Southern Seas

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  He had first met Charo in front of a shop displaying travel goods. The girl had started on full-time prostitution in Venezuela, and was now a self-employed call girl working from the top floor of a new house in the middle of the Barrio Chino. Carvalho was drunk at the time, and had asked her how much she charged. She said he must be mistaken. ‘If I’ve made a mistake, then I’m willing to pay a lot more.’ He then saw for the first time the flat that would often be his home until seven in the evening—the hour when Charo began to receive her regular customers. ‘Wouldn’t you be better off with a flat in a smarter part of town?’ No. The rents would be higher, and anyway her customers liked the mixture of old-style squalor and modern sophistication. Barrio Chino plus a phone. ‘Ring next time. I don’t like doing business in the street. I’m not a street-walker and never have been.’

  Carvalho grew used to her schizophrenia, to her double life as the jealous girlfriend by day and the telephone whore by night. At first, he’d suggested that she retire from the game, but she said that she was no good at anything else. ‘Supposing I was a shorthand typist—the boss would still put his hands on me. If I got married, it would be my husband, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and God knows who else. Don’t laugh! In my village, a married woman gets pawed by everyone, particularly her father-in-law. Does it bother you if I do this kind of work? No? Well, leave things as they are. I love you, that’s all there is to it. When you need me, I won’t let you down.’

  She never spoke of her work or her clients. Only once did Carvalho have to intervene. ‘There’s some filthy creep who wants to pay to see me shit, and he threatens me with a gun if I refuse.’ Carvalho waited for him on the stairs and threw a bottle of piss over him. ‘It’ll be shit next time, and at home—in front of your wife.’ Too many women in his life recently. The widow, who was prepared to sell her soul in a world shaped by the likes of Planas and her husband. The neurotic daughter who had suddenly discovered sorrow and death. Charo, presenting a bill for long-term services rendered by way of sex and company. The next would be Ana Briongos, from whom he would have to wrench the secrets of life, love and death with Stuart Pedrell. And as if that wasn’t enough, there was also Bleda.

  He found his mind occupied by the image of the little dog, alone in the garden in Vallvidrera, chasing sounds and smells, putting her nose into everything to see what it was and whether she could trust it. He had more than an hour before his appointment with Ana Briongos. He climbed into his car and without thinking began driving towards Vallvidrera. He was already halfway there before he realized that this sudden impulse had been motivated by a wish to see the dog and even take her along to the rendezvous in San Magín. What a figure you cut, Pepe Carvalho! You’ll go down in history as Pepe Carvalho and Bleda, like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He was angry at his own weakness, and turned the car around. But Bleda’s almond-shaped eyes haunted him for mile after mile.

  I must be a racist. I’d have sacrificed myself for a human being. But in the end, what’s to say that a man and a woman are human beings, and a dog is not? I’ll put her in for her exams. I’ll take her to the Lycée Française and tell them that I want my dog to become manager of the city trade fair, or chairwoman of the National Association of Canine Employers. Or a cosmonaut. Bleda could study to become a cosmonaut. Or a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi. Or general secretary of the CPSU. No dog has ever built a San Magín. No dog has ever unleashed a civil war …

  Ana Briongos was pacing to and fro. Short, stocky legs, and the shape of her body concealed beneath her grey jacket. She must have smelt him coming. She suddenly turned as Carvalho drove up and drew alongside.

  ‘Do you want to get in?’

  She sat in the car without looking at Carvalho. The passing scenery of San Magín seemed to reproduce itself endlessly, as if it were circular and infinitely repetitious.

  ‘Let’s talk here, in a bar. Do you have a place of your own?’

  ‘I share a flat with two other girls.’

  ‘And your family?’

  ‘They’re doing fine, thanks. How about yours?’

  ‘No need to get uptight. I’m not used to these working-class ways. I’m not a cop.’

