‘Justice?’ he retorted, quick as a flash. ‘Justice doesn’t exist. Or only as an exception, just a few stern lessons to keep up appearances, but only in the case of individual crimes. And woe betide those who receive those lessons. But for collective or national crimes, there is no justice, not even an attempt at it. Justice is always terrified by the magnitude of those crimes, overwhelmed by their superabundance, inhibited by the sheer quantity, paralysed and frightened. It’s naive of us to appeal to justice after a dictatorship or a war, even after a mere lynching in some one-horse town, because there are always too many people involved. How many people do you think committed crimes or were accomplices to crimes in Germany, and how many were punished? I don’t mean tried and sentenced, because that was even rarer, but something easier and more feasible: how many were punished socially or on a personal level? How many found themselves marginalized or excluded, how many found themselves rejected, as you are asking me to do now with the Doctor because of what you’ve found out about him? A tiny, insignificant proportion. And it’s the same in Italy, in Hungary, Croatia, Poland, France, everywhere. A whole country is never brought to justice, not even half or even a portion of the population. (All right, this does happen in dictatorships, but who wants to go back to that?) And just supposing that we could do it here, what sense is there now in putting those people on trial, which is neither possible nor appropriate, and on that we pretty much all agree — but ostracizing the majority of the population? You can be quite sure that we, the foolish avenging angels, would be the ones to end up spurned and isolated. No one denounces his peers, no one accuses someone who is like himself.’ Muriel paused and sat down on the sofa, but I still didn’t dare follow suit. He looked up at the painting by Casanova’s brother, of which he never tired. He turned his one eye on me again and added: ‘Look, young De Vere, Spain is full of bastards large and small, individuals who oppressed and plundered, who flourished and took advantage of others, or who, at best, were merely accommodating. And you want me to turn against a friend because he might once have done something similar? Come on. Yes, I did involve you in the matter and, yes, I did have my doubts, it’s true: remnants of another age, of the person I once was; remnants of rectitude. But frankly, the way things are going here in Spain, I’m not about to be the one idiot who harms himself by dispensing his own personal justice.’ He drummed with his fingers on his eyepatch as if he had guessed that this was precisely what I was then tempted to do (I had to content myself with that pleasing sound) and he concluded with a half-smile and an unexpected lightness of tone. ‘Because that doesn’t exist either, Juan, disinterested, personal justice.’
It was those two things that annoyed me, both his denial that personal justice existed and the light, even paternalistic tone in which he spoke. Not that I found the latter unacceptable in him, on the contrary, it was understandable that Muriel should treat me like that, given that he exceeded me in age, knowledge and government, and then there was also the unconditional loyalty I felt for him. This had perhaps diminished a little, for no enthusiasm, however fervent, can survive continuous contact and proximity, being a witness to how someone conducts his personal life, which is rarely spoken of because such tales are so tenuous, so similar to other tales, that the more ambitious storytellers tend to scorn them and barely pay them any attention at all. I had paid attention to the atmosphere in that apartment, possibly more than I should have done. And perhaps that’s what angered me.
‘Really, Don Eduardo?’ I sometimes reverted to addressing him as ‘Don’, the form of address I had early on and rather reluctantly abandoned; but this time I did so on purpose. ‘So personal justice doesn’t exist either? And you, of all people, are telling me that?’
He noticed the sarcasm, if it went that far; for I never entirely lost my respect for him.
‘And why shouldn’t I? What do you mean, young De Vere?’ For the moment, he didn’t feel offended, only intrigued.
‘I’ve spent long enough here, Don Eduardo, I mean, Eduardo, to see that you’re subjecting Beatriz to something that seems very like a kind of personal justice. Or rather, a punishment, a personal punishment. You tell me you’re not prepared to lose a friend because of something he did years ago, that you won’t even alter or modify your relationship with him one iota; and now you won’t even hear what I’ve found out about him. On the other hand, you’ve spent years, at least I assume it’s been years, making your wife pay for some past misdemeanour. I know that, in principle, it’s none of my business, as you’ve occasionally informed me yourself when I’ve asked you other questions, not that I ever asked with any ill intent, just out of normal curiosity. But when I’ve had to witness certain unpleasant scenes and sharp remarks, then it begins to be my business, wouldn’t you agree? One can’t remain indifferent to what’s there before one’s eyes, nor, in my opinion, should one; and you certainly don’t hold back. Forgive my boldness, but I’ve heard you say quite a lot of things that are, to be blunt, unbecoming to you. Things about Beatriz. You don’t exactly keep your feelings to yourself.’
