Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

'That woman knows a lot or has seen a lot and has decided not to talk about it, I'm sure of that. Her problem or, more than that, her torment is that it is there before her all the time, the terrible things she has witnessed or that she knows about and her personal vow to say nothing. It's not as if she had one day made a resolution which had subsequently brought her peace, however dear that resolution cost her. It's not as if from then on she has been able to live with the acceptable tranquility of at least knowing what she wants – or, rather, doesn't want – to happen; that she has been able to stow those facts or that knowledge away in one corner of her mind, to deaden them, and gradually give them the consistency and configuration of dreams, which is what allows many people to live with the memory of atrocities and disappointments: by doubting, at least, from time to time, that they ever existed; by blurring them, wrapping them in the smoke of the accumulated years, and thus devaluing them. On the contrary, this woman thinks about it constantly, intensely, not only about what happened and has been proved to have happened, but about the fact that she must or chooses to keep silent. It's not that she's tempted to go back on her word (she would only say this inwardly, to herself); it isn't that she feels the decision she took is permanently provisional, it isn't that she's considering reneging on that decision and spends sleepless nights going over and over it. I would say that it's irrevocable, indeed, if you pressed me, I'd say more than irrevocable, because it has nothing to do with a commitment made. It's always as if she had taken the decision only yesterday. As if she were under the troubling influence of something eternally new and that never grows old, when it's likely that now it's all very remote, both what happened and her initial desire that it would never become public knowledge, or not, at least, because of her. I'm not referring to events relating to her profession, although there will be some such events that are equally safe, but to her private life: events that affected her and affect her every day, or that wound and infect her and provoke a fever in her every night, when she goes to bed. "No one will find out anything about it from me, not from me," she must think all the time, as if those previous experiences were there pulsating beneath her skin. As if they were still the nucleus of her existence and as if they still required her maximum attention, they will be the first thing to greet her when she wakes, the last thing she says good night to when she falls asleep. Don't get me wrong, though, there's nothing obsessive about this, her daily life is light and energetic; she's very open, not embittered at all. It's something quite different: a kind of loyalty to her own story. Such a woman would be of great service to many people, she's a perfect receptacle for secrets and therefore perfect for administering or distributing them too, she's completely reliable in that respect, precisely because she remains alert all the time and because, for her, everything is always alive and present. However remote in time her secret becomes, it never grows dim, and it would be the same with any secrets transmitted. She doesn't miss a single detail. Once the roles have been distributed, she would never forget who knows what and who doesn't. And I'm sure she remembers every face and every name that has passed before her bench,' says the young Pérez Nuix of a female judge of a certain age and with a bright, placid face, whom we are observing together from our hiding-place while Tupra and Mulryan ask respectful, devious questions, ladies are always offered tea in the afternoon, if, given their position and poise, they really are ladies, but not the gentlemen, unless they're bigwigs or could be influential in a particular matter, at most a cigarette (although never of the Pharaonic variety), and, exceptionally, an aperitif or a beer if it's that time of day and things are dragging on (there's a minibar concealed amongst the bookshelves); and despite her serene appearance and jovial expression – the warm smile; the very white but healthy complexion; the quick, bright, albeit very pale blue eyes; the dark shadows under her eyes, so deep and so becoming she must have had them since childhood; her ready, generous laughter, with just a hint of politeness, which, while it in no way impedes spontaneity, banishes any suggestion of flattery, of which there is not a trace; her amused awareness that Tupra feels for her a degree of desire, despite the unpropitious age-difference (a theoretical desire perhaps, or else retrospective or imaginary), because he can still see the young woman she was, or can sense it, and this is seen in turn by the woman who is no longer young, and it pleases and rejuvenates her – when I listen to young Nuix everything she says and describes seems plausible, because I, too, can see in that judge something akin to the excitement or vitality which comes from knowing an important secret that you have sworn never to divulge.

Naturally, young Nuix does not talk like this while both of us are watching and taking notes in the compartment, not so fluently or precisely (I am ordering it and shaping it now, as we all do when we talk about something, as well as complementing it with her subsequent written report), instead she makes occasional remarks to me across the table, they cannot see or hear us, although they know where we are, posted here by Tupra himself. And when I listen to her, I remember – I remember it every time, not just when she's interpreting this judge, Judge Walton – the words that Wheeler attributed to Tupra that Sunday: 'He says that in time she'll be the best of the group, if he can hold on to her for long enough,' and each time I wonder if she isn't already the best, the most exacting and the most gifted, the one who takes the most risks and who sees more deeply than any of the five of us, young Pérez Nuix, with a Spanish father and English mother, brought up in London but as familiar as I am with her father's country (not for nothing has she spent every summer for the last twenty or so years in Spain), and completely bilingual, not like me, for me the language that always prevails is the one in which I first began to speak, just as Jacques will always be for me the name, because it is the one I first answered to and the one by which I was called by the person who most often called to me. Her smile, too, is warm, her laughter ready and generous, the smile and laughter of a young woman, and her eyes, too, are quick and lively, all the more for being dark brown and as yet unburdened by tenacious memories that will not go away. She must be about twenty-five, or perhaps two years older or one year younger, and when our eyes meet, across the table or in any other situation, I notice that Luisa and my children begin to fade, whereas the rest of the time they seem all too clear even though they're so far away, and even though children's faces change so much that they never have one fixed image; I realise that the image that is taking root or that predominates is the one in the most recent photos I brought with me to England, I carry them in my wallet like any good or bad father, and I look at them too. I notice also that, despite the difference in our ages, young Nuix does not rule me out; or perhaps I should use the conditional: I cannot rid myself of the idea that she has or has had some sexual bond with Tupra, although there is nothing to indicate this unequivocally, and they treat each other with deference and humour, and with a kind of reciprocal paternalism, perhaps that is the main indicator. (But I can't get rid of the idea, and I know that one does not compete with Tupra.) The idea that she doesn't or won't or wouldn't rule me out is something I see in her eyes, as I have in the eyes of other women over the last few years without once being mistaken – when you're young, you're more myopic and more astigmatic and more presbyopic, all at the same time – and I breathe it and hear it in the brief gathering of energy that takes place, out of shyness or some lurking embarrassment, before she comes over to talk to me, that is, beyond the initial greeting or the isolated question or answer, as if she had to gather momentum or take a run-up, or as if she mentally constructed the whole of her first sentence (which, oddly enough, is never short), as if she structured it and memorised the whole thing before pronouncing it. This is often what one does when speaking a foreign language, but when we are alone or in any private exchanges, this young woman and I, we always opt for Spanish, which is also her language.