The Faint-hearted Bolshevik

  “I have to study. I want to go to college.”

  “What will you study?”

  “Business administration.”

  “It takes ages. Take my advice, save yourself all that bother, forget maths and exams and notes and become a top model, you’re made for it. You’ll be a millionaire while your girlfriends are still underlining their notes. Then hire someone to play the stock market for you, study the courses you best like and laugh at those poor sods slaving away, renting out their brain cells at so much an hour.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes, I rented out my brain cells. Now I don’t know what I rent out any more, nor do I think about it.”

  Rosana sat up a bit. She lay on one side with her head resting on her hand as if she were in a swimsuit ad. I wasn’t complaining.

  “You must be some kind of executive,” she said, “based on the tie you were wearing. I don’t understand why you’re not happy.”

  “Do I have to be?”

  “Everyone wants to be an executive. Travelling, having a pretty secretary and expensive suits, earning loads of money.”

  I closed my eyes. I had ended up getting involved with a minor, I had taken her away from her neighborhood, I had managed to get her to take almost all her clothes off and instead of taking advantage of her by doing some other abominable act that would give me some release, which might fit the bill, there I was surrounded by families, talking to her about the ins and outs of my job. It didn’t matter how, but I needed to put a stop to it.

  “Look, Rosana,” I started to explain. “I don’t know what nonsense your father or someone else has been filling your head with. In my experience, travelling means getting on a plane to fly to another city where it’s always either raining or cold. On the outward flight there are guys with dandruff and on the return flight there are guys with dandruff and who sweat non-stop. Sometimes you have to stay overnight in that rainy city and you zap through the forty satellite channels on TV three times before turning out the light and cursing the whole damn world. Expensive suits are nice in the beginning. Something one looks forward to, I’ll admit it. And if you go to a den full of executives, as you call them, you’ll see that the young ones are all wearing new, neatly ironed clothes. Almost all of them still live at home with mommy and enjoy her loving ministrations, or perhaps those of her maid. But if you look at those who already have a few gray hairs, who have surrendered to their fate, or rather to their wife or her maid, who are much less skilled and much less willing than mommy and her maid, you’ll see that their suits are rumpled and shiny, their trousers show seven creases and their ties have stains on them. There’s no point in buying more new suits. Before they realize, after about six months or so, they’re done for and suits, like everything else, no longer matter. As for the money, the only person who can say he’s loaded is the one who doesn’t put up with any shit nor with other people’s problems, unless they amuse him. Fun and work are incompatible. And there’s no such thing as a sexy secretary who lasts more than two and a half months. Mine didn’t even manage a week. My current one is about sixty and looks like Edward G. Robinson’s twin sister.”

  “Who?”

  “An actor. American. From a thousand years ago.”

  Rosana thought it over, but not for long.

  “Well I’d like to be an executive,” she insisted.

  “You’ll get bags under your eyes, your periods will go haywire and you won’t be able to prevent your bosses being more interested in your ass than in your ideas. There’s never time to weigh up an idea, but an ass can be weighed up quickly. The advantage of being a model is that you earn an honest living from your ass, without taking part in any silly farce.”

  “You’re a male chauvinist pig.”

  “I’m observant, that’s all. Why don’t we talk about you? Thinking about my colleagues at work gives me a headache.”

  Rosana almost leapt to her feet.

  “I’m going for a swim. Are you coming?”

  “Why now, all of a sudden?”

  “I’m hot. Are you coming or not?”

  “Just to watch you.”

  We went over to the pool and Rosana dived straight in, tracing a flawless arc in the air. She swam front crawl perfectly, and this made me rather envious because I’d swum thousands of miles but no more than a couple of lengths of crawl in my entire life because it wore me out and I got water in my ears. At first I stood waiting. When she turned into her sixth length it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to find somewhere to sit in the shade. She swam more than thirty lengths without stopping or lessening the pace she had established at the start. She finally climbed out and walked over to where I was. Dripping wet, muscles tensed from the exercise, her body was even more of a shock. The unflagging childish smile on her face made up for it though.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to jump in the pool?”

