Tu rostro manaña - Javier Marías
Undoubtedly it may seem inconsequential, overlong and overindulgent to some, with rambling asides with no immediately evident purpose or dramatic tension, but Marías achieves an incredible depth through linguistic wordplay and in his exploration of human actions and sentiments. It's a kind of literary spy thriller that sidesteps any of the cliches of the genre, focussing (although 'focus' might not be the best word to use considering the expansive nature of the writing and treatment of the subject) on deeper themes of death, war, conflict, human relationships, memory, desire and betrayal.
More than anything, reading of the book in the original Spanish means you can wallow in and enjoy its beautiful fluid prose. It's Faulkner-like in its ability to weave mood and situation, exploring it obsessively from every oblique angle before it focusses on in the nub of the matter. It's a style that drills down at same time as it opens up connections to a wider perspective on people, business, war and society and where they all come together. It's totally absorbing, demanding total concentration to follow where it's going, the way it skillfully segues one scene into another, echoing flashbacks and revisiting scenes for different angles with new ideas.
The following is less of a review than an attempt to summarise the content for my own benefit and recollection, since I am unlikely to read the whole thing again, but may want to refer back to certain sections at a other time.
Tu rostro manaña 1. Fiebre y Lanza (2002)
I. Fiebre opens somewhat abstractly, the narrator considering the desire to remain silent, to not know that there is worse to come, be silent and save yourself, how forgetting would be a great gift, but an impossible thing to achieve. We discover that these are the thoughts of Juan Deza (variously referred to as Juan, Jaime or Jacobo), a Spanish national living in London, who has been paid to listen, order and tell, observe and select, record and interpret, translate and instigate on behalf of Bertram Tupra.
He has been recommended to Tupra by Peter Wheeler, a retired Oxford professor with interest in Spain who he has come to know through old mutual acquaintance, Toby Rylands, professor of English literature at Oxford, now deceased. Deza had taught Spanish literature in Oxford for a few terms and is now working for the BBC in London but has remained in touch with his Oxford friends, both of whom had worked for MI6 during WWII. Wheeler sees Deza as a kind of pupil or disciple with the kind of observational talent that could be useful for certain purposes. Initially Tupra asks him to advise on Spanish and Latin American affairs, then later as a translator and interpreter of people.
There are no certainties in this work or indeed in life. Deza considers time and memory, where posterity lasts longer; a fiction that surpasses our capability to shape it, shape life, explain and interpret. Even our own lives are inconsistent; we are capable of reacting differently on different days, our actions open to interpretation that we can't control. There is a reflection on the Spanish Civil War, on Andres Nin of the POUM (Partido Obrero del Unificación Marxista), on his father Juan Deza, a journalist during the war, a Republican soldier. On a long interminable night, while browsing through a signed copy of Fleming's From Russia with Love, he discovers a blood stain on the stairs.
In II. Lanza, we find out more about Juan's seemingly strange and pointless exercises for Tupra, in a team that includes Pérez Nuix, a young woman with a Spanish father and English mother. They seem like mere games, but things takes a political turn when he is asked to observe a Venezuelan man who may be preparing a coup d'etat against Hugo Chávez. He is asked to judge intentions based on impressions more than words spoken, using intuition to decipher things the person might not even know about themselves. Deza has the gift.
There is more in-depth consideration on the nature of war and its ability to distort reality. "En tiempo de paz es del todo imposible hacerse a la idea o entender qué es Una Guerra, de hecho ésta es inconcebible." Wheeler shows him his collection of propaganda and wartime notices. Careless talk costs lives. Be silent, say nothing. "Hablar, mucho más qué pensar, es lo qué tiene todo el mundo a su alcance." People now have got used to not speaking, hiding true feelings.
Language, spoken and non-spoken, variances between the meaning of words translated from Spanish to English and vice versa is constantly commented upon, how they change from what is spoken to what is understood. "Nada se entrega tanto no tan cabalmente como las palabras. Uno las pronuncia y al instante se desprende de ellas y las deja en posesión, o mejor dicho en usufructo, de quien se las ha escuchado." Ultimately, what is spoken is too much, vulgar. Everyone has opinions. Tupra's team's job is to determine what individuals are capable of, "conocer sus rostros mañana". Everyone has all their possibilities inside them and only a question of time before they are made known. "Es una maldicion, el presente, no nos deja ver ni apreciar casi nada."
