by Javier Calvo
“He's a man.” Iris Gonzalvo shrugs her shoulders. “Men don't scare me. I know how to deal with them. There are some differences, sure. But in general they're all more or less the same. Men are almost never a problem.” Her thin pale fingers hold up the glass of Krug very delicately. Her lips barely brush the edge when she takes a sip. “Women can be a problem, sometimes. It depends.”
Stripped of Iris Gonzalvo, the group playing darts has regained their truly profane nature. Men involved in a competitive activity with no purpose beyond itself. One of the most truly profane rituals of humanity. Without any more peculiar elements than the contrast between Pavel's exaggeratedly tall and pale figure and his Jamaican-inspired hair and clothing.
“I still keep thinking I've seen you somewhere,” growls Mr. Bocanegra. With a slight shaking of the head. With a slight furrowing of the brow. With a small, suspicious system of gestures. “I could almost swear I've seen you dance here. I don't like to be lied to.”
The clientele of The Dark Side of the Moon is the type of clientele that have made the place what it is over the past thirty years. Local politicians. International businessmen. With their ties festively loosened. Industry magnates with loosened ties and shoes kicked under the table. Sitting on velvet sofas with their arms around two young women dressed in G-strings and high heels. Entire armies of women with their corporate uniforms of G-strings and high heels.
“I do very nasty things to people who lie to me,” says Bocanegra. “Even when they're girls like you.”
Iris Gonzalvo smiles. The elevator in the middle of the circular bar opens its doors and a couple of waitresses in G-strings and high heels emerge, each holding high trays filled with drinks.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 39
Saudade's Finger Pistol
Koldo Cruz finishes spreading shaving cream on his face, his only eye looking alternately at the mirror and at the portable television on a shelf of the bathroom. In the upper floor of his house. The fact that he only has one eye forces him to make lateral head movements in order to shave and not miss anything on TV. The patch that usually covers his eyeless socket is on the bathroom shelf, next to the television and other personal hygiene objects. The images on television have supposedly been recorded by an amateur videographer on vacation in Indonesia. There are people running in terror. In what could be a coastal tourist complex. Then a gigantic wave appears and drags off all the people that were running in terror.
Cruz picks up his razor and turns on the faucet to wet the blades. Since surviving the bombing he has learned to feel his way through shaving so he doesn't have to look at his face without the eye, or at the steel plate that replaces his right temple. That was before he started lifting up the patch and showing his eyeless socket to satisfy the requests of his friends' nieces and nephews. Beside the television and the patch there are a couple of bongs and a bag with thirty grams of marijuana brought specially from Mexico. On the television, the guy filming the gigantic Indonesian wave realizes that the wave is coming at him faster than he can run and drops his camera. Cruz proceeds to shave his face according to his daily strategy: first the cheeks, then the neck and finally the mustache and chin.
He leaves the bathroom, shaved and with his patch back in place, dressed in a wifebeater and long johns, with his towel over his right shoulder. He greets the two workers that are installing the new electrified steel bars into the upper-floor windows and he reminds them that there are practically limitless supplies of beer available to them in the refrigerator downstairs. A refrigerator that looks more like a cold store. Koldo Cruz likes to show signs of largesse with people who lack his personal fortune. And the genius needed to amass a personal fortune like his. He passes in front of his young Russian fiancée's private bathroom where, like every morning, she's locked inside for at least an hour. Koldo Cruz likes to pretend, to her, that he doesn't know she shoots up heroin in the bathroom each morning. At the same time, he calls her dealer every other day to check up on her consumption levels. Standing in front of his bedroom's full-length mirror, he dresses and ties his tie as the workers sporadically walk around lugging steel structures at the back of the mirror's surface. Koldo Cruz would never admit that he's bored. In his opinion, it's a question of balance. Everything in life is about balance. And it simply happens that sometimes his inner demand for emotional balance leads him to do things that other people would find atrocious. Now he checks his Cartier watch with inlaid diamonds. Three minutes until his daily meeting at the Caipirinha café-bar, located exactly one and a half blocks from the electrified perimeter of his house.
