Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

I was rarely told in advance what I should look out for, what character traits, what degree of sincerity, or what specific intentions I should try to decipher in each indicated person or face, when, that is, I took work home. The following day, or a few days later, I would have a session with Mulryan or Tupra or with both, and they would ask me then whatever they wanted to know, sometimes one small detail and sometimes a great deal, it all depended, referring to the people in the videos by their respective names if these appeared in the films or were so well known as to be unmistakable, or, if not, by their assigned letters and numbers: 'Do you think that, despite his words of contrition, Mr Stewart is defrauding the tax office again? He got caught out five years ago, but he came to an agreement and paid more than he owed to avoid any problems, so might he, therefore, believe that he is now free of suspicion?' 'Do you think FH6 intended to repay the loan when he applied to Barclays for it? Or did he never intend paying it back at all? He was given the loan three months ago, you see, and hasn't been seen since.' I would say what I thought or what I could, and then we would pass on to the next one, in the briefer, more practical and prosaic cases, that is. Most cases, however, were not like that at all, they were elusive and complex, often vague and even ethereal, always tricky to respond to, more like those that Wheeler had dealt with in his day and which he had forecast for my day too, or, rather, which he had suggested would come my way, even though there was no war on; that, sooner or later, they would be brought to me for my opinion. And for that majority of cases one needed in effect what he had distractedly called – as if to play down the solemnity of those two expressions, which appeared, at least initially or, indeed, not even then, to be contradictory – 'the courage to see' and 'the irresponsibility of seeing'. For a long time, I was far more conscious of the latter, until I got used to it and, when I did, stopped worrying. And then… Ah, then, it's true, came the great irresponsibility.

The process of getting used to it, however, had been started by Wheeler on that Sunday in Oxford when he also talked to me about myself. Or perhaps by Toby Rylands, who had, at some point, already spoken to Wheeler about me, and had singled me out as someone of like mind, made of the same clay from which they had been shaped. But, no, it wasn't Rylands, because it isn't what is said of us behind our backs which changes things – which transforms things inside ourselves – it is what someone with authority or armed with mere insistence tells us about ourselves to our face that reveals and explains and tempts us to believe. It is the danger that stalks every artist or politician, or anyone whose work is subject to people's opinions and interpretations. If a film director, writer or musician begins to be described as a genius, a prodigy, a reinventor, a giant, they can all too easily end up thinking that it might be true. They then become conscious of their own worth, and become afraid of disappointing or – which is even more ridiculous and nonsensical, but it can't be put in any other way – of not living up to themselves, that is, to the people it turns out they were – or so others tell them, and as they now realise they are – in their previous exalted creations. 'So it wasn't just a product of chance or intuition or even my own freedom,' they might think, 'there was coherence and purpose in everything I was doing, what an honour to discover this, but what a curse too. Because now I have no option but to abide by that and to reach the same wretched heights in order not to let myself down, how awful, what an effort, and what a disaster for my work.' And this can happen to anyone, even if neither their work nor their personality is public, they have only to hear a plausible explanation of their inclinations or behaviour, an incantatory description of their actions or an analysis of their character, an evaluation of their methods – and to know that such a thing exists, or is attributed to them – for them to lose their blessedly mutable course, unforeseeable and uncertain, and with it their freedom. We tend to think that there is some hidden order unknown to us and also a plot of which we would like to form a conscious part, and if we glimpse a single episode of that plot in which there seems to be room for us, if we sense that we are caught up in its weak wheel even for an instant, then it is hard for us ever again to be able to imagine ourselves torn from that half-glimpsed, partial, intuited plot – a mere figment of the imagination. There is nothing worse than looking for a meaning or believing there is one. Or if there is one, even worse: believing that the meaning of something, even of the most trivial detail, could depend on us and on our actions, on our intention or our function, believing that there is such a thing as the will or fate, and even some complicated combination of the two. Believing that we do not owe ourselves entirely to the most erratic and forgetful, rambling and crazy of chances, and that we should be expected to be consistent with what we said or did, yesterday or the day before. Believing that we might contain in ourselves coherence and deliberation, as the artist believes is true of his work or the potentate of his decisions, but only once someone has persuaded them that this is so.

Wheeler had, in the end, begun at the beginning, if anything ever really has a beginning. Anyway, that Sunday morning, when I woke up much later than I would have wanted to and, of course, much later than he was expecting me to, he allowed himself no further preambles or postponements or circumlocutions, in so far as it was possible for him entirely to renounce such long-established characteristics of thought and conversation. The incomplete words he had at his disposal to tell me what he was going to tell me were, I suppose, mystery and limitation enough. As soon as he saw me come downstairs looking sleepy and ill-shaven (just a quick once-over with the razor so as to appear presentable or not, at least, too thuggish), he urged me to take a seat opposite him and to the right of Mrs Berry, who occupied one end of the table at which they had both just had breakfast. He waited until she had very kindly poured me some coffee, but not until I had drunk it or woken up a bit. On the half of the table unoccupied by table-cloth and plates and cups and jams and fruit lay open a large, bulky volume, there were always books everywhere. I had only to glance at it (the attraction of the printed word) for Peter to say in urgent tones, doubtless because he had not counted on such a late awakening on my part:

'Pick it up, go on. I got it out to show you.'

I drew the volume to me, but before reading a single line, I half-closed it – with one finger keeping the place – to have a look at the spine and see what the book was.

' Who's Who? It was a rhetorical question, because it clearly was Who's Who, with its rich red cover, the guide to the more or less illustrious, that year's United Kingdom edition.

'Yes, Who's Who, Jacobo. I bet you've never thought of looking me up in that, have you? My name is on that page, where it's open. Read what it says, will you, go on.'

I looked, I searched, there were quite a few Wheelers, Sir Mark and Sir Mervyn, a certain Muir Wheeler and the Honourable Sir Patrick and the Very Reverend Philip Welsford Richmond Wheeler, and there he was, between the two last names: 'Wheeler, Prof. Sir Peter', which was followed by a parenthesis, which I did not, at first, understand, which said: '(Edward Lionel Wheeler)'. It only took me two seconds, though, to remember that Peter used to sign his writings 'P. E. Wheeler', and that the E was for Edward, so the parenthesis was only there to record his name in its official entirety.