'Peter,' I said, perhaps out of superstition, and showing a definite lack of prudence, 'I don't know if you realise, but your socks have slipped down.' And I managed to point with one timid finger at his ankles.
He immediately pulled himself together, blinked away his fatigue and had sufficient presence of mind not to look down and check. Perhaps he'd already noticed, perhaps he knew and didn't care. His gaze had grown sombre or dull now, his eyes were two newly extinguished match-heads. He smiled again, but feebly this time, or with fatherly compassion. And he reverted to English, it was less of an effort for him, as it is for me to speak in my own language.
'Another time I would have been infinitely grateful to you for pointing that out, Jacobo. But it's of little importance now. I'm going to get straight into bed and I'll be sure to take them off first. We'd both better get some sleep if we're to be fresh in the morning, we have a lot of unfinished business to deal with. Thanks for telling me, though. Good night.' He turned and started up the stairs that lay between him and the first floor, where he had his bedroom, the guest room that I would occupy and had occupied on other occasions was on the second and penultimate floor. As he turned, Wheeler accidentally kicked the ashtray, which was still there along with the corpse of his cigar. It rolled away, without breaking, its fall cushioned by the carpeted area on which the ash fell like snow, I hurried to pick it up when it was still spinning. Wheeler heard and identified the noise, but did not turn round. Still with his back to me, he said, unconcernedly: 'Don't bother cleaning it up. Mrs Berry will restore order tomorrow. She can't stand dirt. Good night.' And with the aid of his walking-stick and the banister, he began the ascent, overwhelmed once more by exhaustion, as if a great wave had suddenly broken over him, leaving him soaked and shaken, a suddenly dislocated figure, slightly shrunken despite his great size, as if he were shivering, his steps hesitant, each stair a struggle, his lovely new shiny shoes seeming to weigh heavily, his walking-stick merely a stick now. I listened, I could hear very clearly the quiet or patient or languid murmur of the river. It seemed to be talking, calmly or indifferently, almost indolently, a thread. A thread of continuity, the River Cherwell, between the dead and the living with all their similarities, between the dead Rylands and the living Wheeler.
'Sorry, Peter, can I just delay you a second longer? I wanted to ask you…'
'Yes?' said Wheeler, stopping, but still not turning round.
'I don't think I'll be able to get to sleep straight away. I imagine you've got Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and Thomas's history of the Spanish Civil War somewhere. I'd like to have a quick look at them, to check something before I go to bed, if you don't mind, that is. If you wouldn't mind lending them to me, and if they're more or less to hand.'
Now he did turn round. He raised his walking-stick and with it indicated a place above my head, moving the stick gently from side to side to his left, that is, to my right, like a pointer. His muscles had slackened, his skin, like tree bark or damp earth, seemed suddenly terribly worn.
'Almost everything about the Spanish Civil War is in there, in the study, behind you. The west bookshelf' Then, irritated, he said in scolding tones: "I imagine", he says. "I imagine." Of course I've got them. I am a Hispanist, remember. And although I've written about centuries of greater interest and momentum, the twentieth century is still my period too, you know, the one I've lived through. And yours too, by the way. Even though you've got a lot of the next century to live through as well.'
'Yes, sorry, Peter, and thanks. I'll go and find them now, if that's all right. Sleep well. Good night.'
He turned his back on me again, he only had a few more stairs to climb. He knew I wouldn't take my eyes off him until I saw that he'd reached the top, safe and sound, I feared those too-smooth soles. And doubtless knowing this, he didn't even turn his head when he spoke to me again for the last time that night, but continued to present me with the back of his neck as the obscure origin of his words. With its wavy white hair, the back of his neck was the same as Rylands's, like a carved capital grown blurred over time. From behind they were even more alike, the two friends, the similarities even more marked. From behind they were identical.
If you're thinking of looking me up in the index of names, to see if I appear and to find out what I did in the Civil War, don't lose a minute's sleep over it. I don't think Orwell's book even has that kind of index. Bear in mind, too, that in Spain my name wasn't Wheeler.'
