All Men Are Liars

by Alberto Manguel

  I keep forgetting that you don’t know any of these people! Being so young (forgive me, Terradillos, but at my age anyone with less than half a century under his belt is a stripling), you don’t know any of these names, which were so famous in their day. Urquieta was (he died a long time ago, poor old thing) your typical born editor. Some people embody their métier: they are a hundred percent carpenters, guitar players, and bankers to the core, and can never be anything else—they were that thing in their mothers’ womb and they will continue to be it after their last breath, as scattered dust, you might say, as part of the air we breathe. Every day, my friend, we inhale the ashes of military men, podiatrists, prostitutes, and, why not, those editorial ashes of Camilo Urquieta.

  Let me tell you about him. Urquieta was born in Cartagena, in Murcia—something he always brought up when dealing with Murcian authors. Early on, he moved to Madrid. He was first there under Franco, then during the decades of slow change. Later, by representing the writers of the emerging cultural scene—the Movida—he managed to find himself a spot in the world of letters. He was an early editor of Hugo Wast and Chardin, later of a short life of Saint Thomas and etiquette manuals, such as The Polite Child and Good Manners; then, from a cautious Introduction to Theosophy, translated by Zenobia Camprubí, he suddenly went on to publish the works of several young Latin American writers who were taking their first steps in the world of books. Courting notoriety with an anthology of vaguely erotic literature, he demonstrated once and for all that nothing in this new Spain was as it had been before. Urquieta knew instinctively what to publish, at what time and in what manner, and, above all, how to sell it and then start the whole process again. There are at least half a dozen publishing houses still running which began life under Urquieta. During the time we’re talking about, Urquieta was running an imprint—the vigorously named Sulphur—that dared to include in its catalog all those poets published in Argentina and Mexico which had previously only been available under the counter in certain dangerous shops. Ask Ana María Moix, who knows much more about that chapter of Spanish publishing than I do.

  Andrea knew Urquieta because, in the small social circle of those days, it was impossible not to know him. And he, predictably flattered that a beautiful and intelligent girl like Andrea would ask his advice, offered it to her in a dingy café next to Angel Sierra’s wine bar. Urquieta frequented this place, apparently, because one of his poets—Cornelio Berens, I believe—had described it in a Nerudian ode as “a mussel bravely clinging / to the prow of an old battleship.” Others says that Urquieta stayed out of the editorial offices because of the uncomfortable possibility of running into a debt collector there.

  At the back of this café, Urquieta had a table reserved for life. To reach it (I, too, have made the pilgrimage!) one had to go down a series of invisible steps, then grope one’s way along a corridor crammed with chairs and tables. One mean candle (“it creates atmosphere,” claimed the café’s owner, who was from Salamanca) grudgingly illuminated the editor’s face, which was smooth and creamy, like the paper in a deluxe edition. Urquieta, I don’t know if I’ve told you, had no body hair, and wore a rather unconvincing wig. But nothing could disguise his lack of eyebrows and eyelashes, and in the gloom, one had the disagreeable impression of sitting opposite someone not entirely human.

  Of course I don’t know what they said to each other, but I can imagine (humor me here) the anxious, ardent questions of little Andrea—toute feu, toute flamme, as you French say—and the solemn, know-it-all answers of Urquieta, playing part Père Goriot, part Casanova. Andrea must have explained to him about her discovery, the need to publish what she regarded as a prodigious work, the need to conceal from its author the fate of his book. Urquieta, smitten but cautious, must have asked for time to look at it and give her his opinion.

  You already know the rest of the story. Urquieta’s decision to publish In Praise of Lying. The rumors that began to circulate around the secret future bestseller. The race to be one of the first to read it. The scandal of the galley proofs. Suspicions around the name of the secret author. The invariably overconservative sales forecasts. Even though it was December and people were focused on Christmas shopping, all Madrid seemed to be absorbed by one topic.

