I was on my own in the toilets and I gave myself a very quick shave. A guy came in and peed and went out again, and I took the risk of giving myself a lightning body wash—or a half-body wash I should say. And then I went into one of the cubicles and changed, I polished my shoes with the toilet paper, I cleaned my teeth using a finger, and I bounced out into the lobby feeling half-human again, a condition to which the hotel's air-conditioning had also contributed. I waved at the reception guy and gave him a smile and walked back to the car and dumped the clothes.
I did not go back to the hotel. I will accept any derogatory remarks about my fraudulent use of their services. At the same time I would wish to point out that it had cost them nothing and had done no harm. I went into an air-conditioned cafeteria and had two cups of good Illy coffee while flipping through the establishment's Vanguardia. One hundred and twenty two conflict deaths yesterday. Merely another dot on the landscape of human activity, given the fact that there were also another 350,000 births yesterday, give or take a few and depending on the day.
The offices of Industria y Transportes Pujol S.A. were in one of those century-old elegant buildings which abound in Barcelona and I arrived there at five minutes to two. The reception area was modern and the air-conditioning was modern, but everything else was…traditionally musty, is how I suppose you would describe it.
But the girl at reception was not musty. The girl at reception was one of those immediately forgettable members of the female population, one of the ones your neurons immediately bar from entry into any of their various memory compartments. She had dyed blonde hair, she had huge breasts squashed into a blouse a size too small, maybe two sizes too small, her lipstick and other miscellaneous paints, powders and chemical products had been applied in what one could only describe as genuine whorehouse fashion, and her perfume was of the inexpensive type whose scent bore a close resemblance to some kind of household cleaning product. In addition, and unless I was mistaken, her deodorant was not of the 24-hour kind. Basically, a Spanish slag.
Which didn't say much for her boss. And that fitted perfectly with my first impression of him when I was shown into his office. He sat behind a huge desk in an office large enough for three American presidents (if you were to accuse me of exaggerating, you would not be wrong, but the office dimensions were verily huge, so I am forgiven), all wood-paneled, expensive antique furniture, photographs of factories and ships and ancestral business personages on the walls, and various photographs of himself smiling and shaking hands with men who, one supposed, were important ones, maybe elected birdbrains. He stood up to greet me and I noticed that he was very small. He, for his part, noticed that I was very tall. And never shall the twain get on with each other, or seldom, and the problem tends to emanate from the smaller ones. They have, absurdly, an inferiority complex based on their size. Tall men have no such complex and tend to take people at their face value.
There used to be an extremely large number of small people in Spain, ongoing through General Franco's dictatorship right into the mid-seventies. We must remember that for many decades Spain was an extremely poor country. Europe stopped at the Pyrenees and Spain was full of shanty towns, hundreds of thousands of people lived in chabolas, they didn't have enough to eat and, yes, they also used to eat chicken feet. And they grew up small. Things have changed since then but there are still some genetic survivors today and Sr. Pujol was one of them. He must have been between fifty and sixty years of age, although if excessive hair growth in the ears and nostrils is a reliable indicator, sixty would be nearer the mark. And he had a pencil moustache. A thin pencil moustache, and when he smiled, his face resembled very closely that of a limbless predator regarding a nearby mouse.
None of which bothered me. In my job you meet all kinds and I have only two things on my plate, no matter with whom I am dealing. The first is that I want to earn a lot of good money and the second is that I am going to go all out to show them how good I am and achieve, or preferably exceed, whatever expectations they might have. Nothing else interests me except—I don't need to mention it—any edible females who may happen to cross my path and who might be worth pursuing at the end of the contract.
Sr. Pujol had a written contract for me to sign. Everything was in order: €500 per day until I said I could fix things and would stay on to do so, and €1,200 per day after that. Both parties had contract termination rights, without notice, without cause and without penalties or indemnities of any kind. I signed.
The meeting was a long one, mainly because Sr. Pujol spent significant swathes of time describing his business group's successes—exaggerated or otherwise—and taking me back through the long, boring history of it. He finally got around to Naviera Pujol, his Palma-based, loss-making container shipping business. The losses had existed for some years and he and his executives had initially wasted their time blaming the country's economic crises, Europe's economic crises, then the competition and then the market-place, and now the losses had ballooned to around €10 million annually. And they didn't know who or what to blame (it was somebody's fault but, as with the birdbrains, it clearly wasn’t theirs). The banks wouldn't lend any more money, the shipping subsidiary was eating up too much of the group's cash, they had looked around for potential buyers but nobody was interested except at a silly price, and he and his board members were at a loss. The only alternative to closing the company, selling off the ships cheaply, and writing off a fortune, was, he said, me. I had a very powerful reputation, he said, I was strongly recommended by various sources.
I told him not to get his hopes up. I told him I hadn't the faintest idea as to whether I could fix his company's problem or not. I might know in a week or two but the answer might be no, I can't.