I couldn't see his face, but I was sure that he'd recovered his vivacious smile while he was saying this. I didn't know whether to reply or not. I did:
'I see. So what did you call yourself then?'
I saw that he was tempted to turn round again, but each time he did so was something of an effort, at least it was that night, at that late hour.
'That's asking an awful lot, Jacobo. Tonight anyway. Perhaps another time. But as I say, don't waste your time, you'll never find me in those indices of names. Not in those of that period.'
'Don't worry, Peter, I won't,' I said. 'Actually, that isn't what I wanted to look up, honestly, it hadn't even occurred to me. I wanted to check something else.' I fell silent. He did not move.
He did not speak. He still did not move. He still did not speak. I added quickly, anxious not to slight him, 'It's an excellent idea though.'
Wheeler had just climbed to the top of the stairs in silence. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw him there. Then he again placed his walking-stick on his shoulder, he again turned it into a spear, and, flattered, he mumbled, without looking back at me, while he turned to the left and disappeared from view:
'An excellent idea, indeed!'
Books speak in the middle of the night just as the river speaks, quietly and reluctantly, or perhaps the reluctance stems from our own weariness or our own somnambulism and our own dreams, even though we are or believe ourselves to be wide awake. Our contribution is minimal, or so we think, we have the feeling of understanding almost effortlessly and without needing to pay much attention, the words slip by gently or indolently, and without the obstacle of the alert reader, or of vehemence, they are absorbed passively, as if they were a gift, and they resemble something easy and incalculable that brings no advantage, their murmur, too, is tranquil or patient or languid, those words are a connecting thread between the living and the dead, when the author being read is already deceased, or perhaps not, but who interprets or relates past events that show no sign of life and yet can be modified or denied, can be seen as vile deeds or heroic exploits, which is their way of remaining alive and continuing to trouble us, never allowing us to rest. And it is in the middle of the night that we ourselves most resemble those events and those times, which can no longer contradict what is said about them or the stories or analyses or speculations of which they are the object, just like the defenceless dead, even more defenceless than when they were alive and over a longer period of time too, for posterity lasts infinitely longer than the few, evil days of any one man. Even then, when they were still in the world, few could undo misunderstandings or refute calumnies, often they didn't have time, or didn't even have the chance to try because they knew nothing about them, because such things always happened behind their backs. 'Everything has its moment to be believed, even the craziest, most unlikely things,' Tupra had said casually. 'Sometimes that moment lasts only a matter of days, but sometimes it lasts forever.'
Andres Nin certainly didn't have time to deny the slanders or to see them refuted by others later on, according to Hugh Thomas's summary, in which, with its index of names, it was easy to find the references, unlike in Orwell's book, it was astonishing that Wheeler should remember such a detail, or perhaps he had deduced it from the fact that Homage to Catalonia was published in 1938, while the war was still on, no one then would have been concerned about mere names. First, though, just in case, I looked up Wheeler's name in Hugh Thomas's book, Peter could so easily have lied to me about that to make sure I wouldn't find it, always assuming I believed him, of course, and didn't even bother to look. But it was true, he wasn't there, nor was Rylands – I checked for checking's sake, it wasn't hard. What name could Wheeler possibly have used in Spain, for he had now managed to prick my curiosity. Perhaps some exploit of his was recorded in that book or in Orwell's, or in one of the many other books about the Civil War on the west bookshelf in Peter's study (and over which I lingered far too long), and, if that were the case, I found it extremely irritating to be unable to find out about it even though the exploit was public knowledge. What wasn't public knowledge was his name, or alias, a lot of people used them during the War. I remembered who Nin was, but not the details of his tragic end, to which Tupra had presumably been referring. He had worked as Trotsky's secretary in Russia, where he had lived for most of the 1920s, until 1930; he had translated quite a bit from Russian into Catalan, and a certain amount into Spanish, from The Lessons of October and The Permanent Revolution, written by his protector and employer, to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Chekhov's The Shooting Party and The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea by Boris Pilniak, as well as some Dostoyevsky.