His expression hardened. That hardness, though, was not yet directed at me, but perhaps at what had happened in the past, at what had one day led him to take against his wife and send her into permanent exile, if not from his affections (it was clear that the embers, or more than that, still glowed) then from conjugal life.
‘You pride yourself on your attentive and retentive abilities, Juan, and yet you’re missing out an important part of what I’ve just said. I said that disinterested, personal justice doesn’t exist.’ And he stressed that first adjective, which I had, indeed, omitted. ‘There’s a fundamental difference between what the Doctor may have done and what Beatriz did, however worthy of censure his actions may be; however systematic, repeated and despicable and on quite another scale, it doesn’t matter. At the time, you asked if it constituted a betrayal of me, and I told you that what I’d heard about him was unrelated to me, had nothing to do with me, and didn’t directly affect our friendship. — ‘And what I saw from the top of a tree in the Sanctuary of Darmstadt,’ I thought, and in my thoughts I addressed him familiarly as tú, ‘and that you also wouldn’t let me tell you about — not that I would tell you — would you consider that to be a betrayal?’ — ‘Whatever the Doctor did he certainly didn’t do to me. Beatriz, on the other hand, did. She did it to me, she changed the course of my life, she determined it and ruined it; and ruined the life of another person too. The accusations I heard against Jorge were unpleasant. Most distasteful. And I did wonder about them. But now I can see (all the more so when I look around me) that I needn’t worry about the thousands of filthy things people have done over the decades out there. Or, rather, here. I don’t have to take steps, still less against someone to whom I feel indebted, and even more so now.’ — ‘What you don’t know is that you might also feel yourself to be his creditor,’ I thought, ‘or perhaps not, perhaps you simply don’t care.’ — ‘I’ve no wish to sit in judgement on the past, no one does, as we’ve seen on a daily basis since Franco died. Not even the professional judges want to do that. Everyone is furious and resentful about what was done to them or to their loved ones or their forebears, but not about what was done “in general”. Tackling “the general” would be a mammoth and absurd task, one that no age and no nation has ever undertaken. One fit for the idle or for fanatics, self-obsessed individuals longing to find a mission in life. Let’s not deceive ourselves, we are all concerned solely with our own affairs; we want our revenge or our compensation, we each have our own personal grudges, and have neither thought nor time for those of others, unless joining together with those others is of some benefit to our cause and our plight. And yet, even in those strategic unions, deep down we’re thinking only of ourselves, each of us is in pursuit only of our own redress, the success of our particular suit. Only a few weirdos are prepared to set themselves up as the policemen or judges of other people’s misdemeanours, of what is wrong per se.’ — ‘According to Muriel, Vidal would be one such person,’ was my first response, ‘and yet he doesn’t seem weird to me at all, but very normal.’ Then I thought again and corrected myself: ‘Ah, no. Vidal isn’t entirely disinterested either, there’s his Aunt Carmen, whom both doctors screwed, Van Vechten and Arranz; so perhaps Muriel is right.’ — ‘What’s more they’re always very pretentious and self-important. There’s a megalomaniac quality about that inability to tolerate impunity in matters that have nothing to do with us, don’t you think? Those avenging angels hang a medal round their neck, look at themselves in the mirror and say: “I’m incorruptible, I’m implacable, I will not allow any injustice to go unpunished, whether it affects me or not.” ’ — I didn’t think Vidal was like that at all; he was equally angry with the Catalan painter and the ugly, bald philosopher, neither of whom had affronted him personally; he simply chose not to keep silent in private about what he knew, but he had no desire to dispense justice or take anyone to court or expose him or her to the public gaze: conversations over a few drinks or at the hospital, advice and warnings given to an inexperienced friend, tales told while sharing a beer or two, that was all. But I let it pass. His family had been directly affected. Not irreversibly, because his father had become a wealthy man, although he had, admittedly, had to make his fortune abroad. But perhaps that first factor was enough for Vidal’s anger to be impersonal, all-embracing. — ‘I myself succumbed to the temptation of behaving like that, so it’s not that I don’t understand the attitude. The younger you are, the more likely you are to suffer those attacks of “objective” indignation. That’s why, on a juvenile impulse, a resurgence of my former self, if you like, that’s why I asked you to do what I asked you to do. But one isn’t young any more; those youthful remnants don’t last, they fade with each day that passes … And then one considers and thinks: What has that got to do with me? Did he ever hurt me? No. The Doctor has never harmed me in any way.’