by Javier Calvo
Iris Gonzalvo has stopped paying attention to Bocanegra and is looking at something that approaches along the highway beyond the abandoned restaurant and playground.
“You'd better hurry up and shoot us already,” she says. And she brushes aside the locks of hair that fall over her pale forehead. “Because it looks like this place is getting popular.”
The three main characters in the scene plus Valentina, who is off to one side, look at where Iris is pointing. At the three rental cars with tinted windows approaching along the highway that have now taken the exit that leads to the abandoned service area. None of the four seem surprised by the appearance of the three cars. As if somehow they were all waiting for them, in some part of their minds. As if somehow they had all been aware the whole time that some dramatic element was missing to make the scene satisfactorily conclusive as a final narrative piece. As if they had been postponing the dénouement and buying time with their speeches until this new dramatic element arrived on the scene. Which is arriving right now. Driving in single file to the parking lot of the abandoned service area. The first rental car in the line of three rental cars passes over the remains of the broken fence and crashes into the back of the Jaguar. Moving the Jaguar several yards and causing a small rain of glass to fall onto the ground.
Iris Gonzalvo crosses her arms. She snorts.
“Since when do you park cars by crashing into the car in front of them?” she says. “Because I swear, no one told me about the new rules.”
Several individuals of above-average size and Slavic features come out of the cars. Some of them carry automatic weapons and one has a Soviet-made assault rifle. Finally the doors of the third car in the line of rental cars open and a bullet-shaped head leads the way for Leon's heavy figure. The last person to get out of the last car takes a moment getting out. The first thing that appears is one leg sheathed in black trousers with burgundy pinstripes, and then another. Finally the rest of the exquisitely dressed body appears, followed by a head with a patch covering one eye and a metal plate where there once was a right temple. Koldo Cruz stands up beside his car and pulls the lapels of his suit coat in an unconscious gesture of royal vanity. The suitological analysis that Giraut carries out on Koldo Cruz in their first official meeting yields the following results: an elegance too exquisite to be of this world and that melancholy that accompanies some emperors in history that have arrived at the peak of their imperial power and are now experiencing firsthand the loneliness of having it all.
“You.” Bocanegra stares at Koldo Cruz. With his eyes open very wide. With that face reserved for the appearances of people who are supposedly dead in movies where supposedly dead people appear at the end. With that expression members of pre-civilized tribes had on their faces as they watched the arrival of explorers from technologically advanced civilizations. “You. Here.”
The metallic sound of half a dozen automatic weapons and one assault rifle cocking in unison is heard. Bocanegra throws his gun to the ground and lifts his hands. Without blinking. Without taking his eyes off of Cruz.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 64
Kingston, Jamaica
This is a story about people that started the world. About people who have no father and no mother. This is not meant to be understood metaphorically. This is literally the story of the people who started the world.
Pavel leaves the arrival terminal at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. He stands on the other side of the automatic doors for a moment. Just standing. Looking around. With his military knapsack over his shoulder and his dreadlocks rocking softly beneath the sea breeze. The sky is a bigger sky than any he's ever seen. The ocean he can see behind the roofs and the highways is much bigger than the sea in Barcelona. And the airport. Pavel has never seen such a big airport. Spreading in every direction as far as the eye can see. Bigger than a lot of towns he's been in. Nothing like his fantasies of little aerodromes with palm trees and people dressed in white with sweat stains under their arms fanning themselves with wicker fans. There are quite a few men in suits and most of the people's clothes fall into the category of what Pavel considers normal, non-Jamaican attire.
Pavel clears his throat and spits on the ground. The last traces of European fluid in his lungs. The spit is scattered at his feet. Pavel observes it with detached curiosity. It's a strange spit. Strangely dark. Like some sort of dark thick fluid that's not like anything he can remember ever coming out of his lungs before. He shrugs and decides that it's as good a moment as any to light a cigarette.
In the line for taxis to the center of the city, Pavel is at least seven inches taller and much whiter than the rest of the people waiting in line. The people that look at him lift their heads and scrutinize him for just a second before going back about their business. The sun is bigger and hotter than any sun Pavel has ever felt before. For some reason, it seems to be summer instead of winter. When he gets to the front of the line, Pavel gets into a taxi driven by someone with a scar on the back of his neck and tries to explain that he wants to go to the city center. He takes a map out of his pocket and points at a spot. The taxi driver nods and takes off. Jamaica's Norman Manley International Airport is on a small peninsula surrounded by an endless stretch of dark blue ocean just south of Kingston. The taxi goes along a dilapidated highway surrounded by slums for five minutes and stops in front of a piece of open ground where the sun seems to have completely burned up all the vegetation. Pavel waits. The taxi driver turns halfway around and points a nine-millimeter pistol at him. A strange model, much older than any Pavel has seen before.
Thirty minutes later, Pavel parks the taxi on a street in the center of Kingston and throws the ignition key on top of the unconscious body of the taxi driver in the backseat. He sticks the pistol into the waist of his pants and leaves the car with a cheerful slam of the door. The streets of downtown Kingston are also much bigger and more crowded than Pavel had imagined. Wide avenues surrounded by mostly dilapidated buildings. Pavel throws his knapsack over his shoulder and starts walking down the street.
