The Man of Feeling

by Javier Marías

  When Manur came back, he sat down again as if nothing had happened (nothing had happened, but now there was on his tie a stain left by the water, considerably larger than the drop of coffee) and he began to talk. Everything that he said I heard in this morning’s dream exactly as it was spoken then, but, on the other hand, I do not think I could repeat it with the same exactitude, at least not this evening when I am tired and hungry (it’s getting dark outside and I still haven’t had any lunch and will not have any lunch, but will probably wait until suppertime before I decide whether or not to go out). I can only reproduce fragments of what Manur said, but with the exception of myself shortly afterwards (except I cannot make an exception of myself), I have never seen anyone with such a will to persevere in his choice and in his love. More than that, I now know that it was Manur who infected me, or, rather, that I was the one who exposed myself to contamination or chose to imitate him. For until then, there had been only my desire to go on seeing Natalia Manur every day, my physical desire for Natalia Manur and my desire to destroy Manur. And it was from then on that I began to understand better, in the same way that a man writing can begin to understand what he is writing from one chance phrase that tells him—not suddenly, but slowly—why all the other phrases were as they were, why they were written in that way (which he will see now as having nothing to do with either intention or chance), when he thought he was just feeling his way forward, merely playing with paper and ink to pass the time, because he has been asked to do so or out of the sense of duty felt by all those who have no duty. Have you never discovered in the attitudes or words or gestures of other people what you had never previously been able to put your finger on? Have you never seen in them the brilliance that we ourselves lack, the inconceivable clarity, the firm hand and the assured touch that we will never have, what once was known as “grace.” Have you never aspired to be them, precisely because of that transcendent quality, because of their sheer infectiousness, their natural annihilating radiance? Have you never felt the temptation, or more than that, the need scrupulously to copy someone else’s being in order to take it from them and appropriate it for yourself? Have you never experienced an uncontrollable desire for usurpation? An unbearable envy at their cheerfulness or their suffering, at their stamina or their will power? At the jealousy felt by another, at their fatalism, their determination or their doom? Who has not wanted to be doomed once and for all and to enjoy the fixity of death in life? Who has not longed to be the object of a curse? Who has not yearned to remain very still and simply to persevere? I am León de Napóles, the Lion of Naples, and my face is still flushed with triumph: I want to continue being what I am. But I know that it was not always so and that I did not always have that name. Manur, by his unexpected example, taught me to persevere: Manur persevered in his love. And now, when hunger is gnawing at me, and now that, even though it is spring time, I have had to turn on the light, I see again, as I did four years ago and as I did this morning, his suddenly grave, animal eyes (he said: “I have waited fifteen years to be loved by Natalia Monte, my wife; you, sir, are a mere upstart”), which incomprehensibly did not turn away from the merciless morning light of Madrid pouring in through the window onto his face, lighting it up (“It was purely a business transaction, Natalia’s father was facing absolute ruin after years of mismanagement and waste, and his children, Natalia and her brother, Roberto, came to fear that their father might put an end to his depression and his irritability by either shooting himself or shooting his wife, their mother, if his business fortunes did not revive and allow him to return to full activity. He was one of those men for whom activity is everything”) and filling his eyes with metallic reflections that made them harder still, although, at one moment, there was just a flicker of grief in them (“It was Roberto’s idea, he was the one who persuaded his sister to accept me, and to see that our marriage was an urgent necessity, that an immediate alliance with my family’s powerful bank was the only solution; and he personally brought her to Brussels, where, appropriately enough, he was best man at our wedding, since he was, in fact, the one who was giving her away to me. But that was years ago now, far too many years”) and that made him look suddenly like his wife, as if not even Natalia and Manur, despite what he was saying, had been able to free themselves entirely from those alarming similarities that time prides itself on developing between those non-blood relatives who are brave enough to see each other every day (“I had met her three months before, when I was on holiday here in Madrid, through her brother, who had done some business courses with me in Brussels; and not only did I court her diligently, I also proposed marriage to her in a last act of desperation dictated by the old-fashioned idea—I had a very conventional upbringing—that her rejections and refusals might be due to the lack of a formal proposal. I have been in love with Natalia Monte, sir, almost since the first moment I saw her”). Those eyes, apparently translucent in