“You could always pretend you were a journalist,” he said. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to give you an interview. The older and more forgotten they feel, the keener they are to have someone pay them some attention. They get anxious, their time is running out.”
“I’d prefer not to do it by deceit, the interview would never get published and he would be waiting for it to appear. Isn’t there some other way?”
Ruibérriz de Torres folded his arms and placed his hands on his biceps, he was standing up, he seemed amused, an idea had occurred to him that tickled him, some machination, some artifice.
“There might be,” he said. “It might mean a rather delicate little job.”
“What delicate little job?”
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing you can’t handle.” He licked his lips again, looking even more like a scoundrel than usual, and gave a glance about him, a glance that combined the desires of both hunter and potential fugitive. “Give me a bit of time and I might just be able to hand it to you on a plate.” He said the last part of the sentence in a rather agitated voice and the expression he used revealed his excitement, “I might just be able to hand it to you on a plate” was like saying “Leave it to me” or “Don’t you worry about a thing.” “You don’t want to tell me what your intentions are, then?”
I wanted to tell him the truth and say: “I don’t really have any intentions, something horrible and ridiculous happened to me, and I can’t stop thinking about it, it’s as if I were haunted; there’s nothing I particularly want to find out because there’s nothing to find out, there’s no one I want to save because she’s already dead, I don’t even want to gain anything from it because there’s nothing to be gained, apart from the reproaches or the unjustified hatred of someone, of Deán for example, of Téllez and his children, or even of a certain despotic, foulmouthed bloke called Vicente who, to put it bluntly, had been having it off with her, I didn’t even manage to do it with her once, that one and only time. I don’t want to supplant anyone or to harm them in any way, I don’t want to usurp anything or to avenge myself on anyone, to atone for a sin or to protect or ease my conscience, to free myself from fear, there’s no reason why I should, I didn’t do anything, no one did anything to me, and the bad part or the worst part has already happened, and for no reason whatsoever, I’m not motivated by any of the things that usually motivate us, finding something out, saving someone, gaining something, supplanting, harming or usurping someone, avenging oneself, atoning for something, protecting or easing or freeing oneself from something; having it off with someone. But even if there’s nothing, something moves us, it’s impossible for us to remain still, in our place, as if vacuous resentments and desires, unnecessary torments, emanated from our very breath. And now, not only is there nothing that I want to know, I am the one who has to hide, I am the one whose every action and every step will be investigated, I am the one who will be forced to recount my story, each passive action, each poisonous step, ‘They’ve only just started looking, but, apparently, Eduardo is determined to find him,’ had heard someone say, and that ‘him’ referred to me and to no one else, not even to that man, Vicente, who would be at my mercy if I revealed myself and to whom the words were innocently addressed. I have no intentions. It’s just that something horrible and ridiculous happened to me and I feel as if I were under a spell, haunted, watched, revisited, inhabited, my head and body inhabited and haunted by someone I only knew in death and by a few kisses we could just as easily not have exchanged.” I would have liked to have told him all that, but even my opening words would have intrigued Ruibérriz more than the reply I gave him, which was more commonplace, simpler and easier to understand:
“Not at the moment.”
It was nearly time for lunch, time for us to go our separate ways, an hour of the day when it still feels like morning; outside it was raining, we could see it through the large windows and on the people who came in through the revolving door, drenched and getting themselves entangled in their barely furled umbrellas. It was raining as it so often does in clear-skied Madrid, a weary, uniform rain, untroubled by any wind, as if it knew it was going to last for days and there was no need for anger or urgency. The morning was orangey-green and, a little way off, beyond the centre and beyond the suburbs, the rain would be falling with even less urgency on Marta Téllez’s grave, raindrops falling on a gravestone that would be washed gratis until time or the stone ran out, although only infrequently in this place of bone-dry air, she was under cover, moreover, and there was no escape for her as there was for the passers-by on the Gran Vía, running across the road and keeping as far from the kerb as possible, seeking shelter under eaves and in shop doorways and in the entrance to the metro, as had their forebears, wearing hats and longer skirts, when they ran to find shelter from the bombing during the long siege, clutching their hats and with skirts flying, according to photos and documentaries I’ve seen about the Civil War: some of those who ran to avoid being killed are still alive, whilst others born later are dead, how odd: Téllez is alive but not his daughter Marta. The group of people who had taken refuge under the awning of our bar, a bar that was here in the 1930s and therefore saw the bombs fall and saw the fall of all those passers-by who did not manage to escape in the desolate Madrid of half a century or more ago, would block our path when we came to leave.
