Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

My father fell silent again, and this time I had something to say during the pause. The blue of his eyes seemed to have intensified. I said, in fact, what I had been thinking just before: 'From now on, I might also look at those buildings when I pass that corner, even though I don't know precisely which building it is. Now that I've heard you tell that story, I mean.' He made a gesture with his hand in the air, or, rather, with three fingers, index, middle finger and thumb – the latter accompanying the other two with a slight delay and purely imitatively – as if I had touched on some very ancient matter, long since debated and resolved. Almost as if he were pushing it away or rejecting it as beyond further comment.

'Yes, I know. Perhaps one should never tell anyone anything,' he said. 'I mean, nothing bad. When you children started to arrive, your mother and I asked ourselves the question: how were we going to tell you about what had happened right here, in the country where you lived, only fifteen or twenty years before you came into the world, or even more than that in the case of your sister? It seemed to us that it wasn't something we could tell our children, still less explain, it wasn't explicable even to ourselves who had witnessed it from start to finish. There hadn't been enough time for us to begin to forget, and besides, it was still all too fresh in our minds, the regime made sure of that. There was never any process of psychological healing, no attempt at assuagement, the regime showed a consistent and thoroughly totalitarian lack of generosity, which was evident in every order and in every sphere of life, even the most intangible. I left the decision to her, to your mother, who spent more time with you than I did; you were always more her children than mine, which is why it seems so dreadfully sad that she ended up knowing you far less than I have, for fewer years and only when you were young and, how can I put it, less finished than you are now, although you're all still fairly unfinished, especially you, but don't take that the wrong way. And then there are your children, your siblings' children and yours, whom she never even knew. Anyway, I always felt her decision was the right one. She believed that you should never feel threatened, personally anxious, fearful for yourselves, afraid that something terrible might happen to you, insecure about your daily lives and your actions. That you should all feel protected and safe. But she didn't think it prudent or right that you should know nothing about how the world works, about the kind of thing that can happen or has happened. She thought that if you found out gradually, without going into gruesome, ugly, unnecessary detail, you would be forewarned and better prepared and have more resources with which to deal with life. It also depended, of course, on the questions you asked. She always hated lies. I mean she really did, she couldn't bring herself to tell you that something that was true wasn't. She could tone down or disguise the truth a little, but not deny it. The tendency today is to enclose children in a bubble of foolish happiness and false security, by not bringing them into contact even with the mildly disquieting, and by keeping them ignorant -of fear or even of its existence, indeed, I understand that nowadays you can buy – and that some people actually give or read these to their children – censored, doctored or saccharine' versions of classics like Grimm or Perrault or Andersen, stripped of all the darkness and cruelly, of anything that's threatening and sinister, and probably with all the upsets and deceptions removed. Rank stupidity in my view. Namby-pamby parenting and irresponsible teaching. I consider that a crime of neglect, really, and a dereliction of duty. Because being exposed to other people's fears provides children with a lot of protection; they can imagine it serenely from the background of their own security and can experience it vicariously, through others, especially through fictional characters, like a short-lived contagion which, while only borrowed, is nevertheless not pure fakery. By imagining something you are starting to resist it, and that applies to things that have already happened as well: you can withstand misfortunes more easily if, afterwards, after experiencing them, you can manage to imagine them. And, of course, the way most people do this is by talking about them. Not that I think everything could or should be told, far from it, but neither is it admissible to over-falsify the world and send idiots and dimwits out into it who have never known the slightest disappointment or anxiety. Throughout my life, before telling something, I have always tried to gauge what could be told. To whom, how and when. You have to stop and consider what stage or moment in their life the person listening to you has reached, and to bear in mind that what you tell that person will stay with them for ever. It will become incorporated into their knowledge, just as the murder I heard about on a tram became incorporated into mine, even though it was just one of many. And, as you see, I haven't managed to dislodge that story from my knowledge, nor another story from the War which, for example, it never occurred to me to tell your mother at the time, even though she was accustomed to horrors and even though I was in quite a state when I returned home after hearing it. But what is the point, I thought, what is the point of upsetting her with yet another story, now that the War has ended, I'll get over it, I'll forget about it in time without having to share or pass the burden on to her. And I did slowly get over it, because one does get over almost everything. But I've never forgotten it, that would be too much to hope for, how could I? This particular gift was given to me by a notorious Falangist writer who later ceased to be a Falangist, as most of them did, and, can you believe it, during Franco's latter years, never mind after his death, the man had the gall to pretend he was a veteran of the Left, and people swallowed it too. They weren't ignorant people either, but journalists and politicians. And so, with Spain 's characteristic ethical superficiality, he was always celebrated, under two different flags.’

He stopped for a moment, but this time he was not remembering with particular intensity or sharpness, he was thinking, or hesitating, or perhaps biting his tongue. He had reined himself in.

'I can't really say whether I believe it or not,' I put in, 'if I don't know who you're talking about and you haven't told me the story. What was the story? Who was this man?' 'You reproached me just now with having told you the story I heard on that tram,' he replied, and I thought he seemed just a touch offended. 'I don't know if I should go on.' And he sounded to me as if he were asking my permission. He sounded strange.

'I certainly didn't intend it as a reproach, that would be absurd. That would be like reproaching historians for writing down what they have found out or what they know at first hand. We spend our lives adding to the catalogue of horrors that have occurred, there are always more being uncovered, always more surfacing. My listening to you telling the story can't possibly have the same effect on me as it did on you hearing it from that woman. She was the one who had done the deed, and she was proud of it too. Plus it had only just taken place. It was still taking place, here and everywhere, that's very different. Don't worry, you can tell me anything, it can't be any worse than all the other things I've read about or that we see on television every day. I don't want you turning into one of those namby-pamby parents, not at this stage in my life. Really! Besides, I would have to denounce you then and accuse you of neglect and, what did you call it, dereliction of duty.’

He gave a short laugh, it amused him that I should dismantle his improvised objections with the very arguments and terminology he had just used. But before replying, he once more addressed me using the plural 'you': including all four: siblings was another way of softening a reprimand intended for only one of us.