Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  ‘Ah, yes, Wellington as brilliant strategist and all that,’ he said, to avoid an excursus, which he successfully did, because Wheeler immediately returned to what he had been saying before:

  ‘Gifted people like you are still needed today. Even in times of apparent peace. Peace, alas, is only ever apparent and transitory, a pretence. War is the natural state of the world. Often it’s open warfare, but when it’s not, war is always there in latent or indirect form or is merely a war-in-waiting. There are large portions of humanity who are always trying to harm others, or to take something from them, and rancour and discord reign at all times, and, if not, then they’re there in the wings, watching and waiting. When there is no war, there’s the threat of war, and what gifted people like you can do is keep it as only a threat. In its infancy, so to speak, not yet unleashed. People like you are capable of avoiding wars, or at least of distracting and delaying them for those living at the time, of making sure they break out later, when others will have to endure them and when there will perhaps be other gifted people who can again avert them. And that is what I mean by intervening in the universe, Tomás. Very subtly. It’s more like blocking and containing it … temporarily. Which is no small thing, don’t you think?’

  Tomás Nevinson was a bright, pleasant young man, quick and funny and even genial, but too youthful to be wise, having not as yet had to make any important decisions or felt the need to consider what kind of person he was. The frivolity with which he observed the external world and his own internal world prevented him from doing so, as did the opacity and reserve that his frivolity concealed. As I said before, no one, not even he, could see through him, and no one tried. He was one of those people with great abilities and qualities, but who has no idea what to do with them unless instructed and told what they are for. If guided in his studies, he was an excellent student, and he perhaps needed someone who could perform the same didactic function in other areas of his life, especially as regards the practical and the personal. He realised that Wheeler was playing a similar role that afternoon – perhaps he was trying to see through him, or had already done so and seen his future – and he felt flattered to think that Wheeler might become his guide; however, he could still not understand or guess precisely what he was proposing, what path he was indicating with all those digressions, which door he was inviting him to open.

  ‘I don’t quite follow, Professor. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know you Oxford people like to hint at things, drop in a few ambiguous words or make allusions whose meaning is immediately grasped. And, yes, I’ve lived here for years now, coming and going, but bear in mind my origins. In Spain, you have to speak clearly or no one will have a clue what you mean. You’re including me among those gifted people, as you call them, but I have no idea what gifts you’re referring to, what gifts you imagine I possess. I really don’t see myself as someone capable of postponing no less a thing than a war.’

  Wheeler gave a deep sigh that seemed to indicate a certain impatience. He doubtless thought he had been crystal clear and explicit in his explanations.

  ‘Let’s see, Tom. According to you, I spoke in praise of secrets, and you yourself mentioned the rumours about my past. You have an exceptional gift for mimicry and for languages, more so than anyone I’ve ever known, and yet you’ve never received any specific training, unlike many others who’ve crossed my path, both during the war and afterwards – yes, afterwards too. What do you think I’m suggesting? You would be very useful here. You would be extremely useful to us.’

  Tom Nevinson laughed, part incredulous, part genuinely amused and part flattered. Laughter did not favour him, it broadened his already broad nose and made him seem coarser. He lost his usually serene expression, and this accentuated that look in his eyes warning of anomalies to come. It was as if his features lost control of themselves and took on another, perhaps future, life.

  ‘Do you mean you’re still in touch with the Secret Service? Are you suggesting I should join them?’

