‘Come on, Iago, please: get to the point. I get lost in your digressions. When do you think Dearlove would be most likely to bump someone off?’
Tupra was, of course, perfectly capable of following my digressions, he never got lost, even if he wasn’t much interested in what he was hearing, although I don’t think he did get bored with me, you can tell when you’ve got the attention of the people listening to you, not for nothing was I a teacher, although those classes are now moving further and further away in time. He would sometimes call me Iago, the classical form of my name, when he wanted to annoy me or force me to concentrate. He knew that Wheeler referred to me as Jacobo and probably didn’t dare attempt the pronunciation, and so he placed my name somewhere half-way along the road, in familiar Shakespearean mode, possibly with some mocking undertone, I couldn’t rule that out. Of course Tupra could follow me, but he would sometimes pretend that the traditional aversion to the speculative and theoretical, inherent in the education and mind of the English, prevented him from accompanying me very far on my digressions. He was not only following everything, he was recording it, filing it away, retaining it. And he was quite capable of appropriating it for himself.
‘Sorry, Mr Tupra, I didn’t mean to get diverted,’ I said; I was still well behaved then. ‘Well, they say that Dearlove is bisexual, or pentasexual, or pansexual, I don’t know, but very highly sexed anyway, sex-mad, they hint at it all the time in the press. And last night he did seem rather overexcited when he slipped on his green gown and insisted on sorting out Mrs Thompson’s tooth decay. Although he would doubtless have preferred to be rooting around in her young son’s mouth. It was a shame for Dr Dearlove, I suppose, that the boy refused to oblige, however sweetly he insisted. They also say that he’s very fond of… of the newly pubescent, shall we say.’
‘They do say that,’ replied Tupra gravely, but barely bothering to conceal the fact that he found all this highly amusing. ‘And?’
‘Well, supposing a minor, male or female, it doesn’t matter, laid a trap for him. If my information is correct, he happily allows these rumours to spread, as long as they are only that, rumours. I imagine it’s not a bad way of airing them: by ignoring them, by not even admitting their existence with denials and lawsuits and complaints. As I understand it, he has never said a word about his sexual predilections. Besides, everyone knows he’s been married, twice, admittedly both marriages were childless, but that, nevertheless, is what he holds on to, officially at least.’
‘More or less. I don’t know much about that aspect of his life.’
‘Anyway, suppose a minor, male or female, slipped a sleeping-pill into his drink. While they were at it, both of them stark naked. Suppose the minor takes some photos of him while he’s off in limbo, the boy or the girl also gets in on the shot, of course, puts the camera on automatic and takes charge of the stage direction, with our ex-dentist a limp rag-doll in his or her hands. Let’s say, however, that the pill doesn’t prove strong enough for the titanic Dr Dearlove: that an inner sense of alarm helps him pull himself together. So that he either doesn’t fall very deeply asleep or else wakes up early. With one eye half-open he sees what’s happening. With a quarter of his conscious mind he takes in the situation, or with even only a tenth part of it. It’s not that he’s puritanical in his attitudes or public declarations, that would lose him fans; he’s quite daring, really, although he’s careful never to go too far, he defends the legalisation of drugs, responsible euthanasia, the kind of cause that won’t lose him any fans. But the appearance of such photos in the press belongs to an entirely different sphere, as would his knifing by thugs from Brixton, Clapham or Streatham. Exactly the same, I think you’ll agree. Even though in one situation he would be the vile, despicable offender and in the other the poor, pitiful, much-mourned victim. As regards the effect on his narrative, they’re not so very different, both are protuberances. In this case it wouldn’t be an ending, the kiss of sleep and the photos I mean, but it would be an episode that would always have a place in his history, that could never be avoided in the story or in the idea of Dick Dearlove. And given the way the public feels about child abuse, it could lead to prison and an embarrassing trial. And even if he was absolved afterwards, the accusation alone and its reverberations, the images seen and repeated thousands of times, the scandal and the grave suspicions that will have lasted for months, could also end up as a warning used by mothers to their adolescent offspring: “Mind who you mix with, dear, you might end up with a Dick Dearlove.” That’s the trouble with being so famous: lose concentration for a moment and you could become the subject of a ballad.’
