Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

'Sabots?' asked Tupra, perhaps more out of amusement than because he hadn't understood me. 'Sabots?' he said, since that was the term I had used: thanks to the translation classes I taught in Oxford and to my time spent toiling for various slave-drivers, I know the most absurd words in English.

'Yes, you know, those wooden shoes with pointed tips like onions. Nurses wear them and the Flemish, of course, at least they do in their paintings. I think geishas do as well, don't they, with socks?'

Tupra gave a short laugh, and so did I. Perhaps he had had a sudden image of the Venezuelan gentleman wearing clogs. Or perhaps Chavez himself, in thick-soled clogs and white socks. On a first meeting and at a party, Tupra struck one as a nice man. He did on a second meeting too and in his office, although there he let it be understood that he could never entirely forget the serious nature of his work, nor be entirely contained by it either.

'Did you say he dresses to look like the national flag? You presumably meant draped in the flag, did you?' he added.

'No,' I said. 'The print on his shirt or army jacket, I can't remember quite what he was wearing, was the flag itself, complete with stars.'

'Stars? I can't remember the Venezuelan flag at the moment. Stars?' To my relief, he did not appear to have taken my comments about the shoes personally.

'It's striped, I think. A red stripe and a yellow one, I seem to recall, and possibly a blue one too. And there's a sprinkling of stars on it somewhere. The President was definitely adorned with stars, of that I'm sure, and broad stripes, an army jacket or a shirt with horizontal stripes in those colours or similar. And stars. It was probably a l iki-liki, which is a shirt they wear for special occasions, I think, well, they do in Colombia, I'm not sure about Venezuela.'

'Stars indeed,' he said. He gave another short laugh, and I did too. Laughter creates a kind of disinterested bond between men, and between women, and the bond it establishes between women and men can prove an even stronger, tighter link, a profounder, more complex, more dangerous and more lasting link, or one, at least, with more hope of enduring. Such lasting, disinterested bonds can become strained after a while, they can sometimes become ugly and difficult to bear, in the long term, someone has to be the debtor, that's the only way things can work, one person must always be slightly more indebted to the other, and commitment and abnegation and worthiness can provide a sure way of making off with the position of creditor. I've often laughed with Luisa like that, briefly and unexpectedly, both of us seeing the funny side of something quite independently, both us laughing briefly at the same time. With other women too, with my sister first of all; and with a few others. The quality of that laughter, its spontaneity (its simultaneity with mine perhaps) has led me, on occasions, to meet a woman and approach her or even to dismiss her at once, and with some women it's as if I've seen them in their entirety before even meeting them, without even talking, without them having looked at me and with me barely having looked at them. On the other hand, even a slight delay or the faintest suspicion of mimetism, of an indulgent response to my stimulus or my lead, the merest suggestion of a polite or sycophantic laugh – a laugh that is not entirely disinterested, but is egged on by the will, the laugh that does not laugh as much as it would like to or as much as it allows itself or yearns or even condescends to laugh – is enough for me promptly to remove myself from its presence or to relegate it immediately to second place, to that of mere accompaniment, or even, in times of weakness and a consequent slide in standards, to that of cortege. But the other kind of laughter – Luisa's, which almost anticipates our own laughter, my sister's, which wraps around us, young Pérez Nuix's, which fuses with our own and about which there is no hint of deliberation and in which we two are almost forgotten (although there is also detachment and arbitrariness and equality) – I have tended to give that a prime role which has subsequently turned out to be lasting or not, even dangerous at times, and, in the long run (when it has lasted that long), difficult to sustain without the appearance or intervention of some small debt, whether real or symbolic. However, the absence or diminution of that laughter is even harder to bear, and always brings with it the day when one of the two is obliged to get a little deeper into debt. Luisa had withdrawn her laughter from me some time ago, or else was rationing it out, I couldn't believe she had lost it entirely, she would still, surely, offer it to others, but when someone withdraws their laughter from us, that is a sign that there is nothing more to be done. It is a disarming laugh. It disarms women and, in a different way, men too. I have desired women – intensely – for their laughter alone, and they have usually seen that this was so. And sometimes I have known who someone was simply by hearing their laugh or by never hearing it, the brief, unexpected laugh, and even what would happen between that person and me, whether friendship or conflict or irritation or nothing, and I haven't been far wrong either, it might have taken some time to happen, but it always has, and, besides, there's always time as long as you don't die or as long as neither that other person nor I should die. That was Tupra's laugh and mine too, and so I had to ask myself for a moment whether, in the future, he or I would be disarmed, or if, perhaps, both of us would. 'Liki-liki ,' he said again. It's impossible not to repeat such a word, irresistible. 'Yes, but it's true, is it not, that one cannot judge the customs of another place from outside?' he added drily or only half-seriously.

'True, true,' I replied, knowing that what he had said was not (true, I mean) for either of us.

'Anything else?' he asked. He had given nothing away, not about the man's identity (I wasn't expecting him to), but not even about the supposed status or position of the Venezuelan to whom I had served as interpreter twice over. I had another go:

'Could you give the gentleman a name? Just in case we have to refer to him again.'

Tupra did not hesitate. As if he had an answer already prepared for any attempt at probing, rather than for my curiosity.

'That seems unlikely. As far as you're concerned, Mr Deza, his name is Bonanza,' he said, again mock-seriously.

'Bonanza?' He must have noticed my amazement, I couldn't help pronouncing the 'z' as it is pronounced in my own country, or at least in part of it and, of course, in Madrid. To his English ears it would sound something like 'Bonantha', just as Deza would sound something like 'Daytha'.

'Yes, isn't that a Spanish name? Like Ponderosa?' he said. 'Anyway, he'll be Bonanza to you and me. Did you notice anything else?'

'Only to confirm my initial impression, Mr Tupra: General Bonanza or Mr Bonanza, whoever he really is, would never make an attempt on Chavez's life. Of that you can be sure, whether it suits your interests or not. He admires him too much, even if he is his enemy, which I don't think he is.'

Tupra picked up the striking red packet with its pharaohs and gods and offered me a second Rameses II, an uncommon gesture in the British Isles, clearly no expense was being spared, Turkish tobacco, a piquant Egyptian blend, and I accepted. But it turned out to be one for the road, not to be smoked immediately, for at the same time as he was giving it to me, he stood up and walked around the desk to show me out, indicating the door with a slight gesture. I took the opportunity to glance down at his shoes, they were sober brown lace-ups, I needn't have worried. He noticed, he noticed almost everything, all the time.