Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream (27 page)

Without changing his posture, De la Garza looked down too; he had got over his dizziness or frenzy or vertigo, he must have thought it somehow chic to stand there, half leaning and half hanging onto a strange, cylindrical metal bar, despite the prosaic nature of the place and the complete absence of spectators (he
could hardly imagine that I was likely to be impressed). He gazed at his shoes from afar, with an inexplicably commiserative look on his face, as if they were not his, but someone else's — mine - and he did not make the immediate movement one would expect, that of crouching down and tying them up. He had an ability to surprise, as does every major idiot, and, of course, to irritate, all in the space of a single second, and to erase at a stroke my open laughter, my inner smile, my incipient sympathy and that tiny pang of pity.

'Tie them up for me, will you, I'm still a bit too drunk to crouch down like that, anyway, where's that frigging friend of yours frigging got to with his frigging waistcoat and the frigging line of cocaine he promised me. And maybe make it a double knot, just in case. Go on, it won't hurt you.'

Perhaps the worst thing was that final remark, 'Go on, it won't hurt you'. His childishness, his rich-kid manners enraged me. The very idea that I would kneel down on a toilet floor, however clean and luxurious the toilet might be, and tie the shoelaces of a great dickhead like him who made all entirely artificial show of being foulmouthed (four 'friggings' in one sentence is too much, it's bound to seem put on) and had blithely landed me in all kinds of trouble; just because the idea occurred to him or presented itself to him as something perfectly natural and possible, and he saw nothing unseemly or unusual about it; and he said it as if it were a whim of his or almost as if it were an order, and in that chic, idiotic place, I had already been given quite enough orders by others, by those who paid me and were allowed to give me orders, or not, or only up to a point; and he wasn't even disabled or crippled or anything, he just couldn't be bothered to crouch down . . . There are people who have no sense of boundaries and who always catch you unawares, however forewarned you might be, such people are simply impossible. I don't know what I would have replied or done, or done to him, I don't know because I didn't have time to do anything; although perhaps, after a few seconds of initial stupefaction, who knows, I would simply have laughed
even more, at his sheer nerve. I didn't have time, though, because, at that moment, Tupra came in, or Reresby as he was that night. I think that when he came in, I had, at most, the same brief, simple thought that had filled my mind when I saw De la Garza's flailing hairnet in action on the dance floor: 'I'd like to smash his face in,' and that is what I must have been thinking when the door opened.

Seven of the minutes announced by Tupra must have passed or perhaps ten or even possibly twelve, he would have had various things to deal with, sorting out Flavia and cleaning her up, restoring her to her husband, offering him some kind of explanation, apologising for having to absent himself again and, since I was occupied elsewhere, leaving the two of them alone, he would, I thought, take over from me now and stay with the attaché — but what would they talk about — and send me back to the table to look after the Manoias. I saw at once, however -his whole figure appeared, as if we could see both the front and the back of him — that he was carrying his overcoat, he did not have it on, but wore it draped over his shoulders like an Italian or a particularly vain Spaniard or perhaps a wealthy Slav, and that he had another slung over his arm, there were two overcoats, his light one and a dark one, it occurred to me that the latter was mine, and so I thought that perhaps we were leaving and that he had picked them up before keeping our absurd ad hoc appointment in the Disabled toilet, so that we would not waste time in the cloakroom on our way out ('Don't linger or delay', perhaps that was Reresby's motto).

'Are we leaving?' I asked.

He did not reply at once, but did not take long to do so. I saw him remove something from his pocket and jam the door shut with it, a much-folded sheet of paper, a wooden wedge, a small piece of cardboard, I couldn't see what it was at first, he did it in a matter of seconds, as if he had been jamming doors shut since he was a boy. No one would be able to open it until he removed the wedge, I saw him testing it by pushing and pulling hard at the door, two rapid movements one after the
other, I noticed a particular firmness and confidence and even economy in each and every movement he made. 'No, no one's leaving just yet,' he said. He seemed distracted, or, rather, still preoccupied, he was very businesslike in his attitude. He slung the darker coat over one of the metal bars, a low one at about hip-height, while he hooked his own coat carefully over the end of another higher one, he took his coat off as if it were a cape, not that it was particularly full, it did, however, seem to me somewhat heavy and stiff, like the filthy coats worn by beggars or as if it had been starched. But no one uses starch any more, certainly not on overcoats. His was clearly very new and expensive, of the kind that underlines its owner's respectability, possibly too emphatically, to the extent that one begins to doubt it.

