The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Officers in high-stress situations get given them,’ said Ramírez. ‘I had one after shooting a suspect dead three years ago.’

  ‘I haven’t shot anybody.’

  Ramírez shrugged. Falcón reminded him about the meeting with Juez Calderón at midday. Ramírez left, taking the rest of the group with him. Falcón called Lobo, whose secretary said he was out for the day. Sweat trickled from the high point of his forehead. He clamped a handkerchief to his head as if it was a wound. Damn this leaking, he thought. His palms moistened. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands and face, and took an Orfidal.

  The psychologist’s office was in some unvisited part of the Jefatura on the second floor with a different view of the car park. He was called in immediately. They shook hands and sat down. The psychologist was in his early fifties and wore a charcoal-grey suit with a waistcoat. There was a single sheet of paper on the desk in front of him.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been to a police psychologist before,’ said Falcón.

  ‘What about the two times in Barcelona?’ asked the doctor.

  Panic swept through him. He’d walked straight into a memory blank. Twice in Barcelona?

  ‘You investigated a car bombing in which the twelve-year-old daughter of a politician was killed and there was a shooting in a lawyer’s office which left a mother of three dead.’

  ‘Sorry, of course, I meant since I’d been in Seville.’

  The doctor gave him a physical examination, which included weighing him and taking his blood pressure. He resumed his seat behind the desk.

  ‘Why am I here?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘You’re handling a very difficult case with some gruesome details to the murders.’

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he lied.

  ‘Everybody in the Jefatura thinks it’s one of the worst cases ever.’

  ‘In Seville,’ said Falcón. ‘I was in Madrid before I came here.’

  ‘You’re five kilos under your normal weight.’

  ‘Cases like this use up a lot of nervous energy.’

  ‘In those two cases you looked after in Barcelona you weighed in at 79 kilos. Now you’re 74 kilos.’

  ‘I haven’t been eating regularly.’

  ‘You mean, since you separated from your wife?’

  A small abyss opened up as Falcón realized how many factors might be taken into consideration.

  ‘My housekeeper cooks meals for me. I just haven’t found time to consume them, that’s all.’

  ‘Your blood pressure is high. At your age I would expect it to be above your normal 12/7 but you’re 14/8.5, which is borderline, and you look hollow-eyed. Are you sleeping well?’

  ‘I’m sleeping very well.’

  ‘Are you taking any medication?’

  ‘No,’ he said fluently.

  ‘Have you noticed anything different in your bodily functions?’ asked Rato. ‘Sweating. Diarrhoea. Loss of appetite.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about mental functions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any cyclical thinking, memory loss, obsessive tendencies … like washing your hands again and again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any joint pains? Shoulders, knees?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you think why anybody inside or outside the Jefatura might have become concerned about your behaviour recently?’

  More panic surged through him. The diarrhoea he’d just denied suddenly became a possibility.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘Stress acts on people in different ways, Inspector Jefe, but the fundamentals are the same. Mild forms of stress — overwork with a problem at home — can induce physical reactions to make you stop. A pain in the knee is not unusual. Extreme forms of stress release the same atavistic mechanism known as “fight or flight” — that burst of adrenalin which will give you the strength to strike out or run away. We are no longer in the wild, but our urban jungle can induce the same reaction. The combined pressure of a heavy workload with distressing details, the death of a parent and the divorce of a wife, can trigger a permanent adrenalin rush. Blood pressure goes up. Weight goes down as appetite is suppressed. The brain speeds up. Sleep becomes elusive. The body reacts as if the mind has encountered something to be feared. There’s sweating, anxiety, rising to panic, followed by memory loss, and obsessive circular thinking. Inspector Jefe, you have all the symptoms of a man under great stress. Tell me, when was the last time you took an afternoon off work?’

  ‘I’m taking one off this afternoon.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Since you arrived in Seville nearly three years ago you haven’t taken any time off apart from a single two-week holiday,’ said Dr Rato. ‘What was your work load before you took on this latest investigation?’

