The Angst-Ridden Executive

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  He called up a couple of times, and suddenly a light appeared, announcing the apparition of Fuster on the terrace above. Sleep had left his blond goatee beard and his thinning but strategically combed hair ruffled, and had tilted the angle of his glasses to such an extent that one side frame was stuck in his left ear and the other was desperately seeking the support of his right.

  ‘What time of night do you call this? What’s up—is your house on fire?’

  ‘No. A duck ragout.’

  ‘A what?!’

  ‘I’ve cooked a duck. It’s not a very big one, but there’s no way that I’m eating it on my own.’

  ‘It’s half two in the morning, though.’

  ‘A duck ragout, friend.’

  ‘A young duck?’

  ‘A veritable duckling!’

  ‘You sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Go and get the wine open. I’ll be right with you.’

  Either Carvalho was excessively slow in returning home, or Fuster had run, driven by the cool damp of the night and his rekindled appetite. At any rate, by the time he arrived Carvalho had not had time to open the bottle of Montecillo. Fuster placed on the kitchen table a small basket that he had brought with him, filled with dried fruits from Villores, natural honey, also from Villores, and some strange pastries belonging to a species of popular dry pastries whose ingredients necessarily included egg and almond.

  ‘My sister-in-law made these pastries. They’re from Villores.’

  ‘I suspected as much.’

  ‘After duck there’s nothing better than a few hazel nuts with honey and a pastry to settle a good meal.’

  Fuster opened the oven, raised his head, and closed his eyes. His thin nostrils were quivering with anticipation.

  ‘You’ve surpassed yourself.’

  A celery salad was the perfect prelude to the duck.

  ‘Now there’s a fundamental contribution from Villores—you’ve put truffle into it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s most unorthodox. You don’t put truffle with duck.’

  ‘You put what the bloody hell you want. . . !’

  ‘Oh well, if that’s the way you feel about it. . .’

  Two glasses of chilled eau de vie were downed in the hope that they would create space in their respective stomachs.

  ‘If this trou normand doesn’t settle things, we’ll be up all night.’

  Fuster gently fondled his stomach.

  ‘You’re crazy. Or rather, we’re crazy. It’s four in the morning!’

  ‘If you want to sleep easy, you have to vomit. The main thing is to have eaten the meal. Digesting it is wholly incidental to the exercise and quite pointless.’

  ‘I’ll go straight home and if I’m not asleep within five minutes I’ll remember a restaurant in London where I used to wash dishes when I was a student, and that’ll make me vomit. I feel like throwing up even at the thought of it. Thanks, Pepe. You’ve put an extra night into my life. I would have spent it just sleeping like an ox, but I’ve lived it instead. I’m grateful.’

  When the night comes and spreads its shadows,

  Few animals do not close their eyes,

  And the pain of sick people grows.

  ‘My fellow countryman Ausias March would not have written those lines if he’d had a neighbour like you.’

  Alone again Carvalho noted how objects in the room seemed to be creeping up on him again, and he wasn’t sure if they wanted to protect him or suffocate him.

  ‘Biscuter—I know this is a hell of a time to be phoning, but it’s important. Has anyone rung?’

  ‘No one. I wasn’t asleep, boss. So as to stay awake for your phone call I was reading one of the books off your bookshelf. It’s a very sad book, but I’m getting through it.’

  ‘Which book?’

  ‘The Heart. I read one bit that was just like the serial on TV—Marco. Similar, but not the same. I’ve been crying, boss. Can’t you tell it from my voice? And another bit the story of the Sardinian drummer boy. Do you remember it? He must have been like the drummer of Bruch. It’s true isn’t it—that the drummer of Bruch doesn’t die?’

  ‘Not while he’s playing his drum, no. But afterwards he very definitely does.’

  ‘I’ve just got to the bit where Garrone’s mother dies. Another bit of melodrama! It’s a very good book, but everyone always seems to be dying.’

  At a given moment, some designer must have decided that, given that Catalonia was trying to reconstruct a raison d’etre for itself in the field of politics and culture, there was no reason not to do the same for interior decor. So they invented a kind of rural Renaissance style combining the much-vaunted Catalonian sobriety of taste with the lightness required for modem furniture. The result was a style of furniture called renaixentista, which was certainly good to look at, but which was a dog’s dinner as far as its antecedents were concerned. From the moment you stepped into the hallway, Alemany’s flat was a declaration of principle. Above a Catalonian flag hung framed portraits of Macia, Companys, and Tarradellas, the three presidents of the Generalitat in the twentieth century. Next to the photo of Macia, a frame transformed a letter into a holy relic. It was a handwritten note in Catalan from Companys to the master of the house: ‘My dear Alemany, our friend Rodoreda tells me that you’ve been ill. . . ,

