'I think that, considering his defects, Incompara is very generous,' I replied. 'Or else that report is worth an awful lot to him.' And then I asked another question, perhaps the one I least expected to ask, although I don't know if she was quite as surprised as I was, that depended on how well she knew me, on how much more she knew of me than I did of myself, on how much and in what depth she had translated or interpreted me—to employ the terminology we sometimes used to describe our indefinable work—during those months of working together. It occurred to me as a joke really and I saw no reason to resist. Besides, it would force her to put something on the table, to put a value on my participation, to consider me and the risk I was taking, to consider the possible damage to me and the unlikely benefits. Asking a favor is easy, even comfortable, the difficult, disquieting thing is hearing the request and then having to decide whether to grant or deny it. A transaction involves more work and more care and calculation for both parties. With a favor, only one of the parties has to decide and calculate, the one who is or isn't going to agree to it, because no one is obliged to return a favor or even be grateful. You ask, wait and receive a 'Yes' or a 'No'; then, in either case, you can calmly leave, having offloaded a problem or created a conflict. No, favors granted are not binding, they carry with them no contract, no debt, or only moral ones, and that's nothing, mere air, nothing practical. So, to my surprise, what I said was: And what's in it for me?'
Pérez Nuix, however, had not fallen into my trap, into my improvised and semi-unintentional trap. She didn't immediately go on to offer me something, a reward, a sum of money, a percentage, a gift, not even the promise of her eternal gratitude. She doubtless knew that the latter has no tangible or even symbolic meaning. People say it far too much, 'I'll be eternally grateful' is one of the most vacuous statements ever uttered and yet one hears it often, always with that unvarying epithet, always that same irresponsible 'eternally,' another clue to its absolute lack of reality, or truth or meaning, and sometimes the person saying it will add: 'If there's ever anything I can do for you, now or later on, you only have to ask,' when the fact is that almost no one immediately asks a favor in return, that would seem exploitative—a case of do ut des—and if, in the future, one does ask for something, the empty words will have been long forgotten and, besides, no one resorts to that, rarely does anyone remind the other person: 'Some time ago, you said . . .'; and if they do, they're likely to meet with this response: 'Did I say that? How very odd. Did I really? I don't remember that,' or else 'No, ask anything but that, that's the one thing I can't grant you, the very worst thing, please, don't ask me' or else 'I'm so sorry, I'd love to help, but it's simply not in my power, if only you'd come to me a few years ago, but things have changed.' And so the person who was only seeking the return of an old favor ends up asking a new favor, as if nothing had happened before, and is reduced almost to begging ('Please, please, please'). She was intelligent enough not to promise me chimeras or outlandish rewards in kind, nothing graspable or ungraspable, present or future.
'Nothing,' she said. 'For the moment, nothing, Jaime. It's simply a favor I'm asking and you can say "No" if you want to, you're not going to get anything out of it, you'll get nothing in return, although I really don't think it will be all that hard for you or that you'll be running any risk. If things don't work out, if he doesn't take the bait, you can always tell Bertie you made a mistake, it happens to us all, even to him, he knows perfectly well that no one's infallible. His hero Rylands wasn't, nor was Wheeler, something Wheeler, later on, had great cause to regret, apparently. Vivian wasn't either, nor were Cowgill, Sinclair or Menzies, people from another age, some of the best and most renowned, both in our field and beyond.' She knew how to pronounce that last name like a good Englishwoman or like a good spy, she too said 'Mingiss.' 'Nor were the big names of more recent times, Dearlove, Scarlett, Manningham-Buller and Remington, they all blundered at some point, in some way. Even Montagu wasn't infallible, nor were Duff Cooper or Churchill. That's why I said earlier that while this was a big favor for me, it wasn't such a big deal for you. That bothered you at the time, but it's true nonetheless. No, I don't think you'll get anything in return or profit in any way. But you won't suffer any misfortunes or any losses either. Anyway, Jaime, it's entirely up to you whether you say "Yes" or "No." You're under no obligation. And I can't think of any way I could tempt you.'
