With his hunger completely vanquished, Carvalho chewed on his Montecristo. As the smoke began to rise, he found himself musing on how things were going—or, rather, not going. Somebody was trying to establish a rationale for the killing of Jauma, and it was obvious that it was a fabrication. Why? Jauma’s discovery of the shortfalls in Petnay’s accounts could have been the reason, but then Petnay had been informed about them. In fact they had seemed to respond to his revelations by hushing the whole business up. Who had handled that money? Why? On the one hand there was the political pressure to get the case shut, and all the expense involved in buying a killer who could claim that he had been defending his honour, and who would be freed in another couple of years, several million pesetas the richer; then there was the ruthlessness with which the people behind all this had acted in the case of poor Rhomberg. In the face of this great wall that was moving to block him, Carvalho only had the fragile pretext of his commission from the widow, a commission that was looking increasingly tenuous in the light of the pressure that was undoubtedly being put on Concha Hijar at that very minute. If the widow pulled out, his only remaining option would be to stoke up a political scandal with the aid of Alemany the accountant and the left-wingers among Jauma’s circle of friends. And who would pay him for that? He wasn’t after the satisfaction of a job well done, but at least he liked to see a job finished, and it worried him to leave a problem unresolved, in the same way that he didn’t like to see a job around the house left undone for want of a suitable screwdriver or because he’d forgotten to buy a roll of insulating tape. The only emotional factor in it for him was the question of Rhomberg’s son. With Jauma he felt a professional solidarity, but the solidarity that he felt for the German kid came from somewhere in his blood. It came from the depths of a childhood terror of being orphaned. It came from having seen the wretchedness of kids in the barrio who had been left fatherless by the war, or by prison, or by shootings or the post-war tuberculosis. The fragility of those orphans who poked their shaved heads through the geraniums on balconies that were as rusty as the collective spirit of the barrio aroused in his stomach the anxiety of the young animal that discovers in others’ misfortunes the possibility of its own.
‘For the working class, everything is tragic,’ his father used to say, ‘whether it’s a sickness, a divorce, or a death in the family. The rich always have a mattress ready so that when they fall they don’t get hurt.’
The German kid probably had a mattress soft enough to protect his little bones, but not to protect against the damage to the esteem he felt for the father he idolized. Once again Carvalho regretted the poverty of his emotional upbringing, with its basis in absolutes. In Japan a dog had apparently died of a broken heart because its master had not come home: he’d read this on a caption to one of the agency news photos displayed in the windows of the offices of La Vanguardia on calle Pelayo. A man had stabbed another man because he was trying to steal the woman he loved: he’d heard this recited by a balladeer on Radio Barcelona. A little girl died of grief because her parents had had a baby boy and he was going to inherit the family’s wealth: he’d heard it, and seen it, acted by a lousy tragic actress at the Sala Mozart. Probably the German boy would grow up strong and confident, freed of the authoritarian presence of a castrating father. But then again, maybe not. He could end up suffering the same fate as Tyrone Power in Son of Fury—sadistically enslaved by his uncle and tutor as played by George Sanders. He’d taken an instant dislike to the voice of Dieter’s brother-in-law. Prussian, he’d thought to himself. Or rather, a Prussian-sounding voice according to what conventional wisdom thinks Prussian sounding voices sound like. But the kid would grow up. He’d emigrate to the South Seas. He’d go pearl-fishing. Then he’d hire other people to do the pearl-fishing for him. He’d get rich on the proceeds, and come back to Berlin and humiliate his uncle. Or he’d grow up living in the past, a failure, who would fall in love with strong women who’d ignore him totally, and he’d end up committing suicide by swallowing all the records of his favourite singer, dissolved in acid.
‘We shouldn’t bring children into this world. No matter how much we do for them, we can never compensate them for the dirty trick of having brought them into the world in the first place.’
So said his father, particularly when he became obsessed with the prospect of the impending nuclear destruction of the world. Every time a nuclear mushroom cloud appeared in the pages of La Vanguardia or the Diario de Barcelona, Don Evaristo Carvalho would point an accusing finger at it and embark on a Malthusian tirade for which the young Pepiño was the sole audience. The boy soon became aware that his very existence was a lamentable error which (for his own good) his father now deeply regretted.
