every weekend on the roads and how many have died in the innumerable battles that have been waged? The losses haven't always been published throughout history, in fact, almost never. People were more familiar with and more accepting of death, they accepted chance and luck, be it good or bad, they knew they were vulnerable to it at every moment; people came into the world and sometimes disappeared at once, that was normal, the infant mortality rate was extraordinarily high until eighty or even seventy years ago, as was death in childbirth, a woman might bid farewell to her child as soon as she saw its face, always assuming she had the will or the time to do so. Plagues were common and almost any illness could kill, illnesses we know nothing about now and whose names are unfamiliar; there were famines, endless wars, real wars that involved daily fighting, not sporadic engagements like now, and the generals didn't care about the losses, soldiers fell and that was that, they were only individuals to themselves, not even to their families, no family was spared the premature death of at least some of its members, that was the norm; those in power would look grim-faced, then carry out another levy, recruit more troops and send them to the front to continue dying in battle, and almost no one complained. People expected death, Jack, there wasn't so much panic about it, it was neither an insuperable calamity nor a terrible injustice; it was something that could happen and often did. We've become very soft, very thin-skinned, we think we should last forever. We ought to be accustomed to the temporary nature of things, but we're not. We insist on not being temporary, which is why it's so easy to frighten us, as you've seen, all one has to do is unsheathe a sword. And we're bound to be cowed when confronted by those who still see death, their own or other people's, as part and parcel of their job, as all in a day's work. When confronted by terrorists, for example, or by drug barons or multinational mafia men. And so it's true, Iago.' I didn't like it when he called me by the name of that troublemaker; it sounded grubby to me, it wasn't a name I wanted to answer to (I, who answered to so many). 'It's important that some of us don't think much of death. Of other people's deaths, as you said, outraged, oh, I noticed despite your neutral tone, it was a good try, but not enough. It's lucky that some of us can step out of our own era and look at things as they used to in more robust times, past and future (because those times will return, I assure you, although I don't know whether you and I will live to see them), so that we don't collectively suffer the fate described by a French poet:
I glanced down at his feet, his shoes, as I had during one of our first meetings, fearing that he might be wearing some abomination, short green boots in alligator skin, like Marshal Bonanza, or even clogs. This wasn't the case, he always wore elegant brown or black lace-ups, they were certainly not the shoes of a yokel; only the waistcoats he was rarely seen without were questionable, although now they looked more old-fashioned and dated than ever, like a leftover from the seventies, at the time when he would have been starting to take life more seriously, I mean, to be fully aware of his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions, or with a proper sense of the options available to him. Nevertheless, there was something about him that did not quite ring true: his work, his gestures, his surroundings, his accent, even that very comfortable English house, so textbook perfect, like something out of an expensive film, or a picture in a storybook. Perhaps it was the abundant curls on his bulging cranium, or the apparently dyed ringlets at his temples, perhaps the soft mouth seemingly lacking consistency, a piece of chewing gum before it goes hard. Many people doubtless found him attractive, despite that slightly repellent element I could never entirely identify or isolate or pin down with any exactitude, perhaps it didn't depend on just one characteristic, but on the whole. Perhaps I was the only person to see it, women clearly didn't pick it up. Not even perceptive women like Perez Nuix, accustomed to noticing and intuiting everything, and with whom he had probably been to bed. That's something we would have in common, Tupra and I, or should that be I and Reresby. Or Ure or Dundas.
'And because of that you allow yourself to beat up and scare to death a poor inoffensive fool, and with my help too; except, of course, I had no idea what you were planning to do to him. And for no reason, just because, because one shouldn't take death too seriously. Well, I couldn't disagree with you more. By the way, I believe that line is from Rimbaud,' I added to make him feel inadequate, he'd already gained far too much ground. I was taking a risk, though, because I wasn't sure at all.
He paid no attention; I was cultured, I knew other languages, I had taught at Oxford in the past, and so he didn't give me any credit for knowing that. He would expect me to recognize the quotation. He gave a wry laugh, just one, a mere simulacrum of bitterness.
