'Bah,' he said disdainfully, 'of course I didn't mean to, in fact, I think I'm going to take this snood off, it's no good if you're dancing, a bit of a bummer, really.' He ran his whole hand over the hairnet from top to bottom, as if squeezing out a cloth. 'Not that she'll have noticed anyway, not with her face packed with Botox like that. In any case, I don't know what you're talking about, she was there for the taking, man. It was just a question of manoeuvring her into position and then in I'd go, the coup de grace, in with sword, up to the gunnels. Two ears and a tail to me and fuck everyone else.' He mimed a bullfighter driving the sword in. He was beginning to string together total non sequiturs, a sign that he was recovering. I wondered if he actually knew what 'gunnels' meant, but I had no intention of asking him.
'Botox?' That was when I heard the neologism for the first time. 'What's that? What kind of word is that? Botox,' I said it again to get used to it, as one tends to do with words one doesn't know. De la Garza had referred to his dangling hairnet as a snood, although I bet he had never seen one in his life. What with that and his enigmatic 'gunnels', I held out little hope of his offering me the etymology of Botox. He insisted on the bullfighting analogy, with gestures and everything, something typical of our home-grown fascists – I use the word in its colloquial sense, and, indeed, in the analogical. The gestures in themselves, of course, are not necessarily fascistic (even I can manage a fair imitation, as well as a pass made with two hands and a pass made only with the right – when on my own, needless to say), but the sheer presumption of comparing (shall we say) the labour involved in seducing a woman with entering an arena and facing an enraged bull in front of a crowd of spectators definitely was fascistic. Perhaps he was, after all, a fascist at heart, analogically speaking.
'You mean you don't know?' And he said this with the puerile sneer of a hard-bitten thug, as if my ignorance were proof of his greater worldly wisdom (I had no argument with that, there are worldly-wise louts by the thousand, and their numbers are on the increase) and of his permanent place in the land of chic that was so precious to him (he could stay there until the last day for all I cared, I had no intention of disputing the territory with him, or even setting foot in it). 'You mean you don't know,' he repeated. He was delighted to be able to teach me something, if you can call it teach. 'Rich chicks have it injected all the time, and some guys do, too. Your friend's a likely case, if you ask me, he looks like he's had it in his cheekbones, his chin, his forehead and his temples, to ward off crow's feet. Yeah, that Reresby guy's skin is suspiciously tight and smooth, he probably has a hypodermic stuck in him every few months, and the Italian woman every few weeks I would think, assuming they let her.’
It was true that Tupra's skin was disturbingly lustrous and firm for a man of his probable years, and was the lovely golden colour of beer, almost peachy sometimes, but it had never seemed to me that this was due to artifice or to some special treatment, rather, it would simply never occur to me that men would resort to such things, or not then at least. Who knows, though. I was becoming old-fashioned in some respects: I knew nothing about the existence of Botox or, doubtless, about other products, that was just one example. In fact, I still didn't really know about it, and Rafita was hardly the best person to explain it to me.
'A hypodermic? You mean they inject it, real injections, with a needle and everything? What is it? Some sort of liquid presumably. Against wrinkles.' My last sentence was a statement, another way of getting myself used to the idea. It seemed to me inconceivable that anyone would have a needle stuck in their forehead or their chin (I couldn't believe they would inject it into their temples) unless they had some pressing reason to do so, and, besides, that word… If I have a feeling for anything it is for languages and etymologies, I suppose I got used to having to be alert to them and to deducing them when I taught at Oxford, and the students (who were, generally speaking, malicious and mischievous) were always asking me about the most outlandish words, I often had to improvise, inventing etymologies on the spot; I mean, how, in the middle of a class, is one supposed to know the origin of papirotazo, or moflete, or the roots of coscorron, esgrima or vericueto? Now I could not help but suspect that 'Botox' was a contraction (soothing and camouflaging, as well as comfortable and practical) of 'botulinum toxin', that is, a feared and highly dangerous substance, which, according to what Wheeler had told me, had been brought exprofeso by the SOE from America in the middle of the war in order to impregnate and poison the bullets that were fired at Heydrich in the attempt on his life in 1942 in Prague, and which was, in the end, what caused the death he struggled – his will refusing to give in – so hard against. 'Botox,' I thought, 'it must be that, it's too much of a coincidence. But if it is, it's madness to have yourself injected with poison in order not to grow old, or, rather, not to look old, it must be administered in very measured, minimal doses. But it would be so easy for a practicante or visiting nurse to make a mistake. And how old-fashioned that term practicante seems now, yet it was normal in my childhood.' – 'I hope Botox isn't the same thing as botulinum toxin,' I said to De la Garza. When I saw the look of brute ignorance on his face I realised that he had no idea, but the utter idiocy of his reply took me by surprise, so much so that I wondered if he wasn't pretending or if his state of semi-intoxication and his recent jigging up and down to that violent music had perhaps, exacerbated his usual stupidity. But he wasn't such a mule, despite everything, to make a mistake like that unintentionally.
'It's got nothing to do with bulimia,' the dunderhead replied. 'No, it's nothing to do with bulimia or anorexia.' He had rested one hand on one of the strange cylindrical bars in the spotless, spacious toilet; on the only bar that was, fortunately for him, fixed: it doubtless helped to keep him from collapsing while he waited for his promised line of cocaine.
'Not bulimia, man, botulin. You know, as in botulism.' He continued to stare at me blankly. 'Botulism, an illness you get from eating food that's gone off, or from canned food that hasn't been properly prepared, haven't you ever heard of it?' This was one etymology I did know and so I let him have it, possibly to repay him for the lecturing tone he had used on me. 'It affects meat or fish, possibly fruit; but it was especially common in sausages, that's where the name comes from: botulus means "sausage" in Latin.’
'I've no idea what you're talking about, not a clue, so don't ask me what it is or where they get it from. But as far as I remember it certainly didn't involve sausages or chorizos or anything. They inject people with this substance and it paralyses the nerves, I think, so that they can hardly move their face, all their wrinkles disappear while the effect lasts and they don't get any new ones either, at least, not in the places where they've had the injections. Anyway, that's what it is, I know several women who've had it, I mean, say some woman's forehead is like piece of old parchment, a little injection in one corner and her forehead's as smooth as a marble statue's. Cheeks like an accordion? Give her a few doses of paralysis and they'll be as fresh and firm as you like. The only downside is that when the nerves are paralysed, the whole area becomes completely desensitised, that's why the Italian woman didn't notice this at all' – he touched the hairnet as if it were a mane – 'and they get a funny, slightly crazed expression too. They can't really move their face at all, so although their skin appears very youthful and firm, there's something stiff and doll-like about their face, they look a bit stupid or a bit touched. Haven't you seen that actress, she's the ex-wife of that guy who's hitched up now with one of our Spanish actresses, oh, fuck, I've forgotten her name, the one with the face of someone very tall, well, I reckon that fixed look in her eyes is from the Botox, her eyes have gone all kind of pointy-looking, haven't they? It makes her look slightly unhinged, don't you think? They must inject it into her cheekbones and into her crow's feet by the litre, I'd be surprised if she can even close her eyes, she probably sleeps with them wide open. Just like this Flavia woman. I mean, depending on the angle, she looks like some kind of sprite.’