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Episode 4: a very special episode devoted to "Berta Isla"
135 Plays1 year ago
To mark the publication of Marías final novel, Tomás Nevinson, we're spending this episode and our next episode diving into the twinned works of Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson. On this episode we dive deep into Berta (warning: we do rather go into the plot in a more significant manner than we have with other titles discussed thus far). And in two weeks' time we'll be back to chat about Tomás Nevinson (so if you haven't picked up a copy yet, get thee to your local indie and get cracking!).
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Music: “Estos Dias” by Enrique Urquijo
Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs
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Transcript
Introduction and Chicago Weather
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tom Flynn. I'm Lori Feathers. And welcome to Lost in Redonda.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hey, Tom, how's it going? It's going well. It is. It's kind of weird talking about I talk about the weather all the time in Chicago because it's really weird in Chicago. It's also really strange to talk about it on these podcasts since like the distance between when we record and when it will go up is enough that like it's gorgeous here today on the day this goes up. It could be hailing for all I know.
00:00:47
Speaker
But it is beautiful in Chicago today. It is almost 80 degrees. It feels like an early summer. It's supposed to hail next week, but we're going to save that for next
Focus on Javier Marías' Novel Berta Isla
00:00:57
Speaker
week. How are things with you?
00:00:58
Speaker
You're right. The weather is so fickle that whatever it is today could very well be the opposite tomorrow. It's nice here. It's about 80 here as well and sunny. And it looks like extended, we're going to stick in the 70s and low 80s for the foreseeable future. So summer's on its way, I guess. Very nice. Excellent.
00:01:19
Speaker
So, we're going to talk about Javier Maréas' novel, Virta Isla, today, and we're dedicating our entire episode to talk about this book. And we decided to do this because we want to dedicate an entire episode to Maréas'
00:01:39
Speaker
forthcoming novel, or forthcoming in the United States at least, novel Thomas Nevinson, which is in a lot of ways a counterpart to this novel. But there's a lot to say about Berta Isla. And where do you think we should start, Tom?
00:01:58
Speaker
Dear God, I don't know. There's so much to dig into with this one. I guess maybe some pretty straightforward scene setting would be useful. So Berta Isla is the name of the main character of the novel.
00:02:16
Speaker
I mean, in many regards, there are two protagonists to it, though that's probably something that we'll get to a little bit later about who's actually a protagonist and who's not. But Berta was born in, my math is correct, like 1951 in Madrid. And it's very much tracing her life and more specifically,
00:02:36
Speaker
her life with her boyfriend and partner from the time that she was about 13 or 14 into her late 40s. Their life together, but more specifically, very much their life apart. As Tomas Nevinson, the young man in her life, ends up spending more time away from her than with her in the course of their life together.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, Thomas is is her childhood sweetheart. And it's kind of interesting because Maria's kind of focuses on the fact that early on, she kind of made a decision that she was going to be Thomas's wife and that she was committing her life to him.
Tomas Nevinson's Espionage Journey
00:03:27
Speaker
And she pretty much does that through thick and thin and a lot of
00:03:36
Speaker
which we'll get into throughout the novel to the very end. And one of the things that kind of is notable about the relationship is
00:03:49
Speaker
As soon as Thomas goes to college, because he goes to Oxford, they start spending extended periods of time apart. Even when they're young, do that thing where your high school sweetheart is like, yeah, we're going to be together forever and then you go to college and that's it.
00:04:11
Speaker
Like they are geographically separated, but they still stay buried, committed to each other, and ultimately end up getting married. Right. And a quick note on Tomas is that he is both English and Spanish. His father is English. His mother is from Madrid. They settle in Madrid for a whole host of reasons.
00:04:40
Speaker
what sets Tomas apart, because then Marius goes to some lengths to not say that he's not handsome. He is handsome, but that he's not, there isn't anything necessarily super striking about his features. It's more the composite of his features that makes him attractive on top of his Englishness that makes him stand out a bit. But he is perfectly bilingual, and by perfectly, he
00:05:04
Speaker
blends into whatever circumstance he wants to. He is a perfect mimic. He can pick up any language, which is what kind of triggers a lot of what takes place in their adult life. Yeah, there's something really notable about his facility with language and his facility with accent and the way in which he can move back and forth and in between.
00:05:34
Speaker
Which I think also, sorry, which also I think ties into their commitment to one another. I mean, it, in some, it's very much a commitment on Berta's part. I don't think it's inertia on Tomasa's. I mean, he certainly loves her, but there is also, isn't a level of self-reflection of now's the time to be a part. Like that thought never seems to occur to him, which is interesting.
00:06:03
Speaker
Well, when you're talking of Thomas's features, the one thing that everyone seems to pick up on, including Berta, is his lips. Apparently this guy's got great lips. It's kind of hard to maybe visualize that. But he's absolutely charming and he's kind of like a real get in high school. You know, all the girls kind of
00:06:26
Speaker
want to be his gal. And I think part of that is because he's really funny and it goes to this linguistic
00:06:35
Speaker
like genius that he has that he does these awesome imitations and he can imitate anyone because not only is he proficient in the languages, but also in the accents and the dialects. And so he kind of busts his classmates up all the time by doing these really great impressions of people. But another thing that you mentioned, and this is kind of
00:07:03
Speaker
repeated throughout the book.
00:07:05
Speaker
is that he's a person that, at least according to Berta, is almost completely devoid of self-reflection. He doesn't really ponder who he is or what he's doing or where he's going. I get the sense that he's just kind of this lucky-go-happy guy that seems to pretty much always kind of come out ahead.
00:07:35
Speaker
He's very smart. He's got a loving family. He gets the girl. But all that kind of changes during his tenure at Oxford. Yeah. And I mean, I think that I absolutely agree with all that. And I also think that that's reflected in his choices of study. I mean, he studies language, which is what brings him to the attention of Peter Wheeler.
00:08:03
Speaker
It's one of the fun things about this novel is that you get to encounter characters that you may have thought were in the past in previous books.
00:08:13
Speaker
But yeah, so he has a gift for language. He is literally a genius for language. And so that's what he does when he studies, when he goes to school. And it's not clear what he's going to do next. In many ways, I don't think he has any idea what he would do after graduation because life has just sort of come to him and been the way that it needs to be.
00:08:38
Speaker
Again, this is going back to the idea of who is or is not a protagonist in a story. In other of Maria's novels, Tomás Nevinson would have been a character that we encountered for maybe a chapter, notable for what he was, but not terribly notable otherwise, and then disappeared into the background. And you know what? Given what Tomás ends up doing with his life, maybe we have encountered Tomás in some of the other novels.
00:09:06
Speaker
But part of Tomás' kind of
00:09:10
Speaker
maybe laissez-faire attitude towards his future is because I think he kind of understands that Birch is committed to him for life. And then there's also this implication, you know, his dad's a Brit and is closely affiliated with the British embassy in Madrid. And there's this, I think it's a family friend rather than a distant relative, but this guy named Starkey, who's,
00:09:39
Speaker
who is very well placed in the embassy and with with Thomas's English education. I think the presumption is is that he's going to graduate and go back to Madrid and work for the British Embassy in Madrid. Yeah, I mean, that seems to be the clear implication.