After walking several blocks, Pavel sits on the sidewalk to count his dollars and have a look at the people. A pretty large group of kids have been following him for a while and now seem to be both asking him for coins and making fun of his appearance at the same time. One of the kids is doing what looks like an imitation of Pavel, walking on tiptoes and chewing the inside of his cheeks and rolling his eyes. Pavel looks his map over several times, trying to find the beach. After a little while he decides to throw a rock at the group of kids and they start shouting at him threateningly and shooting at him with finger pistols.
Getting to the beach takes him a while. When he gets tired of wandering he stops another taxi and this time he decides to put his pistol at the taxi driver's temple while he shows him the map. The driver takes him to a pretty wide, nice beach, with various sizes of palm trees and little shacks with very loud music where they serve colored drinks in plastic cups.
Pavel throws his knapsack onto the sand and sits down, hugging his knees. A few feet from the waves. The sun is high in spite of it being late afternoon, according to Pavel's calculations. Or maybe late morning. He's not really sure. The beach is mostly filled with groups of young people with bottles and boom boxes. Some of them are dancing in a strange style that Pavel doesn't recognize, and passing joints around. No one seems to be wearing anything more than a swimsuit and a hat.
After a few minutes he stretches and decides to take a dip. He takes off all his clothes except for his underwear and starts running toward the tall, luxuriously foamy waves.
The water is hot and Pavel plunges in, enjoying the feeling of having his entire body wrapped in the warm Caribbean waters. The feeling isn't exactly like being in a womb, but has certain elements of that. Then he comes back up to the surface. He floats for a minute on his back on the swaying surface and shakes his dreadlocks back the way you shake your hair back when you are enjoying a pleasant swimming
experience. The water of the Caribbean also seems saltier than the seawater he's known before. Now he observes the beach from the top of a wave. A group of black kids runs off along the beach with his clothes and his knapsack. Pavel thinks about it. He doesn't feel especially upset.
He plunges into the water again. Being underwater fills him with a quite peculiar feeling of power. The power of powerful creatures that live under the sea. He decides that he's a shark. Gluing his hands to his sides and moving the way he imagines a shark would. It's definitely the most fun thing he's done in a long time.
“I'm a shark,” he tries to say underwater.
But the only thing you can hear is an unintelligible gurgle.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 65
Fire Ball (2)
In the opinion of Mr. Bocanegra, Barcelonian Showbiz Impresario and the Main Non-Paternal Figure in this story, the Universe is an abandoned service station by the side of the highway. One of those run-down service stations at the mercy of the elements. Abandoned by the highway administration and the chains of roadside franchises. With broken windows and cracked walls covered with water damage. With those faded signs that are missing letters, the kind photographers usually take pictures of to represent the relentless advance of time. Of course, none of these ideas as such has ever passed through Mr. Bocanegra's head. It's not that Bocanegra has ever consciously made those associations and decided that he could establish a satisfactory analogy between the Universe and a service station. It's that for him, deep down in his brain, the Universe is a service station.
The dramatic sunset reflects on the surrounding hills and the buildings in the service station just like certain Caribbean skies reflect on the crystalline waters of paradisiacal beaches. Strictly speaking, this isn't a moment in the story. The characters in the final scene are stock-still, the way characters in some action movies freeze in sculptural groups in the middle of an action scene. With the camera spinning dizzily around them along an impossible axis. Valentina Parini is paralyzed in the air, in the middle of an ecstatic leap. With her arms and legs splayed out.
And the universe is an abandoned hotel. A haunted house. One of those enormous buildings with the windows broken and boarded up. With the inside filled with garbage and rats and wild animals. With long halls filled with strange sounds with tattered curtains at the end, swaying to a ghostly gust of wind.
And Mr. Bocanegra, Showbiz Impresario, owner of the recently shutdown nightclub The Dark Side of the Moon, is in the middle of the group of people standing in the parking lot of the abandoned service station. With his arms still held high. With his mouth and eyes open very wide and the palms of his hands facing the general direction of a group of Slavic men that have just gotten out of the recently arrived cars.
“A week ago we put one of those things on your car.” Koldo Cruz shrugs his shoulders and looks around. “Every time you get in your car to go buy a quart of milk, there's a satellite telling us where stupid Bocanegra is buying a quart of fucking milk.”
In Bocanegra's opinion, evil nieces and nephews are unquestionably the main population of the Universe. Scampering through dark, dilapidated hallways the way evil kids scamper in movies. Lifting their knees high. Softly singing lullabies to themselves in evil tones. With short pants and lace dresses and other stereotypically childish clothes. With evil smiles and bloodstained chins. With messy hair and open mortal wounds in their skulls. But there's something more. Something that you can't see at first glance. Something that was once there, smiling in a much less evil way when the universe wasn't yet a haunted house. In the happy days when the cafeteria at the service station was filled with that thick cafeteria light, and between its walls the sound of programmed radio music was heard, and there were people lining up with trays filled with food in front of the cash registers. Something soft and warm and almost forgotten.
