Javier Marías - Tomás Nevinson (Penguin, 2024) *****

Another brilliant book by Javier Marías, his last and final novel before his death last year. Marías's prose will not be to everyone's liking: it is slow, repetitive, with a lot of rephrasing, and re-thinking the same topics and issues, looking at them from different sides and perspectives, sometimes touching on something concrete and actionable, but more often than not remaining vague and tentative, approaching reality with a default position of uncertainty and a wide array of possibilities, both as explanations of the past as well as options for the future. 

The lead character is Tomás Nevinson, who we already met in his "Berta Isla" novel, a British/Spanish undercover agent, who gets recruited again by MI6 to go back in service and leave his job at the British embassy in Madrid. His role is to become a teacher in the Basque Region, with the goal to eliminate a female ETA terrorist. The problem is that three women living in the city could be the terrorist, and could also be none of them. Nevinson has to find out and kill the right one. The British secret service gives him the ultimatum that if he is not able to kill the right one, as a measure of precaution all three will be killed. 

Javier Marías's slow prose considers and reconsiders the options, the moral and ethical aspects of his situation and role, he tries to uncover the real truth behind the deceptive characters of the three women, as a kind of mirror for his own duplicity, wondering what is real and what is false, what is truthful or fake. It is also a psychological thriller, deeply carving into the weird situation of the protagonist to act full-time as a fake person, pretending to be what he is not, living the life of a non-existent person with the sole purpose of killing someone else. This duality is what his supervisor uses as the argument to lure him back into the service: to be part of some of the bigger geopolitical happenings, or to be outside of this, and be considered as a nobody who's no longer part of the system. If he wants to be part of the system, he has to relinquish his real self and live the unreal life of teacher Miguel Centurión. He is the non-existent Somebody or the existent Nobody. Either way, he is trapped. 

"'After having been Someone,' he added, 'it's very difficult to go back to being no one. Even if that Someone was invisible and almost no one would recognize him" (p. 51)

This requires of course to be able to disappear in one life, and to create another, fictitious one, with all its challenges: 

"Any­one in hiding, though, if she's smart, must appear to be the opposite of - or as far removed from - what she was and possibly still is. I know from personal experience how difficult this is, and I have, on occasion, allowed my real or my old me to resurface, or have some­times aroused suspicions by not totally rejecting the old me: one's natural tendency is to discourage or avert misfortunes when what you should be doing is fomenting and even precipitating them." (p. 249) 

The reason and the motivation for all these actions is of course to eliminate evil. 

'Cruelty is contagious. Hatred is contagious. Faith is contagious ... It can turn into fanaticism at the speed of light .. .' Now his tone was part assertive, part recollective. 'That's why those attitudes are so dangerous, because they're hard to stop. Before you know it, they've spread like wildfire. That was one of the very first things we were taught, that you need to spot the initial symptoms and nip them in the bud. (...) 'Madness is contagious. Stupidity is contagious,' he said, complet­ing the list. 

I remembered that list very well, I had all too often found out how very accurate it was. People adopt a faith and grow, first, very ser­ious, then very solemn. They start to believe everything their faith embraces and involves, and then they become stupid. If contradicted, they fly into a rage, they won't accept you calling them stupid or challenging what has suddenly become their all-in-all and their raison d'etre. From that point on, they develop a purely defensive, irrational hatred of anyone who doesn't share their fanaticism. And they treat anyone who openly opposes it with great cruelty. Once they discover cruelty, they embrace it and pass it on to others, and it takes a long time for them to grow weary of putting their cruelty into practice" (p. 104)

The narrator tries to look at his choice to eliminate the alleged terrorist from all possible angles, trying to justify, to rationalise and to question the approach at the same time. 

"They had chosen to help the people they were helping or hide the people they were hid­ing, or serve the cause they were serving and to dedicate themselves to whatever they were dedicated to, although they had sometimes been duped or hypnotized into doing so, as had many inexperienced men. The woman I was charged with uncovering and identifying in that town in the north-west, whichever one of the three she turned out to be, had been responsible for massacres and should pay for that. Or if not 'should', it would be appropriate that she did. Or if not 'appropriate', since she no longer presented any danger and had turned around her unhappy life, it would be best to interrupt that life just in case, and because we were by our nature avengers. If we weren't, who would be, in this forgetful world?  

