Your Face Tomorrow. Fever And Spear (29 page)

'Ah, yes, that's right. Well, you know our privileged reputation: they think of us as prepared and qualified in principle for any activity, regardless of whether it bears any relation to our studies or our particular disciplines. And this university has spent too many centuries intervening, via its offspring, in the government of this country for us to refuse to collaborate when it most needed us. Not that we had any choice, it wasn't like in peacetime. Although there were people who did, who refused, and they paid for it, paid very dearly. All their lives. There were double agents and traitors too, you'll have heard of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt, the scandal gradually dribbled out during the '50s and '60s, and even into the '70s, because no one knew anything about Blunt until 1979, when Mrs Thatcher decided to break the pact she had inherited and to make public what he had confessed in secret fifteen years before, thus completely destroying him and stripping him of everything, starting, ridiculously enough, with his title. Anyway, there were so many people involved, it's hardly surprising that four traitors should have emerged from our universities, fortunately the four came from the other place, not ours, and that's worked silently in our favour for the last half-century.' — 'Here too,' I thought, 'spatial malice, the punishment of place.' — 'Well, I say four: the Four of Fame from the Ring of Five, but there must have been many more.' — I didn't understand what he was referring to, but this time I gave no sign of my ignorance, not even by my expression, I didn't want to have to interrupt again. 'Ring' in English can also mean the kind of ring you wear on your finger. — 'I joined, Toby joined, as did so many others, and it's remained quite common practice, even after the war, they've always needed all kinds of expertise and have sought it out in the best and most appropriate places. They've always needed linguists, decoders, people who knew languages: I don't think there's anyone in the sub-faculty of Slavonic Languages who hasn't done some work for them at some time. Not in the field, of course, they haven't gone on missions, anyone working in Slavonic languages was already too marked out by his profession to be useful to them there, it would have been tantamount to sending a spy with a sign on his forehead saying "Spy". But they have used them to do translations, to act as interpreters, to break codes, authenticate recordings or polish accents, to carry out phone taps and interrogations, in Vauxhall Cross or in Baker Street. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, of course, now they don't need them so much, it's the turn of Arabists and Islamic scholars, they have no idea yet just what's hit them, they won't get a moment's peace.' — I thought of Rook with his massive head, the eternal translator of Tolstoy and the alleged and unlikely friend of Vladimir Nabokov, and about Dewar, a.k.a. the Ripper, the Butcher, the Hammer and the Inquisitor (poor Dewar and his insomnia, and how unfair all those nicknames were), a Hispanist who, as I discovered, could also read Pushkin in Russian, delighting in those iambic stanzas, either read out loud or to himself. Old acquaintances from the city of Oxford in which I had lived for two years — although I was only ever passing through — and with almost all of whom I had had no further contact once I returned to Madrid. Cromer-Blake and Rylands, with whom I had been friendliest, were both dead. Clare Bayes was back with her husband, Edward Bayes, or else with a new lover, but there would definitely be no room for me as a friend, there was no reason, our affair had been entirely secret. I was in sporadic contact with Kavanagh, the head of my sub-faculty, an amusing man and a great hypochondriac, which is perhaps why he wrote his horror novels under that pseudonym, two different forms of an addiction to fear. And Wheeler. Except that he really dated from after my time there, he was more like an inheritance from Rylands, his successor, his substitute or replacement in my life, I realised now the family nature of it, of that inheritance and that succession I mean. Wheeler remained thinking for a moment (perhaps he was feeling sorry for some Arabist acquaintance of his, and of his imminent fate under siege from MI6), and then returned to something from earlier in the conversation, saying: it's very odd that Toby should have told you about that. He didn't like anyone to know, he didn't even like thinking about it. Nor do I actually, so don't go imagining that I'm going to regale you with stories of my adventures in the Caribbean or in West Africa or in South-East Asia, according to Who's Who's rather imprecise accusations. What did he tell you? Can you remember how it came up?'

Yes, I did remember, almost word for word, on no other occasion had Rylands spoken to me with such intensity, so immersed in his own memory and with such disregard for his own will. It was true: he didn't like sharing his memories with others, and disliked revealing anything.