00:09:58
Speaker
But I mean, so I guess we should kind of dive into what happens to Thomas in his last year at Oxford. So these are, so I guess it's quickly to say, as two young people coming up in the late 60s and the social and political tumult of that time,
00:10:17
Speaker
Both Berta and Tomas have their first sexual experiences with people other than their partner. They both know that this is what took place. Neither one of them really especially cares. But Tomas in particular, not even carrying on with just having a physical relationship with a young woman who worked at a bookshop. Once again, Oxford Bookshops making their appearance, an antiquarian one at that.
00:10:42
Speaker
To back up for just a moment, Thomas Evanson is a mentee, Peter Wheeler. Peter Wheeler is, we will spend a lot of time with him in your face tomorrow.
00:10:58
Speaker
But he is well regarded within the faculty, a legend, frankly. He's also a legend within the town for what he did before he was teaching at Oxford. And that was that he was a spy of some sort, whether he was actually in the field, whether he was
00:11:15
Speaker
simply an interpreter. The suggestion is that he was in the field. There is an air of mystery to him. And keep in mind that this is in the late 60s, early 70s at this point, and most of the action that Wheeler would have seen was in World War II. There's enough distance for it to take on the tone of myth and legend. And there's the suggestion within the town and the rumor mill that he still is connected to the Secret Service.
00:11:40
Speaker
One day, Thomas is over at Wheeler's, I think he's at his house, not in his offices, if I remember correctly. And Wheeler would ask Thomas to look over his papers that he'd written in Spanish, just because he respected Thomas's ability and fluency to move between the two languages so well. And Wheeler, at first very obliquely,
00:12:04
Speaker
And Thomas is not picking up what Wheeler is laying down. But Wheeler is trying to recruit him into the British Secret Service, saying that, I mean, eventually he has to come out and be very plain about what he's saying. Thomas is a genius. He is a perfect mimic, as we've discussed. He has a facility with languages, with dialect, with accent. His skills would be incredibly useful.
00:12:31
Speaker
And there is, I don't mean to interrupt you, but there's one thing in this speech that Wheeler gives to Tomas at the time that is a recurring theme or recurring memory for Tomas, because at one point Wheeler talks about how inconsequential 99.9% of human endeavor is. And most people live their lives as quote, outcasts,
00:12:59
Speaker
of the universe or outcasts in the universe. He sees that Thomas has the capability to be something greater than that and to not just be an outcast, but to be in the Secret Service and actually help in some way
00:13:20
Speaker
kind of change the course of events. Yeah. To influence and shape, to be someone versus nobody. And that's kind of a specific phrasing that keeps coming up across multiple characters, especially as they discuss the kind of work that
00:13:38
Speaker
that Tomas ends up doing. But at the moment, Tomas rejects Wheeler's offer. He just doesn't see himself as that. And this, again, goes back to the whole lack of self-reflection, these
00:13:51
Speaker
I mean, in some ways, Thomas is almost at least at that point in his life, what is directly in front of you is what he is. The past, the future, none of that really factors into his awareness of himself. It's merely the
Tomas's Moral and Emotional Struggles
00:14:06
Speaker
moment by moment, which is ironic because that's how he describes his work later.
00:14:12
Speaker
So after this meeting with Wheeler, he visits the woman that he's been having sex with. They have an encounter. He leaves that night. And she had implied to him that he knew that she had a lover in London that she would see in the weekends that she was invested in. I mean, this was just a physical relationship for the both of them.
00:14:35
Speaker
And the lover is a somebody with a capital S. Yes. Yes. And this is the first time I believe we see the somebody with a capital S, though it's not the last. And by that, I mean the actual word somebody with a capital S. And in the conversation, it's implied they don't usually converse that much. In the conversation after they have sex, she says that she's basically laid out an ultimatum for this person.
00:15:01
Speaker
that she's not happy with things as they continue, as they are, and wants them to change, and it's up to him, and that she could have vengeance upon him if she still wanted. So, Tamas leaves. He's in a different sort of mood, mostly because of his conversation with Wheeler. He stands outside of her apartment for a bit and sees a man go in, but doesn't notice any change in the lights in her apartment, and then he walks home.
00:15:25
Speaker
He is a few days later or a couple of days later, interrogated by a police inspector about the murder of this woman, Janet. And this actually takes place in front of Eric Southworth. So again, another callback, which I feel like Maria is just I can't tell if it's like sentimentality that's causing this desire to like
00:15:54
Speaker
more carefully tie the threads of his universe, his written universe together. But I enjoyed seeing Southworth and Wheeler again.
00:16:02
Speaker
And Southworth, just to be clear, also is an Oxford professor and he's tutoring Tomás. And it's at the conclusion of one of these tutoring sessions that Officer Morse shows up at the door and says, you know, are you Thomas Nevinson? I need to speak to you. And Southworth, you know, offers to leave and Tomás says, no, you know, you can stay. And then Morse begins to
00:16:30
Speaker
questioned Tomas about his relationship with this woman and when he last saw her and what they were doing. And so Southworth hears all of this conversation and the accusations. Well, maybe accusations too rough of a word, but the implication that perhaps Tomas was the last person to see her alive.
00:16:51
Speaker
Right. And also a quick note, the inclusion of an Inspector Morse into this novel is absolutely delightful. Later on, we find that Morse's first name is Enfield, not Endeavor. So it is not the Inspector Morse, but it may as well be. I think that might just been a copyright dodge right there. But
00:17:13
Speaker
This is this is actually one of the novels I think is almost it's lousy with literary illusions and mentions. They happen in all of Maria's novels, but I feel like this one
00:17:26
Speaker
There's just more of it, or maybe more accurately, it's more bald. It's continuous, direct quotations and continuous reflection and recursion of those lines from other works making their appearance. Yeah. I feel like Shakespeare comes up somehow in almost all of the novels, but this one features Dickens, T.S. Eliot,
00:17:50
Speaker
Herman Melville and, you know, on and on. There's you're absolutely right. I think this one might be packed with more literary illusions than any other. And in such a wider range of them, usually it is just like the the one Shakespeare quote that like continues to like work as a leitmotif throughout the work. This one is just which are not even a leitmotif. Thus Bad Begins. I mean, that's the title of a novel. So right.
00:18:19
Speaker
So, Tomas answers all of this inspector's questions. Southworth thinks entirely too openly. Southworth even advised him to get a lawyer at one point, but he just wants to clear the air because he knows he didn't do it. And it somewhat becomes clear to him that he might be in some serious trouble here.
00:18:39
Speaker
He reaches out to Wheeler, who then tells him to go to a shop on a certain day at a certain time and go to a certain section and someone will meet him who may be able to help him get out of this mess, which he does. I just want to quickly note.
