Your Face Tomorrow 2

by Javier Marías

  'I learned it from the Krays,' he said, using that plural which is redundant in Spanish when used with surnames or the names of families (the plural is indicated by the article, for example, 'los Manoia') and which more and more of our idiotic compatriots are transferring into our language out of pure copy-cat ignorance: they'll end up saying 'los Lopeces' or 'los Santistebanes' or 'los Mercaderes' — but I didn't understand the word at the time, nor did I imagine it as having a capital letter or even know that it was a surname, still less how it was written ('erase', 'craze', 'kreys', 'crays', 'crease', 'creys', or even 'krais'? Most Spaniards have difficulty distinguishing the different kinds of Y in English). That is why I abruptly stopped the deluge, at the same time as he stopped at a traffic light.

  'From what?'

  'From whom, you mean,' he replied. 'The Kray brothers, k-r-a-y.' And he spelled it out, as people so often do with English words and names. 'There's no reason why you should have heard of them, they were twins, Ronnie and Reggie, two pioneering gangsters from the 1950's and 1960's, they started out in the East End, they were from Bethnal Green or thereabouts; they took over the respective turfs of the Italians and the Maltese; they prospered and expanded and eventually ended up in prison at the end of the 1960's, one died behind bars and I think the other one is still in there, he must be pretty old by now and he'll probably never be let out. They were the most violent and the most feared and the most vicious of the lot, sadists really, and they did little to curb their cruelty, and to start with, they used swords. Obviously, in their first attempts at punishment beatings and intimidation, they did so out of necessity, because they didn't have the money for more expensive weapons. They provoked terror with those swords, they would slice their victim's face from ear to ear with a single cut, or slit them down the spine or lower still. They'd sometimes make a second cut too, and it's said that they sliced one woman in four. There are a number of books about them, and there was a film as well, I thought you were a cinema-goer. Although it probably wasn't shown in Spain, too parochial to be of interest in other countries, a minor London story. I've seen it, though, and in one or two scenes they showed them sowing panic with their swords. I remember one scene took place in a pool hall. It wasn't a bad film, well documented, and the actors were twins too. Biographical cinema, they call it.' I had never heard that term. I'd heard of 'biopic', but never 'biographical cinema', yet that was what he said.

  He had defused me, at least for the moment. That was the way he usually talked, he went from one sentence to another and each one took him further away from whatever had given rise to the first, further away from the origin of the conversation or from his disquisition, if that was what it was. The origin in this case had been my anger, my resentment at the way he had involved me in his atrocities and made me witness them, in films and in novels anyone can get killed for no reason at all and no one so much as blinks, not the author or the characters or the viewers or the readers, it always seems so easy and so ordinary and so commonplace. But it isn't like that in real life, it isn't easy or ordinary or commonplace, not in the lives led by the vast — and I mean vast — majority of people, and in real life it causes enormous unease and alarm and sorrow, unimaginable to someone who has never been embroiled in such things. (As I believe I said before, it leaves you trembling and for a long time afterwards too. And then you feel depressed, and that lasts even longer.) Fortunately, we had not, as far as I knew, killed anyone, contrary to what had seemed likely when that sword first appeared (I might be the one to phone De la Garza later, behind Tupra's back — that would be best — to find out if the dickhead was still alive, and hadn't subsequently snuffed it because of some internal injury). After all, it had only been a few blows and shakings and a brief attempted drowning, pretty minor stuff really, very small beer in a film or in one of those slow-witted novel-clones about body-busting psychopaths or analytical, almost arithmetical, serial killers, there are dozens of them, in imitative Spain as well. And yet that trifling incident — at least compared with fictional versions - had left me feeling feverish and nauseous and suffering from intermittent cold sweats, they did not last long, but nor did they entirely go away either, and every time the car stopped at a red light and no air was coming in, the sweats would return and I would be drenched again in a matter of seconds. This was during the car journey, which was indeed brief, especially at night, for we had nearly reached my square already.

  Feeling troubled, but, even more than that, feeling both irritable and curious, I had said nothing after his explanations about the Kray twins, and had to backtrack mentally to recover if not the origin of that comment, at least the near vicinity: the sword.

  'What do you mean when you say you learned from them? Do you mean the business with the sword? And where did you learn it from, from books, from the film, or did you actually know the Krays?'