Tu rostro manaña 2. Baile y sueño (2004)
The second book in the trilogy, Baile y sueño, is much more dramatically driven, but at least initially III. Baile begins contemplative and abstract in its consideration of issues whose purpose only later becomes clearer. The narrator Jaime/Juan Deza in his usual roundabout way considers the obligations imposed on the proposer and the person being asked a favour. He considers this is in the abstract, as an example referring back to wife Luisa and her encounters with an East European beggar waiting outside the supermarket. The matter he wants to really deal with relates Pérez Nuix, the mysterious the woman he encountered at the end of book one in the rain, walking a dog outside his London apartment. His colleague from the agency of "translators" has a favour to ask him. But, again, what exactly that is is left for much later.
Juan is asked to accompany Tupra on one of his social outings at a London disco (baile) while he discussing business with Italian gentleman, Manoia who is there with his wife Flavia. Juan/Jaime is there are a translation assistant and to keep wife entertained. Unfortunately, he runs into De La Garza from the Embassy, a fellow Spaniard of a rather different nature to Juan. Tension rises when the De La Garza disappears with Flavia. There is an almost absurd hunt through male and female toilets, but Marías skillfully ties in a number of earlier episodes through a drip of blood, through a story of the Comendador, and not least the mysterious still unexplained blood stain on the staircase in Wheeler's house in first part.
There are a number of other seemingly irrelevant episodes and issues raised that hardly seem relevant but which nonetheless present oblique views on the whole kaleidoscopic nature of his experiences. He considers a woman without panties that he has seen in ladies toilets while looking for De La Garza and considers the possibility of the blood appearing from an unexpected period. He even questions his estranged wife Luisa on the matter. He is also fascinated and horrified by the idea of botox (or bottox as it is written here). He relates it to an injected poison (veneno) like the one used one used by Nazis and by Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love. Looking over square from his London apartment at three people dancing (baile) to Peter Gunn, he feels urge to dance, to feel the lightness of escape from all the matters preoccupying (and how) his mind.
In the second part of the novel and Part IV. Sueño of Tu rostro manaña he finally gets back to and continues with the story of De La Garza at the nightclub. To get him away from Flavia, who De La Garza has accidentally caused a mark on her face, he goes with Jaime expecting a line of cocaine in the disabled toilets, referring to his conquests in bullfighting terms. There, forcing him down on his knees, Tupra draws a sword from his overcoat and appears to be very seriously on the point of executing or decapitating him. Jaime is understandably horrified. Bullfighting terminology comes up again in relation to the horrors of the Civil War. In addition to a horrific story overheard between two women on a bus of a baby's brains being dashed out, there is another story told by his father, about a famous writer, a falangist who gleeful related a story of how they once killed a prisoner, a friend of his from university, like a bull in the ring.
Tu rostro manaña 3. Veneno y sombra y adiós (2007)
Book three, Veneno y sombra y adiós has its own share of drama (mostly "off screen") and strangeness where Juan observes the full horror and gains some idea of the nature of Tupra's work and how his observations contribute to it. In V. Veneno we find out why Pérez Nuix, who seemed to be forgotten in the last book, came to see Jaime. Although he has been reluctant to consider himself employed by MI6, he finds that he is still a spy, albeit not of the familiar Bond variety. After fall of Berlin Wall and end of Cold War, intelligence services no longer require services of traditional spies, so plans were been made to offer intelligence to businesses.
La joven Nuix relates her own family history, her father's gambling debts and how a lender now has power over their family. That man is Vanni Incompara and he is due to be examined by Tupra's agents, including Juan. Peréz Nuix needs Juan to give his approval of Incompara as a reliable man for Tupra to do business with. As her father is in considerable debt to him. Juan considers his options and is inclined to help if he can. He sleeps with the young woman, having sex almost furtively.
The nature of Tupra's power, influence and ideology is revealed further to Juan at Tupra's house following the disco episode. Death is primarily the subject of discussion. The question of death and sacrifice having meaning, the fear of a shameful death, using how Jane Mansfield died as an example.
Still shocked from sword incident in nightclub, Juan is shown some of Tupra's recordings of prominent figures, held for 'just in case' purposes. He feels the venom (veneno) rising as he observes horrendous tortures and abuse. The point seems to be to show Manoia brutally torture and kill a man, but seemingly in passing he is shown a video of Nuix's father bring beaten up by thugs.
