The Angst-Ridden Executive

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  Propelled by the heat of the boxer’s breath on his neck, Carvalho walked past the short man and entered the living room. Charo was there. She had been stripped to the waist, but still had her skirt on. Two men were holding her by the arms. When she saw Carvalho, she began to cry. Carvalho made as if to turn, but just at that moment he received a heavy kick to the leg that was supporting him. He lost his balance and fell flat on his back. The boxer went to kick him in the balls, and the short man kicked him in the side. As he sat on the floor trying to protect his genitals with his hands, they kicked his arms and then put a scarf round his neck and pulled on it so that he fell backwards. Balanced on one buttock he lashed out, kicking with both feet together and trying to make contact with the one standing nearest. The boxer reeled and grabbed at the sofa to prevent himself falling. By now Carvalho was on his feet again. He aimed a punch at the short man, who staggered back under the impact. Still staggering, he opened the knife that they’d taken from Carvalho. Charo screamed, and as Carvalho turned he saw a hand squeezing one of her breasts as if it was trying to strangle it. He dived towards her, but collided with the bulk of the boxer, who was now on his feet again. The boxer punched him, first in the kidneys, then in the chest, and then full in the face. Stunned, Carvalho lashed out at the boxer’s face with two fists clenched together, followed by a head-butt to the mouth. Carvalho’s momentum sent him sprawling to the floor on top of the man. One great paw flattened his nose and pulled his head backwards as if trying to wrench it off his body, while the other was delivering pile driver punches to his ribs. He managed to press his thumbs into the eyes of the fallen man, and he let out a yell, causing the other three to come running to his rescue.

  ‘Run, Charo, run!’

  But Charo was paralysed—she was crying, with her fists clenched and her lips bruised. Carvalho lashed out blindly, oblivious to the blows raining down on him. They hauled on his jacket and dragged him over to the radiator. Two of them sat on his back, and the other two gripped his arms. He felt the cold metal of a handcuff click round one wrist. A few more punches and they drew back. As he tried to raise himself he realized that the other handcuff was locked round the radiator feed-pipe. An irrepressible aesthetic instinct led him to lift himself up, and he sat there, powerless, looking from one face to the other and trying to contain the sob that came welling up from his stomach at the sight of a terrified Charo, her breasts covered with bruises. He tugged at the chain of the handcuffs to see if they were loose. Everyone and everything was out of reach. He lowered his head, settled his back against the radiator and tried to gather his thoughts. There were burning stabs of pain coming from various parts of his body. He moistened his top lip with his tongue and found that it was soaked with blood. The others were checking their bruises. The boxer’s eyes were streaming with the pain.

  ‘You scratched me, cocksucker. Now we’re going to show you something.’

  The boxer turned to Charo and gave her two hefty blows which knocked her to the floor. He grabbed her short hair and dragged her up, mauling her breasts with one hand and choking her screams with the other.

  ‘If you scream I’m going to castrate this queerboy pimp of yours. You—cut his balls off.’

  The short man moved across to Carvalho with the flick-knife open. Charo stopped screaming and began sobbing.

  ‘Take a look at her, ponce! The only reason we haven’t screwed her is because we prefer virgins, and this one looks like she’s done the rounds, But we could burn her tits with cigarettes. We’re all smokers. Or we could mark her face by scoring it with sugar lumps.’

  He had taken a lump of sugar out of his pocket and was removing its paper wrapper with a slowness that suggested hesitation. When he had it unwrapped, he pushed it abruptly against Charo’s face. She jerked back in panic, like an animal facing death and with no possibility of escape. Carvalho was sobbing silently, through gritted teeth.

  ‘We won’t mark her. At least, not today. It’s up to you, cocksucker, whether we come back another day to give her a seeing to. A whore with gashes all over her face earns fuck-all. And then we have the acid treatment. But we reserve that for really obstinate cases, and it looks like you’re starting to see sense, arsehole. You’ll get there. OK, let’s go.’

  The other three filed towards the door and turned round to watch. The boxer was standing in front of Carvalho, with his legs apart.

  ‘Look what you’ve done to my eyes, cunt! Why don’t you try it again, eh?’

  One, two, three punches sent the detective to his knees, as he tried to prevent the blows from smashing his teeth.

