Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ he said, ‘but if you do that again, I’ll throw you out and refuse to hear another word. Tell me what you need to tell me and ask me whatever questions you need to ask, and at a quarter to twelve, that will be that. At midday, I’ll give my usual lecture.’

  He sounded determined and slightly offended, but not angry and not autocratic either. Tom Nevinson seemed momentarily disoriented, as if he didn’t know what to say now that he was being urged to say it; where to begin, or, rather, how to continue, because he’d already begun in a rather disorganised way.

  ‘I’ve served in good faith, Mr Southworth,’ he said at last. ‘At first, I did so reluctantly, but afterwards I served in good faith for many years. I did what I was asked or ordered to do, with a greater or lesser degree of success, and to the best of my ability. As I said, I’ve been to a lot of places and I’ve done my duty. I convinced myself that my work was useful, or, more than that, crucial for the defence of the Realm. I was unwilling initially, but I became an enthusiast, and enthusiasm can justify anything.’

  ‘Your work? As an infiltrator, you mean.’

  ‘Yes, but not always. Quite often, but not only. I’ve done other work too: desk work, research, writing reports, conducting inquiries. As well as phone-tapping and monitoring and surveillance. I’ve spent whole nights sitting in a car, watching a door or a window. And I’ve watched endless video footage. Better to use the term “espionage”, it’s wider-ranging and encompasses everything. But, yes, it involved a lot of disguises, changes of personality and appearance, speaking like someone else, changing my voice and my accent. That’s the grubby part. It’s what Henry V did when he wrapped himself in a cloak and mingled with his soldiers, to chat to them and sound them out. Or perhaps draw them out.’ Mr Southworth was so well read that Tom was sure he would know the reference. ‘He was perhaps the highest-ranking spy ever, at least in fiction. My wife pointed it out to me one day, because I’d never really noticed it before.’

  ‘Of course you have a wife,’ said Mr Southworth. It was only natural that, at his age, Tom should be married.

  ‘Yes, Berta. We married years ago, in 1974, in Madrid. She was already my girlfriend when I was studying here. I don’t know if I ever mentioned her to you. We had two children, a boy and a girl. I haven’t seen or spoken to them for twelve years now. I wouldn’t let myself, for reasons of security, of survival. They believe I’m dead, assuming they believed what they were told, if Berta did, I mean. I suppose she must believe it, but I’m not dead in her thoughts, which is what counts. Because I am officially dead, Mr Southworth. I no longer exist. And I have another daughter by another woman with whom I lived for a few years and who doesn’t know my real name.’ This time he said ‘woman’, not ‘wife’. ‘The girl doesn’t have my name, but an invented one, the one I had to adopt after my death and which still appears on my papers now. But soon I will become Tomás Nevinson again and emerge from the archives of the dead. That girl, though, will always bear a false name, I’m afraid. And I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in touch with her, or even know anything about her. I’ve missed a great chunk of my Spanish children’s lives, and I’ll have to miss most of my English daughter’s life too. I have no choice. Her mother wouldn’t want me back. We lived together until she grew tired of my mysteries, my silences, my strange, passive life. And she kept the child, of course, children do tend to belong more to their mothers. I haven’t seen them for a while now either, but not for quite as long. And what about you? Are you married? Do you have children?’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s not for me,’ answered a now fully recovered Mr Southworth, although without giving any further explanation. Tomás had always felt he was a man almost religiously devoted to teaching, to music and literature, which were his passions. His life outside the university was a complete mystery, assuming he had a life outside. ‘And you say you know nothing about your wife, and haven’t for twelve years. How extraordinary.’

  ‘No, as I said, I haven’t seen or spoken to her. But I do know something about her and about the children, who, by now, are only just still children. Tupra keeps me informed now and then. He tells me they’re fine and lack for nothing. Just so that I don’t worry, not too much anyway, and don’t succumb to temptation. It’s been like that for some years. I know that Berta is now officially a widow, both here and in Spain. And that she hasn’t remarried, even though she’s free to do so. That’s what makes me think that perhaps she’s not entirely convinced I’m dead, because, obviously, no body was ever found. The official version is that I disappeared in Argentina. And since that happened a long time ago, she ended up having me declared legally dead. And, believe me, I’ve been dead a long time.’

