Wonderful World

by Javier Calvo

  “Shouldn't we get out of here?” Yanel says in that moment.

  Manta snaps out of his ruminations with a blink. Saudade is lighting a cigarette.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 29

  Children and the Heart

  Lucas Giraut opens the gate to the private parking lot of the offices of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., with his remote control, so that the van that reads “ARNOLD LAYNE, WOOD PARASITE SOLUTIONS” can enter. The van is driven by Aníbal Manta, who parks it in the spot right next to Mr. Bocanegra's convertible Jaguar. The winter moon bathes the parking lot in a silvery light that makes you think of frolicking fairies. Among the things illuminated by the silvery light are Lucas Giraut and Mr. Bocanegra, standing motionless in the middle of the frozen cement floor, the latter sheathed in a long-haired fur coat that no one would hesitate in classifying as completely feminine. According to the news, this night that is drawing to a close will be the coldest of the year. Giraut and Mr. Bocanegra watch as the back doors of the van open. Eric Yanel and Saudade come from inside, each carrying a couple of special zippered bags for the transportation of fragile works of art.

  Mr. Bocanegra starts clapping. In spite of the obstacle posed by the open bottle of Moët et Chandon he has in one hand.

  “Bravo,” he says. His voice slightly nasal because of the cigar he holds in his teeth. “I can't say I'm proud. Who could be proud of morons like you. Not even your mothers. But I'm pleased.” He nods emphatically. He takes a sip on the bottle of Moët et Chandon. “You've made old Bocanegra happy.”

  Five minutes later, they are all gathered in the warehouse of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., which Mr. Bocanegra has had decorated with a multicolored assortment of garlands and Christmas ornaments. With reflecting plastic balls and strings of multicolored lights that blink in mysteriously rhythmic patterns. Even the windows have been decorated with a special spray that imitates, with limited success, the texture of snow. There are a couple of those portable refrigerators that are like futuristic baskets filled with bottles of Moët et Chandon. There are folding tables on one side of the warehouse with hors d'oeuvres and cakes cut into triangular pieces. Everything is ready for the celebration to begin as soon as the last step is completed.

  Raymond Panakian walks through the group of men, leaning on a pair of crutches. Lucas Giraut can't help but think that Panakian no longer really looks like himself. His socialist factory worker coveralls are the same, no doubt about that. Giraut has learned to recognize the odor of unwashed clothes and unwashed male body that emanates from the garment. The swelling still hasn't gone down enough on Panakian's face, however, for the new him to look like the old one. His shredded, swollen lips are sunken in where there used to be teeth. His jaw and mustache area seem to have turned a black color that makes you think of rotten steaks.

  “Our friend Mr. Panakian has decided to change his appearance,” says Mr. Bocanegra in an explanatory tone. “You can never be too careful in his line of work.”

  A derisive grunt rises up from the area of the warehouse where Bocanegra's minions are. Out of the corner of his eye, Giraut sees movements among the three men that could be nudges. Slaps on the knee. Now that he is closer, Lucas Giraut can see that Panakian's work coveralls have paint stains in every imaginable color and texture. Something about the stains suggests that they have been produced over several different decades. An archeological record of paint stains. The strings of blinking, multicolored Christmas lights project onto the coveralls producing once again that impression that Panakian is a dazed actor from the era of psychedelic cinema.

  Panakian leans his crutches against the wall and puts on some latex gloves. He opens a briefcase and takes out an instrument similar to the adjustable lens of a professional camera. Lucas Giraut follows his movements attentively, as he sips on his bottle of Moët et Chandon and pretends he's not paying attention. Even Bocanegra's minions are paying attention. More or less. Each of them according to their possibilities.

  Finally Raymond Panakian places the instrument that looks like a camera lens up to his eye and leans forward to examine the St. Kieran Panels. Which have been extracted from their special carrying bags and placed on individual easels. The entire process takes a couple of minutes. Finally Raymond Panakian stands up straight, making pained gestures and expressions that seem to be focused on his lower back. He puts the instrument away in his briefcase. He closes it and turns toward Bocanegra. He nods his head.

