The Angst-Ridden Executive Read online

  ‘The two months business is impossible. He rang from San Francisco, not even two weeks ago, inquiring after me and the children.’

  Jauma’s widow sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘Do you have an address for him in Germany?’

  ‘When he’s not been on his round-the-world inspection trips he’s lived in San Francisco. Especially since his wife died. When she was alive, they used to have an apartment in Bonn. I don’t know for sure whether he kept it on, but I believe he did. He had a son who went to live with his sister, and he would go to visit them every once in a while. The sister lives in Berlin.’

  One hour later Carvalho knew that Rhomberg’s Bonn apartment had been empty for several weeks and that, according to his sister, he had left on a drying-out trip. Dieter had left his job profoundly depressed with his work, and had sent his sister a postcard saying that he was off on a trip round Africa ‘in search of the source, not of the Nile, but more of myself’. At the risk of appearing like a TV detective, Carvalho asked Rhomberg’s sister if she was sure that the card was from Dieter. The card had been typed, but the style and the signature were Dieter’s, she said. At this rate the facts were mounting up, but with no obvious trail in sight. The first phone call had said that he’d popped out and would be back shortly. The second call had said that the German had been touring the world for the past two months. And according to his own sister, the Petnay inspector had sent her a card two or three weeks ago.

  ‘When was that, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t have it with me. I gave it to the boy. He keeps all the cards his father sends. I can’t ask him for it at the moment, because he’s at school.’

  It made little difference whether it was two weeks or three. Either the second San Francisco voice was lying, or the whole scenario had a logic which just didn’t fit. A senior Petnay executive seems to quit two months previously, remains undecided for a month and a half, writes to his sister, and only finally decides to leave—abruptly—the day after Carvalho’s phone call. Carvalho was suspicious as much by nature as by his profession. Rhomberg was obviously very worried about something, he thought, as the morning clouds lifted from his stomach and made way for a sizable hunger. He couldn’t decide whether to ask Biscuter to improvise a meal, or whether to walk up the Ramblas in search of a suitable restaurant. A sudden telephonic idleness prevented him from ringing Charo to invite her out, whereupon a restless nervous energy took him to the Ramblas and a thoughtful deliberation regarding a possible choice of restaurant. He had a beer on Plaza Real, and pined after the long-lost tapas that used to be the speciality of the most crowded bar in the neighbourhood—squid in a spicy black pepper and nutmeg sauce. Instead he had to make do with squid floating in a brown, watery liquid, which was all that was on offer under the new management. The problem with cultures of the transient is precisely that they are transient. This restaurant had once witnessed a genius in the art of cooking squid, a man who had created the illusion of a taste that would last forever—but then he had gone, leaving a void. There was no one left who could match his genius. Once lost, a good barman is gone forever—especially these days, when all you need to be a waiter is to wear a white jacket that is dirtier than yesterday’s but not as dirty as tomorrow’s. As he tormented his brain in mourning for the squid of yesteryear, Carvalho decided to eat at the Agut d’Avignon, a restaurant which he appreciated for the quality of its cooking, but which disappointed by the paucity of its helpings. When Gracian wrote that ‘a good experience is doubly enjoyable when it’s short-lived’, he can’t have been thinking of food. Or, if he was, then he must have been one of those intellectuals who are happy living on alphabet soup and eggs that are as hard and egg-like as their own dull heads. More than one musty philosopher has declared that ‘man should eat to live, not live to eat’, a sentiment nowadays taken up by dieticians, whose principal endeavour seems to consist in the oppression of fat people.

  ‘A soft garlic tortilla to start with, followed by a plate of pork belly, and then codfish a la llauna, and a portion of raspberries on their own.’

  ‘On their own?’

