The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  A full-length mirror gave him a terrible update on his appearance — naked, quivering, genitals shrivelled, tear-stained face, both hands locked round the bottle as if it was going to get him ashore. Because that’s where he felt himself to be, out in some mountainous sea with no hope of landfall. He drank more of the liquid asphalt and sank to his knees. He was still crying, if that was what it could be called, this huge retching of the body, as if it was trying to sick up something bigger than itself. He drank again from the bottle of molten tar until it was all gone. He fell back, the bottle toppled and rolled. The label flashed away from him. He belched an essence of bitumen and slithered into a glittering darkness as if he was being laid down in a new black road.

  He came to steamrollered, all joints dislocated, bones crushed, face distorted. He was lying in a pool of his own urine, shivering with the cold. It was first light outside. His legs stung. He swabbed the floor and went upstairs and collapsed in the shower, grovelling in the tray. He was still drunk and his teeth seemed as large as cobblestones.

  Still dripping, he made it to bed and scratched the covers over himself. He slept and dreamt the fish dream. It was nearly beautiful to be flashing through the blue-green water, but the freedom of perfect instinct was disturbed by the terrible wrench, the visceral tug that was pulling him inside out.

  Tuesday, 17th April 2001, Falcón’s house, Calle Bailén, Seville

  The savage light stepped into his head. Steel tips flashed and sparked in his dark cranium. His organs were as delicate as bone china. He gasped at the ecstatic pain of the drunk.

  An hour and half later, scrubbed, shaved, dressed and combed through, he lowered himself into a chair in front of his doctor, hesitant as a man with elephant haemorrhoids that ran from nose to tail.

  ‘Javier …’ said the doctor, instantly running out of words.

  ‘I know Dr Fernando, I know,’ said Falcón.

  Dr Fernando Valera was the son of his father’s doctor and was ten years older than Falcón although the last week seemed to have evened up their ages. The two men knew each other well, both were aficionados a los toros.

  ‘I saw you across a crowd of people at the Estación de Santa Justa on Friday,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘You looked quite normal then. What’s been going on?’

  The softness of the doctor’s voice made Falcón emotional and he had to fight back the silly tears at the thought that he’d finally arrived in a haven where somebody cared. He gave the doctor a rundown of his physical symptoms — the anxiety, the panic, the pounding heart, the sleeplessness. The doctor probed with questions about his work. The Raúl Jiménez case was mentioned, which the doctor had read about. Falcón admitted it was at the sight of the man’s face that he’d noticed the chemical change.

  ‘I can’t tell you the details, but it had something to do with the man’s eyes.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you’re very sensitive about eyes … as your father was.’

  ‘Was he? I don’t remember that.’

  ‘I suppose it’s quite natural for an artist to worry about his eyes, but in the last ten years of his life your father became obsessed — yes, that’s the word: obsessed with blindness.’

  ‘The idea of it?’

  ‘No, no, becoming blind. He was certain it would happen to him.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘My father tried to tease him out of it, told him if he wasn’t careful he’d go hysterically blind. Francisco was appalled at the idea,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘Anyway … Javier … we are here to talk about you. To me you are suffering the classic symptoms of stress.’

  I’ don’t get stress. I’ve been at this job for twenty years and I never suffered from stress.’

  ‘You’re forty-five.’

  ‘I do remember that.’

  ‘This is when the body begins to realize its weaknesses. Body and mind. The pressures in the mind create symptoms in the body. I see it all the time.’

  ‘Even in Seville?’

  ‘Maybe more so in la maravillosa Sevilla. It’s quite a pressure to be happy all the time because … it’s expected of you. We’re not immune to modern life just because we live in the most beautiful city in Spain. We tell ourselves we should be happy … we have no excuse. We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing … and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition — death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it? We’re all half mad.’

  Falcón wondered whether this was intended to make him feel better about being crazy.

  ‘I was beginning to think I was wholly mad,’ he said.

  ‘You are under very particular pressures. You face the momentary breakdowns in our civilization, when the condition has become intolerable and the wire has snapped. You face the consequences of that. This is not an easy job. Perhaps you should talk to somebody about this … somebody who has an understanding of the work.’

  ‘The police psychologist?’

  ‘That’s what they’re there for.’

  ‘Inside an hour everybody would know that Javier Falcón was cracking up.’

  ‘Aren’t these appointments confidential?’

  ‘They get out. It’s like living in a barracks or a school in the Jefatura. Everybody knows you’re splitting up with a girlfriend before you do.’

  ‘You speak from painful experience, Javier.’

  ‘In my case it was even worse, Inés being a fiscal, and a very noticeable and unreserved one … perhaps we shouldn’t get started on Inés, Dr Fernando.’

  ‘So you won’t see the police psychologist?’

  ‘I want something more private. I don’t mind paying for it. You’re right, maybe talking it out might help.’

  ‘It’s not so easy to get a private consultation. There are also many different approaches to the science of the mind. Some people perceive it as a purely clinical condition, a chemical imbalance to be rebalanced by the introduction of drugs. Others use drugs and a theoretical approach based on say, Jung or Freud, amongst others.’

