Berta Isla - Javier Marías

You'd think that Javier Marías would have fully explored the Oxford connections and its spy recruitment network from every conceivable angle now through Todos las almas and the expansive Tu rostro mañana trilogy. Not to mention where they run up against personal and marriage issues in the final book of the latter but with Javier Marías there are always new and interesting lines to delve into and new angles to approach it from. Berta Isla initially puts relationships at the heart of the book, as evidenced indeed by the follow-up carrying the name of her husband, Tomás Nevinson.

It has to be said however that their marriage doesn't really get a chance to sit on any stable ground. They are both from different backgrounds. Berta a Madrileña at heart, Tom with an English father and Spanish mother has a talent for languages that sees him just as much at home in England. They have been a couple for a long time and are well matched in temperament, but there is a tendency not to speak of certain things. While Berta is looking after the children at home, Tom is often away working in Oxford, having studied there and now working there ostensibly for the Foreign Office. Sometimes she feels as if she doesn't really know him, as if there is a zone or dimension that remains always in darkness, “una frontera de opacidad y reserva” and there is indeed a side to Tom that few are aware of. 

The novel covers several decades when some relevant historical events take place, including the late 60s, a significant period of political activism in many parts of Europe and a time when Spain was under the Franco dictatorship. Tom spends those years however studying in Oxford, another variation on the Marías Juan Deza character from Tu rostro mañana. Tom is gifted in languages, his English is impeccable and his talent is recognised by his friend Professor Peter Wheeler, who has connections with the Intelligence Services from WWII. Wheeler sees Toms potential and  encourages him to stay in England and make the most of his talent. He believes Tom needs to find a position where he can have influence on the world. Unlike Deza who had a facility for observation and the ability to read people, Toms ability is more in the realm of imitation, something that Wheeler thinks will make him a good spy or infiltrator, an undercover agent, much to Tom’s complete surprise when it is proposed.

Tom rejects the idea, but has little option but to get involved when Janet - the girl from a bookshop in Oxford he is casually seeing - is murdered. She had just given an ultimatum to Hugh, a 'Someone', a person of importance in London with government connections, and was killed soon after Tom left her rooms one evening. Despite Tom's efforts to remain distant from anything serious, he is now involved, Wheeler recommending a person who can help him out of this predicament and get the police looking elsewhere. That man's name is Bertram Tupra. Readers of Marías will know what that means for Tom.

What follows then in Berta Isla is essentially a spy story, but nothing is that simple with Marías. This is far from a conventional Le Carre or Fleming thriller - although the author is clearly familiar with both and draws a lot from them. Marías's approach is, needless to say, much more literary and concerned with the deeper impact that involvement in dirty work has on the individual. There are also the familiar literary references that are invoked to give this a much wider context then an espionage adventure. The meeting with Tupra at an Oxford bookshop, for example, takes place in the poetry section, where Tom is to identifies his contacts as those reading TS Eliot. Eliot's verses and apocalyptic resonances feed into the mood of the whole piece. Shakespeare's Henry V, is also referenced often in examining the complexities of duty and loyalty, as well as the weight of responsibility.

Another factor that sets this apart from your typical espionage adventure is the fact that Tom, and indeed the author, remain tight-lipped on the nature and extent of Tom's activities. It would be better for Berta - who is a first-person narrator in her sections, while Tom in this novel remains third-person - not to know what he is involved with. Indeed she remains completely unaware of his double-life until a menacing encounter with a Spanish -Irish couple who claim to know Tomás, reveals to her something of the nature of his involvement with MI6 and possible infiltration into the IRA. Aside from a veiled threat, they also warn Berta of the personal impact of assuming a false identity, how it can take over your life and drive you to madness, and how this can potentially destroy their marriage. Indeed, when war breaks out in the Falklands and Tom effectively disappears, Berta sees those fears realised.

That is really what marks Berta Isla not only different from your average spy thriller, but it also gives this novel a completely different character from the very different treatment of similar material in Tu rostro mañana. As deeply as the subject was explored there, Berta Isla feels less digressive, less ruminative, with less abstraction, where Tom's actions take place in a familiar real world that takes in Franco, Thatcher, Belfast and the Falklands. His characters still like to make long monologues, but there is less of an authorial overview here. If anything Berta Isla is a refinement of his work, not that Tu rostro mañana needs refinement, but rather a summation of his ideas and preoccupations that incorporates couples, relationships, secrets and betrayals in the marriage as much as in spy games.

Marías has the ability to make it seem like nothing much happens, leaving out what many would see as the critical elements of any espionage take, but in reality he manages to touches on so much more than that; the vulnerability of life, how society functions, the nature of undercover work and how much goes on without any of us ever knowing anything about it. Much is hidden that 'doesn't exist'  but we wouldn't exist without. That's on one level, but on another he also considers the temporality of existence, the fiction of our lives, the relative insignificance of it all, our expendability and dispensability. If we disappear few would notice and a place would be filled by someone else. “Somos intercambiales y sustituibles”.

If that still sounds a little abstract, it probably is a little, Marías typical playing with philosophical linguistic twists, puzzles and contradictions, as Nevinson considers “Hacemos pero no hacemos, o no hacemos lo qué hacemos, o lo qué hacemos no lo hace nadie” ("we do but we don't, or we don't do what we do, or we do what no-one does"), while Berta counters later as “Lo que se hace una vez se hace más veces” …“Lo que se puede hacer se hace” ("what is done once, is done many times ...what can be done is done). Linguistic and cultural differences of viewpoints are another familiar theme, what is lost in translation, but also questions of identity and how to find or know your true self, particularly when you have a dual interest - like Marías himself, between the Spanish side of nature and his admiration for English culture - and how not to be corrupted by the world. Maybe also the differences between men and women, but after reading Berta Isla, I'll need to read Tomás Nevinson next to find out. Either way, I have no doubt that in what will now tragically be his last book, Marías will have found new angles to explore on all these themes.

Reading notes: I read the Vintage Espanol paperback edition of Berta Isla. It's been a habit of mine for a number of years to read Javier Marías while I'm in Wexford for the opera festival. I clearly have a finite number of his books of this great author to read now, so all being well, it will be Tomás Nevinsons next October/November.