Part VI. Sombra of Tu rostro manaña goes off on a tangent, but you wonder if this might be getting to the nub of what the book is about in terms of practical realities. After doing some European visits with Tupra, Juan is given leave to spend two weeks in Madrid to sort out his marriage problems. He visits De la Garza at the Embassy before he leaves to check on him and the man is terrified by the encounter. In Madrid, he discovers that his wife Luisa is hiding a black eye from him. He tries to find out the truth, and discusses with his elderly father, who advises to back off (and gives good general advice on relationships), but Juan insists and contacts Luisa's sister. He discovers that she has been seeing a man called Custardoy, and has had a black eye before.
Juan's spying then turns from the theoretical, the abstract and the removed to the practical. He gleans more information on Custardoy, discovers he is a painter, a copyist, wears a ponytail and a sombrero. He runs into him at the Prado and follows him back to his home through the streets of Madrid filled with statues with swords commemorating the ancient dead. In VII. Adiós, the final part of the book, he seeks Tupra's advice on how to handle matters, how to intimidate, frighten or beat up Custardoy, perhaps expecting assistance, but is left unsure how to deal with the matter. He ties to procure a sword through bullfighting contacts in imitation of Tupra but is laughed at and is offered a gun, which he accepts. Juan confronts Custardoy at his apartment at gunpoint, warning him off from seeing his wife. Unsure up to this point how it will play out, nothing happens how he imagined it would, but he ends up breaking the man's fingers of his left hand with poker and lightly scars his face.
Although this domestic drama seems almost comic to what had come before, a petty and trivial domestic situation, Jaime nonetheless sees himself in a historical perspective alongside all the people who have faced death, who have had the power to change events and lives in an instant, who have used that power to alter history. In a small way he feels he has wielded that power, taking the control of the life of another person into his own hands, and altering the future. It may not be as important as the stories of WWII (there's another to come) and the Spanish Civil War, but it shows how ordinary people can turn to violence. His father never killed during the Civil War, he observes, but certainly would have if it were necessary to defend his family.
Even more upsetting to Deza is the realisation of the consequences of his work and observations for Tupra. He discovers that Dick Dearlove has murdered a young Russian man in his home and is under arrest by police and wonders how much his report on Dearlove to Tupra just before he returned to Spain, contributed to this and to the collateral death of a young man. Pérez Nuix discourages him from thinking along these lines, comparing it to how much responsibility does an author have over how his readers respond to his writing - Marías getting somewhat meta here?
Juan goes to visit Wheeler again, aware that his friend is looking old and it may be the last time he sees him, bringing him a book of old Civil War posters (some of which are reproduced). Discussion turns to what became of Wheeler's wife Valerie. Although it is a painful subject that has to be drawn out of the man, it becomes another war story of betrayal and denunciation. Working for Bexley, wishing to help the war effort by sowing distrust amongst German forces, Valerie reports knowledge that the brother-in-law of one of her friends, an SS officer, had quarter Jewish blood and has taken pains to remove documents confirming this from the archives. Having been denounced he is removed from his position, disappeared seemingly to a concentration camp, but after the war Valerie receives a letter advising that his children were also imprisoned as Jews and taken away. Consumed with guilt, Valerie took her own life.
Marías seems to somehow tie up all - or nearly all - the varied themes, thoughts and episodes in the final section of the book, no matter how irrelevant they might have seemed, no matter how abstract or difficult to grasp. There is a sense of closure (Adiós) as Deza leaves London and returns to Madrid. Tupra lets him go, but not without a warning about leaving Custardoy affair incomplete - and he is not wrong. The death of his father is followed soon after by death of Wheeler. Beryl, Peter's housekeeper later tells Juan that he had been suffering from lung cancer and that would have been the source of the mysterious blood was left on staircase - same staircase where Valerie took he life with a hunting rifle - left there unnoticed after coughing it up.
Back in Madrid, Deza settles into a mutual friendship with Luisa but they live separately. He encounters Custardoy once more on street of Madrid, the man looking quite different in appearance from how he used to look. He appears to recognise Deza but not exactly fear him.
Reading notes: Tu rostro manaña by Javier Marías is published in Spain by Alfaguara, which I read from a Kindle version. It took me three years to finish this book, but only as I chose to read one book in the trilogy each year while I was on my annual break to the Wexford Festival Opera and had a week or so to concentrate on reading. It actually took four years to finish, as the 2020 festival was obviously cancelled because of the Covid pandemic lockdown. Nonetheless, I didn't find it at all difficult to pick up the thread when I returned to the book each year. I'll probably continue this convention and read other Marías books each year on my visits to Wexford.
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