B0040702LQ EBOK (23 page)

Until I was thirty years old, I lived quietly and virtuously and
in accordance with my own biography, and it had never
occurred to me that forgotten characters from books read in
adolescence might resurface in my life, or even in other
people's lives. Of course, I had heard people speak of
momentary identity crises provoked by a coincidence of
names uncovered in youth (for example, my friend Rafa
Zarza doubted his own existence when he was introduced to
another Rafa Zarza). But I never expected to find myself transformed into a bloodless William Wilson, or a de-dramatised
portrait of Dorian Gray, or a Jekyll whose Hyde was merely
another Jekyll.

His name was Xavier de Gualta - a Catalan, as his name
indicates - and he worked in the Barcelona office of the same
company I worked for. His (highly) responsible position was
similar to mine in Madrid where we met at a supper intended
for the dual purpose of business and fraternisation, which is
why we both arrived there accompanied by our respective
wives. Only our first names were interchangeable (my name is
Javier Santin), but we coincided in absolutely everything else.
I still remember the look of stupefaction on Gualta's face
(which was doubtless also on mine), when the head waiter
who brought him to our table stood to one side, allowing him
to see my face for the first time. Gualta and I were physically
identical, like twins in the cinema, but it wasn't just that: we
even made the same gestures at the same time and used the
same words (we took the words out of each other's mouths, as
the saying goes), and our hands would reach for the bottle of
wine (Rhine) or the mineral water (still), or our forehead, or
the sugar spoon, or the bread, or the fork beneath the fondue
dish, in perfect unison, simultaneously. We narrowly missed colliding. It was as if our heads, which were identical outside,
were also thinking the same thing and at the same time. It was
like dining opposite a mirror made flesh. Needless to say, we
agreed about everything and, although I tried not to ask too
many questions, such was my disgust, my sense of vertigo, our
lives, both professional and personal, had run along parallel
lines. This extraordinary similarity was, of course, noted and
commented on by our wives and by us ('It's extraordinary,'
they said. `Yes, extraordinary,' we said), yet, after our first
initial amazement, the four of us, somewhat taken aback by
this entirely anomalous situation and conscious that we had to
think of the good of the company that had brought us
together for that supper, ignored the remarkable fact and did
our best to behave naturally. We tended to concentrate more
on business than on fraternisation. The only thing about us
that was not the same were our wives (but they are not in fact
part of us, just as we are not part of them). Mine, if I may be so
vulgar, is a real stunner, whilst Gualta's wife, though
distinguished-looking, was a complete nonentity, temporarily
embellished and emboldened by the success of her go-getting
spouse.

The worst thing, though, was not the resemblance itself
(after all, other people have learned to live with it). Until then,
I had never seen myself. I mean, a photo immobilises us, and
in the mirror we always see ourselves the other way round (for
example, I always part my hair on the right, like Cary Grant,
but in the mirror, I am someone who parts his hair on the left,
like Clark Gable); and, since I am not famous and have never
been interested in movie cameras, I had never seen myself on
television or on video either. In Gualta, therefore, I saw myself
for the first time, talking, moving, gesticulating, pausing,
laughing, in profile, wiping my mouth with my napkin, and
scratching my nose. It was my first real experience of myself as
object, something which is normally enjoyed only by the
famous or by those with a video camera to play with.

And I hated myself. That is, I hated Gualta, who was identical to me. That smooth Catalan not only struck me as entirely
lacking in charm (although my wife - who is gorgeous - said to me later at home, I imagine merely to flatter me, that she
had found him attractive), he seemed affected, prissy, overbearing in his views, mannered in his gestures, full of his own
charisma (mercantile charisma, I mean), openly right-wing
in his views (we both, of course, voted for the same party),
pretentious in his choice of vocabulary and unscrupulous in
matters of business. We were even official supporters of the
most conservative football clubs in our respective cities: he of
Espanol and I of Atletico. I saw myself in Gualta and in Gualta
I saw an utterly repellent individual, capable of anything,
potential firing squad material. As I say, I unhesitatingly hated
myself.

And it was from that night, without even informing my
wife of my intentions, that I began to change. Not only had I
discovered that in the city of Barcelona there existed a being
identical to myself whom I detested, I was afraid too that, in
each and every sphere of life, at each and every moment of the
day, that being would think, do and say exactly the same as me.
I knew that we had the same office hours, that he lived alone,
without children, with his wife, exactly like me. There was
nothing to stop him living my life. I thought: `Everything I do,
every step I take, every hand I shake, every word I say, every
letter I dictate, every thought I have, every kiss I give my wife,
will be being done, taken, shaken, said, dictated, had, given by
Gualta to his wife. This can't go on.'

After that unfortunate encounter, I knew that we would
meet again four months later, at the big party being given to
celebrate the fifth anniversary of our company, American in
origin, being set up in Spain. And during that time, I applied
myself to the task of modifying my appearance: I cultivated a
moustache, which took a long while to grow; sometimes,
instead of a tie, I would wear an elegant cravat; I started smoking (English cigarettes); and I even tried to disguise my receding hairline with a discreet Japanese hair implant (the kind of
self-conscious, effeminate thing that neither Gualta nor my
former self would ever have allowed themselves to do). As for
my behaviour, I spoke more robustly, I avoided expressions
such as `horizontal integration' or `package deal dynamics' once so dear to Gualta and myself; I stopped pouring wine for
ladies during supper; I stopped helping them on with their
coats; I would utter the occasional swear word.

