Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear

by Javier Marías

  At first, though, I innocently assumed that I must have got something right, because not many days after that morning of dual interpretation, of language and intentions — the latter imprecise, but let’s call it interpretation anyway — it was suggested that I abandon my post with BBC Radio and work exclusively (or principally) for Tupra, alongside the devoted Mulryan, young Pérez Nuix and the others, with, in theory, very flexible working hours and a considerably larger salary, I had no complaints on that score, on the contrary, I would be able to send more money home. The feeling of having successfully passed an exam was unavoidable, as was my joining whatever that organisation was, I didn’t ask myself much about it then or later or now, because it was always very vague (and lack of definition was its essence), and because Sir Peter Wheeler had warned me about it in a way, or given me enough of a warning: ‘You won’t find anything about this in any books, none of them, not even the oldest or the most modern, not even the most exhaustive accounts being published now, Knightley, Cecil, Dorril, Davies, or Stafford, Miller, Bennett, I don’t know, there are so many of them, but you won’t find so much as a cryptic reference in the books that were, in their day, and which continue to be, the most cryptic of all, Rowan, Denham. Don’t even bother consulting them. You won’t find so much as an allusion. It’ll be a waste of your time and your patience.’ Throughout that Sunday in Oxford, he always spoke to me not in half-truths exactly, but at most in three-quarter-truths, never in whole truths. Perhaps he didn’t know what they were, the whole truths, that is, perhaps no one did, not even Tupra, or Rylands when he was alive. Perhaps there were no truths.

  The work got off to a gradual start, by which I mean that once the contract had been agreed, they began giving me or asking me to undertake various tasks, which then increased in number, at a brisk but steady rate, and, after only a month, possibly less, I was a full-time employee, or so it seemed to me. These tasks took various forms, although their essence varied little or not at all, since this consisted in listening and noticing and interpreting and reporting back, in deciphering behaviours, attitudes, characters and scruples, indifferences and beliefs, egotisms, ambitions, loyalties, weaknesses, strengths, truths and contradictions; indecisiveness. What I interpreted were — in just three words — stories, people, lives. Often stories that had not yet happened. People who did not know themselves and who could not have said about themselves even a tenth of what I saw in them, or was urged to see in them and to put into words, that was my job. Lives that could even come to an early end and not even last long enough to be called lives, unknown lives and lives still to be lived. Sometimes they asked me to be present and to help in asking questions, if any occurred to me, at interviews or meetings (or perhaps polite interrogations, with nothing intimidating about them), even though there was no problem of comprehension, no language to translate, and everything was in English and amongst fellow Britons. At other times, they did use me as an interpreter of language, Spanish and even Italian, but over the whole range of talks and supervisions (which is what my silent activities were called), that was what I did least of, and anyway now I never merely translated words, at the end, I was always asked for my opinion, almost, sometimes, for my prognosis, or, how can I put it, my wager. On other occasions, they preferred me to be an absent presence, and I would witness the conversations held by Tupra or Mulryan or young Nuix or Rendel with their visitors from a kind of booth next to Tupra’s office, from which one could see and hear what was going on without being seen, just like in a police station. The elongated oval mirror in Tupra’s office corresponded in the booth to a window of identical size and shape: clear glass from one side, from the other a mirrored surface that did not arouse the slightest suspicion amongst all those books and in what looked more like a club or a private drawing-room than an office. The booth was an older, home-made version of the invisible hiding-places from which the victim of a mugging or the witnesses of a crime view a line-up of suspects, or from which the superior officers secretly oversee the interrogations of detainees and make sure that the police don’t overdo the slaps or the flicks with a wet towel. It must have been a pioneering booth, perhaps adapted or made in the 1940s or even the 1930s: it seemed to have been conceived as a small-scale imitation of a train compartment from that period or even earlier, all in wood, with two narrow benches facing each other and placed at right angles to the oval window, with a fixed table between the benches on which to take notes or lean one’s elbows. One was thus obliged to supervise from a somewhat oblique angle, sideways on, with the inevitable feeling that one was looking out of a train window while travelling along, or, rather, while permanently stopped at a station, a strange station-studio, far more welcoming than any real station, where the landscape was an unvarying interior in which only the people changed, the visitors and the hosts, although the latter had only limited permutations, usually two or, at most, three, Tupra and Mulryan, or them plus me (as at the meeting with Comandante Bonanza), or Tupra and young Nuix and Rendel if they needed someone who spoke German or Russian or Dutch or Ukrainian (it was said that Rendel was originally from Austria, and that his surname had initially been Rendl or Randl or Redl or Reinl or even Handl, and that he had half-anglicised it, Randall or Rendell or Rendall or Randell would have been more usual, but not Haendel), or Mulryan and me and some other less assiduous assistant, or young Nuix, Tupra and me … He and Mulryan (or more likely one of the two) were always there. And given that I sometimes had to occupy the booth, I could only suppose that when I was on the other side, in the station-studio, one of those not present would be posted in the booth to watch us, although I wasn’t entirely sure of this at first; and I could only imagine that on that first occasion with Captain Bonanza, Rendel and young Nuix (‘I hope it was her,’ I thought) would have been in the reserved carriage, eyes trained on the lieutenant, but almost certainly on me as well, and that afterwards they would have given their objective report on me as well as on the sergeant (he was gradually being demoted in my memory), the report of someone invisible is always more objective and dispassionate and reliable, that of someone who sits unseen and at ease, observing with impunity, is always more objective than that of someone who is looked at by his interlocutors and intervenes and speaks, and can never observe for very long in silence without creating enormous tensions, an embarrassing situation.