'"Dearlove" did you say? Who? Richard Dearlove?' I recalled that this was one of the unlikely and to me unfamiliar names I'd stumbled across while rifling through some old restricted files one day at the office. It had struck me as a name more suited to some idol of the masses than to a high-ranking official or civil servant, which is why I used it for the singer-celebrity whom here I call Dick Dearlove to protect his real identity, a vain endeavor. My immediate curiosity proved too much for me and so I put off giving my answer a little longer. And there was something else I was curious about, a curiosity that demanded satisfaction, less immediately perhaps but more insistently.
'Yes,' she said. 'Sir Richard Dearlove. For several years, until not long ago in fact, he was our invisible leader, didn't you know? The head of MI6,"C" or "Mr. C" She pronounced this initial English-fashion, 'Mr. Si,' we Spaniards would say. 'No one has published a recent photograph of him, it's forbidden, no one has seen him or knows what he looks like; not even now, when he's no longer in that post. And so none of us could identify him; no one would recognize him if he walked by in the street. That's a great advantage, don't you think? I wish I had the same advantage.'
'And have we never done a report on him? I mean a video interview, although I can't imagine he would have been taken up to Tupra's office so that we could spy on him from our hiding-place in the train carriage, from our cabin.' I realized at once that I had said 'we' and 'our' as if I already considered myself part of the group and had since even before my arrival. I was developing a strange and entirely involuntary sense of belonging. But I preferred not to think about that just then.
'I don't know,' she said half-heartedly. 'Ask Bertie. As I said, he has videos of everyone.' I had the feeling she was growing impatient with my delay, or with my waffling around, I still hadn't heard that order, or was it a kind of motto, 'Don't linger or delay' not that I've ever taken any notice of it, either before or since. She must simply have wanted to know where she stood and then she could leave. Certainly if my final answer was 'No,' she would leave there and then and not waste any more of the night on me, but set off with her gentle dog, doubtless feeling rather ridiculous and perhaps filled as well with a sense of instant rancor or even lasting grievance. If the answer was 'Yes,' on the other hand, perhaps she would stay longer, to celebrate her relief or to issue new instructions, now that what she had come for was in the bag. She must have found it irritating that I should bother her now with questions about Sir Richard Dearlove, the real Dearlove this time, or about any other person or subject. That I should, at this point, open a parenthesis or invent tangents. She would just have to put up with it, I was still the one guiding the conversation and determining its course, and she could not afford to upset me—yet. That, when you think about it, is the only calculation anyone asking a favor must make really, once they've taken the first step and made their request (before that, it's different, they have to be more cautious, estimating whether it's worthwhile or even advisable for them to reveal their deficiencies and inabilities): they have to be pleasant and patient and even unctuous, to keep to the tempo being set for them, to consider their steps and their words and the degree to which they can insist, until they get what they've asked for. Unless, that is, they're someone so important that doing them a favor is in itself an honor for the person granting it, a privilege. This was not the case here, and so she added in another tone of voice: 'No, I don't think so, but anything's possible. I suppose photos of him must exist, nowadays you can track down pictures of anyone; and if only very few have access to his photos, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Bertie was one of them.'
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'Why did you say that Wheeler regretted not being infallible? What happened? What happened to him? What did you mean?' That was the deeper, more insistent curiosity demanding satisfaction.
Again I noticed her annoyance, her frayed nerves, her mutable state of exhaustion, which came and went. I was probably annoying her or driving her mad. But she once more suppressed her feelings or pulled herself together, she had still not lost heart.
'I don't know what happened to him, Jaime, it was a long time ago, during or after World War II, and I don't know him personally. People say that he made an interpretative error that cost him dearly. He failed to foresee something and that left him feeling dreadfully guilty, useless, destroyed, I don't know exactly. I've heard it mentioned in passing as an example of great misfortune, but I've never asked or no one's ever given me an answer, most of our work is still secret even after sixty or more years, it may remain so forever, at least officially Any leaks usually come from outside and are often pure speculation, not to be trusted. Or they come from people with an axe to grind, who either resigned or were sacked, and who distort the facts. It's difficult to know anything very precise about our past, especially about us insiders, who tend to be the most discreet and the least curious, it's as if we had no history. We're the most keenly aware of what should not be told, because we live with that all the time. So, I'm sorry, but I can't help. You'll have to ask Wheeler himself. You know him well, he was your champion, your sponsor, the one who introduced you to the group.'
