Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

He handed it back to me. Unlike Wheeler, he hadn't taken the precaution of holding it up to the light to see if it was clean when I gave it to him. I, however, did do so when it was returned to my hand, but there were no hairs caught on it. I translated that last list of orders to the attache, but I left out the bit about the sword; that is, I mentioned his head and its possible, perhaps only postponed, loss, but not the sword. You cannot ask someone to translate everything, even insane, obscene or nasty remarks, even curses and calumnies, without their questioning or judging or rejecting some of it. Even if you are not the person doing the speaking or the saying, even though you are the mere transmitter or reproducer of someone else's words and sentences, the truth is that these do in large part become yours when you make them comprehensible and repeat them to another person, to a far greater degree than might at first seem likely. You hear them, understand them and sometimes have opinions about them; you find an immediate equivalent for them, give them a new form and let them go. It's as if you endorsed them. I had approved of nothing that had happened in that toilet, nor of anything that Tupra had done. Nor of my own passivity, or bewilderment, or was it cowardice or perhaps prudence, perhaps I had prevented worse calamities. I was even more displeased with Reresby's improper use of the plural, 'we know where to find him', it troubled and upset me that he should include me in that, without my consent and when he knew me so little. What he could not ask me to do was to play an active role and to threaten De la Garza with the weapon that arouses most fear, an atavistic fear, the weapon that has caused most deaths throughout most centuries, at close quarters and face to face with the person killed. And the one that I had feared so much while it was unsheathed and ready for use.

I finished, and added in Spanish on my own account: 'De la Garza, you'd better do everything he says, is that clear? I mean it. I honestly didn't think you were going to get out of here alive. I don't know him that well myself. I hope you recover. Good luck.’

De la Garza nodded, just a slight lift of the chin, his eyes dull, his gaze averted, he did not even want to look at us. He was not only in pain, he was, I think, still terrified, and the terror would not pass until we were out of his sight, and even then a remnant would always remain. He would be sure to obey, he would not dare to make enquiries or seek me out or phone me. He might not even phone Wheeler, his theoretical mentor in England, to have a moan about it. Nor his father in Spain, Peter's old friend. His name was Pablo, and he was, I recalled, a much better man than his son.

Tupra picked up his own pale coat, so stiff and respectable, and put it over his shoulders, there was no difference now between the man who was leaving the toilet and the man who had entered it. He picked up the sodden gloves and put them in one of his overcoat pockets, having first wrung them out and wrapped them each in several pieces of toilet paper. He removed the wedge from beneath the door and held the door open for me.

'Let's go, Jack,' he said.

He did not so much as glance at the fallen man. De la Garza was just that, one of the fallen, no longer of any concern to him, he had done his job. That was my impression, that he viewed him probably without hostility or pity. That must be how he saw everything: you did what you had to do, you took care of things, sorted them out, defused them, set fire to them or restored them to balance ('Don't linger or delay'); then they were forgotten, relegated to the past, and there was always something else waiting, as he had said, he still had some things to deal with out there and needed thirty or forty minutes; with all these interruptions, he wouldn't have had time to close the deals or agree the bribes or the blackmailing scams or the pacts with Mr Manoia. Or he would not have convinced or persuaded him, or he would not have had sufficient opportunity to allow Manoia to persuade or convince him about whatever it was. Nor did he give a farewell kick or flourish as he passed by De la Garza's fallen form. Tupra was certainly Sir Punishment, but he was not perhaps Sir Cruelty. Or maybe he simply never ever hit anyone directly with any part of his body. As he left, only the tail of his overcoat, which swirled like a matador's cape, brushed the face of the fallen man.

Before going through the second door, the one that gave onto the disco itself, another line from 'The Streets of Laredo' came into my mind, with its insistent, repetitive melody. I found the line unfortunate, because I couldn't be sure that I did not, at that moment, endorse it slightly, as one does when one translates or repeats an oath, or that Tupra could not adopt the line as his own that night, after what had, in his eyes, been my entirely unsatisfactory behaviour from start to finish: 'We all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong,' it said, 'Todos queriamos a nuestro camarada aunque hubiera hecho mal.' Although, of course, it could also be translated as ' aunque hubiera hecho daño - 'although he'd caused harm' – and perhaps that version was the more accurate one.

Reresby knew his timings, we spent thirty-five minutes at the table before the four of us left the disco, Mr and Mrs Manoia, him and me. We had left the couple alone for fax less time than that, the business in the Disabled toilet, that is, Tupra's violent intervention, had lasted barely ten minutes, and before that he had first solicitously accompanied Flavia to the Ladies' toilet and then back to the table: he had neglected neither her nor, indeed, him, so there could be no great complaints about our absence. Manoia did not, therefore, seem particularly impatient or ill-humoured, or perhaps to sfregio on his wife's face had so incensed him that this could only be followed by an abatement of the fever, a relative calming down, while we (I included myself in that plural now) were busy punishing the dickhead, possibly in Manoia's name and possibly on his orders.

Tupra, at any rate, did not return his overcoat to the cloakroom, he sat down with it over his shoulders, allowing it to hang straight, like a cloak, as he was obliged to do given the rigidity of the concealed weapon, he seemed used to doing so (the hem must have got dirty, since it was dragging on the floor). I wondered if Manoia had any idea as to what my boss had hidden about his person, he might not have liked it at all. It was not impossible either that the sword had not been there from the start, that Tupra had not always had it with him, that it had been handed to him in the cloakroom when he went to ask for his coat; that, at a signal from him, they had slipped it into the long pocket-cum-sheath, that it was held there for him, so to speak, and given to him whenever he needed it. He was probably a regular customer, a favoured client, and must have been so in all the places we went to, at least that is how he was treated, as a familiar figure, someone to be flattered, respected and even slightly feared, he was known as Reresby in some, Ure in others and Dundas in the rest. But not all of those places would keep a store of weapons to be handed over as and when. Long, sharp weapons.

During those thirty-five minutes he immersed himself in conversation with Manoia, having first made a gesture which I took to mean 'It's done' or 'You can consider yourself avenged' or 'Problem solved, I'm sorry it ever happened'. I heard them mention some of the same names that had cropped up earlier: Pollari, Letta, Saltamerenda, Vails, the Sismi, although I still had no idea what the latter was. Manoia did not so much as glance in my direction, he must have formed a very bad opinion of me and decided to avoid all contact, even visual. It again fell to me to keep Flavia amused, as if nothing had happened; but she seemed dejected, almost depressed, with little desire to talk, she kept glancing vaguely about her, as if she were bored and killing time, she tapped her foot to the music, languidly and discreetly, she had carefully applied more make-up to her cheek, but it still looked raw, there was still a visible mark, her hair had become dishevelled during the dance and, in her case, a comb, her own or someone else's, would not have been enough to restore order to a complex arrangement of what were doubtless various forms of false switches and plaits. She had aged a few years, she might even have wept a few artificial, childish tears, which is something that immediately accentuates the age of someone intent on delaying or concealing it (but only fake tears do this, not real ones). Then, after some moments had passed and while her husband was busily engaged in whispering into Tupra's ear, she asked me in Italian: 'And your friend?' She had suddenly reverted to the formal mode of address, a further indication of her low spirits.