Four months later, at that Barcelona celebration, I met a
Gualta who was sporting a stunted moustache and who
appeared to have more hair than I remembered; he was chainsmoking John Players and instead of a tie, he was wearing a
bow-tie; he kept slapping his thighs when he laughed, digging
people with his elbow, and exclaiming frequently: `bloody
hell!' I found him just as hateful as before. That night, I too
was wearing a bow-tie.

It was from then on that the process of change in my own
abominable person really took off. I conscientiously sought
out everything that an excessively suave, smooth, serious, sententious man like Gualta (he was also very devout) could
never have brought himself to do, and at times and in places
when it was most unlikely that Gualta, in Barcelona, would be
devoting his time and space to committing the same excesses
as me. I began arriving late at work and leaving early, making
coarse remarks to the secretaries, I would fly into a rage at the
slightest thing and frequently insult the staff who worked for
me, and I would even make mistakes, never very serious ones,
but which a man like Gualta, however - so punctilious, such a
perfectionist - would never have made. And that was just my
work. As for my wife, whom I always treated with extreme
respect and veneration (until I turned thirty), I managed,
gradually, subtly, to persuade her not only to have sex at odd
times and in unsuitable places ('I bet Gualta is never this daring,' I thought one night as we lay together, in some haste, on
the roof of a newspaper kiosk in Calle Principe de Vergara),
but also to engage in sexual deviations that only months
before, in the unlikely event of our ever actually having
heard of them (through someone else, of course), we would
have described as sexual humiliations or sexual atrocities. We
committed unnatural acts, that beautiful woman and I.

After three months, I awaited with impatience a further
encounter with Gualta, confident that now he would be very
different from me. However, the occasion did not arise and, finally, one weekend, I decided to go to Barcelona myself
with the intention of watching his house in order to discover,
albeit from afar, any possible changes in his person or in his
personality. Or, rather, to confirm the efficacy of the changes I
had made to myself.

For eighteen hours (spread over Saturday and Sunday) I
took refuge in a cafe from which I could watch Gualta's house
and there I waited for him to come out. He did not appear,
however, and, just when I was wondering whether I should
return defeated to Madrid or go up to his apartment, even if I
risked possibly bumping into him, I suddenly saw his nonentity of a wife come out of the front door. She was rather
carelessly dressed, as if her spouse's success were no longer
sufficient to embellish her artificially or as if its effect did not
extend to weekends. On the other hand, though, it seemed to
me, as she walked past the darkened glass concealing me, that
she was somehow more provocative than the woman I had
seen at the supper in Madrid and at the party in Barcelona.
The reason was very simple and it was enough to make me
realise that I had not been as original as I thought nor had the
measures I had taken been wise: the look on her face was that
of a salacious, sexually dissolute woman. Though very different, she had the same slight (and very attractive) squint, the
same troubling, clouded gaze as my own stunner of a wife.

I returned to Madrid convinced that the reason Gualta
had not left his apartment all weekend was because that
same weekend he had travelled to Madrid and had spent
hours sitting in La Orotava, the cafe opposite my own house,
waiting for me to leave, which I had not done because I was in
Barcelona watching his house which he had not left because
he was in Madrid watching mine. There was no escape.

I made a few further, by now rather half-hearted, attempts.
Minor details to complete the transformation, like becoming
an official supporter of Real Madrid, in the belief that no
supporter of Espanol would ever be allowed into Barca; or else
I would order anisette or aniseed liqueur - drinks I find
repugnant - in some dingy bar on the outskirts, sure that a
man of Gualta's refined tastes would not be prepared to make such sacrifices; I also started insulting the Pope in public,
certain that my rival, a fervent Catholic, would never go that
far. In fact, I wasn't sure of anything and I think that now
I never will be. A year and a half after I first met Gualta, my
fast-track career in the company for which I still work has
come to an abrupt halt, and I await my dismissal (with severance pay, of course) any week now. A little while ago, without
any explanation, my wife - either because she had grown
weary of perversion or else, on the contrary, because my fantasies no longer sufficed and she needed to go in search of
fresh dissipations - left me. Will Gualta's nonentity of a wife
have done the same? Is his position in the company as precarious as mine? I will never know, because, as I said, I now
prefer not to. For the moment has arrived when, if I did
arrange to meet Gualta, two things could happen, both
equally terrifying, at least, more terrifying than uncertainty: I
could find a man utterly different from the one I first met and
identical to the current me (scruffy, demoralised, shiftless,
boorish, a blasphemer and a pervert) whom I will, however,
possibly find just as awful as the Xavier de Gualta I met the
first time. As regards the other possibility, that is even worse: I
might find the same Gualta I first met, unchanged: impassive,
courteous, boastful, elegant, devout and successful. And if that
were the case, I would have to ask myself, with a bitterness
I could not bear, why, of the two of us, was I the one to
abandon and renounce my own biography?

© Javier Marias

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Javier Marias (Madrid, 1951) wrote his first novel when he
was eighteen (Los dominios del lobo (1971) and has since published eight more, amongst them: Todas las almas (1989; All
Souls, Harvill/HarperCollins, 1992), Corazon tan blanco (1992;
A Heart So White, Harvill, 1995), Mariana en la batalla piensa en
mi (1994; Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, Harvill, 1996),
Cuando Jui mortal (short stories) (1996; When I was Mortal, Harvill, 1999 - all English translations by Margaret Jun Costa)
and Negra espalda del tiempo (1998). He is also a prize-winning
translator, notably of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. His
own work has been translated into twenty-three languages
and has won numerous prizes both in Spain and abroad; these
include the 1993 Spanish Critics' prize 1993, the 1995
Romulo Gallegos International Prize for the Novel, the 1996
Prix Femina for best foreign novel and the 1997 International
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. This story is from a collection
entitled Mientras ellas duermen (1990).