The morning is sunny in a lackluster way. A lazy, lackluster sky floats over Pedralbes. Koldo Cruz buys La Vanguardia from a newspaper stand on the way to the café and folds it meticulously three times along its transversal axis. Forty seconds later, he pushes open the glass door of the Caipirinha café-bar and waits a moment in the doorway for the entire morning staff to greet him. Cruz started buying his own copy of La Vanguardia at the newspaper stand instead of reading the copy the café has available for customers after one morning a customer, who was not a regular, insisted on holding on to it for more than thirty-five minutes. Forcing a heated discussion that ended with threats of physical violence. Since that day, the entire morning staff of the Caipirinha café-bar has treated Cruz with awkward friendliness.
Cruz crosses the café with jovial strides and takes his regular spot at the bar. The waiter puts a Macallan with ice in front of him, meticulously prepared the way Mr. Cruz likes it, with a lot of Macallan and a little ice. Beside the whiskey a small plate of olives appears.
The pages of today's La Vanguardia are filled with photographs of gigantic waves in the Pacific. Koldo Cruz pays particular attention to the Business and Sports sections, which usually occupy the final pages in most of the world's newspapers. Every once in a while he looks up to inspect the people that come in and out. Due to the nature of his line of work, Koldo Cruz is always on the alert for the presence of strangers in his immediate personal surroundings. Especially since the bombing. And since that guy snuck into his house less than a month ago. There is a young guy with a basketball cap and sunglasses that he's never seen in the café before. Reading a book at an out-of-the-way table. Cruz is reading the Sports and Business sections and looking up once in a while to check him out above the upper edge of the newspaper. Something about the young man is familiar. Familiar in a strange way. As if his face were a face that came floating back from Koldo Cruz's youth. A mostly hairless face, from what Cruz can see from his bar stool. A soft face with big cheeks and blond, somewhat long hair sticking out from beneath his basketball cap. And who the hell wears a basketball cap with a ten-thousand-euro Lino Rossi suit?
Ten minutes later, Koldo Cruz eats his last olive, takes a last sip of his Macallan and makes his daily call to the foreman of his group of Russian employees. On his way to the door of the Caipirinha café-bar, he twists his head a bit to get a better look at the young man with the cap and sunglasses. Now that he's closer he can see that the novel the young man is reading is a Stephen King novel. And that he's reading it with an expression of intense concentration behind his sunglasses.
Lucas Giraut lets five minutes pass before closing his copy of Wonderful World and leaving it on the table. Koldo Cruz's daily activities are so firmly dictated by tradition that he barely had to look up to be sure he had him in front of him. Ensconced as always on his bar stool as if he owned the bar, exercising his authority over the stool and over the rest of the place. Then Lucas leans over to rummage through his bag located beneath the table and takes out the Highly Secret Accounting Ledger he found in Apartment 13. He pages through it distractedly and tears out a page completely filled with his father's small, neat handwriting. Then he takes out a blank sheet of paper and writes down the note he has been mentally preparing for a couple of days. The note is succinct and has no exact instructions. Both the vocabulary and the tone have been conscientiously chosen to not sou
nd too threatening, yet at the same time transmit an air of absolute confidence. Lastly he sticks the note and the page from the Highly Secret Ledger into an envelope and seals it after peeling off the paper covering the self-adhesive strip. On the front of the envelope he simply writes Koldo Cruz's name.