00:18:59
Speaker
Wheeler sends him to the TS Eliot section of the bookstore. He should pick up a book by Eliot and the other person will also pick up a book by Eliot.
00:19:15
Speaker
not quite English, Englishman in this novel is really quite interesting. You've got Eliot, you've got Thomas, Wheeler himself is originally from New Zealand, but all these people get drawn into this orbit of defending Britishness and defending the empire and defending the realm. I mean, you've even got the last time that
00:19:41
Speaker
that Tomas sees Janet, she's reading The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, another not quite English Englishman. Yeah, I found that quite amusing and kind of a delightful moment throughout it. So yeah, Tomas meets with two men, one named Tupra, and he is recruited into the service. Basically, they say he's pretty well screwed.
00:20:08
Speaker
The person that he thinks he may have seen go in may well be this woman's lover who's an MP, Minister of Parliament, and nothing ties that person. That person has an alibi. Nothing ties that person to the murder. The only person that there is is Thomas, and when it's an open and shut or looks open and shut, the state's going to do what it does, and his life is over.
00:20:31
Speaker
Or he could apply his considerable gifts and come work for them. And he chooses the latter.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, and they don't really give him any time to deliberate, you know, it's just kind of like, you know, you've got to you've got to decide right now, we can make this all go away. But but, you know, you can't let us know tomorrow, you know, you need to decide right now. And it's a it's a kind of a crazy ask for, you know, a 21 year old guy. But I think I think to Moss at this point,
00:21:08
Speaker
is sufficiently scared that he's going to go to jail, that he doesn't really see any other way but to let himself be recruited and become part of the Secret Service.
00:21:24
Speaker
And it's interesting in that, I mean, we'll dive into this a lot in your face tomorrow, but Tupra in Maria's is, I don't know how to pronounce the word oeuvre, oeuvre, how are you saying that silly word? Yeah, exactly, with like way too many vowels, ovre, I don't know.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah. And Maria says body of work. We'll just stick with that. It's longer, but it's less of a tongue twister. Tupra is a major character in Your Face Tomorrow. Matters quite a bit. Something of a spymaster. But one of the things that Tupra is good at, and that Wheeler is good at, is seeing through people, like being able to just
00:22:08
Speaker
discern truth from fiction, kind of know immediately who someone is and what their relationships are and all those things. Tomás is an amazing mimic, amazing to, in his work, he's apparently uses an infiltrator as any number of things, a bit of an analyst, but
00:22:28
Speaker
He doesn't always see through people that well. At least that's not my impression. He's much better at becoming others than discerning others, which in some ways I think is a reflection of his talents, of
00:22:43
Speaker
his way of being in the world, his constant presentness.
Berta's Perspective and Challenges
00:22:48
Speaker
Not that he's not bright. I mean, there are long digressions of his thought process and the things that he's pulling in and all that. And not that long for Marius, but long for almost any other writer, most likely. But yeah, I think that's worth mentioning.
00:23:09
Speaker
because this novel is about to do something. After this section, after Tomasz signs on, the novel does something very strange. Up to this point, it'd been more or less written in a third-person near- omniscient approach. The very next section switches to the eye, and the eye is Berta.
00:23:31
Speaker
Berda seems to see people in a way that Tomas does not. And that juxtaposition I think is really kind of fascinating, something that I think that we can dig into that. Yeah. I mean, she sees, you know, she and Tomas have been
00:23:49
Speaker
living apart for a while because he's studying for six or eight weeks during the term and coming home during the break and then going back to Oxford. But when he graduates from Oxford and Oxford and comes back to Madrid, she notices right away that something is different about him, that he's
00:24:14
Speaker
He's a little more sullen and he's not as happy-go-lucky and he seems preoccupied. She doesn't really know why that is and she tries to gently ask him about it.
00:24:31
Speaker
And even though he's very opaque about it, nonetheless, they still proceed with getting married as they had planned. And then he starts soon thereafter having to go to London, so to speak, for various periods of time, maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks.
00:24:56
Speaker
And then eventually he lets it be known that, well, he can't call her sometimes while he's away because not always is it London, but he's at places that he's not at liberty to disclose to her. And so this whole kind of other life that he's leading kind of emerges and almost supersedes the life of the person that she
00:25:25
Speaker
She married where she thought that she was married, marrying a guy that was going to be a good husband and a good father to their children and someone that she would spend her life with because he ends up spending more and more time away from her.
00:25:44
Speaker
Right. Um, so when he came back, he took a job at the British embassy. Um, initially these trips back to London were described as meetings or additional trainings. There's a suggestion that he was seen as having a bright future. So they're training him in all sorts, like managerial courses, which don't necessarily fit as she notes with, you know, what his actual job is, but maybe they're, maybe they're looking, they think he'll advance. He'll be able to do almost anything. He's so, so gifted and all that, which.
00:26:13
Speaker
you know, fits with her picture of him. I mean, he is brilliant and he is engaging and he is the center of any party. So they're married, they have a child, Guillermo, and
00:26:29
Speaker
During one of the periods where Tomas is gone, she is at a park with Guillermo, and this couple approached her and say that they actually met an embassy party. They're stationed with the Irish embassy. That's how they know Tomas.
00:26:47
Speaker
imply they may have briefly met Berta too. But at these functions, everyone meets everyone, so it's totally reasonable that she doesn't remember them. And over the course of a month, while Tomas is gone, they slowly but surely spend more and more time around her and with her. And at the end of this month, they visit her at her house and say that they're being relocated. They're not quite sure where, but they need to talk to her about Tomas.
00:27:13
Speaker
And then they ask her, do you know what your husband really does? Do you know what he really is? Which, of course, stuns her. And they start putting the question to her of
00:27:25
Speaker
Why is he gone all the time? What is it that he actually does at this embassy? What is he doing when he's away? And they pretty much out and out say that her husband works for MI6, military intelligence for the British government, that he is a spy, and that he may be up to no good in Northern Ireland. I mentioned they were from the Irish embassy. And that he needs to really stop.
00:27:50
Speaker
what he's doing, or there might be some consequences. And the course of the conversation, the husband in this couple accidentally, I'm making scare quotes that no one can see as they listen to the podcast, accidentally spill some of the fluid for his Zippo lighter onto Guillermo sleep in his crib, with the implication very, very clear of what
00:28:13
Speaker
What would happen if Tomas did not stop doing what he's supposed to be doing? They eventually leave. And this, of course, sends Berta into an absolute panic. She tries to reach Tomas. She's not able to. The people that she reaches at the switchboard say that he can't be reached for some time. She starts going through all the names of different people that he's mentioned over the years.
00:28:40
Speaker
eventually hits upon one that brings her to Tupra, though under a different name that, and she doesn't even realize it's a different name sometime later. And basically, when Thomas eventually does come back, he's gone for I think an additional few weeks, possibly a month after that incident. He says that he is permitted to tell her
00:29:02
Speaker
some of what's going on, but can't give too much away. And in so doing, it confirms for her that, yes, he is engaging in espionage. He is not in London or anywhere near London most of the time, or maybe he is. She doesn't know, but when he's gone, he's not just on business. He is gone. He is no longer there.
