was speaking from his own experience when he had a character from one of his tragedies say: 'Thou hast committed fornication: but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.' And for once there is no doubt that here 'country' does not mean
Yes, whatever happens in another country grows immediately faded and faint the moment you return to your own, if not at the very moment when the events themselves are taking place, as if our extreme transience deprived them of all gravity and substance, or as if they hadn't really happened, or had not fallen and weighed upon the world or become etched upon it, or only on the tortuous smokescreens of dreams, from which, afterwards, it is so easy to emerge and which are so easily disowned ('Oh, no, it had nothing to do with me'). And if, moreover, those involved are dead, then what happened becomes even less substantial and less poignant, more ghostly and more preterite, almost as much as the things you read about in novels or see in films, and sometimes you cannot tell the two things apart or distinguish them from what we experience in the nightmares that overwhelm us or from the delirium brought on by pain and fever. Unless, of course, you were the person who killed those dead people or were the cause of their expulsion from the earth and of their definitive silence, whether direct or indirect, unwitting or deliberate, although perhaps the expression 'indirect cause' is meaningless anyway or is merely an acceptable contradiction in terms.
And then there is what Wheeler said about dreams too, and which goes entirely against all that: of the laughter and voices that we hear in dreams, as intense and vivid as those we hear when awake, indeed, often more so, because they are prolonged or repeated and can last all night without their presence fading or without our growing weary – with no rivals in our waking hours and, indeed, unique if they belong to people who have died and who, like the second wife of the blind, widowed poet John Milton, only speak to us again and take on face and form while we sleep – of that laughter and those voices and their words, never before spoken, certainly never while alive, Wheeler said: 'One thing is certain, they are inside us, not somewhere outside… They are in our dreams, the dead; we are the ones dreaming them, our sleeping consciousness brings them to us and no one else can hear them.' And he went on: 'It is more like an impersonation than a supposed visitation or warning from beyond the grave.' ('It's like an unopposed usurpation with no risks attached,' I myself thought later on, 'since those dead have vacated their place and abandoned the field.') And then, if he was right, I thought, in that idiotically chic disco, while what was about to happen was already happening, if he was right, the will or the lack of it barely matters, just as it doesn't matter if something was deliberate or not, it doesn't matter what happened or did not happen, what was only thought or feared or desired, mere deliberations or longings, the more impossible the better, for we can bask in the tranquillity that their absolute impossibility affords us; it makes no difference if such thoughts get no further than apprehension or suspicion, than failed or sterile or never-formulated instigations or persuasions, than the abortive words of an Iago which, over a lifetime, all of us have tasted or will taste in the mouth, whether seeking our own advantage or survival, or bringing down harm and calamity on others: 'all of this is inside us, not somewhere outside'.
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
