and still less those narcissistic writers of diaries who can never quite free themselves from their past, and repeat it with embellishments. For that reason I did not try to worm out of him or to draw from him any a posteriori explanations for his rulings, there was no point, if they came, they came of their own accord and possibly several nights later, and, at most, I would allow myself a little joke at his expense: 'And what about women who dance in public, Bertram? Are they equally exposed?' Tupra had a sense of humour or, at least, tolerated mine. He would shoot me a rapid sideways glance, bite the inside of one cheek so as not to allow so much as a half-smile to escape him, and then would pick up my comment, or so it seemed to me, because nothing in him was transparent or sure or to be taken for granted: 'No, Jack, dancers are far less exposed; bear in mind that keeping on the move always provides protection, it's much more dangerous to stay still, it makes you more vulnerable. Those who run away or hide often forget this, they allow fear to take advantage of them, instead of themselves taking advantage of fear.' He had a way of linking sentences so that the second diverged from the first, the third from the second and so on until he wearied of them all and preferred to remain silent for a while. With him, therefore, it was difficult to go into any subject in depth, unless he was the one asking the questions, the one wanting to reach the bottom of something. 'In what way can one take advantage of fear?' I asked once, seduced by one of his divergent sentences: 'I assume you mean one's own fear.' To which he replied: Tear is the greatest force that exists, as long as you can adapt to it and feel at home and live on good terms with it, and not waste energy battling to ward it off. Because you can never entirely win that battle; even in moments of apparent victory, you're already anticipating its return, you live under constant threat, and then you become paralysed, and fear immediately takes advantage of that. If, on the other hand, you accept fear (that is, if you adjust to it, if you get used to it being there), that gives you incomparable strength and you can then take advantage of that strength and use it. Its possibilities are infinite, far greater than those inherent in hatred, ambition, unconditionality, love, the desire for revenge; they're all unknown quantities. Take someone in whom fear has taken deep roots, in whom fear remains active, an everyday kind of fear that has been incorporated into normal life, that person will be capable of truly superhuman exploits. Mothers with small children know this, or most do. As does anyone who's been in a war. But you haven't, have you, Jack? You've been lucky. But that also means that your education will be forever incomplete. They should send mothers into battle with their children nearby, within sight, to hand, because mothers carry their fear with them, it's a permanent fixture; there could be no fiercer combatants.' If I asked him what wars he had known or taken part in, he certainly wouldn't tell me and wouldn't name them; and if I asked him to expand on his thoughts about the perfect education for a man or about the ferocity of mothers with young children, he would almost certainly bring the conversation to a close. There always came a point when his divergences would fail to find another path, would run into scrub or sand or swamp. He might even put his finger to his lips and then point that same finger at the singer with a look of implicit reproach at my chatter, as if demanding for her art the respect which he himself had denied it only moments before, when he had first spoken, albeit in a murmur and without once taking his eyes off her.
At the start of every sociable period (these usually lasted two or three weeks), he would invite us out, on some work pretext, to suppers or to evenings of itinerant partying. 'I'd like you all to come with me to an important meeting,' he would say or, rather, command, in his semi-authoritarian way. 'I want to give the impression to some people I'm doing a deal with that we form a compact, almost intimidating group.' 'I want you to be particularly attentive to our guests tonight, make them feel comfortable, make sure they have a good time, but keep a close eye on them, because I'll ask you about them later, the more views we have the better.' He didn't usually explain further, or say why he wanted to create that impression or what the deal was or who exactly they were, these individuals with whom we were mingling, mostly British with the occasional foreigner, although, when I think about it and if I include Americans, foreigners weren't so very infrequent. Sometimes, however, it was absolutely clear what of who they were, either from the way the conversation developed, or because they were famous, as famous, almost, as Dick Dearlove. Tupra had an incredibly varied acquaintanceship for one man, if, that is, he was just one man, because I heard him called by different names or, rather, surnames, depending on the place and the company and the circumstances. The first time the maitre d' of some expensive restaurant addressed him in my presence as 'Mr Dundas', he saw that my surprise might give him away and so, after that, he always warned us or me whenever he was not going to be wholly himself. 'I'm Mr Dundas here,' he would tell us. 'Here, I'm Mr Reresby, remember that.' 'They think of me in this place as Mr Ure.' I had to ask him to spell this last name, just hearing it pronounced wasn't enough for me to catch it, that is, to imagine it written down, on his lips it sounded like 'Iuah', I couldn't even guess at its spelling. They were all unusual surnames, slightly antiquated, odd (perhaps vaguely aristocratic or, to my ear, approximately Scottish), as if Tupra, having given up his own name, was not prepared also to do without the originality of name that had accompanied him since birth, without that Finnish, Russian, Czech, Turkish or Armenian Tupra, always assuming he had, as Wheeler believed, borne that name for a long time. He would have found it extremely galling to be called, even if only for a while, something dull or something that might be confused with something else, as most people, in principle, would, when choosing a false name: I don't know, Gray, Green, Grant or Graham, excluding, of course, such threadbare possibilities as Brown, Smith and Jones.