  Wheeler regarded him coolly and with a glimmer of displeasure, perhaps because of that laugh, perhaps because of the excessive frankness of his questions. His narrowed eyes regained their original blue colour and lost their leonine look. He took a sip of his drink to calm himself, or perhaps to delay giving an answer. Then he said:

  ‘Once you’ve been involved with the Secret Service, they’re the ones who keep in touch with you. Rarely or frequently, as they choose. You don’t abandon them, that would be an act of betrayal. We always stand and wait.’ And those last words sounded like a quotation or a reference to something else. ‘They barely ever contact me now, but, yes, there are occasional exchanges. You never completely retire if you can still be of use to them. It’s a way of serving your country and not becoming an outcast. It’s within your grasp not to become a complete, lifelong outcast. Which is what you will be if you return to Spain. If you go back for good, I mean. Nothing would stop you living there part-time. In fact, that would be the best way, to have a double life, with one life being lived abroad. You wouldn’t have to give up much. Or only for short periods, like any businessman, for they all spend time away from their families, travelling or setting up a business in another city or country, they’re sometimes absent for months. That’s no reason for them not to get married and have children, though. They simply come and go. Like any other man of the world.’

  Tomás wasn’t laughing now. Wheeler was speaking in a very serious, professional tone of voice. He spoke circumspectly, like someone complying with a formality, like someone explaining what the job involves, the working conditions and possible perks. He had already carried out the task of tempting, or perhaps attracting him. The temptation to intervene in some way in the universe, even if only minimally, and not to pass through it like a suitcase or a rubbish bin or a piece of furniture, which, according to Wheeler, was what all men and women had done since time began: people who laboured away each day and knew no rest from the moment they got up until they went to bed, who had a thousand duties to fulfil and who broke their backs just to put food on the table, or who played at influencing their fellow men and women, controlling them or dazzling them; they were of as little interest as the shopkeeper who spends his entire life opening and closing his business, day after day at the appointed hour, never once varying his routine. They were all outcasts from the moment they were born or from their conception or even before that: from the time when they were merely a twinkle in the eye of their irresponsible or unthinking parents, who were perhaps unaware that, by succumbing to their instincts, they would be creating yet another being surplus to requirements.

  ‘But what would I have to do? What kind of work?’

  ‘Well, whatever they assigned you to do, once you’d been accepted. At first, they wouldn’t ask you to do anything you hadn’t agreed to beforehand. Sometimes, of course, situations get complicated, unexpected things happen, and you’d have to improvise. Then you just have to carry on and do things you hadn’t counted on doing. There would be plenty of possible jobs for someone like you, you really could be useful. With your genius for mimicry and your other remarkable talents, you would make an excellent infiltrator. Given the relevant training, you could pass for a native in quite a few places.’ Tom Nevinson felt flattered, which was doubtless the intention of those interpolated compliments; young people are very susceptible to flattery. ‘No mission would last very long. The great danger isn’t that the agent will be unmasked (although that remains a danger, of course), but that he ends up too immersed in the role he’s playing, that he loses sight of who he is in reality and who he’s working for. You mustn’t prolong pretence. It’s very hard to be two people at once for any length of time. For someone in his right mind, I mean. We all tend to be just one, exclusive person, and there’s always the risk that you’ll turn into the person you’re pretending to be, with the latter driving out and supplanting the original you. As I said: a few months at the most, like any businessman with various irons i
n the fire, with branches to visit and supervise and manage. His family or friends wouldn’t find this odd or unusual. Everything would carry on as normal when you were in Spain. When you weren’t, well, I won’t lie to you, you would live fictitious lives, lives not your own, but only temporarily. Sooner or later, you would always leave them and return to your own self, to thy former self.’ And he seemed again to be quoting from something, because he used the archaic ‘thy’, which only survives in prayers. ‘You would be helping others and yourself. You would know that your time on Earth had not been entirely in vain. I mean that you would have contributed or removed, added or subtracted something: a blade of grass, a speck of dust, a life, a war, a fragment of ash, a thread, it all depends. But something.’