  ‘On their own…’

  He enjoyed the clitoral look of raspberries, and their fleshy texture and acidity, which was less gritty on the teeth than the mulberry, and with more of a physical consistency than the strawberry. The owner of the Agut d’Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen. Carvalho had a vague memory of him wandering about the university campus during the years of the Terror, with his guitar slung across his back and his moustache an irresistible attraction for girls who were wild about music. One night he must have gone into this restaurant with a gang of fellow-students, and, in between one stupid song and another, he must suddenly have realized that a restaurant is the best home that a man can have, and he must have decided to stay forever. Carvalho often saw him in the Boqueria market, casting an expert’s eye over the produce, always dressed as if he were about to pose for a postcard in which a young English lord has his arm round the waist of a fresh-faced girl in some Sussex meadow, and over their heads an angel carries a scroll saying: ‘I love you, milady.’ The owner of the Agut d’Avignon chose the same produce that Carvalho would have chosen, with an aloof self-assurance that was probably explained by the fact that he never said anything, but just pointed at what he wanted to buy. One gesture from this dandy was sufficient for fishmongers and butchers to save the required items for him, and it meant that Carvalho could now eat the best that the market had to offer, complemented by a variety of interesting contributions from the owner’s market gardens, which he cultivated with a sense of professional dignity worthy of the best of French restaurants. The quality of the food and the manner in which it was served excused the smallness of the helpings, which Carvalho attributed not so much to the owner’s meanness as to a desire that all his clients should be as slim as himself. Even though the total failure of this crusade was evident for all to see, the clientele emerged from his restaurant satisfied, because he had given them the opportunity of respecting the principle of leaving some space for their supper. A philosophy of life that Carvalho found abhorrent.

  ‘I was on the point of ringing you, but idleness got the better of me and I went to eat on my own.’

  ‘You’re too kind. And I suppose you fancy a siesta now. . .’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well I’ve just been to the hairdresser’s and I don’t want you messing up my hair.’

  ‘Don’t you work on hair-do days?’

  ‘With my clients I wear a wig. Dark brown on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Blonde on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I’ll put one on, if you like.’

  ‘No.’

  Charo’s annoyance turned to good humour. She took Carvalho’s head and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘Poor dear. . . wicked Charo was going to deny him his siesta. . . Come, my darling, come. . . !’

  Charo went off down the corridor, stripping as she went, and Carvalho’s nerves were on edge as he watched the sun of her arse quivering with each step she took. The half-light of the bedroom could not hide the richness of her tanned skin—browned under sun and sunlamps—and her lazy nipples and a tongue which drove itself between Carvalho’s teeth like a karate blow. Charo removed his clothes as if they were the wrappings of some precious gift, and settled herself on his penis while at the same time rubbing his chest with a cheek that was surprising in its smoothness. They moved towards the bedroom, slipping down the corridor together, but slowly, to enjoy the moment of distance and delay. Once in bed, Carvalho sprawled on his back and contemplated the inner passions and virginal blushes that showed in Charo’s face. In the floating continuity of their efforts and their caresses, the four walls of the room receded into nothingness, the bond between their sexes
became as of steel, and the entire expressive capacities of their bodies became concentrated in their lips and tongues. Lubricated by each other’s juices, they thrashed about and ended up scattered, like an open book, held together by hinges of arms and legs. The peace of the ceiling descended on Carvalho as his hand touched Charo’s breasts in a penultimate sign of solidarity, an ember of an intense communication that was now setting, like a late evening sun.

  Charo respected Carvalho’s right to first use of the bathroom, and was not surprised that he felt a sudden urge to flee after making love. As if he had to escape from the scene of a crime.

  ‘I’ll ring you, ‘ Carvalho shouted as he pulled on his shoes, while from the other side of the door there came the drumming of the shower water. He appreciated the cooler air of the passageway that led him to the fridge, where a bottle of chilled champagne awaited him. He drank one glass greedily and felt the prickling round his gums as the cool, blond liquid reached deep into his psyche. Out in the hallway he rang Marcos Nuñez, and they made an arrangement to meet at El Sot at midnight.

