Read Online Your Face Tomorrow. Fever And Spear by Javier Marías - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Javier Marías
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and thus monopolising my attention and my conversation. I tried not to pay him the former or allow him the latter and continued to do as I pleased, barely bothering to listen to him, or only when he spoke more loudly than normal, when I would catch ambiguous fragments or odd phrases which he interposed whenever there was a pause or even when there wasn't, though more often than not I didn't even understand the context, since the attaché De la Garza attached himself to me at every moment, and at no moment did he cease to hold forth to me, whether I answered him or listened to him or not.
This began to happen after our first bout together, which caught me unawares, and from which I escaped feeling alarmed and battered and during which he interrogated me about my duties and my influence at the BBC and went on to propose six or seven ideas for radio programmes which ranged from the imperial to the downright stupid, often both at once, and which would purportedly prove beneficial to his embassy and our country and doubtless to him and his prospects, for, he told me, he was an expert on the writers of our poor Generation of '27 (poor in the sense of over-exploited and stale), on those of our poor Golden Age (poor because hackneyed and over-exposed), and on our not at all poor fascist writers from the pre-Civil War, post-Civil War and intra-Civil War periods, who were, in any case, one and the same (they suffered few losses during the fighting unfortunately), and to whom he did not, of course, apply that epithet, for this band of out-and-out traitors and pimps seemed to him honourable, altruistic people.
'I mean most of them were marvellous stylists, and who, confronted by such poetry and such prose, could be so mean-spirited as to mention their ideology? It's high time we separated politics and literature.' And to ram the point home: 'High bloody time.' He displayed that mixture of sentiment and coarseness, soppiness and vulgarity, mawkishness and brutality so common amongst my compatriots, a real plague and a grave threat (it's gaining support, with writers leading the way), foreigners will soon conclude that it is our main national characteristic. He had addressed me as 'tú' from the moment he saw me, on principle: he was one of those Spaniards who reserve what used to be the more formal 'usted' for subalterns and artisans.
I was about to throw a gauntlet at his slick, gelled hair (it would have stuck fast, no problem), but I didn't have one to hand, only a napkin and, despite the general cheapening of the age, it would not have been the same, and so I merely answered him, more curtly than scornfully, so as to lessen the tension:
'There is some prose and poetry whose very style is fascist, even though it's all about the sun and the moon and is signed by self-proclaimed left-wingers, our newspapers and bookshops are full of them. The same thing happens with people's minds or characters: some are, by their nature, fascist, even if they inhabit bodies that have a tendency to raise the clenched fist and do the right thing at marches and demonstrations with hordes of photographers pushing their way through and, of course, immortalising them. The last thing we need now is a rehabilitation of the mind and style of those who not only were fascists, but were proud to call themselves fascists, just in case you didn't recognise them by what they wrote, by every page they published and every person they denounced to the police. They've left enough of a mark on present-day writers without the need for that, although most keep quiet about it and look for rather less sullied antecedents, poor old Quevedo is usually the first in line, and some may not even be aware of their much more immediate legacy, which they carry in their blood and which boils inside them.'
'Dammit, man, how can you say that?' De la Garza protested, more out of confusion than genuine disagreement, for I hadn't given him time for that. 'How can you possibly tell that
This began to happen after our first bout together, which caught me unawares, and from which I escaped feeling alarmed and battered and during which he interrogated me about my duties and my influence at the BBC and went on to propose six or seven ideas for radio programmes which ranged from the imperial to the downright stupid, often both at once, and which would purportedly prove beneficial to his embassy and our country and doubtless to him and his prospects, for, he told me, he was an expert on the writers of our poor Generation of '27 (poor in the sense of over-exploited and stale), on those of our poor Golden Age (poor because hackneyed and over-exposed), and on our not at all poor fascist writers from the pre-Civil War, post-Civil War and intra-Civil War periods, who were, in any case, one and the same (they suffered few losses during the fighting unfortunately), and to whom he did not, of course, apply that epithet, for this band of out-and-out traitors and pimps seemed to him honourable, altruistic people.
'I mean most of them were marvellous stylists, and who, confronted by such poetry and such prose, could be so mean-spirited as to mention their ideology? It's high time we separated politics and literature.' And to ram the point home: 'High bloody time.' He displayed that mixture of sentiment and coarseness, soppiness and vulgarity, mawkishness and brutality so common amongst my compatriots, a real plague and a grave threat (it's gaining support, with writers leading the way), foreigners will soon conclude that it is our main national characteristic. He had addressed me as 'tú' from the moment he saw me, on principle: he was one of those Spaniards who reserve what used to be the more formal 'usted' for subalterns and artisans.
I was about to throw a gauntlet at his slick, gelled hair (it would have stuck fast, no problem), but I didn't have one to hand, only a napkin and, despite the general cheapening of the age, it would not have been the same, and so I merely answered him, more curtly than scornfully, so as to lessen the tension:
'There is some prose and poetry whose very style is fascist, even though it's all about the sun and the moon and is signed by self-proclaimed left-wingers, our newspapers and bookshops are full of them. The same thing happens with people's minds or characters: some are, by their nature, fascist, even if they inhabit bodies that have a tendency to raise the clenched fist and do the right thing at marches and demonstrations with hordes of photographers pushing their way through and, of course, immortalising them. The last thing we need now is a rehabilitation of the mind and style of those who not only were fascists, but were proud to call themselves fascists, just in case you didn't recognise them by what they wrote, by every page they published and every person they denounced to the police. They've left enough of a mark on present-day writers without the need for that, although most keep quiet about it and look for rather less sullied antecedents, poor old Quevedo is usually the first in line, and some may not even be aware of their much more immediate legacy, which they carry in their blood and which boils inside them.'
'Dammit, man, how can you say that?' De la Garza protested, more out of confusion than genuine disagreement, for I hadn't given him time for that. 'How can you possibly tell that
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