  The boxer seemed sated. He showed Carvalho an envelope, which he then tossed onto the sofa.

  ‘Read it carefully and make sure you do what it says. Otherwise we’ll be back, and today’s little episode will look like a picnic.’

  He removed Carvalho’s handcuffs and backed off to join his associates. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway and the door closed behind them. The only other noise in the flat was the sound of Charo sobbing quietly. They avoided each other’s eyes. Carvalho was on his knees. Charo was sitting in a chair with her hands in her lap, her cheeks red and tearstained, her breasts livid with bruises, and her body bowed under the weight of an invisible disgust.

  Feeling like a man who has survived the end of the world, Carvalho rang Biscuter and told him to come as fast as he could, and to bring a big bottle of liniment. He still hadn’t said a word to Charo. She was still crying quietly to herself, but when Carvalho went over and put his hand on her head, the tears suddenly turned to bitter sobbing, as if the floodgates had been opened for everything that was welling up inside her. Carvalho stroked her reddened cheeks and looked worriedly at the bruise marks on her breasts. He went to the bathroom and stuck his head under the tap, suppressing the spontaneous shouts triggered by the pain spots allover his body. He soaked a towel in water and went back to the front room. He wrapped the wet towel round Charo’s head and cradled her head in his arms, feeling her warmth as it penetrated the cloth. When he took the towel away, the swellings on her face had gone down and the bruise-marks were more clearly defined. He put the towel gently onto her breasts and crossed her arms across it to hold its soothing coolness next to her bruises. He exercised his arms vigorously, and then felt his ribs. He flexed his knees, despite the pains shooting through his muscles. He had no bones broken, and this cheered him up. Charo had arranged the towel around her like a shawl, and was trying to see to her hair. Some part of her scalp was obviously hurting, because she was feeling her head gingerly and grimacing when she hit a tender spot. Carvalho took a jug of water out of the fridge and downed half of it. He filled a glass with iced water, got a couple of aspirins from the bathroom cabinet and made Charo swallow them.

  ‘Is this all they did to you?’ he said, pointing to her face and breasts. She nodded. Then she examined Carvalho’s bruise marks and closed her eyes in horror. Carvalho realized that he hadn’t yet seen himself in the mirror. He went back to the bathroom. His alter ego looked frightening. His upper lip was a mass of cut, swollen flesh. He had cuts on his right cheek, big bruises on his cheekbones, a bloody graze in the middle of his forehead, and from some hidden point in the forest of his hair a trickle of half-coagulated blood traced across his brow. He raised his shirt to find his ribs a dark purple colour. He pulled down his trousers. His testicles had swollen to the size of blackened tennis balls. He removed his trousers completely, filled the bidet with cold water, and bathed his genitals. Someone was knocking at the door. He shouted to Charo not to open. He arranged a small hand-towel as a moist dressing between his legs, pulled up his trousers, went into the kitchen to pick up a large pair of scissors, and moved towards the door. The spyhole revealed the face of Biscuter, distorted into a great yellow blob.

  ‘For God’s sake, boss! For God’s sake—what happened!’

  Biscuter hopped nervously around Carvalho, checking the damage. The detec
tive took the bottle of liniment from him. They went into the living room. Carvalho lifted the towel from Charo’s shoulders. Biscuter blushed and looked away. Carvalho poured the liniment into his hands and delicately rubbed it into the girl’s breasts. He replaced her damp towel with a dry one and then returned to the bathroom to bathe his entire body with the lotion. He was beginning to feel better, as he sank into the other chair and relaxed. Charo had put on a silk dressing gown and was sitting quietly. Biscuter looked at them, obviously wanting to say something but not knowing what.

  ‘Put up a sign saying we’re shut for holidays, and come up to Vallvidrera with me. You too, Biscuter.’

  ‘If you need me, boss, I will. But if not I’ll hold the fort here, and God help them if they dare show their faces in the office.’

  ‘Well said, Watson—but I want you to come to Vallvidrera. Go and get my car from the parking lot, and park it just by the front door. I don’t want people seeing me in a state like this.’

  ‘I’ve got beans on the stove. What should I do with them?’

  ‘Take the pot and bring them along. We’ll finish off cooking them at Vallvidrera.’