This deflated him alright and his face, despite the absence of a nearby mouse, took on a more distinct reptilian profile. A good thing too, maybe there was no solution. And apart from anything else, I hadn't the faintest knowledge of anything to do with the shipping industry. Having made things clear, I then slipped in the positive factor, as I always do, by telling him that if I decided I could fix it, I would stay on and do just that. When I say I can see how to turn a company around, I said, I always do. I told him that I was an action man, that I did not write reports, that I was too busy doing things to be able to write reports, and that if he wanted to receive any reports they would have to be verbal ones.
This re-inflated him somewhat and his face took on a more jovial aspect. His reptilian grin was certainly a repulsive sight, but at least it was a grin, it was the best he could do.
He gave me a copy of last year's balance sheet and profit & loss account, together with some supporting documentation. And he babbled away about this and he waffled away about that, managing only to demonstrate that he didn't have much idea of what he was talking about. You find this sometimes, even at this level of management.
I asked him for a copy of this year's accounts and he said there weren't any, they only did them annually. And you find that sometimes too, companies without monthly financial statements, ships without a rudder, even in this modern day and age. And so, even if you don’t know their business and are therefore like a one-eyed man, a one-eyed man, as every consultant knows, is still king among the blind.
The meeting had taken several hours. I was parched—he had offered me nothing to drink, the guy was a pretty useless guy overall—and I badly needed a cigarette. And so I was more than pleased when he finally stood up, wished me a successful assignment, told me the obvious, that time was of the essence, and informed me that the general manager of the shipping company was expecting my visit at 9 a.m. on the Monday. I should please hand in my expense reports to the shipping company in Palma and the invoices for my fees to him in Barcelona, and I should feel free to call him personally at any time and on any issue whatsoever. Ah, he said, and I almost forgot, here is a company mobile phone. Yours is a German one and we don't need all those inflated international charges every time you make a local call,
do we?
I hit the street, lit a cigarette, stored the mobile's cable in my pocket and checked out the phone's function. Another small piece of flotsam, or jetsam if you prefer, washed up gently onto my life's sandy beach. I could now call Monika or anybody else without Delsey's troops being able to trace me, from my end at least. I would also give the number to Roger and Geoff at United Fasteners, they might want to contact me, tell them to keep the number confidential.
It was early evening and still hot and humid. I returned to the car and re-substituted my business gear for my travelling gear, turned the air-conditioning on full blast and drove the short distance down to the port and then turned south and headed towards the industrial docks area. I checked the area around the entrance to the dock enclosure used by Naviera Pujol for its Palma-Barcelona-Palma traffic, and then turned back and headed for one of the few long-term car parks.
Barcelona is an important city, the tenth largest in Europe. It is also home to Europe's largest football stadium and Europe's largest aquarium, and its port is the ninth largest in Europe. This has recently been undergoing enlargement by diverting the Llobregat river estuary and pushing back the Llobregat Delta nature reserve. So what's new? Life on this planet is tough, and nature—what is left of it—only has more suffering to look forward to as the human being continues to savage remaining habitats. But Barcelona is a city which falls short on parking. Parking is rare and expensive and long-term parking facilities are minimal. There are no such facilities in the port terminal area and it is good if you happen to know about the nearby Litoral Port car park in La Barceloneta, as I do, particularly if you happen to have arrived by car to go on a long cruise ship holiday. You can park here for as long as you want and the rates are, for Barcelona, acceptable.
So that is where Monika's car ended up. I squashed my suits and jacket into the suitcase and I had a decent meal in a tapas bar nearby and then I took a taxi along to the ferry terminals which are not far from the Columbus monument at the bottom of La Rambla. The Palma ferry departs at eleven p.m. every night of the week except for Saturdays—Saturdays only being possible at the height of the holiday season.
I bought my ticket and I hung around in the terminal, an area which could be mistaken for a cage of enraged local gorillas conducting a civil war by loudspeaker, until we were allowed to board.
DAY 30
The crossing to Palma is supposed to take seven hours, but time in Mediterranean countries being subject to an alternative measurement system, you need to translate this into eight hours, and so indeed it was. Not that it troubled me. Exhaustion hit me as soon as I reached my cabin and I collapsed into the narrow bed, feet hanging way over the end as usual, and I slept the whole way.
I had not bothered to reserve a room in my hotel in Illetas. It is a very expensive hotel and it is for adults only and it is often not full at this time of the year. Except that on this occasion it was. And the two hotels I have a preference for in the center of Palma were full as well. The whole island was full it seemed. But there were no World Championships, there were no European Championships, there were no Olympics. Was it the Russian multi-millionaires and their families with their non-existent education and pig-sty manners? Was it some of the billions of Chinese who were finally being allowed to move more freely around their planet? Or had there been a rise in the number of professional social security manipulators for whose touristic pleasures we taxpayers—thanks as always to our beloved elected birdbrains—are so readily prepared to pay?