‘You’re very well informed about the buffoon. Even about his opinions; very impressive,’ said Tupra wryly.
‘As I say, he’s almost as much of a superstar in Spain as he is here. He’s given loads of concerts there. It would be hard not to know about him.’
‘I always had the impression that the Basques were a very austere people, in the present context I mean,’ he added, genuinely surprised. He never missed anything or forgot anything.
‘Austere? Well, that depends. There’s no shortage of buffoons either. The leader sets the tone, you know. Like in Lombardy. Or anywhere else in Italy for that matter. Not to mention Venezuela; remember our friend Bonanza.’
‘Well, we’re not far behind,’ he said, and that shocked me a little, for no reason really: I didn’t know exactly who Tupra worked for (that is, who we worked for), I only had Wheeler’s hints to go on and my own unreflective deductions. ‘The kiss of sleep you called it.’
‘Yes, that’s how the trick is known in Spain, it’s used mainly as a ruse to strip the sleeping person’s house of all its valuables. That’s what the media call it.’
‘H’m, the kiss of sleep, not bad.’ He liked the name. ‘So what would happen with Dearlove. He wakes with a kiss, and only half an eye open. And then what?’
‘Something outrageous, anything. That’s what I was coming to. He could also kill in a situation like that, I mean, that’s just a possible example, there would be others. Narrative horror, disgust. That’s what drives him mad, I’m sure of it, what obsesses him. I’ve known other people with the same aversion, or awareness, and they weren’t even famous, fame is not a deciding factor, there are many individuals who experience their life as if it were the material for some detailed report, and they inhabit that life pending its hypothetical or future plot. They don’t give it much thought, it’s just a way of experiencing things, companionable, in a way, as if there were always spectators or permanent witnesses, even of their most trivial goings-on and during the dullest of times. Perhaps it’s a substitute for the old idea of the omnipresence of God, who saw every second of each of our lives, it was very flattering in a way, very comforting despite the implicit element of threat and punishment, and three or four generations aren’t enough for Man to accept that his gruelling existence goes on without anyone ever observing or watching it, without anyone judging it or disapproving of it. And in truth there is always someone: a listener, a reader, a spectator, a witness, who can also double up as simultaneous narrator and actor: the individuals tell their stories to themselves, to each his own, they are the ones who peer in and look at and notice things on a daily basis, from the outside in a way; or, rather, from a false outside, from a generalised narcissism, sometimes known as “consciousness”. That’s why so few people can withstand mockery, humiliation, ridicule, the rush of blood to the face, a snub, that least of all. Dearlove cannot abide that feeling of repugnance, that anxiety, he cannot cope with that vertigo, and when he succumbs to those feelings, when the fit is upon him, then he no longer thinks. When he half-opens his eye and realises what is going on, it probably won’t even occur to him to try and acquire the photos, to offer more for them than any tabloid newspaper would ever pay, to reach an agreement with the boy or the girl, to negotiate, to bribe, to deceive, to hire their services forever. His fortune, if he has both a plane and a helicopter, would
allow him to buy them ten thousand, a hundred thousand times over, in body, in bondage and in soul.’
‘But he wouldn’t do that, you say. What would he do, then? According to you, what would he do next?’
‘The same as he would with the knife-wielding thugs from Brixton, I think. He would misjudge things. He would throw caution to the wind. He would try to kill them, he would kill them. He would kill the minor, male or female, whom he had taken to his house that night. A heavy ashtray kills, it shatters the skull. A jug, a paperweight, a letter-opener, anything can kill, not to mention the swords and spears with which he has adorned that wall in his living-room, the long wall next to the dining-room where we had supper; I imagine you noticed them last night.’
‘I did,’ said Tupra. ‘It might not have been my first time there, you know.’
