In effect. Hush up my client’s demise, scrape off the pieces of his face and sew them onto the face of his younger successor, the man he himself had designated to continue his work if something happened to him. The new man would then assume his new responsibilities behind the refuge of a mask of more traditional authority. And when he had accumulated the necessary experience, his original face could then be returned to him—adjusted, naturally, in accordance with the latest polls. That is what is called fresh blood, my friend.
And that is why I was in no condition, at the time, to spend my days watching your movements and anticipating your plans. What was opening up for me was a way to intervene surgically in the lives of the most important people of our era, to institute a foundation for their permanent power, to make death or generational change but transitory destabilizers. Because if that was the first operation of the sort that I attempted, you will of course understand that it was not the last. That grayish client, whose face at least would not rest in peace, had chosen me. From that point on, it was I who started to choose which clients I would renovate, which features offered stability to the social order. So I also established, as you once did, a network: only mine is less assailable than yours.
And to this, I have dedicated my years, while you collected useless photographs. So do not come here and threaten me with your snapshot of my hands placing minuscule devices in the basement of a face. Those clients owe everything to me. The elder ones, that they may continue to reign under the newer faces. And the youngest, that they may aspire someday to infiltrate the proudest faces of ancient power. Overlaying and undersetting, sewing on top and in between and by the side, excavating and eroding, I know who is who better than any guide that is sold in the bookstores. A snail crossing an eight-lane highway has more chances of surviving than you do. Especially if you are with that little woman. All I have to do is make a call and my friends will make sure you are suppressed, you, your photos, your former inspector, your lover’s hands.
But why should I lose you again? I already made that mistake once before. I was obsessed—quite rightly—with an operation that saved the country from widespread upheaval. So I do not blame myself for disregarding your graduating ceremony—where I doubt that you received a prize. The day, I remember it as if it were yesterday, I went to take a look at you—and you will agree that even half a look is not easy—your disappearance surprised me. Yes. As simple as that. Disappeared. It was not a matter, as it had so often been, of not being able to locate you, your face dissolving into the color of the crowd. No, this time you had really left.
You were not living with your parents, and they even became obnoxious when I sent a detective to sniff out where you had gone, as if we were reminding them of some second cousin who had died of leprosy an eternity ago and whom they preferred not to remember. Something similar, though worse, happened with the neighbors, with your former schoolmates: the majority hardly believed you had ever existed, their eyes going blank with the effort to fix your face. They had not noticed you when you lived among them. Why should they recall you now?
The detective I hired could not catch even a scent of you. A faceless man who changes his name—because that is what you did, is it not?—is impossible to find. Particularly if he destroys all his files, all his fingerprints, any bureaucratic trail that could indicate he had ever slouched through this planet.
I was confident, nevertheless, that our paths would cross. At times, in fact, I would make some arrogant remark in the papers about my ability to operate even on someone with no countenance, to see if you might read it and come to see me on your own. It does not matter that you did not fall into that trap. You were destined to me. You do understand that, I hope? That is why you pushed your foot down on the accelerator at that intersection. Because I had been speeding through green lights for twenty years in the expectation that you would crash into me, that you would make yourself somehow manifest, if not visible. And it is better that you should have taken this long, because I am now able to offer you conditions never before possible, and for your part, weighed down as you are by that sweet woman’s burden, you will have to accept what, at the time of your graduation, you might well have rejected.
You always pined for normality. Inside you there still must be someone who wants to live as the rest of us do. So what I am, in fact, suggesting is that we should revert to the first page of this book we are writing, that initial moment in which the nurse brought you to my hospital room like Moses in a basket, and I, instead of taking you in and transforming that baby into a prince, I returned you to the turbulent rivers of your life. If I am not your progenitor, I am at least a member of your family. And you have known it—fascinated by me since our crash. Otherwise, why have you been muttering your story to my absent ears all these days? Why do you come to see me, demanding favors as if I were some sort of uncle? Why should I help you if, after all calculations have been made, the only thing you have occasioned are disasters, costs without benefits, injuries to my own body?
Because you know that in me you will find a home. Maybe those extinguished eyes of yours guessed it that first day when my step-fatherly face was reflected in the remoteness of the face that you did not yet know was yours. By not intervening, I allowed you to develop your own life, which is, when you think of it, a very rich one, indeed. I used to wonder, with scientific interest, what could a child without a face make of his life? Now I know, and it seems admirable that you have defended yourself with your faculty for reading alien faces and capturing them with your camera. It could almost be said that I feel proud of you.
During that first encounter of ours in the hospital I could have committed the mistake of fixing your nose, of painting your cheeks pink, I could have reformed your features any way I wanted. The whole world would have been fascinated by you. That silly Enriqueta would have invited you not only to her birthday party but into her very conjugal bed. Everyone says that happiness cannot be bought. What can be bought, my friend, is a face. And I have got the face that you need. And I can also protect your walkingtalking doll, if that is your desire, I can also give her a new face so that nobody, except for you, will recognize her.
