Wonderful World

by Javier Calvo

  “Are you a relative of Valentina Parini?” asks the nurse when Giraut gets to the desk.

  Her voice sounds vaguely robotic and inflectionless through the small microphone/speaker that's set into the glass partition.

  “I'm a friend.” Lucas Giraut examines the mistletoe branches hanging from the partition. They are plastic branches with plastic berries meant to look like mistletoe. “A friend of the family.”

  The nurse looks at the package.

  “Is that a gift for the inmate?” She signals for Giraut to place the package in some sort of trap door in the partition, designed for transferring objects from one side to the other. “I must remind you that we have strict rules here.”

  The nurse sticks her arms into the trap door, takes the package and starts to remove the wrapping paper. Now some sort of guttural growls are heard behind Giraut's back. From the place where the shockingly obese boy is sitting. The nurse finishes unwrapping the gift and is staring at the figure, about a foot and a half high, inside. It's a clown wearing white face paint and exaggeratedly large shoes, the kind clowns traditionally wear. The white face has a psychotic smile filled with fangs. A rolled-up electrical cord extends from one of his exaggeratedly large shoes.

  “It's one of those lamps to leave on when you go to sleep,” says Giraut. “It's Pennywise the Clown. From the novel It by Stephen King.”

  “We don't allow the inmates to have electrical devices.” The nurse stands up and carries the figure of Pennywise the Clown to a coat check filled with coats and bags. “You can pick it up on your way out. They sell flowers in the kiosk at the end of the hall.”

  “Valentina hates flowers,” says Giraut.

  Five minutes later, Giraut is sitting on a folding chair with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. In front of the folding chair where Valentina Parini is sitting. For some reason, Giraut had imagined his visit with Valentina would take place in a sunroom with views of a flower garden. One of those sunrooms where meetings with psychiatric patients and their loved ones take place in Hollywood movies. In the midst of a vaguely melancholy atmosphere. Watching as patients stroll through the garden on their caregivers' arms. Instead, Giraut and Valentina's meeting takes place in the first-floor bathroom of the girls' wing. In the common area between the toilet stalls and the long sink with a horizontal mirror that covers the wall in front of the stalls. Leaning against the back wall, a day nurse serves as chaperone for the meeting.

  “Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable in another chair?” Giraut fondles his bouquet of flowers absently.

  Valentina's eyes are red and her face is swollen, like that of an adult who has just gotten up after a night of little sleep. She isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Without her glasses and with her eyes swollen, her face takes on an unexpectedly grown-up look.

  “I tried that thing where you don't swallow the pills and put them under the mattress,” says Valentina in a low voice. “But they caught me and now they give me shots that make me sleep all night.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I don't care. Their drugs don't work. They don't make me drool or spend all day looking at the wall or anything like that.” She looks around her. “Although sometimes I do it, when I know that they're watching me. This is the only place on the whole floor without cameras. The only safe place to talk.”

  Lucas Giraut can't think of any reason why Valentina isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Nor can he explain exactly why Valentina's face has suddenly taken on some indefinite element that is more appropriate to adults.

  “Those are the same flowers my mother brought me.” Valentina points to the flowers with her chin. “Those are the same flowers everybody brought me.”

  Giraut shrugs his shoulders and throws the bouquet of flowers into the metal wastebasket next to the sink with the horizontal mirror. Marcia Parini has also received citations from the same redheaded, sickly-looking lawyer to testify in the preliminary hearings of the trial that Estefanía “Fanny” Giraut's lawyers have begun. The parties involved in the trial, in mutual agreement, are also considering the possibility of calling Valentina Parini to be present in said hearings. In the case that the doctors decide that it wouldn't be harmful to Valentina's treatment. The nurse chaperone stares at the bouquet inside the metal wastebasket. According to Giraut's lawyer, it is likely that Fanny Giraut's lawyer will try to discredit Marcia Parini as a mother unfit for custody of her daughter. It is also possible that they will bring up, as an aggravating factor in the case, a supposed romantic relationship between Marcia and Lucas Giraut.

