he knows, how much he sees and how much he knows. About Tom, Dick or Harry.') Needless to say these notes were unsigned, like all the others in the file, or at least those in that drawer. They seemed to have been written rapidly, judging from the brief time I dared to spend looking at them, when my thumb lingered over some: the notes on me were as vague and speculative as were those devoted to ex-President Clinton or to Mrs Thatcher, which I glanced through quickly.
'Yes, I think he could,' I replied, having given a few seconds' thought to Tupra's questions regarding the host of that celebrity supper (the host was himself a singer-celebrity, I'll call him Dick Dearlove, one of the unknown or unlikely names I had seen in the file, and who, I learned, was a very high-ranking, very important civil servant in some ministry or other, I had only read a couple of lines about him, but with a surname like that he should really have been a great idol of the masses treading the boards of a thousand stages, like our ex-dentist singer-host). 'In a dangerous situation, he would, of course, get his blow in first, if he had the chance. Or even beforehand, I mean before the risk to his own life was imminent and certain. The mere suggestion of a grave threat would turn him into a man of excess, render him almost uncontrollable. He would, I believe, be quick to react violently. Or, rather, he would anticipate that violence: I don't know if the saying exists in English, but in Spanish we say that he who gives first gives twice. But that wouldn't be the reason, he wouldn't react in a calculating fashion, or out of bravery, or even out of nerves or, strictly speaking, panic. He's so pleased with his own biography and with the life he leads, so astonished and proud of what he has achieved and continues to achieve (he can't as yet see it ending), his fairy- tale is turning out so picture-perfect that he couldn't bear for it all to be destroyed in a matter of seconds, prematurely, by mistake and through bad luck, through recklessness or some unfortunate encounter. It's the idea he couldn't bear. Let's say burglars got into his house, ready for anything; or if he was mugged in the street; no, he wouldn't ever walk down a street. Let's say his car broke down while he was driving through a really rough area, that it conked out late one night as he was returning from his country house, alone at the wheel or accompanied by a bodyguard, he probably always has at least one with him, he wouldn't go a hundred yards without some protection. And that the moment they stepped out they were surrounded by a large, aggressive, armed gang, a band of desperadoes against whom two men could do nothing, especially when one of them was accustomed only to being flattered and pampered and to a complete absence of nasty surprises.'
'They would immediately call for help on their mobile phones or would already have done so on the car phone, to the police or whoever,' Tupra said, interrupting me. It amused me the ease with which he joined in or participated in my fantasies. I think he rather enjoyed listening to me.
'Let's say that the car phone died at the same time as the car did, and that their other phones were out of range, or had been taken off them before they had time to use them. I don't know about in England, but in Spain that's the very first thing criminals steal, they go for your mobile first and then your wallet, and that's why all muggers, even the really pathetic ones still clutching a needle in one trembling hand, all have mobiles. You won't see a single pickpocket in Madrid, or even a beggar, who hasn't got his own mobile phone.'
'Really,' said Tupra, tempted to smile. He was familiar with my exaggerations, and did not really disapprove of them.
'Yes, really. Just go to Madrid and you'll see that I'm right. Well, in that situation, if Dearlove was carrying a knife, or even a pistol (he'd be quite capable of owning one, licence and all), he would probably start shooting or lashing out without even trying to negotiate and without gauging the precise nature of the threat, the degree of the desperadoes' desperation or hatred, they might well turn out to be admirers of his who, when they recognise him, would end up asking for his autograph, it could happen, you can't overestimate his popularity. He's a huge star in Spain as well, especially, as you may or may not know, in the Basque Country.'
'I can imagine. Nowadays any buffoon is guaranteed universal acclaim,' said Tupra. 'Go on.' At the time, he used to call me Jack, although I still called him Mr Tupra.
