Javier Marías
Berta Isla

In the end, we know so little about everything we think we know.

The novel Berta Isla by Javier Marías has a circular structure. It begins and ends with Berta thinking she's living with a stranger.

For a long time, she couldn't tell if her husband was her husband, much like how one can't tell in a half-awake state if they're thinking or dreaming, if they still have control of their mind or if they've already lost it.

The narrative is nothing but an endless flashback that brings us back to the starting point, and it lasts a lifetime.

The stranger is her own husband, Tomás Nevinson.

Berta and Tomás had known each other since they were little more than children, from the moment Tomás moved from the Instituto Británico to the high school Berta attended, the Estudio college.

This was because Tomás had Anglo-Spanish blood, while Berta Isla was completely from Madrid. Seemingly friendly and transparent was Tomás, who naturally tended to leave everything behind, while Berta was a sunny beauty, sweet and imperfect, inclined to smile, cheerfulness, and laughter, yet at the same time, she had a deeply introspective soul.

Berta wasn't the only one in school to notice the newcomer, but she soon became the chosen one of the man towards whom she had harbored strong aspirations. They decisively and resolutely became a couple, popular because they chose each other among many suitors.

A couple that quickly got used to the distance, as Berta continued her higher education in Francoist Spain, while Tomás continued his in the elite Oxford environment. There he was soon noticed by professors for his extraordinary ability to learn languages and imitate accents with the same ease that others breathe. It didn't take much for a professor, who had since wartime tied himself to the secret services activities, to set his eyes on him. Initially opposed to following him, Tomás decides to accept the offer from the man in the services, the elusive Tupra, to save himself from the police who had listed him among the suspects for the murder of his English friend.

This is the breaking point of the initial balance, which splits the lives of the two protagonists. Tomás is a husband when he lives in Madrid, he is Mr. Hyde when he leaves. Berta is a wife when Tomás is in Madrid, she is Penelope when Tomás leaves. And, on a certain level, the relationship with the experienced events becomes dual as well.

He would miss it, he was glad it was over, he would miss it.

From this moment, the narrator and his digressions give way to Berta and her thoughts.

Berta Isla tells the story of those who stay, not those who leave. However, the mystery of Tomás's secret life keeps the entire plot in suspense.

The story is incredibly dense with literary and historical references and echoes, layered in multiple levels of reading, it seduces and repels. Echoes that serve as guides and compasses in the protagonists' journey, a reading of experiences, a tool against oblivion and confusion, a key to crossing the door of darkness and ignorance.

An evocative and dense intertextuality that serves but is not enough.

For Berta, Fleming and Le Carré, Crossman and Delmer serve but are not enough to understand the world of secret services, Tomás's other life: there are no words to discuss the facts and accidents, diseases, catastrophes, fortunes, and misfortunes. Like all conventions, they are accepted. Even more, it serves but is not enough to compare the thousand disguises Tomás wears away from Madrid with the famous disguise of Henry V, in which the king infiltrates his own troops under false pretenses to learn of their moods.

With Eliot's verses, Tomás compares the many faces of his existence, in which he finds a compass to understand them and not lose his Ithaca, Madrid.

And to me, while reading it, I seemed to recognize here and there, Saramago and Williams, Homer and Pirandello.

In this way, the story of Berta and Tomás echoes and reflects events, stories, and words, known and unknown, reminding me that we, in the end, know so little about everything we think we know.