Tupra was right: hatred was an emotion unknown to us, but we were the archive; the record, the ones who never forgot what every­one else forgets out of weariness or so as not to wallow in bitterness. I don't know if he realized it, but the words he had spoken made us - with all our human, mortal limitations - rather like the God of all those past centuries of belief, or should that be credulity: the God who retained and stored away everything in his motley, moveless time, in which nothing was new or old, remote or recent. 'For us, what happened ten years ago is yesterday or even today, and is hap­pening right now.' This is how that God - now outmoded, but very much a force to be reckoned with for most of recorded history-must have regarded everything. That's why he forgave nothing, for that really wasn't in his remit, for in his eyes no crime has an expiry date or grows less heinous, they are all simultaneous, and all persist. There was, though, another motive behind my decision to return to active service, to accept this mission: the only way not to question the usefulness of what you have done in the past is to keep doing the same thing; the only justification for a murky, muddy existence is to continue to muddy it; the only justification for a long-suffering life is to perpetuate that suffering, to tend it and nourish it and complain about it, just as a life of crime is only sustainable if you persevere as a criminal, if villains persist in their villainy and do harm right left and centre, first to some and then to others until no one is left untouched. 

Terrorist organizations cannot give in voluntarily, because if they do, an abyss opens up before them, they see themselves retrospect­ively and are horrified by their annulment, and therefore their ruin. The serial killer keeps adding to his series of murders because that's the only way he can avoid looking back to the days when he was still innocent and without stain, the only way he can have meaning. To do otherwise would be to reach Lady Macbeth's horrified realization, something almost no one is willing to do, for it requires great integ­rity, a quality that has vanished from the world: 'Nought's had, all's spent.' In other words: 'We have done infamous deeds and gained nothing.' (p. 138-139)

The undercover agent, the eliminator, has to above all these emotions, and act like a cold-blooded rational being: 

"Justice can obscure, can wrap everything in a mist as time moves on, and when it expires, it can erase and cancel out, can decree that what happened didn't hap­pen or has ceased to happen. We are neither the victims nor the family of the dead, but we are memory, those who never forget. In that sense, and only in that sense, we are like the terrorists and the mafias from whom we differ in one vital detail, as Tupra reminded me on that January day: 'They're also ahead of us when it comes to hatred. But hatred isn't our style, as you know. That's unknown ter­ritory for us.' That's true and as it should be, for we must always remain immune to the five contagions as taught to us by our former legendary instructor Redwood. 'Cruelty is contagious. Hatred is con­tagious. Faith is contagious. Madness is contagious. Stupidity is contagious. We must avoid all five.' (p. 435).  

And what is true of the need to avoid hate, is also true for love. Tomás Nevinson may be in love with his wife, even if they are divorced, and his alter ego Miguel Centurión may become infatuated by one of his potential victims, this is indeed to be avoided, because he could kill the one he loves. 

He is of course in essence a Spanish author, often referring to Spain's dictatorial past yet linked to the situation in general today of the relationship between electorate and politicians: 

"One must never forget that Spaniards from all over Spain - even those who don't consider themselves to be Spanish - have a deep-seated tendency to elect the worst possible leaders on offer and to cheer on whatever tyrants are imposed on them, as long as they make nice promises and seem pleasant enough, even if they have lar­ceny written all over their faces and are clearly very nasty pieces of work. (p. 498)

I copied some passages that are highly abstract, yet of course the story actually consists primarily of dialogue and interaction of the many characters, their interesting pantomime of possible double roles and the hiding of reality. 

Marías's prose is an absolute delight, although I can understand that it may be too long-winded for many readers. At a certain level, you want the action to move on, but the stalling, the reflections, the analyses and the exploring of all the options is part of the mesmerising power of his style. And it is fun to read that in a book of 634 pages, the following paragraph starts a new chapter on page 532: 

"It seemed that the action, the act, the deed was getting closer. And that I would not escape. One always nurses the vain hope that some­thing will· crop up, that the sentence will be commuted ( even a prisoner on the scaffold has high hopes), that the orders will be rescinded or cancelled, that someone will back off at the final moment. And if that doesn't happen, you appreciate and treasure each day's delay, each hour's deferral, each minute of procrastin­ation, anything that allows you to keep telling yourself: 'It will be, it will be, but not yet, not yet.' (p. 532)

So, reader, beware: the book is not about the final deed. It is about the dilemmas and internal battles leading up to the deed. 

Brilliant!