  A clamor of clinking bottles and shouts of joy fills the warehouse of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. A couple of streamers fly through the air. Saudade is emptying a bottle of Moët et Chandon Grand Reserve over his head. After a moment, Bocanegra lifts a hand, asking for silence. And, of course, there is silence.

  “This is a happy moment,” says Mr. Bocanegra. With that deliberate slowness he reserves for moments in which he has a captive audience. An audience that can't avoid being the recipients of his wisdom. “Happy for all of you because you are going to have money to keep having fun and getting yourselves in trouble, although this time the money is going to last you longer than usual. This time you can build yourselves a swimming pool and fill it with money, if you feel like it.” He pauses to receive the cheers that obediently arrive from his minions. Saudade has finished emptying the Grand Reserve over his head and he now gleefully throws the empty bottle against the wall. The bottle bursts with a noise similar to a groan. “And yet, it is also a particularly happy day for me. Not only because it is our most lucrative job to date. A job that will let us all buy luxury homes and pools to store the money in. But because I did this job with Lucas Giraut. The only son of my best friend ever. And someone who I consider my own son. Someone almost of my blood. Much more than just a nephew,” he says, and raises the half-drunk bottle of Moët et Chandon in a toast. There is a burst of slightly less enthusiastic applause from the minions. The clapping dies down after a moment. “And that is why, since today is a really special day for everyone, I've decided to make an announcement.” New pause. Someone shuffles their feet nervously. Aníbal Manta tries to put on a sycophantically intrigued face. “It is something I have been planning for months. A project for the rest of my life. To fill me up here inside.” He raises a fist to his heart. “A reason to live. I've already found the land. And I've got the work permit. Now all I have to do is build it with the money from the sale of these little paintings. Which already have a buyer. Thanks to my contacts and to Mr. Giraut's privileged brain. And that's what I want to show you all today. On this very special day.”

  Mr. Bocanegra makes a half turn and grabs something that's leaning against a wall. It is some sort of thick paper rolled into a cylinder. He puts it on a table and unrolls it. The others come closer to have a look. The paper shows some sort of rural villa. With gardens. With enormous windows that look out on a rural landscape. And with statues. Dozens of statues everywhere. In the garden. In the greenhouse. At the entrance for cars. All of it in the middle of a landscape with all the idyllic elements rural landscapes are meant to have. Herds of cows. Wild horses frolicking. Barns shaped like giant mushrooms. Lucas Giraut draws his face closer to examine the page in detail. It isn't a photograph. It is one of those computer-generated landscapes. A simulation.

  And on top of it all, dominating the image of the house and the statues and the computer-simulated rural landscape, written in enormous, optimistic letters, it reads:

  THE ARNOLD LAYNE CHILDREN'S CENTER AND FOUNDATION

  Everyone present looks at the sheet of paper for a moment. Someone clears his throat.

  “It's…nice,” says Aníbal Manta cautiously.

  “But, what is it?” says Saudade, who has somehow managed to get himself another bottle of Moët et Chandon on his way to the table and is now looking at the sheet of paper as he takes sips on the bottle.

  “All my life I've wanted something like this,” says Mr. Bocanegra. His cruel features give way to those slightly trembling and slightly moist elements that indicate an Emotionally Inte
nse Moment is approaching. His enormous bald head trembles. His mustache trembles. The long luxurious fur of his unmistakably feminine coat trembles a tiny bit, too. “All my life. There is nothing my heart loves more than children. Like an uncle. The truth is I feel like an uncle to every child. My heart has enough room. Because I don't have any children of my own. And I'm getting old. It's the loneliness of a childless man.” He takes a deep, melancholy drag on his cigar. “That's why I decided to set this up. A home. For children without parents. Or for the ones that have shitty parents who beat them. You know. I'll run it myself. I'll be like an uncle to each one of those kids. Once it's built, of course.” He claps his enormous hands one time. One of those claps that serve as a signal to return from a fantasy back to the surrounding reality. “Meanwhile, you all should know that everything you're doing, all our work, will help give a home to all those poor little kids.”

