aftershave, it was as if the lotion impregnated his skin or as if he were constantly, secretly, applying more. I hadn't seen him do so in front of the cripples' mirror. I wound down my window slightly.
'No, it's not cheap, in fact, it's rather expensive,' I replied almost reluctantly. 'But I prefer to spend my money on that, I avoid squalor like the plague.' Suddenly I realised that Tupra wasn't wearing his overcoat and hadn't been for a while, not even draped over his shoulders or over his arm, I hadn't noticed when he had taken it off or where he had put it, it must have been when we left the disco, or perhaps, unbeknown to me, he had switched coats in the cloakroom. I turned my head to see if the coat was lying on the shelf behind the back seats, but I couldn't see it, so where was the wretched sword? 'What about that sword?' I said.
Tupra – he was no longer Reresby, even though the night was not yet over – took out a cigarette and lit it with the lighter in the car, illuminating for a moment his smooth cheeks the colour of beer, he looked as if he had just shaved. This time he did not offer me one of his precious Egyptian cigarettes. To underline this, I got out one of my own Peloponnese brand, but did not immediately light it.
'It's in the boot.’
'No, I mean what was it for? Why do you carry it with you? That was a monstrous, brutish thing to do, I thought you were really going to cut the guy's head off, I nearly died, you must be mad, I mean what is all this about, where do you think we are, you're nothing but an animal, and why did you need to…' It all came out in a rush, in a torrent, despite the fact that his answer ('It's in the boot') had been spoken in the same concluding or conclusive tone with which he had once answered me in his office ('Yes, I have') when I asked him if he had heard about the
'I learned it from the Krays,' he said, using that plural which is redundant in Spanish when used with surnames or the names of families (the plural is indicated by the article, for example,
'From
'From whom, you mean,' he replied. 'The Kray brothers, k-r-a-y.' And he spelled it out, as people so often do with English words and names. 'There's no reason why you should have heard of them, they were twins, Ronnie and Reggie, two pioneering gangsters from the 1950’s and 1960’s, they started out in the East End, they were from Bethnal Green or thereabouts; they took over the respective turfs of the Italians and the Maltese; they prospered and expanded and eventually ended up in prison at the end of the 1960’s, one died behind bars and I think the other one is still in there, he must be pretty old by now and he'll probably never be let out. They were the most violent and the most feared and the most vicious of the lot, sadists really, and they did little to curb their cruelty, and to start with, they used swords. Obviously, in their first attempts at punishment beatings and intimidation, they did so out of necessity, because they didn't have the money for more expensive weapons. They provoked terror with those swords, they would slice their victim's face from ear to ear with a single cut, or slit them down the spine or lower still. They'd sometimes make a second cut too, and it's said that they sliced one woman in four. There are a number of books about them, and there was a film as well, I thought you were a cinema-goer. Although it probably wasn't shown in Spain, too parochial to be of interest in other countries, a minor London story. I've seen it, though, and in one or two scenes they showed them sowing panic with their swords. I remember one scene took place in a pool hall. It wasn't a bad film, well documented, and the actors were twins too. Biographical cinema, they call it.' I had never heard that term. I'd heard of ‘biopic', but never 'biographical cinema', yet that was what he said.
He had defused me, at least for the moment. That was the way he usually talked, he went from one sentence to another and each one took him further away from whatever had given rise to the first, further away from the origin of the conversation or from his disquisition, if that was what it was. The origin in this case had been my anger, my resentment at the way he had involved me in his atrocities and made me witness them, in films and in novels anyone can get killed for no reason at all and no one so much as blinks, not the author or the characters or the viewers or the readers, it always seems so easy and so ordinary and so commonplace. But it isn't like that in real life, it isn't easy or ordinary or commonplace, not in the lives led by the vast – and I mean vast – majority of people, and in real life it causes enormous unease and alarm and sorrow, unimaginable to someone who has never been embroiled in such things. (As I believe I said before, it leaves you trembling and for a long time afterwards too. And then you feel depressed, and that lasts even longer.) Fortunately, we had not, as far as I knew, killed anyone, contrary to what had seemed likely when that sword first appeared (I might be the one to phone De la Garza later, behind Tupra's back – that would be best – to find out if the dickhead was still alive, and hadn't subsequently snuffed it because of some internal injury). After all, it had only been a few blows and shakings and a brief attempted drowning, pretty minor stuff really, very small beer in a film or in one of those slow-witted novel- clones about body-busting psychopaths or analytical, almost arithmetical, serial killers, there are dozens of them, in imitative Spain as well. And yet that trifling incident – at least compared with fictional versions – had left me feeling feverish and nauseous and suffering from intermittent cold sweats, they did not last long, but nor did they entirely go away either, and every time the car stopped at a red light and no air was coming in, the sweats would return and I would be drenched again in a matter of seconds. This was during the car journey, which was indeed brief, especially at night, for we had nearly reached my square already.
Feeling troubled, but, even more than that, feeling both irritable and curious, I had said nothing after his explanations about the Kray twins, and had to backtrack mentally to recover if not the origin of that comment, at least the near vicinity: the sword.
'What do you mean when you say you learned from them? Do you mean the business with the sword? And where did you learn it from, from books, from the film, or did you actually know the Krays?’
Tupra would have been born around 1950, slightly before or slightly after. He might have known them in the role of apprentice, beginner or acolyte, before their imprisonment, in some spheres of activity people do start very young, almost as children. He had mentioned Bethnal Green on other occasions, it had been the poorest part of London during the Victorian era, and its poverty had lasted much longer than that very long reign. For decades, it was home to an insane asylum, the Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum, and the district around Old Nichol Street known as 'Jago' – the name by which Tupra sometimes ironically called me – was notorious for its high levels of deprivation and of crime. If he did come from an area like that – but had also studied at Oxford, thanks perhaps to his gifts – it might explain why he was equally at home among low-lifes and in high society: the latter can be learned and is within the grasp of anyone; on the other hand, the only valid training for the former is total immersion. It was possible, given his age. Tupra, however, did not answer me directly, but then he rarely did.
'The film must be available on DVD or video. But it's pretty gloomy stuff, and fairly squalid. If, as you say, you tend to avoid squalor like the plague, you'd better not see it,' he said, as if he hadn't heard my questions or merely found them superfluous; and I noted, too, a slight hint of mockery, taking my aversion to squalor so literally. 'An actor I know well, an old friend of mine, had a bit part in it and, one night, when they were fuming, I helped him rehearse his scene. I think that's why I went to see it later on, he had picked up a lot of my style. In the scene, he was sharing an army cell with the twins, during their national service, when they were still very young; he was watching them and giving them a brief lesson on what they would have to do when they left the army and returned to civilian life. It's a very condensed lesson in how to get what you want, whenever, whatever. 'I know your name. Kray,' he said to them.' And this time Tupra pronounced the name in a cockney or perhaps it was merely an uneducated accent, that is, as if the word were 'cry', which, depending on the context, can mean 'a shout' or 'weeping'. As if, at that moment, he were himself playing the part: his bland, ingenuous vanity resurfacing. We had just driven into my secluded square, which was silent and tranquil now that night had fallen; he had parked
