having a tempting toy, guns should never be given to men, and yet most of those that are made or inherited or that exist will end up in our hands and not in the more cautious hands of women.' I also had a proud feeling of invulnerability, as if, as I walked past other people in the street, I were thinking: 'I'm more dangerous than they are right now and they don't know it, and if someone got cocky with me or tried to mug me he'd get a nasty fright; if I got out the pistol, he'd probably back off or throw down his knife or run away' and I remembered the momentary feeling of pride that had assailed me on seeing the fear I unwittingly inspired in De la Garza when I went into his office ('You should feel very pleased with yourself: you had him scared shitless,' Professor Rico had said to me afterwords, neither mincing his words nor resorting to onomatopoeia). And I recalled, too, that immediately afterwards it had filled me with disgust that I could possibly feel flattered by such a thing, I had judged it unworthy of me, of the person I was or had been, of my face past and present, and which were both perhaps changing with the tomorrow that had now arrived. 'Presume not that I am the thing I was,' I quoted to myself as I walked. 'I have turn'd away my former self. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast. Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, not to come near our person by ten mile…' These were the words of King Henry V immediately after being crowned and many years before the night when he disguised himself to go among his soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, with everything pitched against him and at great risk of being misjudged, or, as one of his soldiers says to him, not realizing it's the King he's talking to, if the cause be not good, the king himself will have a heavy reckoning to make. Such words were unexpected coming from the man who, until only a short time before, had been Prince Hal, dissolute, reveler and bad son, especially when addressed to his still recent companion in revels, the now old Falstaff whom he was denying: I know thee not, old man,' for all it takes is a few words to abjure everything one has experienced, the excesses and the lack of scruples, the outrageous behavior and the arguments, the whorehouses and the taverns and the inseparable friends, even if those same friends say pleadingly to you, 'My sweet boy,' as Falstaff does to his beloved Prince Hal when the latter has just abandoned that name to become forever, with no possible way back, the rigid King Henry. Such words serve not only to mend one's ways and to leave behind the life of a debauchee or a roué avant la lettre, of a rake and an idler, but to announce that one is setting off along new paths, in new directions, or to announce a metamorphosis: I, too, could say mentally to Luisa and to Custardoy and to myself as I walked along: 'Presume not that I am the thing I was. I have turn'd away my former self. I am carrying a pistol and I am dangerous, I am no longer the man who never knowingly frightened anyone; like Iago, I am not what I am, at least I am beginning not to be.'