The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  Falcón tried to imagine his father saying those words and decided they were Salgado’s invention. He opened up the manila envelope of photographs and found one of Carmen dated June 1965 in which she looked to be in her late twenties. There was nothing striking about her face except her eyebrows, which were short, dark and completely horizontal with no arch to them at all. They gave her an earnest, concerned look, as if she would look after her husband well.

  Another entry dated 25th December 1967: ‘Last night before dinner I was taken back to childhood. My parents always allowed us one present on Christmas Eve and Carmen has given me the best gift of my life. She is pregnant. We are deliriously happy and I get quite drunk on champagne.’

  The diary charted Carmen’s uneventful pregnancy, which was intercut with stupefying details of successful art shows and sale values. Salgado mentioned the purchase of the tape recorder, which he’d bought intending to record Carmen’s singing, which he never managed to do due to her self-consciousness in front of the microphone. Salgado was also entranced by Carmen’s pregnant belly, which was enormous. He even asked her if she’d let Francisco Falcón draw her. She was appalled at the suggestion. The final entry read: ‘The doctor has agreed to allow me to record my child’s first cry in the world. They are bemused by the request. It seems that men are never present at the birth. I ask Francisco where he was for the birth of his children and he says he can’t remember. When I ask if it was at Pilar’s bedside he is stunned by the notion. Am I the only man in Spain to be fascinated by such a momentous occasion? And Francisco, an artist of such genius, I would have thought he would find birth as compelling as inspiration.’

  A strange note to end on. Falcón counted back the months and reckoned that if Carmen had announced her pregnancy at the end of December then the baby should have been born in July. He went through the contents of the trunk to see if there was a record of the child’s birth. In a stained blue folder was his answer — Carmen Blázquez’s death certificate dated 5th July 1968. The medical report beneath it detailed a catastrophic birth marred by high blood pressure, fluid retention, septicaemia and finally death for both mother and child.

  The thought of the padlocked trunk high up in the attic of Salgado’s house took on a terrible poignancy for Falcón. The loneliness of the man — the solitary diner, the forlorn shopper, the desolate hanger-on — whose whole life had been dedicated to the genius of Francisco Falcón, walked the streets with his only possibility of happiness boxed away in a dry dusty place.

  He turned to the next photograph from the manila envelope under the horizontal eyebrows of the undemanding Carmen Blázquez and there they were on their wedding day. Ramón and Carmen holding hands. Their whole happiness contained in that pocket. It was astonishing for Falcón to see Salgado so young. The subsequent thirty-five years had ruined his looks. The misery had been a weight he carried in his face.

  The stack of tapes demanded Falcón’s attention, but he continued to flip through the photographs until he came to a shot of his father sitting with Carmen in a garden, the two of them laughing. It was true of his father that he’d always been drawn to ‘good’ women. His mother, Mercedes … even the eccentric Encarnación was tolerated because she was ‘a good woman’. He carried on through the stack of photographs and realized that this was Salgado’s entire collection of shots of Carmen. They were all different sizes and taken with a variety of cameras. Salgado must have systematically removed her from the photographic record of his life.

  The tapes. The thought of the tapes made his hands sweat. He didn’t want to hear what was on those tapes. His hands trembled as he threaded the tape through the heads. He played it and was relieved to find that it was completely silent.

  The second tape burst straight into a conversation between Salgado and Carmen. He was imploring her to sing. She was refusing. Her heels paced a wooden floor while Salgado pleaded with her, right down to begging her for something that he could remember her by if she happened to die before him. The conversation bled into classical music, followed by some flamenco and Falcón fast-forwarded to the end.

  The third tape started with Albinoni’s Adagio. There followed other stirring pieces by Mahler and Tchaikovsky. He barely managed to feed the fourth tape through the heads, his hands were so slippery. He pressed ‘play’ and heard only the ethereal hiss, but then came everything that he’d dreaded. There was screaming and exhortation and panic. There was the rushing of feet on hard floors, steel trays clanging on tiles, tables and screens toppling, material ripping. There was one last cry of someone being swept out to sea with no life line, with only the sight of their lover, helpless and diminishing on the shore: ‘Ramón! Ramón! Ramón!’ And then a harsh click and silence.