Ruibérriz ate a handful of nuts and looked apprehensively at his Nazi overcoat: it would get wet, what a nuisance. He excused himself and went to the toilet, he took more time than was necessary and, when he came back, it occurred to me that perhaps he had snorted some coke to help him face the rain and the inevitable drenching that his leather coat would get, as well as the lunch he was off to, where he would doubtiess be discussing some important matter, nothing in which he is involved can be considered unimportant. I know that he occasionally takes cocaine in order to stay cheerful and to continue having fun and to continue dazzling people as long as possible, although that too has caused him a few problems with certain of his clients, especially those who show an interest in the merchandise and end up demanding a sample. He was still standing by the stool, looking momentarily melancholy and thoughtful, as if regretting his exclusion from an important project whose initial stages would, moreover, depend on him.
“Okay, if that’s how you want it, don’t tell me anything, we’ll leave it like that,” he said. “But you can’t ask me anything just yet either. I can probably fix it, but it could prove delicate. Give me a bit of time and I’ll be in touch when I’ve got some news.”
Then he puffed out his chest to show off his perfect pectorals and, gripping his left wrist with his right hand, the way wrestlers do at the beginning of a bout, he began telling me or, rather, bringing me up to date on the latest profitable dealings he had had with various women.
I didn’t ask him any questions during the short time I gave him, indeed, during the entire time he took, I didn’t call him and I heard nothing from him for nearly a month, the time it took me to meet Téllez and Deán and Luisa, first the father and then the daughter and the son-in-law, the last two simultaneously. I asked him no questions, and after those four weeks, he called me and said: “I hope you’re still interested in Téllez Orati.”
“I am,” I said.
“Because I’ve got him for you: I’m going to introduce you or, rather, you’re going to meet him on your own. But prepare yourself, my boy, he’s not the only one you’re going to meet.”
“Okay. What’s this delicate little job then?”
Ruibérriz delights in doing other people favours, but he can never resist emphasizing his part in it all, and will keep reminding you of this for months and years afterwards, he requires fulsome praise for his talents and his efforts.
“Don’t imagine it was easy to get, without recourse to deception, as requested: endless phone calls, a lot of waiting about, a lot of intermediaries and a couple of meetings. Anyway, you’re going to write a speech for the One and Only.”
“The One and Only?”
“That’s how his inner circle refer to him, the One and Only, Solo, Solus, Solitaire, even the Lone Ranger, Only the Lonely and Only You, they call him all sorts of names, the closer you get to someone grand the less you tend to use their name or title and, as I told you, Téllez is still quite close to him. It’s all taken rather a long time, as you would expect, but now it’s all set: I had heard from people at the Ministry that the One and Only wasn’t happy with any of his recent speeches, it seems he never has been very happy, he’s extremely fussy about them, he and his advisors have tried everything, civil servants, academicians, professors, notaries, Fascist columnists and pinko columnists, calumnious columnists, unctuous poets and mystical poets, precious novelists and traditional novelists, shy dramatists and vulgar dramatists, all terribly Spanish, and he’s never been satisfied with any of them: not one of these temporary ghostwriters dares to be anything but impersonal and majestic, so the One and Only gets bored when he rehearses the speech in front of the mirror at home and when he reads the boring thing in public, and he’s sick to death of the fact that, after all these speeches and all his years on the throne, his oratorical voice continues to lack any recognizable identity. He wants to have his own style, like everyone else, he senses that no one ever listens to him. Apparently, he wanted to write something himself, but they tried to put him off and, anyway, it didn’t work out, he’s got plenty of ideas but he finds it hard to put them in any kind of order. Through someone at the Ministry I managed to get some examples of our work sent to Téllez, or some of your more recent work, I should say, and they’re prepared to give us a try, they had already noticed that lecture given by the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the speeches of welcome given to the Pope by the various ‘Virgins’ in Seville, they didn’t pick up on any of the double entendres. Téllez is all in favour and he’s delighted, he considers us to be his discovery and he’s glad to be useful again, a good courtier. But the One and Only wants to meet you, he takes quite a bit of trouble over these things. Well, he wants to meet Ruibérriz de Torres, but, of course, there’s no way I’m going to the Palace. Téllez understands that too, he knows about our methods and our limitations, he knows that you will be the one doing the writing and he knows that, when it comes to speech-writing, there are two Ruibérriz de Torres.”
