Your Face Tomorrow trilogy by Javier Marías (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)

Regular readers of this blog may be aware of my fondness for the novels of Javier Marías, widely regarded as one of the preeminent writers of our generation. So, it was with a strong sense of anticipation that I picked up his epic trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, generally considered to be his greatest work.

That said, I wasn’t sure about this series when I read the first volume, Fever and Spear, back in November last year, so much so that I didn’t write about it at the time. While thoughtful and philosophical (perhaps more so than some of the other Marías novels I’d previously read), this opening instalment was fairly slow going throughout, especially in terms of narrative drive. Nevertheless, I preserved with the series, returning to it during my recovery from a fracture earlier this year (big chunksters being very much the order of the day at that point). Now that I’ve read the other two books in this masterful trilogy, I can see what that first volume was setting out to achieve in laying the essential groundwork for the revelations to come.

In brief, the overarching story revolves around Jacques Deza, a Spanish man who has just moved to England following the recent split from his ex-wife, Luisa, and their two young children. (Those of you who are familiar with Marias’ earlier novel, All Souls, will recognise Deza from there.) Back in the UK, Deza reconnects with various former colleagues from a previous stint at Oxford University, through which he is introduced to the shadowy surveillance expert, Bertram Tupra – a man who appears to be linked to, or possibly employed by, MI6.

Tupra believes Jacques has a particular gift or sense of intuition – more specifically, an ability to assess a person’s inherent character and predict how they are going to behave in the future. In short, by looking at a person’s demeanour today, Deza can ‘foresee’ their face tomorrow.

With this in mind, Deza is recruited into Tupra’s organisation, a nameless group whose overall objectives remain something of a mystery. Ostensibly, Deza will be called upon to assess various individuals in the public eye – typically politicians, celebrities and other figures in positions of power. However, as the true nature of Tupra’s operations become increasingly apparent, Deza is drawn into a deeply sinister world, one where violence and torture are second nature and manipulative deceptions are frequently employed.

The state needs treachery, venality, deceit, crime, illegal acts, conspiracy, dirty tricks (on the other hand, it needs very few acts of heroism, or only now and then, to provide a contrast). If those things didn’t exist, or not enough, the state would have to invent them. It already does. Why do you think new offences are constantly being created? What wasn’t an offence becomes one, so that no one is ever entirely clean. Why do you think we intervene in and regulate everything, even where it’s unnecessary or where it doesn’t concern us? We need laws to be violated and broken. What would be the point of having laws if everyone obeyed them? We’d never get anywhere. We couldn’t exist. (p. 128, vol 3, Poison, Shadow and Farewell)

Almost without realising it, Deza finds himself intimately involved in Tupra’s dirty work, both indirectly as a hapless witness to scenes of a brutal assault and more directly as an active participant. His transformation from horrified onlooker to aggressive perpetrator is one of the trilogy’s key masterstrokes. Along the way, the narrative touches on incidents from the deeply personal, such as Deza’s ex-wife and her current relationships, to the broadly political – the latter including a devastating betrayal of trust from WW2 and horrific episodes from the Spanish Civil War.

Many of Marías’ familiar trademarks are present here, from the long, looping sentences and extended meditations that form a key part of his reflective style, to the key symbols and motifs which recur throughout – for instance, the image of a drop of blood on the floor, the rim of which proves particularly stubborn to remove. (The need to erase the final traces of a ‘taint’ or ‘stain’ crops up again and again, each time in a different context, resonating and reverberating with increasing power.)

The ongoing fascination with listening and surveillance is there too – an element which appears in some of Marías’ earlier books, perhaps most notably, A Heart So White. In some ways, the art of assessing character can be viewed as a form of interpretation or translation – another recurring theme in this writer’s work. Marías’ own particular brand of humour is also in evidence, providing some nicely judged moments of levity amidst the darkness of Tupra’s empire. Volume two of the trilogy, Dance and Dream, contains a fabulous disco scene, complete with wild dancing and some outrageously indecent behaviour before the violence kicks in. in this scene, Deza is observing an associate, the licentious attaché De la Garza, who appears to be taking quite an interest in , Flavia Manoia, the wife of an important contact.

He was clearly a man who had no time for good taste, or in whom bad taste was so pervasive that it crossed all frontiers, the clear and the blurred; more than that, he was someone capable of taking a lascivious interest in almost any female being – a rather smutty interest, verging on the merely evacuative – at Sir Peter Wheeler’s party, he had been capable of taking a fancy, and quite a large fancy at that, to the not-quite-venerable reverend widow or Deaness Wadman, with her soft, straining décolletage and her precious stone necklace of orange segments. (I mean, of course, an interest in any female human being, I would not like to insinuate things I know nothing about and of which I have no proof.) Flavia Manoia, who was of a similar age, but with considerably more style and dash (a dash of her former beauty, I mean), could easily turn his head after the couple of drinks he already had inside him or was planning to drink in the next few minutes. (pp. 65-66, book 2, Dance and Dream)

(For more wild nights at the disco, see the earlier Marias novel, All Souls.)

Overall, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy is a tremendous achievement, a thought-provoking treatise on truth, betrayal, coercion and culpability. As a whole, the narrative raises some key questions about the nature of violence, particularly whether the final outcome can ever justify the means. It also forces us to question our own likely responses were we to find ourselves in Deza’s precarious situation. How can any of us ever know just how we would react in the face of extreme adversity? How far would we go to protect the life of a loved one or the safety of our children? It’s almost impossible to tell. The prediction of future behaviour or ‘your face tomorrow’ is more challenging than you might think.

Final notes: If you are thinking of embarking on this trilogy at any point, I would highly recommend you read both All Souls and A Heart So White first – the former to gain an appreciation of Deza’s backstory and earlier time at Oxford University (many of the individuals he encountered in his academic days are referred to again here); the latter for an insight into Custardoy, a rather brash copier of famous paintings who plays a key role in YFT volume three, Poison, Shadow and Farewell.

Also, do persevere with the trilogy even if you find it slow going at first – it really does pay off by the time you get to volumes two and three, I promise!

(This is my contribution to Stu’s Spanish and Portuguese Literature month – you can find out more about it here.)

My edition of the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy was published by Vintage Books; personal copy.