"The second reason is simpler and perhaps less noble: nobody would want to listen to the litany of his bloody exploits, which range from robbery to dismemberment, rape, slave trafficking, betrayal, murder, torture, criminal fraud, embezzlement, defamation, libel, and calumny."—page 101, Voyage Along the Horizon by Javier Marías
I just completed Book Five of Voyage Along the Horizon. The main protagonist Victor Arledge speaks the above words about Captain Kerrigan to his object of interest Hugh Everett Bayham at its beginning. It is a hilarious statement, that seems to be adhered to for the first half of this section. However, about half-way through Arledge begins to detail most of the items on the list of Kerrigan's vices and crimes, along with a few not listed. After almost forty pages of stories about Kerrigan, as told to Arledge, and now relayed to Bayham, Arledge abruptly ends the tales and starts "to walk toward the dining room in the hope that it wasn't too late to get something to eat."
Things are now more tense between Arledge and Bayham, between Branshaw and the person he is reading to, between Marías as author and I as reader, than they have ever been since I first opened the book. Three more Books to go, and many uncharted territories to discover.
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