She, I noticed, used 'we' and 'our' without even thinking, naturally and frequently—she had been part of the group for much longer than me and felt herself to be an heir to the original group, the one that had been created by Menzies or Ve-Ve Vivian or Cowgill or Hollis or even Philby or Churchill himself to fight the Nazis, Wheeler thought Churchill had been the one who sparked the idea, being the brightest and boldest of the lot, and the least afraid of ridicule.
'Who have you heard mention it? Tupra? Can you remember if what happened involved Wheeler's wife? Her name was Valerie. Does that ring any bells?'
'I don't know who I heard it from, Jaime. It could have been Bertie, it probably was, or Rendel, or Mulryan, or perhaps some other person in some other place, I don't recall now. But that's all I know, nothing more—that something bad happened, that he failed in some way, or at least he thought so, and I believe he came close to withdrawing from the group altogether, to giving it up. It was all a very long time ago.'
I didn't know if she was telling me the truth or if she didn't feel authorized to tell me the story or if she simply wanted to get away from my endless questions and not—at this late hour of the night—get into some obscure, possibly long tale about someone else, which she would, at best, know only at second hand and which bore no relation to her current problems, the problems that had brought her to my house after much thought and much trudging through the rain: her father and that man Vanni Incompara and the banker Vickers and that leap-frogging debt of two hundred thousand pounds, I'm amazed at some people's ability to accumulate sums of money they don't have, and in a way I envy them—it's quite a talent, if not a gift; it requires a cheerful mindset—although any envy I might feel is purely theoretical or fictional, literary and cinematographic, Pérez Nuix's vicarious position at that point was not in the least enviable. For the first time, I felt sorry for her (pity always intervenes), perhaps because tiredness made her seem more childlike, or perhaps it was the suppressed anxiety that surfaced now and then in her bright darting eyes and at the corners of her mouth, which kept trying to form brief, fearful smiles, to please me. I decided that it was time to put her out of her misery: she had expended a lot of effort, she had followed me for a long time through that half-deserted city, getting drenched in the process, she had pondered what to do, she had put her case and she had expended on me, first, her indecision and her time and then her resolve and still more time.
'All right, Patricia,' I said, bringing to an end my session of interrogations and postponements. 'I'll try, although I still think Tupra will see whatever there is to see, and more than me. But I'll do what I can, I'll try my best.'
This was the lowest level of commitment I could give. I might fail and make a mistake and not do as well as I had hoped, she herself had said as much and so she wouldn't be able to reproach me with failure. Nor be disappointed, for I had given her due warning. This left me much freer than if my answer had been 'I want this in return,' mainly because now I ran no risk of beginning to desire or to hope for what I had demanded from her, and thus to fear my own defeat. More than that, if you're not afraid, your chances of success will probably increase, and there'll still be time later on to raise your hand and demand a prize and say: 'I want this as a reward.' Naturally, this could be denied to us outright, with no explanation or excuse: there's no moral obligation then, no link, no agreement, nothing explicit, and there may very soon be no trace left of the immense favor we granted, just like the drop of blood or its rim that one looks for after it has disappeared, having been scrubbed and rubbed away, or the infinite crimes and noble acts not known about since their commission or which the slow centuries amuse themselves by very slowly diluting until they're completely erased and then by pretending that they've never been. As if everything always fell like snow on our shoulders, slippery and docile, even things that make a great din and spread fires. (And from our shoulders it vanishes into the air or else melts or falls to the ground. And the snow always stops, eventually.)
