The Man of Feeling (1986)
Javier Marías (1951)
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
182 pages
As Javier Marías’ novel The Man of Feeling opens, the narrator addresses the reader directly, questioning whether he should tell us about his dreams, concerned that there isn’t a coherent story to be made of them. He assures us, however, that the dream he has just awoken from was different, that it was based on actual events from some years before. He then describe the moment when, while on a train to Madrid to perform in an opera, he raised his head from the book he was reading and took notice of the three strangers sitting across from him in the compartment --- two men sitting on either side of a woman.
In the dream, at least, the opera singer recalls feeling that it had taken him “a while to notice them, as if something were warning me or as if, unwittingly, I wanted to delay the danger and the happiness involved in noticing them.” (2) With this hindsight the reader proceeds forewarned of the conflicted relationship that will grow out of this chance meeting on a train. Indeed, the narrator then goes on to recall a moment, “shortly afterwards,” in which he is with the woman in a hotel room, telling her of his fear of dying alone.Marías has structured the novel as a kind of letter or recollection, written by the opera singer over the course of a single day, in which he recounts the events from four years before that came back to occupy his dreams of the previous night. During his telling, the opera singer repeatedly warns us that he cannot always be sure whether he is remembering the actual events, or instead the interpretation of them in his dream. Thus we are left to rely on a narrator of uncertain fidelity, his doubts about the accuracy of his memories coloring both for us, and for him, the understanding of those events, and of the motivations and sincerity of those he meets.
After the initial description of noticing the trio of strangers on the train, and of his later conversation in a hotel room with the woman, the opera singer goes on to explain how he had met up with the three again in Madrid. By coincidence, the opera singer encounters one of them in the hotel bar a few days after the train ride, a man named Dato, and ends up in conversation with him. The opera singer soon learns that Dato’s two fellow travelers are a married couple, that Dato works for the husband, and that he has as his principal duty to act as a companion for the woman, Natalia, as she accompanies her husband on his business trips.
Having captured the opera singer’s interest, Dato goes on to explain that the woman is not very happy in her marriage, and that on these trips his job is to keep her from getting bored during the day, while her husband carries out his business activities. He confides to the opera singer that though “it’s completely illogical” (44), Natalia has never taken a lover. When Natalia enters the bar a few moments later, the opera singer finds himself, not unwillingly, co-opted by Dato into helping keep Natalia happy during their stay in Madrid.
We already know the opera singer and Natalia will end up in a hotel room together, and not so very long after their first meeting, thus the eventual outcome is not in doubt. Instead the mystery of the story lies in these four personalities circling one another, trying to divine one another’s feelings and intentions: the opera singer, who falls so precipitously in love with, Natalia, a woman he hardly knows; Natalia, apparently committed to her marriage, though, as the opera singer recalls from his first glimpse of her on the train, appearing to be “afflicted by a kind of melancholy dissolution” (9); Dato, who may be simply looking for some help in keeping Natalia busy, but could also be instigating an affair for her with the opera singer; and finally Natalia’s husband, who the opera singer describes as cold and exploitive, and who apparently has a powerful hold over his wife.
Though he serves as our narrator, we never learn the opera singer’s name, and, of the four main characters, his intentions remain at once the most banal and the most mysterious. He tells us about his life as a singer, traveling from city to city, constantly on the move, and of his success in his occupation, but he seems judgmental and utterly shallow in his observations about his own life and about the lives of the people he meets and interacts with. He complains about the loneliness and lack of stability associated with his constant traveling, but he clearly enjoys his success and is accustomed to pursing and getting what he wants. And, during his stay in Madrid, his attentions turn to capturing Natalia from her husband.
In his recollections of the events that brought him together with Natalia, he tends to describe the pursuit not in terms of his love for her, but rather the challenge of winning her from her husband. He recalls his struggle to understand the couple’s life together, based on the strange and cryptic information Dato has provided him, the pas de deux he watches play out between Dato and Natalia as he accompanies them on shopping trips and other excursions around the city, and brief encounters with Natalia’s husband. In an extended thought-scene that is vintage Marías, the opera singer imagines Natalia returning to her hotel room in the late evening, after having spent the day with him and Dato, and meets up again with her husband; jealously playing out different scenarios of this reunion, he creates versions alternatively hopeful and damning to his intentions to win her. Oddly, however, even looking back four years later, he seems unable to articulate what drew him to Natalia in the first place.
The novel, in fact, though nominally a love story, does not present the typical encounters and physical interactions of attraction and love one might expect. In the opera singer’s telling, he describes his pursuit of Natalia, but we hear little about moments when they are actually together. Natalia and her husband share a hotel room, but after the initial train ride we only briefly see them together; we are left to learn about their relationship second hand.
Marías engages the reader here not with physical action, but rather with the labyrinthine psychology of desire. The drama plays out in the mind of the opera singer as he recalls, through an uncertain mix of his memories and his dreams, the sudden appearance of three strangers into his life, and how this meeting led to unexpected changes in his life. In a subtle and compelling approach to storytelling that Marías has perfected, we recognize in the opera singer’s reminiscences --- in what he highlights and what he ignores, in how he interprets and is affected by what he has experienced --- our own insecurities, quirks and obsessions.
Other reviews / information: Other works I have read by Marías, though I read all but two before I began this blog of reviews:
• The Infatuations: A woman learns that the male half of a couple she has seen repeatedly at a café has been killed, and she becomes involved in trying to understand what happened to him; my review here.
• While the Women are Sleeping: A collection of short stories; my review here.
• When I was Mortal: A collection of short stories.
• A Heart so White: A novel of a man who upon getting married reconsiders his past.
• Dark Back of Time: A novel written as a kind of imagined biography; a study of human nature that will pull you in deeply and force you to consider ideas and fears you had tried to leave buried in your subconscious.
You can find quotes from some of these works, and from The Man of Feeling here.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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