  Finally, the long-awaited evening came. At about seven o’clock, a small but select group began to gather in the cramped, overheated space of the Antonio Machado cultural center. They certainly numbered more than the visitors who usually attended such presentations, which were rare at the time. I had received my invitation the day before. At first, I thought I might not go, because that same evening I was returning to Poitiers for a couple of days to attend a seminar, and the prospect didn’t thrill me. I mean to say, what would life be without that constant flow of vexatious obligations, of insipid engagements, of frustrated desires!

  Terradillos, let me set the scene: the guest of honor nowhere to be seen. Andrea, at the door, anxiously looking out for him. Two or three journalists waiting impatiently. Berens making jokes about the well-known modesty of celebrities. Quita wrapped in her fur stole, annoyed as hell, asking Tito Gorostiza if he really did not know what had happened to our Alejandro. Gorostiza sulking.

  Finally, Urquieta made an announcement saying that they could wait no longer.

  The proceedings were opened by a certain actress, a rising star in Spanish cinema, who read a few pages from the novel. The audience, doubtful at first, listened with increasing delight, bursting into applause at the end. After that Urquieta spoke. As you’d expect, he made an allusion to the new voices emerging from the New World, to the linguistic debt repaid now by the River Plate to the cradle of Cervantes, to that inspiration born on the legendary pampas between Eldorado and Tierra del Fuego. He concluded by citing various names from the Sulphur backlist who (so he claimed) were already classic authors. More applause. Then Bevilacqua appeared.

  Borne along on Andrea’s arm, he seemed to be dragged to the platform rather than guided there. Urquieta shook his hand, half turning so that the photographer could get a shot of them together. Then, with a kind of reverence, he stepped aside to let him speak. Bevilacqua stared at the microphone as though it were some strange creature, blinked, and raised his gaze to the back of the room; he looked around for Andrea and, finding her behind him, looked ahead again. With difficulty, he lit a cigarette.

  There is nothing longer than a public silence; this one of Bevilacqua’s must have lasted at the very least five endless minutes. We waited, perplexed, feeling uneasy for him more than for ourselves. Suddenly, as though something had hit him in the face, he looked down, got down from the platform, forged a path through the crowd, and made a swift escape through the front door. I say “escape,” because that was the impression he gave us. Of an animal in flight.

  With a few, halting words, Urquieta brought the proceedings to a close. It was apparent that even he, a seasoned master of ceremonies, was baffled. Bevilacqua’s behavior was so strange, so inexplicable, that everyone (myself included, of course) felt stunned and defrauded, as if the man who had run away was someone else. I went up to Andrea, to see if she could explain what had happened. The poor girl was on the brink of tears and, without answering me, tried to cover her face. Tito Gorostiza, always so gentlemanly, spoke consolingly to her while pocketing two of the bottles of sherry that Urquieta had laid on (because a good businessman knows when to be generous) in preparation for the final toast. Berens, who doesn’t miss a thing, joined us and, with those lizard features of his, launched into a rant.

  “I suppose this is the avant-garde way of doing things, eh? Rudeness as a literary style. And there I was, thinking Spain was above the silly posturing we’re used to in South America! Because you know what’s going to happen now? This snub will be interpreted as a revolutionary manifesto—just wait and see. We come from a country where nobody is surprised to see artists getting mixed up in politics, ‘the lowest of all human activity,’ as one of my fellow countrymen describes it. But why sh
it all over the new nest? What’s the point of that?”

  “Berens, weren’t you mixed up in politics yourself?” asked Paco Ordoñez, who had recently started working at the news agency EFE. “Isn’t that why they arrested you?”

  “‘You’ll always find a clover / Amid the grass unseen / Which when you turn it over / Shines with a braver green.’ You can have that quotation free. I wrote it,” Berens replied.

