A flat-chested girl with thick glasses and a startled look sat at the far side of the room and smiled eagerly at me, while a chain-smoking older woman with red hair, lighting one butt off the other, never looked up from her game of solitaire at the card table pushed against the wall. Sabrina came through a curtain, drifted aimlessly into the salon while ferreting between her teeth with a toothpick. She had changed into a sherbet-colored slip—the house uniform, apparently—and plopped herself down on the other side of the card table, to watch the old whore’s solitaire.
My eyes drifted back to the black woman, who puffed a cigarette while restlessly jiggling a Moroccan slipper from her archly extended foot. She stared out into space, her pensive expression and knitted brows suggesting she was anywhere but there. But maybe that was just a ruse and she was intently aware of my interest, because she suddenly flicked her ironed black hair back across her shoulder and scratched her nipple, which, at that moment, was pertly poking through the lavender slip that had one spaghetti strand seductively sliding down the shoulder.
This touching of herself—it instantly made my pants tighten. I was confused and flustered by all the emotions inside of me—the trembling, the shame and disgust, the sweaty-palm excitement, the weirdness of having such intimate thoughts in my father’s presence, the overwhelming and oddly stirring sensation that all my nerve endings were alive and firing at once.
I looked down at the floor, my face red with shame.
“Excellent choice,” Papá said. “She’s a firecracker.”
“Carlotta,” said Madame Christine. “Take the young man to the green room. He already has a tent pole.”
Carlotta went down the basement stairs first, reaching back with one hand to hold my forefinger and lead me into the cellar. Her lingerie made a wet and slippery sound as we descended the stairs.
The wall lamps in the musty basement were draped with red scarves, casting a blood-orange hue over us. Carlotta opened a small door, and I ducked under its low frame and entered the windowless room painted olive green. I had a vague sense there was a lamp in the corner, and a sink and mirror, with towels for washing, plus bottles of massage oil, medicinal ointments, and condom foils, neatly stacked on the mirror shelf. I am also sure there were a couple of wall hooks and a green-painted stool for undressing. But the only thing I really saw was the huge bed, high as a throne. It had a wrought-iron headboard, from which two sets of medieval-looking handcuffs dangled.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I stuttered. “It’s too much.”
Carlotta saw what I was staring at, smiled, and lightly ran her fingers through my hair. “Oh, sweet boy, don’t mind the restraints. They’re not for you.” She unhooked the handcuffs and shoved them into the side table’s drawer. “You’re a virile young man. You don’t need such activities to get you aroused. For you, simple touch should do the trick.”
I could smell her cocoa-butter skin cream. She had me perch at the edge of the bed, but I couldn’t relax and sat upright and stiff as she crouched down at my feet, taking off my shoes and socks.
“Go on. Close your eyes.”
I reluctantly did as she said, felt her brown fingers unbutton my shirt and slide it off my back. There was something soothing about being undressed like that. Her warm palm gently pressed against my chest, forcing my torso to drop back slowly to the bed, while my feet remained firmly planted on the floor.
I relaxed a bit, as her fingers expertly undid my belt, unbuttoned my fly. I felt her reach inside, probing my underwear, her fingers cupping the tip of my cock. I groaned, came immediately.
I sat bolt upright and stuttered profuse apologies. Carlotta laughed and pushed me back to the bed again. “Don’t be silly, guapo. That’s normal with young men. It’s good to get the eagerness out of the way. Now, we’ll just give you a little rest and start again. Madame Christine told me to give you the royal treatment.”
My eyes were tightly closed—with self-loathing and an unbearable sadness. I silently recited the Lord’s Prayer. I heard running water. My pants were removed and then I felt a warm cloth wiping my midriff of semen, and my cock, that cursed thing, it was again standing to attention.