Generally speaking, he wanted us to behave perfectly naturally in social situations, and only on special occasions did he give us any more precise instructions than to be studious and to remain fully alert, asking us, for example, to probe or delve into a certain area; but then he didn't usually take all four or more of us along, only the most appropriate people for the task, or even only one, me, Perez Nuix, Mulryan or Rendel, I went out with him on my own a few times and even on a couple of trips abroad, but I imagine that happened to all of us from time to time. He might ask us to be especially solicitous towards, or to flatter and almost woo, one particular person, he would appoint Rendel or me for these toadying operations when it was women who showed signs of boredom or complaint (burdensome wives or flighty mistresses, Mulryan never perfomed very well with them), or Perez Nuix or Jane Treves if what was required was to enliven the mood or gaze of one of those men who get depressed and even sulk when there is no female presence at the table or on the dance floor (I mean a female presence they have met already and with whom they are on familiar terms and before whom they can preen themselves).
Once, it fell to me to dance attendance on and to flatter an Italian lady who was bidding farewell to her youth only very slowly, not to say kicking and screaming, meanwhile nurturing a multitude of minor caprices, if she had any major ones it did not, fortunately, fall to me to witness them or to deny or satisfy them. She was the wife of a compatriot (of hers) called Manoia, with whom, as far as I could make out from what they were saving, Tupra was deep in conversation about politics and money. The truth is I felt so little curiosity that I rarely managed to take much interest in whatever matters my transitory boss had in hand; and so I hardly ever paid much attention motu proprio, and often discovered, when he did require my attention, that his possible intrigues, assignments, explorations or barterings left me completely cold. Perhaps, too, it was because I was never really that well informed, and it's hard to feel involved in things that are so piecemeal and hazy and outside our influence. (I noticed that young Perez Nuix did keep a much closer eye on all these goings-on and their meanderings, and that she tried hard to do so; Mulryan had no option, since he was the one – at least this was my impression – who kept, how can I put it, the diary, accounts and inventory of all matters left unresolved, untamed or unfinished; as for Rendel, it would be difficult to say, for he tended to remain silent for long periods or else, when he was drinking or perhaps smoking – my cigarettes were not the only ones filling our office with smoke – he would suddenly start lecturing or telling a whole string of jokes which he himself would greet with loud guffaws, until he returned to his usual mute state, both modes of being framed by a kind of uneasy cloud or cumulus of smoke.) The only reason I took in anything on that particular night was because the English spoken by the Italian husband was rather less intelligible than he himself thought, and Tupra would call on me (asking for help with a rapid movement of his fingers or of those eyebrows like two black smudges) to help him out and translate a few phrases or some key word when he and Manoia got themselves into a prolonged tangle and ran the grave risk of understanding entirely the opposite of what they were reciprocally proposing or agreeing, or were prepared to accept.
The surname Manoia sounded southern to me, more by intuition than knowledge, as did the man's accent in Italian (he converted unvoiced consonants into voiced, so that what one heard him say was, in fact, ho gabido instead of ho capita), but he had more the look of a Roman – or, rather, Vatican – mafioso than of a Sicilian or Calabrian or Neapolitan one. The large glasses – the glasses of a rapist or a hard-working civil servant, or both, for they are not mutually exclusive types – which he kept pushing up with his thumb even when they had not slipped down, and his gaze, almost invisible due to reflected light and his incessantly shifting, lustreless eyes (the colour more or less of milky coffee), as if he found it hard to keep them still for more than a few seconds, or else could not stand people examining them. He spoke in a low, but doubtless