00:29:25
Speaker
And I think it's important to note that he doesn't disclose to her the ultimatum that was presented to him. She doesn't know and she's in fact confused as to why in the world would he agree to serve the British government and in such a way that he would endanger his life
00:29:49
Speaker
her life, the children's lives, and really consign himself to a career of being mostly absent from their lives. Yeah. And this, I mean, this section, I feel like kicks off
00:30:07
Speaker
I feel like the middle section of this novel is almost a long discussion of state power. I mean, there is so much of that. What is the role of the individual within a society? How does a society function? What is war? What isn't war? Which come out in these conversations over the years between Berta and Thomas about why is he doing what he's doing? I mean, like you said, she puts it to him. You're not.
00:30:36
Speaker
English, you're English and Spanish, you grew up in Madrid, sure you went to Oxford, but why are you suddenly this patriot? Which is what he becomes, or at least what he presents himself as over time. As their arguments progress, he starts to talk about the realm, the realm with the capital R and the need to defend it, how
00:31:00
Speaker
how it is both his duty and his privilege to be able to, in some small way, guarantee society's functioning. And you have no idea the things that I'm fighting against, even getting to the point of referring to the people that he's against as utter bastards, which stuns her with the vehemence with which he says it. Yeah. He goes into this long soliloquy about how
00:31:27
Speaker
People like you, Berta, and everyone, you don't think about what's happening or what has to happen so that you can live this relatively blissful life and be safe and go about your day and shop and walk and do your teaching, which Berta does some university teaching in Madrid, and have dinner with your friends.
00:31:54
Speaker
there's this whole underbelly that you're not seeing of people that have to really fight enemies in order to make it safe for you and for everyone else. And he starts very much using us and we when he's talking about the British government. And she definitely sees
00:32:20
Speaker
a change in him in becoming this kind of British uber-patriot, but it seems to me that Moreus was kind of drawing us into the fact that in a lot of ways, Thomas is trying to justify this. I don't know that Moreus ever uses this word in this whole novel, but I think an immoral
00:32:46
Speaker
career. And I think that Thomas, in a lot of ways, deep down does think that what he's doing is immoral. And I think that he's trying to convince himself a little bit with this patriotism and these like, you know, the world would go kaput if there weren't people like me doing what I'm doing.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think in their first conversation around this, the answers seem a little bit more pat, like a little bit more like he's just trying to modify her a bit. He's explaining it to a certain degree. It's as their lives continue and as he disappears more and more and for longer and longer and clearly is doing more and more, that he becomes more vehement. And in some ways, and she talks about this, that
00:33:39
Speaker
He's doing these things that he can't boast of, even though he takes great pride in them, that he's able to do these things that no one else can do. So he gets these tiny moments of boastfulness with his wife that he then has to pull back from. And so, yeah, I think it starts as a justification. I think it becomes more and more his personality as it moves along. And no small part, because it's probably what's keeping him sane, is the idea that there is a greater reason for this than just,
00:34:08
Speaker
than just whatever the political climate is at the moment, which interestingly is something that Burda pushes him on constantly. You've worked for how many prime ministers now? Do you think the prime minister actually knows what's going on? Do you think that they really care? Their politics are different. At one point, once Thatcher takes over, she takes some pretty serious shots at Thatcher, I mean, from my opinion, well deserved.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, there's a moment and I think there's second or third longer conversation where she compares him to the Spanish secret police that would infiltrate and she outright says these were peaceful organizations that these groups, that this part of the secret police wanted to push towards violent, wanted to push away from peace in order to arrest them, in order to undermine them, in order to bolster this corrupt state that
00:35:06
Speaker
both Xi and Thomas agreed that the Francoist regime was corrupt, was wrong. And he absolutely loses it on that point and brings up the history of the British and, you know,
00:35:21
Speaker
all these justifications for what he's doing. And after he, or midway through, there's a moment where, again, this is all being told from Berta's perspective, where we go inside her head and she goes, that's just what it is. Anyone can justify anything depending upon their point of view.
00:35:37
Speaker
I wanted to just make one note about your point that he kind of boasts to her about how important what he's doing, although he can't describe what he's doing.
00:35:52
Speaker
is. And the points made that that she's really the only one that he can boast to, because even though she knows very little about what he does, she knows more than anyone else, because for everyone else in their world, including Thomas's parents, you know, he's he's in the diplomatic corps, you know, he's
00:36:20
Speaker
He's a diplomat and he's going around negotiating sensitive things. And there's a point where she realizes that she's become complicit in his secrets, that she's now kind of
00:36:40
Speaker
muddied her hands because she's going along with the lies and lying to Tomas' parents about where he is and what he's doing and about his ability to communicate with her. They asked, have you heard from Tomas lately? Oh yeah, he called me yesterday and he said he's here and the talks are continuing and he hopes to be home soon or whatever.
00:37:07
Speaker
It again goes to this whole, I think, if you had to kind of think of three kind of overarching themes that seem to cover all of Moreus's novels, secrets would have to be one of those three things. Absolutely. And again, it's the secret and keeping secrets and
00:37:30
Speaker
what that does to your psyche and what that does to the psyche of the people around you and that you work with and who you love.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's working out very nicely that we're talking about this one, the episode after talking about a heart so white and the secrets that I remember that his name is Juan. I'm going to still refer to him as the narrator. The narrator's father was keeping in what it does.
00:38:00
Speaker
And it's also interesting that after the first conversation where Tommas levels a bit, not very much, but a bit with Berta, she says that he's much better when he's back in Madrid after that. That when he comes home from these long periods away, he's distracted and sullen.
00:38:19
Speaker
seems out of sorts in a way, but that after a few days, he's very much like himself again. She's getting back the man that she fell in love with, the man that she thought she was marrying, the man that she thought she was going to spend her life with based off of their life together and as a couple prior to his last term and his last year at Oxford and what took place then.
00:38:46
Speaker
Which is awesome, which again goes back to the secrets, right? He unburdened himself enough that he could relax a bit with his wife. He could feel like he could maybe let something slide ever so slightly and then clam back up, but he didn't have to always be on high alert that what he would say would give away the game and so on and so on.
00:39:07
Speaker
But it's a very schizophrenic life for him because he's becoming all of these different personas depending on what the mission is and where he's based. And he takes different names wherever he's located and whatever kind of task he's been set to. He obviously changes his appearance. There's numerous times where we note that, oh,
00:39:36
Speaker
When he left last time he had a scar now he no longer has a scar because he had plastic surgery His hair is lighter. It's died. He has a beard. He doesn't have a beard, you know all of these different Kind of split personalities that he has to that he has to assume Yeah It's I mean
00:39:59
Speaker
Maybe this is maybe this is a good moment to talk about protagonist, or not, because in many respects, the pitch that we were put to him that to put to Nevinson.