  That is doubtless why television is such a success, because you can see and watch people as you never can in real life unless you hide, and even then, in real life, you only have one angle and one distance, or two if you’re using binoculars, I sometimes put them in my pocket when I leave the house, and at home I always keep them handy. Whereas the screen gives you the opportunity to spy at your leisure and to see more and therefore know more, because you’re not worrying about making eye contact or exposed in turn to being judged, nor do you have to divide your concentration or attention between a dialogue (or its simulacrum) in which you are taking part and the cold study of a face, of gestures and vocal inflections, even certain pores, of tics and hesitations, of pauses and dry mouths, of vehemence and falsehoods. And inevitably you pass judgement, you immediately utter some kind of verdict (or you don’t utter it, but say it to yourself), it only takes a matter of seconds and there’s nothing you can do about it, even if it’s only rudimentary and takes the least elaborate of forms, which is liking or disliking (which are nevertheless judgements or their possible anticipation, what usually precedes them, although many people never take that step or cross that line, and so never go beyond a simple and inexplicable feeling of attraction or repulsion: inexplicable to them, since they never take that step and so remain for ever on the surface). And you surprise yourself by saying, almost involuntarily, sitting alone before the screen: ‘I really like him,’ ‘I can’t stand that guy,’ ‘I could eat her up,’ ‘He’s such a pain,’ ‘I’d do anything he asked,’ ‘She deserves a good slap on the face,’ ‘Fathead,’ ‘He’s lying,’ ‘She’s just pretending to feel pity,’ ‘He’s go
ing to find life really tough,’ ‘What a schmuck,’ ‘She’s an angel,’ ‘He’s so conceited, so proud,’ ‘They’re such phonies, those two,’ ‘Poor thing, poor thing,’ ‘I’d shoot him this minute, without batting an eye,’ ‘I feel so sorry for her,’ ‘He drives me absolutely crazy,’ ‘She’s pretending,’ ‘How can he be so naive,’ ‘What nerve,’ ‘She’s such an intelligent woman,’ ‘He disgusts me,’ ‘He really tickles me.’ The register is infinite, there’s room for everything. And that doctor giving a smug, detailed, verbose diagnosis; girls answering strange questions at casting sessions, perhaps for an advertisement or something far worse, all too monosyllabic for me to find out. Sometimes, the videos were obviously homemade or very personal, and consequently more mysterious (I couldn’t help wondering how they had reached us and consequently me, unless we had private clients too): the patriarchal Christmas greeting of some absentee who clearly thought he was much missed and needed; the message of a rich man (presumably posthumous or intended to be) explaining to heirs and dispossessed alike the reasoning behind his arbitrary, capricious, disappointing and deliberately unfair will; the declaration of love by a sick man of self-confessed (or more likely alleged) timidity, who claimed he could not bear to experience ‘live’ the intended recipient’s refusal, which he said he knew was inevitable, but which he clearly didn’t think was inevitable at all, you could tell by the way he spoke. And this was just the British material, as the greater part of it was, of course. I became aware of the number of occasions and places where people are or can be recorded or filmed: to begin with, in nearly every situation in which we are submitted to a test or an exam, shall we say, and in which we are asking for something, a job, a loan, a chance, a favour, a subsidy, a reference, an alibi. And, of course, clemency. I saw that whenever we ask for something, we are exposed, defenceless, at the almost absolute mercy of the person giving or refusing. And nowadays we are recorded, immortalised, often when we are at our most humble, or, if you prefer, humiliated. But also in any public or semi-public place, the most obvious and flagrant ones being hotel rooms, it seems normal now that we will be filmed at a bank, a shop, a gas station, a casino, a sports arena, a parking lot, a government building.