'At last,' De la Garza said in a whining voice. And he added in his hideous English accent, addressing Tupra directly (it was provoking and positively incendiary that he should have passed comment on the latter's waistcoat given how extreme or, rather, offensive he himself was to the eye): 'It's about time too, you know.' Set phrases were always the only recognisable words in his mouth, precisely because they were so fixed and set, and he was one of those people who add 'you know' to everything, which is always a sign of someone who knows nothing at all; and as I knew all too well, the oaf was incapable of holding a conversation in English, he would get lost at the first subordinate clause, if not before, and he was only comprehensible to a fellow Spaniard, which it was my misfortune, and not my only one, to be. It was as if he had forgotten the real reason he was there, as if he had forgotten that we had separated him from Flavia to prevent him from turning her face into a holy shroud, that he was indebted to us and had, in a sense, insulted us as her companions and guardians; I, after all, had been the one to introduce her to him. That is the good fortune of the arrogant, they never feel responsible or have a bad conscience because they have no conscience and are totally irresponsible, they are bewildered and taken aback by any
punishment or slight, even one they have determinedly brought on themselves, they are never at fault, and often convince others, as if by contagion, of that spontaneous conviction of theirs and end up getting off scot-free. I wasn't sure that this time he would. Tupra would not, I thought, like that carping tone; De la Garza had been offered a line of cocaine, not even directly, but through a third party (his compatriot and, very nearly, his interpreter), and in his happy, fatuous mind that meant he could justifiably demand to have it seven minutes later, or ten or twelve, it was tantamount to registering a complaint about a favour done or a gift given.

The feeling of heaviness that had overwhelmed me when I first got up from the table and headed for the toilets increased at that moment; I hadn't lost it, but now it grew stronger, became almost oppressive; various combinations triggered it: alarm and haste, the sense of tedium experienced at the prospect of having to carry out some cold-blooded act of reprisal, or the invincible meekness one feels in a threatening situation. That third blend would not apply to Rafita at the moment, he was unaware of any threat. I, on the other hand, was aware more of the second than the first, there was no alarm or haste now as there had been when I stood up and pushed back my chair in order to go in search of him and of Flavia, but a presentiment (I wouldn't go so far as to use the word 'prescience') of some near-inevitable act of reprisal hovering over us, as if the arrow had been placed in the bow and the latter, however lethargically, was now drawn tight, even if the arm drawing it tight was yawning. All this was emanating from Tupra, even though I was the one feeling it: the malaise, the pinprick and the sense of menace and of some impending misfortune. Yes, Reresby was clearly the kind to give no warning or only when it was of no use at all, how can I put it, when the caveat was just part of the punitive
action already being taken.

'Don't worry, I'll reward you for the wait,' he said affably, he was still sending out no message, not verbally at least. I don't know if the attaché understood, but it didn't matter because, at
the same time, Tupra slipped two fingers into the breast pocket of his reprehensible waistcoat and drew out a neatly folded sachet. With those same two fingers, index and middle, he held it out to De la Garza; or, rather, he did not take a step forward or extend his arm, he merely showed the little packet to him, dangling it in mid-air, pincered between his fingers, the way an adult displays the prize a child has won, so that the undiplomatic diplomat was obliged to come and take it; and Reresby invited him to do so: 'Help yourself,' he added, and that can be understood by any fool who has ever set foot in England. 'But don't take too much. It's got to last all night.' He still sounded distracted, like someone going through the motions or else gearing up to something. And although there is no indication of this in English, I sensed that he was addressing De la Garza as
'tu'.

