Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

Tupra wielded the sword with such vigour that it sounded like a whiplash in the air, and this second time, he again displayed remarkable control, he stopped short so that the blade did not touch anything, animate or inanimate, fabric or skin or flesh or object, everything remained intact, the head, the lid of the toilet seat, the porcelain, the neck, he did not cut or split anything open, he did not dismember or sever, he did not slice. Then he held the blade for a moment very close to De la Garza's hunched neck and shoulders, as if he wanted him to feel its presence – the breath of steel – and even familiarise himself with it before the final blow, just as, after a while, we notice behind us agitated breathing or intense eyes that wish us ill or well, it doesn't matter which if they are as voracious as saws or axes or as penetrating as knives. As if he wanted him to realise that he was alive and was about to die in the next instant, in any one of those instants – one, two, three and four; but not yet; then five – and the attache must have thought, if he was still thinking and not deep asleep and dreaming: 'Don't let him do it, please, he can hesitate and keep hesitating all he wants as long as he decides, at last, not to do it, make him raise that absurd weapon one more time and not lower it again, I mean, who does he think he is, a Saracen, a Viking, a Mau Mau, a buccaneer, let him take the sword away, let him put it back in its sheath and put it away, what is the point of this, and make Deza do something, for God's sake make him do something, make him take the sword off him, throw him to the floor or persuade him, he can't just let this happen, it won't happen, it won't happen to me, not to me, I'm still thinking so it can't have happened yet, time has ceased moving, but I'm still thinking, which means that my time has not entirely stopped.’

Something very similar must have gone through my head, perhaps equally supplicant and numbed – numbed by sheer incredulity perhaps, or simply dulled, even though I was only a witness or an involuntary accomplice – but to what: as yet nothing – and my neck was not on the block. Only a fool would consider trying to grab a sword from the person wielding it, he might well turn it on me, that double-edged blade, the Landsknecht or 'cat-gutter', and then my head would be the one at risk and might yet end up rolling around on the floor of that toilet, although there wasn't the slightest sign in Tupra of derangement or insanity, he was as he always was, concentrating on the job in hand, serene, alert, methodical, slightly mocking, even rather pleasant given that he was possibly about to kill someone, which is the worst and most unspeakably unpleasant thing anyone can do. It was unlikely that he would attack me, I was with him, I worked with him, we had gone there together and would leave together, he was a decent man, there was my overcoat, he had gone to fetch it for me and had brought it to me, why didn't he just abandon these shock tactics and let us get out of this vile place, I didn't want to see blood or to see De la Garza beheaded, headless like a chicken, what would we do with the body and what would the embassy say, they would launch an investigation in Spain, after all, despite his ludicrous appearance, he was still a diplomat, and New Scotland Yard would start their own, we had been seen with him on the dance floor, especially me, as had Mrs Manoia. I knew with absolute certainty then: Tupra would not kill him, because he wouldn't want to get her involved in a mess like that. Unless there was no corpse, because we would take it away with us. But how?

'Are you mad or what? Don't do it!' Now when I spoke, I had time to say more, although still not very much, the kind of superfluous, ineffectual, pathetic phrases that rush to our tongue when confronted by unexpected brutality, a mere verbal counterpoint to something that has dispensed with words entirely and is nothing but violent action, a stabbing, a beating, a homicide, a murder or a suicide, they are superstitious phrases, like interjections, I came out with them despite seeing no signs at all of any madness in Tupra, he knew perfectly well what he was doing and not doing, I saw no rage in him, or even anger, at most annoyance, impatience, irritation, and, doubtless, delayed censure: I would bear my fair share of that, I was sure, since, that night, I had been the link with De la Garza; Wheeler had dumped him on me, but that had been on another day entirely and only today counts. It was more like teaching someone a lesson or calling in a debt, a punishment that he was dishing out or was going to dish out in cool blood with that unlikely sword, I still didn't know where it had come from or why he should resort to such an unusual and impractical weapon – it took up a lot of space, it was a nuisance really -disconcerting nowadays. I found out the answer to the first thing at once; the second only much later, when we had left the club.

He raised the Landsknecht sword, removed it from the neck it had so nearly touched, and this was both a good moment and a bad moment, it could be the prelude to a final, fatal descent, it could be a new gathering of breath before the threatened strike and decapitation, or else signify the renunciation, withdrawal and cancellation of fear, the decision not to use the sword and to allow the head to remain united with its trunk. He rested the flat of the sword on his right shoulder, as if it were the rifle of a sentinel or of a soldier on parade. It was a thoughtful, meditative gesture. He looked directly down at the kneeling De la Garza, who was not moving apart from a few disagreeable, involuntary, spasmodic tremors, he must be holding his breath while his heart raced, he would not want to do anything to tip the balance, not speak or look or exist, like insects which, when faced with danger, remain utterly still, thinking that they can disappear from view and even from smell by changing colour abruptly and blending in with the stone or leaf on which their enemies found them perched. Then Tupra lowered his left hand, took hold of De la Garza's hairnet and pulled it hard, the attache really should never have worn it. De la Garza felt the tug and squeezed his eyes still more tightly shut as if he were trying to burst them and hunched his neck still more, but, having no protective shell into which to withdraw, he could not conceal it.

'Don't do what, Jack?' Reresby said this without looking at me, he was still studying the figure at his feet, at his mercy, kneeling before the toilet. 'Who told you what I'm going to do or not going to do? I certainly didn't tell you, Jack. Tell me, what exactly is it that you don't want me to do?' He raised his eyes. He looked at me straight on, as he did at everything, focusing clearly and at the appropriate height, which is that of a man. And then he brought the sword down.

He sliced off the hairnet with one blow; a kitchen knife, scissors, a Swiss army knife would have been sufficient, a fir shorter blade than that used by a bullfighter to cut off his pigtail when he retires from the ring, although that would have been slower and made less of an impression on the person being threatened as well as on the witness, nor would it have sounded the same, it wasn't like before, like a whiplash or a riding crop swishing through the air, but like a light slap or a soft, clear handclap or even the sound of a gob of spit hitting a tiled floor, it was, at any rate, audible enough for De la Garza automatically to raise his hands to his ears in another gesture of imaginary protection, it obviously didn't occur to him that if he could make that gesture, he must still be alive, it doubtless took him a while longer to tell himself that he had, in fact, survived the third lunge or pass or swipe of the terrible blade, that it had not severed or opened up any part of his body, or perhaps he could not believe it – and if that were the case, he was quite right -and was still waiting for the next blow, and the next, and another, from the weapon that remains in the hand and is not thrown away; of course, I, too, waited for a few seconds, although fewer than he, because I could see what he could not: during the minimal amount of time it took Tupra to walk a few steps, free up his hands and then retrace those steps, De la Garza remained still as a stone, like a strange imploring statue, anguished or, rather, vanquished, terrified, resigned to the sacrifice, with his eyes closed and his ears covered, and in that position he reminded me of Peter Wheeler – although only in that respect – when he had covered his ears in just the same way against the noise of the helicopter which he thought was a Sikorsky H-5 and against the winds that the helicopter kicked up, on that Sunday morning in his garden by the river, the day when he told me more about Tupra and the nameless group to which he too had belonged and to which I belonged now, and it was because of that tacit belonging that I was there, in that spotless, gleaming toilet, sharing in a man's terror.