All Souls

by Javier Marías

  "Have you heard of the Machen Company?"

  'No, what is it?"

  "I can't tell you yet. I just wanted to know if you'd heard of it. Before I tell you about it, I would have to know if you'd be interested in joining. We haven't got anyone in Spain. Or Latin America. You'll be going back to Spain, I take it."

  "Yes, in a year or so, not at the end of this year, but the next."

  "There's no hurry."

  "I go back every now and then, in the holidays. I teach at the university here. But, listen, it's a bit difficult to know if I want to join something without knowing what it's about."

  "Yes, I understand that. But that's the way it is. What matters is the name. How you react to the name. People always react to names. They tell you a lot."

  "Can you at least tell me what I would have to do?"

  "Oh, to start with, you'd just have to pay a modest subscription, ten pounds a quarter. Then you'd be on the list. There are nearly five hundred of us in England. More in Wales. We have some very eminent people as members."

  "Five hundred Machenians? And what do they get out of it?"

  "That depends. It varies each year. For the moment you'd receive bulletins. Publications too. Not regularly. Some you pay for separately. But they don't cost much, there's a discount and you can elect to receive them or not. I've been a member for twelve years now."

  "Congratulations. And nothing's happened since then, apart from what happened to your dog in Didcot. Just a bit of a beating, eh?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, nothing else bad has happened to you."

  "Oh, no, nothing. You wouldn't be running any risks, if that's what you mean. It won't affect your life in any way. There are eminent people involved."

  "What, no horror, no terror? It is, after all, the Machen Company."

  Marriott burst out laughing.

  "Do you know, I wouldn't mind a beer now, if it's not too much trouble."

  His teeth were set very wide apart; they cried out, retrospectively, for braces. He pulled out a Kleenex from his jacket pocket and dried the tears which, strangely, that one burst of laughter had brought to his pale eyes. I brought him up a glass of foaming beer, which he downed almost in one. Then he spoke more fluently: "Machen's horrors are very subtle. They depend in large part on the association of ideas. On the conjunction of ideas. On a capacity for bringing them together. You might never see the horror implicit in associating two ideas, the horror implicit in each of those ideas, and thus never in your whole life recognise the horror they contain. But you could live immersed in that horror if you were unfortunate enough always to make the right associations. For example, that girl opposite your house who sells flowers. There's nothing terrifying about her, in herself she doesn't inspire horror. On the contrary. She's very attractive. She's nice and friendly. She stroked the dog. I bought these carnations from her." And saying that he produced two bent, rather crushed carnations from his raincoat pocket, as if he'd only bought them as a pretext to speak to the flowerseller. "But she could inspire horror. The idea of that girl in association with another idea could. Don't you think so? We don't yet know the nature of that missing idea, of the idea required to inspire us with horror. We don't yet know her horrifying other half. But it must exist. It does. It's simply a question of it appearing. It may also never appear. Who knows, it could turn out to be my dog. The girl and my dog. The girl with her long, chestnut hair, her high boots and her long, firm legs and my dog with his one leg missing." Marriott looked down at the dog, which was dozing; he looked at the dog's stump of a leg. He touched it lightly. "The fact that my dog goes everywhere with me is normal. It's necessary. It's odd if you like. I mean the two of us going around together. But there's nothing horrific about it. But if she went around with my dog. That might be horrific. The dog is missing a leg. If it had been hers, it would certainly never have lost its leg in a stupid argument after a football match. That's an accident. An occupational hazard for a dog with a lame master. But if it had been her dog, perhaps it would have lost its leg some other way. The dog is still missing a leg. There must be some other reason, then. Something far worse. Not just an accident. You could hardly imagine that girl getting involved in a fight. Perhaps the dog would have lost its leg because of her. Perhaps the only explanation of why this dog should have lost its leg if it were her dog would be that she had cut it off. How else could a dog that was so well looked after, cared for and loved by that nice, attractive girl who sells flowers have lost its leg? It's a horrible idea, that girl cutting off my dog's leg; seeing it with her own eyes; being a witness to it."

  Alan Marriott's final words sounded slightly indignant, as if he were indignant with the flowerseller. He broke off. He seemed to have frightened himself. "Let's drop the subject."

  "No, go on, you were on the point of inventing a story."

  "No, forget it. It's a poor example."

  "As you wish."

  Marriott put his hands in his raincoat pockets, as if announcing with that gesture that he was about to get up.

  "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "Would you be interested in joining?"

  I stroked a finger up and down between my nose and my upper lip, as I do when I'm unsure about something. I said: "I might be. Look, here's what we'll do, if it's all right with you that is. I'll give you the ten pounds for the first quarter and that way I'll be on the list along with the eminent people. Later on, I'll tell you if I'm interested in continuing."

  "But when? And the members aren't all eminent people, you know."

  "Soon. Let's say after the three months covered by my first subscription."

  Marriott looked hard at the two five-pound notes I'd taken out of a drawer and placed on the low table as I said this. At least I think he did, his transparent eyes were very deceptive.