'So it was true, he does have some,' I thought, without feeling it was in any way strange: indeed, there was nothing unusual about a man like him having one or two grammes or more, possibly even obtained from the police, confiscated goods; and it wouldn't even necessarily be for his personal consumption, it might serve for just such a situation as this, using the substance as a lure or as a symbolic reward, in order to get something in exchange. 'Comendador, in his day, used it as a bait for getting some pussy,' I suddenly recalled, 'they'd get into his car or go back to his apartment with him and in one of those two places he would frequently, but not always, end up having it away with them, even though they might not have foreseen that when they first got into his car. This was the kind of language — "getting some pussy" and "having it away" - that Comendador normally used, and although very different, it coincided in part with the slang of this imbecile here, and it had been my language too in other, younger, more subjective times and still can be on odd occasions - one never forgets a way of speaking, I can recall all the ones I've known and used — when a woman decides to be just pussy and nothing else and to let you screw her without more ado and without any sudden,
subsequent show of affection, or if she screws you, it comes to the same thing, most women have known a night in their life when they felt like playing the role of pure, mindless flesh, of being either plunderer or spoils, it makes no difference, even Luisa had known such nights in her youth, although I don't know the details, and she might know such nights again now, just as I occasionally have here, perhaps, indeed, Luisa is experiencing such a night tonight; and Pérez Nuix must have known such nights too, she isn't old enough to have called a halt to them for good, that is, a temporary or apparent halt, because nothing is ever definitively over. With his cocaine Tupra has managed to have me lure this cunt into a Disabled toilet, and it's quite something to have got him to stay in here for ten or twelve minutes without complaint. So for the moment, he has managed to achieve his most urgent aim, to neutralise him, to prevent his making the situation with Mrs Manoia still worse and thus reassuring her Arturo or, still more important, assuaging his anger, that is doubtless the main thing.' But now that he was offering him the little packet, I wondered what else he wanted in exchange for handing it over, perhaps it was a bribe (he would say afterwards: 'No, it's OK, you keep it') to make him disappear for good, so that he would go straight from that toilet out into the street with no stopovers en route, but that would be impossible, he would have to go and collect or warn his partying companions, unless they had left without him when they saw his wild behaviour on the dance floor. Reresby had also said: 'This moron has got to be neutralised, stopped,' which meant,
sensu strictu,
rendering him null and void, something not dissimilar to annihilating him.

De la Garza took it from his hand, the neatly folded packet, possibly as yet untouched, it looked quite plump. He did not even say 'Thank you', he merely used the edge of his bejewelled fist to check that the door was closed, securely jammed shut, and then set about preparing the cocaine beside the various taps, on the flat black marble that surrounded the concave porcelain. But he changed his mind as soon as he took out his wallet
(perhaps he didn't quite trust Tupra's wedge after all, it didn't strike him as providing a strong enough padlock), and he went into one of the cubicles, still holding the packet in one hand; obviously he didn't close the door, we would have found that insulting, or as indicating a possible intention to take more than he should. I had not had a proper look during my first rapid visit -just a quick glance round in search of the fugitives - and had failed to notice that as well as bars at shoulder-height, there were also three or four bars at hip-height as well; on one of these lay my overcoat, if it was mine; nor had I noticed how large the cubicles were, there were only two of them, but they were almost like small rooms, everything about the toilet was spacious, doubtless to facilitate the movements of disabled people and to allow wheelchairs to make all kinds of turns (even sudden ones); equally generous was the excellent lighting, intended, I assumed, to avoid the possibility of any stumbles, everything was new and spotless, gleaming and even welcoming, without any of the sordid elements so frequent in public toilets. It was admirable that people should show such respect for the disabled of Britain, that they did not cheerfully invade it and soil and besmirch it, as is the norm among men and optional among women. Anyway, there the three of us were, still all able-bodied, not just making improper and semi-criminal use of the toilet, but also preventing any legitimately handicapped person who might need it from entering, although that would have been an unlikely coincidence; but two of we three intruders were Spanish, and you know what we're like, or most of us: you only have to forbid us from doing something for us all to rush in and disobey whatever orders or instructions or requests have been issued. The original idea, however, had come from the English member of the trio, the idea of meeting there or of profaning that place; regardless of whether his surname was Finnish or Czech, Turkish or Russian, he was a real and possibly patriotic Englishman and, besides, that night, he answered to Reresby. The truth is that I found it hard to remember when he was using one of his other names: I always
thought of him as Tupra and that was what came to my tongue, not even Bertram or Bertie after he had repeatedly urged me to treat him in that more familiar way.