Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  One of the conditions for granting us democracy and for that astonishing act of hara-kiri had been an agreement that, to put it bluntly, no one would call anyone else to account. Not for the distant outrages and crimes of the Civil War committed by both sides at the front and in the rearguard, nor for the infinitely more recent crimes committed by the dictatorship, during the seemingly endless thirty-six years of punitive, vengeful rearguard actions, a boom time for their henchmen and a time of humiliation and silence for everyone else. Although it was far from equitable – the losers had been called to account time and again for both real and imaginary crimes – everyone accepted this condition, not just because it was the only way the transition from one system to another could proceed more or less peacefully, but also because those who had suffered most had no alternative and were in no position to make demands. The promise of living in a normal country – with elections every four years, the legalization of all political parties, a new constitution approved by the majority, no censorship – and, one imagined, the rapid implementation of a new divorce bill – with trade unions, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and no bishops meddling with the law of the land – all of that was far more alluring than the old quest for an apology or the desire for reparation. Both apology and reparation had been so long postponed, and we had so little faith that they would ever appear, that they’d grown worn and frayed in the eternal, never-advancing journey of hopeless hope. The dead were dead and would not return; those who had spent years unjustly imprisoned had lost those years and would never recover them; the subjugated would cease to be subjugated; political prisoners would be amnestied and released with their criminal record wiped clean; those in exile could come home to grow old and die; no one could be arrested or sentenced arbitrarily; we could punish tyrants by not voting for them, ousting them from their posts and stripping them of their privileges, or at least some of them. So tempting was this future that it was worth burying the past – both the old and the more recent – especially if that past threatened to ruin a future that was, comparatively speaking, so good. Many people nowadays have forgotten all this or know nothing about it, either because they don’t remember or because they cannot even conceive of what it means to live under a dictatorship, but to us, who had experienced it at first hand, this promised horizon seemed like an almost impossible dream, and our overriding feeling was one of relief and of great good fortune: we were about to be set free from a totalitarian regime without having to live through any further carnage, and we could at last talk openly about that first time of bloodletting.

  And that is what happened, people started talking about the War in broad, historical terms, rather than going into personal or individual details. We accepted the condition and carried it out to the letter, perhaps too faithfully. Under the general amnesty, no one attempted to bring anyone to justice, and this clearly saved us from endless bitter confrontations and accusations and the ever-present possibility of a return of the hara-kiri-ides, although each day that passed pushed them further and further into a ghostly territory from which, by the time they realized what was happening, it was impossible to escape. During those years, therefore, denouncing someone for what they had done during the dictatorship or during the War was unthinkable. Not calling for justice implied a kind of social pact, tantamount to us saying: ‘Fine, let’s just let sleeping dogs lie. If the price we have to pay for a return to normality and for us not to go back to killing each other is that no one calls anyone to account, then let’s just tear up the bills and start again, because, in exchange, we will have, if not the country we wanted, one that comes very close. That, at least, is what we’re seeking, without violence, without prohibitions and without rising up in armed struggle against those who win an election fair and square.’ They were years of optimism and generosity and hope, and I’m quite sure that, at the time, this was the best possible outcome.

  However, something strange happened: the social pact became so internalized that we ended up fulfilling the condition almost too scrupulously, especially when it came to talking about the past. It made good sense for us not to get embroiled with the courts and for the courts not to get clogged up with painful lawsuits that would have made it impossible for us to continue living together and would have ended very badly. Preferring not to know and not to talk about it was another matter entirely. And yet most people chose that route, chose to remain silent, certainly in public, but often in private too. There was still a degree of stoicism and discretion then, this was before the times – which continue to this day – in which everyone saw the advantages of playing the victim and bemoaning and profiting from their personal woes, whether real or imaginary, or those of their antecedents of class or gender, ideology or region. There was a certain sense of elegance that advised against boasting about suffering and persecution, and made those most badly affected hold their tongues. This attitude only changed when a few notable individuals who had supported Franco at some point – either at the beginning, when repression was at its fiercest, or in the middle or at the end – pushed their luck and, not content with their state of impunity, which meant that they could live in peace and unreproached and with the privileges from their past careers intact, began elaborating illusory biographies, pretending that they had been democrats since the Athenian age and claiming that their anti-franquista attitudes dated back a long way, if not for ever. They took shelter in the ignorance of the younger citizens – and in the ignorance of the population as a whole – and in the discretion of those of their own age, who knew better. One novelist stated in a newspaper that, when the Civil War broke out, he was in Galicia, a franquista stronghold, and so had no alternative but to fight on their side, but that had he been in Madrid, he would have ardently defended the Republic, as had been his intention at the time. Those who knew him also knew that he had, in fact, been in Madrid at the start of the War, and had done all he could to escape from there and travel to Galicia to join the very side he was now renouncing with such aplomb. A historian boasted of his ‘years of exile in Paris’, when he had, in fact, spent those years working in the Spanish embassy, representing Franco, of course. Another intellectual mentioned his ‘enforced exile’, which had consisted of a lucrative two-year contract with an American university in the comparatively peaceful 1960s – a time when no one who had survived the worst bothered going into exile – having benefited in previous harsher years from the numerous favours bestowed on him by the regime for being a fellow Falangist and adoring supporter. And there were many more such cases.

