by Javier Calvo
The British people that fill the main walkway of the Ramblas have very short hair and sportswear and carry lit cigarettes and very large plastic cups filled with beer. Their necks are that intense red color that rural Americans' necks supposedly are. The main brands of their sportswear are Burberry and Nike. Many of them wear soccer jerseys of British teams. Some of them are naked from the waist up, in spite of the fact that the giant thermometer at Puerta del Ángel has dipped below the area where there are numbers to represent the temperature. A couple of them are wearing full-body rabbit costumes of the kind that seem to have become popular that winter in Barcelona. Costumes sold in souvenir stores for tourists, filling the streets with giant rabbits.
“The history of Pink Floyd is like life.” Bocanegra takes a pensive drag on his cigar. “Or perhaps one should say that life is like the history of Pink Floyd. First there was Barrett. The origin of it all. The original genius, if you will. But nobody remembers. How the hell could they remember? The only people who saw Barrett perform with Pink Floyd were a few Englishmen so stoned they can't remember what they saw. That was in the sixties, of course. Then came Waters. And that was the worst of all. Because it turns out that there are people who remember Waters. We remember him. And now we have to bear the fact of remembering Waters and remembering his genius and his music. And all we have is that memory of better times. And Gilmour the numbskull. Playing songs that don't belong to him and ruining everything with his lack of genius. You understand?” As the Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas, the landscape changes. The tiny street entrances on either side are filled with shady-looking people. With that stereotypical gesturing that people use when carrying out illegal transactions. Looking around furtively. Making transactions below waist level and looking over their shoulders with serious expressions. There are also guys vomiting with the palms of their hands resting on the façades of buildings and their heads hanging between their arms.
“It's a symbolic thing. It's like the ages of man or something like that. Barrett and then Waters and then Gilmour. It's like life. It's like remembering old friends that aren't around and not being able to do anything to make them come back. Maybe you'll understand when you get to be my age.”
The Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas and turns onto the circle with the monument to Christopher Columbus in the middle, and takes the coastal road that's moderately filled with traffic at this hour of the early evening. The thrashing that Mr. Bocanegra gave Aníbal Manta last night wasn't limited to breaking his nose with a head butt. When Manta fell to his knees, Bocanegra grabbed the baseball bat held out by a terrified Saudade and beat him on the chest, back, and arms with it. While Saudade and Eric Yanel and Lucas Giraut watched in terror. Bocanegra found it particularly pleasurable to beat up Aníbal Manta in front of Lucas Giraut. Due to the warmly paternal feelings he has toward his old friend's young son. A clearly paternal pride came over him as he heard Manta's ribs crack under the bat. Something similar to that warm feeling you get showing your son how to bait a hook or cast a line over the waves. While Aníbal Manta trembled on the ground, shrunk into a fetal position and protecting his head with his hands, Mr. Bocanegra looked at Giraut with a warm smile. Bocanegra had to repress an ineffable desire to give him the bloodstained bat, tousle his hair affectionately and encourage him to finish the job.
The coastal road becomes more and more empty as they leave behind the city and the airport. Soon the highway begins to flow placidly through an astonishingly uniform landscape of coastal housing developments and roadside bars. With withered palm trees flanking the road. Many of the roadside bars have multicolored blinking neon signs whose bulbs form exuberant female outlines.
Bocanegra takes out his portable organizer equipped with a satellite global positioning device and introduces the exact location of the roadside bar where his contact has indicated he can find Raymond Panakian. That's one of the big advantages of being Mr. Bocanegra: the fact that no one can hide from him. Thanks to his ubiquitous and always alert network of contacts, spread out everywhere. Or at least within the area of influence of his empire of cocktail bars, nightclubs, discothèques and restaurants. That empire with The Dark Side of the Moon at its center, which is like a living creature lying in wait for its prey. Always awake. Always sniffing around in search of those things that Mr. Bocanegra wants to find. And always willing to make a little call to Mr. Bocanegra's cell phone to let him know, merely as a little insignificant favor, where a certain individual, of certain renown in the underworld, that Bocanegra has lost just a few hours earlier, can be found. Something that is always appreciated. And something that Aníbal Manta in particular should appreciate. Because, after all, said phone call has just saved his skin.