  Blank. Panic splashed like ether against his chest.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Inspector Jefe,’ said Rato. ‘You investigated fifteen murders last year as against thirty-four in your last year in Madrid.’

  ‘What’s your point, Doctor?’

  ‘Do you think you’re hiding in your work?’

  ‘Hiding?’

  ‘There are attractive things even about the ugly work you have to do. There’s routine. There’s structure. You have colleagues. And it is endless, if you want it to be. You could fill your year with paperwork alone, I imagine.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Real life is messy. Relationships don’t work out. Friends come and go. And, at our age, people start dying. We have to face loss, change and disappointment, but within all this there’s the possibility of joy. However it is only achieved by making a connection. When was the last time you had sex?’

  Another jolting question, that nearly had Falcón out of his seat and pacing the room.

  ‘That wasn’t supposed to be offensive,’ said the doctor.

  ‘No, of course, I just haven’t been asked that question since I was at university.’

  ‘No male friends have asked you that question?’

  Male friends, thought Falcón. Female friends, even. It nearly squeezed a tear up to his eye, the thought that he had no friends. It seemed impossible that his life had slipped away from him like this without him noticing. When was the last time he’d had a friend? He hit the blank wall of his memory until he thought that Calderón could have been a friend.

  ‘When was the last time you had sex?’ asked the doctor again.

  ‘With my wife.’

  ‘When did you separate?’

  Blank.

  ‘Last year,’ said Falcón, struggling.

  ‘Month?’

  ‘May.’

  ‘It was in July, which was probably why you didn’t take a holiday,’ said Dr Rato. ‘When was the last time you had sex before you separated?’

  Falcón had to calculate using the ugliest of algebra. If we separated in July and she hadn’t let me touch her for two months then that must equal May.

  ‘That was May.’

  ‘A year without sex, Inspector Jefe,’ said the doctor. ‘How is your libido?’

  Libido sounds good, he thought. Like a private beach. Let’s go down to the libido.

  ‘Inspector Jefe?’

  ‘It probably hasn’t been so good, as you might have guessed.’

  That image of Consuelo Jiménez came to him, the one with her kneeling in the chair with her skirt rucked up. Was that libidinous? He crossed his legs.

  The doctor terminated the meeting.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Falcón. ‘Don’t you have to tell me something?’

  ‘I write a report. It’s not up to me to tell you anything. That is in the hands of your superiors. I am not your employer.’

  ‘But what are you going to tell them?’

  ‘That is not a subject for discussion.’

  ‘Give me the general idea,’ said Falcón. ‘ “Stick him in the madhouse” or “Tell him to take a holiday”?’
r />   ‘This is not multiple choice.’

  ‘Are you going to recommend me for a full psychological assessment?’

  ‘This was an initial inquiry following some outside concerns.’

  It’s Calderón, thought Falcón. That business outside his apartment with Inés.

  ‘Tell me what you’re going to say in your report.’

  ‘The meeting is over, Inspector Jefe.’

  It was more by luck than judgement that Falcón came out of the bullpens of the Maestranza with Biensolo in his lote for Pepe to fight that afternoon. He’d nearly hit a moped on his way from the Jefatura, and just missed shunting into the back of a horse-drawn carriage full of tourists. Seven bollards were now missing from the roadworks on Paseo de Cristóbal Colón. The bull selection process had shot past him. There had been some vague talk about the horn wound in No.484, which had reached him, and the other confidants had taken advantage of his distraction to give him the lote that none of them wanted. He called Pepe at the Hotel Colón and gave him the news.

  He went home. He was ready for nothing. His concentration fluttered like a blasted flag. His memory sieved disparate thoughts and images into his brain. He dragged himself up to his room and flung himself face up on the bed. His body shuddered with each sob that lifted his shoulders. The pressure was just too great. Tears ran down his face into the pillow. He gagged against the massive thing that wanted to come up through his throat. Then he slept. No sleeping pill. Pure exhaustion.