“You’ve met him, then?” I said.
“Yes, he arranged to meet me at the Academy of Fine Arts. The moment he saw me, I could sense that he was about to have the ushers grab me and throw me out, taking me for a pickpocket, a picklock, or whatever, the usual thing, he immediately raised his hand to his breast pocket like someone crossing paths with a possible thief. He’s a bit of a bore, it’s just his age, but he’s pleasant enough, I knew his face, from the horse races rather than from photos in the press, he used to go to the races a lot and he doesn’t often appear in the press any more. Once he’d calmed down, I think he quite liked me, he’s a bit of an old fogey but very approachable. So prepare yourself: the day after tomorrow at nine o’clock, Téllez himself will come by and pick you up, you’ll spend half an hour, maybe less, with him and the One and Only and possibly someone else, and if all goes well, you’ll write the speech for him. I don’t think this means that you would be obliged to do any more for him in the future, they probably won’t be satisfied anyway, that’s just the way he is. They don’t pay much, as a business deal, I would rate it medium to crappy, the Palace is very tightfisted, they expect everyone to feel so overjoyed at being given the commission that they won’t even charge them. Sometimes, if the ghostwriter is either very vain or very viperous, they send him a penknife inscribed with a capital R, or a shield, a special-issue coin, a signed photo in a heavy frame, or some such thing. I’ve made it clear that we charge the minimum fee, that we’re professionals. But you don’t mind, do you? You just wanted to meet Téllez, didn’t you?”
“And you don’t mind that your cut will be the minimum too?” I asked.
“No, of course not.”
“What speech is it?”
“I don’t know yet, Téllez or someone from the Ministry will explain later on, if they accept. It’s for some foreign do, I think, in Strasbourg, Aachen, possibly London, or Berne, I’m not sure, he didn’t say. Anyway, that’s the least of it, isn’t it? It’ll be the usual vapid stuff. You just wanted to meet Téllez, didn’t you?” Ruibérriz asked again. He wanted me to reward him by telling him why I wanted to meet the old fogey. He had been efficient, although, as usual, had taken the most complicated route possible, he always does more than you ask him to do, he always amplifies on what people propose to him, with his unsolicited ideas and his convolutions. He could have asked me to go with him to the Academy of Fine Arts, and then I could have decided if I wanted any further meetings or not, there was no need to involve the Lone Ranger. But it was done now.
“Yes, that was the idea.” That was all I said at first, that is, on my own initiative; but I could tell by his silence that he felt that wasn’t enough, I agreed, and so I added: “I owe you one, I’m really grateful.”
“You owe me that story, when you’re ready,” he replied, and his tone of voice made me imagine his white smile at the other end of the phone; he wasn’t demanding it of me, he wasn’t pressing me.
“Yes, when I’m ready,” I said, thinking that perhaps I already owed a lot of people that story, telling a story as payment of a debt, even if it’s symbolic and not required of one, nobody can demand something they don’t know exists and from someone they don’t even know, something they don’t know happened or is happening, and therefore can’t demand that it be revealed to them or that it stop. I owed it to the busy, inquisitive Ruibérriz and to Deán, the husband, who had only just begun to look and who was determined to find me; perhaps to the idle, precarious Téllez and to his two surviving children, none of them would be pleased to hear it, but María Fernández Vera, a relative only by marriage, might be, and the irritable Vicente would doubtless want to know, Inés, on the other hand, would be horrified; perhaps I owed it to the young woman who had been standing at the entrance of the apartment block in Conde de la Cimera, I had interrupted her argument or her farewell or her kisses, although she would never have asked to hear such a story nor even asked after me; perhaps I even owed it to the night porter at the Wilbraham Hotel in London, I had bothered him late at night or in the early hours of the morning because of that story. I owed it to Eugenio, the boy, who, assuming they had taken him elsewhere that first night, would have returned to his home by now, to his bedroom, where he and his toy rabbit would once more be under threat, while they slept, from the peaceable aeroplanes dangling on threads – that inert oscillation – dreaming now of the weight of his absent mother growing ever lighter, a passenger in one of those planes, the child was also under a spell. Except that his was already journeying towards its own dissolution and would soon vanish.
