Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

De la Garza took it from his hand, the neatly folded packet, possibly as yet untouched, it looked quite plump. He did not even say 'Thank you', he merely used the edge of his bejewelled fist to check that the door was closed, securely jammed shut, and then set about preparing the cocaine beside the various taps, on the flat black marble that surrounded the concave porcelain. But he changed his mind as soon as he took out his wallet (perhaps he didn't quite trust Tupra's wedge after all, it didn't strike him as providing a strong enough padlock), and he went into one of the cubicles, still holding the packet in one hand; obviously he didn't close the door, we would have found that insulting, or as indicating a possible intention to take more than he should. I had not had a proper look during my first rapid visit -just a quick glance round in search of the fugitives – and had failed to notice that as well as bars at shoulder-height, there were also three or four bars at hip-height as well; on one of these lay my overcoat, if it was mine; nor had I noticed how large the cubicles were, there were only two of them, but they were almost like small rooms, everything about the toilet was spacious, doubtless to facilitate the movements of disabled people and to allow wheelchairs to make all kinds of turns (even sudden ones); equally generous was the excellent lighting, intended, I assumed, to avoid the possibility of any stumbles, everything was new and spotless, gleaming and even welcoming, without any of the sordid elements so frequent in public toilets. It was admirable that people should show such respect for the disabled of Britain, that they did not cheerfully invade it and soil and besmirch it, as is the norm among men and optional among women. Anyway, there the three of us were, still all able-bodied, not just making improper and semi-criminal use of the toilet, but also preventing any legitimately handicapped person who might need it from entering, although that would have been an unlikely coincidence; but two of we three intruders were Spanish, and you know what we're Like, or most of us: you only have to forbid us from doing something for us all to rush in and disobey whatever orders or instructions or requests have been issued. The original idea, however, had come from the English member of the trio, the idea of meeting there or of profaning that place; regardless of whether his surname was Finnish or Czech, Turkish or Russian, he was a real and possibly patriotic Englishman and, besides, that night, he answered to Reresby. The truth is that I found it hard to remember when he was using one of his other names: I always thought of him as Tupra and that was what came to my tongue, not even Bertram or Bertie after he had repeatedly urged me to treat him in that more familiar way.

De la Garza lowered the lid of the toilet seat and placed the packet and the wallet on the cistern behind, but immediately stopped when he realised that the cistern was white, and transferred them instead to the lid, which was made of moulded plastic or something similar, dark blue, polished and smooth, and he knelt down before it, almost resting his buttocks on his heels ('Ah, so now the little prat doesn't mind kneeling down,' I thought bitterly, 'a moment ago, he didn't even want to bend down to tie his own shoelaces and wanted me to tie his knots for him, but he's happy enough to do it now in order to prepare his line of cocaine and sniff it up, well, I hope he steps on his laces afterwards and falls over; right now, I'd willingly tie a knot in his neck'). He pushed the hairnet out of the way with a toss of his head so that it wouldn't bother him, as if the hairnet were a full head of hair; it hung limply to one side; he took a credit card out of his wallet, it was, I noticed, Platinum, he must have a fair amount of money in his account, or else was in charge of administering embassy funds under various headings, they don't give Platinum Visa cards to just anyone. He opened the packet carefully and rather ineptly, he must be only an occasional consumer; with the aid of one corner of the credit card he scattered a small amount of cocaine directly onto the lid of the toilet seat, having nothing else to hand that he could use as a paten or tray, the white powder could be seen quite clearly, which would not have been the case had he used the white porcelain cistern. With the stiff plastic card he formed the powder into a line, and he didn't take too much, he even returned a little of the powder to the sachet, which he pushed to one side, folded but not completely closed, as if suddenly aware that it was someone else's property. He did not manipulate the Visa card with great dexterity, he kept regrouping and shaping the line; I watched, perplexed, from the cubicle doorway and Tupra remained outside, behind me or so I assumed, I wasn't looking at him, only at Rafita on bended knee (he may not have been very experienced, but it was a brief operation, or should have been). The line did not seem to me either very long or very broad, at least compared with those I had seen Comendador and his friends prepare in earlier days, as well as other less nocturnal people at various parties and in the occasional toilet (the latter especially in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, but not only then), including a minister, a tycoon, the president of a football club, a judge with a very stem reputation and even their respective wives in all their finery and from different backgrounds and of assorted ideas and ages, both in England and in Spain, as well as a couple of actresses and a couple of bishops (on separate occasions: one Catholic and one Anglican, but both incognito), a multimillionairess from Opus Dei or from Christ's Legionnaires, I can't quite remember now, and, more recently, Dick Dearlove at the end of his celebrity supper along with some of his supper celebrities; and one time in America, a Pentagon chief, although I can say no more than that, I mean, who or where or what the circumstances were; but it was pure chance that I was there, and, besides, that happened later, and at the time I'm referring to, I hadn't yet seen all this (I think it was the reason I escaped arrest, or else it immediately invalidated the arrest, more surely even than the faulty recital of the Miranda law on the part of the detective who had ordered me, the Pentagon chief, two women and another two men to be handcuffed, 'You have the right to remain silent…': the fact is that if I hadn't remained silent, I could have landed that high-up chief with all those troops at his command in a very tight spot indeed).

De la Garza patted his trousers and his giant jacket (the tails of which were brushing the floor) and he looked at me without really focusing or entirely turning his head; I was afraid he was going to ask me, or even Tupra, for a banknote, he was quite capable of doing so. 'If you're going to stick a note up your nose, use one of your own, you drone,' I thought, unwittingly falling into rhyme. But, in the end, he stuck his hand in one of his pockets and brought out a five-pound note which he rapidly rolled up – he was more dexterous at that – to make the tube through which to inhale the powder that looked rather like talc. 'Yes,' I thought, 'it does smell a bit like talcum powder in here. They're so clean, the disabled,' although I was becoming increasingly convinced that it had been a very long time since any disabled person had visited that disco, perhaps the toilet had just been installed, a recent improvement. 'Or perhaps it isn't coke, but talc that Tupra's given him': that thought also occurred to me. I saw De la Garza bend his head and crane his neck forward, he was about to snort the line, or half of it, up his left nostril, he had closed his right nostril with his index finger. 'He looks like a condemned man in olden times,' I thought, 'offering his vanquished head, his bare neck to the axe or the guillotine, with the toilet-seat lid as stump or block, and if the seat was up, the toilet bowl would serve as a basket for his head as it fell – the way vomit does – into the blue water, that way, it wouldn't roll.’