  “Later.”

  “Really?”

  As I watched her go up and down, on that summer afternoon as warm as all the summer afternoons when I had failed before, I started turning a strange idea over in my mind. I ended up deciding there and then, both on Rosana’s behalf and to give myself the sensation of breaking something: “When we come back later I’m going to go up on the highest board and dive off.”

  “That board’s really very high.”

  “If I crack my head open on the bottom of the pool you can slip away quietly. Just catch a bus and don’t tell anybody anything. They’ll take care of burying me, you needn’t worry about that.”

  “I don’t want you to dive, Jaime.”

  Rosana seemed genuinely worried. We went back to where we’d left our things and she barely spoke for the next half hour. The sun was going down and the people who’d arrived in the morning were beginning to leave. Before my resolution could falter, I took my T-shirt off and suggested to Rosana that we went back to the pool.

  “Don’t do it, I mean it,” she insisted.

  “It’s okay. I’ve done it loads of times.”

  Five minutes later I was more than fifteen feet above the water, looking back over my life. It was a lovely afternoon, a cool breeze was blowing and there were hardly any swimmers in the pool. I thought again about the speed at which I would hit the water, the braking power of its liquid mass and the depth of the pool. In my case, the diver’s skill was completely irrelevant. Rosana was waiting on the pool side. I saw someone walk up to her from behind and start talking to her. A young Richard Gere lookalike, same mane of hair, more or less same complexion. Rosana turned to face him and at that moment someone in my head shouted banzai and I found myself flying straight toward the bottom of the abyss. I only just had time to tense my body and press my legs together. A moron who dies plunging off a diving board is pathetic, but a moron who dies plunging off a diving board and falls with his legs all over the place is verging on the grotesque.

  The water hit my head as if I’d smacked it on an awning. Then the awning tore and I went further and further down in the middle of a bubbling whirlwind. I didn’t put up any resistance, it even seemed undignified to resist, but suddenly my neck twisted upwards like a spring and something grazed my knee and the big toe of my left foot started stinging. I was safe and sound and the only way was up. I don’t have the patience to commit suicide by drowning.

  The ascent seemed interminable, although it could have gone on for ages, which is how long the air in my lungs would have lasted. When my head broke the surface I couldn’t see anything. I ducked back under and swam underwater over to the ladder. I put my feet on the rungs, grabbed the rails and dragged myself out of the water. Above me, lighting up the sunset with her blue eyes, was Rosana.

  “You’re a liar. That’s the first time you’ve done it” she scolded me.

  “How did you guess?”

  “Nobody who knows what they’re doing dives like that. You’re crazy.”

  Rosana reached out her hand and brushed the damp fringe off my forehead. She didn
’t do anything, she just looked at me and I saw that her pupils were larger than those of any other girl who had looked at me on the side of a swimming pool in the twilight. Perhaps I should have reproached myself for having plunged off the diving board, or Rosana for being impressed, but I preferred to interpret that a bit differently, that it wasn’t my jump that had impressed her, but the fact I had done it without knowing how.

  When happiness is too complete, when you’re cured of truly horrific injury, when everything is too beautiful, there is only one feeling a sensible man can have: something is about to go completely fucking wrong. I had this premonition at that moment, while Rosana loved me and I was aware of it, and so I sank into the melancholy that I haven’t been able to shed since then.

  When we left the swimming pool parking lot in my cousin’s car, I was overwhelmed by the sensation of having left behind whatever it was that justified that afternoon. One of the few ways of getting through life is thinking about something we want that’s going to happen to us. When it finally happens, and you always realize when it does even if you didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly you were longing for, the whole house of cards collapses. As anyone who hasn’t yet taken up the modern habit of not reflecting on the essentials knows, what’s important is not your wish coming true, but the fact that it hasn’t done so yet and the possibility that it will.