  ‘In Argentina of all places,’ murmured Mr Southworth with a touch of irony in his voice. ‘A bit out-of-the-way, don’t you think? A bit remote? Even Borges left, and presumably for good reasons.’

  ‘Even you seem to have forgotten that we fought a war against Argentina. It’s amazing how easily we forget. Unless there’s a football match between the two teams, and then everything flares up again for a while.’

  ‘Of course, yes, you’re right. We don’t think much about that war. Did you take part in it? And what do you mean “a football match”?’ Mr Southworth had no idea about football either.

  ‘Whether I did or did not take part is unimportant. The report of my disappearance says that I did, that I vanished without trace and no one has heard from me since. It’s assumed I was the victim of incensed Argentinians. It doesn’t much matter. As I said, I’ve been in a lot of places, and they had to give some explanation to my family. And to a section of the Foreign Office which tends not to know much about anything, and who are happy to be told very little.’

  ‘Hence the twelve-year absence.’

  ‘Yes, I said goodbye to Berta right at the very start of that war. The truth is quite different, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here with you now. You see, we all believe that the worst will never happen, despite the evident dangers. Basically, we’re all optimists, we go to bed convinced we’ll get up the next day. You gain confidence as you take on missions and assignments and emerge from them unscathed. And success of all kinds breeds pride, and, unconsciously, you develop a sense of invulnerability. If it went well this time, why shouldn’t it go well the next, you think. And the more obstacles you overcome, the more scrapes you get out of, the more you believe that and the more risks you take. Until, in the end, something does go wrong and you fail. Or you don’t fail exactly, but you have to be removed and are written off, useless. Burned, they call it. You don’t know for how long, or if it will be for ever. Anyway, I had to disappear for real, I had to hide, to be a dead man as far as everyone was concerned, especially my wife, of course, with all communication, all contact, forbidden. A couple “befriended” her years ago, people from the other camp, you understand, just trying their luck really, and they terrified the life out of her. If I was assumed to be dead, then there was far less chance that anyone would go looking for me, although our enemies do tend to be sceptical types, who won’t believe someone is dead until they see the body. They’ll pursue a mole and punish him, and they’ll only forget about him if enough time passes and they still haven’t found him, and when those he harmed die or retire, join the reserves or end up burned as well. That’s why so many years have to pass, unless you get lucky and someone bumps them off or puts them in prison. It doesn’t last for ever though: the clandestine life is a short one, people get replaced very quickly, and your successors won’t know you from Adam and will have their own scores to settle. They have no interest in avenging their fathers or their grandfathers, that’s a complete myth. You quickly become ancient history.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you, Tom. Not entirely.’

  Tomás was speaking at high speed now, on the assumption perhaps that Mr Southworth would, as he said, leave for his lecture promptly.

  ‘Of course you do, Mr Southworth. You’r
e an intelligent man. Anyway, I erased myself from the map. I took on another identity. I was provided with papers and a work permit so that I could lead an ordinary life in the town they sent me to, I could open a bank account, rent a flat, get my National Insurance number, just like everyone else. A medium-sized provincial town where no one would come looking for me. A town inhabited only by people who were born there or whose work had brought them there. I became a modest schoolteacher.’

  ‘Teaching Spanish or languages, I imagine.’