Who knows, but I was not going to spend a frustrating hour or so calling other hotels with which I was not acquainted. The method used for the allocation of stars to hotels in this country is strongly dependent upon the different phases of the moon in which the allocations are made. I approached a taxi and asked the driver if he knew of a decent hotel with a vacant room. He made one call and told me there were some vacancies at an absolutely superb hotel he knew of, and so I said 'bien hecho, hombre', heaved my suitcase into his vehicle and told him to take me there without delay. Much appreciated my good man.
However, we headed east and passed Portixol and continued onwards in the direction of the airport. Which caused me to panic. I asked him where we were going to. We were going to Playa de Palma, he said.
Oh no, oh no. Ganesha, save me from this most hideous of all fates, protect me please from the evils of the stinking swamp, deliver me unto the land of milk and honey, the goats and the bees won't bother me. Please.
Ganesha, if you are interested and I appreciate you may not be, is arguably the most popular of the thirty-three Hindu gods. He is a male and he has the form of an elephant with a human stomach and he rides on a mouse. No, I am not trying to mislead you, that is the way it is, it is easy to check. Anyway, this is the god responsible for destroying all evils and, unbelievably incompetent though he has patently proven himself to be, who knows if he might not be willing to assist me on this occasion.
"I am not," I told the driver, "under any circumstances going to stay in Arenal."
Arenal, as you may know, is Ballermann country and the only people who go anywhere near there tend, among other things, to sport vast beer bellies or have razorblades hanging from their ears and not infrequently both. I would rather sleep elsewhere. For example, in a bus station in Albania, of which there are very few, as with most things in that repulsive niche of human destitution.
Ah, said the driver cunningly, but this hotel is not exactly in Arenal, it is right at the beginning of the Playa de Palma, a hundred meters before you reach Arenal. A quiet area, a superb four-star hotel.
Now the term 'quiet', for a Spaniard, possesses a significance violently divergent from the one you and I possess. It is as comparable in its divergence as would be an agreement to meet him somewhere at a pre-determined time. And four stars in Spain is a category not only dependent upon the moon, but also on the local birdbrain minion responsible for the decision, and in reality it denotes anything from one star upwards, while at the same time guaranteeing you three star guests and two star employees.
This hotel was not quiet. Nor was the street behind it, nor the street in front of it. And the hotel swimming pool—three or four strokes would take you from one end to the other—received its non-stop entertainment from the screeching and screaming hordes of pre-pubescent juveniles enjoying themselves on the beach across the road. There were possibly pubescent ones there as well, but with brains that had not yet reached the puberty stage and maybe never would. Ganesha had once again demonstrated his pathetic and unequalled inadequacy as a god. Or maybe he simply doesn't give a shit. Could be.
No matter, we swim with the tides and a squall is a squall and not a storm. The hotel only charged me an extra half-price for my early arrival and the room was comfortable and the air-conditioning was unusual in that it functioned in accordance with my adjustments.
The first thing I did, I called the hotel in Illetas and booked a room for tomorrow for as long as I wished to stay. I told them I would pay for two weeks in advance; not necessary sir, they said, our custom is to charge at the end of each month. Falling asleep again was the second thing I did.
I did nothing much else except lounge around the pool, if a pint-sized bucket permits the term, and, swimming not being feasible, cool off occasionally in the water. In the evening I went on the hunt for a restaurant. I walked past a fenced-in and firmly closed church in a square facing the beach—you can't go far in Spain without coming across a church, they hold the world record for churches per head of population—and then I was in Germany. I walked past a number of eating establishments, 'Oberbayern', 'Deutsches Eck', 'Wurstkönig', 'Grill Meister', 'Bavaria', 'Münchner Kindl' and so forth, you get the idea, and stepped onto the terrace of one which at least had a friendly name. 'Aber Hallo' it was called. I ignored the 'Sauerbraten', the 'Rotkohl', the 'Knödel' and other similar Teutonic offerings and ordered a chicken salad and a whole bottle of dry Riesling and both were very good.
I walked back i
n the balmy night air to the hotel, passing, among other things, the 'Red Lips' Erotic Show Center, one of those places young males need to experience at least once in life in order to learn never to visit them again. Nowadays you pay between €30 and €100 per drink for whatever drinks are ordered, and this provides you with the dubious benefit of not being able to talk to any of the eastern European females who inhabit these holes in the wall, mainly because they are unable to converse in any of the world's major languages. Of course, if you speak Bulgarian or Rumanian or Russian, you don't have that problem, but conversation is not exactly the name of the game anyway. So you just get a hand-job if you are that way inclined and, if you're drunk enough, you lose your wallet and you don't find out about it until the next morning; or—if you're really lucky—they've taken all of your cash and maybe your credit cards and your debit cards, but you've still got your wallet.
Had I been in the design center at the time they were working on Adam and Eve, I would have made it the other way round. We males would be the inhabitants of these places and young females would be the ones wandering in and paying us money to assist them in temporarily alleviating their lust. But I was unfortunately not around at the time.
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