Wonderful World

by Javier Calvo

  There are two guards at the door. The one who's just opened the door looks first toward the group of Ecuadorians with bandannas. Now that there are no cards or rolled-up bills in sight, the Ecuadorians are just seated at the table with their hands on top of it. Or standing with their hands in their pockets. Not looking anywhere in particular. Showing profuse signs of inactivity with their body language. The way the Ecuadorians are spread out around the cell gives the impression that they are posing for one of those group photographs of Hollywood celebrities. Or one of those group photos of pop bands. The guard looks the other way, toward the Russian-speaking side of the cell.

  “Congratulations, Bob Marley,” he says to Pavel. “Your cop boyfriend's here to see you.” He swings the bunch of keys he has in his hand with a distracted expression. “It's amazing how cops love you.”

  “I don't think he's that handsome.” The other guard looks at Pavel with a calculating expression. “I don't know why the police love him so much.”

  On hearing this, the Ecuadorians' body language transforms into gestures of penitentiary contempt. One of the Ecuadorians spits on the floor of the cell. Pavel lets himself be handcuffed, goes out into the corridor escorted by the guards and takes a last look at his bunk with an almost nostalgic expression.

  “Don't come back,” says the guy from Minsk as he takes his Russian pornographic novel back out from under the mattress. “Please.”

  The group composed of Pavel and the two guards travels through a muddled succession of hallways, stairways and rooms. Pavel can't make out any trace of cruelty or sadistic pleasure in the guards' faces, or any other traditionally penitentiary or police attitude that he's familiar with. In the visiting room, Commissioner Farina is at a table on which sit a thermos of coffee, a pile of plastic cups one inside the other, half a dozen croissants and various paper napkins. Beside the napkins are a group of the kind of folders that are used to transport police files. Commissioner Farina is flipping through a magazine about cars as Pavel sits at the other side of the table and waits for a guard to take off his handcuffs.

  Pavel glances around. Several inmates at the other tables of the visitors' room look at him with expressions of penitentiary contempt. Pavel sighs. Commissioner Farina looks up from his automotive magazine as if he had just realized Pavel was in front of him and nods with admiration.

  “Those hair things of yours have grown a lot,” he says, closing the magazine and leaving it on the table. Commissioner Farina has one of those chubby-cheeked faces and that very dense, black hair that are common in male adults from Barcelona. “The last time I saw you they were so short you looked like one of those puppets on TV.” He furrows his brow and turns to the lackey standing behind his chair. “What do they call those puppets?”

  “Puppets?” The lackey frowns. “I think I know the ones you mean.”

  “Doesn't matter.” The commissioner rolls up the magazine and starts hitting the edge of the table rhythmically with the rolled-up magazine, as if he were playing a simplified version of a drum kit. “The important thing here is that we're very happy to see you. We haven't seen you in months. Come by the station once in a while. You're neglecting us.” He makes some sort of sad face. “We're so happy to see you that we wanted to bring you a present. Some Bob Marley CDs or something like that.” He turns toward the police lackey again, still playing his simplified drum kit. “Did we bring him his Bob Marley CDs?”

  The lackey seems to be staring at the legs of the wife of one of the prison inmates that are looking at Pavel with contempt.

  “CDs?” says the lackey without taking his eyes off the woman. “I think we forgot them.”

  “We forgot them.” Commissioner Farina shakes his head the way people shake their head when they want to emphasize that something's a real shame but, in the end, that's how life is. “But let's see. We must have something to give you. What do we have around here that we could give you?”

  He kneels down and gets something from under the table. He places it on top of the table. It is a plastic tray with Pavel's street clothes, along with his watch, his wallet, his keys and his pack of cigarettes.

  There is a moment of silence. Commissioner Farina and his lackey smugly contemplate Pavel's terrified expression.

  “No,” says Pavel finally. After looking at the plastic tray with his belongings for a long moment. His terror seems almost moral in nature. As if in the tray there were a check for a million dollars in exchange for his letting Farina fuck his sister.