  As I accelerated with my good foot and controlled the clutch with my bad foot, which I had scraped on the bottom of the pool, I came to the conclusion that I had no choice but to return Rosana to her parents and forget about this game. After rummaging amongst my worse inclinations, I realized that I lacked the nerve to go beyond the point I had reached. My scruples were, in part, what held me back. Some of my colleagues had daughters Rosana’s age, and some of them were guys I more or less respected. They would have despised me for my behavior and it bothered me that I had no arguments of substance to defend myself against that kind of scorn. Of course Rosana didn’t exactly come across as a helpless little girl, but that could just have been a twisted evaluation on my part. And even if I needed to settle a score with fifteen year-old girls, such a need was an anomaly and I couldn’t hope that anyone would understand it.

  I was also afraid of the practical consequences. Of course, those that might be the result of the worst possible scenario—being discovered and having to answer for my dirty tricks before a judge—appalled me. But I was also haunted by a less serious and highly predictable outcome: that Rosana would suddenly become a woman within her teenage body and would stop being nice to me and even lose her looks and start to judge me. A man can free himself from a real woman using various widely recognised tactics that are easily put into practice. Many of these methods are even compatible with living under the same roof. On the other hand, there is no certain or easy way to free oneself from a woman-child, especially one with whom you’re involved in an indecent relationship.

  I was about to state aloud, and in slightly more heroic terms, my decision that we shouldn’t see each other again, when Rosana had that idea she should never have had: “Let’s go somewhere where there’s nobody else around.”

  The sensible thing would have been for me not to give in to her whim. At some point I would have to put a stop to things and that was as good as any. However, I chose to persuade myself that doing what she wanted could buy me some time to find a clever way of convincing her.

  “Of course, your wish is my command. Do you have somewhere in mind?” I asked.

  “Somewhere around here. Somewhere you know.”

  I racked my brain and finally remembered the vacant lot next to the Distance University building. I used to go there often when I was a student. I’d taken girls there before. I’d even broken up with a girlfriend there, in case the precedent was of any use. Once we arrived I drove over to a remote area, beneath some trees. I switched off the ignition and felt I had to be the first to speak.

  “Rosana.”

  “Yes.”

  “You see,” I stammered, “sometimes you can’t do exactly what you want.”

  “Right.”

  “What I mean is, sometimes, however much you want something, you just have to let go.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Lots of things start out as jokes, and while something’s still a joke it doesn’t matter. But it can’t always be a joke. In the end things take a serious turn and you have to be more careful.”

  “I thought you were going to kiss me.”

  “What?”

  Rosana drew closer. She had turned voluptuous and it was hard for me to get used to seeing her like that.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be the first,” she said, and it was as if she suddenly was twenty years older. “Not in this, nor the rest.”

  “I can see it’s pointless trying to explain this to you,” I squirmed. “I’m not going to be anything with you. Let’s go.”

  I can’t swear that I would’ve kept my word if I’d had to resist her incitement for any length of time. But there was no more time. Before my hand could touch the key to start the ignition, the car doors opened and someone lifted me out of my seat as if I were nothing more than a teddy bear stuffed with foam rubber.

  On occasion, and fortunately these are few and far between, you look round and realize that hell, the wrath of God and rotten luck really do exist and not only can they catch up with you, but they do. In the movies, Evil is normally represented as something more or less monstrous that crushes you mercifully quickly. In reality, Evil is human and much slower. That afternoon for example, it came disguised as three individuals who must have been just over twenty years old. One had a shaved head and was about two metres tall, the second one had long, dishevelled hair and was wearing an enormous spiked wristband, the last, who seemed to be in charge, was unremarkable as regards his hair, and was wearing army boots.