  "It's not our usual way of doing things. But since you're a foreigner. And we haven't got anyone in Spain. Or in Latin America. I'm going to give you my address. Just in case you find anything by Machen that you've already got. Or Bridles and Spurs. Or his introduction to John Gawsworth's Above the River. It's very difficult to find his complete works. I'll write it all down. I'll pay you for them. If they're not too expensive. Up to twenty-five pounds. First editions. I don't live far away." He scribbled rapidly on a piece of crumpled paper, gave it to me, picked up the two five-pound notes and put them in his raincoat pocket. He took the opportunity of returning his hands to his pockets in order to lean into them and get to his feet. "Would you like a receipt for the membership subscription?"

  "No, I don't think that's necessary. I'm on the list now, am I?"

  "Yes, you're on the list. Thank you. I hope you stay on it. I won't hold you up any longer. And I'm sorry I didn't phone first. I haven't got your number. Nor a phone at home. I think I might well get one. Right. Come on, let's go," he said to the dog, who got up again on his three legs and shook himself out of sleep. Marriott picked up his hat.

  I didn't give him my number. They went downstairs and I accompanied them to the door. I, who had never been a member of anything in Madrid, had in a few months become a member of the Oxonian congregation by virtue of my job, a member of St Antony's College, to which, as a foreigner, I'd been assigned from the Taylorian Institute, a member of Wadham College, to which I'd been assigned according to the caprice of my head of department, Aidan Kavanagh, and now I was a member of the Machen Company, to which I'd assigned myself without knowing why and without knowing a thing about it. I watched them walking away down the pavement, back down St Giles', stumbling like two drunks along that broad, monumental street also in exile from the infinite. It was nearly lunchtime. Before closing the door I waved to the gypsy flowerseller who was already busily devouring a sandwich. She wasn't as attractive as Marriott had said. She had big teeth and a huge smile; even at that distance I could see the bits of lettuce stuck to her teeth. I could imagine her involved in some quarrel at Didcot station or somewhere else, with her black le
ather jacket and her tangled mane of hair, kicking out with her high boots, biting - like the dog - with her big teeth. Her name was Jane, she was a bit dense but very sweet and I knew that she'd got married, at all of nineteen, to the man - invisible to me, since he never got out of his car to help her - who every Sunday and bank holiday dropped her off and picked her up opposite my house, together with her merchandise, in a clean, modern van. It could have been her husband who cut off the dog's leg.

  Back upstairs, I collected Marriott's empty beer can, the tearstained Kleenex and the two crushed carnations still in their silver foil that he'd taken out only to leave behind on the sofa where he'd been sitting. I noticed these three things as they dropped into the rubbish bin on that Sunday in the March of my first year in Oxford.

  I DON'T TAKE SO much notice of the rubbish now, whole weeks and even months pass without my paying it any attention, it may be that I don't notice it at all or only very occasionally, just for a second, as you might recall something so long disowned or extinct that you banish it at once from your thoughts to preclude all possibility of its ever existing again or to make it seem like something that in fact never did exist, something that never took place. In the short time that has passed since I left the city of Oxford too many things have changed or begun or ceased to be.

