Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

The protagonist, Victor Frances, of TBTM reminded me of that writer guy in Medem’s brilliant Lucía y el sexo. Victor is a quiet, creepy character but Javier Marias sets him up to riff on the central event of the book in ways that is just mindblowing. Perhaps, it has to do with Victor’s own writing (that stays out of the book) as a ghostwriter for other screenwriters:

"it’s all the same, even though we choose to forget that and refuse to think about it so that we can continue to be active and to act without knowing, to decide without knowing and to take those poisonous steps; it’s all the same, walking down a particular street or getting into a car at the invitation of the driver who, from his seat at the wheel, pushes open the door for us, taking a plane or picking up the phone, going out to supper or staying in our hotel staring distractedly out of the sash window, celebrating a birthday and growing up and going on having birthdays and getting called up, initiating a kiss that leads to other kisses that will force us to linger and for which we will be called to account, asking for or accepting a job, watching the growing storm without bothering to seek shelter, drinking a beer and looking at the women sitting on their stools at the bar, it’s all the same, and every one of these things can bring in its train: knives and broken glass, illness and malaise and fear, bayonets and depression and regret, the tree struck by lightning and the fishbone in the throat; as well as the fighter plane at one’s back and the barber’s blunder; the broken high heels and the large hands pressing on your temples, my poor temples, the lit cigarette and the back of neck averted and damp with sweat, the creased skirt and the undersized bra and then the naked breast, a woman tucked up in bed apparently sleeping and a child who dreams in blissful ignorance beneath his inherited scene of aerial combat. "Tomorrow in the battle think on me, when i was mortal; and let fall thy lance" "

-JM, 1996