  These false declarations and denials, these inventions and presumptions, proved irritating to anyone who had genuinely opposed the regime or refused to collaborate, who had suffered for decades and had a pretty fair idea of the role played by various individuals; irritating, that is, to the few people who had the necessary knowledge and memory and so could not be deceived. Most could be and were deceived, because no letters were sent to the press or to the television stations contradicting these pompous asses who, instead of counting themselves lucky to have survived unscathed following the restoration of democracy, had absolutely no compunction about concocting these stories, presenting themselves with non-existent medals, and generally manufacturing a convenient pedigree. The people who knew the truth were accustomed to losing and to keeping quiet. The agreement, the pact of silence, weighed on them excessively, as did the general distaste for and aversion to revenge and betrayal. And so the lies of these former Franco supporters went unchallenged and no one spoke of their personal experiences in public, apart from the brazen few and their fallacious tales. However, the brazen few grew still bolder and went so far with their barefaced lies that they gradually provoked more and more of those in the know to react in private – how much restraint and patience they showed, how much they continue to show now – and to talk about what they knew, what they had done or said or written, how they had behaved during the War and during the dictatorship, behaviour that thousands or even hu
ndreds of thousands of people were now taking great pains to hide, embellish or erase. There were so many backing each other up that the great labour of concealment and disguise was sure to succeed: I’ll stand by you if you stand by me, I’ll keep schtum for you if you keep schtum for me, I’ll put a flattering gloss on your past if you do the same for me. And I thought that perhaps it was some such murmur, from those resisting the sham and telling the truth – toned down, discreet, mentioned only to family members or at meetings and suppers with friends or in the even greater privacy of bed – that had recently reached Muriel’s ears.

  While I was submitting him to my brief interrogation, Muriel had continued his pacing, every now and then glancing across at me, merely to check that I was still there, still listening, glances that led me to think that he hadn’t grasped what I was getting at. He stopped when I stopped talking. Then he gave me a grave, sober look, which I didn’t know how to interpret. Perhaps it bothered him to be asked so many direct questions, which might force him to tell me the story when he had not yet decided whether to tell me or not. He put away the pillbox-cum-compass and with his free hand fumbled for his tie underneath his sweater and smoothed it out – it must have got wrinkled or ridden up while he was lying on the floor. He also straightened the knot, although, having no mirror handy, it remained crooked. I pointed this out to him, gesturing with my left hand, and he again adjusted the knot, this time successfully. He went over to one of the sofas, sat down, crossed his legs and said:

  ‘Almost everything has to do with the War, Juan, one way or another. Let’s just hope that one day this will cease to be the case, but I fear I won’t see that day. I doubt if even you will, despite being so much younger and even though what happened then must seem as remote to you as the Cuban or the Carlist wars or even the Napoleonic invasion. If that’s what you believe, then you’re quite wrong. You’ll continue to hear people talking about our dreadful War for far longer than you might think. Especially those who didn’t live through it, because they’re the ones who need it most, in order to give meaning to their existence, to feel anger or pity, to have a mission in life, to feel they belong to the right side, to seek retrospective or abstract vengeance, what they would call justice when there can be no posthumous justice; to be moved and to move others to tears, to write books or make films and earn money, to gain prestige, to benefit sentimentally from the poor wretches who died, to imagine hardships and sufferings no one could possibly understand even if they heard about them first-hand; to set themselves up as their heirs. A war like that is a stigma that takes one or even two centuries to disappear, because it contains everything and affects and debases everything. It contains the very worst of everything. It was like removing the mask of civilization that all presentable nations wear, firmly attached like this patch’ – and he tapped his own eyepatch – ‘and which allows them to pretend. Pretending is essential if we are to live together, to prosper and progress, and here, where we’ve seen the criminals’ true faces, seen what happened, pretence is impossible. It will take a very long time for us to forget what we are or what we could be, and how easily too, all it takes is a single match. There will be times when that war dwindles in importance, as is beginning to happen now, but it will be like one of those family feuds that last for generations, and you find the great-great-great-grandchildren of one family hating the great-great-great-grandchildren of another family even though they have no idea why; simply because that hatred was drummed into them from birth, enough for those two lots of great-great-great-grandchildren to have inflicted harm on each other and thus see in their respective actions proof of what they were told: “Our elders warned us about them, and they were quite right.” And so it goes on. None of us can possibly comprehend the harm done by Franco and his henchmen, by those who began that entirely unnecessary War, with such deliberate, extreme intent, as an exercise in extermination, and who enjoyed it all so much that they didn’t want it ever to end. Of course those they attacked were equally extreme. But it isn’t just what they did, it’s the curse they placed on this country. And, unlike Hitler, the great oafs weren’t even aware of that curse. They didn’t consider the consequences, why would they? And, on the other hand, on the other hand, who can say how much longer those will last …’ Muriel stopped speaking and remained sunk in thought, again looking up, perhaps at the painting by Casanova’s brother. But it was as if his one eye were contemplating not the horseman in the picture (possibly a scene depicting peaceful military manoeuvres, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms), but a very slow, almost motionless, future of imperceptible advances and retreats. That is precisely the effect produced by the best paintings, which, despite everything, never move, going neither forward nor back.

