And thus we reach a domain in which what matters least is whether things do or do not exist, because they can always be talked about, just as all dreams, even the most involved and absurd of dreams, can be recounted after a fashion, in fits and starts, recounted to ourselves at least, and not always grammatically; and to that extent whatever has passed through our thoughts has existed; and whatever preceded it or came before, that too has existed. What is the use, then, of the faint, nebulous nature of what happens and what we do when abroad or far away, in another city, in another country, in that unexpected existence that seems not to belong to us, in the theoretical, parenthetical life we seem to be leading and which, up to a point, encourages us, in subterranean fashion, to think, without actually thinking it, that nothing contained by that time is irreversible and that everything can be cancelled, reversed, cured; that it has only half happened and without our full consent? What is the use, if something that even a judge considers not to have happened – a murder, say – if all we did was plan it; a betrayal, if we were merely tempted by it; a calumny or denunciation or deceit, if we only imagined both them and their annihilating effects without actually circulating them or giving them free rein: any judge who saw this would say: 'Overruled, case dismissed' – but what is the use if we feel that something did happen and that we contributed to it and feel responsible for it? All the more if one's job involves making frivolous bets and forecasts, looking and listening and interpreting and noticing, taking notes and observing and selecting, inveigling, making connections, dressing things up, translating, telling stories and coming up with ideas and persuading others of those ideas, responding to and satisfying the insatiable, exhausting demand: 'What else, what else do you see, what else did you see?' although sometimes there is no 'else' and you have to force your visions or perhaps forge them out of your own inventive powers and memory, which is to say with that infallible mixture which can either condemn or save people and which forces us to announce our prejudices or pre-judgements, or perhaps they are merely our pre-verdicts. All the more if you are like me or like Tupra, like Perez Nuix or Mulryan or Rendel, like Sir Peter Wheeler or like Toby Rylands, if you possess that not particularly extraordinary gift, one indeed that only others will see in you or which they will teach you to assume that you have, and thus come to believe in its existence.
9
I did make haste, although Tupra had not explicitly told me to, at least not in those exact words. Moving my chair slightly to one side, I got up, apparently full of resolve. I felt that there was no need to make my excuses, after all Manoia would not miss me, he didn't pay me much attention and was dissatisfied with my work; perhaps he would pay me more attention now and, with his glasses firmly positioned on the bridge of his nose and held in place there, would follow my steps until I had vanished from his field of vision, he would sense or understand or know that I was going off in search of his wife in order to bring her back, regardless of whether or not he had understood what Reresby had said; this exploit of mine, and, still more, its result, would certainly interest him, and he would even feel unease and impatience and would ask after me if I took a while to return from my trip: if I lingered, despite Tupra's urgings – or, rather, orders – if, contrary to his instructions, I loitered or delayed, if I played the fool or failed. All these things could happen if I did not find them soon, if they were hidden away in some comer of the club invisible to me but known to De la Garza because he would already have tried it out on another night with some other desperate menopausal no-hoper – I doubted there would be a darkened room where people could crawl around in anonymity – or if they had, in fact, swiftly left the premises – but that was unthinkable – not even stopping to pick up their coats – but that was unimaginable, Flavia would never abandon a Mourmanski fur coat – then, I would have to go out into the street and scan the pavements in both
directions, and then run after them, if, that is, I spotted them -I didn't even want to think what the implications would be for us if we were to lose them, or if we already had.