“We're almost there,” says Mr. Bocanegra, still drumming his fingers to the beat of the Pink Floyd compact disc. And giving copious signs of being in a good mood. “Keep going past two more blocks of apartments, then three roadside bars, take a left exit and look for a neon sign in the shape of a girl with devil's horns,” he says, tracing the directions that appear on the screen of his global positioning system with his finger. “The place is called Judas.”
Five minutes later, Aníbal Manta parks the Jaguar in the client parking lot of the roadside bar named Judas. From where, less than an hour ago, came the casual call to Mr. Bocanegra saying that the individual commonly known as Raymond Panakian was having glass after glass of Macallan at the hostess bar and sticking wrinkled fifty-euro bills into the dancers' panties. The building that houses Judas is a block of cement similar to a warehouse, with a neon sign on the roof and surrounded by withered palm trees. With no windows. With an exaggeratedly well-lit main entrance that's protected by a couple of security guards with headphone intercoms.
“We have to do this discreetly,” says Mr. Bocanegra when Aníbal Manta turns off the engine and takes out the ignition key, making David Gilmour's voice suddenly stop. “These people are our friends. We don't want to make a scene. I know the owner of this bar. He's a good man. His business is based on discretion. Just like ours. And we wouldn't like anyone making a ruckus in one of our places. Right?”
Aníbal Manta nods. He gives the Jaguar's keys to the parking valet and gets out of the car, followed by his boss. The two security guards at the door step aside to let them through with barely the slightest shudder of the muscles behind their identical sunglasses, betraying the fact that they've recognized the two men. Once inside the bar, Bocanegra and Manta wait a second for their eyes to adjust to the reddish half-light. An old single from the English band Iron Maiden plays on the sound system. Aníbal Manta feels a warm wave of recognition. When he was a troubled teenager traumatized by the stigma of his physical appearance, Manta used to listen to Iron Maiden tapes. In his opinion it's obvious that Iron Maiden were much better than Dio. Better than Saxon. Even better than Megadeth.
The bar employee who approaches them with an obsequious smile is dressed in stiletto heels and sequined panties. She also has something like sequins, maybe glitter, sprinkled over her face and torso.
“My name is Anaïs,” the employee says to them. “I'm here to ensure you have an unforgettable evening.”
“His name is Mr. Bocanegra.” Aníbal Manta points to Bocanegra with his thumb. His plugged-up nostrils turn his voice into some sort of rich, buzzing boom. “We came to look for a friend of ours. If everyone minds their own business, I don't think anybody will end up getting hurt.”
Anaïs's obsequious smile melts like a bar of soap that's fallen into a vat of steaming sulfuric acid and is replaced by an expression of immense terror. She nods several times and moves away from the two men as quickly as her stiletto heels allow her. Her speed gives her bare breasts an exaggerated rhythmic vertical sway. Some of the clients that have been watching the scene surreptitiously also begin distancing maneuvers. Some of which are so subtle as to hardly be noticed, and others so hasty that they leave behind unfinished cocktails and scantily clad companions.
Raymon
d Panakian is sitting on a stool at the hostess bar with his back curved, dressed in the same blue, paint-stained coveralls he was wearing when he escaped the night before. His facial expression suggests that he's been sitting on that same stool for a long time and has drunk several dozen glasses of Macallan. Under the bar's strobe lights, the paint smatterings on his face and hair make him look like a lazily trancelike model from some seminal work of the psychedelic film genre. At one point he extends his arm in an almost nostalgic gesture to touch the genitals of the striptease dancer dancing in front of him. Something that looks like a string of saliva falls from the corner of his mouth.
Aníbal Manta and Mr. Bocanegra sit on the stools beside Raymond Panakian. One on each side. The striptease dancer dancing in front of him begins to distance herself subtly. Still dancing.
