Wonderful World
Page 50
Koldo Cruz sticks his hands in the pockets of the pants of his suitologically impeccable pinstripe suit. Now that Lucas has him there in front of him, he notices that Cruz has an indefinable gleam to him. It doesn't just have to do with his impeccable suit, nor with his certain strange, mutilated beauty, nor with the majestic aura he definitely projects. It's a gleam similar to the flash Giraut caught sight of in the courtroom during his hearing: something that makes you turn your head and stare in his direction. Some sort of powerful flash that comes off the plate on his head. Like the beam from a lighthouse.
“You're Giraut's son.” Koldo Cruz looks at Lucas Giraut out of the corner of his only eye. As he walks among his Slavic thugs of above-average size. With his hands comfortably in his pockets. His tone isn't questioning. Nor is it exactly curious. His words are slow, and seem measured. “I understand why you're here. I understand why you kept the money and ran. Although you got the wrong person.” He shrugs his shoulders. “He wasn't the one who did it. He didn't sell out your father. Bocanegra wanted to keep your father. All to himself. That's why he put a bomb in my house.” He pauses. “It was her, of course. In case you're interested. It was your mother. Your mother and the lawyer.”
According to one of those ancient oral legends, childless men have no reflection in the mirror. The legend says that it's because they've already started to disappear, or because in a certain sense they're already dead. Like those people that in a certain sense have already started to disappear from a story. In a similar but inverse way, people who have no father and no mother observe the world as if they were on the other side of a mirror that no one is in front of. People without a father and without a mother, as the most basic logic dictates, are the exact opposite of childless men.
“We'd been expecting something like that from her for a while before it happened.” The part of Koldo Cruz's face that isn't covered by the patch or the metal plate adopts a pensive expression. “She had started to do strange things. Change her face and things like that.” He shrugs. His aura seems to flicker the way beautiful things or things once lost and now found flicker. “She was the one who organized the ambush and called the police. She was the one who pretended to be the buyer and sent your father to that fleabag hotel in Camber Sands. After paying off the lawyer, of course.” He brings a fist to his mouth and clears his throat. “I suppose she offered him part of the business once your father was in jail.”
Cruz stops pacing through the Slavic thugs with their weapons at the ready. He stops. With his hands in his pockets. He looks at Lucas Giraut.
“I guess this is sad news,” he says. “Since she's your mother and all.” He points with his partly metallic head at the bottle green Puma sports bag that Giraut is still holding up in his flagging raised hand. “As far as I'm concerned you can keep the money. The way I see it, that money belongs to your father. It's the money he would have gotten that night in Camber Sands.”
Giraut looks at Iris. Iris looks at Giraut. They both look toward where Valentina was a moment before. The sun has already set on the horizon of rocky hills and Valentina Parini is now only a blurry silhouette in the distance. Scampering toward the hills. A bit like an evil niece. With her shirt over her head and lifting her knees high and leaping cheerfully in what looks like an evil parody of a happy child's leaps.
Bocanegra stares at her for a moment before she disappears on the horizon. Then he wipes his brow with a meticulously folded handkerchief and points with the trembling handkerchief at the thugs that are aiming their guns at him. With a defiant expression.
“I'm extremely proud of everything I've done,” he says to them. Showing his big white teeth. In a final cruel grimace. “That's the key to my success in this world.”
No one does or says anything that could be interpreted as an immediate response to Bocanegra's words. From where he is, on the edge of the group of people in the parking lot, Lucas Giraut has the impression that Iris is rolling her eyes or even muttering some malicious comment under her breath.
A long time ago, a young man closed all the curtains in his room for the first time. He closed all the shutters and enjoyed the peace he got from the lack of natural light. A long time ago, a woman took the bandages off of her face for the first time and discovered that her rage lines had disappeared.
Giraut and Iris are heading away from the service area's parking lot. Without looking back. Not walking particularly quickly or particularly slowly. The sky is no longer red. The sky has grown dark and night is falling fast around the service area. Like someone were turning off the lights on a stage. A dramatically conclusive fade to black, if you will. Giraut and Iris walk hand in hand toward the lights of the highway.
A long time ago, a boy threw a stone into the water of a bay in the Ampurdan. Then he covered his eyes so he wouldn't catch sight of the emerging sea monster.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel was written by the ghost of Charles Dickens, summoned and questioned using the system of Enochian magic created by John Dee and Edward Kelley. During the process of its conception and creation, Stephen King published the following works: The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla; The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah; The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower; The Colorado Kid; Cell, and Lisey's Story. May this humble book be an homage to the Most Enduring Genius of Our Times.
The author would like to give his heartfelt thanks to the true members of the Down With The Sun Society: Miguel Aguilar, Toño Angulo, Robert Juan-Cantavella, Mónica Carmona, Francisco Casavella, Eva Cuenca, Marga Durá, Isidre Estévez, Beatriz Fluxá, Rodrigo Fresán, Marc Godessart, Roger Gual, Josan Hatero, Andreu Jaume, Carola Kunkel, Claudio López Lamadrid, Mónica Martín, Gabi Martínez, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Nikki Murphy, Iván de la Nuez, Patricia Núñez, Lucas Quejido, Félix Sabaté, Diego Salazar, Patrick Salvador, Michael Slagle, Manel Soler, Anna Stein, Mercedes Vaquero, Manolo Vázquez. And above them all, sitting in a sunless house, Mara Faye Lethem.
This novel is about each and every one of them.
About the Author and the Translator
Barcelona-born Javier Calvo is the author of four works of fiction. Wonderful World is his second novel and his English-language debut. He is also a screenwriter and a book collector. He spends his time between Barcelona's Old City and Brooklyn, New York.
Mara Faye Lethem wears many hats, one of which is that of a translator of fiction from Spanish and Catalan. She has recently translated works by Albert Sánchez Piñol, Juan Marsé, and Pablo De Santis. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she now lives in Barcelona.
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ALSO BY JAVIER CALVO
Risas enlatadas (Canned Laughs)
El dios reflectante (The Reflecting God)
Los ríos perdidos de Londres (The Lost Rivers of London)
Credits
Jacket painting © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
Jacket design by Jarrod Taylor
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WONDERFUL WORLD. Copyright © 2009 by Javier Calvo. English translation copyright © 2009 by Mara Faye Lethem. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Palm Reader February 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-177969-5
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