‘If humanity just made up its mind not to have any more children, in fifty years the human race would die out, and the earth would revert to the forces of innocence—water, sun and minerals.’
Right up to his death, Evaristo Carvalho had a feeling of remorse every time he saw his son, and he tried everything possible to purge the boy’s brain of any instinct towards paternity. From his habitual vantage-point on the balcony he would watch as the cars and the generations passed. Cars were the symbol of human madness—a machine designed to speed up mankind’s absurd progress from birth to death. And for him the kids that emerged from the bellies of the girls in the barrio were victims—losers of everything and winners of practically nothing.
‘I ask you! The woman in number seven’s had another kid, for God’s sake! Needs her head examining, bringing more victims into this world. . .’
Carvalho had always meant to ask his father if he’d have thought the same way if he hadn’t lost the Civil War.
He’d Invited Pedro Parra up for a meal at Vallvidrera. He managed to find time to go to the Boqueria to buy the essentials for a spare but wholesome menu designed to replenish the energies of a colonel who had still not abandoned his dream of storming the Winter Palace. A leek soup and a freshly-caught steamed turbot. Parra was pleased to find a meal that was not going to jeopardize his life’s struggle against cholesterol and uric acid.
‘So this is how you live! A proper little hideaway!’
‘North, South, East or West, my home is wherever happen to be at the time. . .’
‘You bachelors can always afford to leave the cage door open.’
Parra ate sparingly, drank just one glass of chilled Perelada, and was enchanted by the dessert of yoghurt, orange juice and grated orange peel. He was rather put out when he discovered that it also contained Cointreau and a triple sec, but was placated when Carvalho assured him that the quantities involved were minute. He declined the offer of a coffee and took a small packet from his pocket.
‘I’m sorry to be a bit of a bore, but I’d be grateful if you could do me an infusion with these leaves. If you’d rather, I could do it myself.’
‘What is it?’
‘A mixture of what Catalonians call puniol y boldo. Excellent for the digestion. And for the liver.’
From the same pocket he produced a small dispenser which disgorged two small saccharine tablets which he placed within reach for when the infusion was ready. Carvalho poured himself a coffee, and two glasses of orujo, and prepared to counter Parra’s ironical comeback.
‘To think that I was counting on you for the revolution! You’ll be too unfit when the time comes.’
‘You still on about the revolution?’
‘My old plan still holds. I’ve just adapted it to changing circumstances.’
Twenty years earlier Parra had calculated how many activists would be needed to occupy the nerve centres of the country’s four or five principal cities.
‘All we need do is wait for the cracks to start appearing in the state apparatus. Then we move in and seize the time.’
Parra was appalled by the Left’s growing willingness to negotiate electoral alliances, and had been obliged to postpone his pl
an of action to some future date when the vanguard elements of the working class would hopefully have regained their historical lucidity and thrown off that sense of self-pity that led them to want to be accepted by the bourgeoisie.
‘Here’s your flow-chart. If you ask me, this kind of thing’s more for visual effect than for serious study: they’re more graphic art than economics, really.’
‘In this case I’m more interested in the graphic art than the economics.’
‘The picture is fairly complete. It shows the relationship between Petnay and its various associated companies, at several levels: (1) companies that are directly linked because Petnay owns shares in them; (2) companies that are indirectly linked because people from the boards of directors of directly linked firms are also on the boards of firms that are indirectly linked; (3) companies that are indirectly linked via family connections—parents, children, marriages, that sort of thing—the list isn’t completely up to date because our research department can’t afford to spend all its time reading the gossip columns; and (4) companies that are indirectly linked because their survival depends on selling to Petnay itself or to one of its subsidiaries.’
‘It looks more like a swamp than a flow chart!’
‘Don’t start complaining—we did it for you in record time. And don’t forget, you owe the lads five thousand pesetas for doing all the fancy work with the coloured pens. Now, how about telling me what this is all about? Would I be right in thinking it’s to do with the stories in the papers, about Antonio Jauma and Dieter Rhomberg?’
‘Could be.’
Carvalho’s eyes flicked from name to name, and from time to time he recognized names that he’d seen in the papers. Present-day members of the government; yacht owners who tended to come fourth or fifth in international races; noted socialites from Fuengirola, Torremolinos, Puerto Banus and S’Agaro; and sundry notables from the national Chamber of Commerce.
‘I’ll take a closer look at this later.’