the sunlight, cast occasional rapid glances at my unmade bed: there, in desolation, lay my hand mirror and my electric shaver (“I have waited fifteen years for her to love me. And as long as there is no one else, as long as she harbors no hopes and does not love anyone else, I know that I can go on waiting, or at least, year after year, keep to my old plan of spending the rest of my life with her. That is why I will not permit, in anyone, the excessive and irregular interest that you have now begun to show. Most women—and some rather odd men too—love by reflection or, if you prefer, by imitation: they love and desire the other person’s love, as has often been shown to be the case and as you yourself will know. That is why I married Natalia Monte and saved her father from absolute ruin and destruction even though I knew this was the only reason she was marrying me, or, rather, because this was the plan of salvation that her brother Roberto had decided upon. And that is also why I have always prevented her from having any other model to inspire her or for her to imitate, any ‘other person’s love’ that might tempt her, and whose existence would constitute—believe me, I’m not lying when I say this—the greatest possible danger for me”); and then invariably, as they had done the first time, his eyes shifted to my chin, reminding me of my abandoned beard and the fact that tonight was the first night of Verdi’s Otello and that I had still not been able to cover my mouth with sticking plaster—as I usually do on the day of a performance—so that I would be unable to talk during the hours prior to the curtain and could thus nurture and preserve my voice (“For years she was bound to me simply because one word from me or even a signature would have meant returning her calamitous father to the very situation from which she had rescued him by her marriage, or, rather, as I had by mine, by becoming his beloved son-in-law, as wealthy as I was accommodating. Much later, when her father died, followed not long afterwards by her mother, my safeguard was and continues to be Roberto Monte, who is as catastrophic in his business affairs as his father was and to whom my wife is even more devoted”). His thick, pale, fleshy lips moved at extraordinary speed, with his usual fluency in my language, making scarcely a mistake: an unnatural perfection (“Only a few months ago, I had no option but to send him to South America because he was on the point of being arrested and tried here for capital flight, tax evasion and who knows how many other financial misdemeanours. He is my safeguard, sir, and I am perfectly well aware that my wife is anxiously awaiting the moment when her brother Roberto—Roberto rather than I—will release her from her agreement with me by telling her that he is no longer in any danger, that he is no longer dependent on me, that he can fend for himself without fear of reprisals on my part and with no need of my protection. My wife believes that I manipulate things so that this can never happen, and that belief has only helped to fuel her feelings of resentment towards me and become a further obstacle to what I have been waiting for all these years, her wholehearted and unconditional love. In fact, it seems most unlikely that Roberto Monte will ever achieve financial independence or peace, but that will be through no fault of mine: there is no need for me to hinder his plans or to dev
ote myself to laying traps for him: he is perfectly capable of maintaining himself in a permanent state of imminent arrest. But despite that more or less lifelong guarantee, I also require that my wife should have no amatory shadows in her life. You’re probably thinking how unhappy she must be, but bear in mind that I am too”). Manur was speaking with great composure and with little show of emotion, but he kept restlessly crossing and uncrossing his legs in a gesture that, in a way, brought him closer to Natalia Manur, as if he had copied it from her or perhaps she from him (“I count for little in her life today, but then there is no one else—nor should there be—who counts for more. I did once count and I will again; and believe me, it will not be long now before she will find herself unable to do without me. For the moment, at least, I see her every day, spend every night in the same bedroom, after my day of work and her day of diversion or self-absorption or perhaps meditation on her own dark fate. But diversion too, don’t forget: and that is what we all aspire to, isn’t it, to be diverted? I mean, the life she leads would be the envy of many women, not to mention, for example, that prostitute who came to see you last night. Do you think my wife, Natalia Monte, would want to change places with that prostitute? I don’t really know that someone in her position has a right to complain, just as I do not consider that someone in my position has a right to complain either. Would I, for example, change places with you?”) and while he was talking, he continued pouring and drinking black coffee from the two coffee pots which he had commandeered, until he discovered, with visible annoyance, that there was not a drop of coffee left (“She’s a wealthy woman, she has everything she needs—that presents no problem—she has her own bank account which I keep topped up, even a permanent companion whom she likes very much and who seems to keep her amused and with whom she gets on well and to whom she can open her heart whenever she wishes. I don’t mind, just