I got to my feet with an overwhelming feeling of heaviness, which can be brought on by various combinations: by fright and haste, by distaste for the cold-blooded act of retaliation we are obliged to carry out, by an overwhelming sense of helplessness in a threatening situation. I didn't really think anything like that had happened, it seemed unlikely to me that Mrs Manoia could have been so very taken with De la Garza, and so rashly too, with her husband only a few steps away negotiating deals with foreigners. In Rafita's case, almost any kind of assault was perfectly possible, from the crassest of propositions to the most fatuous of passes – five fingers, both hands. It seemed to me that the only reason they would enter a toilet together would be maternal compassion, by which I mean that the attache might, without warning, have felt deathly ill and had a sudden need to go and disgorge everything he had ingested, via the same route or entry point through which he had gorged himself (with Mrs Manoia supporting his pitching forehead, making sure, with all those convulsions and retchings, that his hairnet did not become a noose and hang him). No, I didn't believe in any dramatic change or grave event, not with my more sensible thoughts; but nevertheless I felt a weight in my thighs, a tight knot at the back of my neck, a burden on my shoulders, as if I foresaw (but, no, it wasn't prescience) that because of this whole episode, something was about to go badly wrong, something that would blight us possibly for ever or, at least, for a long time, and I realised at once, then, that the origin of that presentiment had more to do with Tupra, with his dissemblings and his furtive mutterings – which had been far too prompt for his usual contrary and reluctant self- than with Manoia or De la Garza or Flavia, or the rowdy group of Spaniards with their singer of deeply felt songs, or with the situation itself, which as yet entailed no great affront or anomaly. Or with myself, of course, although the feeling was obviously mine alone as I stood up to begin the search. The malaise, the pinprick, the sense of menace or of some impending misfortune, the held breath – or perhaps it was the stealthy breathing of someone preparing to deal a blow, or of something that sat heavy on my awakened soul – all of this emanated from Tupra, it was as if he had crossed a frontier or quickly drawn a line and immediately jumped over it, not so much in his mind as in his spirit, and had already settled on a punishment, regardless of what might happen from then on. Perhaps he was the sort who does not issue any warning, at least not always, the sort who takes remote decisions for barely identifiable reasons, or without waiting for a link of cause and effect to establish itself between actions and motives, still less for any proof that such actions have been committed. He did not need proof, on those occasions, whether arbitrary or well founded – who could say – when without the slightest warning or indication, he would lash out with his sabre; indeed, on such occasions, he did not even require the actions or events or deeds to have occurred. Perhaps for him it was enough that he knew precisely what would happen in the world if no pressure or brake were imposed on what he perceived to be people's certain capabilities, and knew, too, that if those capabilities were never fully deployed it was only because someone -himself, for example – had prevented or impeded them, rather than because those people lacked the desire or the guts, he took all that for granted. Perhaps for him to adopt the punitive measures which he deemed necessary, he simply had to convince himself of what would happen in each case if he or another sentinel – the authorities or the law, instinct, the moon, fear, the invisible watchers – did not put a stop to it. 'It's the way of the world,' he would say, and he would say this about many of the complex situations described or related or experienced or foreseen during the sessions when we were called upon to give our interpretations and reports (he alone made the decisions and these came later); he applied these words to betrayals and acts of loyalty, to anxieties and quickened pulses, to unexpected reversals, to anxieties and doubts and torments, to the scratch and the pain and the fever and the festering wound, to griefs and the infinite steps which we all take in the belief that we are being guided by our will, or that our will does at least play a part in them. To him, all this seemed perfectly normal and even, sometimes, routine, he knew all too well that the earth is full of passions and affections and of ill will and malice, and that sometimes individuals can avoid neither and, indeed, choose not to, because they are the fuse and the fuel of their own combustion, as well as their reason and their igniting spark. And they do not require a motive or a goal for any of this, neither aim nor cause, gratitude or insult, or at least not always, or as Wheeler said: 'They carry their probabilities in their veins, and time, temptation and circumstance will lead them at last to their fulfilment.' And for Tupra this very radical attitude – or perhaps it was simply a very practical one, a consequence of his clear, confident, unshakeable opinions – was doubtless just another facet of that way of the world in which words like 'distrust', 'friendship', 'enmity' and 'trust' were mere pretence and ornament and, possibly, a quite unnecessary torment, at least as far as he was concerned; that unreflecting, resolute stance (or one based perhaps on a single thought, the first), also formed part of a style that remained unchanged throughout time and regardless of space, and there was, therefore, no reason to question it, just as there is no need to question wakefulness and sleep, or hearing and sight, or breathing and speech, or any of the other things about which one knows: 'that is how it is and will always be'.