Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream (32 page)

My father fell silent again, and this time I had something to say during the pause. The blue of his eyes seemed to have intensified. I said, in fact, what I had been thinking just before: 'From now on, I might also look at those buildings when I pass that corner, even though I don't know precisely which building it is. Now that I've heard you tell that story, I mean.' He made a gesture with his hand in the air, or, rather, with three fingers, index, middle finger and thumb - the latter accompanying the other two with a slight delay and purely imitatively — as if I had touched on some very ancient matter, long since debated and resolved. Almost as if he were pushing it away or rejecting it as beyond further comment.

'Yes, I know. Perhaps one should never tell anyone anything,' he said. 'I mean, nothing bad. When you children started to arrive, your mother and I asked ourselves the question: how were we going to tell you about what had happened right here, in the country where you lived, only fifteen or twenty years before you came into the world, or even more than that in the case of your sister? It seemed to us that it wasn't something we could tell our children, still less explain, it wasn't explicable even to ourselves who had witnessed it from start to finish. There hadn't been enough time for us to begin to forget, and besides, it was still all too fresh in our minds, the regime made sure of that. There was never any process of psychological healing, no attempt at assuagement, the regime showed a consistent and thoroughly totalitarian lack of generosity, which was evident in every order and in every sphere of life, even the
most intangible. I left the decision to her, to your mother, who spent more time with you than I did; you were always more her children than mine, which is why it seems so dreadfully sad that she ended up knowing you far less than I have, for fewer years and only when you were young and, how can I put it, less finished than you are now, although you're all still fairly unfinished, especially you, but don't take that the wrong way. And then there are your children, your siblings' children and yours, whom she never even knew. Anyway, I always felt her decision was the right one. She believed that you should never feel threatened, personally anxious, fearful for yourselves, afraid that something terrible might happen to you, insecure about your daily lives and your actions. That you should all feel protected and safe. But she didn't think it prudent or right that you should know nothing about how the world works, about the kind of thing that can happen or has happened. She thought that if you found out gradually, without going into gruesome, ugly, unnecessary detail, you would be forewarned and better prepared and have more resources with which to deal with life. It also depended, of course, on the questions you asked. She always hated lies. I mean she really did, she couldn't bring herself to tell you that something that was true wasn't. She could tone down or disguise the truth a little, but not deny it. The tendency today is to enclose children in a bubble of foolish happiness and false security, by not bringing them into contact even with the mildly disquieting, and by keeping them ignorant of fear or even of its existence, indeed, I understand that nowadays you can buy - and that some people actually give or
read these to their children - censored, doctored or saccharine versions of classics like Grimm or Perrault or Andersen, stripped of all the darkness and cruelly, of anything that's threatening and sinister, and probably with all the upsets and deceptions removed. Rank stupidity in my view. Namby-pamby parenting and irresponsible teaching. I consider that a crime of neglect, really, and a dereliction of duty. Because being exposed to other people's fears provides children with a lot of protection; they can imagine it serenely from the background of their own security and can experience it vicariously, through others, especially through fictional characters, like a short-lived contagion which, while only borrowed, is nevertheless not pure fakery. By imagining something you are starting to resist it, and that applies to things that have already happened as well: you can withstand misfortunes more easily if, afterwards, after experiencing them, you can manage to imagine them. And, of course, the way most people do this is by talking about them. Not that I think everything could or should be told, far from it, but neither is it admissible to over-falsify the world and send idiots and dimwits out into it who have never known the slightest disappointment or anxiety. Throughout my life, before telling something, I have always tried to gauge what could be told. To whom, how and when. You have to stop and consider what stage or moment in their life the person listening to you has reached, and to bear in mind that what you tell that person will stay with them forever. It will become incorporated into their knowledge, just as the murder I heard about on a tram became incorporated into mine, even though it was just one of many. And, as you see, I haven't managed to dislodge that story from my knowledge, nor another story from the War which, for example, it never occurred to me to tell your mother at the time, even though she was accustomed to horrors and even though I was in quite a state when I returned home after hearing it. But what is the point, I thought, what is the point of upsetting her with yet another story, now that the War has ended, I'll get over it, I'll forget about it in time without having to share or pass the burden on to her. And I did slowly get over it, because one does get over almost everything. But I've never forgotten it, that would be too much to hope for, how could I? This particular gift was given to me by a notorious Falangist writer who later ceased to be a Falangist, as most of them did, and, can you believe it, during Franco's latter years, never mind after his death, the man had the gall to pretend he was a veteran of the Left, and people swallowed it too. They weren't ignorant
people either, but journalists and politicians. And so, with Spain's characteristic ethical superficiality, he was always celebrated, under two different flags.'

