If Wheeler wanted me to observe Tupra and to pay closer attention to him than to anyone else during the evening, he made a grave miscalculation in inviting another Spaniard, a certain De la Garza, I wasn't clear whether he was cultural attaché or press attaché at the Spanish embassy, or something of an even vaguer and more parasitic nature, although given some of his language I could not entirely dismiss the idea that he was merely the officer in charge of improper relations, a sommelier, a suborner in petto or a gentleman-in-waiting. He was immaculately dressed, arrogant and insolent and, as tends to be the norm amongst my compatriots whenever and wherever they happen to meet up with foreigners, whether in Spain as hosts or abroad as guests of honour, whether they are in the absolute majority or in a minority of one, he could not bear to have to socialise with foreigners or to find himself in the tiresome situation of having to express a little polite curiosity, and so, consequently, as soon as he spotted a fellow Spaniard, he scarcely left my side and dispensed altogether with having any truck with the natives (we, after all, were the dagos), apart from with the two or three or perhaps four sexually attractive women amongst the fifteen or so guests (cold like the buffet and occasionally seated, but with no fixed place, or wandering about or standing in one spot), although this consisted mainly in ogling these women with his all too diaphanous eyes, in making crude remarks, in pointing them out to me with his ungovernable chin and even, occasionally, dealing me a knowing, mortifying, entirely unforgivable dig in the ribs, rather than going over to them himself to strike up an acquaintance or a conversation, that is, giving them the come-on more than just visually, which would not have been at all easy for him to do in English. I noticed at once his contentment and relief when we were introduced: with a Spaniard on hand, he would be saved the tension and fatigue of the onerous use of the local language which he thought he spoke, for his appalling accent transformed the most ordinary of words into harsh utterances unrecognisable to anyone but me, although this was more torment than privilege, since my familiarity with his implacable phonetics meant that I had to decipher, much against my will, a lot of presumptuous nonsense; he could also give free rein to his criticisms and slanders of those present without them understanding a word, although he did sometimes forget Sir Peter Wheeler's perfect command of Spanish, and when he remembered this and saw that Wheeler was within earshot, he would resort to obscene or criminal jargon, even more than he did when Wheeler was out of range; he felt at liberty to bring up absurd Spanish topics, whether justified or not, given that I know almost nothing about bullfighting or about the nonsense published in the tabloid press or about members of the royal family, not that I have anything against the first and very little against the third; and with me he could also swear and be as crude as he liked, which is very difficult to do in another language (easily and convincingly) and which you miss terribly if you're used to it, as I've often had occasion to observe when abroad, where I have known ministers, aristocrats, ambassadors, tycoons and professors, and even their respective beautifully dressed wives and daughters and even mothers and mothers-in-law of varying backgrounds, education and age, take advantage of my momentary presence to unburden themselves with oaths and diabolical blasphemies in Spanish (or Catalan). I was a blessing and a boon to De la Garza, and he sought me out and followed me all over the room and the garden, despite the cool of the night, mingling coarseness with pedantry and generally revelling in Spanish.
He shadowed me all evening, and even if I was talking to other people, in English naturally, he would sidle up to me every few minutes (as soon as someone gave him the slip, having had enough of his phonetic idiocies and barbarisms) and interrupt in his hideous English, only to slide immediately into our common language, given the evident struggle it represented for my interlocutors to understand him, with the apparent, initial intention of using me as simultaneous interpreter ('Go on, translate the joke I just made to this daft cow, will you, she obviously didn't get it'), but with the real and determined intention of scaring them all away and thus monopolising my attention and my conversation. I tried not to pay him the former or allow him the latter and continued to do as I pleased, barely bothering to listen to him, or only when he spoke more loudly than normal, when I would catch ambiguous fragments or odd phrases which he interposed whenever there was a pause or even when there wasn't, though more often than not I didn't even understand the context, since the attaché De la Garza attached himself to me at every moment, and at no moment did he cease to hold forth to me, whether I answered him or listened to him or not.
This began to happen after our first bout together, which caught me unawares, and from which I escaped feeling alarmed and battered and during which he interrogated me about my duties and my influence at the BBC and went on to propose six or seven ideas for radio programmes which ranged from the imperial to the downright stupid, often both at once, and which would purportedly prove beneficial to his embassy and our country and doubtless to him and his prospects, for, he told me, he was an expert on the writers of our poor Generation of '27 (poor in the sense of over-exploited and stale), on those of our poor Golden Age (poor because hackneyed and over-exposed), and on our not at all poor fascist writers from the pre-Civil War, post-Civil War and intra-Civil War periods, who were, in any case, one and the same (they suffered few losses during the fighting unfortunately), and to whom he did not, of course, apply that epithet, for this band of out-and-out traitors and pimps seemed to him honourable, altruistic people.
'I mean most of them were marvellous stylists, and who, confronted by such poetry and such prose, could be so mean-spirited as to mention their ideology? It's high time we separated politics and literature.' And to ram the point home: 'High bloody time.' He displayed that mixture of sentiment and coarseness, soppiness and vulgarity, mawkishness and brutality so common amongst my compatriots, a real plague and a grave threat (it's gaining support, with writers leading the way), foreigners will soon conclude that it is our main national characteristic. He had addressed me as 'tú' from the moment he saw me, on principle: he was one of those Spaniards who reserve what used to be the more formal 'usted' for subalterns and artisans.
I was about to throw a gauntlet at his slick, gelled hair (it would have stuck fast, no problem), but I didn't have one to hand, only a napkin and, despite the general cheapening of the age, it would not have been the same, and so I merely answered him, more curtly than scornfully, so as to lessen the tension:
'There is some prose and poetry whose very style is fascist, even though it's all about the sun and the moon and is signed by self-proclaimed left-wingers, our newspapers and bookshops are full of them. The same thing happens with people's minds or characters: some are, by their nature, fascist, even if they inhabit bodies that have a tendency to raise the clenched fist and do the right thing at marches and demonstrations with hordes of photographers pushing their way through and, of course, immortalising them. The last thing we need now is a rehabilitation of the mind and style of those who not only were fascists, but were proud to call themselves fascists, just in case you didn't recognise them by what they wrote, by every page they published and every person they denounced to the police. They've left enough of a mark on present-day writers without the need for that, although most keep quiet about it and look for rather less sullied antecedents, poor old Quevedo is usually the first in line, and some may not even be aware of their much more immediate legacy, which they carry in their blood and which boils inside them.'