The Man of Feeling by Javier Marías

slightly incredulous gaze of Dato, who, perhaps out of discretion or diplomacy, pretended to be thinking his own inscrutable thoughts whenever I talked about myself—the bare facts of my story or past or life until approximately a year before, that is, up to the moment when I had decided to live in Barcelona with Berta, whose existence I still had not even mentioned. I talked to Natalia Manur (and therefore to Dato) about my sad, solitary childhood; about my then unhealthy plumpness, which had brought me so much mockery and heartache (another view of the world); about my wretched and always abject relationship with my godfather, Señor Casaldáliga, who took me in on the death of my mother—his cousin—and of whom I have always suspected that he might be, as well as my godfather and second cousin, my ashamed and unconfessed father. I talked to Natalia Manur about the painful experience of being a poor relation, with no rights and no aspirations, with not even the possibility of complaining, obliged to live in a state of uncertainty that goes far beyond what might be deemed reasonable, never feeling that one had a home of one's own. I explained to her how, as a child, I was permanently and painfully aware that I could be expelled at any moment from my room—which, purely by extension, I assumed to be also my home—by Señor Casaldáliga, a truly strange and terrifying man: wealthy (I found out afterwards that he was enormously rich), tortured, mean, devious, somber, sarcastic and authoritarian, a judge by profession and the owner of a bank (but this, like so many other things, I only found out when I was older and through third parties: I knew nothing about his activities when we lived under the same roof). I sensed that my being there—as with my schooling, my food and my clothes—depended entirely on his fancy, not on his affection or sense of responsibility or on his clemency, and nevertheless I felt obliged, not so much to gain his respect and to try to please him, as not to gain his disrespect and not be too much of a disappointment. (I haven't seen him for a long time now: four years ago he was still living in Madrid, but it never occurred to me—not once—to go and visit him, although I did send him tickets to the opening night of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, to which he did not, as far as I know, come, at least he didn't drop by my dressing room to congratulate me. He's still alive now, having retired to the countryside, where he lives in a vast mansion in the province of Huelva, and we write to each other occasionally, a strange, belated father-son correspondence.) I explained to Natalia Manur how I had to ask permission to do anything: to move from one part of the house to another, from my room to the bathroom, from the dining room to the living room, from the kitchen to the bedroom, to say nothing of going outside and coming back in again. I never had my own keys. He always wanted to know exactly where I was, as if he were afraid I might come across him in a corner committing infamies that no one else should witness. Every move I made required his consent, and if my godfather wasn't at home, then I simply had to (this was what he prescribed and what I did not do) wait for his return before I came out of my room: put up with my bursting bladder, put up with my thirst, put up with my hunger; or be farsighted in a way no child, however sensible, unhappy and reliable, could ever be. Anyway, for years I had to avoid the servants (who, distinctly lacking in charity—and not at all enamoured of this fat little boy—promptly informed him whenever I overstepped the mark) and had to be very careful not to leave clues behind of any unauthorized movement: the sponge used to refresh my face had to be left as dry as it was before and in exactly the same position; whenever I gave in to the irresistible temptation to use the telephone in order to discuss the day's homework with my best friend, I had to