'We were talking about death,' I said. ('The worst thing about the approach of death isn't death itself and what it may or may not bring, it's the fact that one can no longer fantasise about things still to come,' Rylands had said, sitting in a chair in his garden next to the same slow river that we could see now, the River Cherwell with its muddy waters, except that Rylands's house gave on to a wilder, more magical, and far less soothing stretch of water. Occasionally swans would appear, and he would throw them bits of bread.)

'About death? That's odd too,' remarked Wheeler. 'It's odd that Toby should talk about that, odd that anyone should, especially once it's inevitable, because of infirmity or old age. Or, indeed, character.' ('Wheeler is talking about it now,' I thought, 'but more because he's an intelligent man than because of his age.')

'Cromer-Blake was already very ill, and we were worried then about what did, in the end, happen. Talking about that and about how little time there was left led Toby to speak of the past.' ('I've had what is commonly referred to as a full life, at least that's how I regard it,' Rylands had said. 'I haven't had a wife or children, but I've had a life spent in the acquisition of knowledge and that was what mattered to me. I've always gone on finding out more than I knew before, and it doesn't matter where you put that "before", even if it's only today or tomorrow.')

'And is that when he told you what he had done, about, his adventures?' asked Wheeler, and I thought I noticed a touch of apprehension in his voice, as if he were referring to something more specific than having collaborated with MI6 which, in Oxford, was, after all, something trivial, commonplace.

'He wanted to explain to me that he'd had a full life, that he hadn't, as it might seem, devoted himself solely to study and knowledge and teaching,' I replied. ('But I've had a full life, too, in the sense that my life's been crammed with action and the unexpected,' Rylands had said.) 'And that was when he confirmed the rumours I'd heard, that he'd been a spy, that was the word he used. And I assumed that he'd belonged to MI5, it didn't occur to me to think of MI6, perhaps because it's less familiar to us Spaniards.'

'That's what he told you.' There was no interrogative tone. 'He used that word. H'm,' murmured Wheeler, as so many people in Oxford did, including Rylands. 'H'm.' Seeing Peter so thoughtful and full of curiosity, it seemed to me selfish and unkind not to fill in the context, which I remembered so well, and not to quote to him verbatim his younger brother's words. 'H'm,' he said again.

' "As you'll no doubt have heard," he said, "I was a spy, like so many of us here, because that, too, can form part of our duties; but I was never just a pen-pusher like that fellow Dewar in your department, indeed like most of them. I worked in the field."' I could tell by the look in Wheeler's eyes that he had noticed that his brother had used some of the same expressions he had just used.

'Did he say anything else?' he asked.

'Yes, he did: he talked for quite a long time, almost as if I wasn't there, and he added a few other things too. For example: "I've been in India and in the Caribbean and in Russia and I've done things I could never tell anyone about now, because they would seem so ridiculous that no one would believe me, I know only too well that what one can and cannot tell depends very much on timing, because I've dedicated my life to identifying just that in literature and I've learned to identify it in life too.'"

'Toby was right about that, there are things that can't be told now — or only with great difficulty — even though they really happened. The facts of war sound puerile in times of relative peace, and just because something happened doesn't mean it can be talked about, just because it's true, doesn't mean it's plausible. With the passing of time, the truth can seem unlikely; it fades into the background, and then seems more like a fable or simply not true at all. Even some of my own experiences seem like fiction to me. They were important experiences, but the times that follow begin to doubt them, perhaps not one's own time, but the entirely new eras, and it's those new eras that make what came before and what they didn't see seem unimportant, almost as if they were somehow jealous of them. Often the present infantilises the past, it tends to transform it into something invented and childish, and renders it useless to us, spoils it for us.' He paused, nodded at the cigarette I had hesitantly raised to my lips after drinking my coffee (I was afraid the smoke might bother them at that hour). He looked out of the window at the river, at his stretch of the river, more civilised and harmonious than Toby Rylands's. He had momentarily lost all his previous haste and impatience, which is what usually happens when one remembers the dead. 'Who knows, maybe that's partly why we die: because everything we've experienced is reduced to nothing, and then even our memories languish and fade. First, it's our personal experiences. Then it's our memories.'

'So everything also has its moment not to be believed.'

