Your Face Tomorrow. Fever And Spear (6 page)

I observed this at the buffet supper at Sir Peter Wheeler's house and, of course, later on, when I knew more about him. Later, I realised, in fact, that his perspicacity as regards half-written biographies and half-travelled trajectories applied to everyone, women and men, although he found the former more stimulating and more interesting. At Wheeler's party, he arrived accompanied by the woman whom he had announced to Wheeler as his new girlfriend, a woman ten or twelve years younger than him and who appeared to find no novelty either in Tupra or in the situation: she lavished smiles on the wealthier-looking guests and half-heartedly rubbed shoulders with them, struggling to pay attention to their conversations as if she were playing an all-too-familiar role and kept mentally consulting her watch (she did look at it a couple of times without any apparent mental co-operation). She was tall, almost unusually so, in her well-trained high heels, and had the strong, solid legs of an American and a rather horse-like beauty of face, with attractive features, but a threatening jaw and such compact, excessively rectangular teeth that when she laughed, her upper lip curled back so far it almost disappeared — she was best when she wasn't laughing. She smelled good, of her own smell, one of those women whose pleasant, sour smell — a very sexual, physical smell — prevails over any other, this would doubtless be what most excited her boyfriend (that and her much-flaunted thighs).

Tupra was about fifty and shorter than she was, as were most of the other men present; he looked like a well-travelled diplomat who still did a lot of extempore dashing about, or else a high-ranking civil servant who spent more time out of the office than in, that is, someone not particularly important as a name but indispensable when it came to practical matters, more accustomed to putting out major conflagrations and covering up large holes, to sorting out messy pre-bellum situations and calming down or hoodwinking insurrectionists, rather than organising strategies from a desk. He looked like a man with his feet firmly on the ground, not lost somewhere in the upper echelons or bedazzled by protocol: whatever it was that he did ('his present line of work'), he probably spent more time padding streets not carpets, although now, perhaps, any streets he padded down would all be very elegant and well-to-do. His bulging cranium was softened by a head of hair considerably darker, thicker and curlier than one normally finds in Britain (with the exception of Wales), and which, particularly at the temples where the curls were almost ringlets, was probably dyed, revealing a premature but deferred greyness. His eyes were blue or grey depending on the light and he had long eyelashes, dense enough to be the envy of any woman and to be considered highly suspect by any man. His pale eyes had a mocking quality, even if this was not his intention — and his eyes were, therefore, expressive even when no expression was required — they were also rather warm or should I say appreciative, eyes that are never indifferent to what is there before them and which make anyone upon whom they fall feel worthy of curiosity, eyes whose very liveliness gave the immediate impression that they were going to get to the bottom of whatever being or object or landscape or scene they alighted upon. It is the kind of gaze that barely exists now in our societies, it is disapproved of and is being driven out. It is, of course, rare in England, where ancient tradition requires the gaze to be veiled or opaque or absent; but it's just as rare in Spain, where it used to be commonplace, and yet now no one sees anything or anyone or has the slightest interest in seeing, and where a kind of visual meanness leads people to behave as if others did not exist, or only as shapes or obstacles to be avoided or as mere supports to keep one upright or to be clambered up, and if you trample them in the process, so much the better, and where the disinterested observation of one's fellow man is seen as giving him an entirely unmerited importance which, moreover, diminishes that of the observer.

And yet, I thought, those who do still look at people in the way Bertram Tupra does, those who focus clearly and at the right height, which is the height of a man; those who catch or capture or, rather, absorb the image before them gain a great deal, especially as regards knowledge and the things that knowledge permits: to persuade and to influence, to make yourself indispensable and to be missed when you step aside or leave or even pretend to, to dissuade and convince and appropriate, to insinuate and to conquer. Tupra had that in common with Toby Rylands, whose student he had been, that warm, enveloping attention; and he had something in common with Wheeler too, except that Wheeler's gaze was wary, watchful, and his eyes seemed to be forming opinions even when they were merely reflective or distracted or sleepy, thinking on their own without the intervention of the brain, judging when there was no need to form a judgement, not even for his own purposes. Tupra, on the other hand, was not initially intimidating, he did not give that impression, and you did not, therefore, feel it necessary to be on your guard, rather, he invited you to lower your shield and take off your helmet, to allow him to get a better look at you. They all had something in common, and he, as nexus, made me aware of more similarities between the two older men, the dead friend and the living friend: links of character, no, links of ability. Or perhaps it was a gift that all three of them shared.

