'But you didn't come to this house, did you, Peter?' I asked.
'No, I went to my rooms in college and lived there for three years, I preferred to have people around me. But you see, the one night, the one and only night, that I failed to watch over her sleep or non-sleep, Valerie went and killed herself. She couldn't live with what she had done. And I didn't foresee it. It never crossed my mind, not even when she sent me upstairs to the chambre de bonne. It was a perfectly reasonable excuse, and I wasn't prepared: it was the first time she had ever deceived me. You can't imagine the times I've wondered if I would have gotten there in time had I only been quicker to realize where she was when I woke up'—'Don't linger or delay,' I thought—'if I hadn't picked up the book or turned out the light or put on my dressing gown or if I'd gone down those two flights of stairs more quickly or gone down them just as quietly but without opening my mouth, without saying her name, without letting her know I was there. All nonsense of course. But you think those things over and over.'—'Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake,' I remembered.—'Some time afterwards, I wrote to Maria Mauthner and introduced myself, because she knew nothing about me. I told her that Valerie had died, but not how or why. The War, I said, and that was enough. I helped her nephew come to England, but I couldn't bring myself to have anything to do with him, it would have been like looking at Valerie's rifle. And I've helped his son, too, the Rendel that you know: apparently he's pretty good, but not as gifted as Tupra or you, he lacks vision. At least he has a good job, though. My vision, I can assure you, has improved greatly since then. I promised myself that such a thing would never happen to anyone again simply because I couldn't or didn't dare to see. Not that anyone was ever as important to me again, of course: most of the people I observed and interpreted subsequently, on whom I reported, of whom I said whether or not they might be useful and for what, haven't mattered to me one jot in comparison. But now at least I can say to you, with no fear that I might be wrong, that you can live with what has happened to you, with what you came here to talk to me about, because, unlike her, you find it hard to believe that you were responsible.'—'Yes,' I thought, 'I will always be able to say to myself tomorrow: "Oh, I didn't intend to do it, I knew nothing about it, it happened against my will, in the tortuous smokescreens of fever and shadow and dreams, it was part of my theoretical, parenthetical life, of my vague parallel existence that doesn't really count, it only half-happened and without my full consent, in short, as it said in the report I found among those old files and which was headed "Deza, Jacques," I don't see myself or know myself, I don't delve into or investigate myself, I don't pay much attention to myself and I've given up trying to understand myself. And besides, that was in another country." And then the judge would say: "Overruled, case dismissed.'"—'And anyway, you're made of very different stuff and you belong to a different age, Jacobo, a much more frivolous age. No, don't worry, you're not like Valerie. In fact, no one ever has been, during all these years without her. Or only occasionally, in my dreams.'—'Give me your hand and let us walk. Through the fields of this land of mine . . .'—Wheeler removed his hand from his eyes and looked at me with surprise, or fright, as if he had just emerged from a long dream. Or perhaps it was more that he opened his eyes very wide, as if seeing the world for the first time, with a gaze as inscrutable as that of a newborn child, born only weeks or days before, and who, I imagine, observes this new place into which he has been hurled and tries perhaps to decipher our customs and to work out which of those customs will be his. He looked very tired and very pale, and I suddenly feared for his health. I felt like putting my hand on his shoulder, as I had with my father a few days earlier. He noticed the olives, picked up two and ate them both. Then he drank a little more sherry, and the color returned to his cheeks, maybe he had suffered a brief drop in blood pressure. When he spoke again and I heard a different tone in his voice, I felt completely reassured, realizing that the evocation, the story, was at an end: 'Go and ask Mrs. Berry if it's time for lunch yet,' he said. 'I don't know why she hasn't called us, she stopped playing a while ago now'
I still live alone, not in another country, but back in Madrid. Or perhaps I live half-alone, if one can say such a thing. I think I've been back now for almost as much time as I spent in London, during my second English sojourn, which had been more bewildering than the first but less transforming, because I was of an age when it's harder to change, when almost all you can do is ascertain and confirm just what it is you carry in your veins. Now I am a little older. Both my father and Sir Peter Wheeler have died, the former only a week after that last Sunday in Oxford, not so much in exile from the infinite as from the past. It was his death, in fact, that precipitated my return to my home city, to be with his grandchildren, my brothers and my sister, and to attend the funeral. There was a space for him in my mother's grave. No one else will fit in there now. It was my sister who told me, she phoned me in London and said: 'Papa has died. His heart stopped half an hour ago. We knew his heart was weak, but it was still very unexpected. I was talking to him only yesterday. He asked after you, as usual, although he was convinced that you were in Oxford, teaching. You'll come, won't you?' I said that I would, that I'd come immediately. And so I went, I consoled and was consoled, I only saw Luisa at the funeral and there she embraced me in order to console me too and then I returned to London, to sort out that ingenuously furnished apartment and leave everything in order before my definitive departure, which it would now be best to hasten; a great many things required my attention in Madrid: house, furniture, books, a few paintings—that copy of the 'Annunciation'—my own bereft children, a modest or possibly not so modest inheritance; and the task of remembering. Both alone and in the company of the others.
