Dance and Dream

by Javier Marías

  Young Pérez Nuix had launched into her request but had immediately left it vaguely floating, without completing it or focusing on it, then she had gone on postponing it or measuring it out or preparing me for it, so that talking to me would not take only 'a moment' as she had announced from the street. Or was it simply that other thing, that she didn't know in what order to approach the topic, and the sentences all crowded into her head, and then branched off and diverged, causing isolated, preliminary questions to arise in my mind relative to what she was saying? I was struck by various things she mentioned without intending to mention them or unaware that I did not know about them. The conversation would be even less brief if I was to linger over all of them.

  'Jane ... Treves, Branshaw?' was my first question. I lingered over those names, I couldn't just let them pass.

  'Yes, t-r-e-v-e-s,' she replied, perhaps judging by my brief pause that I had not quite caught the names, and she automatically spelled them out in English, spelling in Spanish came less naturally to her: 'ti, or, i, vi, i, es', that's how it would sound to a Spaniard (and I had, in fact, assumed that it would be written as Trevis or Travis). Biographically, she was quite a lot more than half-English. She spoke my language as fluently as I did or just a touch more slowly, and she had a good, even literary vocabulary, but from time to time she slipped in some odd word or expression or used an Anglicism or was drawn into an English pronunciation; her c or z was softer than the norm, as it is with Catalans when they speak Castilian Spanish, as was her g or her j; fortunately, her t was not fully alveolar nor her k as plosive as it is among the English, because that would have made her diction in Spanish unbearably affected, almost irritating in someone with such a mastery of the language. However, it was the other surname, Branshaw, that had amused me, although I wasn't going to start enquiring about him nor explain my interest, it wasn't the moment, one must always be careful with talk, a second's distraction and it can become infinite, like an unstoppable arrow that never reaches its target and continues flying until the end of time, never slackening its pace. I did not, therefore, insist, I did not linger any longer, that has to be avoided, opening up more and more subjects or parentheses that never close, each one containing its own thousands of digressions. 'They're people Bertie uses, occasional informants, from outside, more or less specialised in certain areas, certain fields. Oh, that's right, you haven't come across them yet,' she added as if the penny had just dropped and, judging the matter to be closed, she didn't want to spend any more time on it, and nor did I. She kept calling Tupra 'Bertie', then correcting herself and slipping up again, that was doubtless how she thought of him, that is how he presented himself to her in her mind, even though at work she addressed him as Bertram, at least in my presence, still friendly but more formal, it would be equivalent in my language to a respectful use of the familiar 'tu'. He had not yet given me permission to go that far, that would come later, and at his urging not mine.

  'What do you mean "whoever has requested the report"?' That was my second preliminary question. 'What do you mean by "client"? I thought there was only one and that it was always the same one, albeit with different faces, I don't know, the navy, the army, such-and-such a ministry or one of the embassies, or Scotland Yard or the judiciary or Parliament, or, I don't know, the Bank of England or even Buckingham Palace. I mean the Government.' I had been about to say 'the Secret Service, MI6, MIS', but that would have sounded too ridiculous on my lips, and so I avoided it and replaced it as I went with: 'Or the Crown. The State.'

  It seemed to me that young Pérez Nuix did not want to spend time on this subject either, she had launched into the first part of her speech and had not reckoned on the possible side effects of my curiosity. Perhaps she was formulating her request in calculated stages, perhaps she was getting me accustomed to it first, getting me used to the idea in several phases (the main drift of the request was already clear); or its nature - but she would not want to lose her way among unexpected matters of procedure, in preambles and long explanations.

  'Well, yes, generally speaking, that's so, at least as I understand it, but there are exceptions. We don't often know who exactly we're reporting to, or who our interpretations, our judgements, are intended for. We certainly don't, but Tupra, I imagine, must always know or deduce who it is. Or perhaps not, some commissions probably reach him through the intermediaries of other intermediaries, and he doesn't ask questions unless he can do so without arousing suspicions or causing upset. And he has a very precise idea of when it's safe to do so; he spends his whole life calculating such things. But he'll have some idea, I suppose, of where each commission comes from. He can see through walls. He can sniff out where things come from. He's very bright.'

  'Does that mean that we sometimes work for . . . private individuals, if I can put it like that?' Young Pérez Nuix pursed her lips in a gesture that was half mild annoyance and half self-imposed patience, as if she were unresistingly accepting the irritating fact of having, after all, to discuss the matter, velis nolis or doubtless nolis, much against her will. I had the advantage of directing the conversation, of abbreviating it or delaying it or diverting it or interrupting it as long as her request remained incomplete, or at one remove, as long as it had been neither accepted nor rejected. Yes, until the eternal or eternalised 'We'll see', until the 'Yes' or 'No' had been pronounced, she would be pretty much prohibited from contradicting me in any way. This is one of the ephemeral powers of the person doing the granting or refusing, the most immediate compensation for finding oneself involved, but one pays the price for this too, later on. And this is why, often, in order to make that power last, the reply or decision are delayed, and sometimes never even arrive at all. She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again the other way, I saw the ladder in her tights begin on one thigh, she would not discover it for quite some time, I thought (she was not looking where I was looking), and by then the size of the ladder might make her blush. But I wasn't going to tell her about it now, that would have been an impertinence or so it seemed to me just then. What little of her thigh that was revealed, however, was of a very pleasing colour.

