Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins

I couldn’t help myself and so I missed the opportunity. Few of us can resist the need for an immediate explanation of something someone says to us.

‘What’s a paco ?’ I asked, instead of seizing the moment and asking to know more about the Doctor or about Beatriz. Had I been more patient, I could have looked it up in a dictionary later on. According to him, the word was first used to describe the Moroccan snipers during the war in Africa and the word then spread, although it obviously didn’t last very long.

‘That’s what they called the snipers, there were quite a lot during the first weeks and months of the Civil War and they caused a lot of injuries in Madrid, and I’m not saying that just because of my own experience. The word comes from the sound made when they fired, which happened in two stages, the second was either the impact or the echo, I’m not sure: pa-co or, rather, pa-có . There was even a verb paquear . But, of course, there’s no reason why you should know that.’

‘What I don’t understand is what you and your brother were doing up on the roof if there were snipers about.’

Muriel looked up, and his non- paco ed eye regarded me scornfully:

‘Why? Because good little boys never disobey their parents? What kind of a boy were you? We were actually playing at being pacos , with a couple of sticks for rifles. Children always play at being the most dangerous thing they see or hear about. I’ve often wondered if the man who hit me didn’t realize we were children and mistook us for pacos like him and shot to kill. Or perhaps he did realize and fired anyway. People could be real swines then, so who knows? I’ll certainly never know. But we’ve rather strayed off the subject, young De Vere. Let the Doctor go. Abandon your investigations and leave him in peace.’ He was using our nicknames again, the time for seriousness having passed.

I wasn’t best pleased to receive this counter-order. Having obeyed the original order with great reluctance, I was now the one who felt curious; it’s always upsetting not to be able to bring to a successful conclusion some project requiring patience and skill. I suppose that’s why some hitmen warn their clients that there can be no going back. Even though they’ll get paid anyway, they don’t want to feel they’ve wasted valuable time studying the victim’s habits and itineraries, seeing how the land lies and painstakingly preparing the ground. It’s annoying to have all your efforts come to nothing.

‘I can’t just drop him like that, Eduardo,’ I said. ‘He loves coming out and about with me, discovering the new nightlife and meeting young people. As I said before, never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined having access to the girls he’s met thanks to me. Do you really expect me to suddenly stop taking him out, just like that, to tell him he’s no longer welcome? He’d protest, he’d insist, he’d make an almighty scene.’

‘You don’t have to be abrupt about it, you can always make excuses,’ said Muriel. ‘Space things out. Tell him you’re really busy helping me, that the filming has got bogged down what with this Beatriz business, and we’re not at all sure what’s going to happen. Unfortunately, that’s true. I don’t know how much longer Towers will allow me to be absent, he’s practically climbing the walls as it is, and each day that passes is money down the drain. The director on the second unit is going ahead with some action shots in the mountains, but, as you know, there aren’t that many of those; actors hate sitting around doing nothing, they get bored, so something’s got to give. Or tell him you’ve got a steady girlfriend now and that you see each other every night, which means you can’t go hanging around in clubs any more. You could also, for the moment, tell him another truth: tomorrow, or the day after, Beatriz will be coming home and I’m not going to be around very much if I start filming again. I need to go straight to Barcelona, for the scenes in Parque Güell and in a few other locations. I can’t really count on the girls, and Flavia being Flavia, well, she does what she can. Oh, and best to ration any visits from Marcela and Gloria, and ideally, in the circumstances, keep them away altogether — you can imagine the poison and the hysteria they’ll spread. I want you to move in, at least for the first week when I’m away, to watch her, to sleep with one eye open. It’s not that I’m afraid she’ll try it again soon, she usually allows some years to pass between attempts, but you never know. Keep her company, talk to her, amuse her, take her out. Don’t let her get depressed, or as little as possible. I’m not sure if the Professor’s going to be around at all, but he certainly won’t be sleeping here. And as for Roy, well, youth makes for better company than middle age. Tell the Doctor you’re looking after Beatriz, he’ll accept that. He’ll be sure to visit, though, but I beg you, please, not to ask him about the past, don’t probe him at all.’ Despite that ‘please’, the tone remained imperative. ‘That’s the last thing he deserves, after what happened a couple of days ago. Don’t even, as I suggested, boast to him about your own lack of scruples; don’t tempt him further. If he did show a lack of scruples on one occasion or on various, I wasn’t there, and I don’t want to know about it. I’m sorry, but when I asked you to do that, I allowed myself to be carried away, to be influenced by others. We should only be concerned with what we have seen with our own eyes, with what directly affects us. We can’t go around handing out punishments, even if the punishment consists only in behaving coldly or withdrawing our friendship from someone who may once have done something bad. It would be never-ending, we’d never have time for anything else.’ He paused for a moment, then concluded: ‘We need to remember that we have all done something bad at some point. Even you, and if you haven’t, you’ve got all the time in the world, far too many years, in fact; that’s the downside of being young. So one day you, too, will do something bad.’

Again I was burning to ask a question and again I waited until Muriel had finished or reached the end of a paragraph, so to speak, just as we do with a silent book that couldn’t possibly take offence, before we stop reading and go out or go to bed.

‘Did you say “attempts”? How many have there been, then?’

Muriel raised his little finger, his ring finger and his middle finger.

‘This was the third.’

‘And always the same method?’

‘No, each time has been slightly different, what happened before doesn’t serve to warn or to raise one’s suspicions. But the fact that I’ve told you a little doesn’t give you the right to know everything, so don’t ask what she did, I don’t like talking about that either. Let’s leave it there. I think you’ve found out quite enough for today.’

Muriel was making an effort now to put on his usual prickly self, but he had either softened or was tired, perhaps the shock of what had happened two nights before had temporarily tamed him, dulled his sharpness and his vigour. I sensed that I could push my luck a little further.

‘At least tell me who came to you with that story about the Doctor. What if, one day, he tells me of some vile deed he did, without my trying to wheedle it out of him? How will I know if that was the one we were after?’ I deliberately used the first-person plural, in order to remind him of his disquiet and anger, now extinguished or banished or kept at bay by gratitude. ‘That’s how you described it, wasn’t it, a vile deed? That he had behaved indecently with a woman. I assume the person who told you was the victim of that deed, a woman.’