All Souls by Javier Marías

life, no longer than that. One of the things Toby misses most is that now he hardly ever gets anyone in London phoning up to consult him. Destitution is possible but not inheritance. I think that's one of the reasons why there are so many bachelors here. It doesn't really encourage one to have a family knowing that, after a life of discipline and sacrifice but also of authority and wealth, one will have nothing to leave that family but the miserable pension of an obscure universitylecturer. Despite all that, I still hope one day to be bursar of this college. I know it won't grieve me that much to give up the money when called upon to do so. Above all I know there'll be no ill-mannered, spoiled child to reproach me for it, I mean for the extreme poverty that would await us after the years of pomp. There's no risk of my having a family."
    "Cromer-Blake doesn't want to talk to me or tell me anything about Clare," I thought. "He's quite capable of speechifying for hours on any subject in the pretence that he's talking to me about Clare, but he still hasn't told me anything it would be in my interests to know; he's capable of revealing his most intimate desires, his most deep-seated ambitions, of making all kinds of confessions I haven't asked for in order to avoid telling me anything concrete about his friend Clare. If what he wants is to distract me, to dissuade me and protect her from any attempt on my part at seduction, he's going about it the wrong way. The more he avoids and delays telling me what I want to know, the greater, more urgent, exclusive and all-embracing that interest becomes. I'm even beginning to forget about the girl on the train as being too hypothetical, too young, too autonomous, too unconscious of her own presence. Clare isn't like that. Clare is possessed of more self-knowledge, which is the kind of knowledge that makes people attractive, the kind that gives them their worth: the fact that they can shape their lives, plan and carry through their actions. The interesting thing is to act knowing that what one does or does not do has weight and meaning. There's nothing interesting about chance and the only promise innocence holds is the manner of its loss. Clare must have lovers, although Cromer-Blake doesn't want to tell me so, probably more out of friendship and respect for her husband than for reasons of discretion (according to what he's told me, Cromer-Blake needs, appreciates and indeed relies on indiscretion). What do I care about a husband I don't even know nor, if I can help it, ever will know? What do I care about the long-established marital ties of a city where I neither belong nor have any? How can anything that happened before me have any possible influence or weight? I'm free of the responsibility of having been a witness here, I've witnessed nothing. This static city was set in motion the day I arrived, only I didn't realise it until this evening of disquieting thoughts and events. And once I'm gone, what importance can whatever happens next possibly have? I'll leave no trace. This is just a stopping-off point for me but I'll be stopping long enough to make it worth my while finding what people call 'someone to love'. I can't let myself have all this time at my disposal and not have someone to think about, because if I do that, if I think only about things rather than about another person, if I fail to live out my sojourn and my life here in conflict with another being or in expectation or anticipation of that, I'll end up thinking about nothing, as bored by my surroundings as by any thoughts that might arise in me. Perhaps Cromer-Blake is right, at least in part: perhaps the most pernicious, and furthermore impossible, thing is not to think about women, or in his case men, about a particular woman, almost as if there were a part of our brain that could only deal with that kind of thought, thoughts that other parts of the brain flee from or perhaps despise but without which they cannot