_sera Buena Persona El Cocinero - Javier Marias... Apr 2026

To be a "good person" is a vague, almost decorative concept in our world, a label we apply to those who don’t cause us immediate trouble. But with Custodio, the question felt urgent. If he were not a good person—if he were, let’s say, a man capable of a sudden, quiet cruelty—would that bitterness not find its way into the ossobuco ? Could a hand that had struck a face in anger, or signed a treacherous letter, truly garnish a plate with the necessary mercy?

This title evokes the unmistakable style of Javier Marías: the obsession with the secret nature of others, the ambiguity of character, and the long, winding sentences that circle a moral question without ever quite settling it. ¿Será buena persona el cocinero?

I asked myself this question— ¿Será buena persona el cocinero? —while watching the back of the man who prepared my dinner every Tuesday at that small, overly quiet bistro on the Calle de Amaniel. His name was Custodio, a name that suggests guardianship, though he looked more like a man who had spent his life guarding secrets rather than people. He moved with a precision that was almost surgical, his shoulders hunched in a way that suggested a profound, perhaps even resentful, concentration. _Sera buena persona el cocinero - Javier Marias...

My friend Berta, who accompanied me that evening and who has the unfortunate habit of believing that everyone is exactly who they appear to be, laughed at my inquiry.

But I watched him through the service window. He was plating a sea bass with a delicacy that felt like a disguise. I wondered if he went home to a dark apartment and sat in the silence, regretting the things he hadn't said to a woman who left him twenty years ago, or if he was the type of man who felt nothing at all, which is perhaps the most dangerous form of "not being good." To be a "good person" is a vague,

If he were a bad man, his excellence was a deception. We were consuming his discipline, his technique, his professional mask—but never his soul. And yet, if he were a truly good man, why did he hide in the steam and the heat, away from the eyes of those he nourished?

I have often thought that the person who feeds us holds a power over our lives that is far more absolute, and perhaps more terrifying, than that of a doctor or a lover. The doctor intervenes when the damage is already done, and the lover’s betrayal is, at most, a matter of the spirit; but the cook—the man who stands behind the swinging doors of a kitchen, invisible and methodical—possesses the immediate capacity to alter our physical reality, to sustain it or to subtly undermine it, while we sit in the dining room discussing trivialities or the latest political disgrace. Could a hand that had struck a face

"He’s a cook, Jaime. He’s paid to follow recipes, not to radiate virtue," she said, her voice cutting through the heavy air of the restaurant.