While I was submitting him to my brief interrogation, Muriel had continued his pacing, every now and then glancing across at me, merely to check that I was still there, still listening, glances that led me to think that he hadn’t grasped what I was getting at. He stopped when I stopped talking. Then he gave me a grave, sober look, which I didn’t know how to interpret. Perhaps it bothered him to be asked so many direct questions, which might force him to tell me the story when he had not yet decided whether to tell me or not. He put away the pillbox-cum-compass and with his free hand fumbled for his tie underneath his sweater and smoothed it out — it must have got wrinkled or ridden up while he was lying on the floor. He also straightened the knot, although, having no mirror handy, it remained crooked. I pointed this out to him, gesturing with my left hand, and he again adjusted the knot, this time successfully. He went over to one of the sofas, sat down, crossed his legs and said:
‘Almost everything has to do with the War, Juan, one way or another. Let’s just hope that one day this will cease to be the case, but I fear I won’t see that day. I doubt if even you will, despite being so much younger and even though what happened then must seem as remote to you as the Cuban or the Carlist wars or even the Napoleonic invasion. If that’s what you believe, then you’re quite wrong. You’ll continue to hear people talking about our dreadful War for far longer than you might think. Especially those who didn’t live through it, because they’re the ones who need it most, in order to give meaning to their existence, to feel anger or pity, to have a mission in life, to feel they belong to the right side, to seek retrospective or abstract vengeance, what they would call justice when there can be no posthumous justice; to be moved and to move others to tears, to write books or make films and earn money, to gain prestige, to benefit sentimentally from the poor wretches who died, to imagine hardships and sufferings no one could possibly understand even if they heard about them first-hand; to set themselves up as their heirs. A war like that is a stigma that takes one or even two centuries to disappear, because it contains everything and affects and debases everything. It contains the very worst of everything. It was like removing the mask of civilization that all presentable nations wear, firmly attached like this patch’ — and he tapped his own eyepatch — ‘and which allows them to pretend. Pretending is essential if we are to live together, to prosper and progress, and here, where we’ve seen the criminals’ true faces, seen what happened, pretence is impossible. It will take a very long time for us to forget what we are or what we could be, and how easily too, all it takes is a single match. There will be times when that war dwindles in importance, as is beginning to happen now, but it will be like one of those family feuds that last for generations, and you find the great-great-great-grandchildren of one family hating the great-great-great-grandchildren of another family even though they have no idea why; simply because that hatred was drummed into them from birth, enough for those two lots of great-great-great-grandchildren to have inflicted harm on each other and thus see in their respective actions proof of what they were told: “Our elders warned us about them, and they were quite right.” And so it goes on. None of us can possibly comprehend the harm done by Franco and his henchmen, by those who began that entirely unnecessary War, with such deliberate, extreme intent, as an exercise in extermination, and who enjoyed it all so much that they didn’t want it ever to end. Of course those they attacked were equally extreme. But it isn’t just what they did, it’s the curse they placed on this country. And, unlike Hitler, the great oafs weren’t even aware of that curse. They didn’t consider the consequences, why would they? And, on the other hand, on the other hand, who can say how much longer those will last …’ Muriel stopped speaking and remained sunk in thought, again looking up, perhaps at the painting by Casanova’s brother. But it was as if his one eye were contemplating not the horseman in the picture (possibly a scene depicting peaceful military manoeuvres, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms), but a very slow, almost motionless, future of imperceptible advances and retreats. That is precisely the effect produced by the best paintings, which, despite everything, never move, going neither forward nor back.
I didn’t know if this long speech was intended as a way of avoiding giving me an answer and thus abandoning the subject, but then, I wondered, why had he chosen to bring the subject up in the first place and why ask me that question? I tried again, swearing to myself that it would be the last time, at least for that morning. He would soon be leaving for his office, where he spent most of the morning until lunchtime; at first, he didn’t usually take me with him, although later on he did. Sometimes he had lunch out, with other people, and did not come back until mid-afternoon. Sometimes he wouldn’t reappear all day and would return only at night when his wife, Beatriz, had gone to bed. If that occurred on several consecutive days, they would only see each other over breakfast. When, that is, he wasn’t travelling or filming.
‘So is this business with your friend to do with the Civil War or not? You haven’t yet answered my question, Eduardo. Or, rather, I’m not sure whether what you’ve just told me is a Yes or a No. But if you’re not more explicit with me, I still can’t help you.’
He smiled his luminous smile, and his eye smiled too, sympathetically, indulgently, the look of amused indulgence with which many adults regard or speak to children.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry, so impatient, I was just coming to that. No, it’s neither of the things you mentioned. As far as I know, he didn’t kill anyone or take part in any summary executions or send anyone to their death, among other things because he wasn’t old enough to do that between 1936 and 1939, or only if he’d been some prodigy of precocious evil, of which there were a few. He’s not much older than me. Nor did he betray or denounce anyone. It’s actually related to the fact that he apparently didn’t betray or denounce anyone. Of course he’s always had a reputation for having behaved very well in the post-war years, of having helped those who most needed him, I mean for political reasons. He’s irreproachable in that sense, in that respect. As I say, that, at least, has been his reputation.’
I couldn’t help but notice the words ‘in that respect’, as if his friend had been less irreproachable in other respects, which, to be fair, was not so very unusuaclass="underline" there are so many aspects to our lives that we are bound to be found wanting in some. Nor had I failed to notice the even stranger part of what he had said, the part I had most difficulty in grasping, and that I couldn’t simply allow to pass: