Javier Marías - Your Face Tomorrow 1 - Fever and Spear

'Tell me, Jack, what did you think of our buffoon of a host last night, yes, that ridiculous singer, do you think he would be capable of killing someone? In some extreme situation, for example, if he felt really threatened? Or would he be simply incapable of it, would he be the sort who would just give in and allow himself to be knifed to death, rather than get his blow in first? Or, on the contrary, do you think he could kill, even in cold blood?'

I paused to think for a moment, I never now answered straight off 'I don't know; how could I possibly know that?', I never replied like that to any question, however strange or convoluted or fantastical or overly precise, not even one as arcane as that, after all, who knows who would be capable of killing, or when, and whether in hot or cold or lukewarm blood. And yet I always ventured some answer, trying to be honest, that is, trying to see something before actually saying it, and avoiding talking for talking's sake, or simply because I was expected to talk. I tried at least to place myself in the situation or the hypothesis thrown at me by every question asked by my superiors or my colleagues. And the strangest or most terrifying thing was that I always managed to see or glimpse something (I mean I didn't invent it, they weren't visions or mere cunning tales), and therefore was able to suggest something, that is doubtless the process by which audacity advances, and so much depends on practice, on pushing yourself. Most people are limited by their own lack of persistence, because they are lazy or too easily satisfied, and also because they are afraid. Most people will go only so far and then apply the brakes, they suddenly stop and sit down to recover from the fright or else drop asleep, which is why they always fall short. Someone has an idea and normally that one idea is enough, they pause, pleased with that first thought or discovery and do not continue thinking, or, if they're writing, do not continue writing more profoundly, they do not drive themselves onwards; they feel satisfied with that first fissure or not even that: with the first cut, with piercing a single layer of people and events, intentions and suspicions, truths and quackery, the times we live in are the enemy of inner dissatisfaction and, therefore, of constancy, they are organised so that everything quickly palls and our attention becomes frolicsome and erratic, distracted by the mere passing of a fly, people cannot bear sustained investigation or perseverance, to immerse themselves properly in something in order to find out about that something. The prolonged gaze, Tupra's gaze, the gaze that ends up affecting everything it gazes at, is not permitted. Nowadays, eyes that linger offend, which is why they have to hide behind curtains and binoculars and telephoto lenses and remote cameras, to spy from their thousands of screens.

In one respect – but only one – Tupra reminded me of my father, who never allowed us, my siblings and me, to be satisfied with what appeared to be a dialectical victory in our debates, or a success in explaining ourselves. 'What else,' he would say when we had assumed, exhausted, that an exposition or an argument was over. And if we replied: 'Nothing. That's it. Isn't that enough?', he would reply, to our momentary wild despair: 'Why, you haven't even started yet. Go on. Quickly, hurry, keep thinking. Having an idea, or identifying it, is something, but then again, once absorbed, it's almost nothing: it's like arriving at the first, most elementary level, which, it's true, is more than most people ever do. But the really interesting and difficult thing, the thing that can prove both truly worthwhile and very hard work, is to continue: to continue thinking and to continue looking beyond what is purely necessary, when you have the feeling that there is no more to think and no more to see, that the sequence is complete and that to continue would be a waste of time. In that wasted time lies the truly important, in the gratuitous and apparently superfluous, beyond the limit where you feel satisfied, or where you get tired or give up, often without even realising it. At the point where you might say to yourself there can't be anything else. So tell me, what else, what else occurs to you, what else can you bring to the argument, what else can you offer, what else have you got? Go on thinking, quickly now, don't stop, go on.'

Tupra did the same, by pointing out inadequacies, as he had ever since that first meeting with Soldier Bonanza, with his 'What else?', 'Explain that, will you,' 'Tell me what you think,' 'Why do you think that?', 'Go on,' 'Talk to me about those details,' 'Anything else?,' 'Is that all you noticed?' It was a gentle, measured tenacity, by which he nevertheless extracted everything you had thought or seen, even the dream or shadow of thoughts and images, what was not yet formulated or delineated and therefore not entirely thought or seen, but only sketched or intuited or still implicit, still unrecognisable and phantasmagoric, like the sculpture enclosed in the block of marble or the poems contained almost in their entirety by grammar books and dictionaries. He managed to make the illusory acquire speech and put on flesh. And find expression. Sometimes it felt to me like an act of faith on his part: faith in my abilities, in my perspicacity, in my supposed gift, as if he were sure that with just the right degree of insistence – guided by it, trained by it – I would always provide him at last with the drawing or the text, present him with the portrait he wanted from me, or needed.