as I would not have minded in the least if she had opened her heart to you: I make no secret of any of this, especially not to perfect strangers who will vanish completely from our lives. Why should I care? And if she doesn’t have much of a social life, that is because, generally speaking, she prefers not to accompany me to my various suppers and meetings: but that is her choice, just as it has been her choice not to work, perhaps to punish me with her inactivity. Listen, would you like a little more coffee? These hotels are so cheap with their coffee nowadays”). Then he got up and, after asking me if he could use my phone when he already had it in his hand, he requested—or rather commanded—that more coffee should be brought to my room; then he sat down again, first taking advantage of a fleeting moment in front of the full-length mirror, just as I had done, to cast a rapid glance at his own reflection to check that the water stain and the drop of coffee had both now disappeared. (“You will be wondering what has gone on in our bedroom at night during those fifteen years, but I am not prepared to satisfy your curiosity on that subject. All you need to know is that the conditions on which our marriage is based exclude—independently of what may have happened in the past in our bedroom or what may still happen now—the possibility of our leading separate lives, which is, I believe, the current rather unimaginative euphemism. A failure to meet any one of these conditions would constitute for me a casus belli of the most serious kind. As serious as if she were to leave me, do you understand?”) On more than one occasion throughout his speech—especially after that Latin tag, I seem to remember—I felt a desire to interrupt him, to ask him a question or to make a point, but his weary, overbearing, alert tone was that of a punctilious, reliable company director whose turn has come to read out a report written with such effort or with such pleasure that he will not allow the members of his board even the most insignificant of interjections or give them the slightest opportunity to object (“You, sir, cannot understand, you will only have experienced ordinary love affairs. The reason I am telling you this is so that you can see exactly what the situation is and what my position is; so that you will know that I am not prepared to let these fifteen years pass by in vain just because of some last-minute slip; so that you will be good enough to leave my wife alone from tomorrow onwards and purge from your thoughts all trace of the excessive and irregular interest of which you gave me ample evidence last night. I am not a neglectful husband. Those who have shared your interest previously have understood this very well: they gauged the obstacles, weighed up the difficulties, saw that it really wasn’t worth the effort, gave up and backed off, only once did I have to pay out any money. You should follow their example. Don’t complicate my life and don’t make things complicated for yourself. Believe me, my wife is not a good deal, not a profitable concern”). When someone knocked at the door and I went to open it, there was not only the waitress bringing more coffee, but also the maid, who, following her own trajectories and her own timetable, had come to make my bed and air the room; Manur, turning round in his chair, invited the former to come in and dismissed the latter (“Come back later, can’t you see we’re still having breakfast?”), without stopping to think that I might want to have my bed made and my room aired, and to see my beard completely shaven and my mouth covered by the protective strip of sticking plaster reserved for special days like this. While I was signing the tab and paying for the smile, the couple from Cuba or the Canary Islands who were staying in the room next door walked past. They were not early risers. I did not see their faces, only the grey or blue jacket of a suit and a brightly colored dress. She was taller than he was and walked behind him. I caught a whiff of flowery perfume and heard him say “You’ll just have to put up with it!” to which she replied “I’m telling you I can’t go on like this!” I shut the door and returned to my place, opposite Manur. (“At the moment, you are at a stage when all you have are your thoughts. And what are those thoughts? Nothing, sir, they are so simple that anyone can guess them, so transitory that you can count them as they go by. I can guess yours and you know mine, isn’t that so?”) Despite having ordered the new coffee with such resolve, Manur did not pour any of it out. Perhaps he had only ordered it so as to give me back the coffee that was due to me and which I had not yet tasted—the coffee he had poured into my cup was now cold—(“I will applaud you tonight”). He uncrossed his legs. He got up to go. He stroked his tie. He smoothed his bald head. He picked up his fedora. He looked at his watch (“She smells very good” and I did not know if he was referring to his wife, Natalia Manur, to the woman from Cuba or the Canary Islands who had just walked past and who could not take any more or to Claudina the prostitute, whose cheap, pleasant perfume—the room had still not been aired—might still be perceptible to him). He said:

  “Bear in mind that there is no stronger bond than that which binds one to something unreal or, worse, something that has never existed.” And I saw him raise his index finger for the third time. That was also the third time that I saw him.