Juan made huge strides as a fisherman that week, the simple act of catching fish that first day boosting his confidence. From that moment on, he followed hard in my footsteps, fishing with single-minded purpose, eager for his skills to catch up to those of his brother, uncle, and father. One afternoon, with the help of God and Felipe, Juanito landed a twelve-kilo fish. News spread, and Papá came down to our beat at the end of the day to closely observe Juan fishing on the far bank. He saw instantly that Juan was a true Álvarez—no longer slapping the water like an impatient boy, but precisely bringing his rod back with that unique mix of strength and gentleness, before sending his line straight across the river with a serious and manly intent. He stood and watched my brother and smoked a cigar.
“Juanito,” Papá drawled at dinner, “you’ll fish with me tomorrow.”
“That’s all right, Papá,” I interjected. “Juan can stay on my beat.”
“That was not a request. It was a father’s command.”
Juan was sitting to the right of Papá, and his hand suddenly shot out, snatching the piece of roast lamb Papá was trying to spear for his own plate.
“Aren’t you worried I will snatch all the fish from right under your nose?”
We all laughed, Papá loudest of all. He gently rapped the back of my brother’s head, his eyes filled with that special love and affection Juan evoked in all of us. But Papá’s face stiffened when Juan said, “Gracias, Papá, but I will just get in your way. I’ll keep fishing with José María and Felipe. He’s incredible, our ghillie. I am learning so much.”
Father reached out for more lamb.
“As you wish, Juan. Do as you like. I don’t care.”
“Gracias, Papá. I will.”
The next day, rotated back up to the highest beat of the river, we were visited by unseasonably warm weather. Smells of lavender, rosemary, and ripening black cherries fluttered like ribbons in the air. Hatches came out, dotted the river. All day we saw natural rises as irritated salmon took down the annoying flies buzzing on the current’s surface. By late afternoon, we couldn’t beach any more fish; the canvas bags were so full with salmon they were in danger of tearing apart at the seams.
“The heat,” Felipe said. “It’s not good for the fish. We should head back a little early and get them on ice. Do you agree?”
“I do.” I reeled in my line. “Let’s go.”
The horses were excited to be going home, to the bag of oats that they knew would be their reward at Sheep’s Corral, and they trotted down the goat’s path at a hard clop, every now and then breaking into a half gallop.
As we came around a bend in the river, Juan roared out in pain and slapped his neck hard, involuntarily digging his heels into his mare. She bolted and shot past my horse. The excited other horses, not wanting to miss out on the oats, began to gallop after Juan’s hard-charging mare.
“Hold your horse! Hold your horse!” Felipe yelled.
Juan swore and pulled hard on the reins. The mare’s head swiveled this way and that, and then she came up short, snorting furiously and whinnying. In one fluid motion, Juan jumped off, tethered her to a willow branch, and yanked off his shirt. A crushed bee fell from its folds.
“Shit on the milk!”
Juan turned to show us the angry red boil on his neck. “What does it look like? It’s killing me!”
“Quick! Jump in the river!” Felipe said. “The cold water will help with the swelling.”
Juan unbuckled his pants, yanked down his underwear, and hopped around on one foot, cursing as he pulled one boot and sock, and then the other, in one smooth motion pulling the entire tangle of corduroy pants, underwear, and socks from under him. His neck was a leathery column of sun brown and angry red that haloed out around his shoulders, before giving way to a strong but hairless torso whi
te as sheep’s cheese. Juan turned and ran full force off the riverbank, landing atop the water’s surface in a loud belly flop, his moonlike butt cheeks last to disappear under the surface.
Felipe and I were roaring with laughter at his belly flop when Juan’s head finally came up to the surface, his sigh and face the picture of relief. “You assholes,” he yelled from the river, splashing water at us, even though we were too far away to get wet. “Come here if you dare!”
Felipe and I exchanged glances and, without another word, stripped naked and similarly ran hard off the river’s bank. For the next half hour we horsed around, swam a little out into the current, and then drifted off into the rocky shallows, again talking about the fish we had caught that day. A sheer wall of black rock rose on the far side of the pool, pocked with the odd cliff-clinging sapling.
