Javier Marias - Your Face Tomorrow 2 - Dance and Dream

He had defused me, at least for the moment. That was the way he usually talked, he went from one sentence to another and each one took him further away from whatever had given rise to the first, further away from the origin of the conversation or from his disquisition, if that was what it was. The origin in this case had been my anger, my resentment at the way he had involved me in his atrocities and made me witness them, in films and in novels anyone can get killed for no reason at all and no one so much as blinks, not the author or the characters or the viewers or the readers, it always seems so easy and so ordinary and so commonplace. But it isn't like that in real life, it isn't easy or ordinary or commonplace, not in the lives led by the vast – and I mean vast – majority of people, and in real life it causes enormous unease and alarm and sorrow, unimaginable to someone who has never been embroiled in such things. (As I believe I said before, it leaves you trembling and for a long time afterwards too. And then you feel depressed, and that lasts even longer.) Fortunately, we had not, as far as I knew, killed anyone, contrary to what had seemed likely when that sword first appeared (I might be the one to phone De la Garza later, behind Tupra's back – that would be best – to find out if the dickhead was still alive, and hadn't subsequently snuffed it because of some internal injury). After all, it had only been a few blows and shakings and a brief attempted drowning, pretty minor stuff really, very small beer in a film or in one of those slow-witted novel-clones about body-busting psychopaths or analytical, almost arithmetical, serial killers, there are dozens of them, in imitative Spain as well. And yet that trifling incident – at least compared with fictional versions – had left me feeling feverish and nauseous and suffering from intermittent cold sweats, they did not last long, but nor did they entirely go away either, and every time the car stopped at a red light and no air was coming in, the sweats would return and I would be drenched again in a matter of seconds. This was during the car journey, which was indeed brief, especially at night, for we had nearly reached my square already.

Feeling troubled, but, even more than that, feeling both irritable and curious, I had said nothing after his explanations about the Kray twins, and had to backtrack mentally to recover if not the origin of that comment, at least the near vicinity: the sword.

'What do you mean when you say you learned from them? Do you mean the business with the sword? And where did you learn it from, from books, from the film, or did you actually know the Krays?’

Tupra would have been born around 1950, slightly before or slightly after. He might have known them in the role of apprentice, beginner or acolyte, before their imprisonment, in some spheres of activity people do start very young, almost as children. He had mentioned Bethnal Green on other occasions, it had been the poorest part of London during the Victorian era, and its poverty had lasted much longer than that very long reign. For decades, it was home to an insane asylum, the Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum, and the district around Old Nichol Street known as 'Jago' – the name by which Tupra sometimes ironically called me – was notorious for its high levels of deprivation and of crime. If he did come from an area like that – but had also studied at Oxford, thanks perhaps to his gifts – it might explain why he was equally at home among low-lifes and in high society: the latter can be learned and is within the grasp of anyone; on the other hand, the only valid training for the former is total immersion. It was possible, given his age. Tupra, however, did not answer me directly, but then he rarely did.

'The film must be available on DVD or video. But it's pretty gloomy stuff, and fairly squalid. If, as you say, you tend to avoid squalor like the plague, you'd better not see it,' he said, as if he hadn't heard my questions or merely found them superfluous; and I noted, too, a slight hint of mockery, taking my aversion to squalor so literally. 'An actor I know well, an old friend of mine, had a bit part in it and, one night, when they were fuming, I helped him rehearse his scene. I think that's why I went to see it later on, he had picked up a lot of my style. In the scene, he was sharing an army cell with the twins, during their national service, when they were still very young; he was watching them and giving them a brief lesson on what they would have to do when they left the army and returned to civilian life. It's a very condensed lesson in how to get what you want, whenever, whatever. "I know your name. Kray," he said to them.' And this time Tupra pronounced the name in a cockney or perhaps it was merely an uneducated accent, that is, as if the word were 'cry', which, depending on the context, can mean 'a shout' or 'weeping'. As if, at that moment, he were himself playing the part: his bland, ingenuous vanity resurfacing. We had just driven into my secluded square, which was silent and tranquil now that night had fallen; he had parked opposite the trees and had immediately turned off the engine, but he wasn't going to let me get out at once, he still had things to say to me. And he had not yet revealed why he had wanted to give me a lift. – ' "And I think to myself, George, I think,"' – he continued his monologue, it was as if he had learned it by heart on that night, years ago, when he had rehearsed it with his friend the actor -' "these boys are special. These boys are a new kind. You've got it… And I can see it."' – That or something similar was also our motto at work, 'I can see it, I can see your face tomorrow' -' "And you've got to learn how to use it. Now these people, they don't like getting hurt. Not them or their property. Now these people out there who don't like to be hurt, pay other people not to hurt them. You know what I'm saying. 'Course you do. When you get out, you keep your eyes open. Watch out for the people who don't want to be hurt. Because you scare the shit out of me, boys. Wonderful.'" – That is what Tupra said in a fake accent which was perhaps his real accent, inside his fast car, in the lunar light of the street-lamps, sitting on my right, with his hands still resting on the motionless steering wheel, squeezing it or strangling it, he wasn't wearing gloves now, they were hidden away, dirty and sodden and wrapped in toilet paper, in his overcoat, along with the sword. – 'That's the thing, Jack. Fear,' he added, and those words still sounded as if they belonged to the role he had been imitating, or which he had usurped, or which perhaps he had stolen, or which he felt he had actually played through the intermediary of his friend. But it didn't really sound like his style, not the usual style of the Bertram Tupra I knew, more like the performance of a Shakespearian actor, although he did sound sombre, not squalid perhaps, but definitely sinister, ominous, so it was not surprising that along with the cold sweats that came and went and my general sense of fever, a shudder also ran through me.

My unease, however, had begun to subside since he had stopped the car. I could see the lights on in my apartment, I often left some or all of them on, to anyone watching from the building opposite or from the street, it would look as if I were always home, apart from when I was sleeping or on other occasions when I deliberately turned them off, to listen to music, for example.

'Are those lights yours?' asked Tupra, following my gaze, and he had to invade my space for a moment in order to lean across and peer through the open window on my side of the car, he liked to see things for himself, to scrutinise everything he saw with his insatiable eyes, blue or grey depending on the light.

'Yes, I don't like finding the apartment in darkness when I come home late.’