“Under normal circumstances,” says Bocanegra to Panakian's bowed and vaguely drooling head, “I would be the one to take care of you. As a question of hierarchy, of course. I'd be the one that'd make you understand that it's not right to leave a job with no notice, et cetera. And without finishing the job, obviously. It is one of my duties as supreme chief. To give those who are doing something they shouldn't a few good tugs on the ear and then smile and pat them on the back and tell them not to worry about it after all. That we're all friends here and that we've never held a grudge. And yet, given the present circumstances”—Bocanegra points with his head to Aníbal Manta, sitting on the stool on the other side of Panakian—“I think that my friend Aníbal is interested in being the one who has that little chat with you personally. And I'm going to let him have that.” His lips trace an enormous cruel smile. “That is if you don't mind, of course.”
Panakian turns his head slowly to look at Manta. Aníbal Manta nods his head and says something that's unintelligible because his nostrils are clogged with dried blood and broken cartilage and cotton balls. The only words that can be understood are “recognize” and “mother.”
Raymond Panakian's next movement is completely unexpected from a man of his age and complexion, especially a man who seems to have drunk so many dozens of glasses of Macallan. As if he had some sort of spring in his lower body, or perhaps a jet engine. Panakian shoots forward and up toward the spot where the dancer had been just a minute earlier. It's probably one of those physical feats born of absolute desperation and fear for one's life. Which can only be pulled off when the seized-up, desperate mind forgets for a second that the body is incapable of it. And it almost works. Raymond Panakian is about to successfully jump from his bar stool to the stage. Except for the fact that just as he is hanging in midair, Aníbal Manta manages to grab him by the ankle. Causing Panakian's floating body to jerk and fall facedown on the edge of the stage. Breaking most of his teeth against it.
“Grrfssslll,” says Panakian from the floor. Spitting out pieces of teeth and protecting his head with his hands.
“I don't understand,” says Mr. Bocanegra with a frown. He raises a hand to his ear in that universal gesture meant to show someone that they haven't spoken loudly or clearly enough. “What do you think he said?”
“I don't know,” says Aníbal Manta. “Must be one of those weird languages.”
Mr. Bocanegra picks up a pool cue from a rack beside one of the pool tables. By that point, the vast majority of people in the establishment have already left or are taking cover behind some piece of furniture, watching with fascinated horror. Bocanegra grabs the pool cue by both ends and breaks it in half over his knee. Then he tosses the larger piece to Aníbal Manta. Manta catches it airborne.
What happens next is quick, efficient and not pretty. Manta grabs Raymond Panakian by the scruff of the neck and lifts him to shoulder height. He pushes him against the edge of the stage in such a way that Panakian's body is conveniently folded in half with his rear end slightly projected outward. In one swift tug he pulls down his pants and his underwear.
“Be careful with the hands,” says Mr. Bocanegra.
Aníbal Manta looks at his hands quizzically.
“No, you idiot, with his hands.”
Manta lets out a grunt of acquiescence. Then he looks at Panakian's pale, scrawny backside. With the splintered piece of pool cue in his hand. With the same facial expression that Olympic archers have before releasing an arrow. Or bowlers before sending the ball down the lane. The spectators groan and make horrified faces and shake their heads. Aníbal Manta smiles beneath his broken nose.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 26
The Lost River Within
Eric Yanel stretches out his neck periscopically to see above the heads of the party guests, who are nothing like any idea Yanel has ever had about what party guests should be. In spite of the fact that it's perfectly clear that a party is being celebrated in the uptown nightclub. There are uniformed waiters strolling with trays of filled glasses, which are being replaced with empty glasses at a dizzying rate. Everyone is animatedly drinking and smoking and talking. But Yanel can't seem to reconcile the guests with his idea of a party. Many of them are fat. Others are old, and some are both things at once. No one is wearing really expensive clothes and most of those present have no discernible hairstyle. A veritable ocean of spare tires, beer bellies, fat ankles, swaying double chins and nonexistent waists as far as the eye can see. Many of the guests look as if they've never set foot in a gym in their lives.
