Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, by Javier Marías
mark beyer
Perhaps the most enjoyable scene in Marías’s compact yet richly intricate novel comes midway, when narrator Victor Francés (a ghostwriter) visits Spain’s Royal Palace. He meets the king—alternately called the Only One, Solus, Your Majesty, Solitaire, the Lone Ranger, and Only the Lonely—for an interview to write a speech. He has been introduced by a famous and wealthy courtier, who has long been unused in society but is a favorite of the king. Marías makes great comedy here, using stereotypical people (a court portrait painter; an ancient usher-cum-majordomo; the alluring and oh-so-young female secretary; a half-mad cleaning woman) and props (a tobacco pipe; the too-large canvas teetering on its easel; a gargantuan ashtray; women’s hosiery) to create a bit of farce. Marías handles this scene deftly, and with grace, showing us how even the noble and powerful easily expose their imperfections, people bumbling along in their skins beneath the artifice of position:
Solus was leaving, but first, he indicated Juanito’s foot: “Juanito,” he said, “don’t forget that shoelace, you’ll trip over.”
[Juanito] Téllez looked down again, this time a touch despairingly, he would clearly be incapable of tying it himself, not even with his foot raised. I grasped the situation in an instant: it would take Segarra ages to reach us and he was even less capable of bending down than Téllez was; you couldn’t rely on Segurola, perhaps he didn’t even have permission to leave his corner and approach Solitaire, he looked like a man in exile or immured; young, conscientious Anita would have been perfect for the job, but if she crouched or knelt down the buttons of her jacket might pop off and her stockings fall down. It was up to the Lone Ranger or myself. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and I saw that he made no move to help. That was to be expected. I didn’t hesitate.
“Don’t worry, I’ll tie it,” I said and although I seemed to be saying it to Téllez, I was really saying it to Only the Lonely, as if there had been a genuine chance that he might take on the job.
This scene is nearly a complete aside to the story—Victor has unwittingly fallen into a mystery when Marta Téllez (Juanito Téllez’s daughter), married but not to Victor, dies in Victor’s arms one night as they are about to have a tryst—yet the farce turns, suddenly, to reveal that this scene, too, relies on the over-arching themes of justice, morals, and history. Its threads reach back to the opening sentences of the novel and forward as the author reveals more and more about Marta, her husband Deán, Victor, and the human need for self preservation amidst overwhelming pressures to do the right thing.
Each of Marías characters in Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me live this way. They can’t help themselves. Most of us can’t help this, is Marías’s premise. I think he’s right. We are caught within our own lives, and more importantly, in our own thoughts, our own memories (and its lapses, its ultimate failure), to see the larger picture. In this case it is Victor who passes on this universal to the reader, as he lives out this mystery in which he stands at the center.
The story hinges on Marta’s death and Victor’s conscience against his crime of unjustly leaving behind a dead woman (and her very alive, but sleeping, son), left to be found by anyone but himself. Victor is naturally troubled by Marta and her son. Marta’s husband, Deán, was in London on business. Victor did not want to be the one to explain to authorities, to the family, to Deán, why he was in the apartment. Nevertheless, his presence in Marta’s apartment could not be totally erased.
Yet Victor’s need to know what has happened drives the action. Marta’s death notice appears in the papers a few days later, Victor attends the funeral, he meets the family (and learns that Deán knows a man was with his wife the night of her death, and wants to find him), he’s introduced to her eminent father. Marta’s sister, Luisa (now taking care of the boy) figures out that Victor was the man with Marta in her last moments of life. This triggers the endgame to the mystery within Tomorrow in the Battle. The ending is quite ironic, and endlessly telling about human foibles.
Equally important to the story is Victor’s (and others’) meditations on being, time, memory, and justice—what these perspectives are from a head of a family, the husband of a recently dead woman, her sister, even the State. In fact, much of the writing and various story threads happen within Victor’s internal thoughts. The reader must stay sharp early on or dare miss something—and so become frustrated with the layered prose. This is an interesting ride, because when prodded—and we are here—we realize that memory itself comes as layers. We just don’t often remember events, people, books, movies, etc. in single, exact, moments in time and space.
Sometimes Victor’s memories are repetitive—he revisits Marta’s final moments from different perspectives, particularly once he’s learned others’ stories of that night; he ruminates on death, marriage, divorce, infidelity, deception, and all their apposite themes.
People used to venerate [the dead] or at least their memory, and they would go and visit their graves with flowers, and their portraits would preside over their homes,” I thought, “people spent a period in mourning and everything stopped for a while or slowed down, the death of someone affected the whole of life […] Now people forget about the dead as if the dead were plague victims, sometimes they use them as shields or dunghills in order to blame them and make them responsible for the terrible situation in which they have left us.
Memory is prominent here, both in use and in dissection. The phrase “tomorrow in the battle, think on me” is a line from Shakespeare’s Richard III (Shakespeare is used amply throughout, in fact). Its inference is to memory, of course; its implications to justice and righteousness in life. Shakespeare’s long shadow shows on Javier Marías’s novel, and can be wonderfully appreciated. Taking into account this is an English translation, we can still feel in the prose Marías’s careful craftsmanship of sentences, direction, suspense, and character. All difficult tasks, especially to make them into art, which this novel attains brilliantly.
Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, by Javier Marías
A New Directions Book
313 pages; $15.95
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