  ‘When you see fifteen or twenty people listening to someone and looking simultaneously amused and bored, that’s where you’ll find me. You can be sure that I’ll be the one speaking.’

  The street was shared between delivery vans and ageing prostitutes in angora wool sweaters. One hand clutching a handbag from which years of sweat had removed the gloss, and the other giving a come-hither gesture, or using a nail to dislodge a piece of stewing steak lodged between her incisor and first molar. This same finger served to touch up her lipstick, or to empty her ear of scurf, of things that itch, and of old ear wax. The van boys divide their time between a lazy coming and going to grocery stores and cavernous bars and the occasional question to the prostitutes:

  ‘How come you’ve got such big tits, granny?’

  ‘Because your dad used to suck them.’

  A drunk is calculating the shortest distance between the roadway and the pavement. Schoolchildren are returning from some mezzanine school where the toilets perfume the whole environment and the children’s horizons begin and end with an internal patio divided between the section for the dustbins, a playground for rats and cats, and a number of inside passageways where the washing lines seem to be perennially full. Pots of geraniums on rickety balconies; the occasional carnation; cages containing thin, nervous budgerigars; and butane gas bottles. Notices advertising the services of midwives and chiropodists. An office of the leftwing PSUC. Maite’s hairdresser’s. A vile smell of frying oil: squid á la romana, fried seafood, spicy potatoes, roast lambs’ heads, sweetbreads, tripe, rabbit thighs, watery eyes and varicose veins. But Carvalho knew these people and their ways. They made him feel alive, and he wouldn’t have changed them for the world, even though at night he preferred to flee the defeated city and make for the pinewood heights. There was nothing to beat the backstreets and alleyways that give onto the Ramblas—tributaries feeding into a river which carries the biology and the history of a city, of the entire world.

  Biscuter was making a potato tortilla.

  ‘I’m doing it the way you like it, boss. With a bit of onion and a touch of garlic and parsley.

  Biscuter improvised an eating space on Carvalho’s office desk, and the detective applied his mind to the quarter of tortilla filling his plate. Biscuter sat in front of him, tucking into another quarter and waiting for some word of appreciation.

  ‘You can’t say that it hasn’t turned out well, eh, chief? If you’re still hungry I’ve made you a bit of brain paté with ratatouille. It’s good, isn’t it, boss?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘God, you’re stingy, boss. I think it’s brilliant. And wait till you taste the ratatouille. It’s a treat! Oh—I forgot. There was a phone call from Pedro Parra—the “colonel”, he called himself. He said: “Don’t forget, tell him that the ‘colonel’ rang. Tell him he’ll have what he was looking for tomorrow, if he calls in at the bank.” And there’s a telegram too. I didn’t open it.’

  ‘Am arriving Barcelona Wednesday. Rhomberg.’

  ‘Do me a bit of the paté.’

  ‘I suppose you won’t need any supper after this, eh, boss? You eat like a pig, and you still manage to stay trim. But it all goes into your blood, you know, and you end up with cholesterol…’

  ‘I’m surrounded by doctors! First Bromide, and now you! Stop worrying about the cholesterol and get on with your food.’

  ‘I was only saying it for your own good.’

  ‘And will you be eating again after this little snack?’

  ‘Of course. The left-overs will do fine for my supper. Don’t know what’s up with me, boss. I’m feeling depressed. I’m sleeping badly. I’ve been remembering my mother.’

  Biscuter dried his eyes with his serviette, but they were still brimming with tears which threatened to spill into the green and red of the ratatouille.

  ‘Find yourself a girlfriend, Biscuter. Or a prostitute. Or have a wank every now and then. You’ll find it does wonders.’

