“Amparo is too much of a woman for Tomás or for anyone. It’s not just that she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but if she’s arranged to meet someone at seven o’clock, then, rather than arrive even a minute late, she’ll leave whoever she happens to be with in mid-fuck. She has character, style, independence. As well as nice tits and a nice ass. It’s really hard to cope with that at home on a daily basis, having to fight off marauders—because that’s what it’s like these days,” says Justino, who is known to be something of a marauder himself and, doubtless, one of those men Amparo has, on some occasion, left high and dry in mid-fuck.
Bernal again:
“She’s certainly an important factor, but less so than you seem to think. He knows how to have fun too, how to live it up. Amparo played only a small role in the collapse of Tomás’s businesses, all right, there were the facial peels, the nails, the spa treatments, Revlon, Dior, Loewe, Miuccia Prada, and all the rest, but that’s normal for any bourgeois bit of pussy. The wife of any small-time property developer, car dealer or owner of a chain of gas stations or an apartment block will be sure to have acquired that designer stuff over the last few years. Or are there wives who don’t go to those shops, wear those clothes or indulge in aromatherapy massages and hydromassage baths? He was the real problem, what with his extravagant tastes, his desire to impress, the money he lavished on social or should that be municipal events (not forgetting the usual bribes paid to the local councilor); and then there were the wines from Burgundy, the seafood, the champagne, and so on, not to mention the Russian girls, and the cocaine,”—ah, so the secret’s out, I always suspected that he took cocaine from the way he kept rubbing his nose, I shoot a quick glance at Francisco, who remains impassive—“because the bastard certainly hasn’t stinted himself.”
Justino:
“He’s screwed the best prostitutes in the region. Not the ones in the clubs, who charge fifty or a hundred or two hundred euros. No. He only used to go there on work outings with his employees or to impress small-time suppliers. He’s always gone for the kind of woman who appears to be working for herself, but is, in fact, just one tentacle of a mafia octopus, the kind of woman you find at the Marina Esmeralda lying on the deck of some yacht, which might belong to a friend, male or female, who has lent it to her, crew included, to enjoy a few days of rest. Rest from what, though? From business deals, catwalks, boutiques, photo sessions or some other sort of session. At least that’s what she’ll tell you when she gets you in her sights. The kind who always has bottles of Moët chilling in the fridge, a forty-inch flat-screen TV and a jacuzzi in a 2000-square foot apartment with a sea view or a clifftop villa in Xábia or Moraira, owned by mafia from Eastern Europe or possibly Western Europe (you’d have to check whose name is on the deeds, and even then you’d never know for sure who’s hiding behind the ostensible owners). Pedrós has often bought himself a few weeks in one of those villas, telling Amparo and us that he’s away traveling, phoning home on his cell phone to complain about the rain in Vigo (it hasn’t stopped all week) or how cold it is in Pamplona (enough to freeze your balls off), and that he’s staying another few days so as to sort out the distributor’s accounts (they’re a complete mess, I’ll tell you about it later), when, in fact, he was opening and closing a pair of silky legs. He’s taken those women out to supper at Quique Dacosta’s, at the Hotel Ferrero, at the Girasol when they had that Swiss or German chef working there, or to spend the night in the Westin Hotel. He’s been seen in those places on more than one occasion and word has spread, after all, it’s a very small world here, and everyone knows everyone else. And he’s learned a lot from you, Francisco, I think. By now, he probably knows more about wine than you do.”
Francisco leaps on this statement like a Bengal tiger:
“Don’t I know it. He loves showing off to me: Olivier Leflaive’s Corton-Charlemagne with the amuse-gueules; a Chateau Cos d’Estournel with the plat de résistance; and a Coutet Sauternes with the dessert or the foie gras: mere nouveau-riche posturing.”
Justino interrupts:
“Don’t forget the cognacs: Martell, Delamain, Camus, because his other vice—apart from prostitutes—is cigars and cognac, even more so than wines. He loves sitting around after a meal, one hand on his belly, his legs stretched out under the table and his lips pursed, blowing out a great cloud of cigar smoke. He uses wine to give him a veneer of class, but cognacs are his true love. I would say that he’s spoiled Amparo rotten because it suited him to. Husbands who cheat always take great care to make sure their wife lacks for nothing. If you do get caught out at some point, you can always save yourself by saying: but I’m crazy about you, don’t be silly. Don’t I bow to your every whim and treat you like a queen? Besides, anyone can make a mistake.”
Francisco can resist no longer. Falling into the trap of discussing what wines and cognacs Pedrós drinks has hit him where it hurts—in his wine expert’s liver. He can detect direct competition; all that talk about Corton-Charlemagne and Delamain; and hearing someone say that Pedrós knows more about wine than he does is tantamount to challenging the emperor for his crown. And so he adds:
“It’s one thing to say Amparo is still gorgeous, even at her age, and that she’s intelligent and has good taste, but basically he, well, he’s just a fucking plumber. He may have fitted the bathrooms of his Russian clients with gold taps, but he’s still a plumber. That’s how he started out. He knows nothing about cognac or wine. He knows names and labels, but that’s a very different matter. He’s quick on the uptake and notices what the genuinely rich people he mixes with are drinking. He’s the sort who keeps a little notebook and goes into the restaurant toilet to note down the labels of the wines being served with the meal, or which were the most expensive ones on the menu, along with the brand names of the clothes and shoes his fellow diners are wearing, he even notes down words he doesn’t know, but which he notices are considered to be chic. He was on at me for months to teach him about denominaciones, wine merchants, good years and bad years. He bled me dry, like a vampire. Not that I’m criticizing him, mind. At least he did his homework. He’s a conscientious fellow. Hard study can turn even an ignoramus into a sage,” Francisco declares, closing his speech with an unexpected defense of the plumber Pedrós. Like Christ with Lazarus. The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth back. The Lord is God-like in his generosity.”