  “When they caught me hiding my pills they took away Stephen King's New Novel.” Valentina lowers her voice and moves closer to Lucas to speak to him in a confidential tone. “I have to get it back. My mother brought me another copy on the sly but they caught her, too. I need you to find a way to bring it to me. They have cameras everywhere. And microphones. It's almost impossible to hide stuff.”

  Lucas Giraut looks out of the corner of his eye at the nurse chaperone seated at the back of the bathroom. She looks back at him with a neutral gaze and nods her head almost imperceptibly. The nurse chaperone doesn't look like the nurses in psychiatric centers that Lucas Giraut has seen in movies. She isn't stout or frowning and she looks like she'd rather be somewhere else. She's younger than Giraut and has svelte legs and the badly dyed hair and excessive makeup that one usually associates with women from working-class suburbs.

  “I know how to get it in,” says Giraut. “But I don't know when I can come visit you again. My mother is trying to kick me out of the company.”

  Valentina makes a gesture with her hand that is powerfully reminiscent of that gesture with which adults dismiss obviously irrelevant questions. Questions that are insignificant given the gravity of the circumstances. Valentina signals for Giraut to bring his ear close to her mouth. He does.

  “I've discovered how they do it,” says Valentina in a whisper. “How they make everything work. Or make it seem like everything is working. They divide the population into five groups. Each group with their special instructions. There are the Repairers. Like the people that work here. The doctors and all that. There are the Developers. The scientists and the engineers and the people that work building machines and preparing their arrival. There are the Hunters. The ones who hunt people like us. They don't have to go around dressed as policemen or anything like that. It could be a little old lady that lives on your street and has known you all your life. Then there are the Providers, who make sure that they have food and all that. And the Priests. Who are the ones that talk to them and get their messages and create the transmissions for the population.” She pauses and moves a little bit away from Giraut's ear. “Those are the most dangerous.”

  Giraut leans back against the chair. With his shoulders very straight and his arms crossed over his lap. He studies Valentina's soft face and straight hair over vaguely dull eyes. The nurse chaperone with too much makeup and svelte legs clears her throat.

  “If you make her nervous I'm going to have to take her away.” The nurse uncrosses her legs that were crossed at knee height and immediately crosses them the opposite way. In a clearly nervous gesture. “You've been warned.”

  “The most dangerous?” Giraut asks Valentina with a frown, in the exact moment that the door to the floor's communal bathroom opens and a second nurse enters, leading a sleepy little girl about seven years old by the hand. “Does this all have to do with the book by Stephen King?” He looks out of the corner of his eye at the nurse and the sleepy girl that have just come in. “Is that why you need a copy of the book?”

  The girl with the sleepy face walks holding on to the second nurse's hand and seems to have some kind of psychomotor problem that gets in the way of her walking in a straight line. As she passes by Giraut's side she stares at him with glassy eyes. The nurse patiently guides her toward one of the toilet stalls. Giraut thinks he can see a bit of saliva on her chin.

  “I'm talk
ing about the Captors, of course.” Valentina grabs Giraut's arm. She stares at him with slightly squinted eyes. Like the eyes of someone who has a bit of a headache or who spends too much time looking at a computer screen. “It's them that did all this. I can't say that they're the ones who put me here. There are a lot of things I can't say. The cameras and the microphones aren't the only problem. They have a lot of ways to find out what we are saying here. Right now they're hiding. They fly over the city, but they're invisible. They're waiting for everything to be under control. Then they'll show themselves.” She looks at the nurse chaperone with something like malice. “At first they look like angels. Or that's what they say.”

  The nurse clears her throat once again. She looks ill at ease.

  “Sir,” she says.

  “I'm not hearing voices!” Valentina raises her voice. “Who's hearing voices?”

  The second nurse is gently pushing the sleepy-faced girl into the stall. The girl stopped walking when she got to the stall and is now grabbing the door frame with both hands. Letting out a soft noise similar to the mooing of a calf.