‘No, of course. Yes, it figures that Dearlove would be a devotee of the medieval, of things Celtic and semi-magical. Of fantasy chic. This is what I imagine would happen: despite still feeling very groggy from the pill he was given, or perhaps precisely because he is still groggy, he draws strength from the terrible fright he has had and staggers over to that wall; he accepts as clear, established fact that this terrible narrative protuberance will live with him forever because of these images treacherously taken of him, and, in his mental fog, this is what permits or empowers him to be angry and immoderate. And so he takes down one of those spears and with it pierces the chest of the girl or boy and destroys the flesh he had earlier desired, without thinking about the consequences, not at that moment. At such times, men like him do not see, they do not see what only three minutes later will become obvious to them: that it is less difficult to get rid of a few photos than it is to get rid of a corpse, less arduous to cover someone’s mouth than to clean up their many pints of spilt blood. I’ve known men like that, men who were nobody and yet who had that same immense fear of their own history, of what might be told and what, therefore, they might tell too. Of their blotted, ugly history. But, I insist, the determining factor always comes from outside, from something external: all this has little to do with shame, regret, remorse, self-hatred, although these might make a fleeting appearance at some point. These individuals only feel obliged to give a true account of their acts or omissions, good or bad, brave, contemptible, cowardly or generous, if other people (the majority, that is) know about them, and those acts or omissions are thus incorporated into what is known about them, that is, into their official portraits. It isn’t really a matter of conscience, but of performance, of mirrors. One can easily cast doubt on what is not reflected in mirrors, and believe that it was all illusory, wrap it up in a mist of diffuse or faulty memory and decide finally that it didn’t happen and that there is no memory of it, because there can be no memory of what did not take place. Then it will no longer torment them: some people have an extraordinary ability to convince themselves that what happened didn’t happen and that what didn’t exist did. For Dick Dearlove, the worst thing, the unbearable thing, would not be bumping off a mugger or a deceitful adolescent, but that people might find out, that the fact would remain attached (so to speak) to his file. Even in the midst of his confusion at the moment of the homicide, he perhaps knows that it might, albeit with enormous difficulty, be possible to conceal it. Not, on the other hand, his own death at the hands of savages, or photos of him naked with a young boy or a nymphette, once they have been printed and universally admired.’ — I stopped for a moment. I thought, as I always did at the end of my interpretations or reports, that I had gone too far. And that I had again got caught up in digressions. It also occurred to me that I probably wasn’t telling Tupra anything he didn’t know already. He doubtless knew the score about such individuals, perhaps even as regards Dearlove, from previous visits, or, who knows, from plane journeys made together (Tupra as part of Dearlove’s entourage, mingling with the other guests, the supervisors, the newly pubescent and the bodyguards). Perhaps he was not so much learning from what I was telling him as studying me. ‘I’ve known men like that, Mr Tupra, of all ages, everywhere,’ I added, as if apologising. ‘You have too, I’m sure. We both have.’
‘Cigarette, Jack?’ he said. And he offered me one of the Pharaonic variety from his flashy red packet. It was a gesture of appreciation, at least that was how I understood it.
And I thought, or kept thinking: ‘I’ve known Comendador, for example. Since forever.’