A minute later he leaves the Caipirinha café-bar and crosses the street. He passes in front of the newspaper stand, where a woman with many dogs on leashes is chatting with the bored-looking guy who runs the stand. He walks up to the house with the electrified perimeter at the end of the street and stops in front of the wrought-iron gate. The scrupulously polished gold plaque on the gate reads “UMMAGUMMA 2.” A bit farther up he can see the remains of a security camera that someone seems to have beaten with a blunt object. Giraut lifts up the top of Koldo Cruz's personal mailbox and sticks the envelope inside. Without noticing the black Volvo parked on the same block where someone is watching his movements with binoculars. Within Koldo Cruz's electrically delineated yard there are half a dozen workers installing bars on the windows of the first floor. Giraut looks through the bars of the door and sees a very pale young woman with dark glasses who seems to be supervising their work. Then he readjusts his cap on his head and heads off down the street. Once again passing the black Volvo, which has a slight rhythmic vibration coming from inside it, like the vibrations you feel near the dance floor in a disco.
Inside the black Volvo, moving his head rhythmically to the beat of the strictly percussive dance music that comes out of his compact disc player, Juan de la Cruz Saudade watches Giraut with a satisfied expression. With one of those smiles that you only see on the faces of people who think they were born under a lucky star. With the neck of a bottle of Finlandia sticking out of the glove compartment. Saudade folds the fingers of one hand and points it at Giraut's increasingly faraway back, imitating the barrel and hammer of a pistol.
“Bang,” he says. And he moves his hand brusquely to indicate firing his finger pistol.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 40
Wonderful World
Strictly speaking, Barcelona is nothing like the idea that Pavel had of Barcelona before getting onto the airplane that took him there. In general, he finds it gray and filled with cars and ugly people. Not to mention those fat little ladies with their short hair dyed ridiculous colors that go around staring at everyone with hateful expressions. He's not crazy about the Paseo de Gracia either. The brochure in Russian he brought with him in his suitcase said that the Paseo de Gracia is “an art nouveau architectural gem.” Pavel spent a morning sitting on a strange-looking bench on the Paseo de Gracia looking at people and buildings. The most interesting thing he saw were the butts of the female tourists that passed by, their necks twisted upward to admire the building façades. And whose idea was it to paint the taxis yellow and black? A very overrated city, is what Pavel would say if anyone ever asked him. Which hasn't happened yet.
Pavel leaves the Russian book he's reading on the bar of his favorite spot on the Rambla del Raval and looks out of the corner of his eye at the butt of a black woman who is standing beside him. A big soft butt. Ample in every direction. The type of urban landscape that Pavel likes is the kind you see in the postcards of Jamaica he has tacked up near his bed. Short, brightly painted wooden houses with people sitting in some kind of garden chairs in front of the open doors. Colors that make you think of parrots or other tropical bird species. Black women in minishorts strutting among the men with a certain high and mighty attitude. The fact that the Jamaican men in the postcards pay no special attention to the women that parade around in minishorts arouses the suspicion in Pavel's mind that black women in minishorts are a species sufficiently plentiful in Jamaica so as not to be a highly prized asset. So that it doesn't seem preposterous to imagine nocturnal scenes starring Pavel and a black woman with an abundant ass touching each other in front of a fireplace. That is, if there are fireplaces in Jamaica. Pavel's not sure. There's no indication in the postcards. He raises a hand to his increasingly satisfactory dreadlocks in a flirty gesture. He is sure about the palm trees. There are palm trees in practically every postcard of Jamaica that he has in his room. Palm trees are one of the main reasons that Pavel likes to come to the Rambla del Raval and the seaside at dusk. The palm trees and the black women. Another image of Jamaica that often comes into his head is one of him beneath a waterfall in a jungle setting. He's not sure exactly why. One of those small waterfalls that often appear in television ads for soap. In the image, he is beneath the cascading crystal-clear water with his eyes closed, drinking water from a vaguely spiral mollusk shell. It is impossible to know where the image comes from.