  An affectionate letter which reflected the older generation’s fetish for formalities. The letter took on new meaning when señora Alemany, twenty years younger than her octogenarian husband, spoke in a subdued voice to inform him that Alemany was ill, very ill. Alemany was all skin and bone, with a pale complexion and grey hair that was neatly combed. Breathing through his mouth and peering at Carvalho with eagle eyes, Alemany told the detective to come and sit by his bed. He gave his wife just one look and she hurried from the room. Then the old man looked at Carvalho and asked him to be brief. The detective explained the reason for his visit. Had Jauma been to see him recently about anything to do with Petnay? If so, what? Was it something important? The old man said nothing. Carvalho explained that he was there on behalf of Jauma’s widow, and the eagle eyes became more gentle. He shut his eyes as if to make them gentler still, swallowed his saliva by a motion of his Adam’s apple that was almost audible, and a slight trembling movement indicated that he was gearing himself up to speak, in the way that Spanish toilet cisterns give a slight quiver just before the water begins its descent down the pipe.

  ‘Señor Jauma and I—I’ve called him señor Jauma ever since his father died—had a fine friendship. He was from Vidreras, a village in Gerona, close to my own. I am from Santa Cristina de Aro. Señor Jauma, as I say, was alarmed when he saw that the figures that I prepared for him did not add up, but that the figures in the company’s official audit did.’

  ‘What was the discrepancy?’

  ‘This will surprise you. Two hundred million. Yes really, two hundred million pesetas.’

  ‘Was this the first time?’

  ‘No. Let me finish. That’s what I was going to say. It wasn’t the first time. The accounts that I’ve drawn up and the accounts prepared by Petnay haven’t tallied since 1974, but there’s never been such a big gap before—usually it’s only been five or six million. On each occasion Jauma informed the company’s head office, so that they could investigate the matter. The first two years they replied that it had all been cleared up. But this year the amount was too big to explain away. I advised señor Jauma to have the figures double-checked by somebody else, because I was worried by the responsibility involved. He made me run through the figures again and again, and each time the discrepancy came out at two hundred million.’

  ‘What did Petnay say?’

  ‘All I know is what señor Jauma told me. He rang me one day and said: “Don’t worry, Alemany. It’s all been sorted out.” That was one week befor
e his death.’

  ‘Have you told anyone about all this since Jauma was killed?’

  ‘It was a professional secret between myself and señor Jauma, and also a matter of friendship.’

  ‘Have you kept a copy of your work?’

  ‘Of course. I would only let it go into the hands of señor Jauma’s elder brother, though, and then only on condition that he promised—promised—that he would never use it against his brother.’

  ‘I suppose we can presume that it wasn’t Jauma who had appropriated the money.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that Jauma’s death might have been connected with the business about the disappearance of the money?’

  ‘Of course. But since there’s been so much garbage piling up in this country, so much filth, during the dictatorship of that petty crook, that scum. . . !’

  The insults came from his lips like shells from a howitzer. They gave him the energy to raise his head from the pillow, with the aid of thin muscles that were white and fragile, and which soon gave way, to let his head sink back, but not his anger.

  ‘I let a few days pass and I saw that they were providing an explanation. Fine. It was none of my business. If anyone had raised questions about the money, or about the running of the firm, then Oriol Alemany would have gone straight to the board of directors and I would have told them a thing or two. But then I fell ill. I’m eighty-six years old, and I still do the audits for four companies. Look at those books, there.’

  On the renaixenca sideboard lay four large credit/debit books, an accounting pad with big lilac-coloured board covers, a classic Waterman’s fountain pen, an ink rubber and a set of recently sharpened pencils.

  ‘In the afternoon, when my head clears, my wife sets up a table for me, and I work for a bit until I get tired. Just a moment ago señor Robert rang to ask how I’m getting on with the accounts. He rings me every day. Not that he’s trying to hurry me up—it’s more his way of encouraging me. I used to do the accounts for his father. He was what I’d call a proper industrialist, of the sort we used to have before the war. He was a man of the centre-Right, but not one of those who went off to Burgos. I vouched for him several times during the war, and one day, when I realized that, for all my protection, they would be coming to look for him, to do something dreadful to him, I went to see him, and I said: “Señor Robert, I can get a car and take you as far as Camprodon. From there I know how to get you across the mountains.” We’d always had a wonderful understanding, you see. He was in the League, and I was in the Socialist Union, but we were both Catalans, Catalans to the core. Señor Robert wouldn’t listen to me, and a few days later they found him dead on a piece of waste ground over by Horta. His Widow always used to say: “Ah, Alemany! If only he had listened to you!” You follow my meaning? Anyway, I didn’t take on clients just because they wanted me to take them on—I took them on because I wanted to, and they were really more friends than clients, because it’s a bad thing when an accountant thinks only of making money.’