Because it is true that she is in danger.
How can I be so sure?
A woman who was much too similar to the one you have called Patricia arrived—that same Friday that she stuck you with your defenseless playmate—at the office of a colleague of mine. It must have been Patricia because she brought with her the identical photo of your lover at four-and-a-half, the one you have handed to me. She came to ask for an urgent operation for that girl. I hope you understand, therefore, that you are not the only one who has conceived this brilliant idea. My colleague did what he always does when somebody acts suspiciously. He gave her an appointment for next week and then consulted me, as he must if he wants to retain his license to practice medicine. And since the woman was no one I knew, nor could I guess that she was someone who might interest you, I naturally authorized him to warn the police. What they do later is up to them.
You wonder about confidentiality? I am surprised that someone like you is asking that sort of question, but I’ll answer it, anyway. I am scrupulous about confidentiality, thank you very much. I apply it to my habitual clientele, as well as to any person who comes well recommended. But you, of all people, cannot tell me that all the faces in the world have the same rights. If we did not relinquish, once in a while, information about some unknown, petty person, we would be breaking our pact with the authorities of this country who happen to be, as you must have realized by now, some of my best friends. Those in charge of public order respect our autonomy as doctors—as long as they know they can count on our most thorough cooperation. Or did you expect me to sacrifice my business for someone like your Alicia? Did she have anyone to protect her? Not that I knew of. Again, if I had been aware that she was a friend of yours, if we had been partners at the time, my lips would still be sealed. And in the case of Patricia it could ev
en be stated that I did you a favor: if the police had not arrested her that very Friday afternoon, she might have pestered you to get the girl back.
But you need not worry. I don’t think you’ll be seeing her again. And I am also certain that she did not let your name slip out. They would have come to see you, wouldn’t they? But beyond that elementary reasoning, I have more evidence. Yesterday a detective came to visit this same colleague to ask him more about the girl who appeared in the photo. They would not have frittered away their time if they knew who was keeping her. And he also happened to relinquish some information about your—what is it that you call her?—your Oriana?
You have complained that nobody has ever given you friendly advice. Let me be the first. What I think you should understand is that women are the monarchs of deceit. I hope this paternal tone does not disturb you, but as you have had such a paltry experience with the opposite sex, I would not want you to awaken someday with the bitter certitude that this little girl of yours had been dissembling all this time, playing you like a saxophone until she could find someone more powerful to guard her. Why this blind confidence in a person you know nothing about? You said she is an amnesiac. I would like to tell you, however, that they are searching for her because she has an excess, rather than a diminishment, of memory. It seems that she possesses—or used to, once upon a time, if you are correct—possesses, I say, a remarkable mnemonic faculty. Somewhere in that mind, unbeknownst to you, she hides what appears to be a kind of tape recorder, which reproduces with minute faithfulness what people say. Not astonishing, is it, that with that exceptional talent so many people want to get their hands on her? If she were not the woman of a business associate, I myself, let me warn you, would be making every effort I could to smuggle my hands into that brain.
But I shall not do it. She is the one who holds you hostage for me. If you were alone, nothing could stop you from disappearing again, restoring your subterranean empire. The eruption into your life of that … let me call her a child, of that child, has made you visible. While you are tied to her, forget about leaving the country or even of slipping into a multitude to snap the shot that you could sell for a fortune.
That is your real position. Take a careful look at it. Objectively. Calmly. No more network. Not a friend in the world. That softhearted and affectionate Jarvik, whom you compute as a last reserve, is precisely one of the men who are after your lover. And if he were to be told that you have made a fool of him, I do not think he would offer you his friendship again.
To put things clearly: without my help, there is no way in which you can save your plaything. That does not mean that I approve. But if she gives you satisfaction, if you can find in one little woman the whole world of females, all the possibilities, all the dimensions, it remains for me, as one of your principal creators, to be the best man at the wedding and to congratulate you.
You can count on me.
You can count on me. Do you know anyone else in the universe who could repeat that phrase to you?
Now you show me—silently show me—the photo you took. You do not yet let me touch it. I know what you are thinking. I may not be able to read faces as well as you, but I know what I would think in these circumstances … How can you trust me? What sort of guarantees can I give?
Just think a minute.
If I had wanted to capture you, would it not have been easier to blow your cover, to get one of those men who are chasing your doll to take her away, and to be left alone to excavate your skin at my leisure?