  Tupra would have been born around 1950, slightly before or slightly after. He might have known them in the role of apprentice, beginner or acolyte, before their imprisonment, in some spheres of activity people do start very young, almost as children. He had mentioned Bethnal Green on other occasions, it had been the poorest part of London during the Victorian era, and its poverty had lasted much longer than that very long reign. For decades, it was home to an insane asylum, the Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum, and the district around Old Nichol Street known as 'Jago' - the name by which Tupra sometimes ironically called me - was notorious for its high levels of deprivation and of crime. If he did come from an area like that - but had also studied at Oxford, thanks perhaps to his gifts - it might explain why he was equally at home among low-lifes and in high society: the latter can be learned and is within the grasp of anyone; on the other hand, the only valid training for the former is total immersion. It was possible, given his age. Tupra, however, did not answer me directly, but then he rarely did.

  'The film must be available on DVD or video. But it's pretty gloomy stuff, and fairly squalid. If, as you say, you tend to avoid squalor like the plague, you'd better not see it,' he said, as if he hadn't heard my questions or merely found them superfluous; and I noted, too, a slight hint of mockery, taking my aversion to squalor so literally. 'An actor I know well, an old friend of mine, had a bit part in it and, one night, when they were fil ming, I helped him rehearse his scene. I think that's why I went to see it later on, he had picked up a lot of my style. In the scene, he was sharing an army cell with the twins, during their national service, when they were still very young; he was watching them and giving them a brief lesson on what they would have to do when they left the army and returned to civilian life. It's a very condensed lesson in how to get what you want, whenever, whatever. "I know your name. Kray," he said to them.' And this time Tupra pronounced the name in a cockney or perhaps it was merely an uneducated accent, that is, as if the word were 'cry', which, depending on the context, can mean 'a shout' or 'weeping'. As if, at that moment, he were himself playing the part: his bland, ingenuous vanity resurfacing. We had just driven into my secluded square, which was silent and tranquil now that night had fallen; he had parked opposite the trees and had immediately turned off the engine, but he wasn't going to let me get out at once, he still had things to say to me. And he had not yet revealed why he had wanted to give me a lift. - ' "And I think to myself, George, I think,"' - he continued his monologue, it was as if he had learned it by heart on that night, years ago, when he had rehearsed it with his friend the actor —' "these boys are special. These boys are a new kind. You've got it... And I can see it."' — That or something similar was also our motto at work, 'I can see it, I can see your face tomorrow' -' "And you've got to learn how to use it. Now these people, they don't like getting hurt. Not them or their property. Now these people out there who don't like to be hurt, pay other people not to hurt them. You know what I'm saying. 'Course you do. When you get out, you keep your eyes open. Watch out for the people who don't want to be hurt. Because you scare the shit out of me, boys. Wonderful.'" — That is what Tu
pra said in a fake accent which was perhaps his real accent, inside his fast car, in the lunar light of the street-lamps, sitting on my right, with his hands still resting on the motionless steering wheel, squeezing it or strangling it, he wasn't wearing gloves now, they were hidden away, dirty and sodden and wrapped in toilet paper, in his overcoat, along with the sword. - 'That's the thing, Jack. Fear,' he added, and those words still sounded as if they belonged to the role he had been imitating, or which he had usurped, or which perhaps he had stolen, or which he felt he had actually played through the intermediary of his friend. But it didn't really sound like his style, not the usual style of the Bertram Tupra I knew, more like the performance of a Shakespearian actor, although he did sound sombre, not squalid perhaps, but definitely sinister, ominous, so it was not surprising that along with the cold sweats that came and went and my general sense of fever, a shudder also ran through me.

  My unease, however, had begun to subside since he had stopped the car. I could see the lights on in my apartment, I often left some or all of them on, to anyone watching from the building opposite or from the street, it would look as if I were always home, apart from when I was sleeping or on other occasions when I deliberately turned them off, to listen to music, for example.

  'Are those lights yours?' asked Tupra, following my gaze, and he had to invade my space for a moment in order to lean across and peer through the open window on my side of the car, he liked to see things for himself, to scrutinise everything he saw with his insatiable eyes, blue or grey depending on the light.

  'Yes, I don't like finding the apartment in darkness when I come home late.'

  'It isn't because there's someone waiting for you upstairs, is it? And here I am monopolising your time down here.'

  'No, no one's waiting for me, Bertram. You know I live alone.'

  'You could have a visitor, a regular one, someone with a key. Perhaps an English girlfriend. Or would she have to be Spanish?'

  'No one has my keys, Bertram, and tonight would hardly have been the best one to choose for a late-night tryst. When we go out with you, we never know what time we'll be back. We're not that late tonight, but if De la Garza had put up a fight or run away, or if we'd had to go to the police station for causing a public affray or for being in possession of some very original weapons, we would have been out until the small hours, or even until the morning.'