Wheeler smiled vaguely, almost regretfully. He had picked up on my inversion of the words he had used a short while before, of the possible motto that he shared with Tupra, if it was a motto and not just a coincidence of ideas, yet another affinity between them.

'But nevertheless he told you,' Wheeler murmured, and what I sensed now in his voice was, I thought, not so much apprehension as fatalism or defeat or resignation, in short, surrender.

'Don't be so sure, Peter. He did and he didn't. He may have dropped his guard sometimes, but he never entirely lost his will, I don't think, nor did he say more than he was aware he wanted to say. Even if that awareness was distant or hidden, or muffled. Just like you.'

'What else did he tell and not tell you, then?' He ignored my last comment, or kept it for later on.

'He didn't really tell me anything, he just talked. He said: "I shouldn't be telling you any of this now, but the fact is that in my lifetime I've run mortal risks and betrayed men whom I had nothing against personally. I've saved a few people's lives too, but sent others to the firing squad or the gallows. I've lived in Africa, in the most unlikely places, in other times, and was even a witness to the suicide of the person I loved.'"

'He said that, "I was even a witness to the suicide . . ."' Wheeler didn't complete the phrase. He was astonished, or possibly annoyed. 'And was that all? Did he say who or what happened?'

'No. I remember that he stopped short then, as if his will or his conscious mind had sent a warning to his memory, to stop him overstepping the mark; then he added: "Oh, and battles, I've been a witness to those too," I remember it clearly. Then he went on talking, but about the present. He said no more about his past, or only in very general terms. Even more general, that is.'

'May I ask what those terms were?' Wheeler's question sounded not forceful, but timid, as if he were asking my permission; it was almost a plea.

'Of course, Peter,' I replied, and there was no reserve or insincerity in my voice. 'He said that his head was full of bright, shining memories, frightening and thrilling, and that anyone seeing all of them together, as he could, would think they were more than enough, that the simple remembering of so many fascinating facts and people would fill one's old age more intensely than most people's present.' I paused for a moment to give him time to listen to the words inside him. 'Those, pretty much, were the terms he used or what he said. And he added that it wasn't, in fact, like that. That it wasn't like that for him. He did still want more, he said. He still wanted everything, he said.'

Wheeler now seemed at once relieved and saddened and uneasy, or perhaps he was none of those things, perhaps he was simply moved. It probably wasn't like that for him either, however many bright, shining memories he had. Probably nothing was enough to fill the days of his old age, despite all his efforts and his machinations.

'And you believed all that,' he said.

'I had no reason not to,' I replied. 'Besides, he was telling me the truth, sometimes you just know, without a shadow of a doubt, that someone is telling you the truth. Not often, it's true,' I added. 'But there are occasions when you have not the slightest doubt about it.'

'Do you remember when this took place, this conversation?'

'Yes, it was in Hilary term during my second year here, towards the end of March.'

'So a couple of years before he died, is that right?'

'More or less, or perhaps a bit more. I think he may not have even introduced us yet, you and me. You and I must have met for the first time in Trinity term of that year, shortly before I returned to Madrid for good.'

'We were already quite old then, Toby and I, well into our emeritus years both of us. I never thought I would be so much older, I don't know how he would have coped with all the additional time that I've had and he hasn't. Badly I suspect, worse than me. He complained more because he was more optimistic than me, and therefore more passive too, don't you agree, Estelle?'

I was surprised that he should suddenly address Mrs Berry by her first name, I had never heard him do so before, and yet he and I had often been alone together, but he had always addressed her as 'Mrs Berry'. I wondered if the nature of the conversation had something to do with it. As if he were opening up for me one door or several (I didn't yet know which one or how many), amongst them that of his unseen daily life. She always called him 'Professor', which in Oxford does not mean 'lecturer' or 'teacher' as it does in Spanish, but chair or head of department, and there is only one professor in each sub-faculty, the others being merely 'dons'. And this time Mrs Berry responded by calling him 'Peter'. That's what they must call each other when they're alone, Peter and Estelle, I thought. It was, however, impossible to know if they addressed each other as 'tú', since in present-day English only 'you' exists, and there is no distinction made between 'tú' and 'usted'.