There are many adventurers, real and imaginary, who have dreamed of conquering a distant kingdom, sitting on its throne and founding a dynasty. Among the former were James Brooke, who became the White Rajah of Sarawak; Josiah Harlan, who briefly became monarch of Ghor, in Afghanistan, or Charles-Marie David of Mayréna, king of Sedang (name of the main tribe that enthroned him) in the jungles of Indochina and who, at the time exiled in Malaysia, he died from a snake bite or a duel (it’s hard to say which is more interesting). Among the latter, the fictional adventurers who achieved a kingdom, stand out, of course, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnahan, the two hustlers from Rudyard Kipling’s unforgettable story. The man who could have been king masterfully brought to the cinema by John Huston with Sean Connery and Michael Caine, respectively in the roles of the first and the second.
I have been fascinated by these stories all my life—among which we could include, very broadly, those of Kurtz and Lawrence of Arabia—but always from afar. You have to have a lot of ambition and, above all, a lot of guts, two things I lack, to take over a kingdom (“the first thing he who knows himself to be apart has to demand of himself is courage,” he says in The royal road from Malraux that modern avatar of Mayréna that is Perken; “We fear nothing but drink,” Carnahan declares in Kipling’s story). And if I ever entertained the idea of being one of those unscrupulous and determined types, what the sedangs and the jarain do with intruders (the torture of the women) took away my desire for royalty. highlights, which is not that they color your hair but that they pierce your fingers in a horribly painful way). Or the fate of Dravot, of whom only the dry and withered head returns from Kafiristan, with its crown of solid gold studded with turquoises, that is.
The kingdoms are not for me, they are for others, for true adventurers, and those who can hold them with a strong arm. At most it would replace a king in the manner of Rudolf Rassendyll in The Prisoner of Zenda: provisionally, without anyone finding out and to practice fencing a little.
So you can understand how shocked I was to learn that anyone could ever think of me as a king. And not just anyone, but Javier Marías himself, Xavier I, king of Redonda, who would have considered becoming his successor, as his widow, Carme López, explained to me over coffee the other day. She “appreciated you very much and thought it would be a fun surprise.” That’s for sure. I was stunned, with the cup halfway to my mouth. Well, look, there are no people in the world or in the Kingdom of Redonda itself who would be excellent kings or queens, not to mention their literary blue blood, their pedigree, their merits and the affection that Javier professed for them. Just review the who’s who of Redonda and the great titles that Javier granted to friends, writers and artists: dukes, duchesses, viscounts and viscountesses, knights and ladies, ambassadors, consuls and Redonda emissaries, in addition to the honorary citizenship of the Kingdom, not to mention the Royal Master of Fencing or Lagardère that the Duke of Corso (Arturo Pérez-Reverte) holds as a double and that I like almost as much as “Viscountess Strogoff” (Inés Blanca) or “ambassador in Costaguana or Nostromo” (Juan Gabriel Vásquez).
My own title or rank is modest and does not imply nobility, whether of blood or any other, but it is something that I will carry throughout my life with great pride and trying to live up to it. It consists of the position of Chief of Explorers or Almásy —Javier winked (or made a fuss) alluding to the name of one of my favorite characters, the Hungarian explorer and adventurer Laszlo Almásy, on whom the protagonist of The English Patient, who assumed the title of count although in purity it did not correspond to him—. Actually (and worth the word) rising from Chief Scout of the Kingdom of Redonda to King would be a considerable leap. A pirouette worthy of an adventure novel or of individuals capable of notable feats. Custer, for example, was promoted, provisionally of course, to general for his cavalry charges in the Civil War, and Gagarin, I have recently read, went from lieutenant to commander, skipping all the intermediate ranks during his short but intense flight into space in the Soyuz and because his supporter Khrushchev ordered it, with great contempt for the ranks. In The dueliststhe film about Conrad’s story, the hussar Armand d’Hubert is promoted to avoid being challenged by his nemesis, his colleague Féraud.
Be that as it may, Javier knew perfectly well that I don’t have the makings of a king, come on, if in the military I didn’t become a private soldier, I’ve been at the newspaper for forty years in the same position as Deputy Chief of Culture without going up a step (also without being demoted , it’s true) and when in a moment of crisis in the supplement Lluís Bassets proposed to me to be the head of Babelia I said no, with the same horror as if they had offered me a promotion to sergeant in the Zinderneuf fort besieged by the Tuareg.
![British police raid against Mau-Mau in a Kenyan village.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/2G1WUFYgmbXau5LvW0Fd_pByWyo=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/F3E55PHHGNSUSOQF56HIVPSYHI.jpg)
The friendship with Javier was based on readings, hopes and common dreams, and on a mutual affection that could be manifested in things as unusual as the interest in the yeti, Captain Trueno, Colonel Blimp, the crusader castles, the infiltrated Nazi spy. in the filming of Henry V by Laurence Olivier, the black panthers, betrayal, Kipling, precisely (he said that The man who could have been king was the favorite story of Proust and Faulkner), or the Mau-Mau. The secret society that was created among the Kikuyus to confront the British colonial power in Kenya (and about which there was an adventure film with Dirk Bogarde, Simba, the fight against the Mau-Mau) was a topic that fascinated Javier since he was a child. When we became friends, to that interest tinged with childhood fear was added the distaste for the opinions of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan anti-colonial writer, also a recurring candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, who claimed the Mau-Mau ( of which one of his brothers was a part) and had attacked some characters that Javier appreciated such as Joseph Conrad, Rider Haggard (Kipling’s friend, by the way), Nicholas Monsarrat or Captain WE Johns, the creator of the adventurous aviator Biggles. Right now I’m reading a book, Mau-Mau, terror in Africa, by CT Stoneham (Iberia publishing house, 1954) that I bought with the idea of discussing it with Javier and giving it to him. He was enormously generous with that. Among my treasures is a first edition that he gave me of the memoirs of Custer’s wife.
![The writer Javier Marías, at the presentation of 'Los amores'](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/y0w-poPhXmyyMi1Ys5tnUzszquo=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/A22CAB5XXEUXSIJ3B66BVUGHHA.jpg)
I will never be king of Redonda – which is undoubtedly fortunate for the kingdom – but I have inherited something from Javier that makes me very excited. A Scottish formal suit, complete with skirt (green and dark Black Watch tartan), very elegant Prince Charlie jacket with square metal buttons, waistcoat, sporran, belt and traditional thistle buckle. The wet dream of highlander Daniel Fernández. Add the bagpipes and the pith helmet and you look like you stepped out of Alphonse Maire de Neuvelle’s epic painting of the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Does not include underwear, of course. Javier acquired it to wear when collecting a literary award in Edinburgh. I wear it at home at night and I don’t rule out going to some ceremony or official event dressed like this. A more stylish and better dressed Chief of Scouts has not been seen. I said that I will never be king of Redonda, but it may be that Javier left me the suit to surprise the natives of some distant and wild land, and, with a handful of rifles and some luck, create my own kingdom there and proclaim myself king. . Jacinto I, dear Javier, how exotic it sounds. “The son of man goes to war / seeking to win a king’s crown / in the distance he waves his blood-red banner! / Who will be the one to follow him?”
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#man #king