Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

'Here, at the university?'

'No. Well, yes, but not only here. On fronts where that fall was far more serious and brought with it far worse consequences than not being invited to high tables' – the dinners of which I had endured a good few in my time at Oxford – 'or becoming the object of gossip and criticism or finding oneself in a social or academic vacuum or being discredited professionally. But we'll talk about that tomorrow too, perhaps, a little, just enough. Or perhaps we won't, I don't know, we'll see. Tomorrow we'll see.'

I don't know quite how I looked at him, but I know that he did not like that look. Not so much because of what it revealed – surprise perhaps, curiosity, slight incredulity, a touch of suspicion, but not, I think, disapproval or censure, it was intuitively impossible for me to harbour such feelings towards him – but because of the mere fact that my look existed. It was as if it made him doubt his previous statement or comparison or recognition, when it was too late or was inappropriate.

'Have you spread any outbreaks of cholera?' That was the question that accompanied my look.

He rested the end of his walking-stick on the ground, grabbed hold of the banister and, with cigar and handle in the same hand, tried to get up, but couldn't. He remained like that, two arms raised, as if he were hanging from both supports or was caught in a gesture reminiscent of the one people make to proclaim their innocence or to announce that they are carrying no weapons: 'Frisk me, if you like.' Or: 'It wasn't me.'

'You're far too intelligent, Jacobo, for it even to occur to me to think that you could have understood that turn of phrase as anything but metaphorical. Of course I've spread them.' And that convoluted Jamesian gibe and the subsequent defiant affirmation were swiftly followed by the dilution of the latter, or its diminishment or an attempt at a nebulous, partial explanation, as if Wheeler did not want my vision of him to be muddied or spoiled by a misunderstanding or by an unpleasant metaphor. I don't know how he could possibly think that I would take him for a callous swine. 'That was a long time ago,' he said. 'Don't forget, I was born in 1913. Before, can you imagine it, the Great War. It doesn't seem possible, does it, that I should still be alive. Some evenings it doesn't seem possible to me either. In a life like mine there is time for too many things. Well, there's simultaneously not time for anything and, yes, time for too much. My memory is so full that sometimes I can't bear it. I'd like to lose more of it, I'd like to empty it a little. No, that's not true, I would rather it didn't fail me just yet. I just wish it wasn't quite so full. When you're young, as you know, you're in a hurry and always afraid that you're not living enough, that your experiences are not varied enough or rich enough, you feel impatient and try to accelerate events, if you can, and so you load yourself up with them, you stockpile them, the urgency of the young to accumulate scan and to forge a past, it's so odd that sense of urgency. No one should be troubled by that fear, the old should teach them that, although I don't know how, no one listens to the old any more. Because at the end of any reasonably long life, however monotonous it might have been, however anodyne and grey and uneventful, there will always be too many memories and too many contradictions, too many sacrifices and omissions and changes, a lot of retreats, a lot of flags lowered, and a lot of acts of disloyalty, that's for sure. And it's not easy to put all that in order, even to recount it to yourself. Too much accumulation. Too much vague material collected together and yet somehow dispersed as well, too much for one story, even for a story that is only ever thought. Not to mention the infinite number of things that fall within the eye's blind spot, every life is full of episodes that are literally invisible, we don't know what happened because we didn't see it, couldn't see it, much of what affects us and determines us is concealed or, how can I put it, not available for viewing, kept out of sight, out of shot. Life is not recountable, and it seems extraordinary that men have spent all the centuries we know anything about devoted to doing just that, determined to tell what cannot be told, be it in the form of myth, epic poem, chronicle, annals, minutes, legend or chanson de geste, ballad or folk-song, gospel, hagiography, history, biography, novel or funeral oration, film, confession, memoir, article, it makes no difference. It is a doomed enterprise, condemned to failure, and one that perhaps does us more harm than good. Sometimes I think it would be best to abandon the custom altogether and simply allow things to happen. And then just leave them be.' He stopped, as if he realised that he had moved a long way away from his planned conversation. But he had not lost sight of Tupra and Beryl, of that there was no doubt, he could allow himself digression upon digression upon digression and still come back to where he wanted to be. He grew defiant again and then immediately moderated that defiant tone: 'Of course I've spread outbreaks of cholera, malaria and plague too. I would remind you that we fought a long war against Germany far fewer years ago than I've been alive, I was already an adult by then. And before that, I was briefly involved in your war too. I was an adult then as well, you can do the calculations yourself.'

I rapidly did the calculations in my head. Wheeler's birthday was on 24 October, and so he wouldn't even have been twenty-three in July 1936, when the Civil War broke out, and in April 1939. when it ended, he would have been twenty-five. His involvement in the Civil War was a further revelation, he had never mentioned it. 'And before that, I was briefly involved in your war,' he had said, which must mean that he had taken part, had fought or perhaps spied or simply made propaganda, or perhaps he had been a correspondent, or a nurse with the Red Cross, or had driven ambulances. I couldn't believe it. Not the fact itself, but not knowing about it until that night, after we'd known each other all these years.

'You never told me you were involved in the Spanish War, Peter.' I used the expression 'the Spanish War', in excessive obedience to the language I was speaking, for that is how it is occasionally referred to in English. 'You've never even mentioned it.' I really couldn't believe it. 'How is that possible? You've never even so much as hinted at it.'

'No, I don't think I have,' Wheeler agreed gravely, as if he had no intention of adding anything further now either. And then his face lit up with a smile of undisguised delight which made him look still younger, he loved to get me all intrigued and then leave me dangling, I assume he did it with everyone if the opportunity arose, in that respect, too, he resembled Toby Rylands, who would often hint at deplorable events in his past, or remote, semi-clandestine activities, or unexpected or clearly inappropriate friendships for an academic, and yet never told a single one of those stories in its entirety. He would insinuate something and then fall silent, he would fire the imagination, but not stir or feed it, and if he did begin a story, it was as if it were only his memory and not his will – his memory talking out loud – that led him to do so, and he would immediately stop, pull himself up short, so that he never told the whole story of those possibly testing or adventurous times, he allowed only glimpses. They belonged to the same school and to the same past era, he and Wheeler, it wasn't surprising that they'd been friends for such a long time, he, the still-living, must miss his dead friend very much, immensely. 'But I didn't conceal it from you either,' Wheeler added with a broad grin, as he finally stubbed out his cigar, pressing it hard down in the ashtray, in one vertical movement, as if it were an undesirable insect to be crushed, if you'd ever asked me about it…' And, still more amused, he took great pleasure in saying to me reproachfully: 'But you've never shown the slightest interest in the subject. You've shown no curiosity at all about my peninsular adventures.'