I am ready to confess that if I had believed that this plan could have been successful, I would have executed it without the slightest hesitation. But quite frankly, my man, how do I keep you? If I put you to sleep, if I extinguish the cold semen in your eyes, your skin would stop renewing itself—you would stagnate and so would our business. There is not a jail, a hospital, an asylum, that could retain you. Of course they would begin by following my instructions down to the last detail: fasten you tight, watch you day and night, surround you with reflectors as if we were about to operate. Inevitably, however, they would soon forget how dangerous you are, their attention would be distracted, and, all of a sudden, you would have escaped. And it is unpleasant to contemplate what you would do to me that night. No, my dear man, my former patient, I do not wish our little partnership to end like an action film where the hero finally, when everything seems lost, unties his bonds and wreaks a terrible revenge. No doubt gratifying to the passive, inert audience in the darkness, but not so to the one who receives the blows. Far better, wouldn’t you say, to keep you happy?
Now you do pass me the photo. Without a word. Strange, to see oneself so clearly from eyes that are so alien, the lightning flash of my hands entering the mysterious waters behind that face. A memorable photo, indeed. I will try not to deny what my face is proclaiming—you have captured exactly what someone, what I myself think on those occasions. All right, I admit it, I start to think that I am possessing that face: that small apparatus is like a metallic clitoris, which I am inserting into the precise intersecting line of the brain. The photo’s admonition to harbor suspicions is not misplaced.
But there is no possibility that I would do something like that to you. What function do you attribute to that piece of metal? Is it for spying? Is it a way of controlling the patient? Not at all. It is an integral part of the therapy, what we might call the postoperative treatment. Tell me: of what use is it to change somebody’s twisted nose if his memory persists in remembering the old one and, therefore, continues to twist the new one until it resembles the nose that will not vanish from that memory? That is why my operations have such an incredible degree of success: because along with the old skin, they eliminate the old habits, the past. It is as if I strained my patients through a filter: like one of those that converts the dirtiest river into the most transparent drinking water. And you drink the old and purified liquid without giving a second thought to where it has been, what it has touched. My tiny device is merely guarding that new face from the ghost of the old face, making sure it cannot be recomposed. Just as we change our phone number so old lovers cannot call and make a scandal, interrupting us as we prepare to make love to our wives. But forgive that image: I forget that you would not know what I am talking about. Of course.
It is here that our interests coincide. Both of us want that sleeping beauty of a girl to stay with you, never to awaken. If that face enthuses you so, certainly, we shall make her once again into a five-year-old. And if you choose to suffocate her other faces, I will certainly not voice any opposition. But I am again appalled at your lack of ambition, my man. Why demand a dossier of her past when you can burn the memory in her? Why suffocate what you can extirpate? Irreversibly.
So she will remember only what you want her to remember.
Which does not mean that you should worry about something like that being done to you.
I would have to be insane to try to make you forget the deep pit of your previous face, that pit which has no bottom. On the contrary, what I require is that you recall it every night, that you continue to reproduce it inside over and over. My only desire is that under the faces I will settle upon you, which I have been preparing all these years, under the multiple masks, there, deep under, the cells of your original facelessness will replicate themselves like serpents during an eternity. So that each time it becomes necessary, I may descend like a miner toward the inexhaustible treasure which grows like moss on the inner wall of your most recent features.
Why should I wish to erase the incrustations that coat your skin and your memory, if your face is the only capital that you are contributing to this enterprise?
I have plans for that face.
And they are not, at this moment, the ones I dreamt of when I first saw it. Even if during all these years I have reminded myself why I should search for it. Even if up to the instant before you limped through that door I repeated that reason and no other. But now I know that we are going to postpone the distr
ibution of those small doses of your cells among my clients, no matter how large the payments might have been. That sort of exchange will come, it will come: later.
No, my plans have changed. Your eyes have illuminated my own life as if until now I had been blind, murmuring to me that, with all my almightiness, I had been up until now a slave controlled by others, captured by their looks, relegated to exercising power through indirect, remote intermediaries. As you spoke, I managed to understand fully that thing I had glimpsed only as a weak intuition on the day I had you in these hands and dared to find in myself the courage to postpone our glory for another occasion, when you had refined the instrument of your anonymous skin and I had acquired the means to insure its use: the intuition of another future for your face.
I knew it halfway then and I know it fully at this moment and I will know it beyond any doubt within a few minutes.
I want that face for myself.
I do not know how long I will need it. A few days, a week, a year. It makes no difference. I will return it when I have tired of its exercise. I want to roam the world without anyone knowing me. I want you to open up. Open up. Open up, and let me see that which only you have seen.
Why do you look at me that way, with those forgettable eyes? With those eyes that so soon will sink into my sockets?
Let us go. If that is your desire, let us go first to undress Oriana so her memories can never more rebel. If that is your desire, if you are still doubtful, you can by yourself insert into her this apparatus, which will erase her previous faces. I shall be no more than your silent assistant, I will do no more than pass the instruments. Are you not the person who knows most about faces in the universe? Is there any other way to insure that I will not invade, with my hands, the intimate world of Oriana? Or would you prefer another sort of insurance before we operate on her? Would you prefer that before that happens we undress, you and I, underneath the lights which stream forth from the reflectors?