  ‘You will have to advise me.’

  ‘I can only tell you that so-and-so is a good psychologist, this one works exclusively with a psychopharmacologist, this one is a serious Freudian. You might not like their approaches. You know, “What does my relationship with my caca when I was a kid have to do with my adult problems?” It doesn’t mean they are bad at their work.’

  ‘You still think I should go to the police psychologist?’

  ‘There’s the added advantage of availability.’

  ‘So now you’re going to tell me that in the ciudad de la alegría, Sevilla la maravilla, there isn’t a single available mind doctor? ¡Estamos todos chiflados!’

  ‘We all suffer,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘The Spanish, not just the Sevillanos, rise above their problems through … la fiesta. We talk, we sing, we dance, we drink, we laugh and party night after night. This is our way of dealing with the pain. Our next-door neighbours, the Portuguese, are very different.’

  ‘Their natural condition is to be depressed,’ said Falcón. ‘They’ve given in to the human condition.’

  ‘I don’t think so. They’re melancholic by nature, like our Galicians. They have the Atlantic to confront every day, after all. But they are great sensualists, too. There’s a country that would commit suicide if you cancelled lunch. They love to eat and drink and enjoy the beauty of things.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Javier, getting interested. ‘And what about the British? My father so admired the British. How do they cope with life? They’re so reserved and inhibited.’

  ‘Well, to us they are, but amongst themselves … I believe they have this expression: “to take the piss”.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Javier, ‘they never take things too seriously. They make fun of everything. Nothing is sacrosanct. The famous British sense of humour. And the French?’


  ‘Sex. Love. And all that leads up to it. La Table.’

  ‘The Germans?’

  ‘Ordnung.’

  ‘The Italians?’

  ‘La Moda.’

  ‘The Belgians?’

  ‘Mussels,’ said Dr Fernando, and they both laughed. ‘I don’t know any Belgians.’

  ‘And the Americans?’

  ‘They are more complicated.’

  ‘They all have their own personal analysts.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s not so easy to be leaders of the modern world with the right to the pursuit of happiness written into the constitution,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘And they’re a mixture: Northern Europeans, Hispanics, Blacks, Orientals. And maybe that’s it, they’ve lost touch with their traditional safety valves.’

  ‘It’s a good theory. You should write a thesis.’

  ‘You’re enjoying yourself, Javier.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ he said, looking up, as if trying to remember why he was here.

  ‘Perhaps you should get out more. Work less. Be more sociable.’

  ‘I’d still like you to find someone for me to talk to,’ said Falcón, the weight back on his shoulders.

  Dr Valera nodded and wrote out a prescription for some mild anti-anxiety pills called Orfidal and something to help him sleep.

  ‘One thing is certain, Javier,’ he said, giving him the paper. ‘Alcohol will not resolve any of your problems.’

  Falcón picked up the prescription on República de Argentina and swallowed an Orfidal with his own spit. Ramírez was waiting for him in the office with a package addressed to Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón, with a Madrid postmark on it.

  ‘It’s been X-rayed,’ said Ramírez. ‘It’s a video cassette.’

  ‘Take it down to Forensics and get them to check it.’

  ‘Something else that might be interesting. I sent Fernández down to Mudanzas Triana yesterday to help Baena with the interviews. He got friendly with the foreman. One of the things that came out was that Raúl Jiménez used Mudanzas Triana because they’d moved him before. They’re holding stuff in store for him from his last two moves.’

  ‘His wife said he moved into the Edificio Presidente in the mid eighties.’

  ‘From a house in El Porvenir.’

  ‘And before that he was in the Plaza de Cuba.’

  ‘Which he moved out of in 1967.’

  ‘When his first wife died.’

  ‘When they put his name into the computer at Mudanzas Triana they found he still had stuff in the warehouse. They asked if he wanted it moved into the new home. He said no, and he was very emphatic. They offered to dump it for him because it was costing him money. Again he said no.’

  Ramírez left with the package. Falcón’s hand hovered over the phone. He sat back and thought about the quality of that information. The Orfidal was working. He was calm and concentrated in his thinking, although he was aware that he might be suffering a paranoid tendency — to believe that Ramírez was diverting his attention with tantalizing but fruitless information. He had two options: the first was to apply for a search warrant, which would mean filing documentary proof that he thought that events of thirty-six years ago had a bearing on the case. The second was to ask Consuelo Jiménez for access, but she’d already blocked him on the Building Committee’s files.

  The phone made him jump in his seat. Juez Calderón was asking for a meeting. He’d just had an unusual visit from Magistrado Juez Decano de Sevilla Alfredo Spinola. They agreed to meet before lunch at the Edificio de los Juzgados.

  Ramírez returned with the ‘clean’ video cassette from the Policía Científica. There was a printed card with the cassette which read: ‘Sight Lesson No. 1. See 4 and 6.’ The title of the cassette was Cara o Culo I.

  ‘Wasn’t this the title on the empty slipcase in Raúl Jiménez’s apartment?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘The killer must have taken it,’ said Falcón. ‘And … Sight Lesson?’