The black woman with the ample ass walks to the jukebox with the black man that accompanies her and they both start to flip through the record selection system. A large part of the clientele of the bar is black people. Pavel picks up the package, which is shaped like a box that holds a tie, from the bar and starts to unwrap the Christmas gift wrap. The same gift wrap that his sister's Christmas gifts come in every year. It doesn't seem his sister is very good at wrapping gifts. The paper is always wrinkled and dented and the pieces of Scotch tape are irregular and in the wrong places. The book that Pavel is reading is one of those Russian pornographic novels they sell in the neighborhood Russian bookstore. In paperback editions with unpleasant stains on the part of the pages that you turn. It's unclear how his sister manages to have the same gift wrap every year. With snowmen and candy canes and some sort of little Christmas goblins printed on it. This year's tie is deep red and blue and has some sort of heraldic crest on it. It takes Pavel a minute to realize that it's a tie with one of the local soccer teams' colors. The kind designed to show one's allegiance to said team. He sighs and sticks the tie in the pocket of his combat pants.
The black woman and her black companion have chosen a song on the jukebox and are now dancing in front of it. The scene causes Pavel a slight stab of emotional pain. Black people have a special attitude and a credibility and an authenticity just because they're black. It's unfair. Not to mention the subject of the black man's supposed sexual vitality and genital size. Pavel doesn't so much want to be black as he wants to find a way to develop that same credibility. To be accepted in a way that would make him feel like real Rastafaris must feel, for example. Instead, Pavel is excessively tall and very blond and gangly and, even though he's twenty-nine years old, still can't get rid of the pimples on his cheeks and the area of his neck where he shaves. When he lives in Jamaica, he's already decided, he is going to devote himself to the music business. He'll set up his own discothèque and he'll wear really long dreads and he'll throw parties on the beach that will give him the credibility he needs.
The first thing Pavel notices is the smell. Even before he realizes that the black faces around him are looking suspiciously at something located right behind him. Before he feels the big hairy hand land on his shoulder like a big hairy bird of bad omen. The smell of industrial grease and an abandoned garage where all that's left is the smell of grease. Leon's unmistakable smell of grease.
“Nice tie,” says Leon's high-pitched voice in Russian. Pavel turns to find his compatriot's big, shiny head that's morphologically similar to a bullet. Leon points with his head at the local soccer club tie sticking out of Pavel's pocket. “Can't say it goes very well with the rest of your outfit. But what the hell….” He shrugs his shoulders. “It's a start, I guess.”
Pavel finishes his glass of whiskey with ice in one slug. He puts the empty glass back on the bar beside the pornographic novel and the Christmas wrapping. He makes a sign to the black waiter and points to the empty glass with his finger. Which in international sign language indicates a refill. Some of the black people seem to now be looking out of the corner of their eyes at the two white men at the bar. Pavel decides that the best way to tackle the problem of the bullet head who just appeared by his side is to pretend, as much as he can, that the problem doesn't exist. The black woman with the ample ass
is dancing in that way a lot of black people dance: subtly swaying her pelvis and neck while talking to her male companion and introducing coins into the slot of the jukebox. A way of dancing that's not really dancing. Which more just seems to form part of her general disposition.
“Sometimes I think you think I'm a boring guy.” Leon is also looking at the ample ass of the black woman, but with a different expression. With the same expression a passenger sitting in an airport looks at the poster he has had in front of him for two hours as a result of a two-hour delay. “Maybe because I have a family and my own business and we always see each other for work-related stuff. It's an understandable prejudice, I guess. But mistaken.” Leon shows a large set of teeth, in a shade ranging from white to grayish. “The truth is I really like music and dancing and all that stuff. I used to be a pretty good dancer when I was young. In Russia. In my day, there were good jazz and rock and roll bands. With really good Russian musicians. I like movies, too. Especially the Alien series. You know the Alien movies? I guess everyone does. The ones with that dyke and the creature that crawls out of people's bellies. Which brings me to the question of why I came here to talk to you. In case you were thinking that I was just passing by here and we met up by chance. The truth is that this isn't my kind of atmosphere.” He looks around him with that expression that makes you think of air travelers during an excessive flight delay. “And I came here to make it clear to you that I'm an outgoing kind of guy. A good friend. More than that. A person perfectly willing to make friends with people who aren't his friends yet. Or who aren't his friends anymore.”