The Man of Feeling by Javier Marías Read Free Book Online Page A

interest in or even liking for music, seemed, nevertheless, to be permanently absorbed in what was happening on stage, leaning forward, his hands resting on the back of the seat in front and his eyes fixed perhaps on me: as fixed as his eyes had been in the train in protracted contemplation of either the landscape or his own face. Natalia, more relaxed, leaned back (probably with her legs crossed), following our actions with close attention when I was on stage acting and with curiosity—but, I would venture, no more than that—when I was not involved. And when my presence was not required up there, I would come down and join them for however many minutes I had at my disposal. Dato would then almost invariably get up and, so he said, go out to smoke a cigarette, and Natalia Manur, in my opinion—and even though there was no real evidence to substantiate this—would forget all about the illustrious Hörbiger, the grotesque Volte and the lovely Priés (who was playing Desdemona) as completely as I did. I do not know nor did I ever know if Dato took advantage of those moments when I kept Natalia Manur company in order to take a rest from his obsessive duties as companion or if, in his unacknowledged role as Pandarus, he was using that excuse to leave us alone so that we could each gradually become accustomed to the silent breathing of the other or to the way our sleeves occasionally and very lightly touched, so that we could each get used to the faint odour of the other. For the former to be true, he must have smoked three or four cigarettes in succession. However long my break lasted, he never came back until I had rejoined my colleagues on stage: he was probably watching—one swift, bulging eye glancing every few seconds through the crack—hidden behind the curtains that opened onto the auditorium, for Natalia Manur was never left alone for even half a minute: as soon as I resumed my rehearsal, he, with rapid steps and hands behind his back as if still concealing in his fingers the butt of his everlasting cigarette, would return to his seat, and would again, apparently, bestow on me his undivided attention.
    Those were extraordinary days. For the first time in my operatic career I did not feel sad and solitary in the big city. On the contrary, in a very short space of time (perhaps only a couple of days) we achieved that wonderfully beneficent state of being in which two or three people take it so much for granted that they will meet up each day that the first question of the morning tends to be "So what shall we do, then?" not "What are you going to do today?" That state, proper to adolescents and to the newly in love, is not without its demands, and one of these, however contradictory it may seem, given one's acceptance of another person or persons as extensions of one's own self and therefore of one's freedom too, consists in the immediate establishment of the strictest possible routine, which leaves no room for any disconcerting improvisations and allows for no catastrophic gaps that might cast doubt on that union and allow room for thinking. Thinking, thinking. Now that I'm telling you this dream and this story, I realize that I have abstained from thinking for the past four years. The "I" that existed before meeting Dato and the Manure has been absent or damped down during all that time, and I would go so far as to say that it had died, were it not for the fact that this morning, which is advancing as I write, I seem to recognize that "I." In these pages that I have been filling (without yet having had any breakfast) I recognize a cold, invulnerable voice, the voice of the pessimist, who, just as he sees no reason to live, likewise sees no reason to kill himself or to die, no reason to feel afraid, no reason to wait, no reason to think; and yet he does nothing but those last three things: feeling afraid, waiting, and thinking, endlessly thinking. That was what my mind was like (cold and invulnerable, and perhaps it