  I was rarely told in advance what I should look out for, what character traits, what degree of sincerity, or what specific intentions I should try to decipher in each indicated person or face, when, that is, I took work home. The following day, or a few days later, I would have a session with Mulryan or Tupra or with both, and they would ask me then whatever they wanted to know, sometimes one small detail and sometimes a great deal, it all depended, referring to the people in the videos by their respective names if these appeared in the films or were so well known as to be unmistakable, or, if not, by their assigned letters and numbers: ‘Do you think that, despite his words of contrition, Mr Stewart is defrauding the tax office again? He got caught five years ago, but he came to an agreement and paid more than he owed to avoid any problems, so might he, therefore, believe that he is now free of suspicion?’ ‘Do you think FH6 intended to repay the loan when he applied to Barclays for it? Or did he never intend paying it back at all? He was given the loan three months ago, you see, and hasn’t been seen since.’ I would say what I thought or what I could, and then we would pass on to the next one, in the briefer, more practical and prosaic cases, that is. Most cases, however, were not like that at all, they were elusive and complex, often vague and even ethereal, always tricky to respond to, more like those that Wheeler had dealt with in his day and which he had forecast for my day too, or, rather, which he had suggested would come my way, even though there was no war on; that, sooner or later, they would be brought to me for my opinion. And for that majority of cases one needed in effect what he had distractedly called — as if to play down the solemnity of those two expressions, which appeared, at least initially or, indeed, not even then, to be contradictory — ‘the courage to see’ and ‘the irresponsibility of seeing’. For a long time, I was far more conscious of the latter, until I got used to it and, when I did, stopped worrying. And then … Ah, then, it’s true, came the great irresponsibility.