'There are no inoffensive people, Jack. None,' he said. 'And you don't seem to take into account that it was all your fault. Think about it.'
'What do you mean? Because I introduced him to the lady and they hit it off? She was longing to be courted by the first mameluke who appeared, whoever he was. Just think back a bit. You yourself warned me about it.' The word
'That wasn't the only reason. I asked you to find them and to bring Flavia back, I told you not to take too long and to remove that De la Garza fellow from the scene. You failed. So I had to go after you and sort things out. And still you complain. By the time I found them, Mrs. Manoia already had a great welt on her face. If I hadn't stepped in, it would have been far worse, you don't know her husband, I do. I couldn't just have that useless Spaniard thrown out.' It occurred to me that he sometimes forgot that I, too, was a Spaniard, and possibly a useless one as well. 'Given that Flavia had a mark, a wound on her face, that wouldn't have been enough for him. He would have gone up to your friend and, if your friend was lucky, torn off his arm, if not his head. You criticize me for some trifling, unimportant thing that I did, but you live in a tiny world that barely exists, sheltered from the violence that has always been the norm and still is in most parts of the world, it's like mistaking the interlude for the whole performance, you haven't a clue, you people who never step outside of your own time or travel beyond countries like ours in which, up until the day before yesterday, violence also ruled. What I did was nothing. The lesser of two evils. And it was your fault.'
The lesser of two evils. So Tupra belonged to that all-too-familiar group of men who have always existed and of whom I've known a few myself, there are always so many of them. The sort who justify themselves by saying: 'I had to do it in order to avoid a greater evil, or so I believed; others would have done the same, only they would have behaved more cruelly and caused more harm. I killed one so that ten would not be killed, and ten so that a hundred would not die, I don't deserve to be punished, I deserve a prize.' Or those who answer: 'I had to do it, I was defending my God, my King, my country, my culture, my race; my flag, my legend, my language, my class, my space; my honour, my family, my strongbox, my purse and my socks. And in short, I was afraid.' Fear, which exonerates as much as love, and of which it's so easy to say and to believe 'It's stronger than I am, it's not in my power to stop it' or that allows one to resort to the words 'But I love you so much,' as an explanation for one's actions, as an alibi or an excuse or as a mitigating factor. Perhaps he even belonged to those who would claim: 'It was the times we lived in, and unless you were there, you couldn't possibly understand. It was the place, it was unhealthy, oppressive; unless you were there, you couldn't possibly imagine our feelings of alienation, the spell we were under.' On the other hand, at least he would not be one of those who dodged the issue altogether, he would never pronounce those other words: 'I didn't intend to do it, I knew nothing about it, it happened against my will, as if befuddled by the tortuous smokescreen of dreams, it was part of my theoretical, parenthetical life, the life that doesn't really count, it only half-happened and without my full consent.' No, Tupra would never stoop to the sort of pathetic excuses even I have used to justify to myself certain episodes in my own life. Just then, however, I prefered not to go into that aspect of things, and so I replied to the last thing he'd said to me:
'I work for you, Bertram, I do my job. Don't ask me to do any more than that. I'm here to interpret and to write reports, not to deal with drunken boors. Nor even to entertain ladies in their declining years, clasping them to me, sternum to breast.'
Tupra couldn't help being amused despite himself. Up until then we hadn't had the chance to talk about my torment, still less to laugh about it, or for him to laugh at me, at my bad luck and my imperfect stoicism.
'Rocky peaks, eh?' And he let out a genuine guffaw. 'There's no way I would have accepted her invitation to dance, not with those bulwarks of hers.' He used the word 'bulwarks,' which might best be rendered in Spanish as
He'd done it again. I myself sometimes laugh at things despite myself. I couldn't suppress my own laughter, my anger vanished for a moment, or was postponed because it was no longer relevant. For a few seconds, we both laughed together, simultaneously, with neither of us hanging back or preempting the other, the laughter that
