Free All Souls by Javier Marías Page B

pretty much hand in glove lately. All Dayanand's glowering was aimed at me, I'm sure of it. He did it first through intermediaries, then it was my turn to be crucified with red-hot nails. How dare he?"
    The last question was purely rhetorical.
    "I thought you were such close friends."
    "Oh, we are. And what's more he's my doctor, a splendid one I wouldn't want to lose. As soon as I feel the hint of a sore throat I'm off to his rooms for him to have me stick out my tongue and give me a few pills. I'm eternally in his debt, but not so much that I have to put up with his wild looks across the table, with twenty other people as witnesses." In other circumstances I would immediately have asked the reason for those looks that had so upset and offended Cromer-Blake and whose cause he nonetheless seemed to understand perfectly well, but I couldn't wait to find out about Clare Bayes and was waiting for a convenient opening to the conversation that would allow me to return to the subject. Not finding one, I fell silent and Cromer-Blake, as he sometimes did, adopted an air of seriousness that seemed to have nothing to do with what was going on around him nor with what his companion was saying: it was something that welled up from within him, like the false solemnity that precedes and surrounds soliloquies in the theatre. And the more he talked, the more his head sank onto his chest and the more he seemed to be talking to himself.
    "I can't suit my tastes and my desires to his, I mean I can't avoid coinciding with them. If I did I'd spend my whole life feeling handcuffed and frustrated, having to ask his permission before I started up any new pastime or passion in this city; it would mean having to reject the most tempting of offers, having to put on hold my best seduction techniques in order, before carrying them through, to go to his rooms and ask him if he had any objections, if my sexual activities or even my affectionsin any way clashed with his past life or with his future plans, if I might in any way wound him retrospectively or in advance, if he'd noticed or was considering noticing such and such a pretty face or athletic body at that moment at my disposal in my bedroom. It would be ridiculous: 'Dayanand, do you have any objection to my going to bed with a certain naked person I happen to have in my room at this present moment? Now take a good look at him and make quite sure, just in case you change your mind later.' It would be ridiculous. But something's going to have to be done, he's taken it very badly. Who does he think he is, behaving like that? Who does he think he is, asking me direct questions about my personal life? Who does he think he is, adopting that desperate tone with me? I can't be the cause of his desperation, and I'm not. Who does he think he is, calling me to account? And right at the end of supper, it's unbelievable. Jack's the one he needs to talk to." Cromer-Blake paused, as if the name he'd just pronounced were an internal signal to end the soliloquy and grow less serious; he stroked his wispy hair, emptied his glass in one gulp and added as, with unsteady hand, he poured himself another: "The man's insanely jealous, he's a fanatic."
    Drink makes me laconic, although I remain a good listener. It had no such effect on Cromer-Blake who talked resolutely on, but it did make him momentarily forget to whom he was speaking and he thus mentioned subjects which, though he made no secret of them to me (probably because I would not be staying in Oxford for ever) he would not have spoken about so frankly had he been sober. Were I a malevolent person (which I'm not), I would have made the right noises to fan his bad temper and he would have divulged to me every detail of that quarrel over sentimental or sexual rivalries. But the truth is I wasn't interested in such details that night, although I've often speculated about them since with more than mere curiosity, with a real longing to know. I'd like to have known the