Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

But one quickly gets used to anything and one idea can easily be replaced by another. I suppose he assumed I was putting on a front when at work and that my true self was the one I displayed when out and about, and he soon became accustomed to my coarse, contemptuous language and my predatory behaviour, although the word ‘behaviour’ is misleading, for I continued to behave towards my women friends and girlfriends and with any new ones (one was always meeting new people in the welcoming night of that new age) as I always had — if I hadn’t, my female friends old and new would have been astonished — but later, I would discuss them all with Van Vechten as if I were a callous swine and regale him with unsavoury adventures and dirty tricks that had sometimes never happened or, if they had, had not been perpetrated in such a utilitarian, exploitative manner, certainly not with the degree of lying and indifference or deceit on my part that I described. It wasn’t so much my behaviour that was disdainful and vicious, as my description of it. I heeded Muriel’s advice: ‘There’s nothing like boasting about your own exploits to get others to tell you theirs, however ancient; it never fails.’ And Muriel was right, it rarely does fail.

Some people take pleasure in deceit and trickery and pretence and have enormous patience when it comes to weaving their web. They’re capable of living through the long present with one eye fixed on a vague future, which will arrive when it arrives or only when they decide that it should at last become the present, and then, immediately afterwards, the past. Sometimes they put off or postpone the moment when they will take their revenge, if revenge is what they’re after, or when they achieve their goal, assuming they had one, or when their plan finally reaches fruition, if a plan is what they’ve been hatching; and sometimes they wait for so long that nothing comes of it at all and the whole thing decays inside their imagination. There are those who live their whole lives in a state of continuous secrecy and concealment, and who also have the patience never to destroy their web. Curiously, they never tire of this or miss transparency, simplicity or clarity, miss being able to lay their cards on the table, look someone straight in the eye and say: ‘This is what I want and that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t want to confuse or fool you any more. I’ve lied and pretended and have been lying and pretending for a long time, almost since I met you. It was necessary or I felt obliged to do it, I was obeying orders or my happiness depended on it, or so I thought. I was weak or being loyal to others, I was afraid of losing you for ever or was persuaded to behave as if I was. You were too important to me or I didn’t care about you at all, I regretted having to deceive, it went against my conscience or I found it really easy, for me you were everything or you were nothing, but it doesn’t matter, not now. I feel really bad and I’m exhausted. It takes endless work to silence the truth or to tell lies, maintaining them is a titanic task and remembering which are which even more so. The fear of putting my foot in it, of contradicting myself without realizing it, of being caught out, unwittingly going back on my word, or lowering my guard, it’s utterly draining. My guilt has eased, it’s not so great as to stop me trying, and so I’m going to tell you the truth. My lie began a long time ago, things are as they are and there’s no alternative now, no going back. At this point, the truth doesn’t exist and has been replaced; all that matters is what we have experienced since. Maybe that distant deceit has become the truth. Nothing is going to change very much because you know what was once the truth and no longer is. And I need to rest.’

Yes, there are some fortunate people who never feel tempted to say this, to put things right and to confess. I’m not one of them, alas, because I do have a secret that I’ll never be able to tell to a living soul, still less to those who have since died. You convince yourself that it’s only a small secret, that it doesn’t really matter and doesn’t affect your life in the least, these things happen, youthful indiscretions, things you do without thinking and that are basically insignificant, so what need is there to know them? And yet not a day passes without my remembering what I did and what happened in my youth. It isn’t and wasn’t anything very grave, I don’t think anyone was hurt, but it’s best, just in case, to keep silent, for our own sake, for mine, perhaps for the sake of my daughters and, above all, my wife. And when I tell that secret here (except that here is not reality), you will all have to keep my secret and keep silent too, you mustn’t go broadcasting it from the orient to the drooping west, making the wind your post-horse, as if it had become something trivial that belonged to you and each of you were a tongue on which rumour rides. Please, say not a word if others ask to hear my story. They will do so only to amuse themselves or to accumulate useless information, which they will forget as soon as they have indifferently scattered it further afield and a little further.

It troubled me not to be straight about things, to lurk in the shadows so to speak. I wished I could tell Van Vechten what I was after — although such were Muriel’s scruples, I didn’t know exactly what that was — and to put an end as soon as possible to this pantomime, to rid myself of his company, his presence, all of which I already found disagreeable or soon would. It wasn’t that he himself was unpleasant or didn’t try his best to be agreeable, most of my friends liked him despite the great difference in age, and he was far better received than I’d expected. When I first turned up with him in tow, they all stared at him as if he were a Martian, but it didn’t take him long to blend in — insofar as that was possible, of course — and not be seen as an intruder, a nuisance, a spy. He did his bit, he was cheerful and affable, he gave advice when asked, and my friends and acquaintances inevitably saw him as a man with experience of life, they also consulted him about their fears and anxieties — doctors have it easy in that respect, they’re always welcome everywhere. He bought many a round of drinks and that always helps one to be accepted into a group, and at the end of the night — if he lasted that long, some of the older people understandably flagged when we younger folk could still keep going for hours — he would deliver each of us to our door in his flash car, it was as if we’d suddenly acquired a chauffeur, which was very convenient, a blessing really, saving us the expense of getting a taxi or making the long walk home under the influence of whatever excesses we had indulged in during the night. Van Vechten justified taking such pains by saying that he couldn’t allow the girls to go home alone in the early hours, that one must always accompany a lady to her door, that’s how he’d been brought up, and we should take advantage of his old-fashioned ways.

I noticed that he almost never took the most logical route, never dropped us off in the most convenient order, thus avoiding having to take a circuitous route or drive unnecessarily long distances, instead he always arranged things so that the last person to be dropped off would be a girl, thus ensuring that he would be left alone with her in the car once we had all been dispatched. I was on good enough terms with most of the girls to be able to ask in a jokey way: ‘So, how did you get on with the Doctor the other night? He obviously wanted to be alone with you, and you didn’t exactly seem to mind.’ I knew that an older man would, in principle, have difficulties getting anywhere with a young woman, but I also knew that a lot of girls — at least when they’re going through a phase, as so many of them do, of going out every night, night after night — are impressed by wealth or its appearance or its symbols, and by savoir faire too, so that a man of the world often finds them easy to dazzle, especially if he’s good at laying the flattery on thick both before and afterwards. Some young women feel somehow honoured if a much older man shows interest, especially if they discover they can give him exceptional pleasure, or so he tells them: ‘No, really, I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life, and I’ve known a fair few women in my time, you know …’ I soon learned not to discount anything, the most unlikely combinations are possible. When one reaches maturity, it’s almost embarrassing to think how easy it can be to deceive youth.