Muriel rested his hands on his chest, one hand still grasping the now extinguished pipe that he hadn’t bothered to relight. Instead of beginning to dictate, as he had announced he would, he remained silent for a couple of minutes, while I gazed at him interrogatively, pen at the ready, until, fearing the ink would dry up, I replaced the cap. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten what it was he had been about to do, as though a thought or a problem had crossed his mind, or a much-mulled-over dilemma had swept away everything else, apart from me as a possible chance adviser or simply as an ear to listen to his anxieties: from his position on the floor, he kept shooting me doubtful or almost furtive glances, as if he had something on the very tip of his tongue — a few times he opened his mouth and took a breath, then closed it again — something he could not bring himself to say, that is, to have me hear, as though pondering whether or not it would be right to share with me a matter that troubled and disturbed him or even burned him inside. He cleared his throat once, twice. The words were fighting to get out, held in by prudence, a desire for secrecy or, at least, discretion, as if the matter were a delicate one and should not perhaps be aired in public, or even put into words, because once spoken it would instal itself in the atmosphere and be very hard to expel. I waited without saying anything, without insisting or urging him to speak. I waited confidently and patiently because even then I knew — one learns this early on, in childhood — that the thing one is tempted to say, to tell or ask or propose, almost always bursts out, emerges, as though no force — no restraint or even reason — were strong enough to stop it, for we nearly always lose our battles against our own excitable tongues. (Or the tongue itself is angry, dictatorial.)
‘You, who are from a different generation and will, therefore, see things differently,’ Muriel said at last, still tentatively and cautiously. ‘Yes, you, who are young and from another generation,’ he repeated, thinking he was buying time and might still be able to interrupt himself and say nothing, ‘what would you do if you heard that a friend you’d known most of your life …’ He paused, as if he were about to reject what he had just said and begin again: ‘How can I put it, how can I explain … that a friend of many years’ standing had not always been what he is today? Not as you have known him and as he now is, or as you had always believed him to be?’
Given this succession of confused and vacuous questions, he was clearly still struggling. Muriel was rarely confused, on the contrary, he prided himself on being very precise, although sometimes, in his search for precision, he did have a tendency to ramble. Depending on my response, he still had time to retreat (‘Oh, don’t worry, let’s just let the matter drop’ or ‘No, no, forget it’ or even ‘No, it’s best you know nothing about it, it’s not your business and, besides, it’s an unpleasant affair; you wouldn’t be able to help me and you wouldn’t understand either’). And so I decided to wait and adopted an expression of intense interest, as if I were on tenterhooks waiting for him to speak and there was nothing in my life that interested me more; but when he continued to say nothing — entangled in his own tangled thoughts — I realized that it was up to me to give him a verbal cue and, before he could withdraw entirely, I asked boldly:
‘What do you mean? Some kind of betrayal? An act of treachery against yourself?’
I saw that he could not allow my mistaken interpretation to pass, even though it was an interpretation of a mist, a darkness, a mere nothing, and I thought he would have no option but to continue, at least a little.
He put his pipe in his mouth, chewed the end and spoke from between clenched teeth, as if not wanting me to be able to hear too clearly what he had to say. As if what he was saying were, perhaps, pure bluff.
‘No, that’s the problem. If it were, I would know how to confront him, how to deal with the situation. If it affected me directly, I would have no hesitation in going to him and demanding an explanation. Or if it turned out to be something truly unforgivable, a casus belli, I would simply never speak to him again. But that isn’t the case here. The matter doesn’t concern me at all, it has nothing to do with me or with our friendship, and yet …’ He did not complete his sentence, and withdrew into himself again, finding it hard to admit what he believed to be the truth.
I did not believe what I said next, but I either thought or sensed that it would help to draw him out, because, as soon as someone begins to tell or to insinuate something — something delicate or salacious or forbidden, some presumably grave matter, about which he is unsure whether or not he wants to speak — we immediately do our best to draw him out. It’s almost a reflex reaction, largely for our own amusement, for what used to be called ‘sport’.
‘Why don’t you just ignore it, then? Why not let it pass? It might not be true, a mere calumny or a simple mistake. After all, if it doesn’t actually concern you, why get involved? Or you could, of course, ask him about it, ask him to confirm or deny it. If you’re really good friends, then he’d tell you the truth, wouldn’t he?’
Muriel removed the pipe from his mouth and raised his free hand to his cheek, although I couldn’t say whether his cheek was resting on his hand or his hand on his cheek, it’s hard to know when someone’s lying on the floor. He turned his wise eye towards me; up until then, it had been staring at the ceiling, at the higher shelves in the library, at a painting by Francesco Casanova hanging on the wall of his study: he was very proud to be the owner of an oil painting by someone who was not only the younger brother of the famous Giacomo, but also Catherine the Great’s favourite painter, as he told me more than once (‘Catherine the Great of Russia,’ he explained, as if doubting my historical knowledge, not entirely wrongly). He looked at me, trying to judge how genuine or how ingenuous my interest was, if I really wanted to find a solution or was merely being kind or, worse still, was eager for gossip. He must have given provisional approval to my response, because after several inquisitive seconds that made me very nervous and during which I myself was tempted to examine my conscience, he said:
‘Not necessarily. No one would readily admit to something like that, anyone would deny it to whoever asked them, to a friend, an enemy, a stranger, a judge, not to mention his wife or his children. What would he say if I asked him? Was I mad? Who did I take him for? Didn’t I know him better than that? He’d say these were malicious lies or the product of some vile settling of accounts by a spiteful, devious person who harboured an implacable grudge against him, the kind of grudge that never dies. No, he would demand to know who had come to me with such a story. And I would doubtless have to lose his friendship, on his insistence not mine. And then he would be the disappointed party. Or would feel justifiably insulted if it turned out to be false.’ He paused for a moment, perhaps in order to imagine the absurd scene, that plea for sincerity. ‘No, don’t be silly, Juan. There are many occasions on which a No is the only possible answer and such a No clarifies nothing, is useless. It’s the answer one would get whether it was true or not. A Yes can be useful sometimes, but a No almost never, especially when the subject under discussion is something ugly or shameful or when it’s a matter of getting what you want at all costs or of saving your skin. It’s of no value in itself. Accepting it is an act of faith, and the faith is ours not that of the person saying No. Besides, faith is a fickle, fragile thing: it stumbles, recovers, grows stronger, cracks. And is lost. Belief can never be trusted.’