  'Does it really matter?' she asked, not defensively, but as if she had never thought about it and was therefore asking herself the question too. 'We're always working for Tupra, aren't we? I mean, he hires us, he pays us. He's the one we answer to and the one to whom we give our work, on the understanding that he'll make the best use of it, well, that at least is what I assume, I suppose. Or perhaps, I don't know, perhaps I just think that it's not my concern. Is it the concern of a car worker what happens to the screws he puts in or the engine he builds along with his workmates, for example, if it's going to be an ambulance or a tank, or, if it is a tank, whose hands the tank will end up in?' 'I really don't think the two things are comparable,' I said and said no more. I wanted her to go on arguing, I was the one in charge just as Peter Wheeler was in charge when he and I were talking, or Tupra when he urged me on or questioned me or forced me to see more and then wormed things out of me.

  "Well, what do you want me to say?" - Bueno, como me quieres que diga, she had said. Yes, there was definitely something strange or half-English sometimes about her turns of phrase in Spanish, yet they were almost never merely incorrect. - 'Going further than that would be like a novelist worrying not about the publisher to whom he hands over his novel so that the former can find as wide a public for it as possible, but about the potential buyers of what the publisher produces under his imprint. There would be no way of selecting or controlling or meeting those buyers,, and, besides, that wouldn't be the novelist's concern. He puts stories, plots and ideas into his book. Bad ideas, temptations if you like. But surely what arises out of them, what they unleash, is neither his business nor his responsibility.' She paused for a moment. 'Or do you think it would be?' She seemed sincere — or genuine -I mean that she seemed to be thinking what she was saying while she was formulating it, somewhat uncertainly, hesitantly, with a sense of spontaneity and
of effort too (the effort of really thinking, nothing more, but which is something that is becoming less and less common in the world, as if the whole world nearly always resorts to a few set pieces available to everyone, even to the most unlettered, a kind of infection of the air).

  'I'm not even sure the comparison works,' I replied, and now I joined her in her effort, 'because our reports aren't, as I understand it, public but more or less secret; at any rate, they're not available to be read by anyone nor are they sold in shops; besides, they're about people, real people whom no one has invented and who cannot, therefore, be made to disappear or be dropped in the next chapter, and for whom I have no idea whether what we say has much or little importance, if it causes them great harm or brings them great benefit, if what it withholds from or grants them is crucial to them, if it makes their plans possible or completely scuppers them, plans which, as far as they're concerned, are important, possibly vital. If it resolves or ruins their future, or, at the very least, their immediate future (but then the distant future depends on the immediate future, and so everything else ends up depending on it too). Anyway, I don't believe reporting to the Crown or the State is the same as reporting to a private individual.'

  'Ah, you don't believe,' she said. Not with irony (she could not as yet allow herself that), but perhaps with surprise. 'And what do you see as the fundamental difference?' Ah, yes, what did I see? Her question made me feel suddenly ingenuous, absurdly much younger or less experienced (I was, as she said, new), and it suddenly became a very hard question to answer without appearing a complete idiot, a novice. I had no option but to try, though; after all, I had come out with the remark, and I couldn't simply allow it to fall at the first fence, I couldn't just give in like that and say: 'Yes, you're right. There is, as far as I can see, no difference at all.'

  'At least in theory,' I said protecting myself as best I could, 'the State safeguards the common interest, the interests of its citizens, that should be its sole concern. At least in theory,' I said again: I didn't really believe what I was saying, even as I was saying it, and that is why it emerged only slowly; she would be bound to notice this, 'it's just an intermediary, an interpreter. And its components, which are always circumstantial, are not subject to personal, individual or private passions, either base or elevated. How can I put it, they are representatives, a part of the whole, and nothing more, and they are replaceable, interchangeable. They have been chosen, in places where that's usual, as is the case, up to a point, in both our countries. One assumes they're working for the general good. According to their own lights, of course. True, they can make mistakes, and even pretend to make mistakes in order to disguise as error any personal, selfish gain. That inevitably happens in practice, possibly frequently. Possibly all the time and everywhere, from the sewers up to the palace. But we have to assume their theoretical good faith, otherwise we would never be able to live in peace. There can be no peace without the assumption that our governments are legitimate, even honest, because our states are too. (Or you can dispense with that illusion, if you like.) And so you work for them based on that theoretical good faith, which also touches or enfolds or protects you in your mission, your job, or even in your mere acquiescence. On the other hand, you wouldn't work for any private individual without first finding out exactly who he is, what he does, what he proposes, if he's a criminal or an honest man. And to what aims our efforts will contribute.'