  “No what?” asks Commissioner Farina. Leaning a bit over the table as if he was having trouble hearing what Pavel was saying.

  “No,” repeats Pavel. “No way. I don't want to leave.”

  “You don't want to leave?” Commissioner Farina points with his head around the visitors' room. “This is jail, son. Everyone wants to leave.”

  Pavel finds Commissioner Farina a perfect example of the kind of humankind that makes the vast majority of his universal Rastafarian concepts fall apart. A perfect example of the things that he doesn't like about the so-called civilized Western world. When he sees signs of Western decadence of Farina's stature, Pavel starts to feel tired and depressed and in a bad mood that seems to screw him into the chair he's sitting in, there in the middle of the visitors' room. That seems to multiply the force of gravity.

  “We want you to leave.” Commissioner Farina opens the thermos and fills a couple of little plastic cups with steaming coffee. “You're going to waste here. I've always thought that you had a lot of potential.” The commissioner waits for his lackey to respond with a sycophantic little laugh. “A kid like you. So elegant. So tall.”

  Commissioner Farina takes half a dozen little plastic cups from the pile and spreads them out on one side of the table. Then he takes the croissants and spreads them out on the other side. He takes the thermos and places it at a point equidistant from the group of little cups and the group of croissants.

  “Imagine that all these things on the table are your friends.” He points to the group of little plastic cups. “Those are Leon's gang. Russians like you. Lifelong friends. And you've got that little one that's had an operation on his vocal cords. What's his name?”

  “Something Duck,” the lackey prompts.

  “These ones over here are Bocanegra's gang.” Commissioner Farina now points to the group of croissants. “More recent friends, but good friends just the same. You've got your old friends and your new friends, too. That's life. And what else do we have?” He points to the thermos. “Turns out you also have a sister. A dancer, says the file. I see there's an artistic streak in the family.”

  “One day I went to the bar where she works,” says the lackey. Looking out of the corner of his eye at the legs of the woman who is now standing as she ends her visit. “I like those Russian babes.”

  Commissioner Farina shakes his head.

  “He's kidding,” he says. “We wouldn't do something as disgusting as lay your sister. But let's just say your sister has paid your bail. Your sister hasn't actually paid your bail. I doubt the poor girl knows how to pay someone's bail. That is, if she had the money. And if she even remembered you exist. But just between us.” He leans over the table to say something in a confidential tone. “We forgive you. Arrivederci.” He makes a gesture with his hand as if he were waving good-bye. “And don't you forget to visit us every once in a while.” He smiles with his chubby-cheeked face. “And don't change your cell phone number.”

  In Pavel's opinion, the civilized Western world is a giant ocean of shit where everyone ends up drowning, sooner or later. Pavel doesn't really know if the rest of the world is an enormous ocean of shit or not. The only thing he's sure of right now, at that table filled with croissants and little coffee cups, is the basically shitty composition of the civilized Western world in which he currently finds himself. With no little islands in view to grab on to. He also has no doubt that right now he seems to find himself in the middle of the largest concentration of shit he has ever
seen in his life.

  “This not possible.” Pavel rubs his temples. “It is not good you, not good me. Why would you want them shoot me right here?” He points to the back of his neck. “You profit nothing. You put me out there, okay, you already know who's waiting for me. I went a step too far. Well, I made a mistake.” He slaps both palms simultaneously on his knees in an exasperated gesture. “Let me stay here. I confess everything. I spend twenty years here. The food is bad, that's okay. What you want me confess to? I'm dangerous criminal. Carjacking. Jewelry stores. Whatever you want. I did it all.”

  Commissioner Farina stares at him for a moment. Then he gives him a chubby-cheeked smile.

  “That was funny, wasn't it?” he says. “You're a funny guy.”

  “Bob Marley's a funny guy,” corroborates the lackey. “And they say Russians don't have any sense of humor.”