  ‘Anything you say, boss!’

  Biscuter went off, making his brrm brrm noise as he went, and Charo couldn’t help laughing. Carvalho picked up the sealed envelope and put it in his trouser pocket. One half of him was dying to open it, but the other half wasn’t. Charo followed the transfer of the envelope, and the look of fear returned to her eyes. She and Carvalho looked at each other. Wanting to ask, but not wanting to answer. Carvalho went up to the roof terrace where Charo was in the habit of sunbathing, at the top of a modern building constructed in a gap in the rotting structure of the old barrio. As he leant on the railing he saw Biscuter arriving. Charo was putting some things into an overnight bag. She turned off the electricity in the hallway. When she turned round after locking the door she was wearing a pair of sunglasses. Biscuter opened the car doors like a chauffeur in a film. They drove towards the Ramblas, down to Paralelo, then along calle Urgel, to the old part of town and the slopes of Tibidabo. The fighting was beginning in the Ramblas. The armed police were forcing the demonstrators up neighbouring side-alleys. They gave more determined chase to some demonstrators rather than others, apparently motivated by random degrees of antipathy to their prey. One of the fugitives stumbled against the bonnet of Carvalho’s car, and at the speed of light a large black truncheon shook his shoulders with a series of blows that whistled down as the air was sliced by the hurtling rubber. Behind the plastic visor protecting his face the policeman had his eyes shut and his teeth clenched. The sound of the cars hooting infuriated him still further. He turned round and began lashing out with his truncheon at the cars nearest to him. Two or three of his associates joined in his insensate bludgeoning of the cars, and when the traffic began to move off, the truncheon blows rained onto their boots as if lashing the hind quarters of fleeing animals. Biscuter was driving with his head down and the tip of his nose virtually between the spokes of the steering wheel. The scene of violence outside the car had Charo clinging to Carvalho and periodically closing her eyes in horror.

  ‘Let’s get out of this shit country, Pepiño—please, let’s go away somewhere.’

  She cried for virtually the whole of the drive. Carvalho held her in his arms as he went up the steps to the apartment. Biscuter followed, with Charo’s bag in one hand and a china cooking pot tied up with string in the other. Once inside, Charo settled herself into an armchair. Carvalho began his fire-lighting ritual, deciding this time to use Alfonso Sastre’s Anatomy of Realism as kindling. Biscuter undid the web of knots and stuck his nose into the cooking pot to check the state of the stewed beans.

  ‘I’ve put mint in with them, boss. I bought a packet at the chemist’s. It’s dried mint, but it still gives a good flavour.’

  He was whistling to himself in the kitchen. ‘Now this is what I call proper conditions to cook in. If only I had this gear in the office . . .’

  The smell of the cooking relaxed them. Even Charo sniffed appreciatively, and although she said repeatedly that she wasn’t hungry, and that Pepe and Biscuter were two savages who thought of nothing but their stomachs, and that beans made you fat and she had no intention of ending up like a balloon, moments later she lifted the lid of the pot, smelt the aroma with evident pleasure, and had Biscuter almost passing out with delight when she said:

  ‘Your cooking’s as good as Pepiño’s.’

  Carvalho took the envelope out of his pocket. First he put it on the mantelpiece. Then, fearing that the sight of it would give Charo the horrors again, he put it in a drawer in the sideboard and began to lay the table.

  The room smelt of the camphor in the liniment. The rest of the house smelt of bean stew. Across Charo’s bared chest the bruises had formed into capricious fleurs du mal. Carvalho didn’t wake her. He shifted the unwashed dishes, sat himself on the one comer of the sofa that wasn’t occupied by the sleeping Biscuter, and wrote something on a piece of paper, choosing his words carefully as he wrote. Then he put it in the envelope that his assailants had left him. He put his jacket on and put the envelope in one pocket and the note that the boxer had given him in the other. He shook Biscuter to wake him.

  ‘I’ll be out all day. Don’t let Charo go out.’

  ‘I’m getting up now, boss. This house needs a good cleanup.’

  ‘This house needs nothing of the sort. It’s fine as it is. You just keep your eyes open, and stay with Charo.’