  ‘You surely don’t think I swallowed that missing relative story …’

  ‘Fair enough. But I’m not a cop. The dead man’s family hired me to investigate what happened to him. It’s a job like any other. Don’t you read detective novels?’

  ‘I’ve got better things to read.’

  ‘Gramsci read detective novels. And he even had a theory about them. Do you know who Gramsci was?’

  ‘An Italian.’

  ‘Very good. One of the founders of the Italian Communist Party.’

  ‘Bully for him.’

  The badges were still on her lapel. Nuclear Power—No Thanks! and the words Free Speech! below a tragic mask whose mouth was closed with a red gag. A lot of rain had fallen on the mask: a few letters had almost disappeared, and the whole badge was cracked and fading.

  ‘I can’t talk about this in the car—it makes me nervous. Let’s go to Julio’s bar. Near the church.’

  Julio’s bar was like an old tearoom that could have been hired from the studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. Tables covered with red-squared plastic tablecloths. Strings of chorizo, garlic and ham. Barcelona’s football teams posing for posterity. The sound of dominoes, and voices trying to fight their way through the cigarette smoke. A wooden porch at the rear was waiting for summer, when it would be jam-packed with families who would come seeking fresh air on the dusty, sweaty outskirts of San Magín. Carvalho noticed that the friend who had been with Ana Briongos in the morning was sitting at a table with a man and staring straight at them. Ana ordered a coffee, and Carvalho a peppermint cordial with ice. She looked at his drink in amazement.

  ‘I thought that was a summer drink, or for women with ovary problems.’

  ‘Who hasn’t got ovary problems, these days? Look, kid, you and me need to talk.’ He had addressed her with the familiar tú instead of usted.

  ‘Don’t you call me kid. And why are you using tú? That proves you’re a cop. Only cops use tú like that.’

  ‘Why don’t you call me tú?’

  ‘I’ll use usted, and you use it too.’

  ‘What was your friend’s name?’ he asked, returning to the formal style of address.

  ‘Are you referring to Antonio? You already know. He was called Antonio Porqueres.’

  ‘That’s the first lie. Now for the second. Was he an accountant?’

  ‘Why is that a lie? His name was Antonio Porqueres, and he was an accountant. Or rather, he did accountancy work at Nabuco’s.’

  ‘The second lie. Are you saying that you don’t know who Antonio Porqueres really was?’

  ‘If he had another name, what’s that to me? I knew him as Antonio Porqueres.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘At a public meeting towards the end of 1977. We had to organize a number of meetings to explain the Moncloa Accords. No one was happy with them, but we were supposed to say what we’d been told—that they would benefit the working class in the end. It wasn’t long before we saw that the whole thing was a swindle. Anyway, I spoke at a meeting near here, in the Navia Cinema. At the end, Antonio came up to me and wanted to talk about it. He was against the accords. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Did you win him over?’

  ‘More or less. He was a man who knew how to listen and have a real dialogue—not like some people I know. I don’t want to run people down—I feel fine with my own people, precisely because they’re my people. But he had manners, culture, and education. He’d read a lot, and travelled a lot.’

  ‘He arrived here from the planet Mars. Didn’t you realize that?’

  ‘He told me he was a widower and had spent a lot of time abroad. He was tired and just wanted to live a quiet life, observing and experiencing this new stage in the life of the country.’

  ‘Did you get on close t
erms with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All the way?’

  ‘What do you mean? Did I sleep with him? Obviously I did.’

  ‘And then, suddenly, he went off. Without saying goodbye?’

  ‘That’s right. Suddenly he went off, without saying goodbye.’

  ‘And didn’t you try to find out what happened to him? Weren’t you surprised?’

  ‘No. He left as he arrived.’

  ‘You women never learn. You still believe in tall, dark sailors coming to take you away.’

  ‘I don’t believe in sailors. I know what you’re trying to say. But you’ve got it all wrong. Things have changed in San Magín too. A man and a woman can happily accept each other for what they are, live together and part on the best of terms. You’re one of those who think that only the bourgeoisie can do things like that.’