‘If you’ll excuse me being nosey, I’d say you’re dealing with some pretty big fish here. Jauma was by no means a nobody. I’ve copied you an article from Time magazine, to give you an idea. It gives a list of the leading political and financial figures in Spain at the time it was written, together with their future prospects. Jauma’s right in there. They describe him as having strong prospects at the international level.’
‘They’re a bit wide of the mark with the politicians, though.’
‘The article’s from the Franco period, and they underestimate the staying power of some of the old guard. But if you take a close look you’ll see that the financial list isn’t so wide of the mark. Maybe you don’t follow these things, but today you’ll find all these characters holding key positions. There’s been a change of faces among the politicians, but in the world of industry and commerce everything’s stayed just as it always was—in fact the Young Turks of the economic sector are increasingly tending to take on political power. It’s a phenomenon typical of periods of crisis. Big capital feels confident for as long as it has the back-up of the repressive power of the fascist state. As soon as that state starts losing its grip, big capital goes through a phase of dissociating itself from the political forces that might previously have represented its interests, and in part takes on that role itself. This also happens in countries with a formal tradition of democracy. Look at Italy. The Agnellis never took on a directly political role for as long as the Christian Democrats were strong enough to do their dirty work for them. But as soon as the political forces representing their interests began to disintegrate, the Agnellis started getting involved in politics themselves. The elder one dabbled in conspiracies, and the younger one stood as a member of parliament and tried to advance his interests inside the Christian Democracy.’
‘So what’s big capital’s game in Spain right now?’
‘They’re moving on several fronts at once. I don’t believe that Spanish capital is divided into one bloc that’s nostalgic for Francoism—the so-called economic “bunker” —and another bloc that favours change as long as it can control it. I think they’re all banking on a controlled changeover, but at the same time they’re keeping one hand on their guns. In other words, they hand out a hundred pesetas to the neo-Francoites, a hundred to the Centre Right, and another hundred to the far Right and the secret police.’
‘A hundred pesetas! We’re talking about five million, rising to two hundred million . . .’
Some impulse prompted him to get up and begin pacing round the room like the proverbial caged animal, or, in Carvalho’s case, like an ex-prisoner pacing round his cell in voyages through a geography of the imagination.
‘Now, they’re not that generous just for the hell of it. In order to have coughed up two hundred million, either they must be very strong undertakings or they must have a very strong hand to play.’
‘Two hundred million, in 1976 to be precise.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You could do a lot with money like that. Finance a sympathetic political party; hire a bunch of armed mercenaries; or even buy top-level government decisions.’
‘Yes, two hundred million’s not bad. But that would have to be just for starters.’
At four in the morning Carvalho finally fell asleep. The sheets that the ‘colonel’ had given him fell to the floor like a gentle flight of clumsy, ingenuous animals. He dreamt of having a strange erotic relationship with Fuensanta, which began with a plate of sausage and beans served at the counter of a bar which was too flashy to be La Chunga.
‘Are they real?’ Carvalho asked, pointing to her breasts.
‘Touch them.’
He did. They were big, soft, and hot.
‘If my son comes back, we’re done for.’
They found a hiding place among some plastic drainpipes in the moonlight, but the woman still wasn’t satisfied.
‘They can see us from the house.’
‘Which house?’
In the background you could see the outlines of a terrace roof, and the shadow of a guard with a rifle slung across his shoulder.
‘It’s my son. Can’t you see him?’
‘I thought you had a daughter.’
‘No, no, a son.’
Carvalho seemed to have no strength left to finish pulling her skirt off, even though he could already see in the moonlight the promise of a white arse with its soft cleavage appearing between two cool, spherical globes of flesh.
He suddenly found himself awake, with his cock at half mast and a sex urge somewhere in his nether regions. He made his way to the toilet, unsure whether to piss or masturbate. As he pissed it relieved the pressure on his sex organs, but not on his imagination, which was still a jumble of carnal images of Fuensanta and her daughter.
He cleared the dirty dinner plates off the table so as to make room for the carefully detailed sheets of paper that Parra had given him. The name Gausachs cropped up five times in firms that had links with Petnay. The lawyer Fontanillas was on the board of directors of two companies with rather remote connections, and Aracata Milk Products Ltd turned up in the list of firms supplying raw materials.
The Angst-Ridden Executive Page 19