  His mobile woke him. His eyes felt like hot stones, his lids thick as leather. Paco told him they were down at the restaurant and he was about to eat all his chuletillas for him. He showered like a gaping inmate. He dressed and it returned some of his equilibrium. He even felt mildly positive, as if his breakdown had repaired some small but vital mechanism.

  During the Feria de Abril the area outside the Hotel Colón was always busy. The bellboys never stopped as cars and minibuses glided in and managers and promoters and team members got out. Fans always hovered around the cafés opposite. There were fewer today because there were no big names on the bill — Pepín Liria was the best known, followed by Vicente Bejarano and then the unknown Pepe Leal.

  Falcón went up to Pepe’s room. One of his banderilleros was standing in the corridor outside, hands behind his back. He opened the door, as if on a mourning wife. He murmured something to Pepe and let Falcón in.

  Pepe was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. His shirt was undone and outside his trousers. He wore no jacket, tie, shoes or socks. His hair was a mess from where he’d been gripping his head. There was a slick of sweat on his forehead and in the middle of his chest. He was white. His fear was naked.

  ‘You shouldn’t see me like this,’ he said.

  He took a sip from a glass of water on the floor and embraced Javier, then he ran for the bathroom and retched into the lavatory.

  ‘You’ve caught me on the way down,’ he said. ‘I’m nearly at the bottom of my fear. In a moment I’ll be blabbing and in half an hour I’ll be a different man.’

  They embraced again. Falcón caught the sharp smell of his vomit.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Javier,’ he said. ‘It’s good. Things are coming together. I can feel it. Today will be my day. La Puerta del Príncipe will be mine.’

  He was gabbling. They embraced again and Falcón left.

  Both the bar and restaurant were heaving with people. The noise was cacophonous. He squeezed into the comedor and kissed and embraced his way around the table. He sat down, wolfed the tuna and onions, dipped his bread in the juice of the roasted peppers, gnawed on the slim bones of the chuletillas and drank glasses of dark-red Marqués de Arienzo. He felt whole again, full and solid. His nerves were intact. There’d been some release in being found out. He didn’t care any more. Seeing Pepe so profoundly scared had marshalled him. He would embrace everything, including his fate.

  At five o’clock they made their way through the warm streets to La Maestranza. The smell of cheap and expensive cigars mingled with cologne, hair oil and perfume. The sun was still high and there was the lightest of breezes. The conditions were near perfect. Now it was up to the bulls.

  Their group was split up. Paco and Javier took their privileged debenture seats in the Sombra while the family took their complimentary seats in the Sol y sombra. Paco and Javier sat two rows up from the ring in the barreras. Paco handed his brother a cushion with the finca’s crest embroidered on it. They breathed in the atmosphere of la España profunda. The murmuring crowd, the Ducados and puros, the men with their hair combed back in brilliantined rails helping their silken wives up the steps to their seats. A line of young women in traditional mantillas of white lace sat beneath the president’s box. Boys with buckets of ice full of beer and coke patrolled the terraces. Cans were expertly hurled and caught by customers, who handed down change through the obliging crowd.

  The toreros led their teams out, all in their trajes de luces, following three perfectly groomed, high-stepping, dappled-grey stallions who necked at their bridles. Pepe Leal had rebuilt himself and was resplendent in his royal blue and gold suit. He wore the serious expression of a man who’d come to do his work.

  The stallions retreated, followed by the mules, who would drag the dead bull out of the plaza, nodding under their red pompoms. The three toreros practised slow, beautiful passes with their pink capes. The crowd’s anticipation tightened. The toreros moved behind the barriers leaving Pepe Leal, who was to face the first bull, out alone in the plaza with his cape.

  The door into the dark swung open. Silence. A single voice shouted encouragement and the half-ton bull burst into the sunlit plaza and the roar of the crowd. The bull looked about, charged, gave up and eased to a trot. Pepe called the bull, which thundered past him with no interest in the cape and savaged one of the barriers with his horns. Pepe brought him back and executed two media verónicas with the cape and the crowd broke their silence for him.