00:40:14
Speaker
idea of being someone in the world, someone that matters, maybe not someone that anyone ever knows about, but you will know the secret history, the secret shaping of the reality that everyone else lives in, in many ways, making you into a writer or a narrator of the world in which everyone else exists. But in the structure of the novel, I mean, we get into Tomas's head, but we're never
00:40:42
Speaker
addressed as a reader by Thomas. We are by Berta. Berta is talking to us all the time in this, in this novel. And what's more, I mean, Thomas in constantly changing his appearance and constantly changing his identity in frankly, being like dropped into these situations, but being controlled by someone else. I mean, he might be shaping things by his actions, but he's not in control of his life. He's not in control of much of anything at that point.
00:41:14
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I think that's really a question in some ways that Marius is putting to the reader. The novel's called Berta, Berta Isla. She is talking to us all the time. And Tomás is gone for most of the book, and yet he would claim that he is one of the creators of this world in which Berta gets to live.
Impact of Espionage on Identity and Agency
00:41:39
Speaker
I think that's a really interesting
00:41:42
Speaker
There's a really interesting conversation that Maria says is trying to start in that regard. Yeah, he really has very little agency. I mean, he's he's at their whim. I mean, whether he gets to stay in Madrid for.
00:42:01
Speaker
six months or or six hours you know it's where wherever they need him and whenever they need him and under whatever circumstances he's gotta be there. And when you were talking just now about that and about.
00:42:21
Speaker
about the kind of, um, situation that Thomas is in and, and what the book sets up. This, this novel Berta Isla could almost be called your face tomorrow as well, because, you know, it's this theme again that, um, that no one, you know, you think that you know someone, but you really don't know
00:42:50
Speaker
if the circumstances are tough enough or change in certain ways, what kind of person they will really
00:42:59
Speaker
prove themselves to be. And I mean, of course, Thomas's face is changing all the time, literally. But but yeah, it's it is a really interesting thing that that kind of, I don't know, I'm getting more and more, I guess, into this maze of thinking all of these novels really talk to each other in different ways.
00:43:28
Speaker
I mean, I was even thinking on this read through like. Maria says novels are often driven by some sort of moral quandary, right, that the main character, the narrator functionally is facing. I mean, tomorrow on the battle is the death of this woman. And what are what are my responsibilities in the media and what are my responsibilities after the fact? A heart so white in some respects is.
00:43:55
Speaker
I mean, it's about what you owe to someone else. But these are all in the very private lives of individuals. This is on the very interpersonal, small-scale level.
00:44:14
Speaker
diving into something much bigger, much broader. It's taking place from Francoist Spain into the 80s, into the 90s. It touches on the IRA on ETA. It deals with Thatcher. It deals with the Falkland Wars. But it all does that within the context of this
00:44:35
Speaker
this couple, this family, and the secrets that they're keeping, the impacts they're having. It occurred to me to call this a proof of concept. When you expand it outside of the personal
00:44:48
Speaker
what do you owe to the other? And what do you look like the next day? Your Face Tomorrow even takes place under a much tighter timeframe than what this novel is doing. So the idea that someone might be unrecognizable the next day is a really interesting thought experiment, and we can go down all these digressions. But we're talking about
00:45:11
Speaker
Tomás being gone for literally months at a time and coming back looking completely different until we get to the point where the Falkland Wars kicks off, he leaves and he's gone. And not just gone for a period of time, he is very, very much gone.
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah, he's like totally off the grid, even to the extent that at least the Secret Service and Tupra claim that they've lost his signal. They don't know where he is. And when it's going on, like,
00:45:47
Speaker
18 months that he's been gone bertha starts calling to and saying you know i know that that i'm not supposed to be calling you i know that you might not be able to tell me very much but you know,
00:46:02
Speaker
Did he go to the Falklands? I mean, where is he? And at first, Chopra just kind of was like, oh, I can't really talk, but he'll be back. Don't worry. But then is the years, and it becomes 12 years.
00:46:21
Speaker
Mount, even Touper is forced to come to Madrid and Talberta, listen, we don't know whether he's dead or what, but we've lost contact with him.
00:46:40
Speaker
And Tuprah being such a sensitive guy starts reciting British and Spanish law to her about like when someone can be deemed dead and when she could be a widow and remarried and when she's eligible for Tomasa's pension benefits and all that kind of stuff.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, for much of the novel, she assumes that he very well might be dead. And what we keep reading about very much is this
00:47:21
Speaker
almost ambivalence that Berta has about waiting. She hates waiting. She hates like expecting every time the phone rings that it might be news of him or looking out of her balcony at the park across the way and like looking at all of the people walking and you know
00:47:43
Speaker
using her binoculars and could that be him? Is that him? Is he coming back? But yeah, it's this waiting that she does, but she almost thinks that maybe the waiting is better than the truth. Yeah, and there's also an interesting comment that she makes about how she refers to herself as, how does she put it?
00:48:10
Speaker
a young woman and then in or no.
00:48:13
Speaker
a young adult and an older woman, referring to her physical appearance and how, in a way, it feels like her body is refusing to change from the time when Thomas saw it last, which is kind of a, again, that's an interesting counterpoint to Thomas's constantly changing appearances and shifting lives and, you know, what languages or accents is he living in?
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's. He goes through I mean.
00:48:48
Speaker
There's a scene when they're having an argument before his disappearance, where he keeps changing his accent on her. At one point, he adopts an American accent. Walter Brennan, I think, is the name of the actor that she refers to, like a background actor in Westerns. And it really starts to freak her out to the point where she tells him to stop. And then when he does stop, he adopts almost a Cockney accent.
00:49:16
Speaker
They're having this serious conversation about what it is he does and how that interacts with the world. And he's doing it in voices, in voices that are not his, but obviously are because he's the one speaking them.
00:49:34
Speaker
I couldn't tell in that moment if he was just trying to be cruel or if he thought it was funny or funny in this. There was certainly a cruelty to what was taking place there, but the point he was trying to make, I'm not even sure he knew.
00:49:56
Speaker
His sense of self outside of his arguments for defense of the realm was so lacking that it was just as easy to sound like someone else and almost assume that a personality as it was to be the Tomas Nevinson that she's always known.
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah, I felt that he kind of reverted to this skill that he has and uses a lot for his career because he didn't like what she was saying and he felt threatened by it. And so he just kind of reacts and and acts out in that way. But that would be really freaky if the person you were married to just started talking, talking in some weird accent.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was even just trying to process what that would be like, especially in the midst of an argument that would be discomfiting, to put it mildly. All right, so back to the action, or at least the point we're at in the novel. So Tomás has disappeared.
00:51:09
Speaker
Like I said, he leaves right at the start of the Falkland War. It's not clear that that's where he was sent, though that is what is used as the pretext for declaring him dead. And again, Tupac goes into all the legalisms as to why that's the most convenient. But at the same time, he's not confirming that he was in the Falklands or anywhere near Argentina. We never really. We never really know where he is. There is obviously that suggestion.
