“Excuse my French, it’s a bit “brutal,” smiles Arturo Pérez-Reverte, before explaining that he essentially learned the language of Molière from the “taxi drivers and soldiers” he encountered during his years as a war reporter. Ultimately, the French of the prolific Spanish author, who has restored the nobility of the historical novel, proves to be of good quality and will be used throughout the interview granted on the occasion of the publication of his 29th novel, The Italian*. This adventure story set in Gibraltar in 1942 and 1943 is the first to be published by his new French publisher, Gallimard, which is also preparing to republish most of the titles of his work in paperback (The painting by the Flemish master, (His first bestseller, published in 1990, is already available).
His new opus relates the dangerous collusion between a Spanish bookseller, Elena Arbuès, and an Italian combat diver, Teseo Lombardo, tasked with sinking Royal Navy ships. Beyond the impeccably realistic action scenes in the depths of the Bay of Algeciras, the fruit of meticulous research, the story explores themes dear to the author: courage, even if irrational, the relationship between life and books, loves and their irrevocable implications, all of which lead to a reflection on the notions of heroism and honor, dear to this great reader of Joseph Conrad. Interview.
L’Express: How does the desire for a new book arise?
Arturo Perez-Reverte: There are many kinds of novelists. For my part, I have always had a lot of stories in my head, from a very young age. I watched films on TV, at the cinema, I read books, I dressed up, I played with friends, brothers, I have always had a disposition to invent stories. When I got into journalism, it was to check if reality would correspond to what I had read in books: if I would find girls, heroes, villains who would resemble those in the novels. And now that I am 72 years old, my head is still full of stories, and what I have read, what I have experienced and what I imagine are mixed together.
So one day something almost mystical happens, a girl who passes by, a friend who says a sentence, a piece of music, a reading activates that part of my brain and will trigger the novel. This time, the idea that guided me was the way a woman’s gaze constructs the hero. The Italian is a soldier, he doesn’t say anything interesting, he is not cultured, he is not an intellectual, but he is handsome and he is courageous. Elena, on the other hand, has read, she knows The Iliad and the Odyssey, It is she who projects onto him and constructs the hero. A man is never a complete hero if there is not a woman looking at him. That was the starting point. I tell what I have lived and what I imagine. That is why I do not consider myself an artist, in the way that my friend Javier Marias could be, who lived literature in an intellectual way, from an inner world: I am a craftsman.
The sense of honor is shared by many of your characters, but a very personal honor, by virtue of which one is essentially accountable to oneself…
Indeed, and there are several reasons for this. I come from a family where this word, “honor”, had a certain meaning. It meant panache in the face of adversity. The given word was important. When I was a child, if I gave my word of honor and someone made fun of me, I would fight… I still give it today but not many people do it anymore.. [Rires.] Then, the readings. As a child, I read The Three Musketeers, a story in which honor, loyalty, fidelity to principles, to the country, to friends, matter… The same in the films I saw as a child. So I was raised to be a gentleman, and when I later found myself in situations that contradicted these values, I always had as a refuge to ask myself what were the things that one could not do and those that one had to do. Because you are your own witness, and one day you may regret certain choices.
Like all citizens of my generation, I was raised on grandiloquent words like “homeland”, “honor”, “flag”, “religion”, “God”. Real life was quick to destroy them. And when these grand words have been destroyed, it is appropriate to construct one’s own rules. This was my case and that of most of my characters. They had to give up an idealization of the world and develop personal rules in which to take refuge.
“I never stopped looking for Miladys, I even married one.”
Does this also come to you from reading Conrad?
I read The Shadow Line when I was 15. I was linked to the sea from a very young age: my father, an engineer, travelled on oil tankers to the producing countries, his friends were naval captains, my uncle was also in the navy, my grandfather was a war sailor… When I read Conrad, it was as if he was talking about me, I was not a witness, but a protagonist of everything that happened to Lord Jim, to Marlow… There are authors to whom I owe a lot: Dumas, Stendhal, Chateaubriand, Barjavel, Montaigne, Dostoyevsky, Scott Fitzgerald, but little by little they remained behind me, they gave me everything I could take from them, I squeezed them like lemons. The only one who still lives with me is Conrad.
Two weeks ago I reread it for the tenth time The Rescue, always with the same humility, I take notes, I notice things that I had not yet seen… In my office, I have a photo of him, as well as on my boat. Conrad is a friend. He spent thirty years at sea, I spent twenty covering the war [avant de devenir écrivain]. I have a library with 300 of his books, biographies, correspondence, in all languages. A friend recently redid the Spanish translation ofIn the heart of darknessand no translation of the first paragraph was correct, because the maneuver that Conrad describes requires a very good knowledge of the marine world. My friend asked for my help, and I proposed another translation. I am proud of that…
Your female characters are very strong, independent, powerful women, one could say…
I think it all starts with Dumas. I read The Three Musketeers, and I fall in love with Milady, a woman who fights alone against the world of men. My conception that women are soldiers lost in enemy territory comes from there. She has marked my life. I have never stopped looking for Miladys, I even married one… [Sourire.] The idea of women facing a hostile world has been there from the beginning. And I have continued to explore this idea in my novels, like The Tango of the Old Guard. Man is not as interesting as woman. Even the happiest woman in appearance has corners of solitude, of darkness. In Spain, I recently suffered a campaign of feminists, in relation to language [NDLR : il a pris position contre l’écriture inclusive]. I need an effective professional tool, I’m not ready to let myself be bothered by bullshit that has nothing to do with language. But everyone who reads my novels knows that the women in them are very powerful, in control of their existence. In The Italian, Elena becomes a heroine through defiance.
You are a great book collector, how do you see its future?
I am not a bibliophile: I have books to read them. There is a real contraction of readers. The Spanish edition of The Queen of the South [2002] had sold 800,000 copies in a year; today, if I manage to cross the 200,000 or 300,000 mark, it will be an achievement. And yet, I am a privileged writer. The book as we know it will exist for another ten or twenty years, and it will be an object for the elite. But that does not matter. Human beings, from the day they faced mammoths, have always told and listened to stories. It elevates, amuses, and it will continue, but the media will be different. The book as an object of reading is already dead. For me, it is too late, I am not going to try to adapt, I am going down to the next one…
* The Italian, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Gallimard, 448 p., €24.
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