  ‘Are you still telling me that Antonio Porqueres was Antonio Porqueres?’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I know.’

  ‘You don’t know much, or so it would seem. Your man’s real name was Carlos Stuart Pedrell. Does that ring a bell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘I’ve read something about him in the papers. An industrialist, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Correct. The man who built San Magín.’

  Ana Briongos’s eyes were not large enough to contain her surprise. She wanted to say something, but was lost for words.

  ‘You lived with one of the people responsible for this heaven on earth.’

  ‘It may not be heaven, but we’re better off than we were in Somorrostro. Do you know what it used to be like there? I spent my whole childhood there. Antonio …’

  She was resting against the back of the chair. Her open jacket revealed a full bosom beneath a flannel dress, and the bosom gave way almost without transition to the now-undisguised abdomen of a pregnant woman. She tried to cover herself with a mechanical gesture, but stopped as she realized that it was too late. She exchanged glances with Carvalho. The flood of sadness which gushed from her eyes hit home.

  ‘Will it be a girl or a boy?’

  ‘A girl, I hope. One less fucker in the world.’

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned her eyes away to the ceiling of hams, chorizo, garlic and cowbells, all covered with a uniform layer of dust and cheap tobacco grime.

  ‘Is Señor Stuart Pedrell the father?’

  ‘I’m both father and mother.’

  ‘Did you never suspect that Porqueres wasn’t who he said he was?’

  ‘I always suspected it. But it didn’t matter.’

  ‘He always opened doors for you; he bought you flowers sometimes; he’d read more than you; he used two or three thousand more words than you; he could describe the charm of an April day in Paris. Did he ever tell you that April was the cruellest month? Did he ever tell you that he liked to read much of the night and go south in the winter?’

  ‘What are you playing at? Are you trying to paint me as a girl who’s been seduced and abandoned? I explained to him why we were fighting. I explained what it’s like in the police cells at Vía Layetana, and in the Holy Trinity women’s prison.’

  ‘Holy Trinity? That must have been a premonition. His body was found on a building site in Holy Trinity.’

  A look of utter incredulity appeared on Ana Briongos’s face.

  ‘He’d been stabbed several times, apparently by two different hands. One was weak and hesitant, the other strong, the hand of a killer.’

  ‘You obviously enjoy giving the details.’

  ‘They dragged him to an abandoned building site, probably over the fence. But they hadn’t killed him there. When he was found, he’d lost a lot of blood, but there was hardly any around him. He’d been moved from some other place. And that other place was San Magín. His killers looked for somewhere at the other end of the city, maybe not realizing that they’d be helped by his false identity. Or maybe they did realize it. You have to help me. You must know enough to point me in the right direction.’

  ‘It was probably robbery.’

  ‘Did he usually carry a lot of money?’

  ‘No. Only as much as he needed. He was very generous with the little he had. Always wondering what presents to buy me. Not flowers, though. There aren’t any flowers in San Magín. You were wrong there.’

  ‘So, one day, he just didn’t show up. What did you do?’

  ‘I waited a few hours, and then I went to his flat. He wasn’t there. But it looked like he was going to return.’

  ‘Did you have a key?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you went back the next day.’

  ‘And the next. And the next …’

  ‘Didn’t you leave a note, in case he returned?’

  ‘Yes … No … No, I didn’t leave a note. Why didn’t I? It began to dawn on me that he wouldn’t be coming back.’

  ‘Did he know about the child?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you think that was why he’d run off?’

  ‘Not at first. Because I told him very clearly that the child was mine and mine alone. But then I started putting two and two together. Maybe he would feel responsible. But what am I saying? I’m talking as if he ran away, when in fact he was murdered.’

  ‘Didn’t you think of phoning the hospitals, or the police? Didn’t you think it strange that the flat remained empty for weeks and weeks?’