  I no longer live alone or abroad, I'm married now and living in Madrid again. I have a son. That son is still very young, as yet he can neither talk nor walk nor, of course, does he have a memory. I don't understand it yet, how he came to be, I mean, he seems foreign to me, strange and alien, although he lives with us day and night and hasn't left us for a minute since he was born and despite the fact that for him there's no expiry date, as there may be for his mother or for me, as there was for Clare Bayes or (perhaps) for me two and a half years ago, at the end of my residence in Oxford. For him, on the contrary, there's no time limit. Only a short while ago he did not even exist. Now he's an eternal child. Sometimes I look at this child of only a few months and I remember Alan Marriott's words. I wonder what would be required in order for this child to inspire horror, or to whom the child has been attached in order that that other person will inspire it. I'm troubled by the fantasy that I - his own father — might be the missing factor, the one necessary for the two of us to provoke terror, that he might be the one idea necessary for me to do so. I watch him sleeping. So far he's a completely normal child. Alone, he can't inspire horror, on the contrary, both his mother and myself, in common with all the people who surround us and visit us here in Madrid, feel the protective urge that very young children usually provoke. They seem so fragile. One wouldn't protect something that inspired horror, although I also wonder if perhaps that horror enjoys the protection of what Alan Marriott called its horrifying other half, of that or of whatever reveals or causes the horror by association, by conjunction. Just as the dog would have protected the flowerseller and the flowerseller the dog, in the example proposed by Marriott. This son is, I think, much loved by his mother and by me (for his mother he is doubtless a transient deity condemned to lose his godliness), but there's something compulsive about him, as I suppose there is about all children during their first months of life, and there are moments when I would not want him to disappear exactly — that isn't it at all, that would be the last thing I'd want, it would drive us into madness — but rather I would like to return to the situation of having no children, of being a man with no prolongation of himself, of being able to embody for ever and in unadulterated form both son and brother, the true figures, the only ones to which we are accustomed, the only ones in which from the start we are and can feel at ease. The exercise of the paternal or maternal function is something that comes with time, is doubtless a duty imposed by time. It requires adaptation, concentration, it's something that happens. I still cannot comprehend that this child is here and is here for ever, the harbinger of an extraordinary longevity that will survive us both, nor can I grasp that I am his father. Today I had some meetings to go to and some business to deal with (business that involves a lot of money: that too has changed, I now earn and handle large amounts of money, although not as much as a college bursar), and in the middle of one of those conversations I completely forgot the existence of my son. I mean that I forgot he had been born, forgot his name, his face, his brief past which it was my responsibility to witness. I don't mean that I just stopped thinking about him for a moment, which is not only normal but beneficial to both, I mean that the child simply did not count. I did not, on the other hand, forget my wife, for whom there never was nor foreseeably will be an expiry date as there was for Clare Bayes from the moment I set eyes (full of the sexual admiration I also feel for Luisa) on her lovely, hard, sculpted, square-jawed face and her tasteful evening décolletage. (Despite the fact that I haven't known my wife that long and I could quite feasibly have forgotten her, I did not do so.) So this morning, while I talked to a financier called Estévez, fiftyish and very extrovert (three or four times he proudly referred to himself as a "go-getter"), my son became not something that has ceased to exist but something that had never existed. For no less than forty-five minutes, while the go-getting Estévez regaled me with splendid business propositions, I forgot I had a son and in my head I made plans for myself and my wife (especially travel plans) as if this son who still cannot walk or talk did not exist at all. For no less than forty-five minutes his life was literally wiped from my mind. He disappeared, he was cancelled out. Then, although nothing in particular, nothing concrete reminded me, I suddenly remembered him. 'The child," I thought. I didn't mind remembering him — I felt glad to do so - nor did I mind immediately jettisoning the plans I'd been rapidly sketching out as I chatted to that most encouraging and enthusiastic of fellows, Estévez the go-getter. It didn't bother me in the least. What did bother me and make me feel guilty was my having forgotten him, and that made me wonder again today, as I have on other occasions when I've watched him sleeping, if I will not prove to be his horrifying other half, if, seeing that only a few months after his birth I'm capable of completely forgetting his existence, I'm not therefore destined to play that role. There's no reason why this should be so, it could happen to anyone, but forgetting gives rise to rancour and rancour to fear. He will forget me, because he will not have known me as a child or as a young man. A little while ago I asked my wife who, despite motherhood, remains very calm and serene, if she thought this child would always live with us, as long as he was a child or at least while he was still very young. She was getting undressed for bed and her upper body, her breasts still swollen, was uncovered.

  "Of course he will, don't be so silly," she replied, "who else would he live with?" And she added while she removed her dark tights. "As long as nothing happens to us, that is."

  "What do you mean?"

  She was almost naked. In one hand she held her tights, in the other her nightdress. She was almost naked.

  "Nothing bad, I mean."

  Clare Bayes' son didn't live with her and her husband. Or rather, he was generally with them in Oxford only during the holidays, when he came back from his prep school in Bristol. He went there firstly because it had been decided that when he was thirteen, he would go to the well-known and extremely expensive Clifton School, on the banks of the Avon, just outside Bristol - it was his father's old school - and secondly to ensure that from as early an age as possible he should become accustomed both to the place and to being far from home. His holidays were much shorter than mine and those of his parents (in Oxford, classes are taught for three terms of exactly eight weeks each - Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity - and the rest is idleness for those who, as was my own case, have no administrative duties, not even the invigilation of exams) and besides I was always away then, visiting Madrid or travelling in France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland or England itself. I never stayed in Oxford unless I had to, except once, right at the end. I was never, therefore, in Oxford at the same time as Clare's son, and that was the most convenient state of affairs for me, and t
he best suited, I suppose, to our adulterous affair. One shouldn't involve children. They're both too inquisitive and too squeamish. They're overdramatic and full of apprehensions. They cannot bear anything shadowy or ambiguous. They see danger everywhere, even where there is none, and can always spot a potentially dangerous situation, even if it is not dangerous exactly but merely confused or unusual. For more than a century now children have ceased to be brought up to become adults. Quite the contrary, and the result is that the adults of our era are brought up - we are brought up - to continue to be children. To get worked up over some sports event and grow jealous at the slightest thing. To live in a state of constant alarm and insatiable desire. To be fearful and angry. To be cowardly. To observe ourselves. Within Europe, England has shown the least interest in following that path and until only very recently she still enthusiastically and rigorously beat her most tender shoots with a consequent and much commented upon burgeoning of deviations (of the sexual variety) amongst its more impressionable citizens. However, according to what Clare told me, caning was no longer permitted at the school in Bristol and so I imagined that, as well as escaping the sufferings endured at school by his real and fictional predecessors, once home her son Eric would bask in the special privileges reserved for children who are boarded out for most of the year. Despite her innate lack of consideration and her natural expansiveness, Clare was considerate enough not to talk that much about him, at least with me, for I, even without knowing him, could not but see in him the vestiges or the living evidence of her past love. However dead a past love may be, new lovers are much more upset by them than they are by real and current disaffections even if the latter create all kinds of practical difficulties. However, with me, Clare only spoke about her son Eric if I asked after him.