Tupra, I thought, would prove irresistible to women (I thought this often, I saw it) regardless of class, profession, experience, degree of conceit or age, even though he was getting on for fifty and not exactly handsome, but he was attractive in himself, despite the odd feature that might prove repellent to the objective eye: not so much his rather coarse nose which looked as if it had been broken by a blow once or by several more since; not so much his skin, disturbingly lustrous and firm for a man of his years and which was the lovely golden colour of beer (not a wrinkle in sight, and without recourse to artificial aids); not so much his eyebrows like black smudges and with a tendency to grow together (he probably plucked the space between them with tweezers now and then); it was more his overly soft and fleshy mouth, as lacking in consistency as it was over-endowed in breadth, lips that were rather African or perhaps Hindu or Slavic, and which, when they kissed, would give and spread like pliable, well-kneaded plasticine, at least that is how they would feel, with a touch like a sucker, a touch of always renewed and inextinguishable dampness. And yet, I told myself, he would still captivate whoever he chose to captivate, because nothing is so short-lived as the objective eye, and then almost nothing repels, once it has gone or once you have perhaps got rid of it in order to be able to live. Besides, there would be no shortage of people whom that mouth would please and inflame. As an adult, and even as my younger, more uncertain self, only very rarely have I felt convinced, in the presence of another man, that, whatever the situation, I would not stand a chance against him; and that if that fellow or individual looked at the woman beside me, there would be no way of keeping her there. But I had no woman beside me, not at Wheeler's buffet supper nor during most of the time I was under contract to Tupra as his assistant. Thank heavens Luisa isn't with me, I thought; she isn't here and so I have nothing to fear (I thought this often, I saw it). This man would amuse and flatter and understand her, he would take her out on the town every night and expose her to the most appropriate and most fruitful of dangers, he would be solicitous and supportive and would listen to her story from start to finish, and he would isolate her too and quietly feed her his demands and his prohibitions, all at once or within a very brief space of time, and he would not have to dig an inch deeper to send me down to the very depths of hell, nor have to make the slightest move to despatch me to limbo, me and my memory, as well as any occasional, improbable nostalgia she might feel for me.

This conviction made his new girlfriend's attitude towards him even stranger in my eyes, for she seemed more like someone who had made the whole journey with him some time ago, indeed, had done so long enough to grow weary of their shared trajectory and weary too, therefore, of Tupra, who, one would have said, she treated with familiar affection and in a conciliatory — and perhaps adulatory — spirit, rather than pursuing him enthusiastically about the large living-room or clinging to him like the brand-new lover who can, still not believe his or her good fortune (this man loves me, this woman loves me, what a blessing) and confuses it with predestination or some other such uplifting piffle. Not that she did not seem dependent on Tupra, but this was more because he was her companion and the person who had dragged or led her to Wheeler's house to be with these people, half university types and half diplomatic or financial or political or business types, or perhaps literary or professional — it's harder to distinguish amongst smartly dressed people in another country with an archaic etiquette, even when one has lived there; also present was a vast, drunken nobleman, Lord Rymer, an old Oxford acquaintance of mine and now the retired warden of All Souls — than out of inclination or submission or desire or love, or out of the natural impatience for novelties which conceal for the moment the inevitable end of their condition, and which, deep down, we all want to accelerate (the new is so tiring, for it has to be tamed and has no established course to follow). Peter had introduced her to me as just plain Beryl. 'Mr Deza, an old Spanish friend of mine,' he had said in English when they arrived and I was already there, thus giving them natural preeminence by mentioning my name first, it may simply have been deference to the lady's presence or there may have been more to it; and then: 'Mr Tupra, whose friendship goes back even further. And this is Beryl.' And that was all.