High up, in the top ledge of forest overlooking the pool, a tiny chapel was catching the day’s late light. The plaster shell was painted a faded pink. A naïve painting of a friar, his hands clasped in prayer, stood at its center, behind the simple wooden crucifix. Someone had recently lit candles and left a jam jar filled with lemon-yellow wildflowers.
We were in the Dead Priest’s Pool, I suddenly realized.
The sun was low, its slanting rays pouring over the riverbank bushes, and it left the pool partially in a golden light of swirling motes, partially in a cool, wine-bottle-green shadow. I looked downriver at my brother and Felipe, who were sitting on rocks in the sun and dangling their legs in the water. Felipe suddenly waded to the riverbank, plucked some broad and furry leaves from an unassuming bush; he carefully split the leaves down their center vein and they instantly oozed sap. He waded back to my brother, talking to him in a low voice. Juan looked wary, but did as he was told, lifting the hair off the back of his neck and bending forward, so Felipe could rub the soothing leaf ooze onto his bee sting.
I stood still as the river lapped my midriff.
I was mesmerized by the care in Felipe’s gesture, as he administered the balm; at the submissive bend of Juan’s exposed neck, as he pushed away his hair and offered up his bee sting; at the luminous way the two of them were cast in the glow of the day’s fading light; at the way the pool beside them looked at that moment, deep and green and full of mysterious life. I drank the scene in, like a man parched, and it felt like God himself had just entered me, had come into my life, and I silently prayed that I could stay in this moment forever and ever, amen. I loved my brother beyond all else, loved him far more than my own parents. He was the only real friend and ally I had in this world.
Our week fishing was coming to an end when Felipe and I made our way at 7:00 a.m. to the Bridge Pool in Omedina, the river’s most famous stretch of water. More fish were caught from this one pool than any other part of the Sella.
Juan was missing, having finally given in to the pressure and joined Papá on his beat, and his absence left a hole in our day. But I ignored that anxious knot of loss sitting in my stomach and focused instead on the task at hand: pulling fish out of the Bridge Pool. A few villagers stood on the bridge overhead, looking down at me as I made the first few casts, getting line out with a tufted San Martin. The fly finally landed a centimeter off the limestone cliff on the far side of the pool, just where I wanted it, and a salmon instantly rose to the bait.
On almost every cast, a salmon went after the fly or came on to the line. By 11:00 a.m., the bridge was filled with a few hundred excited locals from as far away as Beleño and Panes, all chattering about that Álvarez boy down below, who all week long was breaking record after record on the Sella River. At one point, the noise grew so loud, Felipe had to climb the riverbank to have a word with the two Guardia Civil officers, one of whom was his cousin. The officers hushed the crowd and told them not to spook the fish or disturb the gifted young Señor Álvarez fishing down below.
Felipe and I, focused on beaching the next fish, never fully registered the two black sedans pulling up on the far side of the bridge and disgorging four men in black leather coats. One of them returned to his car and spoke into a radio. Then a motorcade of BMW motorbikes and army trucks, surrounding a bulletproof Cadillac with tinted windows, rumbled into town and stopped just short of the stone wall. I was playing the small salmon in the gravelly shallows when El Caudillo emerged from the back of the Cadillac and a roar went up from the crowd.
Felipe and I, startled by the noise, looked up. Generalísimo Francisco Franco, the man who had slaughtered his opponents during the Spanish Civil War and turned our country into a fascist dictatorship, was looking down at us in a billowing rain slicker and porkpie hat, his face hidden by large sunglasses.
My first thought—He’s the shape of a Bosc pear!—was an utterance that, had I spoken it aloud, could very well have had me thrown in prison.
Several men and women were trying to kiss Franco’s hand, while the mayors of nearby towns pushed themselves forward and bowed and scraped and uttered excessive and repeated welcomes in such flowery language that even their wives blushed. Franco pretended to listen to the local dignitaries, but kept glancing over the bridge in our direction, until his chief of staff, sensing Franco’s growing impatience and anger, extracted his boss from the crowd.