  Ten minutes later, dressed in his street clothes and with a look of absolute desperation on his face, Pavel leaves through the disappointingly small metallic back door for inmates who've completed their sentences. The traffic on the highway is light but continuous. Pavel walks as fast as he can under the blazing midday sun, feeling annoyingly conspicuous in his black clothes, to a phone booth in front of the gas station attached to the prison complex. When he enters the booth, he stares at the numbers on the phone with a perplexed face. When he really thinks about it, any number he could dial means vast risks to his personal safety. He spends a couple of minutes slamming the receiver against the phone's casing with a rage that is not Rastafarian in the least. Until the receiver is nothing more than a twisted broken piece of plastic in his hand. Then he wipes his hands on his pants and decides that this would probably be the most appropriate moment to pick up where he left off with his old life plans, ones having to do with one-way tickets to legendary islands in the Caribbean.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 17

  Fonseca

  Lucas Giraut's office on the mezzanine of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., is dark except for the circle of vanilla-colored light that the only lamp projects on the rosewood surface of his Louis XV cartonnier. The darkness hides the fact that there have been recent changes to the furnishings in the unilluminated areas. Although there is something ineffable in the office's atmosphere that produces the sensation that changes have in fact been made. The lighting, in any case, is clearly inappropriate for the business meeting now taking place in the office between Lucas Giraut and his mother's lawyer. Clearly inappropriate for any type of meeting. The rigid, hard-looking armchair where Fonseca is seated also seems clearly inappropriate. Especially for someone Fonseca's age.

  Lucas Giraut is sitting at his desk. Drawing something with his fountain pen beneath the lamp's insufficient light. One of those distracted doodles people make while having a conversation. Fonseca leans over the cartonnier and makes a vaguely threatening gesture with an extraordinarily light and firm hand that resembles the extremities of certain birds.

  “You need to sign these documents as much as we do,” he says. “Probably more. That's what I am trying to make you see. And you have to believe me. Without the restructuring plan you're left alone. And in a delicate position. How do you plan on running this company? You have no experience. You know nothing about business. You can't do anything with what you have, son. You have the majority of the stock shares, but your mother has the rest. The money. The houses. The boats. And you can't even do anything with those shares. Put your feet on the floor, son. We're doing this because we appreciate you. Step aside and let the adults take care of adult matters.” He leans his body back again and reclines against the rigid armchair. As if to show that the bottom line of his speech had already been delivered. Then he softens his tone. “Listen. Your mother wants you to know that she appreciates your effort to stand up to her. Contrary to what you may think, your mother knows how to appreciate these kinds of things, things that another kind of person could find irritating. Your mother is a person that appreciates insolence. Like your attempts to sabotage the International Division. Like raising Chicote's salary and giving him all those stock shares. Or generally doing everything that upsets your mother and is bad for our international campaign. What the hell.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Who understands you better than your own mother?”

  “My mother has never understood me.” Lucas Giraut runs a hand through his straight blond hair and admires the drawing that he is making under the lamp's insufficient light. “She doesn't even know me,” he continues. “The only reason she speaks to me is because my father named me primary stockholder. Before that she hadn't called me in six years. And she'll stop talking to me when she manages to get me out of the way. I know that she makes fun of me all the time. And that she doesn't care about what I want. She never has. It's like when I was a kid. She never did anything to make me feel good. She always gave me birthday presents I didn't like. It was almost as if she gave them to me because she knew I wouldn't like them. They were usually fishing-related.” The drawing Lucas Giraut is scribbling with his fountain pen on the top page of a block of notes depicts a vaguely human and vaguely female figure whose most striking element is a very flat oval face that transmits no emotion whatsoever. “Fishing rods. Fishing vests. Hats. Things like that.”