If Wheeler wanted me to observe Tupra and to pay closer attention to him than to anyone else during the evening, he made a grave miscalculation in inviting another Spaniard, a certain De la Garza, I wasn't clear whether he was cultural attaché or press attaché at the Spanish embassy, or something of an even vaguer and more parasitic nature, although given some of his language I could not entirely dismiss the idea that he was merely the officer in charge of improper relations, a
sommelier,
a suborner
in petto
or a gentleman-in-waiting. He was immaculately dressed, arrogant and insolent and, as tends to be the norm amongst my compatriots whenever and wherever they happen to meet up with foreigners, whether in Spain as hosts or abroad as guests of honour, whether they are in the absolute majority or in a minority of one, he could not bear to have to socialise with foreigners or to find himself in the tiresome situation of having to express a little polite curiosity, and so, consequently, as soon as he spotted a fellow Spaniard, he scarcely left my side and dispensed altogether with having any truck with the natives (we, after all, were the dagos), apart from with the two or three or perhaps four sexually attractive women amongst the fifteen or so guests (cold like the buffet and occasionally seated, but with no fixed place, or wandering about or standing in one spot), although this consisted mainly in ogling these women with his all too diaphanous eyes, in making crude remarks, in pointing them out to me with his ungovernable chin and even, occasionally, dealing me a knowing, mortifying, entirely unforgivable dig in the ribs, rather than going over to them himself to strike up an acquaintance or a conversation, that is, giving them the come-on more than just visually, which would not have been at all easy for him to do in English. I noticed at once his contentment and relief when we were introduced: with a Spaniard on hand, he would be saved the tension and fatigue of the onerous use of the local language which he thought he spoke, for his appalling accent transformed the most ordinary of words into harsh utterances unrecognisable to anyone but me, although this was more torment than privilege, since my familiarity with his implacable phonetics meant that I had to decipher, much against my will, a lot of presumptuous nonsense; he could also give free rein to his criticisms and slanders of those present without them understanding a word, although he did sometimes forget Sir Peter Wheeler's perfect command of Spanish, and when he remembered this and saw that Wheeler was within earshot, he would resort to obscene or criminal jargon, even more than he did when Wheeler was out of range; he felt at liberty to bring up absurd Spanish topics, whether justified or not, given that I know almost nothing about bullfighting or about the nonsense published in the tabloid press or about members of the royal family, not that I have anything against the first and very little against the third; and with me he could also swear and be as crude as he liked, which is very difficult to do in another language (easily and convincingly) and which you miss terribly if you're used to it, as I've often had occasion to observe when abroad, where I have known ministers, aristocrats, ambassadors, tycoons and professors, and even their respective beautifully dressed wives and daughters and even mothers and mothers-in-law of varying backgrounds, education and age, take advantage of my momentary presence to unburden themselves with oaths and diabolical blasphemies in Spanish (or Catalan). I was a blessing and a boon to De la Garza, and he sought me out and followed me all over the room and the garden, despite the cool of the night, mingling coarseness with pedantry and generally revelling in Spanish.

He shadowed me all evening, and even if I was talking to other people, in English naturally, he would sidle up to me every few minutes (as soon as someone gave him the slip, having had enough of his phonetic idiocies and barbarisms) and interrupt in his hideous English, only to slide immediately into our common language, given the evident struggle it represented for my interlocutors to understand him, with the apparent, initial intention of using me as simultaneous interpreter ('Go on, translate the joke I just made to this daft cow, will you, she obviously didn't get it'), but with the real and determined intention of scaring them all away and thus monopolising my attention and my conversation. I tried not to pay him the former or allow him the latter and continued to do as I pleased, barely bothering to listen to him, or only when he spoke more loudly than normal, when I would catch ambiguous fragments or odd phrases which he interposed whenever there was a pause or even when there wasn't, though more often than not I didn't even understand the context, since the attaché De la Garza attached himself to me at every moment, and at no moment did he cease to hold forth to me, whether I answered him or listened to him or not.