This gift or curse of mine is nothing very extraordinary, by which I mean it is nothing supernatural, preternatural, unnatural or contra natura, nor does it involve any unusual abilities, not divination, say, although something rather similar to that was what came to be expected of me by my temporary boss, the man who contracted me to work for him during a period that seemed to go on for a long time, more or less the same period of time as my separation from my wife, Luisa, when I came back to England so as not to be near her while she was slowly distancing herself from me. People behave idiotically with remarkable frequency, given their tendency to believe in the repetition of what pleases them: if something good happens once, then it should happen again, or at least tend in that direction. And it was all because I chanced to make a correct interpretation of a relationship that was of (momentary) importance to Señor Tupra, that Mr Tupra – as I always called him until he urged me to replace this with Bertram and later, much to my distaste, with Bertie – wanted to hire my services, initially on an ad hoc basis and subsequently full-time, with theoretical duties as vague as they were varied, including acting as liaison or occasional interpreter on his Spanish or Spanish-American incursions. But in reality or, rather, in practice, I was of interest to him and was taken on as an interpreter of lives, to use his own grandiose expression and exaggerated expectations. It would be best just to say translator or interpreter of people: of their behaviour and reactions, of their inclinations and characters and powers of endurance; of their malleability and their submissiveness, of their faint or firm wills, their inconstancies, their limits, their innocence, their lack of scruples and their resistance; their possible degrees of loyalty or baseness and their calculable prices and their poisons and their temptations; and also their deducible histories, not past but future, those that had not yet happened and could therefore be prevented. Or, indeed, created.
I had met him at the home of Professor Peter Wheeler, of Oxford, an eminent and now retired Hispanist and Lusitanist, the man who knows more than anyone else in the world about Prince Henry the Navigator and one of those who knows most about Cervantes, and who is now Sir Peter Wheeler and the first winner of the Premio Nebrija de Salamanca, awarded to the most brilliant members of a particular speciality or field and – rather surprisingly in the university world, which is either miserly or impoverished depending on the institution – worth a not insignificant amount of money, which meant that the narrowed eyes of his greedy or needy international colleagues rested enviously upon him on that penultimate occasion. I used to travel down from London to see him now and then (an hour on the train there, another hour back), having met and got to know him slightly many years before, when, for two years, I held the post of Spanish lector at Oxford University -1 was single at the time, and now I was separated; I seem always to be alone in England. Wheeler and I had liked each other from the start, perhaps out of deference to the person who had first introduced us, Toby Rylands, Professor of English Literature, and a great friend of his since youth and with whom he shared a number of characteristics, as well as the age and status of the reluctantly retired. Although I often visited Rylands, I did not meet Wheeler until the end of my stay there, since he was teaching as emeritus professor in Texas during term time, and I went back to Madrid or went travelling during the vacation, and we did not, therefore, coincide. But when Rylands died, after I had left, Wheeler and I continued that deference which will, I suppose, since it became, from then on, deference to a memory or to a defenceless ghost, now last indefinitely: we used occasionally to write or phone, and, if I was going to be in London for a few days, I always tried to make time to visit him, alone or with Luisa. (Wheeler as substitute for or successor to Rylands, or as his inheritance: it's shocking how easily we replace the people we lose in our lives, how we rush to cover any vacancies, how we can never resign ourselves to any reduction in the cast of characters without whom we can barely go on or survive, and how, at the same time, we all offer ourselves up to fill vicariously the empty places assigned to us, because we understand and partake of that continuous universal mechanism of substitution, which affects everyone and therefore us too, and so we accept our role as poor imitations and find ourselves surrounded by more and more of them.)
He amused me and taught me a great deal with his intelligent though never cruel brand of mischief, and with his astonishing perspicacity, so subtle and unostentatious that one often had to presume or decipher it from his remarks and questions, apparently innocuous, rhetorical or trivial, sometimes almost hieroglyphic if you were alert enough to spot them; you had to listen 'between the words', as sometimes you have to read between the lines of what he writes, although this pre-dominantly indirect manner did not prevent him, if he suddenly grew bored with hints and judged them to be burdensome, from being franker and more ruthless – with third parties or with life or himself, although not usually with his immediate interlocutor – than anyone else I have ever known, with the possible exception of Rylands and, perhaps, myself, but only as disciple and pupil of both. And I – well, I didn't dare think anything else – doubtless amused him, and even flattered him by my ready affection, my easy delight and my celebratory laughter, which never takes much coaxing in the presence of people who have earned my respect and admiration, and Wheeler deserves both. (I was, in his case, a replacement for or a successor to no one, or to no one known to me, possibly someone from his ancient past, the long-delayed or, who knows, long-since-ruled-out replacement of some remote figure whose echo or mere shadow or reflection he had already relinquished.)
So during my time in London, working for BBC radio, until Mr Tupra took me away, I used to go and see him where he lived in Oxford, by the River Cherwell, like Rylands, whose neighbour he had been, either on my own initiative or occasionally on his, when, for whatever reason, he required witnesses to his verbal interventions or to his disguised mises-en-scene, or if he had visitors whom he wanted to provide with a little variety – for example, with a Latin who had nothing to do now with the all-too-familiar university world – or visitors he was looking forward to discussing with me afterwards, the next day when we were alone. I had that feeling on two or three occasions: it was as if Wheeler, well into his eighties, was always preparing conversations that might entertain or stimulate him in the near, or, to him, still foreseeable future. And if he foresaw that he would find it amusing later on to talk to me about Tupra, or to recount his indiscretions, his vices and enigmas and funny ways, it would be a good idea for me to meet Tupra first, or at least be able to put a voice and a face to him and have formed some impression, however superficial, which he, Wheeler, could then confirm or deny, or even argue about with unnecessary zeal, and only then would we get any real enjoyment out of the conversation. He needed a counterpoint to his perorations.
I wonder if this is what the enigmatic and fragmented time of the old is like, the paradoxical discovery – for those who manage to get that far and become part of it – that you have such a superfluity of that dwindling time that you can afford to devote no small part of it to the preparation or composition of prized moments; or, so to speak, to guiding the numerous empty or dead moments towards a few pre-planned and carefully considered dialogues, in which you have, of course, memorised your own part: it is as if the old took great care of their time – at once brief and slow, limited and abundant, the time of an astute old man – and planned and channelled and directed it as much as they could, and were no longer willing to accept – enough, no more: no more fever or pain; no word or spear, not even sleep and dreams – that it was a mere consequence of chance, of the unexpected or of something beyond them, but tried to convert it into a work of their own making, of their own dramaturgy and design. Or, which comes to the same thing, as if they took great pains to anticipate and configure it and to shape its content as much as possible; and that this was what they wanted, as being the only sure way of truly making the most of their remaining time, which seems to move so very slowly, but is, in fact, sliding from their shoulders like snow, slippery and docile. And the snow always stops.