  “It doesn't matter that you can't see them yet.” Valentina turns toward Giraut again with her brow slightly furrowed. Giraut notices a smell of urine. “The signs are there. Everywhere. Look at Barcelona. Didn't you ever ask yourself why nothing ever happens in Barcelona? People just shop, cook and go to work. They sleep and watch TV. Doesn't that seem suspicious to you? I mean, normally things happen. And everybody seems so happy…” She brings a tense hand to her inner thigh. “But they just seem that way. Because they're not them anymore.”

  The nurse chaperone stands up in alarm. From the stall comes a sound of intestinal exertion that is somewhat reminiscent of the noises that opponents in martial arts movies make in the moments before attacking.

  “Please.” Valentina looks intently at Giraut. “You have to make sure that at least one of us is still around. In case they erase my memories.”

  A couple of nights ago, Lucas Giraut visited Marcia Parini's apartment with two deluxe set menus from the Thai/Japanese restaurant on their street and a copy of the movie Carrie in DVD. For some reason he didn't think it was a good idea to bring a bottle of wine. A seriously sedated Marcia Parini opened the door and then, after making some unintelligible comment, tried to kiss Giraut on the lips. Giraut turned his face so that the kiss landed on his cheek. Later Marcia and Giraut were sitting very close to one another on the sofa in the living room of the Parini house watching the movie. The same sofa where they both usually sat with Valentina to watch a movie almost every Sunday. Usually horror movies related to Stephen King's literary and film works. Remastered editions in DVD of Cujo and The Dead Zone and Misery and Children of the Corn. While watching Carrie, Marcia spent a good long while nibbling on Giraut's earlobe before falling asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. For some reason the main character in Carrie makes Giraut think of Valentina. For some reason he can't explain.

  “Sir.” The nurse comes toward them with a worried face. “The girl has peed on herself, sir.”

  Valentina moves even closer to Giraut and grabs him by the arms. She brings her lips close to his ear again.

  “This is the Prayer of Those Who Have No Father and No Mother,” she says. “Listen carefully and memorize it. If you want you can write it down.”

  “Sir,” repeats the nurse. “I'll remind you we are a center with very strict rules.”

  “We are the people who have no father and no mother,” says Valentina. “The world began with us. And we are better than the rest. Because we are stuck in the armpit of love. And the things that smell bad are the things that make us strong. We started the world. Because no one is our father and no one is our mother.”

  The sounds of vaguely Asian intestinal exertion coming from the stall continue, muffled by the door. It is one of those doors that don't reach the floor or the upper part of the frame. The nurse is talking to someone on some sort of an institutional walkie-talkie.

  “Get me the book,” says Valentina. “The prayer works better when you repeat it several times.”

  The nurse takes Valentina out of the bathroom. Valentina says good-bye with a strange hand gesture before leaving. Giraut is left alone in the bathroom of the children's psychiatric center. With the two folding chairs and the bouquet of flowers in the wastebasket. The sound of intestinal exertion coming from the stall has changed into something similar to a gurgle of satisfaction.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 34

  A Waste of Time in an Expensive Suit

  Lucas Giraut would like his lawyer to stop looking lasciviously at the legs of the Legal Mediator sent by the District Court. Legs that are slender and tanned like the legs of many professional women. The Legal Mediator is sitting with her legs crossed at knee height in a position that causes her skirt to rise above her knee and reveal a triangular section of thigh through the back slit. The way the lawyer is looking lasciviously at the Legal Mediator's legs is: leaning his body way back and sprawling in his chair, with his legs very wide open, and his head tilted so he can see the Mediator's legs to one side of the meeting table. Chewing a pen with an expression that's rife with overtones of sexual predation. The Mediator is young and wears glasses and her hair is short. Lucas Giraut's lawyer is Arab or maybe from the Indian subcontinent and wears a very short beard, the way Peter Gabriel did in the eighties, which accentuates the lascivious elements of his expression. His expression is lascivious in that spontaneous, effortless way that the faces of many Arab men, or men from the Indian subcontinent, are.