Yes, that, more or less, was how it was, if the report I read about myself was authentic, and I had no reason to believe it wasn't. I came across it one morning while looking something up in one of the old filing-cabinets. What was not intended for everyone's eyes must have been kept and stored there rather than on computer, so insecure and unprotected. I saw my name, 'Deza, Jacques', and pulled out the file without even thinking about it. It was dated a couple of months after my first intervention (well, that's how I saw it), after my interpretation of Conscript Bonanza and the subsequent interrogation regarding my impressions of the man, and it wasn't really a proper report, just a few jottings, possibly handwritten – possibly made by Tupra himself – as a result of who knows what actions or interpretations on my part, although someone had clearly judged them of sufficient worth to be filed away and had had them transcribed on to a computer or typewriter – perhaps he had taken the trouble to do this himself. I read them quickly, then buried them again. No one had ever told me not to consult those old files, but I had the distinct feeling that it would be best if I was not found reading things that had been written about me and which I had not been shown. It was a brief report, a few impressionistic notes really, not at all systematic or organised, a bit confused and contradictory, almost indecisive. This, more or less, is what it said:

It's as if he didn't know himself very well. He doesn't think much about himself, although he believes that he does (albeit without great conviction). He doesn't see himself, doesn't know himself, or, rather, he doesn't delve into or investigate himself. Yes, that's it: it isn't that he doesn't know himself, merely that this is a kind of knowledge that doesn't interest him and which he therefore barely cultivates. He doesn't examine himself, he would see this as a waste of time. Perhaps it doesn't interest him because it's all water under the bridge; he has little curiosity about himself. He just takes himself for granted, or assumes he knows himself. But people change. He doesn't bother recording or analysing his changes, he's not up to date with them. He's introspective. And yet the more he appears to be looking in, the more he is, in fact, looking out. He's only interested in the external, in others, and that is why he sees so clearly. But his interest in people has nothing to do with wanting to intervene in their lives or to influence them, nor with any utilitarian aim. He may not care very much what happens to anyone. Not that he wouldn't regret or celebrate what happened, he's a caring person, not indifferent to others, but always in a rather abstract way. Or perhaps it's just that he's very stoical, about other people's lives and his own. Things happen and he makes a mental note, not for any particular reason, usually without even feeling greatly concerned most of the time, still less implicated. Perhaps that is why he notices so many things. So few escape him that it's almost frightening to imagine what he must know, how much he sees and how much he knows. About me, about you, about her. He knows more about us than we ourselves do. About our characters I mean. Or, more than that, about what shaped us. With a knowledge to which we are not a party. He judges little. The oddest thing of all is that he makes no use of his knowledge. It's as if he were living a parallel theoretical life, or a future life that was awaiting its turn in the dressing-room. Waiting for its moment in another existence. And as if all the discoveries, perceptions, opinions and verifications ended up there. And not in his present, real existence. Even what does affect him, even his own experiences and disappointments seem to split into two parts, and one of the two is destined for that merely theoretical or future knowledge of his. Enriching it, nourishing it. Not, strangely enough, with a view to anything. Not at least to anything in this real life of his that does move forward. He makes no use of his knowledge, it's very odd. But he has it. And if he did one day make use of it, he would be someone to be feared. He'd be pretty unforgiving I think. Sometimes he seems to me to be a complete enigma. And sometimes I think he's an enigma to himself. Then I go back to the idea that he doesn't know himself very well. And that he doesn't pay much attention to himself because he's given up understanding himself. He considers himself a lost cause upon whom it would be pointless squandering thought. He knows he doesn't understand himself and that he never will. And so he doesn't waste his time trying to do so. I don't think he's dangerous. But he is to be feared.