  I had recovered my slightly reproachful tone and that may have reminded him that he, in turn, had something with which to reproach me, either in order to crush or quash my reproaches or because he had been keeping it back, and which was his original reason for wanting to give me a lift home. Yes, that was probably it, he did not usually allow faults to go unnoticed, or his own discontents.

  'He couldn't have run away, nor could he have put up a fight, you know that,' he pointed out. 'But seeing as how you're calling me Bertram now, there's something I want to say.' — And his face hardened, I really must have done something to annoy him. 'Three times tonight, three times if not four, you called me Tupra when we were with that imbecile friend of yours. How could you, Jack? Where's your head?' And he even struck me on my forehead with the soft, lower portion of his palm, as if he were a gym teacher. 'I'm Reresby tonight, Jack, tonight that's the only name I have - I'd made that perfectly clear - under any circumstances. You know that full well, no matter what the situation, that's an immutable rule, unless, of course, I tell you otherwise. How could you have been so careless? That cretin heard my name. Other people could have heard it. He doesn't matter, he's not important, it makes no difference to him what my name is, besides, the last thing he'll want to do is remember me, my face or my name. He'll want to forget the whole dreadful nightmare, he won't be looking for revenge. But imagine if you'd let my name slip in front of Manoia, for whom I've always been Reresby, ever since he's known me. And we go back years, Jack. You can't just chuck all those years down the drain, simply because you throw a wobbly and get all hysterical and act as if you know what I might or might not be about to do, you can't possibly know that until you actually see me do it, and sometimes not even then, do you understand? I wouldn't have done it anyway.

  Not that it's any business of yours. You'll be doing some travelling with me soon, Jack, abroad, and there'll probably be other trips too, if, that is, you stay with us and we continue working together. Regardless of what you see me doing, don't ever try to interfere again. It doesn't bear thinking about: with Manoia it's taken years to build the rather precarious, uncertain trust we've got and to see all that tossed overboard in a moment . . . How do you think someone would react to hearing a negotiator or a colleague suddenly being addressed by a different name from the one by which he or she has always known him?'

  He was right in a way, indeed he was largely right: it had been a failure on my part. But it had happened when it had happened, each time that I believed he was about to kill the cretin, it wasn't exactly a normal situation. However, instead of immediately defending myself (to call him by the wrong name three times was quite a lot), I decided to ask a question of my own: 'So you've known each other for years, then, and yet he still thinks you're Reresby,' I said. 'I didn't know that, not that you ever explained. And may I ask what the Sismi is?'

  Tupra laughed, on his own this time, a short, almost sarcastic laugh it seemed to me; or worse than that, condescending.

  'You may,' he replied, 'although you may not need to. You'd probably find it in a dictionary, an Italian-English one, or Italian-Spanish in your case. It's the Italian Intelligence Service. The Military Security and Information Service, or something like that, it's an acronym, which in Italian gives you SISMI, s-i-s-m-i, there's no great mystery about it. You were paying more attention than I thought.'

  'I see. Should I deduce, then, that Manoia works for them, that he's one of Berlusconi's vassals? Those poor Italian civil servants and soldiers, slaves to a man who has no taste in clothes at all. You can sense the sequins and the red satin jacket even when he's not wearing them. I wasn't paying much attention actually, it just happened to be a word I didn't know in any language.'

  He didn't respond to my joke, but that wouldn't have been out of respect for that particular Prime Minister, I knew he shared my views, that Berlusconi was a man with no taste in clothes who was always implicitly wearing a sequinned satin jacket..

  'That would be a deduction too far, Jack. So don't even ask. Mentioning the CIA or MI6 or MI5 doesn't necessarily mean that you work for them, does it? In fact, those who do rarely talk about them at all, just as many mafiosi have banned the word "Mafia", they can't bear to hear it being bandied about by other people, by civilians shall we say. Besides, you're not paid to make deductions or to ask questions, so you can save yourself some work, which you're doing for free anyway. So, if ever you're tempted, just keep any deductions and questions to yourself. But don't piss me off, all right, don't bother me with them.'

  He suddenly turned rude and unpleasant and said those last words with great disdain. It was easy enough for me to recover my own anger, I wouldn't get over those deep feelings of rage for a long time and I would never forget the whole awful experience, the feeling of wretchedness and outrage he had instilled in me, of impotence and menace and even of analogical fascism. If it was analogical: it had reminded me of that gang of Carlist militiamen or Falangists who had baited a man in a field outside Ronda, in the remote October or September of 1936. Tupra had pissed me off, and so I responded in kind.