  I suppose the fourth journalist finally rang not long afterwards. But by then I had finished shaving and had covered my mouth with sticking plaster: I hesitated for a moment, I did not answer.

  I WAS SO HUNGRY THAT I HAD TO pause for a moment and go downstairs to have supper in a nearby restaurant, lively, expensive and crowded, and which, being much frequented by tourists, opens its doors fairly early. First I looked in my mailbox and picked up the letters that had been waiting for me since the morning. No one had brought them up to me because no one has come to see me today. And I’ve had the answering machine on too, so I haven’t seen or spoken to anyone all day, and the day is nearly over. Among various circulars from banks and the odd pre-contract to sing in a couple of years’ time at some particular spot on the globe where I know I will be sure to find myself on that precise and distant date, the only letter in the box (and which I read while I was waiting for supper amid the gabble of tourists) was from that man, Noguera, the husband or widower of my girlfriend Berta. Surprisingly—given my silence—he has written to me again, on today of all days, just when Berta had appeared to me again in this morning’s dream, only three we
eks after I had learned of her death by the same marital route. Noguera, in this second letter, which I have just read, initially goes on again about my old books and warns me that if I do not write to confirm that I want them back, he will have no option but to throw them on the fire along with everything else (that is what he says, “throw them on the fire,” an odd expression given that spring is already here). He is not going to continue living in the house or “tower” he shared with Berta, he tells me (and on this occasion, unlike the first, he does mention his state of mind, which is one of despair), because he finds the constant memories of his wife extremely painful. So sadly do the hours pass that he plans not only to leave the marital home, but also to destroy all her belongings and anything that serves to feed her memory, which he intends to allow to “die of inanition.” He is still young, he says, he hopes to rebuild his life, and, given that he has the firm intention of destroying photos, clothes, shoes, records, jewelry, lotions, videos, creams, aprons, books, mirrors, pills, letters—in short, everything that his wife ever used while alive—he asks me if, before he lights the pyre, I would like to have—as well as those books of mine that he has already listed—some of those objects which he, “on the other hand,” never wants to see again. Perhaps he thinks that, contrary to what is happening to him, I do want to keep Berta’s memory alive with something tangible that once belonged to her, and this legalistic individual—whom I now am sure is called Noguera because I have just read his name—sends me another detailed improbable list of all the things he is kind enough to offer me before the planned incineration. Noguera thinks that I would be particularly interested in photos from the time when she and I “saw most of each other” and in the letters and postcards that I sent her (“there are not that many and most are postcards”) and which he found in an old tin box of Lindor chocolates. But—he insists—it would be no trouble at all to send me any other object I might like to keep. If, within two weeks, he receives no answer—just as he received no answer to his first letter—he will assume that I have no desire to keep anything “from the above inventory” and he will proceed with the “cremation,” which is why, if there is anything I want, he urges me to reply and gives me his Barcelona telephone number in case my many travels and commitments (“which I know about from the newspapers and the television”) do not leave me enough time to write and it would be easier for me to tell him over the phone what I would like to keep. I have not dared to read the new list closely, it is several pages long, but when I glanced over it—repeatedly in fact—I noticed two things: that Noguera is mad enough to include in it all kinds of things that have nothing whatever to do with me, things clearly bought long after I had ceased to have anything to do with Berta; but he is not mad enough to offer me (as I had begun to fear) tights and panties and other such things—which will doubtless be among the objects to be devoured by the fire—nor her set of silver cutlery, her record player, her video machine or her television—which will certainly not be consumed by the flames in a fortnight’s time. Noguera, unhinged by the unexpected and possibly avoidable death of his wife (and it is perfectly normal that he should be more troubled now than the first time he wrote to me, when he had just buried her and when the sense of calm and reason that the dead bestow on us would not yet have deserted him), is incapable of understanding that if he wants to forget Berta Viella, then no one else will want to remember her. For the last person is the one who counts, thus, for example, it will be our last widow who will have to be consoled, and any inheritance we leave will almost always go to those who did not know us when we were young, but only when we were already deep in vile decrepitude or in rigid old age. That is why neither I nor anyone else in the world considers the great Gustav Hörbiger to be the most heroic Heldentenor of our century, but, rather, an