Valentina Parini brings both hands to her chest and makes a sound like “ughhh” and sticks out her tongue the way kids do when they are pretending they've been shot in the chest or are having a heart attack. The newcomers look curiously at the small, alarmingly skinny figure that seems to be looking at them with her T-shirt over her face and her torso covered with ballpoint pen drawings. Several feet from where the scene is taking place. Valentina tosses her head way back and extends her arms in a gesture of slow agony. And she falls onto her bare knees on the concrete ground and continues acting out her death in slow motion, with her tongue out and her eyes rolled back in her head.
What could have been forgotten between the cracked walls of the abandoned hotel? Like those things that are inexplicably forgotten in dreams: homework to do or tests to take or babies wrapped in baby blankets. Mr. Bocanegra's life isn't flashing before his eyes in a simultaneous confluence of temporal events. Somehow, what's going through his head at that moment is the simultaneous confluence of spatial coordinates. The universe reduced to a place. Life reduced to a stage. And without his being conscious of any of this as such, nor as a mental image he can recognize, Mr. Bocanegra is in that place. In that haunted house. Which in turn is inside his mind. And magically transported to the foot of a concrete staircase covered with the crumbling remains of a carpet, Bocanegra touches the termite-eaten railing with his brow furrowed and looks at the fingertips of one hand. With an uncertain look of recognition. And he goes up the stairs covered in the remains of carpet and walks through a dark hallway, dodging the evil nieces and nephews that scamper by and finally arrives at a full-length standing mirror covered by a sheet that is in the place where the window with tattered curtains should be. And he moves the sheet aside.
“Blah, blah, blah,” says Valentina, in some part of the hallway. With her face covered by her shirt. Bringing her fingertips together rhythmically the way kids do when they want to show that someone is talking a lot. “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
And in some part of the house all those lost things should be found. The era of the lines with trays in the cafeteria and the cheap souvenir shops. The story of the three friends and the woman with the furious face and the promises made in crowded pubs on Tottenham Court Road. And all the rest too, of course. The fake business fronts and the meetings on board ships. The meetings on ship deck, with both parties dressed in wool coats and hats. The call from a British police station after Lorenzo Giraut was arrested in Camber Sands. The money accruing in Swiss bank accounts and the active capital of companies located on fiscally convenient archipelagos. And the hasty calls and the secret meetings. And the explosion in Koldo Cruz's house. The first house called Ummagumma. And “The Fletcher Memorial Home.” The song that plays in the abandoned house is “The Fletcher Memorial Home” by Pink Floyd. With the flaming pieces of Koldo Cruz's house raining over the streets of Pedralbes. And everything deteriorating a bit more with each passing year. Everything cracking and sinking and getting covered with water stains. As the Swiss bank accounts were filling up with money.
“Blah, blah, blah,” Valentina keeps saying. Faking her own death in slow motion. To one side of the group of Slavic men led by Koldo Cruz and Leon that are aiming at the group composed of Bocanegra, Lucas and Iris.
This is what you can see if you look closely at Valentina Parini, with her shirt over her head and her no-longer-childish belly covered with mystical drawings: the beginning of an absence. The shadow of an absence. Something still too subtle to define itself but which clearly indicates the beginning of a process. The first sign that Valentina is already starting to pass to the other side of the story.
Bocanegra approaches Koldo Cruz. With his eyes still glued to him. In his face rage and cruelty are combined with a new element: some sort of fundamental ambiguity. His face is still trembling. The wrinkles on his forehead continue to redefine and reorganize themselves in a way that some could only define as tectonic. Tracing intricate fractal designs made of folded flesh. His mouth is still a horrible grimace. His hand lifts, trembling, to signal to Cruz. One of the Slavic thugs kneels to pick up the gun he ha
s dropped.
“Very well,” he says. “Lovely. A triumphant entrance. With your little Russian friends and everything.” He makes a disgusted face. “With your impeccable suit and your eye patch and all the rest.” He grabs the bottom of his absurdly feminine fur coat and takes a couple of stiff, ridiculous little steps. Moving his butt a lot. Like an exaggerated parody of someone strutting with stiff, ridiculous little steps. Then he stops. He looks at Cruz, his eyes swollen with rage. “And I guess I'm supposed to get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for all these years. And tremble, and beg you not to kill me. And I guess everyone else”—and he makes a wide gesture with his arm—“thinks it's all very well and fitting. Well I.” He beats his chest with one hand. Releasing a cascade of little drops of saliva whose trajectory is discernible depending on your relative position to the setting sun. “I'm pleased as punch. And why should I repent and beg if I'm happy and pleased.”
No one says anything. The Slavic thugs of a size clearly larger than average just look forward in a way that doesn't allow you to see if they've understood Bocanegra's words or not. Valentina rolls her eyes and grabs her throat, a few feet to one side. Lucas Giraut and Iris Gonzalvo still have their arms in the air but they've dropped a bit, like people who've had their arms up but then realized no one was really paying attention to them. In a certain way, everything seems to be in place. The elements of the scene have reconfigured in such a way that you could practically say that they are now the essential elements to satisfactorily conclude the story. There are only a few details missing. Minor details. Those minor details that set apart a perfectly realized conclusion.