  ‘You say find a prostitute, but that’s not so easy. They just treat me as a joke. When they say, “Come on, baldy, pull your willy out so that I can give it a wash,” I just want to laugh. And as for wanking, as you put it, I’m at it nonstop. First with one hand, then with the other. I even use the numb-hand system. I go to bed and lie down on top of my hand, so as to cut off the circulation, and it goes all numb. Then it feels not like my hand at all, but like something else . . .’

  ‘Have you ever tried it with a piece of raw meat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve missed something.’

  With one eye on Biscuter and the other on Rhomberg’s telegram, Carvalho reached for the phone. This was the signal for Biscuter to clear the table. An inexplicable sense of misgiving prevented Carvalho from informing Jauma’s widow of Dieter Rhomberg’s unexpected resurrection.

  To arrive at a bar where the principal spectacle is the clientele, and to have to go down the stairs to centre-stage, tends to endow your shoulders with the stance of the lead actor in a New York movie, and your legs with the tension of a tightrope walker. Up until two in the morning the place is populated by two or three couples trying to escape bachelorhood or married life. From two onwards it’s taken over by mainstream actors from the fringe theatre and fringe actors from the mainstream, not to mention executives with a smattering of culture and sensibility, and people who would be film directors if the film industry wasn’t such an industry, and writers of protest songs and the ubiquitous political cartoonist, and so on.

  ‘To live in Barcelona is to live in Europe!’

  A poet and ex-prisoner seeking in El Sot a double life that will give him back part of the twenty-five years spent in prison; an extremely young official of the workers’ commissions, with grey eyes; organizational and petitional ladies of the local Left; professional night-owls of more than thirty years’ standing, ever hoping for that one night in which everything will prove possible; a homosexual novelist; a concrete poet who has read Trotsky; a chairman of political round-table discussions, the owner of just the right magic gesture to make sure people take it in turns to speak, and who can conjure up a synthesis where there wasn’t even a thesis to start with; the occasional sensitive intellectual who turns up in the hopes of l’amour fou something even hardened regulars of the place have never achieved; ex-politicos still into things more or less ethical; young islanders from one or other of the islands; wild and soon-to-be-rich youth; Uruguayans fleeing the terror in Uruguay; Chileans fleeing the terror in Chile; Argentinians fleeing successive terrors in Argentina; one of Carillo’s ten right-hand men; an almost young ex-industrial engineer now publishing independent and radical-Marxist thinkers; a few leftovers of the 1940s, nourished on a diet of Stefan Zweig; puritan left-wing cadres intent on coming into contact with the decadent and definitely scandalous Barcelona Left for just one night. Cockt
ails somewhere between the low level of a mediocre bar in Manhattan and the abysmal level of Barcelona cocktail bars. A space that is divided into functional seating areas with differing degrees of intimacy, and a bar where people strike up conversations with the owner and the bartenders with a degree of camaraderie that reflects a nightly familiarity and the certainty that afterwards there will be a whole day to wash away its after-taste.

  On this particular night the gathering around Marcos Nuñez was only ten strong, and the ageing youth was holding forth with his habitual sibylline style and a narrative rhythm acquired in his university days. A tone which is capable of imbuing even the story of a broken-down bus with sublime nostalgia, or firing wicked irony into the description of a Spanish sausage. Nuñez had been a pioneer in the reconstruction of the Left in Barcelona University during the nineteen fifties. After torture, and spells in prison, he had fled to France, where he had embarked on a life that would have made him ideal material for the bureaucracy of his own party, or a doctorate in social science and an assured place in a future democratic Spain. Too cynical to be a bureaucrat and too apathetic to be an academic, he plumped for the role of an onlooker, a role which he exercised with a dedication that was half-hearted only in appearance. Nuñez was one of the old guard, and he remained attached to the vision of moral renewal held by the Left when Franco was alive. His capacity for friendship was immense, in the giving and the taking alike, both of which he executed with a hint of sadism; he was given to verbal aggression when describing friends or enemies, and there was a certain personal angst in his frenetic adjectival acrobatics.