  I didn’t know if this long speech was intended as a way of avoiding giving me an answer and thus abandoning the subject, but then, I wondered, why had he chosen to bring the subject up in the first place and why ask me that question? I tried again, swearing to myself that it would be the last time, at least for that morning. He would soon be leaving for his office, where he spent most of the morning until lunchtime; at first, he didn’t usually take me with him, although later on he did. Sometimes he had lunch out, with other people, and did not come back until mid-afternoon. Sometimes he wouldn’t reappear all day and would return only at night when his wife, Beatriz, had gone to bed. If that occurred on several consecutive days, they would only see each other over breakfast. When, that is, he wasn’t travelling or filming.

  ‘So is this business with your friend to do with the Civil War or not? You haven’t yet answered my question, Eduardo. Or, rather, I’m not sure whether what you’ve just told me is a Yes or a No. But if you’re not more explicit with me, I still can’t help you.’

  He smiled his luminous smile, and his eye smiled too, sympathetically, indulgently, the look of amused indulgence with which many adults regard or speak to children.

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry, so impatient, I was just coming to that. No, it’s neither of the things you mentioned. As far as I know, he didn’t kill anyone or take part in any summary executions or send anyone to their death, among other things because he wasn’t old enough to do that between 1936 and 1939, or only if he’d been some prodigy of precocious evil, of which there were a few. He’s not much older than me. Nor did he betray or denounce anyone. It’s actually related to the fact that he apparently didn’t betray or denounce anyone. Of course he’s always had a reputation for having behaved very well in the post-war years, of having helped those who most needed him, I mean for political reasons. He’s irreproachable in that sense, in that respect. As I say, that, at least, has been his reputation.’

  I couldn’t help but notice the words ‘in that respect’, as if his friend had been less irreproachable in other respects, which, to be fair, was not so very unusual: there are so many aspects to our lives that we are bound to be found wanting in some. Nor had I failed to notice the even stranger part of what he had said, the part I had most difficulty in grasping, and that I couldn’t simply allow to pass:

  ‘Yes, but what I don’t understand is how the problem can possibly be related to the fact that your friend neither betrayed nor denounced anyone, isn’t that what you said? Because surely that’s a good thing. And if what you’ve been told doesn’t imply any crime and doesn’t affect you directly because it isn’t a betrayal of you as such, well – I mean, you can tell me about it another day, if you like – but I really can’t understand what you meant when you said “something like that”. Something that you can’t dismiss as mere gossip and that anyone would deny to anyone who asked, “to a friend, an enemy, a mistress, a stranger, a judge, not to mention his wife or children”. Those were your words. Don’t go thinking I haven’t been listening. I have, as you see.’

  He ran his hand over his cheeks and chin, as if checking to see that he had shaved properly. Then he rubbed his forefinger several times up and down his large, straight nose, which resembled that of a TV actor fr
om my youth, Richard Boone, who also had a slender moustache; in fact, Muriel was possibly more like him than any of the others I mentioned earlier. Then he gently drummed his fingertips on his bulbous eyepatch, doubtless preparing himself to make a decision, although perhaps only as regards me, rather than the matter in hand.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have got you all intrigued for no reason, but just for the moment, you’re going to have to wait. I still don’t know what to do with this story. In fact, it’s really bothering me. So much so that I daren’t tell anyone else. I don’t think I should. Not yet. And if I did tell someone, you or whoever, I would be spreading the story, and there’s no way of catching or stopping something once you’ve thrown it to the winds. Later, depending on what I decide (which will be soon, don’t worry, one way or another), I might have to ask you to do something for me, might need your help as my assistant or, more than that, as my bishop or even my knight, for, as you may or may not know, the knight is the most unpredictable piece on the chessboard, capable of leaping over obstacles in eight different directions. I may also simply ask you to forget this whole conversation, as if it had never happened. But I don’t want to leave you completely in the dark and, besides, since it’s quite likely that you’ll meet this friend at some point, you could, anyway, see what you think, since he’s the person involved, just to see how he strikes you; one tends not to notice things so much in people one has known for ages. His name is Jorge Van Vechten and he’s a doctor. Dr Van Vechten.’

  I couldn’t resist interrupting him, we all leap up like a coiled spring whenever we hear an unfamiliar word or name. Now I know exactly how that name is written, but when I first heard it (Muriel pronounced it ‘Ban Bekten’, as did Van Vechten himself and everyone who knew him, although later I was told that in Holland and Flemish-speaking Belgium, they would say ‘Fan Fechten’ or something like that), I couldn’t catch it the first time nor imagine how it was written.