  Tomás couldn’t believe what he was hearing, those flattering remarks hadn’t been enough for him to accept the implausibility of it all, to transport him into a world of spies, novels and films, even though it was being presented to him in the middle of ordinary everyday life, on a peaceful afternoon by the River Cherwell, where he had expected to be editing a text. An infiltrator into who knows what groups or in what countries? Pretending to be someone else, living various alternative existences, invented, deceitful, corrupt, and, to use Wheeler’s word, ‘fictitious’? He couldn’t understand how Wheeler could have thought of such a thing, how he could even be suggesting such a possibility, how they had ended up having what, for him, was an unreal, fantastical conversation. He felt he must be dreaming, but he wasn’t: there was his mentor with the scar on his chin, directing, suggesting, proposing, leading. Showing him a future path, acting as his guide. Which, up to a point, was what he wanted. And yet it all seemed absurd, pie in the sky, impossible. He glanced at Wheeler and saw a look on his face of sudden repudiation, disappointment, almost scorn, as if realising that his arguments and attempts at persuasion had had no effect. He was a very perceptive man, who could read people’s faces. The faces of students rarely hold much mystery for their teachers.

  ‘I don’t know how such an idea could occur to you, Professor. I really don’t deserve such confidence in my abilities. You’re quite wrong about them. I’m enormously grateful, but I’m simply not equipped for the kind of work you describe. That would require a sense of adventure and courage and, of course, character. I’m a pretty ordinary, sedentary fellow really, and, quite probably, a coward, although fortunately, in the latter case, I haven’t had many occasions to find out. And with luck I won’t have any. So the last thing I would do is to encourage such occasions, and expose myself to them voluntarily. Thank you, but please, just forget it. I could never be part of something like that. And I’m not sure I would want to if I could.’

  Wheeler fixed him with an intense, almost severe gaze, of a kind rarely found in England, as if he were trying to work out if Tomás was merely being falsely modest and hoping that he, Wheeler, would insist, argue back or heap him with more compliments. He must have decided that this was not the case, because he then waved his hand in a gesture of displeasure or dismissal, as if he were a monarch ordering a minister to leave, or as if he were saying: ‘We clearly do not agree. We’ll speak no more about it. It’s your loss.’ Then he brought the pause to an end and suggested they return to his text. Tomás was sorry to have failed him and to have left him feeling disappointed or embarrassed, but he had no alternative. He could not imagine himself living among conspirators, criminals, genuine spies or terrorists, and passing himself off as one of them, if that is what was meant by the word ‘infiltrator’. He realised that their discursive chat had ended and that nothing of what had been said would be mentioned again, that it was the kind of conversation that would happen once and once only. He had perhaps not reckoned with the existence of people who, if they see something in you and choose you, never abandon the topic or entirely withdraw, but are like vultures: they move off and circle around and wait, then try their luck again. He had resumed his reading of the text out loud when he heard Wheeler murmur in a ruminative voice, as if the words were emerging from inside a helmet:

  ‘Give it a little more thought. Am I so mistaken? That would only be the second time in many years. I don’t think so. I don’t usually make such mistakes.’

  A week later, when it was not yet halfway through the so-called Trinity term, Tom Nevinson made one of his incursions into Waterfield’s, the second-hand bookshop on several floors where Janet worked from Monday to Friday, doubtless always eagerly waiting for the weekend to arrive so that she could get together with her long-term London boyfriend, about whom she had never told him a thing, except to mention his existence and his first name, Hugh, and how long they had been together. He, unlike Tom, was clearly not a way of filling the time but, rather, her objective or reward after those five days of work, that is, the sole goal and reason for her time, the very axis and illumination of its passing. Tom imagined Hugh to be married and older than her, a proper grown-up with responsibilities, but he didn’t actually know this. Those five days would pass so slowly that Janet might have to kill time by resorting to some kind of distraction, whole months and years dominated by days that were either empty or parenthetical, days that you long for merely so that they can give way to the next day and thus move on from the despairing ‘It’s still only Tuesday’ to the impatient ‘Wednesdays are so long’ to the hopeful ‘It’s Thursday already’. There are far too many such accumulated transitional nights in anyone’s life.

