Free Your Face Tomorrow. Fever And Spear by Javier Marías Page B

dump; go on, tell 'em, I mean they may have been to university this lot, but they don't know shit about anything.' By then he had mixed sherry and whisky and three different kinds of wine.) He liked the Dean of York's well-upholstered widow even more than he did Beryl the girlfriend, and while I chatted to her for a few minutes, De la Garza kept muttering to me: 'Cor, get a load of that, God, she's bloody gorgeous', apparently too bowled over to make a proper breakdown of the whole, to analyse in detail, to notice subtleties or, for that matter, anything else (by now he had drunk some port as well). His excitement was as puerile as the expression 'get a load of that', more suited to someone with little experience of women than to a natural and expert womaniser. It occurred to me that De la Garza would know many nights on which he would succumb to women whom a combination of over-eagerness and alcohol would make him think desirable, only to clutch his head in the morning on discovering that he had got into bed with some vast relative of Oliver Hardy's or with some flighty Bela Lugosi look-alike. This wasn't the case with the widowed deaness, with her placid pink face and her voluminous upper body set off by a vast necklace made of what appeared to me to be Ceylonese jacinths or zircons made to resemble orange segments, but she was nevertheless old enough to be the mother (albeit a young one) of her callow, foul-mouthed admirer.
    Tupra, with a cup of coffee in his hand, had asked me what my field was, following the Oxonian norm according to which it is taken for granted that everyone in that city has their specific field of teaching or research, or some field worthy of boasting about.
    'I've never been very constant in my professional interests,' I replied, 'and I've only been at the university here inter-mittently, almost by chance really. I taught for a couple of years a long time ago, contemporary Spanish literature and translation, that's when I first met Sir Peter, although I saw less of him at the time than I did of Professor Toby Rylands, under whom, I understand, you studied.' I could have stopped there; it was enough for a first reply, and I had even given him the opportunity to continue the conversation seamlessly by mentioning Toby, whom he could easily have started reminiscing about, and I would gladly have joined in. But Tupra allowed a second or two to pass without saying anything, and would probably have continued to say nothing for a third or fourth or fifth (one, two, three and four; and five), but I wasn't sure, he was one of those rare men who knows how to withstand silence, who can remain silent, but without making you feel nervous, rather, encouraging you and making it clear that he is ready to hear more, if you have more to say. That receptive manner combined with his courteous or affectionately mocking eyes invited one to talk. And so I did, perhaps also because my superfluous explanations would give me all the more right to ask him in turn about his field, his 'line of work' to use Wheeler's expression, it was high time I found out, and it was strange that the word 'right' should have crossed my mind in relation to something so innocuous and normal, we all ask other people what they do, it's almost our first question. Or perhaps it's because with Tupra one always felt under an obligation to speak even if he didn't open his mouth, as if he were our tacit creditor. And so I added: 'Then I spent some time in the United States, but I hardly did any teaching at all when I went back to my own country, I've had various occupations, I worked for a while on a very influential magazine, I've done a bit of translation, I've set up a couple of businesses, I even had my own tiny publishing house, then I got fed up and sold it.'
    'For a profit, I hope,' he said, smiling.
    'For a large and entirely unmerited profit, to tell you the truth.' And I too smiled. 'Now I'm working for BBC Radio in London, on the