  There is a moment of solemn silence. In some part of the warehouse a commotion is heard, like furniture being violently moved around.

  “My father beat us,” says Aníbal Manta with a pensive face. “But it never occurred to me to think about that stuff about loneliness.”

  The sound of furniture being moved violently is followed by an abrupt, muffled din. Like something heavy falling from a certain height. Mr. Bocanegra frowns.

  “What's over there?”

  He points with a big, hairy, ring-filled finger in the direction the noises are coming from. It is one of the unused wings of the warehouse, connected to the main part by a metal door that is now ajar.

  Lucas Giraut shrugs his shoulders.

  “It's a storage room,” he says. “For tools. Old furniture. Things like that.”

  Noises continue to come from the door, now weaker. Like muffled echoes.

  “Has anyone seen Yanel?” says Aníbal Manta.

  Everyone looks around. In the warehouse lit by little multicolored blinking Christmas lights there are only five men. Saudade is polishing off his third bottle. Raymond Panakian seems to be talking to himself in whatever language it is he speaks while he fills his mouth with pieces of cake. But there is no trace of Eric Yanel. He seems to have disappeared in a moment of distraction.

  Mr. Bocanegra starts to walk toward the half-open metal door. Followed closely by Lucas Giraut and Aníbal Manta.

  The storage room on the other side of the door is dark and smells damp and like it hasn't been opened for months. The spiderwebs that hang from the ceiling get tangled in their hair and faces, forcing them to walk through the room swatting. Eric Yanel is hanging from the ceiling, too, from the lamp fixture in the middle. With the belt from his pants around his neck. With his face blue and kicking the air frenetically the way people do when they're choking. It's never very clear if the kicking means the person has changed their mind right in the middle of hanging themselves or if they are just experiencing the intrinsic emotional pain of the hanging. At his feet there are several dozen objects and pieces of furniture knocked over by the kicking.

  The three men look at each other for a moment.

  “But what the fuck is this?” says Mr. Bocanegra.

  “I think he's committing suicide.” Aníbal Manta scratches his head pensively.

  Yanel looks at them with his face blue and his eyes bulging. Still kicking.

  “There'll be no suicide,” says Mr. Bocanegra in a firm tone. “And much less on such a happy night. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, for fuck's sake. And you”—he points at Yanel with his cigar—“still owe me money. So don't even think about trying to get over.”

  Mr. Bocanegra leaves the room with an indignant air. Aníbal Manta sighs and carefully tries to get closer to Yanel. Trying to avoid his frenetic kicking.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 30

  Stuck in the Armpit of Love

  Christmas in Barcelona looks like a story by Stephen King. Not exactly because of the combination of Christmas lights, streetlamps lit up in the early evening, shop windows and corporate signs. A combination that's yellow and doesn't cast a single shadow. Not because of the institutional carols that hundreds of public-address speakers simultaneously emit. Not because of the hordes of people crossing Diagonal and other avenues, loaded down with bags from the big department stores either. It's their faces. The happy faces you see on people. The way the children laugh and run through the streets, and their parents' tired but happy faces. Like in those Stephen King novels where entire towns are controlled by a Central Intelligence. Those novels where one of the main characters, who's immune to the central control, runs through the streets shouting and crashing into hordes of happy-faced pedestrians. And suddenly, as soon as the sun sets behind the hills, the people begin to disappear. The streets are deserted in mere minutes. Like in those novels by Stephen King about mind control where night falls and wild dogs take over the city.

  Iris Gonzalvo drives her brick red Alfa Romeo through the deserted blocks of the Upper Ensanche. With her wrist leaning on the upper curve of the steering wheel, and the car's interior flooded with an analgesic blend of music at top volume and cigarette smoke. She reaches into the purse on the adjoining seat and pulls out her key chain equipped with some sort of miniature remote control that opens the door to the garage. Without ever looking in the direction of the purse or the key chain, her gaze fixed on the deserted street in front of the Alfa Romeo. When she gets to the corner where her parking garage and her apartment are she makes an abrupt turn, causing a lingering family of holiday shoppers to scatter in every direction, shouting and dropping their bags full of gifts.