  The rest of the people seated at the meeting table of the conference room at the legal firm are: Lucas Giraut, Fonseca, and the sickly-looking redheaded lawyer who visited the mezzanine of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., a week ago with the subpoena. Of all of them, only Fonseca has taken off his suit jacket and is leaning his elbows on the table. Both Fonseca and Giraut are seated beside their legal representatives in a way that accentuates the divisions between the two camps at the meeting table. With the Mediator seated at one end of the table, lateral to both groups.

  “The terms of the agreement that Mr. Fonseca is offering are what we call an amicable solution,” the Mediator explains with hand gestures and a facial expression that somehow are structurally conciliatory. With a slight maternal/condescending overtone in the details and emphasis of her gestures. “Which of course would end the legal action. And cancel the legal and medical measures set in motion by Mr. Giraut's family. And these terms, to sum up, are specifically four. First of all, that Mr. Lucas Giraut renounce, voluntarily and in writing before a notary, two percent of his stock in LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., with which he would go from being the holder of fifty-one percent of said stock to holding forty-nine percent, with which he would continue to be the individual shareholder with the largest percentage of the company's stock. The plaintiff wants it to be noted that the defendant will continue to be the primary shareholder. Second, in exchange for said renunciation the shareholders' committee will guarantee Mr. Lucas Giraut the position of Director of Archives and Catalogues at LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., with important economic compensations independent of his condition as nonprincipal shareholder. Third, the plaintiff would also agree to finance the psychiatric or psychological treatment most suitable for Mr. Lucas Giraut during however long it is necessary. Guaranteeing Mr. Giraut's continued employment and salary for the duration of said treatment. And fourth, in exchange for the renunciation specified in the first point of the offer, the plaintiff represented at this table by Mr. Fonseca and his legal representative agree to withdraw the lawsuit that has been filed and close all legal actions associated with these proceedings. And now, please.” She looks around her with a conciliatory smile that makes her nose wrinkle beneath her glasses. “This is the moment to ask questions if any one of those points has not been completely made clear.”

  Although he wouldn't swear to it, Lucas Giraut has the distinct impression that his lawyer is now touching his
crotch in an improper way. While looking at the Legal Mediator's legs. It's a crotch-touching that's ambiguous enough that it's unclear if it's inappropriate or not. It could perfectly well be an automatic response to some sort of small discomfort. Like, for example, a slight itch or a poor placement of the contents of one's briefs. The Arab or Hindustani lawyer, by the way, is not Lucas Giraut's regular lawyer. He is a regular professional colleague of Mr. Bocanegra, who recommended him to Giraut to help with his problems with the family business. The slight clacking heard in the room is coming from the Arab/Hindustani lawyer's little, unconscious nibbling on the pen in his mouth. The Legal Mediator looks at the meeting's attendees one by one without her smile losing even a hint of composure. She finally leans forward to listen to something the redheaded lawyer is saying into her ear with a frown while making small explanatory gestures with his hands. The Legal Mediator nods several times and uncrosses her legs.

  “My client has something to say,” says the redheaded lawyer without looking at anyone in attendance. “Something important in terms of what is being discussed here. My client would like to state that we are looking into the possibility of having the defendant's representation deemed unfit. And I would like to personally introduce the idea that we are dealing with someone who is a disgrace to my profession. A regular partner to organized crime and someone who has been involved in several cases of judicial corruption and coercion of juries. We have brought some of the documentation that incriminates him.” He takes a shockingly fat dossier of documents out of his briefcase and puts it on the table. Giraut can't help noticing that his fingers and the back of his hand have pigmentation stains and that the whiter parts look painfully irritated. They even have that texture of flesh that's been scalded with boiling water. “Including indictment certificates and photographic documentation. Mr. Giraut.” He looks at Giraut. “I assume you realize how damaging this professional association is to you. In terms of how your case is going to be received in a courtroom. I don't need to tell you that this could go further. That things do get leaked to the press.”