  “For the love of God.” Fonseca rolls his eyes. In the margin of the beam of light, his hands seem extraordinarily strong and firm in spite of the lightness of his limbs. Giraut thinks he has seen the same phenomenon in certain birds. “What the hell does that have to do with it? And what are you trying to pull by making me sit here in the dark? And in this chair? I'm sixty-five years old. Do you think any of this is going to do you any good?”

  “I was a kid,” says Giraut. “I don't think my mother understood what that means.”

  The suitological analysis of Fonseca's gray Armani suit offers the following results: corporate discretion, a firmness impervious to obstacles and an absolute acceptance of his place in history. Just as Lucas Giraut has a chance to prove once again, still doodling on the top page of his note block, Fonseca is completely immune to any suitological criticism. He is also immune to all the different Attack Strategies thought up by Lucas Giraut and Valentina Parini in the courtyard of their house. With his face reduced to a network of gnarled tendons and treelike veins. With whole parts of his face sunken in, giving the impression that his face is nothing more than a layer of skin and nerves and tendons stretched over a bird's skull. Seated in a rigid chair that is absolutely inappropriate for any type of interpersonal business meeting, Fonseca is the second most immune person to any type of mental attack strategy that Lucas Giraut knows.

  “Listen to me, son.” Fonseca keeps his face out of the lamp's conical beam of light. “We don't have much time. Your mother is not going to let me leave this office without you signing those papers. You know how she is. I figured you would have realized it by this point, but now I'm going to tell you even more clearly. It is not in your best interests to get in her way. Even though you're her son. So let's quit dancing around the subject. Tell me what it is that you want. If it's reasonable, you'll get it. And this”—he lifts a skinny but powerful finger—“is not a negotiation. It's a gift. A small gift to show you our goodwill.”

  Lucas Giraut slowly tears out the page he's been drawing on and balls it up, without looking at his mother's lawyer. He throws it in the wastebasket.

  The question of Lucas Giraut's childhood birthdays takes up dozens of pages in the secret childhood notebooks that constitute his subjective chronicle of those years. Year after year, Lorenzo Giraut systematically forgot his son's birthday, in spite of the many, not very subtle hints in the form of anonymous notes and red circles in engagement books that Lucas left during the days leading up to his birthday. Often Lucas Giraut wondered if there could have been something true in those systematic and perfectly predictable oversights. In his father's slightly amused expression and in the cheerful melodies he whistled when he got up on the mornings of his childhood birthdays.
As he stared at him from the other side of the breakfast table.

  “I need to know what happened the night they arrested my father.” Giraut concentrates his gaze on the next blank page of his block of notes with a look of concentration. “I mean the night at Camber Sands. In the summer of 1978. I need to know the details. Someone held the cargo in the port that my father was going to sell and someone called the police. I've been reviewing my father's accounting ledgers and his desk diaries, as well. That night there should have been someone else in the hotel room. Some sort of business partner. Someone who didn't show up. And who called the police.” He starts to trace the contours of a new drawing. With a frown. With the tip of his tongue sticking out artistically from between his lips. Finally he lifts his gaze for an instant in Fonseca's direction. “I need to know if my father was betrayed. And if so, I need to know who it was.”

  “Son.” Fonseca looks at him with theatrical fatigue. “Your father was a strange man. Who did strange things, like turn off all the lights and cover the windows with newspaper pages. Or like leaving you the majority of the company stock in his will. Which could only be a joke. A strange joke. Which is why I'm here today. To tell you that your mother is willing to forget everything. To forgive things other people wouldn't forgive, and perhaps to give you a job more suited to your talents. Perhaps in some other part of the world. Let's be honest: you were never exactly the son your parents expected. I think that in many senses the word disappointment could be used.” He pauses. Giraut doesn't, not even for a second, see Fonseca make any sign of being uncomfortable in his hard, rigid chair. “And as far as what happened to your father”—he shrugs his shoulders—“who could know about that at this late date? Your father was a disturbed man. Who associated with undesirables. And it doesn't seem prison helped him at all. When he got out, I don't think it could be said that he was himself.”