He stopped for a moment, but this time he was not remembering with particular intensity or sharpness, he was thinking, or hesitating, or perhaps biting his tongue. He had reined himself in.

'I can't really say whether I believe it or not,' I put in, 'if I don't know who you're talking about and you haven't told me the story. What was the story? Who was this man?'
'You reproached me just now with having told you the story I heard on that tram,' he replied, and I thought he seemed just a touch offended. 'I don't know if I should go on.' And he sounded to me as if he were asking my permission. He sounded strange.

'I certainly didn't intend it as a reproach, that would be absurd. That would be like reproaching historians for writing down what they have found out or what they know at first hand. We spend our lives adding to the catalogue of horrors that have occurred, there are always more being uncovered, always more surfacing. My listening to you telling the story can't possibly have the same effect on me as it did on you hearing it from that woman. She was the one who had done the deed, and she was proud of it too. Plus it had only just taken place. It was still taking place, here and everywhere, that's very different. Don't worry, you can tell me anything, it can't be any worse than all the other things I've read about or that we see on television every day. I don't want you turning into one of those namby-pamby parents, not at this stage in my life. Really! Besides, I would have to denounce you then and accuse you of neglect and, what did you call it, dereliction
of duty.'

He gave a short laugh, it amused him that I should dismantle his improvised objections with the very arguments and terminology he had just used. But before replying, he once more addressed me using the plural 'you': including all four:
siblings was another way of softening a reprimand intended for only one of us.

'You're a silly lot sometimes,' he said. And then he went back to addressing me as 'you' singular. 'All right. I won't tell you who he was, his name. I can't be sure that if you knew it you would keep quiet about it, as I have always done. From your point of view, you would have no reason to. You wouldn't feel obliged to, not even if I asked you to say nothing, and I would rather not take the risk, Jacobo. It's not out of consideration for him, because ever since I heard him tell the story, I've felt nothing but contempt and resentment for him. No, something stronger than that, more like disgust and loathing. Not, I think, a desire for revenge, mainly because of the way unfulfilled desires eat away at you, besides, there was I a victim of reprisals and there was he on the winning side and wielding considerable influence. But, you know, for fifty years he kept publishing books and receiving prizes and being praised to the skies and appearing in the press and on television, and for about half or more of those fifty years I don't think I read a single line of his, and I would quickly turn the page of any newspaper that carried an interview with him or a review of one of his books, I simply couldn't bear to see his face or his name in print. Later on, though, I felt curious to see just what he was capable of, how far he would go in the biographical fiction he had shamelessly started to weave about himself in public. But above all, purely by chance, through my work, I met his wife and got to know her. She was a really nice, cheerful person, who clearly knew nothing of her husband's more repulsive side, or the more repulsive facts about his behaviour during the War. She was quite a bit younger than him, ten or twelve years, they must have got married in about 1950, when he was thirty-five or more, fairly old for the time. And not only was she an extremely nice, cheerful, capable woman, on one occasion she was very helpful to us, and to your mother in particular. That's all by the bye now, but I've always had a sense of enormous gratitude towards her,
and any consideration I've felt has always been for her, not for him.'

'Is she still alive? Are they still alive?' I asked.

'No, he died a few years ago, and she died not long afterwards.'

'So?' What I meant to say was 'So why maintain the consideration and the silence?' and my father understood.