  It was the skinhead who had dragged me out of the car. After lifting me clean into the air he stood me on the ground and made sure I couldn’t move by twisting my arm behind my back and crushing my neck with his forearm, which was significantly thicker than my torso and about thirty times as hard. For one stupid moment, the only thing that crossed my mind was that I hadn’t expected the regression to childhood I’d feared when I agreed to go to the swimming pool with Rosana would be quite so complete. Then I was scared, shit scared. The guy with the matted hair had grabbed Rosana and had his hand clamped over her mouth. He had to because she was trying to shout.

  “Tell the little bitch to shut her trap, boss, or Yoni will split her head open,” the guy with the boots threatened me.

  “Don’t worry, Rosana, nothing’s going to happen to you,” I stuttered with difficulty.

  “That’s right, Rosana, nothing’s going to happen to you, sweetie-pie,” the ringleader reassured her.

  The girl stopped struggling but Yoni didn’t uncover her mouth. Given our situation, I hastened to bet, with little confidence, that this was not of prime importance.

  “All my money’s in the car, in the bag. There’s about twenty thousand pesetas and my credit cards. I’ll give you the pin number. It’s nine zero ninety-nine for all of them.”

  “Very good, boss, you made the right move there.”

  “I bet that’s the wrong code, Fredi,” surmised Yoni, gratuitously and mistakenly.

  “I’ll put the squeeze on him a bit to check if you want,” offered the guy with the shaved head.

  “Wait, Urko, let me have a look,” ordered Fredi. He got into the car and pulled out the bag. He found my wallet, counted the money and took out the cards.

  “Nineteen grand, a Visa Gold card and three other less common ones. You’re telling the truth boss, I’m sure the code’s correct. Or is it? Let him have it, Urko.”

  Urko twisted my arm so hard I thought he was going to pull it off.

  “I swear that’s the code,” I shouted.

  “Enough, Urko. I believe him. In any case, we’ll take him with us and if he’s lying we�
��ll beat the shit out of him. That way you can’t cancel them either, eh chief? Now, let’s have a look at the slut. You gonna give her to me too, boss?”

  “Leave her alone, fuck it, she’s just a kid,” I begged.

  “What?”

  “Leave her alone. You’ve got a truckload of cash. You can get fifty thousand with each card, and you can buy yourselves a real broad each.”

  “I didn’t catch that, boss. Did you say something?”

  I swallowed. Everything was about to fucking explode and I had to take a risk, or rather, divert the problem onto myself.

  “She hasn’t done anything to you. If you touch her you’re a fucking piece of shit.”

  “Boss you’ve had it! Hold him, Urko.”

  Fredi took a run up and, obviously, dealt me a kick in the soul, or rather, in my groin. Looking back, I think it’s the first time I’d ever been kicked there, and it hurt so much that I have no words to describe it. I was left dangling from Urko’s iron forearm, moaning and feeling the tears streaming down my face.

  When I was able to open my eyes again, I saw Rosana, terrified and immobile. She no longer even seemed capable of shouting.

  “I don’t know what an old guy like you is doing with a little whore like her,” Fredi pondered aloud, with exaggerated gestures. “And I’ve no idea how come she’s such a good-looking little thing. What I do know is that she’s for free and your cash will buy us a few drinks later. Hold her still, Yoni.”

  Rosana tried to shake them off but they had a good grip on her. Fredi pulled up her dress and ripped her panties off.

  “I’ll have these as a souvenir,” he told me, squirrelling them away.

  Hell, my personal hell, was that it was Fredi who revealed to me as night fell on that vacant lot, the treasure hiding under Rosana’s dress. In my most abject moments, I had dreamed of doing it myself, but slowly and with a tenderness that Fredi didn’t need and that now made me disgusted and full of self-loathing. Nor could I fail to acknowledge, in the midst of the horror, the tender beauty that was about to be devastated. Sinking right down to the depths of depravity, I have to confess I tried not to miss a single detail, because probably this would be the last instance of female nudity my eyes would see. In a fit of pride or rage I tried to free myself from Urko’s grasp. My rebellion didn’t last long. The giant squeezed my neck until I started to choke and could no longer struggle.