00:51:36
Speaker
from the Irish couple or Irish Spanish couple that he might be in Northern Ireland doing some work, but that's never confirmed. And Thomas sort of suggests that they were confused as to who it was, that it was someone else actually.
00:51:54
Speaker
But so he's gone and Burda is trying, I mean, is making a life, something of a life for herself, raising the kids. She does have a few lovers over time, but no one that sticks around. She's not especially interested in them sticking around either. What do you make of the fact that she becomes quite close to Tomas's father? Yes. In this period. And this, I,
00:52:24
Speaker
I think that I mentioned it when we were getting ready for the show that I don't ever recall in a novel where the mother-in-law becomes a central figure in these books, but the father-in-law very often does.
00:52:41
Speaker
Which is also kind of interesting, right? Because Marius never married. And his father outlived his mother, which is often the case for his characters. But it's not like Marius had a wife that would have grown close to Julian, his father. Doesn't mean he didn't have partners over time. But it is kind of an interesting exploration there, isn't it?
00:53:07
Speaker
But yeah, Berda becomes close with Jack, Tomasa's British father. And it seems that there was always a perfectly cordial, you know, in-law relationship, but she reaches out to Jack after Tomasa is gone for about eight or nine months after the Falkland War kicks off and comes to an end and Tomasa's still not returned. And
00:53:32
Speaker
she basically is trying to ask him what he know, like, outward asks him what he knows about his son's life. And they there's a brief feeling out period. But Jack lets on the fact that yeah, he's a pretty good idea of what his son has been doing that he, he recognized the absences, he recognized how he came back, he remembers men he knew from World War Two.
Berta's Resilience and Responsibility
00:53:54
Speaker
And he
00:53:55
Speaker
tells Berta that she needs to wait as long as possible before reaching out to the numbers that she has, because sometimes these things take years. And that seems to be the seed for their deepening relationship, that they are able
00:54:16
Speaker
Suddenly, there's another person that they both can somewhat talk to about this important person in their lives who tells them absolutely nothing about what most of their time is spent doing.
00:54:27
Speaker
And notably, and I found this particularly painful, Tomás' mother dies. And he doesn't show up. There's no response whatsoever. I mean, that seems to almost kind of weigh in this kind of deliberative thing that Berta's always doing. Is he dead? Is he alive?
00:54:51
Speaker
that even though they put ads in all of the newspapers about her obituary and her death, that there was no response whatsoever.
00:55:03
Speaker
from him and he certainly didn't come back to Madrid for the funeral. But I think that that also kind of tightens the bond between Berta and Jack because now she's kind of Thomas's siblings all live outside of Madrid. So she kind of becomes Jack's
00:55:21
Speaker
caretaker in a way. Right. And both her parents died, I believe, in the novel, like within an 11 month period, both her parents and Mercedes Jack's wife die. So she even refers to herself as this widowed orphaned woman, raising orphaned children.
00:55:39
Speaker
She and Jack have lunch together every Sunday, and she calls him every day. One of the things I love about Berta is she can go on these really interesting ruminations and digressions, but she can also be so incredibly blunt. And she says that she calls him every day to make sure he's still alive.
00:55:59
Speaker
Right. If she doesn't get him, he has an answering machine and she asked him to call her back. She wants to check in every single day that he woke up that day, which again, when you think of like tomorrow in the battle and that discrepancy in time where the husband didn't know that his wife was dead and what that could mean for his future and all that,
00:56:24
Speaker
Yeah, Marius is playing with a lot of this. I think I absolutely think that his books are in conversation with each other.
Tomas's Return and Search for Truth
00:56:31
Speaker
I think this one might be even more obliquely talking to some of the themes and some of the ideas in the previous books than some of his other books have done in the past. That's my feeling anyway. Well, should we tell the listeners what happens to Tomas?
00:56:52
Speaker
Sure, because I think we both agree that this section of the novel is freaking weird and kind of throws the whole thing off kilter. Please proceed, Lori. Well, after 12 years, Thomas reappears in Madrid and comes home to Berta. But before he does that, we learn that he goes back to Oxford.
00:57:20
Speaker
And he drops in on his old tutor, Professor Southworth, and he asks him a very pointed question. And that has to do with the whole process of trying to recruit Tomás and actually successfully recruiting him
00:57:46
Speaker
over the murder of Janet Jeffries, his long ago, 20 years ago, kind of
00:57:57
Speaker
occasional bedmate and that weird murder that happened that made him so fearful that he was going to be arrested and put in prison and why he actually went to the Secret Service. But he starts asking his old tutor some really
00:58:19
Speaker
kind of hard questions. It's nine o'clock in the morning. He quickly drinks three glasses of white wine. The professor is rather
00:58:30
Speaker
At first, I think taken aback, this guy has changed so much. What's become of him, he's so cynical and almost angry. At one point, he even grabs Stockworth by the lapels and demands to know what wheeler knew
00:58:55
Speaker
about the murder of Janet Jeffries. I guess it's important to talk about what happened even before that visit to Oxford and what precipitated Thomas really resigning from the Secret Service. That is, he believes that he's got good reason to
00:59:22
Speaker
think that Janet Jeffries really wasn't murdered at all, that it was just a ruse to get him into the Secret Service. It was used as a recruitment tool to kind of
00:59:36
Speaker
put the fear of God in him, give him an ultimatum, say, you're going to prison, except we've got one way out for you, buddy, and you've got to come with us and you've got to sign up. And so, yeah, that kind of gets into this weird discussion with Stockworth. And what I really kept reading, because I forgot kind of exactly what happens in this part when I read Berta Isla years ago, was
01:00:04
Speaker
Well, does he go confront Wheeler? Alas, he doesn't in this book. But yeah, that's kind of a tense scene. And you and I talked a little bit, Tom, about the kind of incongruous way that Thomas learns about what he thinks is what really happened to Janet Jeffries.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, so Tomasa spent the last 12 years living in basically the English countryside in a small town. He's been a school teacher. He was basically being hidden away.
01:00:46
Speaker
Um, and so he couldn't even teach Spanish. He had to teach like geography and history and he's kind of this is Southworth and a, and it comes across as sort of the absurdity of it. This, this brilliant man, uh, when it comes to languages who isn't even like, as he's being hidden allowed to exercise his gifts, um, less that giveaway, who he is to some passerby or someone looking for him. Um, and in the process of doing so, he actually enters into another under relationship and father's another child. Um,
01:01:17
Speaker
But at the end of that 12 years, he is told that he can come back in from the cold, as it were, that he can go home if he wants to, which is obviously a shock to his partner. He basically absconds after when both
01:01:38
Speaker
she and their daughter are out of the house, um, goes back to London and is basically like put up again, put on ice. Like they're, they're some things to be figured out before he can go back home. And so he's just traveling around London and he goes to ma'am Tussauds. And while in ma'am Tussauds, he, which is a wax museum with famous people represented, he sees these two kids there, they're on their own. And initially he's kind of doing the math and figuring out the,
01:02:05
Speaker
It's not quite that he thinks that they're Guillermo and Eliza, his kids with Berta, but they're probably about the same age and it's hard to tell. But something about the little girl is really bothering him. And then he realizes that she is the spitting image of Janet Jeffries, which starts
01:02:22
Speaker
cause some other tumblers in his head to fall into place. And he starts talking to the kids and starts playing a game about being able to guess where they're from. And if he can guess, you know, guess things, he'll buy them something, which is a little weird and creepy, but it is what it is. And eventually he figures out that their mother's name is Janet and that her maiden name is Jeffries.