  ‘No, that could have aroused suspicions, because I speak the languages I speak far too well. No, I taught history, geography, literature, depending on the needs of the school. I spent about five years there – imagine that, one loses track of time – teaching twelve- and thirteen-year-olds or fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, who aren’t interested in anything. It was lucky really that I wasn’t teaching them languages, because, at that age, they can’t even be bothered to speak English well. The trouble they take to mangle their own language is remarkable really. Fortunately, I didn’t have to live on my teacher’s salary alone, although I pretended to: I couldn’t be seen to be living beyond my means, I couldn’t draw attention to myself or to any aspect of my life. It was, needless to say, very tedious, being stuck there, far from home, and having to live so circumspectly. But that’s what I had to do to stay alive: one false move and I could lose everything. Our enemies have their own moles. They’re not as good as ours, but they exist. Every cause does the same thing: namely, recruit people with nothing to do and nowhere to go, people who need a reason to get through the day and who’ll join anything; every gang has its fanatics. And so you obey orders and do what you have to, you get on with things. As Cervantes said: paciencia y barajar. Shuffle the pack and deal again. The trouble is that, in those circumstances, there’s no pack of cards to shuffle. You’re trapped, glued to the spot, until one day someone tells you: ‘It’s all right, the danger’s pretty much past. You can leave if you like, albeit cautiously. Everyone either thinks you’re dead or has forgotten all about you. No one will be concerned for you or waste their time worrying about you.’ Anyway, at least I lived fairly decently and without having to economise too much, thanks to a payment I received every six months, in cash, because they couldn’t risk that money appearing in my account. You have to become paranoid, you have to think you’re being watched even though you’re probably not and no one knows where you are. You have to assume that the tiniest little thing might be detected. Tupra would send someone with the money, always someone different, a stranger, who would also give me a brief report on how things were in Madrid. I did have a few phone conversations with Tupra, though, always from a public phone.’ Tomás fell silent for a moment and looked down at the floor, as if overcome by sudden grief or by a grief briefly deferred by that visit to Mr Southworth. Then he added: ‘It’s funny really, ironic: when Professor Wheeler suggested to me that I could be of use, one of his arguments was that it would give me the opportunity to influence world events and decisions; I wouldn’t then be an outcast from the universe, he said, as the Earth’s inhabitants always have been, although every place and time has its exceptions. And yet that’s precisely how I’ve felt for years, it’s how I feel now: an outcast from the universe. The one saving grace is that people think I’m dead and no one remembers me.’

  Mr Southworth got up and poured Tom another glass of wine, first interrogatively raising the bottle. Tomás Nevinson had just downed his drink in one and mechanically lit another Karelias cigarette, this time without asking his former tutor if he would care to join him. He seemed silent, abstracted, his gaze still fixed on the floor. Mr Southworth again consulted his watch; they still had quite a lot of time.

  ‘Given what you say, yours is clearly a special case. But, yes, being presumed dead would put any of us out of danger. No one would ask or want anything from us, no one would make demands or give us orders, no one would bother to seek us out or to inflict harm,’ he said, perhaps simply to say something or to draw Tom out of his melancholy. ‘Speaking of Peter, what was it you wanted to ask me about him.’

  Despite Tom’s radically changed appearance, despite his aggressive behaviour only a few moments before, Mr Southworth realised that he was beginning to feel the superficial affection and esteem he had felt for Nevinson when the latter was an outstanding, almost dazzling student, not dazzlingly intelligent, but endowed with an extraordinary linguistic talent, a remarkable facility for learning and speaking any language, for imitating and reproducing it. He had barely given a thought to Tom for about twenty years – or perhaps once or twice just after his departure; and perhaps once or twice more when someone mentioned that he was working for the Foreign Office or at the embassy – but now he could clearly recall the concern he felt for him on the morning Tom found himself caught up in the murder of that girl from Waterfield’s, and that policeman Morse came to interrogate him in these very rooms. He didn’t remember the matter being cleared up or the guilty party arrested, but then he had rather lost interest once Tom had ceased to be a suspect and had left Oxford. However, Southworth always felt very protective towards his students, and had now, with some difficulty, succeeded in juxtaposing the broad, weather-beaten face of that man with the beard, moustache, scar and receding hairline with the now remote face of that promising, rather charming young man. Physically, the man before him was rather nondescript, as is the case with so many Englishmen, and so many Spaniards too. And yet, even in his current state of abstraction, he sensed that Tom had a ruthless streak. Perhaps he’d fallen silent because he was plotting or pondering his revenge. He exuded a kind of resentment that was at once abstract and real, and which seemed to belong to the worst of all resentments, that of the deceived. He had spent his life deceiving others, because of the nature of his work, but probably also because he considered himself to be the victim of a great, primordial deception. And that was how Southworth understood Tom’s answer:

