Free Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream by Javier Marías Page B

matters, at least, that's what matters to me tomorrow. But he would, I believe, despite his tepid appearance, be capable of stabbing anyone who went too far, even if only verbally. So keep your wits about you and, please, study the line - his, not yours — between good and bad taste very carefully, we don't want any stupid complications. You could misjudge her, you see. Well, don't. Heap attentions on her, but if in doubt, remember, less is definitely more, less we can do something about, but not more. That's why I'd rather take you than Rendel, although he's better suited to a jolly, fun-loving woman like Mrs Manoia. He doesn't always know when to apply the brakes.'
    There was always something surprising to me about the way in which Tupra referred to the people he dealt with, studied, interpreted or investigated, perhaps he never merely 'dealt with' anyone. Even though there were so many of them and they came and went in rapid succession, for him they were all someone, he clearly never saw them as simple or interchangeable, mere types. Even though he would never see them again (or had never seen them in the flesh, if all we had was video footage), even if he formed and gave us a poor opinion of them, he did not reduce them to outline sketches or dismiss them as ordinary, as if he were always very conscious that even among the most commonplace of people, no two are alike. Another man might have summed Flavia Manoia up thus: 'She's your typical reluctantly menopausal woman, so just put up with all her boring chatter and make her believe that she can still knock men dead, including you, that's the way to win her over. Not that you'll find that so hard to believe, because she probably did knock them dead a few years ago — by the dozen. Take a good look at her legs, which she keeps in excellent shape and quite rightly shows off, and you'll see what I mean. She's even got a wiggle when she walks,' such a man would add, a man with only a very vague idea of where the line between good and bad taste lies.
      Tupra, on the other hand - or was he already Reresby when we were on our way to the restaurant in the Aston Martin that he drove on nights when the aim was to make a good impression or to toady up to someone — went into long, complex disquisitions on the lady which went beyond her and her insignificant case (on the lips of the thoughtful Reresby she no longer seemed quite so insignificant). It was when I heard such subtleties from him that I saw the influence of Toby Rylands, of whom, according to Peter Wheeler, he had been a disciple, and then I would see again how linked their characters were, or was it merely that ability, or that shared gift which they also attributed to me (in all other respects, Tupra was completely different): 'Bear in mind that, deep down, what fills Mrs Manoia with horror,' he remarked as we waited at a red light, 'is not her own imminent physical decay, against which she is struggling as best she can, but the troubling intuition that her world is about to disappear and is already dying. Some of her oldest friends have died in recent years, a few very unexpectedly, it's been a bad time; in some cases, her friends have retired, in others, there are people who would like to speed them on their way to retirement. It's no longer easy for her to find companions to go out on the town with every night of the week, and nowhere will you find proper parties with hosts and everything on a daily basis, still less in Rome, which that killjoy Berlusconi and his maladroit ways have transformed into one long yawn' (I translated the rather literary word 'maladroit' to myself as mala sombra, it doesn't mean quite the same thing, but never mind, and 'killjoy', which I'd never heard before, I took to mean ceniza or, perhaps aguafiestas). 'I mean companions in the old sense, the traditional sense. There are some younger people following in their footsteps, they want to find favour with Manoia, because, in his field, he