  This was doubtless why Janet was always pleased to receive Tom’s visits, which usually culminated a few hours later in somewhat mechanical, utilitarian sex, and he, as I said, was the one who tried to stagger their meetings, partly so that he would not inadvertently become another, albeit lesser, way of filling her time (of which Janet had so much), for habit can work miracles and confer the rank of necessity on the unpredictable and the superfluous. Whenever he decided to see her, he would usually do so on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, because he had the impression that on Mondays she was still under the spell of her brief London stay and that on Thursdays she was already anticipating the next one; and so he chose the days when she would be at her lowest ebb, the days when she would be feeling most bored or peeved with or even resentful of her lover, preferring to punish him without his knowledge and in silence, keeping that punishment purely to herself.

  That Wednesday was no different. They chatted on the third floor of the bookshop, the one with fewest customers, and, concealed behind the bookshelves, they partook of a brief advance payment: Tomás was more experienced now and slipped his hand up her skirt for a good long minute, staring at the spines of some of Kipling’s works as he did so, both of them standing, both, as is frequent among the young, primitively excited by that first contact, both storing away those sensations in order to recover and relive them for the rest of the day, until they met up again in the modest flat she occupied in St John Street, near the Ashmolean Museum and the elegant Randolph Hotel. They didn’t even go out for supper together, he simply said he would drop around at about nine o’clock, neither of them requiring any deceiving preamble.

  They stayed together for less than an hour, shifting, during that time, from the excitement of anticipation to the faint melancholy that always follows what has already happened, leaving no memory or even any imaginary longing; indeed, it had begun to seem superfluous and forgotten even while it was happening: clinical sex with no frills, prescribed sex because you have to have it every few days or, at least, every few weeks and anyone who doesn’t is a pariah, but also because you feel the need – a need more of the idea than the actual act – but it’s a very half-hearted business once it’s over and when viewed in retrospect, and afterwards, the predominant, troubling thought is: ‘OK, I felt that urgent need, but I could easily not have bothered, now that it’s so joylessly and rather sadly over, it wasn’t worth it; if I could go back, I wouldn’t bother.’ And, at the same time, you know this isn’t true: if you could go back, you would feel the same urgency again and proceed, elementally, ahead. />
  Tomás felt sorry for Janet, and wondered if she might not feel equally sorry for him. They didn’t even get undressed, it was just a prolongation of what they had begun that morning in the bookshop, as if the memory of that had lingered on and imposed itself on those new and different circumstances, as if yielding to the thoughts that had filled their minds during the day, in occasional, involuntary waves. Tom did remove her tights and knickers, but only took off his raincoat and jacket, then unzipped his flies, nothing more. When he finished, he went quickly to the bathroom so as not to stain anything, and when he returned to the bedroom, Janet was lying on her side on the bed, her head resting on the pillow and a book in her hands, as though she had moved on to something else or was in a hurry to take up reading where she had left off when he arrived. Her skirt had ridden up to mid-thigh level; she wore a watch on her left wrist and a couple of bracelets on the right one. Tomás had heard the bracelets tinkling – a slight distraction – while he and Janet were busily at it, just as he had noticed her earrings swaying – large hoop earrings – while he pumped away, with her resting her fists on the mattress and him standing behind her, neither of them having bothered to take off anything that did not present an obstacle. Now she was more the image of a woman in a hotel room absorbed in her book, waiting for sleep to come, than that of someone in her own home who has just partaken of a youthful fuck: Janet was three or four years older than him, with very blonde, probably bleached hair; features that were at once delicate, fierce and determined; and very pretty, curved eyebrows, much darker than her hair. She had very red lips and a gap between her front teeth, which lent a childish element to her smile; and inquisitive eyes that were devouring those pages as voraciously as if nothing else mattered in the world. She didn’t even look up at him, but, sensing his presence, raised her left hand as if to say: ‘Let me just read this bit.’ She also hadn’t taken off the two rings she wore on that hand, a kind of wedding ring on her ring finger and a discreet onyx ring on her middle finger. Both could have been presents from her lover Hugh, thought Tom, the first as a simulacrum of an engagement, the second a gift.