01:02:48
Speaker
Okay, so now he's starting to figure out that it was a trap. It was a dirty trick. And this man who's been playing dirty tricks for most of his adult life and taking such pride in his ability to shape the world around him and shape society starts to realize that all of that started with another dirty trick. So yeah, go ahead.
01:03:11
Speaker
No, I was just going to note that the kids also tell Tomas that Janet died in a car accident a year and a half ago. So it's not like he can go talk to her and say, hey, why did you get involved in this weird plot to fake your murder? Or even 100% confirmed that it's the same Janet Jeffries. Right.
01:03:38
Speaker
There's enough that's ambivalent. He's certain, but there's enough ambivalence there. And one of the things that he wants to be sure of is whether or not Wheeler knew that he'd been set up. So that's why he goes to Southworth. And Southworth is very clear, like, no, that is not what Wheeler would not have gone along with that. He would not have set that up. He's not that kind of a person. And also, he's an old man. Don't do this to him. Don't confront him. So he does it.
01:04:08
Speaker
He does, however, confront Tupra. And Tupra, my God, could someone be more dismissive of how they treat other people's lives? It's a remarkable scene in that
01:04:25
Speaker
Every time you encounter Tupra in Marius's novels, he is in such control of himself, of the people around him, of the situation, and that holds here, but there's such a clinical aspect to his control over someone who he has used and in some ways abused for the last 20 years. I mean, Tupra says that
01:04:54
Speaker
We both have been if the realm has benefited from you and you've benefited from the realm and Nevinson is like his eyes are practically bugging out of his head like I have benefited. You've had me hidden in the countryside for 12 years. Like what do you mean I benefited from any of this? I loved especially when Tupac mentions that
01:05:12
Speaker
They've been giving Berta severance payments for the past 12 years while Tomás has been forcibly removed from her life and in exile, basically.
01:05:27
Speaker
Right. And also that, you know, they've been supporting Tommaso. So it's been a real strain in the state for him to support both of them. Oh, and by the way, he started another family. Why would you think to do that? Like, I mean, Tubera is such a fascinating character, but also like, he is, he's described consistently as someone that like,
01:05:47
Speaker
is in some ways almost instantly attractive in a very particular way, but he's also still repulsive in how he uses and discards people.
01:05:58
Speaker
I mean, basically, it basically tells to Moss, you know, you know, you're kind of burnt anyway. You know, we can't really we can't really use you. So go along your way. I accept your resignation. You can go back to to London for a while and then go to Madrid. But you damn well better keep your mouth shut. And if you do, we'll always take care of you. See you later. Right.
01:06:28
Speaker
But also before that, Nevinson puts to him, why did you do this? Why go to all this trouble? And again, it goes back to the malleability of the state and this idea of a realm that they're defending, but a realm that is, in many ways, the laws of which are so conditional upon what the powers that be or various powers within it,
01:06:49
Speaker
um need them to be so of course they're able to manipulate circumstances such that he could be accused of this crime and of course if he had pushed back on it and taken taken his chances the case would have fallen apart and so on and so on but Tuber says to Nevinson like you know you are exceptional like you are a genius you are one of a kind there are very few people like you in this entire world
01:07:13
Speaker
So, of course, we would go to whatever links we had to to try and get ahold of you. Again, this idea of how remarkable Thomas and Devinson is, and yet how little actual agency he has when it comes to his own life, this genius.
01:07:33
Speaker
When Southworth sees Nevinson, his hair is thinned. He's put on weight. He's got this gray beard and mustache. His eyes have lost their spark. But that mouth, the mouth is still there. The mouth is still interesting. The mouth is what allows him to say whatever voice and whatever acting, whatever dialect, whatever he needs to say to blend in, to earn people's trust. That's still a part of him.
01:08:01
Speaker
I thought it was particularly audacious when Tupra says, well,
01:08:08
Speaker
You know, we didn't hold a gun to your head to make you sign up. If you were to just like, you know, not not given in to our suggestion, you would have seen soon enough that these these murder charges would have melted away like ice cream. He actually says that, you know, that there was no there there, that there was nothing to convict you and put you into prison. But, you know, you just hastily, you know, agreed to come along with us, which we know that
01:08:38
Speaker
The pressure on Thomas was pretty great at the time, and plus he was 21 years old. He was a very naive, innocent kid.
01:08:53
Speaker
He doesn't read people like Tuprah and Wheeler well. He couldn't see through the BS. He couldn't see through the lie. He couldn't see how remarkably incongruous all of this is. He has offered a job in the Secret Service. He declines it. His lover is suddenly dead, and he's being accused of the crime by, oh, the way out is the Secret Service. When you step back,
01:09:18
Speaker
it seems like there are things to ask questions about. And of course, when you're inside of the House of Cards, it probably looks pretty sturdy, right? But he's not one to step too far outside of it, despite his claims to being able to shape and control the world around him and the importance of his actions.
Berta and Tomas's Complicated Reunion
01:09:38
Speaker
So so Tomas eventually makes his way back to Berta. And I guess
01:09:45
Speaker
I guess the question that we're left with, she's not particularly 100% thrilled about him being back. In fact, he refuses to move back in. He gets an apartment very near, so he can try to reestablish a relationship with the kids.
01:10:07
Speaker
And they do have sex every once in a while and they spend some time together. But you get this sense that it's not surprising after what's happened.
01:10:23
Speaker
reuniting. And I guess that kind of sets us up pretty well for our next episode, Tom, to talk about, or to kind of venture, I guess, as to what their life is going to be like together, Berta and Tomás, and what the sequel to Berta Isla, Tomás Denvinson, is going to tell us about that life.
01:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious to see how that plays out and how that works.
01:11:00
Speaker
Initially, in Tomasa's version of things, he's excited to go home and to reunite with his family. He even chose not to marry Meg, the woman that he was with and had a child with in England, because he was married to Berta. Even if he was declared dead, he was married to her. In some ways, that seems to be Berta's
01:11:23
Speaker
opinion too. But after he's back and after he's settling back in, there are moments where she notices the same dissatisfaction, the same distraction in him that she saw back when he was back from assignment. The tension of not being out there anymore, maybe feeling bereft and lost. So yeah, I'm really curious to see. I'm curious to see what comes next after
01:11:50
Speaker
after all this, as he reintegrates, as he returns. And also, this last section is where the Dickens starts to rear its head. Some really, some really remarkable quotes from Dickens that Berta is like reciting in her head. Do you want to read some of them? Sure.