  'You were about to explain,' I said, 'about that wretched sword. About the Krays and all that. What was it you learned from them that was so important, how to be Zorro perhaps? Or d'Artagnan, Gladiator, Conan the Barbarian, Spartacus? Or Prince Valiant, the Seven Samurai, Aragorn, Scaramouche? Or even Darth Vader? Which was your chosen model?'

  He rested his hands again on the immobile steering wheel. He turned towards me, to his left, and in the faint light - the lunar light - his eyes seemed black and opaque, as I had never seen them before; or was it the
dominant effect of his eyelashes, long and dense enough to be the envy of any woman and to be considered highly suspect by any man? Although I'm a man too, and my lashes are neither short nor sparse. He laughed briefly, although more wholeheartedly this time, my remark had amused him. Once again I had amused him, and that is the best safe-conduct pass you can have in order to step free from any situation (not where grudges or revenge are involved, but certainly from angry reprisals and threats, which is no small thing).

  'Oh, you can laugh now, Iago,' he said mockingly, he always called me that when he wanted to annoy me. And then he continued in a more serious vein. 'You can laugh now, but an hour ago, when I had that sword in my hand, you were as petrified as Garza was' — he pronounced this in the English fashion, 'gaatsa' - 'and if I were to get out of the car now, go to the boot and take out that sword, you would be terrified all over again; and if I threatened you with it, you would race off to your front door, cursing the existence of keys, which have to be taken out of your pocket and fitted into that tiny slot, not so easy to do when your life depends on it and when you're desperate and can't catch your breath. You would never get the key in the lock in time. I would have caught up with you before you managed to open it. Or if you had managed to unlock it, leaving me outside with my sword, I would have jammed the blade in the crack so you couldn't slam the door shut. Even dreams know that your pursuer usually catches up with you, and they've known it since the Iliad.' - He paused for a moment and glanced across at my front door, he pointed at it as if we could both see, in split-screen image, the hypothetical scene he was describing, a man running frantically to the door, taking the steps in one bound and fumbling with the key in the lock, completely panic-stricken; and behind him the other man holding a double-edged 'cat-gutter', wielding a Landsknecht sword. If I shuddered, I tried to conceal the fact. I was disconcerted by his mention of the Iliad. - 'It's fear, Jack. Fear. I told you once that fear is the greatest force that exists, as long as you can adapt to it, and feel at home and live on good terms with it. Then you can benefit from it and use it to your own advantage, and carry out exploits never dreamed of even in the most fatuous of dreams, you can fight with great courage or resist and even overcome someone stronger than yourself. As I said, mothers on the front line with their children nearby would make the best combatants in any battle. That is why you have to be so careful with the fear you provoke, because it could turn back on you. The fear you provoke has to be so terrible that there is no chance of the other person absorbing it or incorporating it, adapting to it or finding it bearable, there must be no point at which the fear stabilises, no pause so that the person can get used to it, not even for a second, or can assimilate and make room for it and thus, for a moment, cease the exhausting effort involved in fending it off. That is what paralyses and erodes and absorbs all their energy - incomprehension, incredulity, denial, struggle. And if the struggle (which is pointless anyway) stops, then the person's strength returns in spades. No one thinks they are going to die, not even in the most adverse of situations, not even in the bleakest of circumstances, not even when confronted by death's irrefutable imminence. Therefore, the fear you provoke or instil cannot be a known or even an imaginable fear. If it's a conventional, predictable or, how can I put it, common-or-garden fear, the person feeling the fear will be capable of understanding it, of gaining time and, eventually, getting used to it, and perhaps, afterwards, even being able to tackle it. He won't stop feeling the fear, he won't lose it, that's not the point: that fear will remain active, plaguing and tormenting him, but he will be able, partly, to come to terms with it, he will be able to reposition himself and to reflect; and when you're in the grip of fear you think very quickly, the imagination grows keener and solutions appear, whether realisable or not, whether doomed to failure or not, but you at least catch glimpses of solutions, the mind becomes alert and with it everything else. You leap a wall that would have seemed insurmountable at any other time, or you run for hours as you make your escape when, before, you would have said you didn't have enough puff to run for the bus. Or you begin to speak, to ask questions, to discuss and to argue, to divert the person threatening you and to see if you can dissuade them, when all your life you have been at a loss for words and have never even been able to catch the eye of a waiter at a bar to place your order. People become transformed by fear if you allow time for the quick inventiveness of survival to prevail in them, rather than mere instinct.'