  ‘I want to know, in your view, to what extent he was a party to it all. I’m not going to confront him if you don’t think I should, if you believe him to be innocent or ignorant. I’ve already confronted my immediate boss about it, insofar as that was possible, of course. Some people are impervious to such confrontations, however murderous you feel towards them. That’s something you learn, it’s a fact. You just have to accept the dirty tricks certain individuals play on you, or, at most, rebuke them.’ And he used the Spanish word, putadas, for ‘dirty tricks’. After all, like Wheeler, Mr Southworth was a Hispanist. ‘And you can do nothing against the State, against the Crown. The Crown is always in the strongest position, it’s too big, too powerful, it has laws that it can change or ignore at will, or break with impunity. And it can crush you. When there’s no other way out, when there’s no going back … The last thing you should expect from the world is justice or redress. They simply don’t exist. You can try to retaliate, and feel a small, momentary sense of satisfaction, but it doesn’t last. Nothing can restore what’s been lost. I often used to say that to Meg, and it would drive her crazy, because I never explained what I meant exactly or why I was saying it. She would eye me curiously, fearfully, wondering what had happened to me in the past and what it was that I’d lost. She never knew anything about me, or only about my present life and a vague, invented past. She found it odd that I had no family and never spoke about them, no parents or siblings, nothing. No one ever visited me in that provincial town, no one even wrote me a letter. At first, I would sometimes pretend to go on a trip somewhere, but would immediately get bored; in fact, I would book myself into a hotel for a few nights and barely leave the room during the day, in case I had the misfortune to run into Meg in the street, when she thought I was away.’

  ‘Meg? The other woman?’

  ‘Yes, the mother of my little girl. I didn’t intend that or anything like it to happen. I assumed I wouldn’t be stuck there for very long and didn’t want to form any strong bonds. I intended just to teach my classes and
keep a low profile, and generally pass myself off as a drab, dull fellow. On Saturdays, I’d go and watch the local football team, who were struggling not to get relegated from the First Division, because I had to do my best not to seem odd or reclusive. Having known far worse situations, I thought I’d be able to cope with the loneliness, but the lack of things to do and the lack of tension and adrenaline didn’t help, and actually became a real burden. Time drags then, and you need company, need someone to talk to. It’s best not to get a reputation as a putero either, in small towns like that, people end up knowing everything.’ Again he resorted to the Spanish term, as if all the words deriving from puta, ‘whore’, were more graphic or more uncompromising than in English. ‘In the end, I didn’t have to make any effort at all, she did all the work; I mean, she was the one who chatted me up and came on to me. She worked as a nurse at the dental practice I went to. That’s where we met. She brushed up against me a few times, whether intentionally or not, I don’t know, and briefly positioned herself so that I couldn’t help but admire her bust. We’d exchange a couple of jokes when I arrived and again when I left; and she seemed to find my jokes funny, which is always flattering. I probably shouldn’t say so, but she fell for me like a ton of bricks, and placed me firmly in her sights. And, well, who can resist a tight-fitting white tunic?’ He stopped and wondered if Mr Southworth was sensitive to such curves, but seeing that Southworth remained unmoved, he assumed this was not something that interested him. ‘Only a few months later, she was talking about getting married, or at least wanting us to live together. She was quite a lot younger than me, although not in absolute terms – that, at least, was her view. There was nothing to stop me marrying, given my new identity as a bachelor. I could have married, then vanished later on, without a goodbye or an explanation, when I was allowed to return to the world. I was used to that as well, to appearing and disappearing from the lives of others. A few months here or there, pretending to be someone else; on one such mission, I stayed in a place for two whole years, and then, once the mission was over, I was off, leaving the people I’d lived with either condemned to death or dead, and others on their way to prison.’ Tomás briefly fell silent, then went on: ‘There’s a long tradition of husbands leaving their wives in the lurch without a word, but rather fewer examples of wives doing the same. Still, I preferred not to do anything that might attract attention, not to be a cause for celebration or become too involved with Meg’s family, who lived elsewhere and never visited; she always went to see them. The fewer people who knew me, the better. Knew me well, I mean.’ He paused again.