  The glass desktop provided support. Carmen’s final cries had hit him like three body blows and broken him in the middle. His organs felt ruptured.

  He concentrated on his breathing — the calming effect of valuing a motor reflex. He turned the machine off, wiped sweat from his top lip. He was nearly overwhelmed by guilt at how brutal he’d been to this old friend of his father. All those times he’d seen him outside Calle Bailén and thought, no, not that pain in the arse. But then there were the appalling contents of the computer. What had happened to this man after he’d lost his wife? Had his misery goaded him? Had it prodded him down this worthless road to the ultimate, lonely depravity of auto-strangulation whilst calamitous images of ruined children passed before his eyes? Maybe it was in his nature and he’d seen that terrible capacity, but then Carmen had come into his life and given him a shot at goodness and he’d had her brutally torn from him. Yes, disappointment would seem a paltry word to describe Ramón Salgado’s state as he left that hospital in the dreadful heat of a Sevillano July and taken his first feverish steps down towards hell.

  Baena came in with a large plastic bag.

  ‘We’ve finished in the house, Inspector Jefe,’ he said and handed over the bag. ‘Serrano’s done the garden with Jorge. The only thing of interest was this. It’s a whip. The sort religious nuts use to flagellate themselves. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘In the back of the built-in wardrobe in the bedroom,’ said Baena. ‘No thorn tiaras or hair shirts though, sir.’

  Falcón grunted a laugh and told Baena to make an inventory of the trunk and take it back to the Jefatura. He left Serrano to seal up the house and drove back to the centre of town. He parked in Reyes Católicos and had a quick tapa of solomillo al whisky and then walked up Calle Zaragoza to Salgado’s gallery, where the showroom was in darkness.

  Greta, Salgado’s Swiss-born secretary, was sitting at her desk at the back of the showroom with her hands jammed between her knees, staring into space. Her eyes were puffy and wrecked from crying.

  ‘You should go home,’ said Falcón, but she didn’t want to be on her own. She told him it was her tenth anniversary working for Ramón Salgado. They had a celebration planned for this year’s Feria. She drifted off into old memories and stock phrases about ‘what a good man Ramón was’. Falcón asked if there were any artists that she could think of who hadn’t liked Ramón, who perhaps had been rejected by him?

  ‘People come off the street all the time. Students, young people. I deal with them. They don’t understand how the business works, that Ramón is not operating at that level. Some of them storm out, as if we don’t deserve their genius. Others get talking and, if I like them, I let them show me their stuff. If it’s good I tell them who they could show it to. Ramón never saw any of these people.’

  ‘How many of them show you installations using film, video or computer graphics?’

  ‘More than half. Not many of the kids paint these days.’

  ‘That’s not Ramón’s style, is it?’

  ‘It’s not his clients’ style. They’re the conservative ones. They can’t see its value. At this level it’s mostly about money and investment … and a CD with some creative stuff digitalized on to it does
n’t feel or look like a ten-million-peseta investment.’

  ‘Were there any unhappy established artists that he was representing?’

  ‘He worked very closely with his artists. He didn’t make those sorts of mistakes.’

  ‘What about in the last six months? Do you recall anything suspicious, an unpleasant or humiliating …’

  ‘He’s not been so concentrated on his work. He’s been concerned about his sister and he’s been abroad a lot. Mainly the Far East — Thailand, the Philippines.’

  The thought of Salgado pursuing his needs with oriental boys congealed in Falcón’s mind. He felt grimy in front of the blonde Greta — he with his new knowledge, she with her untarnished memories. He realized that he was diminished by the truth, and she, unsullied in her ignorance.