  ‘I soon stopped going there. Besides, he didn’t have many things. It was a rented flat. Just a few books. The rest belonged to the company, or the previous tenant.’

  ‘If I go to the police and tell them of Stuart Pedrell’s double life in San Magín, you’ll be their only link. You realize they’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks?’

  ‘That doesn’t frighten me. I’ve had dealings with the police since I was fourteen. I’ve nothing to hide.’

  ‘Everyone always has something to hide, and the police know that.’

  ‘I know my rights. I’ll be OK, don’t you worry. Go and tell them what you know. I’ll go and tell them myself, if you like.’

  ‘The police are neither here nor there. This is a private investigation that I’m conducting for the widow.’

  ‘The widow. What’s she like?’

  ‘Older than you, and much richer.’

  ‘Did they get on well?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He seemed a sad man.’

  ‘And you gave him happiness.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Just one last question for today. Don’t you remember anything, any event or any person, that might set us on the trail of the murderer?’

  ‘The last question for today and any day. And this is my last answer. No.’

  ‘We’ll be seeing each other again,’ said Carvalho, as he rose sharply to his feet.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Tell your friend and her chum to disguise themselves better next time.’

  ‘They’ve nothing to disguise. They came because we agreed that it would be a good idea.’

  Carvalho got into his car and drove off to meet Señor Vilas. He was sitting in front of the television with his grandchildren, watching a programme about horses. He took Carvalho up to the office.

  ‘Do you keep information about people living in San Magín?’

  ‘Not everyone, but just about everyone.’

  ‘Do you have files?’

  ‘Señor Viladecans asked me to keep them. There’s an administrative file, which is pretty complete, and a much patchier one for specific incidents.’

  ‘What kind of incidents?’

  ‘If someone gets into trouble. After all, you have to know your enemy. It’s a jungle out there.’

  ‘I want everything you have on Ana Briongos.’

  ‘I can tell you that without a file. She’s a red, but she hasn’t been causing much trouble. Not for some months, anyway. She seems to have been lying low for the past year. I hear she h
as a sweetheart.’

  ‘Where she lives, who she goes around with, what her family does, everything you know.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  A small cupboard that appeared to promise little of interest opened, to reveal Señor Vila’s cardboard files. He searched around, pulled out three or four folders, and held them at a distance from his longsighted eyes.

  ‘I can’t see a thing without my glasses.’

  The file contained Ana Briongos’s address and that of her family—her parents and six brothers and sisters. The parents and the oldest brother had come from Granada. The others were born in the immigrant areas of Barcelona; the youngest in San Magín. The father: a cinema usher in La Bordeta. The mother: a cleaner at the same cinema. The eldest brother was married and working at a pipe factory in Vic. Ana was the next in line. Next came Pedro Larios …

  ‘How come one of the Briongos kids is called Larios?’

  ‘He’s a half-brother. That’s all I can tell you.’

  One of the girls worked at a hairdresser’s in San Magín. The youngest two were still at school. Ana’s file had a long list of political activities. Next to the name of Pedro Larios ‘Briongos’ was a note about a motorcycle theft at the age of fourteen.

  ‘What else is known about the guy?’

  ‘This isn’t a police file. I only record what people tell me.’

  Carvalho jotted down a few notes.

  ‘I’ll be absolutely discreet.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Are they in some sort of trouble?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s just routine.’

  ‘It’s not very pleasant to have to keep an eye on people. But these days, it’s more necessary than ever. All this freedom is all very fine, but it has to be freedom with responsibility, and therefore with vigilance. Does this have anything to do with the tenant you were asking me about the other day?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I repeat, it wasn’t my responsibility. It was a direct order from Señor Stuart Pedrell, may he rest in peace. I’ll make that clear to Señor Viladecans.’

  ‘Don’t mention anything for the moment. I’ll have to give him a report myself.’