There were no matters pending with Tupra, everything had been pretty much resolved and, indeed, settled the day after the Sunday I spent with Wheeler, in Tupra's office in the building with no name (and which, I assume, remains nameless). As predicted by Beryl or by the person who refused to tell me if she was Beryl or not, Tupra, having returned from his trip or weekend absence, was already in his office when I arrived on Monday. Our conversation was very brief, partly because it turned out to be a repetition, I mean that we'd had that identical conversation before, in the distant days when I still called him Mr. Tupra. I went straight to his door as soon as I arrived, saying a quick good morning to Rendel and young Pérez Nuix as I passed; I didn't see Mulryan, perhaps he was with Tupra. I knocked.
'Yes, who is it?' asked Tupra from inside.
And I replied absurdly:
'It's me,' omitting to give him my name, as if I were one of those people who forget that 'me' is never anyone, who are quite sure of occupying a great deal or a fair part of the thoughts of the person they're looking for, who have no doubt that they will be recognized with no need to say more—who else would it be—from the first word and the first moment. I suppose I confused my point of view with his, for we sometimes erroneously believe our own sense of urgency to be universal: I had spent many hours impatient to see him, to demand an explanation and even to confront him. But Tupra wouldn't be the least impatient, I was probably just another matter or another person to deal with, a subordinate returning to work after two weeks' leave in his country of origin, I think he often forgot that I wasn't yet English. When I didn't receive an immediate response, and suddenly aware of my own naiveté or presumption, I added: 'It's me, Bertram. It's Jack.' I accepted calling myself by a name that wasn't mine right until the end; it was the least important of the compromises I made while I was earning my living listening and noticing and interpreting and telling. But at least I didn't call him Bertie on that occasion.
'Come in, Jack,' he said.
And so I opened the door and peered in. He was sitting behind his desk, making notes or writing something on some papers. He didn't actually look up when I went in.
'Bertram,' I said, but he interrupted me.
'One moment, Jack, let me finish this first.' I waited f
or a minute or perhaps two or three, enough, in any case, to foresee that what did happen would happen. I sat down in an armchair opposite him, took out a cigarette and then lit it. He automatically picked up his Rameses II cigarettes, which were in their lavish red pack on the desk. In theory, smoking was forbidden in any of the offices, but I couldn't imagine anyone stopping Tupra inhaling and exhaling smoke, nor complaining about it. There had to be some advantage in the fact that neither the building nor our group had a name, and that we barely existed at all, more or less like the black propaganda group run by the PWE and Delmer and Jefferys during the War. When he finished his note-making, he took out and lit one of those exquisite cigarettes. 'So, Jack, how did it go?' There was nothing unusual in the way he said this, it wasn't even a question, more as if he were taking a routine interest in a simple little errand he had sent me on the day before. 'They told me at home that you phoned on Saturday about an urgent matter. Problems with your problem in Madrid?'
But I didn't answer his question, I got straight down to my own business—without delay:
'What happened to Dearlove and that Russian boy? What have you done?' I said. 'You really dropped me in it, I mean, it was me who gave you the idea, joder! That 'joder'—that 'damn it'—came out in Spanish because it was what my anger required me to say, even if I was speaking in English.
He sat looking at me for a few seconds with his blue or grey eyes—they were grey in that light—through his long eyelashes, dense enough to be the envy of any woman and to be considered highly suspect by any man, with those pale eyes that had a mocking quality, even if this was not their intention, eyes that were, therefore, expressive even when—as then—no expression was required, warm or should I say appreciative eyes that were never indifferent to what was there before them. And he responded in the same tone of voice, identical, with which he had said: 'Yes, I have,' when I had asked him in that same office, on another morning many months before, if he had heard about the failed coup d'état in Venezuela, and it had occurred to me that perhaps it had fallen through because we hadn't seen—because I hadn't sensed—sufficient determination on the part of General or Corporal Bonanza, who was the first person for whom I acted as translator with Tupra and on whom I improvised a report and offered my interpretation.