  I’m not insensitive to the suffering of others. I saw that Andrea was still anxious. She clearly wanted to leave. Without saying good-bye to anyone, I took her arm and led her out into the street. She didn’t put up much resistance. We found a café a few blocks away. When she had calmed down, I asked her what had happened. The poor thing said she didn’t know, that Bevilacqua seemed suddenly to have taken fright, that it must have been her fault for not consulting him, that she had thought the publication would make him happy, that she had only done it for him, so that his genius would be recognized.

  I told her that that would still be the case. I was in no doubt that In Praise of Lying was an important work.

  “If you say so,” she said, in a tone of voice which—given that I am easily moved—suddenly made her seem like a little girl. Isn’t there something touching about the absolute faith of people in love? All these years later, it still makes me shiver to remember Andrea’s voice.

  I answered that of course I thought so, that this was my professional opinion. “Without a doubt,” I assured her. “The critics will be on your side. And you know how harsh they usually are. But in this case they’ll be kinder—I’m sure of it.”

  I paid, and we left. Freezing fog was making the bad driving conditions worse, and it was a halting journey to her house. After leaving her, I went home, in a pensive mood.

  There he was. Bevilacqua was standing outside my front door, the tip of his cigarette glowing like lamplight in the fog. The nightwatchman was watching him charily. I seemed to be tasked with calming people’s nerves that night. You know me, Terradillos. You know what I’m like. I was already that way in my youth. I tried to soothe them both.

  We were scarcely through the door when Bevilacqua began to tell me everything. Andrea’s discovery had upset him very much, and to see, all of a sudden, the printed book had plunged him into a nightmare in which he felt utterly powerless. I reminded him of Freud’s discovery that nothing is accidental, that all events are prompted by something within us. But Bevilacqua was neither offended nor annoyed. He merely felt lost, stunned, incapable of expressing himself (he used an endless stream of words to make this point, of course). Up there on the platform, before that avid audience, hemmed in on the right by Urquieta, who terrified him, and on the left by Andrea, whom he loved, but who also scared him, the poor man had not known what to do or say. Then he caught sight of them. Him and her. The two of them. Right there in the audience. Sitting with everyone else. Smiling. He with his horrible dark glasses. She with her little hat.

  “Who?” I asked, pointlessly.

  “El Chancho and La Pájara,” he answered. “El Chancho Olivares and La Pájara Pinta.”

  “Not your zoological phantoms again, Bevilacqua,” I said, to mollify him. “Wasn’t La Pájara dead? Wasn’t El Chancho, as you call him, in prison for conning a military man? They’re hardly going to let him take a leave of absence!”

  “I can’t explain it,” he said, “but they were there.”

  “All right,” I said hurriedly, because my train was leaving in a couple of hours. “Let’s see. Suppose it was them. Suppose the grave could not hold her and prison bars were not enough for him. What does it matter to you? It’s not as though they blame Alejandro Bevilacqua for their woes.”

  Bevilacqua shot me a look of terror, wringing his long yellow fingers as though he were washing them. “Brother,” he entreated me, “you’re about to go to France for a few days. Would you let me stay here, in your house, just for the weekend? I promise not to touch anything. I just don’t have the courage to deal with the journalists, with Andrea, with Urquieta, with . . .” He let the sentence hang.

  What can I say—I’m a bit softhearted, as you know. Someone asks me for something and I can’t say no. Also, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the idea of leaving the house unoccupied for more than a few hours. I’d heard of several robberies taking place in the neighborhood, invariably when the occupiers were away. I had a hunch that the nightwatchman was passing on information, but of course it was impossible to prove this. And to be fair, Bevilacqua was a very tidy man. So I agreed. I swear that he embraced me with tears in his eyes; he would have kissed me if I’d let him. I picked up my suitcase, gave him a copy of my key, and let him walk me to the door.