  They went to the interrogation room, where the video was still set up. Ramírez slipped in the cassette. Tinny music started up and bad graphics. There followed a series of sketches, each one five or ten minutes long, in which quite normal situations such as a drinks party, dinner in a restaurant, a poolside barbecue, disintegrated into improbable orgies of group sex. Falcón was instantly flattened by boredom. The music and false ecstasy irritated him and his palms began to moisten again. The Orfidal wore off. He breathed deeply to maintain calm. Ramírez leaned forward, playing with his ring. He made comments to himself throughout and whistled occasionally. Falcón came out of his torpor only once during the last sketch, which he thought had been the one playing on the TV when Raúl Jiménez was with Eloisa Gómez.

  ‘I don’t know how you can tell that,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘It’s just shapes on a screen.’

  Ramírez grinned. The cassette finished.

  ‘What’s this “Sight Lesson”?’ he asked. ‘If this was playing on the night Jiménez died, so what?

  ‘That was the last sketch of six. We were asked to look at four and six.’

  ‘We’ve done that.’

  ‘So it’s got nothing to do with the fact that it was playing on the night of the murder.’

  ‘Sight lesson?’ murmured Ramírez.

  ‘He’s teaching us,’ said Falcón. ‘He sees things that nobody else sees.’

  ‘He’s not teaching me anything,’ said Ramírez. ‘I know all that stuff backwards.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the point. What do you look at when you watch a pornographic movie?’

  ‘You look at them doing it.’

  ‘That’s why they’re called “skin flicks” in the States, because that’s all you look at. The skin. The surface. The action.’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Maybe he’s saying that there’s more to this than meets the eye. It’s not just genitals and penetration. We forget that the performers are real people with faces and lives,’ said Falcón. ‘Let’s watch that last sketch and just look at the faces this time.’

  Ramírez rewound the tape. Falcón turned the sound down to zero. They stood closer.

  ‘Have you seen the way these people are dressed?’ said Falcón.

  ‘It’s got to be twenty years old, this movie,’ said Ramírez. ‘Look at those shirt collars — I remember them.’

  Falcón concentrated on the faces and, as he moved from one to the next, taking in the eyes and mouths, he wondered what was driving these people to do this. Was the money enough to abandon morality, innocence and intimacy? He moved from a pair of vacant eyes to a mouth with gritted teeth, from a slack and lifeless face to a sneering lip, and shuddered under the slow weight of the small, unfolding tragedy. Did these people even know each other? Perhaps they’d just met that morning and by the afternoon …

  One of the girls had dark, curly hair. She never looked at the camera. She either stared straight ahead or looked down on the surface of the table she was leaning on, as if it was only a matter of time before she was on the other side of this experience. One hand was balled into a fist of bleak determination. He realized that if the camera’s focus had been pulled close-up on the faces while a voice-over unravelled the lives of the participants, the movie could have had documentary possibilities. Did these people have partners outside this temporary world? Would it be possible to have sex with seven or eight strangers and then go back home for dinner with a boyfriend or girlfriend? Did they have to give up on life to be able to do this work?

  A wave of sadness collapsed in his chest.

  ‘Seen anything?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘Nothing relevant,’ said Falcón. ‘I don’t know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Is this tío laughing at us?’

  ‘This is his game and we play it because we learn something about him every time. Let’s go to number four.’

  Ramírez rewound the tape, set it to ‘play’. It opened on a party in an apartment. The doorbell rang. The camera followed a gi
rl in tight shorts and a halter-neck top down a corridor. She opened the door and let in two men and two women. Ramírez put his big finger to the screen.

  ‘Look at her,’ he said.

  It was the girl with the curly dark hair and the balled fist, who never looked at the camera.

  ‘That’s a wig,’ said Ramírez.

  The camera followed the group down the corridor to the party, which was now unaccountably out of control with everybody naked and performing. The four new arrivals, rather than running screaming from the apartment, joined in.

  ‘There she is again,’ said Ramírez.

  This time she was stripped to the waist and sitting on the sofa looking up at a man’s bulging trouser front. The camera went in close as the girl’s hands reached for the man’s fly.

  ‘You know who that is?’ said Ramírez.

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Ramírez, his satisfaction palpable. ‘She’s younger and sort of fatter, but that is very definitely Sra Consuelo Jiménez.’

  17

  Tuesday, 17th April 2001, Jefatura, Calle Blas Infante, Seville

  They were back in the office. Falcón behind his desk staring at the cassette while Ramírez stood tapping his ring finger against the window, looking out over the car park as if he had the whole lot to sell before the end of the week.

  ‘At least we know she’s not a virgin,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘You know what this does?’ said Falcón, batting the cassette across the desk. ‘It does exactly what it’s meant to do. It confuses everything.’

  ‘It was supposed to teach us something. It was a sight lesson,’ said Ramírez, straightening himself up, shaking his head at the cars, a really impossible task.

  ‘How does this make you feel about the case you’re building against Consuelo Jiménez?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning his back to the window. ‘In one way it supports it and in another it destroys it.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Falcón. ‘It shows she’s capable of stepping outside the boundaries. But why should the killer, supposedly paid for and instructed by her … why should he send us the tape?’