obsessed madman, doubtless confined in some German hospital and whose imminent death will not now be his defining moment. That is why Otello is an avenger and Liu a martyr until the end of time, that is why I cannot easily forget Manur (that is why, on the other hand, I do not yet know what I am nor if anyone or no one will remember me). Noguera, with his impossible offer, is trying to contravene an immutable law, according to which the last person is the one who determines, sanctions, amends or cancels everything that came before. He is and always will be Berta’s husband, her final choice, and if he now regrets and is wearied by his inability to forget, what he cannot do is to try and carry out an illicit transfer and pass that responsibility over to me. I cannot perform an act of palingenesis, I do not want to remember her; more than that, as I said before, I do not remember her now. I don’t want those books that were once mine, I don’t want her photos of monuments and faces and beaches, nor the postcards I sent to her from half the known world, I don’t want a sponge or a bathrobe, or a scratched record of Lauritz Melchior or even a new one by Pavarotti, let alone one of me singing sublime extracts from seven operas. I don’t want her medicines or her sunglasses, her stiletto heels or her azaleas; her random selection of novels, her rings, her colorful earrings, her unopened bottles of Rhine wine and Veuve Clicquot; her cologne, her eye drops, her lamps, her lipsticks, her bits of pottery from La Bisbal, the trilobite I gave her; her silk-blend blouses, her glass Murano ashtrays, her iridescent skirts, her shells from the Lido, her English teapots, her collection of cockerels from around the world and made of all kinds of materials, her—very lovely—Fortuny engravings. I do not want anything that she once owned. Or perhaps just one thing: because although I had no intention of doing so, between courses—the restaurant was so crowded, the waiters so rushed, the hubbub of voices so loud that even the normally affable head waiter did not speak to me, and, unable to eavesdrop on anyone else’s conversation, I grew bored—I spent rather too much time leafing through the mad, meticulous sheets that Noguera had sent me, and on the third page, I noticed this object, “elegant Italian calendar” (that is the description given by poor Noguera, about whom I still know nothing, what he does or who he really is). I wonder if it is the same one (marzo, ottobre, dicembre) that adorned the bedroom wall in our apartment in Barcelona, I mean, I wonder if it is the same make or the same series, if the very precise Berta would have continued buying them all these years and if they were therefore still being made. I could ask Noguera to send me that elegant calendar. Besides, in a few months’ time it will be out of date and will have to be thrown out anyway, it will not last nor will it remind me for very long of what I am now incapable of remembering. Perhaps it would do me good to look at it during that time, for I fear that, from now on, no one will watch over my sleep nor will I watch over that of Natalia Manur. This morning, when I woke, she was not in our vast bed with its four lion’s feet and she has still not come home. There may be nothing strange about this. I have slept so badly and so little for so many years that I now take a powerful soporific (twenty-five drops) that plunges me into such a deep torpor that until I have had my eight hours of sleep nothing can wake me apart, that is, from my own will, alerted before I drop off, or else another person’s will to interrupt my slumbers and return me to the world: on occasions when Natalia needed me during the night, she had to call out my name and shake me and unbutton my pajama jacket and splash cold water on my forehead and neck. But last night, my thoughts were not vigilant, and she clearly did not need me, so she must have gone out early without my noticing and, quite possibly, she was in a hurry, so much so that she did not even leave me a note explaining where she was going or at least warning me that she would not be back for lunch or supper. Yes, she was probably in a hurry, because she seems to have gone off somewhere on a trip—it’s impossible to know if she went by plane or train—and when one is traveling, there is never time to spare. Two expandable suitcases and a large bag are missing from the wardrobe where we keep our luggage, as are most of her more personal belongings, of which I would not now be able to make a list like Noguera’s because, unlike him, I do not have them here before me. However she has taken with her the things one never leaves behind: almost not