'What happened is in all the papers.' Perhaps he took advantage of that extemporaneous Spanish expletive, incomprehensible to him, to pretend that he had only heard my first sentence and to ignore the rest. No, he wasn't pretending, it was a way of telling me that the rest of what I had said seemed to him inadmissible and that he wasn't going to tolerate it. 'You must have read about it. Even in the Spanish press, I expect, didn't you tell me once how famous he was there? Especially . . . where was it now? In the Basque Country?' His memory never failed him. 'And you yourself warned me in Edinburgh that Dearlove was so concerned for his posterity that he might commit some barbarous act simply in order to be remembered. That having so little faith that his music would last, he might very well blot his own life and thus deliberately enter the ranks of the Kennedy-Mansfield clan, isn't that right? So you see, you were very sharp, it was clear he might come to a bad end. And on purpose too.' I had forgotten about that additional report of mine; he, on the other hand, had not and was now using it as an alibi. I realized that he was not willing to discuss the matter, that he wasn't even going to take part in the conversation, I was still just an employee who did my job and was paid well for it, but I had no right to ask about objectives or motivations, still less to demand explanations or make reproaches, at least that was how he saw it. Perhaps because he held me in a certain regard, because of his temporary fondness for me, he was putting me in my place only indirectly, almost tacitly, surreptitiously. And I understood this even more clearly when he added: Anything else, Jack?' It's what he had said on that other far-off occasion, after replying succinctly: 'Yes, I have.' No, he didn't usually comment on my successes and failures, or on his aims or motives, or on his pacts or transactions or commissions. He had said enough with the words 'you were very sharp.' In fact, I think that was the only time he complimented me.
'Yes, there is something else,' I said. 'I have to leave, I have to go back to Madrid. Things have got a little complicated there, I won't bore you with an explanation, it would take too long. But I can't stay here in London. I have no alternative but to resign. That's why I phoned you at home on Saturday, to let you know as soon as possible, in case you wanted to start looking for a replacement, although, obviously I can't help you with that.'
I played his same game, I resorted to an acceptable alibi, I preferred not to confront him, not to insist, after all, he would soon be merely the past for me, dumb matter, or perhaps a dream, as I would be for him. But I'm sure he understood the real reason for my leaving. It must have seemed ridiculous to him, but he didn't show it.
'As you wish,' he said coldly. 'It's your decision.'
'If you like, I can still come in occasionally, until I actually leave,' I added.
'Fine,' he said. 'That way some things won't be left half-finished. But it's not really necessary. You do as you like. Really.' There wasn't any spite in the tone in which he said this, but, rather, curtness or indifference, whether feigned or recently acquired, I don't know. It was, at any rate, new. He didn't care whether I came in or not.
'I'll see you around, then. If, that is, I do manage to come in on the odd day. Although I will have an awful lot of things to sort out.'
'Fine. Anything else, Jack?' he said again and picked up his pen as if intending to resume writing his notes as soon as I left his office.
And this time I gave the same answer as I had on that previous occasion:
'No, nothing else, Mr. Tupra.' That is how I addressed him.
I got up and went over to the door, and just as I was about to open it, his voice stopped me:
'Just out of curiosity, Mr. Deza.' When he addressed me in the same formal way, I realized that it amused him that I should have chosen such an odd moment to do so with him, just when we were saying goodbye. I turned round and thought I saw the tail end, just the shadow of a smile on that soft fleshy mouth, on those lips that were rather African or perhaps Hindu or Slavic, or even Sioux. 'Did you sort out that business in Madrid? Did you take care of that guy who's been bothering your wife? Did you make sure he's out of the picture?'
I stood still for an instant. I thought.
'Yes, I think so,' I replied.
And then he smiled broadly, waving his pen at me as if he were telling me off:
'Be careful, Jack. If you only think you did, that means you didn't.'
I didn't go back to the building, so that was the last time I saw him. But here in Madrid, I think of him more than I imagined I would. Despite that rather abrupt ending, despite the possible disappointment I must have caused him and the very real disappointment he caused me, I still feel that he is someone on whom I could always count. In a time of difficulty or confusion or trouble or even danger. Someone I could call one day and ask for advice or guidance, especially with the kind of situation I don't deal with very well. And now that Wheeler is dead, it's as if Tupra, strangely enough—possibly because of his link with Rylands, the brother whose student he was—were all that remained to me of him, even if only in my memory and imagination: his unexpected substitute or successor, his legacy almost, part of that permanent process of replacing the people we lose in our lives, of the shocking and persistent efforts we make to fill any vacancies, of our inability to resign ourselves to any reduction in the cast of characters without whom we can barely go on or survive, part of that continuous universal mechanism of substitution, which affects everyone and therefore us too, and so we accept our role as poor imitations and find ourselves surrounded by more and more of them.