Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

His wife might possibly have done so, but she would certainly not have been its object, how else explain her impulsiveness or her ease: she must have known, in advance, that she had been granted a plenary indulgence or a full papal bull. And yet, for all that, she seemed so full of new insecurities – every age takes us by surprise; each one takes a long time to come into effect inside us, or, perhaps, to catch us up – that it was very hard not to feel affectionate towards her despite the fact that she required a great deal of work, especially from me, her entertainer and plaything for the evening. Her husband doubtless loved her, and that would be of some help, but as far as certain unstoppable advances or retreats are concerned there is no help. I had engaged her in inconsequential chatter throughout our supper at Vong's – a restaurant almost next door to the Berkeley Hotel – or, to be more precise, it was she who had engaged me in chatter; she was not a shy woman and very talkative, and thus little effort was required from me in that department; however, now and then, she would stop and fold her arms, thus providing a frame for her nautical neckline – by which I mean that she was wearing a top with a boat neck or, in her particular case, more of a Viking longship or canoe neck – and would sit looking at me, a friendly smile on her lips, and then, with a gesture not without charm – an imitation, shall we say, of a justified reproach – give voice to one of her favourite or more persistent requests: 'Mi dica quakosa di tenero, va, su, signor Deza,' she would say, without any transitional phrase or preamble, even though in that exotic restaurant we hadn't yet danced together and were not even on familiar terms. (In fact, she called me 'Detsa', which is how she pronounced my name.) 'Su, signor Deza, no sia cosi serioso, cosi antipatico, cosi scontroso, cosi noioso, mi dica qualcosa di carino,' and this desire to be fussed over would last for a while. And thus she would put me in the awkward position of having to come up with something sweet or charming to say to her, without, however, being bold or offensive, something Tupra had earnestly warned against when he had described her to me and lectured me about her the day before in his office, with his retrospective, and also terrifyingly accurate, eye for the ladies. He had said very little about Manoia, or only obliquely, the odd key characteristic, but a great deal about his dear lady wife Flavia, because he, Reresby – the name Tupra was using that night, perhaps it was the one he normally used for Italy, or for the Vatican – was not going to be available to distract her and keep her happy.

'Grant her every whim, Jack, whatever she wants,' he had said. 'But be careful. From what I know and from what I've seen of her, she won't want anything more than flattery. At her time of life, she needs that by the truckload, but a generous, skilfully applied dose of it will be enough for her to go to sleep feeling calmer and more contented than when she woke up, and it's the same for her every night and every morning; because after each nocturnal triumph she will wake with the same diurnal anxiety, thinking: "Last night, I was fine, but will I be all right today? I'm another day older." And if you had to keep her company for two evenings in a row (don't worry, I'm not expecting that to happen), you would have to start the compliments and the hard work all over again from zero, she's reached a time in her life which is insatiable but non-cumulative, you see, continually forgetting what has been gained. But be quite clear, she herself is insatiable only in that one respect, for endless blarney and sweet talk, for reinforcement, but nothing more. Not even if it seems to you crystal clear that she is asking you for more with every look and every gesture, by the way she touches you and turns to you and by what she says. You must not give way or be taken in. Theirs is a marriage… well, let's say it's a Catholic marriage, and doubtless very strict in that respect, although not in any other, I'm pretty sure they ignore all the other precepts, in fact, some I know they do ignore. Manoia wants her to be happy and that's what matters, at least, that's what matters to me tomorrow. But he would, I believe, despite his tepid appearance, be capable of stabbing anyone who went too far, even if only verbally. So keep your wits about you and, please, study the line – his, not yours – between good and bad taste very carefully, we don't want any stupid complications. You could misjudge her, you see. Well, don't. Heap attentions on her, but if in doubt, remember, less is definitely more, less we can do something about, but not more. That's why I'd rather take you than Rendel, although he's better suited to a jolly, fun-loving woman like Mrs Manoia. He doesn't always know when to apply the brakes.’

There was always something surprising to me about the way in which Tupra referred to the people he dealt with, studied, interpreted or investigated, perhaps he never merely 'dealt with' anyone. Even though there were so many of them and they came and went in rapid succession, for him they were all someone, he clearly never saw them as simple or interchangeable, mere types. Even though he would never see them again (or had never seen them in the flesh, if all we had was video footage), even if he formed and gave us a poor opinion of them, he did not reduce them to outline sketches or dismiss them as ordinary, as if he were always very conscious that even among the most commonplace of people, no two are alike. Another man might have summed Flavia Manoia up thus: 'She's your typical reluctantly menopausal woman, so just put up with all her boring chatter and make her believe that she can still knock men dead, including you, that's the way to win her over. Not that you'll find that so hard to believe, because she probably did knock them dead a few years ago – by the dozen. Take a good look at her legs, which she keeps in excellent shape and quite rightly shows off, and you'll see what I mean. She's even got a wiggle when she walks,' such a man would add, a man with only a very vague idea of where the line between good and bad taste lies.

Tupra, on the other hand – or was he already Reresby when we were on our way to the restaurant in the Aston Martin that he drove on nights when the aim was to make a good impression or to toady up to someone – went into long, complex disquisitions on the lady which went beyond her and her insignificant case (on the lips of the thoughtful Reresby she no longer seemed quite so insignificant). It was when I heard such subtleties from him that I saw the influence of Toby Rylands, of whom, according to Peter Wheeler, he had been a disciple, and then I would see again how linked their characters were, or was it merely that ability, or that shared gift which they also attributed to me (in all other respects, Tupra was completely different): 'Bear in mind that, deep down, what fills Mrs Manoia with horror,' he remarked as we waited at a red light, 'is not her own imminent physical decay, against which she is struggling as best she can, but the troubling intuition that her world is about to disappear and is already dying. Some of her oldest friends have died in recent years, a few very unexpectedly, it's been a bad time; in some cases, her friends have retired, in others, there are people who would like to speed them on their way to retirement. It's no longer easy for her to find companions to go out on the town with every night of the week, and nowhere will you find proper parties with hosts and everything on a daily basis, still less in Rome, which that killjoy Berlusconi and his maladroit ways have transformed into one long yawn' (I translated the rather literary word 'maladroit' to myself as mala sombra, it doesn't mean quite the same thing, but never mind, and 'killjoy', which I'd never heard before, I took to mean ceniza or, perhaps aguafiestas). 'I mean companions in the old sense, the traditional sense. There are some younger people following in their footsteps, they want to find favour with Manoia, because, in his field, he has no intention as yet of stepping aside.' Here I noticed the school of Sir Peter Wheeler: just as Wheeler had taken ages to explain to me what exactly Tupra's 'line of work' was, Tupra was now nonchalantly mentioning Manoia's 'field', in order not to have to say anything more about it. Not that I really cared. 'But she feels slightly lost among all these apprentices, too much of a veteran. That's the worst that can happen to someone who has been young for far too long, whether because she entered the adult world too soon, or because she made one too many pacts with the devil (that's just a manner of speaking, of course, such pacts are purely a matter of chance). Then, because she didn't have children, she continues to be the little girl of the house, and that brings with it a lot of bad habits, she pays dearly for the contrast as soon as she steps out into the street, and in any disco she finds to her horror that she is suddenly competing for the title of oldest person there; it's very corrosive to the soul, that moving between two worlds. She'd be better off at the casinos.’