  ‘Did Ramón ever talk about his wife?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t know he’d been married,’ she said. ‘He was a very private man. I never thought of him as particularly Spanish even. There was a lot of Swiss reserve about him.’

  We are such different things to different people, thought Falcón. Salgado was quiet, powerful, kind and private with a woman he had no need to impress, and yet to Falcón he was always oily, tedious, ingratiating and pompous. With a good memory we could be who we wanted to be, with whoever we liked — all of us actors and every day a new play.

  He went upstairs to Salgado’s office, now occupied by Ramírez and Fernández in their shirtsleeves on either side of the desk, leafing through papers.

  ‘We’re not getting very far here,’ said Ramírez. ‘The best we’ve got is what Greta gave us in the first half-hour, which was their client list, the list of artists he used to represent, those he still represents and those he’s rejected. The rest is letters, bills, the usual stuff. No correspondence between him and Sra Jiménez. No little note from Sergio saying, “You’re fucked.”’

  It was late. Falcón told them to pack it in. He went back to the Jefatura. The trunk from Salgado’s attic was already there. He took the film and spooled it into Raúl Jiménez’s projection equipment, which was still set up. The movie must have been a gift, perhaps even from Raúl Jiménez. It consisted of seven sequences of Ramón and Carmen. They were happy in every shot. Salgado clearly adored her. The look he gave her as she turned to the camera and his eyes remained fixed on her cheek, there was no mistaking it.

  Falcón sat in the dark with the flickering images. He had no way of controlling himself. He had no one to control himself for. He wept without knowing why and despised himself for it, as he used to despise cinema audiences who wailed at the crass sentimentality on the silver screen.

  Extracts from the Journals of Francisco Falcón

  2nd November 1946, Tangier

  An American came to see me yesterday. A sizeable piece of humanity. He introduced himself as Charles Brown III and asked to see my work. My English has improved with all the Americans suddenly appearing in the Café Central. I don’t want him leafing through my drawings and tell him I have to show properly and to come back in the afternoon. This gives me time to find out from R. that he is the representative of Barbara Hutton, the new Queen of the Kasbah. I set up the work I want to show and when he returns and we enter the room I say: ‘Everything’s for sale, except that one,’ which is the drawing of P.

  There’s a rumour that inside the Palace of Sidi Hosni there is a world of wealth beyond even R.’s imagination. Each of the thirty rooms has its own gold mantel clock from Van Cleef & Arpels at a cost of $10,000 a piece. Anybody who spends a third of a million dollars to tell the time can only value things by price alone. ‘She will not buy a drawing from you for $20,’ says R. ‘She doesn’t know how much that is. It’s as little as a centavo is to us.’ I tell him I have never sold a piece in my life. ‘Then you should sell your first piece for no less than $500.’ He gives me the sales technique, which I have put into practice. I follow Charles Brown around the room and talk him through the work, but all I can sense is his desperation to get back to the drawing of P. At the end he asks: ‘Just outa interest, how much is the charcoal drawing of the nude?’ I tell him it’s not for sale. It has no price. He keeps using the phrase, ‘just outa interest’ and I say, ‘I don’t know.’ He goes back to the piece. I play it by R.’s book and don’t go with him but smoke at the other end of the room and look as if I’m amusing myself, rather than what I want to do which is burst like a balloon of water so that all that is left of me is a puddle of gratitude and a bladder.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘this is all very interesting stuff. I like it. I mean that. I like it. The interlocking shapes in the Moorish tradition. The patterned chaos. The bleak landscapes. It all does something for me. But we ‘re not talking about me. I buy for clients. And this is what my clients want. They don’t want the cool intellectual stuff … not the people who come to Tangier. They come for … what shall I call it? … eastern promise.’

  ‘On the northwest tip of Africa?’ I say.

  ‘It’s kind of a saying,’ he says. ‘It means they want something exotic, sensual, mysterious … Yeah, mystery is the thing. Why isn’t this for sale?’

  ‘Because it’s important to me. It’s a new and recent development.’