  After I finished my Sunday seminar (the turnout was disappointing; from December to March the French show little interest in anything), I took the train back to Madrid. The Ávila landscape was visible through my window as, yawning and with my café con leche slopping cheerfully onto its saucer, I opened a newspaper the waiter had brought and read the terrible news that Bevilacqua had died. It was Tuesday. The newspaper said that on Sunday morning an early riser had come across the body in a pool of congealed blood. A photograph showed the nightwatchman pointing an accusing finger at my balcony. The article gave no further details, but lingered instead on the irony of this feted author having found fame such a short time before his tragic end. It quoted Urquieta, for whom the new literature had just lost one of its best voices. On the same page there was an ad in which the Sulphur publishing house reminded the public of the merits of In Praise of Lying. I reread the article several times. A death in one’s immediate circle is particularly hard to take in.

  When I got home, the nightwatchman advised me, with evident satisfaction, that the police wanted to question me. Not many people like the police. The Swiss, the English maybe. Not me. With a growing sense of unease, I started looking around this flat which no longer felt like mine. Violent acts render familiar things alien, and besides, in this case, there were traces of Bevilacqua in every room, on all the furniture. On the dining-room table were the remains of a frugal supper. On the sofa (and I usually keep everything so tidy) there was a waistcoat, several shirts, and a towel. The bed was unmade. I swear that I felt I could never again sleep on that mattress, on that pillow, as if Bevilacqua had died there, between my sheets. After a while I went out onto the balcony, whose balustrade now struck me as dangerously low. For the first time in my life, I felt vertigo.

  I resigned myself to the worst: discomfort, uncertainty, insomnia. I unpacked my suitcase, put Bevilacqua’s things away in his (which sat in a corner of the room, like a loyal dog awaiting its master’s return), and spent the rest of the day cleaning the flat from ceiling to floor with Ajax. I slept badly that night.

  It must have been eight o’clock in the morning when the doorbell rang. Not finding my glasses on the bedside table, I groped my way toward the front door. I could just make out two hazy shapes. One, small and bald, belonged to the nightwatchman. The other introduced itself as Inspector Mendieta, from the Investigation Squad. Apologizing for the fact that I was still in pajamas, I invited the inspector in, then closed the door in the nightwatchman’s face.

  You have good eyesight, Terradillos, and I bet you can’t imagine how awkward it is to talk to someone whose features are a blur. My discomfort was exacerbated by the paradoxical character of Inspector Mendieta. Even without glasses, I could tell that he was both cordial and menacing, paunchy and mustachioed, like a Mexican Father Christmas. He asked me to sit down as though we were in his house, not mine.

  In a way I was almost disappointed that he didn’t treat me more severely. He asked a few obvious questions (why Bevilacqua had been in my house, how long we had known each other, what his state of mind had been when I left him, if anything unusual had happened in the last days of his life), and he wondered if I would be staying in Madrid in the following weeks. Then he took a look around the flat, pausing for several minutes on the balcony without
saying anything. He sat down again.

  “The rail is very low, isn’t it?” he suddenly said.

  “Not just mine,” I protested. “All the balconies are the same. It’s part of the design. Art Nouveau,” I explained. My fuzzy vision was really annoying me, and when I noticed how bothered I was, it made me feel even more bothered. I began to talk about Madrid’s Art Nouveau, comparing it to Barcelona’s. Apparently not listening, Mendieta got to his feet and went back out to the balcony. I stopped talking. When we said good-bye, I felt accused, without knowing why.

  I said before, Terradillos, that the death of someone close has something unreal about it. That’s true, but there’s a solidity and a substance to it as well. Those deaths that take place out there in the world, those hundreds of thousands of deaths that swamp us every day—they’re insubstantial in their vast anonymity. That of a friend, on the other hand, wrenches from our very core something that belongs to us, and to which we belong. I think I’ve been clear on this point: I didn’t love Bevilacqua. And yet, the fact that he had died there, in my house, under my momentarily absent nose, hurt like a pulled tooth, like a cut finger. Something was missing, now, from my life’s routine, something regular, albeit a bit insipid, a bit boring and annoying: the tall, thin, pale, and tormented shadow of Alejandro Bevilacqua.