  The process of getting used to it, however, had been started by Wheeler on that Sunday in Oxford when he also talked to me about myself. Or perhaps by Toby Rylands, who had, at some point, already spoken to Wheeler about me, and had singled me out as someone of like mind, made of the same clay from which they had been shaped. But, no, it wasn’t Rylands, because it isn’t what is said of us behind our backs which changes things — which transforms things inside ourselves — it is what someone with authority or armed with mere insistence tells us about ourselves to our face that reveals and explains and tempts us to believe. It is the danger that stalks every artist or politician, or anyone whose work is subject to people’s opinions and interpretations. If a film director, writer or musician begins to be described as a genius, a prodigy, a reinventor, a giant, they can all too easily end up thinking that it might be true. They then become conscious of their own worth, and become afraid of disappointing or — which is even more ridiculous and nonsensical, but it can’t be put in any other way — of not living up to themselves, that is, to the people it turns out they were — or so others tell them, and as they now realise they are — in their previous exalted creations. ‘So it wasn’t just a product of chance or intuition or even of my own freedom,’ they might think, ‘there was coherence and purpose in everything I was doing, what an honour to discover this, but what a curse too. Because now I have no option but to abide by that and to reach the same wretched heights in order not to let myself down, how awful, what an effort, and what a disaster for my work.’ And this can happen to anyone, even if neither their work nor their personality is public, they have only to hear a plausible explanation of their inclinations or behaviour, an incantatory description of their actions or an analysis of their character, an evaluation of their methods — and to know that such a thing exists, or is attributed to them — for them to lose their blessedly mutable course, unforeseeable and uncertain, and with it their freedom. We tend to think that there is some hidden order unknown to us and also a plot of which we would like to form a conscious part, and if we glimpse a single episode of that plot in which there seems to be room for us, if we sense that we are caught up in its weak wheel even for an instant, then it is hard for us ever again to be able to imagine ourselves torn from that half-glimpsed, partial, intuited plot — a mere figment of the imagination. There is nothing worse than looking for a meaning or believing there is one. Or if there is one, even worse: believing that the meaning of something, even of the most trivial detail, could depend on us and on our actions, on our intention or our function, believing that there is such a thing as the will or fate, and even some complicated combination of the two. Believing that we do not owe ourselves entirely to the most erratic and forgetful, rambling and crazy of chances, and that we should be expected to be consistent with what we said or did, yesterday or the day before. Believing that we might contain in ourselves coherence and deliberation, as the artist believes is true of his work or the potentate of his decisions, but only once someone has persuaded them that this is so.

  Wheeler had, in the end, begun at the beginning, if anything ever really has a beginning. Anyway, that Sunday morning, when I woke up much later than I would have wanted to and, of course, much later than he was expecting me to, he allowed himself no further preambles or postponements or circumlocutions, in so far as it was possible for him entirely to renounce such long-established characteristics of thought and conversation. The incomplete words he had at his disposal to tell me what he was going to tell me were, I suppose, mystery and limitation enough. As soon as he saw me come downstairs looking sleepy and ill-shaven (just a quick once-over with the razor so as to appear presentable or not, at least, too thuggish), he urged me to take a seat opposite him and to the right of Mrs Berry, who occupied one end of the table at which they had both just had breakfast. He waited until she had
very kindly poured me some coffee, but not until I had drunk it or woken up a bit. On the half of the table unoccupied by table-cloth and plates and cups and jams and fruit lay open a large, bulky volume, there were always books everywhere. I had only to glance at it (the attraction of the printed word) for Peter to say in urgent tones, doubtless because he had not counted on such a late awakening on my part:

  ‘Pick it up, go on. I got it out to show you.’

  I drew the volume to me, but before reading a single line, I half-closed it — with one finger keeping the place — to have a look at the spine and see what the book was.

  ‘Who’s Who?’ It was a rhetorical question, because it clearly was Who’s Who, with its rich red cover, the guide to the more or less illustrious, that year’s United Kingdom edition.

  ‘Yes, Who’s Who, Jacobo. I bet you’ve never thought of looking me up in that, have you? My name is on that page, where it’s open. Read what it says, will you, go on.’

  I looked, I searched, there were quite a few Wheelers, Sir Mark and Sir Mervyn, a certain Muir Wheeler and the Honourable Sir Patrick and the Very Reverend Philip Welsford Richmond Wheeler, and there he was, between the two last names: ‘Wheeler, Prof. Sir Peter’, which was followed by a parenthesis, which I did not, at first, understand, which said: ‘(Edward Lionel Wheeler)’. It only took me two seconds, though, to remember that Peter used to sign his writings ‘P. E. Wheeler’, and that the E was for Edward, so the parenthesis was only there to record his name in its official entirety.