hing of hers remains in the bathroom and my toothbrush is alone again, as it was once before; I know that her drawers are now empty of her underwear and her wardrobes of her autumn clothes, which leads me to think—given that, in our hemisphere, spring is just beginning—that perhaps she has flown off to Argentina, the country where her brother Roberto (whom, it is true, she has not seen for a long time and whom she often misses) enjoys a prosperous lifestyle and where he has chosen to remain. Yes, perhaps, on an impulse, she decided to go and see him. But an impulse like that requires planning, and there is also the possibility that Natalia Manur has simply left me without saying a word, as she left Manur four years ago, about which I also dreamed this morning. (Natalia has so often told me how she used to say to him: “When I do finally leave, you won’t even know.”) During the last few weeks or possibly months (time is so slippery when one is constantly on the move and, during the years that we have lived together, my profession has meant that we have traveled the world together), she seemed tired of so much to-ing and fro-ing and tired too—just a little—of me. She had again developed those dark shadows under her eyes that only accentuate her femininity, and she laughed less than she used to, revealing the beautiful teeth that light up her face, and—an old habit acquired in early youth, or perhaps only in Brussels—she had resumed that furious gnawing of the skin around her nails, so that her two index fingers—especially those, but the others as well—had again taken on the ugly, childish, raw appearance they had had during our time in Madrid. But what worried me most was the abnormal weariness that overwhelmed her whenever we arrived in a new place where I was to sing. Something which, only four, three or two years ago, or even six months ago, was for her a source of the greatest pleasure seemed to have become a torment borne without any violent complaint, indeed with hardly any complaint at all, but borne—of this I am sure—with great suffering. On our last few trips, she did not even have the strength to unpack the suitcases: she still withstood the departure well and appeared completely composed and even cheerful during the extreme provisionality of the journeys themselves; however, once the bellboy had shown us to our room, she experienced a kind of invincible exhaustion and collapsed, as if felled by lightning, onto one of the beds in the hotel room. After a couple of hours lying there, dazed or in a light sleep, she gathered together sufficient strength to get undressed and take a shower; then she would lie down again and thus, alternating showers and siestas and a bit of reading or television, she would remain for the whole of our stay in whatever city we happened to be in. She no longer wanted to sally forth on her own to visit places (even though we had recently been to Prague, Paris and Berlin) nor attend my rehearsals (even though I had lately performed such highly prestigious roles as Aeneas and Pinkerton and Des Grieux) nor to pick me up afterwards to go and have supper in the company of illustrious colleagues and interesting people (even though we had recently coincided with Anna Telesca and with the picturesque Guillerme and the handsome Jerusalem). She asked for her meals to be taken up to her room, she insisted on speaking and hearing only Spanish and, in short, she passed through those cities—which not long ago she had been thrilled to visit and in which she had eagerly tracked down all kinds of ornaments and implements for our home—as if she only existed as a name on a plane ticket. She behaved like a character in an excellent comedy I saw recently on video, about a delightful ex-boxer, fat, loyal and punch-drunk, who had no idea whether he was in Chicago, New Orleans or Detroit, so accustomed had he become in his previous pugilistic life to enforced confinement to his hotel room. I don’t know what Natalia did while I was rehearsing the opera or recording the record that had taken us to wherever we were, but during the brief moments on recent trips when we were together in the room, she just used to lie on the bed—often swathed in a bath towel because she didn’t have the energy to get dressed again after a shower—reading all kinds of magazines or dozing or, at the least, yawning, and—the television always on, albeit on mute so as not to disrupt my studies or my practice or because she wasn’t interested anyway or didn’t want to hear another language—responding only in monosyllables to my comments or attempts at conversation and proffering only her cheek or her forehead in response to my displays of affection. In a couple of cities, a propos of nothing, she suddenly wondered out loud, in an almost nostalgic tone of voice, what had become of Dato, and the truth is that she no longer seemed to take the same pleasure in my voice or my singing: indeed I had seen her look distinctly bored—even pull a face—when I was doing my vocal exercises in her presence and had just performed a few vertiginous vibratos or stentorean tremolos, which once would have provoked her astonishment. In Paris and Berlin, she claimed to have a migraine and did not even attend my performances. She had never missed one before. And she did not seem a great deal happier in the brief periods we spent at home. But it was not until this morning, when I woke from my dream with the renewed image of the one moment (as I have already described to you) when her face appeared to me with utter clarity, when I realized that the look on her face in recent times, the non-expression that predominated when she was lying down, leafing through magazines or half-watching TV programs or, at most, standing at the window and gazing impassively down at a beautiful avenue or a historic square or an ancient church or at a country’s enigmatic inhabitants transformed into articulated miniatures, was the same one I had seen that first time and which had made me realize that Natalia Manur (when I still did not know her name) was afflicted by—how did I put it?—a form of melancholy dissolution.