All Souls by Javier Marías Page A

contents of several plates, were not only crumbs, peas and mushrooms (which have a natural propensity to leap) but also bits of steamed potato, the bones of several lemon sole, great gobs of thick sauces, the spectacles belonging to the ugly professor from Leiden (even uglier without them) and pools of spilled wine of various hues. (Fortunately, the gowns, as well as serving the twin functions of concealment and aesthetics, also protect the elegant clothes worn at high table from the unconscionable, seemingly infinite amounts of filth and debris generated.) The five servants, however, having reached some agreement, were now engaged in holding down the table at the other end - ruffling the hair of the literary scholar seated there - to ensure that the vibrations from the hammer blows and the weight of the Warden's monstrous body, now lying almost completely across the table, did no further damage. Gradually (although in fact it took only a matter of seconds) the refectory fell silent, or almost silent, for both the fervent Halliwell and the peevish Atwater were incapable of keeping their mouths shut for a moment and while the former continued drowning me in cider ("Even Viscount Pitt had to intervene in the affair! And Sterne mentioned the tax in one of his sermons!" he was exclaiming in rapturous tones), the latter, his thumbs tucked into his gown, continued to aim his exhortatory discourse at the Warden in the belief that the latter's fixed and bestial eyes were gazing on him, not on Clare's covered décolletage and face. Although at its wildest the hammering did not in fact last more than a minute, the situation (during that minute) became untenable. But since the only guests with unveiled eyes were not, given our lowly status inthe hierarchy, in a position to take steps and the eyes of the other guests who did have that authority wore the aforementioned layer of gauze that prevented them from seeing that the peer had quite gone off the rails and that someone should either speak to him or relieve him at once of the presidency (Lord Rymer, however, as well as being Warden, was an influential politician known for holding lifelong grudges), the silence grew ever longer, broken only - apart from the gavel blows - by Halliwell's and the luminary Atwater's imperturbable murmurings and by the shrieks of the harpy to the Warden's right, who, although arrantly fawning and therefore incapable of bringing the man to his senses because of the concomitant risk of annoying him, could not help jumping at every gavel blow, so close to the battered gavel stand was her prominent and doubtless silicon-enhanced bosom.
    During that one eternal minute I had the chance to observe all the other guests within my field of vision: the literary scholar at the other end of the table was slapping at the stewards who, in their eagerness to hold the table steady, threatened to overwhelm him, tousling his hair and shoving the elbows of their ten firm arms in his ears; to his right Dr Wetenhall, another of the ladies present, could have done with a helping hand in her triple attempt to cover her ears, keep two (half-empty) bottles from rolling in the direction of the Warden and to hold on to her precarious wig (possibly new) that threatened to become dislodged; her other neighbour, the head of my department (Professor Kavanagh, an easy-going Irishman, whose main interest lay in the successful horror novels he wrote under a pen name, a man considered suspect by both colleagues and subordinates alike precisely because he was easy-going, Irish and wrote novels), seemed amused and indeed was adding his own ironic contribution to the din made by the Warden, by keeping time with a teaspoon on his wineglass, the way people do to introduce  an  after-dinner speech;  to his  right,  were twomembers of the college (Brownjohn and Willis by name, two middle-aged men of science and possessed therefore of rather slow reflexes) who dared cast only sidelong glances at