  His somnolent major domo had bloodshot eyes. Carvalho felt his gun where it sat in his pocket. Biscuter’s eyes followed the gesture, and it seemed to shake him awake.

  ‘I’m not letting you go on your own this time.’

  ‘Don’t worry—this time I’m taking my little protector.’

  The sun was barely up. The damp night air gave everything an early-morning smell—the earth, the pine trees, and the gravel as it crunched beneath Carvalho’s feet. The roads to the city were empty. The comanches were still sleeping in their lairs, or were just starting their daily gargles in the bathroom. The traffic lights saw that he was in a hurry and duly obliged. He arrived at Nuñez’s house just as the concierge was opening up, put the envelope in Nuñez’s mailbox and left again before the man could question him. He checked to make sure the boxer’s note was still in his pocket, took it out, unfolded it and put it on the passenger seat.

  ‘It gives me great pleasure to invite you to my estate at Palausator (Gerona) for an exchange of views. I shall be expecting you at midday on Saturday, and I would be delighted if you could lunch with me. You can inquire for the whereabouts of my house in Pals or La Bisbal, but I enclose a map anyway, in case you need it.’

  Signed: Argemi.

  The motorway seemed built for him alone. He devoured the miles, driven on by the emptiness of it all and the gentle coolness of the morning. As he crossed the Tordera he gave a moment’s thought to Dieter Rhomberg, and how he had died for the greater glory of universal stability. He came off the motorway at the Gerona North toll and took the road to Palamos. The countryside was slowly yawning into life. Tractors were working the fields. A van was going round picking up its daily harvest of dead dogs run over bypassing cars. Groups of children in single file were walking to the local high school.

  The van picks up its daily harvest of dead children run over by passing cars, and dogs are walking to school in single file,’ Carvalho said to himself, out loud, and then, at the top of his voice, he started into a romantic aria.

  You’re the woman I love best.

  The only one to whom I gave my heart

  Then he let rip with ‘Faithful triumphant sword’, and half strangled his vocal chords when he tried his luck with the tune:

  I love you

  Like a man loves his mother,

  Like a man loves his girl,

  Like a man loves mo-o-o-o-n
ey

  I lo-o-o-o-ve you.

  In La Bisbal they told him that the only place he would get something solid to eat was at La Marqueta. A small restaurant with oilcloth-covered tables, the wife in the kitchen, and a cylindrical giant of a man listing what they could heat up for him at that hour of the day: chicken with crayfish; spidercrab with snails; pigs’ trotters; roast kid; stuffed squid; baked snails with a vinaigrette or garlic dressing; turkey with mushrooms; stewed veal; sausage and kidney beans; an assortment of home-made sausages; butifarras; pork fillets; pork chops and steaks. The man completed his recitation, confident of the overwhelming effect of such a litany. Carvalho chose spidercrab and snails.

  ‘It’s more snails than spidercrab, really. The crab is for the flavouring.’

  ‘I suspected as much. After that I’ll have the kidney beans and butifarra, with a side-dish of garlic mayonnaise.’

  Slices of bread that still had the smell of the wheat field about them. A thick, dark red wine of the sort that turns your ears red in winter.

  ‘Where do you get the wine from?’

  ‘We make it ourselves. I’ve got a cellar on the other side of the river.’

  ‘Could I buy a few bottles?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll have time to get them ready for you. I’ve got a lot to do first.’

  ‘Call me at the Argemi estate, in Palausator. Ask for me by name—Pepe Carvalho—and tell me if you can manage it. I’d like to pick tip thirty or forty bottles on my way back.’

  The man offered him an almond pastry which he said was called a rus, and placed at his elbow a big bottle of garnacha, from which Carvalho filled his glass three times. He came out of the La Marqueta having decided that the world was a wonderful place after all, and at the same time stressing to his host that the best time to call him chez Argemi would be between twelve-thirty and one. Then he wandered through La Bisbal looking at the ceramics shops, and went into one to order himself a tiled picture that showed the points of the compass with the names of the local winds—Gargal, Tramontana, Garbi. Once again he said that they should phone the Argemi establishment, without fail, between twelve-thirty and one, because then he’d be able to tell them if he needed two pictures instead of just one. Next he went into an antique shop and bought an old oak chest.