  'You said it. In theory,' agreed young Pérez Nuix, and she uncrossed her legs and lit a cigarette, one of mine, she took it without asking, as if, in this respect, she were a pure-bred Spaniard. They weren't Rameses II, just Karelias from the Peloponnese, far from cheap, but not that rare either, I never skimp on cigarettes. With that movement, the ladder in her tights advanced a little further, but she still didn't see or feel it. (Or perhaps she didn't care.) (Or perhaps she was offering it to me: a minimal, insignificant, progressive nakedness; no, that I didn't believe.) 'Look, in all the years I've been here, I've never seen anyone who wasn't a private individual.' - That 'here' I took to mean 'working here'; as far as I knew, she had spent most of her life in her mother's country. - 'Not even in the army, which is mostly about obeying orders and very little about taking decisions, a machine they call it. But it isn't, nothing is. It doesn't matter what posts people occupy, or whom they represent, whether they have high responsibilities or are mere errand-boys, whether they've been elected or chosen arbitrarily, it doesn't matter where their authority, however large or small, comes from, or whether their sense of the State is great or non-existent, their loyalty is beside the point, as are their venality and their proclivity for changing sides. It doesn't matter if the money that passes through their hands belongs to the Treasury and that not a penny piece of it is theirs. It doesn't matter, they will handle huge amounts of money, never mind insignificant sums, as if they were their own. I'm not saying that they keep the money, not all of them, or not necessarily; but they distribute it according to their whim or convenience and only afterwards find reasons for that distribution, never before. There are, as you know, always reasons a posteriori for any action, even for the most gratuitous and most unspeakable actions, reasons can always be found, ridiculous, improbable and ill-founded sometimes and which deceive no one or only the person who invents them. But you can always find a reason. And sometimes those reasons are good and convincing, impeccable; in fact, it's easier to find a reason for some thing that has happened than for plans and intentions, for proposals or decisions. What has already happened provides a very strong, solid starting point: it's irreversible, and that provides a standard, a guide. It's something to hold on to. Or more than that, something to adhere to, because it binds and obliges, and so half your work is done for you. It's far easier to give reasons to explain something that is past (or, which comes to the same thing, to find them or even, why not, provide them) than to justify beforehand what you want to happen, what you're trying to achieve. Anyone in politics knows that, as does anyone in diplomacy. As do wet gamblers, or criminals when they decide to eliminate someone and do eliminate them, knowing that they will deal later on with any previous considerations and with examining the pros and cons when they meet them as consequences; but the eliminee has been eliminated, you see, and there's nothing anyone can do about it, and there's nearly always gain, not pain. And everyone who occupies some post of responsibility knows this, even if they're the last policeman in the last village in the remotest of shires.' -'She didn't use our Spanish word condado,' I thought, 'but then it isn't much used nowadays.' After all, it was her language too. And she had used the English term 'wet gamblers' too, an expression I had never heard and didn't understand, perhaps it had no real equivalent in Spanish, given that she had not even attempted to find one: it meant literally jugadores humedos, or tahures mojados, I had a sudden anachronistic image of waistcoats on Mississippi riverboats. - 'And they're all private individuals, I can assure you, under the uniforms and outside of their offices, and inside too, when they're alone.' — I remembered Rosa Klebb, SMERSH's ruthless murderess in From Russia with Love, who, according to that novel, might have killed Andres Nin; I remembered the description of her that I had read in Wheeler's house, on that night of improvised, feverish study by the river of calm continuity: 'She would be difficult to get out of her warm, hoggish bed in the morning. Her private habits would be slovenly, even dirty. It would not be pleasant ... to look into the intimate side of her life, when she relaxed, out of uniform ...' And there was still time for this thought to cross my mind: 'Few people are exactly appealing when they get out of or into their warm bed, when they relax or let themselves go or lower their guard; but I know that Luisa is, and this young woman seems as if she would be; or perhaps neither of them ever does lower her guard, despite that ever-growing ladder in her tights.' — 'To a greater or lesser degree everyone allows themselves to be led by their impulses, they are oriented, guided by their sympathies and antipathies, by their fears, their ambitions, their conjectures and t
heir obsessions; by their preferences and their grudges, biographical or social. So I don't see the difference, Jaime. But then it's better for me that you do see the difference, because that means you won't mind so much doing me the favour I'm asking. Because this commission comes from private individuals and not from the State, that much I know. I mean that it comes from private private individuals.'