TÉALLEX AND I arrived early in what was, apparently, an official car, but, as befitted his rank and occupation, the One and Only kept us waiting, I imagine he’s always slightly behind with his daily schedule and, as he gets later and later, he probably cancels one of his appointments at the last moment, thus returning at a stroke to punctuality and the timetable, I would find it a real curse, that continuous trail of activities and the hit-and-miss method used to curtail it, and I was only too aware that, even though we were near the start of the day, we might well be the ones to be cancelled, the ones to receive the formal apology and to be turned away, courtiers and ghostwriters can always be put off. During our wait in the rather chilly little room, Téllez took advantage of the wait to repeat yet again the advice he had given me on the way there, that is, not to interrupt but not to allow any silences either, only to speak when asked a question directly or when invited to make some contribution, to abstain from making any sudden gestures or raising my voice, since that could irk or disconcert Solo (that was the word he used, “irk”, and it really did sound like somet
hing to be avoided), how I should address him both directly and when referring to him, how I should greet him, how I should say goodbye, that I was not to sit down until he had done so and had indicated that I too should sit down, that I should not, whatever happened, get up before he did, throughout the whole journey I had felt as I used to feel at school or on the eve of my first communion, not just because of the instructions themselves, but because of the manner and tone in which the old man spoke to me, a mixture of indulgence, reproval, pomposity and defeatism (unrest amongst his subjects, a lack of conviction), I was convinced by the end that he would be an expert writer of obituaries. When he saw me appear at the street door, he had scrutinized me from inside his car, as if my getting into the car or not depended entirely on my appearance (his mottled hand holding the back door open, his large, inquisitive face slightly on one side, his impish eyebrows sceptically arched, I felt like a prostitute being examined and evaluated by a client before being given the humiliating nod that means “Get in”); and having bestowed on me the approval that Ruibérriz had doubtless assured him I would merit, he beckoned rather urgently to me with the discreet handle of the stick he was carrying and with which he slightly shielded himself when I finally got in, the old live in constant fear of other people falling on top of them. Now he was playing with the stick while we were waiting, sometimes he rested it across his thighs like an edgeless sword, sometimes he made it spin between his legs, its point on the floor, as if it were a closed pair of compasses. We were not alone: ever since we had been ushered into the room (after the security checks) by a plain-clothes camerlengo or chamberlain or whatever he was, a servant or factotum in an old-fashioned uniform had stood there, unmoving (I couldn’t make out what period he was from, but he was dressed in melon-green livery, with black calf-length breeches, white stockings and patent-leather slippers, but no wig of any kind), he was a very ancient man next to whom Téllez seemed like a mere youth. Téllez had greeted him saying: “Hello, Segarra”, and he, in turn, had replied brightly: “Good morning, Señor Tello”, they were doubtless old acquaintances from harder times. The old man had very white hair brushed forward in the style of the Roman emperors and he was standing to attention in an altogether unmilitary fashion next to an empty fireplace above which hung a large, tarnished mirror; he only changed position to put his weight first on one foot and then on the other or to remove from his gloved hand some fleck or piece of fluff on the other glove which was thus inevitably transferred to the first glove (both gloves were white, like his stockings, which were reminiscent of the seamed stockings worn by nurses); and although, at first, I was concerned about his stamina and his ability to remain upright, I imagined that he must have spent so many years standing up that this would now be his natural state and he would be immune to tiredness (besides, there was a small palace armchair next to him, perhaps he sat down on it when there was no one else around). Some way away from us, in a corner, there was a senescent painter holding a palette in his hand, before him stood a rather large canvas, of which we could only see the back, mounted on an easel that was too small for it and which made one fear for its stability: he took no notice of our presence, he did not greet us, he seemed to be concentrating on his unfinished work, he must be doing so in order to take maximum advantage of the imminent arrival of his model. He wasn’t wearing a beret, but he was wearing a kind of overall or indigo blue smock. The palette trembled in his hand, as did his brush when he made a stroke (he must have been painting from memory), his hand didn’t seem at all steady.