After a moment, Yanel locates Iris Gonzalvo at a distant point of the party. Talking to a guy with a wide face and metal-rimmed glasses. The most striking aesthetic element of the guy talking to Iris seems to be an ass much larger than any ass Yanel has ever seen on a man. An ass that would even be too big on a woman. Big and fat. It used to be that Iris would never have been seen in public talking to a man with an ass like that. Yanel feels vaguely alarmed. With his drink in his hand, and trying not to touch anyone more than strictly necessary, he makes his way through the mass of unlikely party guests that separates him from his fiancée.
“I don't think you should feel bad,” the guy with the unbelievably fat ass is saying to Iris when Eric stops in front of them with his drink in his hand. “For having put out your cigarette in that man's face. Of course it is annoying that he's suing you and all that. Especially when you say you're going through a difficult moment financially.” He shrugs his shoulders. Now that he can see it up close, Yanel speculates that the guy's face is actually wider than it is long. “But you definitely were expressing what you were feeling. Solving a complex communicative situation. It was brave to do what you did. And, more importantly, you were completely sincere.”
Iris Gonzalvo turns partway toward Eric Yanel and looks at him with a slight frown. Yanel doesn't detect anything in her gaze that resembles sympathy. Which causes him certain confusion: Was there ever anything positive in the way his fiancée looked at him, or is he feeling nostalgia for something that only ever existed in his imagination? The truth is he can't remember.
“Eric,” she says to him, “This is Álex Jardí. He writes books. Those things people read. I was telling him about my problems, about you never being able to get it up anymore. And how no one wants to give you work anymore and we have no money and no one has called us in months.” She takes a sip on her drink without taking her eyes off of Yanel. Then she gestures with the half-empty cup to the guy with the unbelievably fat ass. “Álex published a best seller a few years ago. One of those books that help people find themselves and live happier lives. Called The Lost Rivers of London.”
“They're four independent stories,” explains Álex Jardí. “But interconnected. I consider it a sort of manual. To finding your own inner lost river. That's what I call that person we all have inside of us. The person we want to be. We all have one inside but we have to learn to let it out. To metamorphose.”
Yanel looks at the guy with the fat ass. His face is wide in a way that makes you think of cartoon characters that have been hit by a falling piano, making them more horizontal than vertical.
“I d
on't understand anything,” says Yanel. “I don't understand what these people are.” He points with his head toward the people around him. His facial expression makes one think of Muslim clerics at a summer foam party. Of Oxford graduates in the middle of a slum. Of Japanese people in any social event outside of Japan. “I also don't understand why we're here when we could be in some normal party. Who's throwing this party? I don't know anyone.”
“You don't know anyone because this is a literary party,” Iris tells him. “The people here are writers, editors and journalists. Which is to say not the kind of party that you're used to. There are no naked whores carrying around trays filled with lines of cocaine. And you're probably gonna have a hard time finding someone to suck you off in the bathroom.” She makes a vague gesture with the hand that holds her drink, toward Yanel's crotch. “Although it must not be very fun for you anyway. Considering you can't get it up anymore.”
Eric Yanel rubs the wings of his nose with a circular movement of his index finger and thumb, which is one of his traditional nervous gestures. One of Eric Yanel's Classic Nervous Gestures. One of those gestures that people who know him automatically associate with his idiosyncratic gesticular repertoire. The wings of Eric Yanel's nose seem to be always red. As the result of some kind of localized skin irritation. Eric Yanel's other Classic Nervous Gestures are (a) sniffling loudly and often while wrinkling up his entire face, and (b) abruptly tossing his head back to reconfigure his coiffed blond hair, the way hair models on television shampoo commercials toss their heads back to shake their long locks and the way regular people shake their long hair in parody of the shampoo ads. In Yanel's case, however, there doesn't seem to be any attempt at parody. Parody seems, in general, to be foreign to his expressive repertoire.