  He turned down the bedclothes and revealed a gold Barcelona F.C. shield embroidered onto the breast pocket of his pyjama jacket. He looked at the shield and then at Carvalho. ‘If it hadn’t been for those hooligans who took the club over after the war. . . I was one of the directors of Barcelona during the Republic, when the club was a proper football club. Because now those comedians, those crooks. . . You can’t tell me that it’s a proper club now! It’s just another monument to Franco, and it will stay that way until they get rid of the dross—in other words, the Spanish Football Federation. I said this way back in the thirties, to Hernandez Coronado, a journalist who later became a director of Madrid Athletic. I said: “If it was up to me, Barcelona would withdraw from the Spanish league and join some other league—the French, maybe. . . or the Australian. . . it’s all the same to me.” “Don’t take it like that. Alemany, old chap,” he said. Don’t take it like that! How am I supposed to take it when they rob us of match after match? All Madrid knows is how to rob us blind, and ever since the war they’ve been trying to turn us into a nation of shepherds and farmers, like Churchill wanted to do with Germany. Although I have to say that I would have done the same with the Germans. They’ll soon be getting up to their old tricks again. I give it another five years. There’s plenty of scope for wheeler-dealing, and what has foreign investment ever done for us except prop up the dictatorship that kept Catalonia down?’

  ‘Oriol, don’t talk about politics—you know it only upsets you.’

  ‘Oh, leave me alone, woman! “Don’t talk about politics,” she says. Everything’s politics!’

  His wife handed him a little tray with a pill and half a glass of water on it. The old man concentrated his energies on a meticulous swallowing of the pill and then gave his wife a look which drove her from the room.

  ‘Don’t talk about politics, indeed. . . everything is politics! Now they say that we’re heading for democracy. And who’s taking us there? The same traitors who had it good under Franco. . . First democracy, and then autonomy. Damn them all!’

  ‘Señor Alemany, it is possible that the business with the missing money is important for the inquiries that I’m making. Could I count on you as a witness?’

  ‘When the time comes I would consult with señor Jauma’s elder brother, because he is now head of the Jauma family and holds the moral responsibility—at least, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘I hope you get better; I hope Barcelona wins out; and I hope Catalonia gets its autonomy.’

  ‘It won’t happen in my lifetime. Are you from Catalonia?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d say I’m probably one of the “traitors”.’

  ‘In Catalonia, the real foreigners are actually Catalans—people like Samaranch, Porta, and other moneybags who lined their pockets under Franco. They’re your real foreigners.’

  From the doorway Carvalho could see that the old man was still smouldering with anger. In the drawing room the widow-to-be had tears in her eyes.

  ‘He’s on the way out. He’s very ill, poor thing.’

  ‘He seems very well, considering.’

  The wife gave him a look she’d copied from her husband.

  ‘It’s his character. It’s his stamina that keeps him going. I think the only reason he’s lived this long is because he wanted Franco to die first.’

  The message from the Golden Hammer had been urgent, but the king of the pimps was sitting making inroads into a plate of cockles, which he then washed down with a tomato juice. He invited Carvalho to take a seat.

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘What don’t you like?’

  ‘This business you’re investigating. For the past forty-eight hours they’ve been pulling all my pals in, trying to get someone to own up to the Vich killing, They tell me that some new boy who’s been trying to make his mark round here has signed a bloody statement saying that he didn’t actually kill Jauma, but that everyone’s saying it was one of us who did. The next step will be to pull in some poor sod and get him to sign a confession. It looks to me as if someone’s pushing very hard to get this case stitched up—someone with the power to be able to put pressure on. The civil governor leans on the chief of police, and the chief of police leans on someone else, and so on, down to the cop on the street.’

  ‘You still say you don’t believe the official version?’

  ‘I know how these things work. I’ll wait till they put the silly fucker inside, and then I’ll know who’s calling the shots, and whether he’s signed with the fear of God up him, or whether he actually knew something. At this moment he’ll be at the police headquarters. This evening they’ll take him to the Modelo, and tomorrow I’ll send in a lawyer to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘They might put him in solitary.’

  ‘If they put him in solitary, I’ll send the lawyer of one of the prison big-sh
ots, because they can get to talk to prisoners in the punishment cells and they always know everything. By tomorrow we’ll know something, for sure.’

  ‘Would you be able to find out who’s putting the pressure on?’

  ‘That’s none of my business. My territory begins and ends in Plaza de Catalunya, as you might say. Anything beyond that is up to you. It must be someone pretty big, though, because we’ve been behaving ourselves, and for the last two days they’ve been grabbing our balls with both hands. Anyway, you’d best go now, because the less I’m seen with you the better.’

  The bar lay outside Barcelona’s criminal quarter, and had an air that suggested it served nothing but tomato juices and camomile infusions for forty-year-old ladies lost in the desert of the late afternoon. He returned to his office on foot, mingling with the midday crowds on the Ramblas and bathing in the innocence of the sun: students, office workers, old-age pensioners, all looking to enjoy a stroll and soak up the free nutrition of the spring sunshine. Looking like a puppy thrown out of his kennel, Biscuter was standing in a corner of the office which had been invaded by one of the long-haired policemen of the previous visit, and a gigantic inspector who looked like he weighed a ton, and who seemed to have two moustaches, one over his mouth, and another between his eyes.