  A trumpet announced the picadors, who trundled out with their lances on their blindfolded, mattressed horses. Pepe drew the bull into one of the picador’s horses. As the bull hit, the picador leaned down on his lance and drove the point into the hump of muscle. The horse’s front legs came off the ground. The crowd cheered the bull’s willingness to charge and its strength.

  The picadors left the ring. Pepe’s team lined up with their banderillas, which they placed efficiently into the bull’s neck. Pepe came out for his faena and Javier and Paco leaned forward to study the final act.

  The nervousness and disinterest in the cape the bull had shown at the beginning became more apparent in the faena. It took Pepe nearly half his faena to persuade the bull to take to the muleta. When the bull finally responded the band played a slow paso doble. Pepe went on to kill the bull well. Javier and Paco thought it had been a creditable performance with a distracted bull. The crowd applauded, but no white handkerchiefs dabbed the air asking for an ear.

  Pepín Liria’s first bull did not take to the ring. It burst out into the bright roar, took ten strides and turned tail. It trotted around, butting the barriers. Its only moment came when, running through the cape, a horn caught in the ground and the bull performed a perfect half-ton somersault.

  Vicente Bejarano’s bull was strong and fast and interested in the muleta. The crowd took to the animal, but it was not Bejarano’s day. He could not forge any connection with the beast and, although he produced some fine sculpted moments, never controlled the bull.

  At 18.40 the sun was still shining on the expectant crowd sitting in Sol when the door opened into the plaza and Biensolo trotted out and took stock. There was no rushing madness, there was no charging at barriers or senseless butting. He looked around the plaza and decided it was his.

  The crowd murmured, unsure of this bull, worried that it might know more than it should. Pepe walked out towards him and laid his cape at his feet. The bull took exception to the intrusion and charged him, fast, direct, head down. From that mom
ent the crowd knew that this was the bull of the day and that if Pepe could control him then they would see something unique.

  ‘This should have been Pepín’s bull,’ said the man sitting next to Paco.

  ‘You watch,’ said Javier. ‘You’ll be crying with the rest of us by the end of this.’

  Pepe performed two full verónicas and a chicuelina with the cape. The crowd went wild with anticipation. Words were spoken between the torero and the picador and when Biensolo drove into the mattressed side of the horse with such stupendous violence that both man and horse were carried aloft right to the barrier, the crowd erupted. They loved this bull.

  Paco grabbed Javier around the neck and kissed his brother on the forehead.

  ‘Éso es un toro, no?

  One of Pepe’s banderilleros excelled in placing the banderillas. The horn tips were practically in the man’s armpits as he leaned over on his slanting sprint and there was a breathless, frozen moment when man and beast became one, before miraculously separating.

  Pepe came out for his faena and the crowd stilled to the purest silence in Spain. The silence of respect for the bull.

  The bull, mouth closed, shoulders heaving, a red sash of blood running down his right flank to the top of the foreleg, looked at Pepe. Pepe screwed the baton, which brought the muleta out to its full extension, into his palm. He walked towards the bull, pointing the toe of each shoe at him, holding the muleta behind him. The bull was patient. At four metres Pepe turned a shoulder to the beast and opened out his chest and slowly produced the muleta, as if to say: ‘May I offer you this?’ The bull took to it, ran hard and fast and dropped his horns. Pepe seemed to hold him there, forcing him to slow down, so that only when the nose met the muleta did Pepe allow him to go forward, drawing him on, telling him that this was the royal pace. And it was a beautiful thing to see, the gradual tensile twisting of Pepe’s body, smooth and strong as red-hot wrought iron.

  He brought Biensolo back and forth, and with each pass the dance improved, the relationship grew stronger, the mutual respect deepened. It was done so slowly that the audience didn’t notice that the connection had been made, the pact understood, that man and beast would play this out to its only possible conclusion.