  ‘I can see that. Your other drawings are perfect … meticulously observed. But this … this is different. This is so revealing … and yet, forbidden. Maybe that’s it. The nature of mystery is that it shows something of itself, it entices but it forbids the ultimate knowledge.’

  Has Charles Brown been smoking, I ask myself. But he is sincere. He pushes again for a price. I don’t give in. He tells me his client has to see the work. I won’t let it out of the house. He finishes our discussion with the words:

  ‘Don’t worry I’ll bring the mountain to Mohammed.’

  He leaves, shaking my damp hand. I tremble with excitement. I am in a sweat and tear off my clothes and lie on the floor naked. I smoke a hashish cigarette, one of the half dozen I prepare for myself every morning. I look at the drawing of P. I am as priapic as Pan and, as if by telepathy, a boy arrives from C. and releases my steam.

  4th November 1946, Tangier

  I lie in my room in a state of controlled nonchalance for two days. My ear is trained and finely tuned to the faintest knock on the front door. I fall asleep and when the knock comes I burst to the surface like a man freed from a sinking ship. I wrestle with the bolster and try to dress at the same time. I do a comic turn while the houseboy waits at the side of the bed with an envelope. It is he who has prodded me awake. I tear open the envelope. Inside is a gold-embossed card from Mrs Barbara Woolworth Hutton, and in her own handwriting she asks if she may visit Francisco González in his home on 5th November 1946 at 2.45 p.m. I show the card to R., who is impressed, I can tell. ‘We have a problem here,’ he says. R. likes problems, which is why he is always creating them. The problem is my name.

  ‘Name me a González who has done anything of note in the world of art,’ says R.

  ‘Julio González, the sculptor,’ I say.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ says R.

  ‘He worked with iron — abstract geometric shapes — he died four years ago.’

  ‘You know what Francisco González says to me? It says button seller.’

  ‘Why buttons?’ I ask, and he ignores me.

  ‘What’s your mother’s name?’

  ‘I can’t use my mother’s name,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t use it, that’s all.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Falcón,’ I say.

  ‘No, no, no, que no … es perfecto. Francisco Falcón. From now on that is your name.’

  I try to tell him that it will not do, but I don’t want to reveal more than I have to, so I accept my fate. I am Francisco Falcón and I have to admit it has something … Apart from being alliterative there is a rhythm to it, as there is to Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Gaudí, even the simpler Joan Miró … they all have the rhythm of
fame. They’ve known this for some time in Hollywood, which is why we have Greta Garbo and not Greta Gustafson and Judy Garland not Frances Gumm, never Frances Gumm.

  5th November 1946, Tangier

  She came as promised and I am completely delirious. I have not smoked this evening so that the diamond brightness of the moment is not lost in the hashish haze. She arrived, escorted by Charles Brown, who is monumental next to her and utterly deferential. I am struck by her extraordinary grace and elegance, the perfection of her dress, the softness of her gloves, which must have come from the underbelly of a five-week-old kid. What I like more is her natural disapproving look. Her wealth, which is an encasing aura, sealing her off from normal mortals, has made her demanding, but I think when she falls … she falls hard. Her heels click expensively on my terracotta floor. She says: ‘Eugenia Errázuriz would love these tiles.’ Whoever she may be.

  I am mesmerized, but surprise myself by not being tongue-tied as we go to the exhibition room. I have refined R.’s technique and this time the drawing is not even on display. She walks around the room placing each foot carefully in front of the other. Charles Brown is murmuring words in her ear, which I imagine is lined with mother-of-pearl. She listens and nods. She is taken with the Moorish shapes. She moves swiftly past the bleak, Russian landscapes. She hovers over the Tangier drawings. She turns on her heel. The kid gloves are off and hang limply from one of her small white hands. ‘This is excellent work,’ she says. ‘Remarkable. Original. Quite strange. Very affecting. But Charles tells me you have something that is even beyond the excellence of these pieces, which you’ve had the good grace to allow me to view.’