Javier Mariás - Berta Isla (Hamish, 2018) ****½

Berta Isla is a young Spanish woman who marries Tomas Nevinson, a young Spanish-British man who gets recruited - against his will - by MI6. Because of his perfect language skills, his job is to translate messages by the secret service but gradually he gets recruited to do real spy work. Berta is not allowed to ask him any questions, because it may endanger both their lives and the life of their young son. Tomas has to be abroad a lot of the time, and as time moves forward, he disappears for longer stretches of time. Berta stays at home in Madrid, worried about her young husband and especially about the life of their son, since she feels very threatened by the occasional visit of men whose real intentions she cannot fathom, but it is clear that they are not friendly.

Javier Marías is the omnisicient narrator in the first two chapters, who tells the story from the perspective of Tomas.

In the third chapter, the perspective changes and Berta Isla becomes the narrator, and the subject of her narration is about uncertainty, about what we can know, about what is visible or not, about truth and deception, about following one's heart when there is no longer and present object for that love.

In chapter seven and eight, the omniscient narrator takes over again for the resolution.

Like the other novels by Marías, the lyrical sentences are long, exploring the different conflicting feelings and interpretations that events may lead to, with even more explorations of the ensuing possibilities or needs for action or inaction, resulting in a very realistic depiction of the human psyche in all its hesitating and wavering nature. As usual, and despite the harshness of the plot, the coercion, the absence, the threat of violence, a deep sense of melancholy and sadness permeate the entire story.

Some might find Marías long-winded, but I think his style is utterly enjoyable, and a real treat.

Highly recommended!

Javier Marías - Thus Bad Begins (Hamish Hamilton, 2016) ***½

Javier Marías might be Spain's best writer of the moment. Last year, I gave "The Infatuations" a five-star rating, and rightly so, I guess, which made me take the next novel that appeared on the shelves of the book stores.

We meet young Juan De Vere, who works for Eduardo Muriel, a Spanish film director in the 1980s, just after the Franco regime. He ends up living with the excentric Muriel, whose relationship with his wife is one of neglect and vicious contempt, and young Juan eavesdrops on their misery and pain, the possible result of something that she may have done in the past, or still doing. As a result, she does her own thing, and young Juan suspects her of having affairs, even if he is also attracted to her, and at the same time he is wracking his brain to find out what she could have done to deserve all this.

One of these possible lovers is the dark figure of a Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, about whom rumours circulate, but who is also willing to take De Vere on night trips to clubs and bars.

Marías is a master of slow and precise prose, and his narrative sucks the reader into the bizarre situation of becoming a spy in the household of two bourgeois people, and even if you think that the narrator has long passed the boundary of privacy, you still read on, to know what is happening. And that is the strength of the book, there is no escape to be taken on a trip to the darker side of human nature, deep under the visible cover of decent bourgeois life, where appearances are almost by definition deceptive. What appears a boring marital problem becomes a moral investigation of respect, guilt, and self-knowledge, full of uncomfortable moments for both reader and narrator.

Javier Marías - The Infatuations (Hamish Hamilton, 2013) *****

Een opmerkelijke roman.

Het verhaal is simpel. De hoofdfiguur, Maria, die bij een uitgeverij werkt, komt dagelijks bij het ontbijt in een café het "perfecte koppel" tegen, tot op een dag de man brutaal wordt neergestoken door een zwerver. Na verloop van tijd neemt ze contact op met de weduwe, en ook met enkele van haar vrienden. Een diepgevoelig verhaal over dood en rouw wordt plots een thriller.

De manier waarop het verhaal verteld wordt is redelijk uniek, want één lange bijna-monoloog van Maria waarin al haar gedachten bij wat ze ziet worden neergepend. En die gedachten zijn vol mogelijkheden en verwachtingen en veronderstellingen. En vooral de onwetendheid, of eerder het gebrek aan zekerheid die hieruit ontstaat, zet haar aan om verder te gaan.

Marías vertelt met een ongelooflijk gevoel voor ritme en tempo, traag maar onderhoudend en slim, een beetje zoals W.G. Sebald, als een verkenning van gevoelens en drijfveren en de werkelijkheid.

Dit geeft Marías de mogelijkheid om aspecten aan bod te brengen die je enkel in literatuur kan brengen. De "mogelijkheden" zijn vaak te anecdotisch voor filosofie of psychologie, maar daarom niet minder relevant en menselijk, over rouw, liefde, passie, vriendschap, de dood.

Maar het stelt ook diepe vragen over de werkelijkheid rond ons, of wat we zien, of vermoeden te zien, ook effectief is wat het is, of er misschien geen ander perspectief is dat even plausibel is, zonder dat de feiten er daarom anders moeten uitzien.

Marías maakt van literatuur iets wat alleen in literatuur kan. En dan ten volle.

Echt, een opmerkelijke roman.