The captain of the Moorish Guard, his chest full of ribbons, was first to climb over the stile. He was followed by military officers, the minister of agriculture and fisheries, and Franco’s chief of staff. Sergeants were ready to catch the diminutive Franco as the great man himself came next over the stile. A handful of secret police followed, as did an eighteen-year-old cadet who did nothing but carry around the “Hand of Saint Teresa of Avila,” a relic that Franco had seized during the Civil War and that he now took with him wherever he went, a talisman to ward off evil and to assert God’s divine command that he rule all Spain.
Felipe and I stood open-mouthed as Franco’s train of officialdom followed the goat trail down through azaleas and Spanish gold broom. I had lost the fish; my fly line was left dead and drifting in the river. When Franco and his men finally landed with a thud on the gravel bank, their suits were dusted with orange pollen.
Felipe and I repeatedly dipped our heads, our tongues frozen.
“You have done well this morning, boys,” Franco said. “El Caudillo is impressed by your fishing skills. Whom am I speaking to?”
I gave him my name.
“Aaaah, yes. I have heard of you already. Your reputation as a fisherman precedes you. I know your father, Don Jesús, and of course the family’s Banco Álvarez in San Sebastián.”
I again lowered my head.
“It is the only bank in San Sebastián not owned by Basques,” Franco said to the hills. He smiled slightly, from behind the sunglasses. “Your family is providing the nation a great service.” He turned toward Felipe and barked, “You are Ignacio del Toro’s grandson, are you not?”
Felipe was clutching his hat and visibly trembling, while staring resolutely at the ground. “Sí, Generalísimo,” he whispered, not daring to look up. “Felipe del Toro.”
“Look up, boy,” Franco said before adding, a little more gently, “You have an honest Spanish face.”
Franco turned back in my direction. “You’ve had some excellent fishing this week. I was supposed to have fished the Sella. But you know that, don’t you?”
“Sí, Caudillo.”
He looked longingly at the river. “The duties of state, you know . . .”
I glanced at the gravel underfoot, looked contrite.
“This is my favorite pool on the Sella,” he continued. “They usually take there, in the current against the far rock wall. Is that not so?”
“Yes, El Caudillo.”
“Young man, do me a favor. Tell your father I know what he is up to—booking the river after me.” Franco chuckled in a way that sounded like a dry cough. “I am amused by your father’s antics, both on the river and in business. He’s always entertaining—and, we concede, very clever.”
I was not sure how I sh
ould respond, nor what the true meaning of these remarks was. Franco looked at his watch. “Well, I have to be off. I have a meeting in Oviedo. But first, José María, humor an old man. Show me what the river has yielded today. There are some monsters here on the riverbank, no?”
I led Franco and his procession downriver, to where Felipe had bled the fish and laid them out in the moist grass under the trees. I had caught nine salmon that morning, the largest of which was eleven kilos, but none smaller than five kilos. El Caudillo slowly walked the entire length of fish with his hands behind his back, like he was inspecting his troops on the boulevards of Madrid.
“Sin novedades en el Alcázar, mi General,” he said.
There was a gasp. We all knew that line, had learned it in school, perhaps the most famous uttering of the Civil War. It was spoken when Franco’s battle-hardened African Legion marched into Toledo in the fall of 1936, to rescue the Nationalists and Falangists holed up in the Alcázar castle and surrounded by Republican soldiers. The African Legion marched into the city singing their anthem, El novio de la muerte, “The Bridegroom of Death,” their unified voices unsettling the Republicans’ ragtag army of laborers armed with old shotguns and pistols.
That day Franco’s troops slaughtered everyone they saw: whole families, even entire apartment buildings of people, were left in dead heaps on the cobblestone lanes, rivers of their blood running through the gutters. Even the wounded Republicans were dispatched by lightly tossing a few hand grenades into the local hospital. It was a massacre.
The Man With No Borders Page 8