Almost no trace remains of what happened next or only the faintest of vestiges in my more languid memory and perhaps in hers too, but we will never find out—I mean she and I, face to face, through an exchange of words. It happened as if in the very moment it was occurring we both wanted to pretend that it wasn't happening, or preferred not to notice, not to register it, to pretend it didn't matter, or to keep it so hushed up that later on we could deny it to each other, or to others if one of us let the cat out of the bag or started boasting about it, even if each of us only did so to ourselves, as if we both knew that something of which there is no record or no explicit recognition and which is never mentioned simply doesn't exist; something which, in a way, is committed secretly or behind the backs of its perpetrators and without their full consent or with only a drowsing awareness: something we do while telling ourselves we're not doing it, something that occurs even as we're persuading ourselves that it isn't happening, something not as strange as it sounds or seems, indeed, it happens all the time and causes us almost no alarm or doubts about our own judgement. We convince ourselves that we never had that unworthy or evil thought, that we never desired that woman or that death—the death of an enemy, husband or friend—that we never felt even momentary scorn or hostility towards the person we most respected or to whom we owed the greatest debt of gratitude, nor envied our irksome children who will go on living when we're no longer here and who will appropriate everything and quickly take our place; that we never intrigued or betrayed or plotted, never sought the ruin of anyone when in fact we diligently sought that of several people, that we were never tempted to do anything we might feel ashamed of; that we never acted in bad faith when we recounted some malicious gossip to someone so that he could defend himself-—or so we argued, thus becoming instantly virtuous and charitable—and so that he would stop being so naive and realize just who he was dealing with; and—even more extraordinary, because it affects actual events and not just the easily-deceived mind—that we didn't flee when in fact we ran away for all we were worth and left all regrets behind us, that we didn't push or shove a child out of the way to make room for ourselves in the lifeboat when the ship was sinking, that we didn't shield ourselves behind someone else when things were at their worst, so that the blows or the knife-thrusts or the bullets hit the person next to us who was, perhaps, expecting our protection: who knows, perhaps the person we loved most in the world, to whom we declared a thousand times that we would unhesitatingly give up our life for him or
her, and it turns out that we did hesitate and didn't and haven't given up our life, nor would we if a second opportunity were to arise; that we didn't lay the blame for something we did on someone else nor make a false accusation in order to save ourselves, that we never acted out of the most terrible egotism and fear. We really believe that we weren't born when and where we came into the world, that we're younger than we are and from some nobler, less obscure place, that our parents aren't our parents and bear a much less vulgar surname; that we earned by our own merit what we stole or was given to us, that we fairly inherited some scepter or throne or mere stick or chair without using guile and without usurping them, that we came up with witticisms and ideas written or spoken by other wiser and more thoughtful men, whose dread names we never mention and whom we loathe for having 'got in' before us, although deep down we know, in some small surviving corner of our consciousness, that there was no question of their 'getting in before us' and that if they hadn't 'preceded' us, those ideas so personal to them would be even less our ideas, indeed could never be ours; we believe ourselves to be the person we most admire, and to make this come true, we set out to destroy him, believing we can supplant and obliterate him with our achievements which we owe entirely to him and drive him from the world's fickle memory, reassuring ourselves with the thought that he was only a pioneer whom we have exceeded and absorbed, and thus made highly dispensable; we persuade ourselves that the past does not weigh on us because we have never traversed it ('It wasn't me, it didn't happen to me, I never lived through that, I didn't see anything, I know nothing about it, it's the fruit of someone else's imaginings, someone else's memory that has somehow or other been transplanted into mine or else infected it') and that we never said what we said or stole what we stole, that we never cheered the dictator or betrayed our best friend who was so unbearably much better than us from the first day to the last ('He brought it on himself, I had nothing to do with it, I kept my mouth shut, he was a hothead, he made his own fate, he stood out when he shouldn't have and didn't change sides in time, didn't even want to'); and we don't even call ourselves by our real name, but only by a false one or by whichever of the ever-changing names that keep coming along and being added, be it Rylands or Wheeler, or Ure or Reresby or Tupra or Dundas, or Jacques the Fatalist or Jacobo or Jaime.