01:12:15
Speaker
The first, I mean, there are two specific quotes. The first one that emerges is, every human creature is destined to be a profound secret and mystery to every other creature. A solemn thought comes to me whenever I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses in every room in every house contains its own secret.
01:12:33
Speaker
that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts hidden there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it, the one that drowses and beats by its side. And there is, in all of that, something akin to awe, which is gorgeous. I don't know what Dickens' work that comes from. Yeah, I should have looked that up before we recorded. But I mean, I think it's interesting because it's, in some ways,
01:13:03
Speaker
Again, I know I'm kind of harping on this whole notion of the protagonist or not, but maybe bring that to a close.
01:13:17
Speaker
The last line of the novel is, that is what usually happens to lives which, like mine and his, and like so many, many others, simply exist and wait. And as that combines with the Dickens, I mean, it is that everyone is their own protagonist. Everyone is also a background character in someone else's story. And if Thomas Nevinson had called the bluff,
01:13:45
Speaker
These two would have simply lived a life in Madrid. I mean, other things would have happened to them, but this complicated separation and reunion
01:13:58
Speaker
everything that happened, all the conversations that took place that probed into who the other person is, wouldn't have happened the same way. And they could have been background characters in another Marius novel, but for that one instance. And ultimately, in some ways, I think it thrust Berta into more of the role of the protagonist, the driver of the story, and Thomas much more into the person that
01:14:27
Speaker
the person that accompanies her along the way. Well, two points. Don't you think that. Maria's intended Berta to be the protagonist. She's the she's the the title of the story. I think he did. But I also think that especially with what he was doing with how he how he wrote the novel, that those shifts in perspective that and the fact that I mean, he's writing this from the perspective of a woman.
01:14:57
Speaker
I mean, he hasn't done that in the same way, not like this before. Women were usually, I mean, they were powerful, impactful forces, but within the context of these male protagonists. So in some ways, I think he's not exercising, but like drag
01:15:18
Speaker
pulling a pulling a female character in one of his novels to the forefront, and especially against the backdrop of her partner or her husband, who is a spy, but she's the protagonist, not him. I think there's an interesting interesting thing he's doing there.
01:15:36
Speaker
Well, I especially love the fact that the last word literally of the novel is weight. Because to me, that's just the very palpable feeling that you get reading this novel.
01:15:52
Speaker
particularly the two-thirds of it that are from Berta's point of view, that this tension of just waiting. And she spends so much of her life waiting because every time he goes away, albeit it's never for 12 years until the last time, but
01:16:15
Speaker
it's long periods of time and and he's gone a lot and she's got no idea where he is or when he's coming back and
01:16:24
Speaker
And really that, just like we talked about Tomás not having any agency, she doesn't have any agency either because what else is she going to do but wait? Whenever the Spanish law allows her, she could get remarried, but there's still this shadow cast over her life, no matter what she does, that he very well might come back.
01:16:53
Speaker
But I think there's also the point that she is choosing to wait. I mean, she made the choice at a young age that this is who she was going to be with.
01:17:04
Speaker
We mentioned that she did have lovers after Tomas was gone, and it was clear he may not ever come back. But none of them stuck. And in many ways, she didn't want them to stick. And on top of that, she is teaching during this time. But her job is initially suggested as very
01:17:25
Speaker
part-time adjacent to whatever Thomas is doing. And it becomes, she becomes more and more, her intellectual life comes more and more to the fore throughout this novel. She's dwelling on Melville and Bobbie Dick on the morning that Thomas reappears. And this is not the first time that's come up. So
01:17:49
Speaker
Yes, her life is defined by the waiting, but it's also a life that I think she really, in some ways, takes greater control of because of the absence and because of who Tomas was and was in her life. I don't know. I think she's
01:18:15
Speaker
She's obviously, a lot of her life is going to be defined by the disappearance of her husband. But I think in ways that Thomas is not, she controls and defines her life for herself as well.
Podcast Conclusion and Sequel Anticipation
01:18:30
Speaker
Even though she never made the choice to wait for him.
01:18:37
Speaker
Really, I mean, it was it was a situation that was forced was thrust upon her. Well, she didn't make the choice. Like they talk about that. I mean, she talks to that before, after the incident with the Irish, where they threaten her and Guillermo.
01:18:54
Speaker
the day that Thomas is returning, she knows that when he comes, finally he's home, because they wouldn't talk about it over the phone. When he's finally home, they're going to have the conversation. And in that conversation, she's going to have a choice, whether to leave him and leave all of this, or to stay and to wait for him when he's gone. And he puts it to her as such in the conversation. And she chooses to wait, maybe not.
01:19:20
Speaker
all the circumstances around the waiting, but she does make the choice very early on to wait. Yeah, no, that's a very good point. She does clearly make that choice and it's kind of presented to her. Do I want to put up with this the rest of my life, having a husband like this?
01:19:39
Speaker
But I also think that she probably, in making that choice to, yes, I'm in it for good, she probably didn't anticipate that he could be gone for 12 years at a time. No, absolutely not. It's interesting, and it will be really interesting to read and to discuss Thomas Nevinson because
01:20:02
Speaker
Well, it's going to be the last novel, I think that we, the last new novel that we get from Marais, who, as we said, died last year, but it'll just be really interesting to see how he further develops and what he does with these two characters. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to dig into it and then to talk about it. It's a really,
01:20:30
Speaker
It's a really remarkable universe he generated over the course of his work. And I think it's really, I find it interesting that these are the last two books that round it out and in some ways tie it even more closely together. I mean, I haven't not read Thomas Edison yet. I assume that's the case, but just the reintroduction of Wheeler, Tupra's re-emergence Southworth, all of it, I think it's,
01:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think and I mean, Laurie, there are so many things else we could have gone into with this one. We could have talked about how we could have talked about the fact that Burda was in college, you know, in the late 60s in Spain and what that meant in terms of dealing with the government versus the world, the universe outside of the universe that is Oxford, that Tomás is inhabiting and what that does to the two of them.
01:21:23
Speaker
His novels are so rich, so it's fun. I've got a just weird thing that came up in my mind.
01:21:34
Speaker
I was thinking because over the last, well, especially during COVID, and maybe I mentioned this previously, but we watched all of the David Suchet Hercule Poirot, a bag of her Christie. It's like, I think, 137 episodes or something. Wouldn't it be so cool if someone made Javier Marais's Peter Wheeler? And so Peter Wheeler would be in each episode, like Hercule Poirot,
01:21:59
Speaker
and not necessarily like but but playing his character but just having all of these different spin-offs from Peter Wheeler because he's so recurring in this in these books and he's such a fascinating character.
01:22:17
Speaker
I mean, or even use Wheeler much like Hitchcock in the background, these episodes just sort of passing through. He is the sun around which all the other planets are spinning, whether they realize it or not. He is there somehow directing traffic, exerting gravitational waves. Absolutely. That'd be phenomenal. Well, it was super fun talking to you about Berta Islatan.
01:22:44
Speaker
This was great, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Tomas and Berta get on with things moving forward.