Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

'And then?' I asked. 'When did you meet up again?'

'In England, years later. By then I really was Wheeler and he was Rylands. I think that I was already the person I am, if I am who I think I am. I sought him out, we didn't just meet. Not exactly. But that's another story.'

'I'm sure it is,' I replied, perhaps with an unintentional touch of impatience: my lack of sleep caught up with me now and then, and when something, even a chance remark, refers in some way to ourselves, waiting becomes very difficult. 'And I assume that the answer to my original question, which you provoked, is hidden in there somewhere: in what way could I, according to Toby, be like the two of you? You're not going to tell me it was because of my variable first name, as you know, you and others call me Jacobo, but Luisa and many others call me Jaime, and there are even those who know me as Diego or Yago. Not to mention Jack, as I'm often called here in England.'

Wheeler noticed my slight impatience, such things never escaped him. I saw that he was amused, it didn't make him feel embarrassed at all, or pressured.

'I call you Jack,' said Mrs Berry shyly. 'I hope you don't mind… Jack.' And this time she hesitated before saying the name.

'Not at all, Mrs Berry.'

'And by which name do you know yourself?' Wheeler was quick to ask.

I didn't have to think about it even for a second.

'Jacques. That's the name I learned and made mine as a child. Even though my mother was almost the only one to call me that. Not even my father does.'

'There you are,' said Wheeler in an absurdly demonstrative tone. 'Ahí lo tienes' is the only way I can think to translate it into Spanish. 'But, no, Toby didn't mean that, neither did I,' he added at once. 'He had told me quite a lot about you, before you and I met. In fact, that's partly why we did meet, he aroused my curiosity. He said that you might perhaps be like us… That's what he had given me to understand, and he confirmed it later when we happened to talk about the old group. Of course, by then you were no longer living here, and it was unlikely that you would ever come back here to stay. Don't worry, I don't mean that now you're going to stay here for good, I'm sure you'll go back to Madrid sooner or later, you Spaniards don't survive very long far from your country; even though you're from Madrid, and madrileños tend to suffer least from homesickness. But you have, for the moment, come back to stay indefinitely, if you'll forgive the relative contradiction, and that's enough of a return. And so, posthumously, Toby's opinion suddenly acquires, how can I put it, an added practical interest. Especially as I share his opinion (after all, he no longer wields any influence, nor can he be pressed on the matter), having spent quite a lot of time with you since his death. Intermittently, of course, but it's been some years now. As I said, I didn't set great store by his literary judgements, but I did by his personal judgements, by his judgement of people, his interpretation and foresight, he could see straight through them, or, as you say in colloquial Spanish, las calaba. He could suss them out. He was rarely wrong, little short of infallible. Almost as infallible as me.' He gave a brief, studied laugh, to cancel out or mitigate his immodesty. 'More, possibly, than our friend Tupra, who is very good, or than that very competent girl of his, although you do, I suppose, live in less testing times: she's Spanish too, the girl, or half-Spanish at any rate, he's spoken to me about her several times, but I can never remember her name, he says that, with time, she'll be the best of the group, if he can hold on to her for long enough, that's one of the difficulties, most of them get fed up and leave. Toby was almost as infallible as you must be, even given the less testing times you live in. According to him anyway. He believed that you would prove more infallible than him, that you might outdo him assuming that you first became conscious of your abilities and then immediately let go of that consciousness, or at least deferred it, as did those of us who had or have it still. Indefinitely, for the moment, if you'll again forgive that relative contradiction as regards the deferral of consciousnesses. But, to be honest, I don't know if you would ever reach those heights.'

'What group are you talking about, Peter? You've mentioned it several times now.' I tried a different question. But I no longer felt impatient, that had been just a reflex reaction, a moment. And if he had been in a hurry before, that had probably been due to my lateness in waking up and coming downstairs, which he had not counted upon, any failure to keep to his mental timetables and plans upset and bothered him. But now that I was there with him, he was enjoying intriguing me, enjoying my state of expectation: he wasn't going to ruin his performance, which he had planned and possibly dreamed about, by rushing things. As expected, he did not answer my new question, but he did, at last, answer my previous one. With only half-truths, of course, or, at most, three-quarter truths. As I have said, he probably didn't know any whole ones. They probably didn't even exist.

'Toby told me that he always admired, and, at the same time, feared, the special gift you had for capturing the distinctive and even essential characteristics, both external and internal, of friends and acquaintances, characteristics which they themselves had often not noticed or known about. Or even people you had only glimpsed or seen in passing, in a meeting or at high table, or whom you had passed a couple of times in the corridors or on the stairs of the Taylorian without exchanging a single word. I understand that, shortly before you left, you even wrote a few sketches of our colleagues for his amusement, is that right?'

I had a vague memory of this. It was so long ago that any trace of it had been erased. You forget much more of what you write than of what you read, assuming it's addressed to you; much more of what you send than of what you receive, of what you say than of what you hear, your own offences more than those committed against you. And although you may not think so, the process of erasure happens more quickly with those who are dead. A few vignettes, perhaps, yes, a few lines about my colleagues of the time in Oxford, those in the sub-faculty of Spanish, whom Rylands, recently retired Professor of English Literature, knew well, although not as well as Wheeler himself, who was, for years, and up until his retirement, the direct boss of most of them, especially those who were, by then, already veterans. I felt a sudden retrospective shame, I was struggling to remember; perhaps they had been amusing, affectionate sketches, with just a touch of mischief or irony. That is why I felt it best to deny it, at least initially.

'I don't remember that,' I said. 'No, I don't think I've ever written a sketch about anyone. Possibly in conversation, yes. We talked a lot about everything, about everyone.'

'Can you pass me that file, please, Estelle?' Wheeler asked Mrs Berry, and she produced one and handed it to him, like a nurse promptly handing a doctor a medical instrument. She must have had it on her lap all that time, like a treasure. Wheeler put it under his arm, or, rather, under his armpit. He got up and said: 'Let's go out into the garden for a while, for a stroll on the lawn. I need the exercise and Mrs Berry will need to clear the table if we want to have lunch later on. It's not that cold now, but you'd better wrap up, that river is treacherous, it gets into your bones before you know it.' His eyes had resumed their mineral quality, and he added calmly and seriously (or, rather, carefully, as if he were holding on to me with his words, but did not want to frighten me off): 'Listen, Jacobo, according to Toby, you had the rare gift of being able to see in people what not even they were capable of seeing in themselves, at least not normally. Or if they do see or glimpse something, they immediately block it out; the flash leaves them with sight in only one eye and then they look ever afterwards through that blind eye. It's a very rare gift indeed nowadays, and becoming rarer, the gift of being able to see straight through people, clearly and without qualms, with neither good intentions nor bad, without effort, that is, without any fuss or squeamishness. That is the way, in which according to Toby, you might be like us, Jacobo, and now I think he was right. We could both see people like that, clearly and without qualms, with neither good intentions nor bad. Seeing was our gift, and we placed it at the service of others. And I can still see.'