  Once she's parked, Iris turns off the music and grabs the Blockbuster bag that's on the backseat. She goes up the stairs awash in yellow light that leads to her apartment and puts the high-security key into the lock. The kind of Stephen King novels that the staircase leading from the garage to the apartment is reminiscent of are those zombie novels where there's a couple of zombies lying in wait in a parking lot staircase. When Iris enters the apartment, there's a commercial on TV for a channel in which several famous people are toasting with cava. The way they're staring at the camera makes them look like they're being controlled by some Central Intelligence. With enormous smiles. And dubious expressions of clichéd enthusiasm.

  Iris drops the Blockbuster bag and takes a look around her. With a frown. She opens the bedroom door and looks behind the sofa. She looks into the room with the exercise equipment and opens the bath curtain to see what's in the tub. Finally she opens the door to the walk-in closet and finds Eric Yanel sleeping inside the laundry basket. In his underwear and hugging a bottle of Macallan. She closes the door to the walk-in closet again. The television is playing a cava commercial that shows a boy dressed in old-fashioned clothes carrying a gigantic bottle of cava under his arm and looking at the camera with a malicious smile. Iris makes herself a Finlandia with tonic and places it on a tray next to eight very long and perfectly straight lines of cocaine. Then she takes out a DVD box of the eighth season of Friends from the Blockbuster bag and puts the first disc into the DVD player. She sits on the sofa with the tray on her lap and pushes the PLAY button on the remote.

  * * *

  Mr. Bocanegra, Show Business Impresario, is lounging in his chair with a napkin tied around his neck. Seated at a table in the restaurant where the Bocanegra family celebrates Christmas Eve every year. He is surrounded by his complex system of brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and the expectant looks of half a dozen nieces and nephews, their eyes lit up with greed. A greed that Bocanegra has already been feeding for a couple of hours with the smiling transfer of plentiful one-hundred-and two-hundred-euro bills into the trembling hands of his nieces and nephews. Some of them are so anxious with greed that they have barely touched their desserts.

  “Isn't it time to open presents?” Bocanegra wipes the sauce from his mustache with a corner of his napkin.

  A roar of wild joy emanates from the throats of the half dozen children who are now running toward the Christmas
tree under which a restaurant employee in uniform has placed all the Bocanegra family gifts. The employee in uniform moves away instinctively.

  “You haven't spent a ton on presents for the kids again, have you?” one of Bocanegra's brothers asks Bocanegra, who is smiling beneath his mustache with quasi-parental pride.

  Around the Christmas tree, Bocanegra's nieces and nephews are kicking aside all the gifts that aren't wrapped in the distinctive red and green paper that Mr. Bocanegra has his Christmas gifts wrapped in each year. Some of the adults seated at the table exchange uncomfortable looks. Mr. Bocanegra's nieces and nephews rapidly identify their gifts and tear off the red and green paper and shout with enthusiasm when they confirm that the professional sports equipment and portable technology that they have received this year are the most expensive models on the international market. There are more uncomfortable looks exchanged among the adults seated at the table. One of the nieces, kneeling beside the tree, cries with happiness as she hugs something that looks like a robot in the shape of a dog that has just come out of a box with Japanese writing on it. Another nephew screams with joy and pretends to play an electric guitar that he has just taken out of its case. At a sensible distance away from the group of children, the employee wearing the uniform of the exclusive uptown restaurant observes the scene with an element of horror in his smile.

  * * *

  Aníbal Manta is lying in his double bed with several large pillows behind his enormous back. With his reading glasses on. Carefully examining an Italian issue of the X-Men and consulting at regular intervals the Spanish-Italian/Italian-Spanish dictionary he bought a couple of days earlier in a downtown bookstore. His wife appears in the doorway of the bedroom with a bathrobe over her nightgown and a blender in her hand, one of those ones that look like miniature spaceships.