On that stubbornly rainy night in London, I decided to experiment by stopping suddenly, by coming to an abrupt halt without any warning in order to find out whether or not that light, almost imperceptible sound was coming from me, tis, tis, tis, whether it was the soft steps of a dog or the rustle of my raincoat as I walked briskly along, the shaking of my umbrella or the skulking step of some dubious character who did not come near and did not reveal himself, but who, nevertheless, persisted in following me — or accompanying me in parallel, at a distance of a few yards — if he should finally make up his mind, he still had time to think about it before I reached my house and opened the door and, before going in, furled my umbrella and shook it hard (a few more drops to add to the improvised lakes and miniature streams of the city streets), and then closed the door rapidly behind me, impatient to be upstairs, in my temporary home which was becoming ever more like a refuge and ever more mine, so that now it almost soothed me to go up the stairs and shut myself in and from my third-floor apartment — safe from questions and answers, from talk — to contemplate the square, with its murmuring trees in the middle, which seemed to accompany every meek surrender and rebellion of the mind; and the lights of the families or the other single people opposite (my fellows), the elegant hotel always lit up and lively, like a silent stage or like the pan shot in a film that never changed and never ended, the vast office blocks in repose now and guarded, from a cabin, by a night security guard who yawns as he listens to his radio, his cap pushed back on his head, the peak raised, and, in the darkness, the zigzagging, fugitive beggars who emerge to do their rummaging, and whose stiff clothes seem to emanate ashes, or perhaps it’s just accumulated dust; and, of course, my dancing neighbour (who is so unconcerned about the world it cheers one to see him) and his occasional dancing partners, recently I had seen him launch boldly into the sirtaki, good grief, he looked poofy, not gay exactly, but something else — like an exquisitely dressed swank, a dummy, a honeyed, vainglorious rogue — the term has nothing to do now with the actual carnal preferences of the person thus described, I, at least, would make that distinction, and there is no more ridiculous dance for a man to dance alone than the Greek sirtaki, with the possible exception of the Basque aurresku, which, fortunately, my neighbour would not know.
So I experimented two or three times, I stopped suddenly without warning, and on those three occasions the sound of cautious or semi-aerial steps, the whirr of crickets, the swishing sound or whatever it was — like the crazy trot of an old wall clock, which also resembles the footsteps of a dog — took longer than usual to stop, I could hear it when I was already standing still and when I could not possibly be emitting any involuntary or uncontrolled sound. I did not turn my head when I made this experiment, to look behind or to the sides, as I did when I was walking steadily along, resting the umbrella on my shoulder, almost as one would with a sunshade when out for a stroll, as if I wanted above all to protect the back of my neck, to protect it from the wind and the water and from the possible looks of other people and from imaginary bullets that would have pierced both (the back of my neck and the umbrella), you think such absurd things when you have to walk a longish distance alone and at night, feeling as if you were being followed even though you can’t actually see anyone following you. During the final stretch there were occasional grassy areas to the left and right, I took a short-cut through a small local park, so perhaps those unseen steps were made on the grass. I waited until I had left that barely lit park behind me and was already very close to home. I had only another two blocks to go and another square to
cross when I tried again, and this time I did turn round when I stopped and then I saw them, two white figures at a distance that would not normally have allowed me to hear panting or footsteps. The dog was white and the woman, the person, was, like me, wearing a light-coloured raincoat. I thought, from the first, that she was a woman, and she was, because, after only a second or a sliver of doubt, I took an immediate fancy to her legs, when I saw that they were covered not by dark trousers, but by black, knee-high boots (with no heels, or only very low heels) which delineated or accentuated the curve of her strong calves. Her face was still hidden by her umbrella, she had both hands occupied, she was holding the dog’s leash in one, the dog, somewhat hopelessly and possibly wearily, kept tugging on the leash, the creature had no protection at all, it must have been drenched, the rain doubtless continued to weigh on it however violently it shook itself each time they paused (for when they did, the rain didn’t stop falling on the dog), and they were pausing then, because the two figures had also stopped, with a slight but inevitable delay after me or my very abrupt halt. I stood for a few, but not too few, seconds looking at them. The woman didn’t seem to mind being seen, I mean she could just be someone who, despite the wild weather, had decided to take her dog for a walk, and she wouldn’t have to explain herself to me were I to ask her to. It could just be a coincidence: sometimes you do find yourself following the same route as another pedestrian for many long minutes, even if your route is not a direct one, and sometimes you can start to feel annoyed by this, for no reason, it’s merely a longing for that coincidence to end, to cease, because it seems somehow like a bad omen, or simply because it irritates you, so much so that you even go out of your way and make an unnecessary detour just to separate yourself from and to leave behind that insistent parallel being.