'There are two daughters, two very sweet, pretty girls, I saw them a couple of times. And they were and are her daughters as well, not just the daughters of the important man. Well, he was important while he was alive and could fight his corner, and he used all available means to do so, but even though only a few years have passed, he barely merits a mention now, and his memory will continue to fade, he was a very overrated figure. But I wouldn't want to upset her daughters, whom she adored almost as much as she did her loathsome husband, she was I devoted to them all and especially to him, one of those steadfast I loves that remains undiminished and unquestioned, untouched by time or even infidelities (very minor infidelities, because, in his superficial, egotistical way, he loved her very much and couldn't have coped without her; he was even lucky in respect too, in dying before her), the kind of love that is above such things. No, I would never bring such shame down upon her daughters, and even if they hadn't existed, I wouldn't bring down posthumous shame on someone so affectionate compassionate. It seems to me that your generation, and the younger generations too, don't care much about the good or bad name of the dead, but for us it still matters. Besides, give that he was a man in the public eye, one day someone probably will reveal all anyway and, who knows, no one will so much as bat an eye or see it as shameful, or even as a stain, his apologists will just ignore it as if it were purely anecdotal, this country is not only superficial, it's also arbitrarily partisan, and once someone has been issued with an indulgence it's rarely taken away. But I won't be the one to tell the world nor will it come out because I was foolish enough to tell you
no, it won't come out through me or because of some slip of mine. Most of the other men who were present must be dead by now, there were five of us round the table when I heard him tell the story, and I'm sure it wasn't the only time he had told it so brazenly, quite a few people must know it (although there can't be many of us left alive). But I wouldn't be in the least surprised if that was the last time, if after that little gathering he tried to keep quiet about it and even began the meticulous cover-up job of later years. It's quite likely.'

'What little gathering? What was it he told you?' I asked, although without emphasising the interrogative tone. I realised that I did want to know, despite the fact that, generally speaking, I did not try to worm information out of my father even if I was really curious, I left him and his memories alone unless he summoned them up on his own account and of his own accord - and despite having lied to him a little and having, in passing, lied to myself a little too, albeit only momentarily: it wasn't true that he could tell me anything, with no consequences, I mean, for my state of mind or my sorrow, nor that the unpleasant events related by him were more bearable or less awful to know about than the worst atrocities read about in history books or the contemporary atrocities seen on television. What he told me was not only as real and true as the siege of Vienna in 1529 or the terrible fall of Constantinople to the Turkish infidels in 1453; as
the slaughter in Gallipoli of Wheeler's compatriots and the three battles or bloodbaths at Ypres during the First World War; as the devastation of the village of Lidice and the bombing of Hamburg and Coventry and Cologne and London during the Second World War; it had, moreover, happened here, in the same bright, peaceful and, nowadays, prosperous cities and streets, the 'sweet lands', where I had spent the larger part of my life and almost the whole of my childhood; and it had not only happened here - as had the executions of 3 May 1808, during what the English call the Peninsular War, as had the siege of Numancia between 154 and 133 BC, and so many other incidents of unspeakable cruelty —
they were things that had happened to him and which his blue eyes (dull now and with the iris dilated) had seen and which they now saw again, or which his defenceless ears had heard and now heard again (with stomach churning, with a weight on his chest as in murky, agitated dreams, all of it lying like lead upon his soul). What made his bad experiences more painful to me than almost any past misfortune or act of cruelty, or even present-day ones that take place somewhere far away, was that they had affected him personally and had cast a shadow over his biography, that of someone so close to me and who was there before me, still alive, still present — who knows for how much longer - with his mind still perfectly clear. No, you don't take in or receive first-hand testimony from a stranger - a journalist, a witness, a newsreader, an historian — in the same way as you do from someone you have known since birth. You see the same eyes that saw and, to their grief, found in a filing cabinet the photo of a young man who had been killed by a bullet in his head or ear; and you hear the same voice that had to tell the dead man's sister, or had to remain silent with horror or sorrow or suppressed rage when those same ears heard involuntarily, in a tram or a café, what they would prefer never to have heard ('Keep quiet and don't say a word. Put your tongue away, hide it, swallow it even if it burns you, pretend the cat's got it. Keep quiet, and save yourself').