'What Dearlove could not bear,' obviously I didn't call him Dearlove, but by his real name, 'is that his life should end like that; in short, he would find the manner of his death almost more unbearable than death itself. He would, of course, be terrified to see his successful existence truncated and to lose his life, as would anyone, even if that life had been a failure; what's more, I don't, as I said, believe him to be a brave man, he would be terribly afraid. What most horrifies Dearlove, though, as it does other show-business people (although they may not know it), is that the end of his story should be such that it overshadows and darkens the life he's lived and accumulated up until now, eclipsing it, almost erasing and cancelling out the rest and, in the end, becoming the only fact that counts and will be recounted. If he were capable of killing (and I believe he is), that would be the reason, narrative disgust, if I can put it like that. You see, Mr Tupra, if someone like him were killed by a group of criminals in Clapham or Brixton, or, even more conspicuously, if he was lynched, that kind of death would create such a scandal, it would so shock the world, that it would be brought up every time his name was mentioned, on every occasion and in every circumstance, even if they were talking about him for some other reason, because of his contribution to the popular music of his time or to the history and heyday of buffoons, or because of the vast fortune he amassed with his voice or as one of the more worrying examples of mass hysteria. It would make no difference, they would still always mention the tale of how he was lynched in Brixton due to some awful misunderstanding, or in Clapham one fateful night along with his best bodyguard, or at the hands of a few unspeakably cruel felons from Streatham. A time would come, indeed, when that would be all that was remembered of him. Mothers would even use it to scold their children with when they strayed into the wilder parts of town or into other dodgy areas: 'Just you remember what happened to Dick Dearlove, and he was famous and had a bodyguard with him.' A real posthumous curse, for someone like him I mean.'
Tupra, who was smiling broadly now, improved on this by saying: 'Remember Dickie Dearlove, darlin', and 'ow they did 'im in,' adopting a cockney accent (or possibly a half-educated South London accent, I can't really tell the difference) and putting on a mother's voice. 'Good grief, I'm sure he could never in his life imagine a more sordid epitaph for himself. Not even in his most humiliating nightmares. What else, though, go on.'
'I don't know if such a phobia has ever been recorded, or if it has a rather less pedantic name than the one I gave it. Dearlove himself, of course, would never use such terms. He wouldn't even understand what I was talking about, I might as well be speaking Greek. And yet that is what it is: narrative horror or disgust; a dread of having his story ruined by the ending, wrecked forever, destroyed, of its complete ruination by a finale too spectacular for the world's taste and hateful to himself; of the irreparable damage done to his story, of a stain so powerful and voracious that it would spread and spread until it had, retrospectively, wiped out everything else. Dearlove would be capable of killing in order to avoid such a fate. Or such an aesthetic, dramaturgical or narrative doom, as you prefer. I'm sure he would be capable of killing for that reason. At least so I believe.' When I finished, I would sometimes retreat a little, shrink back, not that it made any difference, I had spoken, I had said my piece.
'You'll all end up like Dick Dearlove, every one of you,' said Tupra, pursuing his imitation for a while longer, laughing briefly and wagging an admonitory finger. Then he added: 'The only thing is, Jack, that someone like him would never drive through Clapham or Brixton, either to enter the city or leave it.'
'All right, but he could get lost, take the wrong motorway exit and end up there high and dry, couldn't he? It does happen. I saw something similar in a film called
'I don't go to the cinema much, unless obliged to by my work. I used to, when I was young. But I'm afraid you haven't quite grasped the economic level of these people, Jack. For short trips Dearlove probably travels around in a helicopter. And for longer trips he uses his private jet, with an entourage that would make the queen's look positively puny.' He fell silent for a moment, as if recalling a journey made in just such a private plane. Tupra was always very scornful of Dearlove and similar figures, but the fact is that he mixed on occasions with quite a few of them, from the worlds of television, fashion, pop music and cinema, and whenever I had seen him with them, he had always appeared to treat them with easy sympathy and trust. Sometimes I wondered if these contacts, difficult to achieve for most people, were provided from on high, as part of his job and to make his work easier. Naturally, I never knew exactly what his job was. On the other hand, he never seemed uncomfortable in the company of even the most frivolous of celebrities. It could just be part of his training, of his trade, it didn't necessarily mean he enjoyed it. The truth is that he never seemed uncomfortable in any social situation, with the brainy or the serious, with the pretentious or the idiotic, with the marginalised or with the simple, he was clearly a man who adapted to whatever was required of him. Then he returned to the subject: 'Tell me, do you think he would be capable of killing in any other circumstance, apart from one in which he saw that his life might not only be in danger, but also, according to you… called into question? You may be right, he might well be horrified to think that his end could prove ugly, inappropriate, onerous, humiliating, sarcastic, turbulent, dirty…'