Justino yawns and stretches voluptuously, undulating his body like an odalisque in a harem, then he scratches his crotch and sighs:
“It’s such a good feeling when you do rein yourself in and stay faithful to your wife. I’m faithful most of the time, and only occasionally do I allow myself to succumb to temptation, but how delicious those occasions are, no?”
Bernal continues:
“They’re each as bad as the other, it’s been pretty much tit for tat between Tomás and Amparo. She’s done her fair share of over-spending too and hasn’t gone without certain other things either: trips abroad, shopping sprees, days spent who knows where (best not ask); solo visits to Paris, exhibitions, although, having said that, their marriage does seem pretty indestructible. Or it has been as long as the money kept flowing in. We’ll see what happens now. But I think that, at least for the moment, their bond will remain strong as long as they still share financial responsibility. What really binds a couple together are the business deals they have in common or the loans taken out in joint names and that have to be repaid. If you sign up for a twenty-year mortgage, you’re pretty much guaranteeing your marriage for the same period of time. That’s true love. Not mere words that the wind can carry away. The banks don’t keep words in their safes; you can’t buy anything with words or use them as a guarantee.”
Justino:
“When things go wrong, that’s that. Like they say, when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window. Unpaid bills put paid to love. The water of debt shortcircuits the electrics of passion. Wow, that sounds like something str
aight out of an old-fashioned novel or some high-falutin’ essay! You’re the writer, Francisco, take note. Who knows what goes on between husband and wife, it’s forbidden territory, not even a lover has access to the secrets of the marital bedroom, the bedside table with the family photos, the alarm clock, the little boxes with earplugs in them, tampons, KY jelly, it’s years of accumulated habits and obsessions, you get their different versions of events, but you don’t know what really matters, what they owe each other, what money they have, where they keep the safe and who has the keys; that’s what you can’t know, what’s in her name or her father’s name or the name of some spinster aunt above suspicion, they won’t tell you that even if they fight like cat and dog, I know, or I think I know, that they’ve agreed on separation of property. And this bankruptcy could well just be a cover.” He speaks as what some people say he is, one of Amparo’s spurned lovers.
Francisco:
“It’s obvious that the only happy marriages are marriages of convenience, which work like well-oiled machines, with no friction, each partner aware that their aspirations are progressing well thanks entirely to that alliance. It’s really good to see such couples working as a team, having grasped the idea that matrimony is tantamount to being a publicly traded company. They do well in the world, providing each other with total support, each one specializing in a different activity so as to get maximum return on their investment, because they know that whatever one of them gains will benefit them both. Public arguments, disagreements, announcements of a separation make the price of shares on the social stock exchange plummet, damaging the domestic economy, so forget all the garbage that young people and other imbeciles proclaim to the winds, not realizing that they’re devaluing what they have. They believe in being in love and falling out of love, in betrayal and jealousy, unaware that, as soon as what novels and romantic magazines insist on calling ‘love’ gets in the way, you’re fucked. Screwed. An end to all peace of mind. When someone says ‘I’ll love you for ever,’ the affair has already begun to take in water. A mountaineer can’t stay on the peak he’s just conquered, because he’s already reached the highest point. What next? You know that now you have to climb down again and find another K 8000 mountain to climb. Your newly-married neighbor, the office colleague you’d never even noticed before, become new targets. It’s the same with everything. The flames melt it. It’s what happened to the Twin Towers. They melted. At boiling point, the stock in the pan soon evaporates and the stew you were so lovingly preparing burns dry. Ardor only serves to scorch things. The lovers themselves, if they’re truly in love, are in a hurry to end that torment and do all they can to free themselves from it. They force matters. If a marriage is to last, you must never swear eternal love. Rather than a rolling amorous boil, you need a steady selfish simmer on a medium flame.”
Francisco—quite unintentionally—is telling me about his marriage to Leonor, but Justino, despite his radical distrust of all things human and, indeed, of the whole of divine creation—he’s the sort who hears a goldfinch singing at the window and rushes to close it because he thinks it’s the screech of a rat in heat—gathers his strength, sensing that now is the moment to begin to make light of the charges against the accused: you never know who you might be talking to; he’s probably noticed that I’ve only opened my mouth to defend Pedrós and this makes him uneasy. He must know that I’m a partner in Pedrós’s business. And naturally he knows about all the work I’ve done on his properties. As for my bankruptcy, he must be more than aware of that, how could he not know what everyone else knows? Besides, he has direct access to the intimate details of the Pedrós household, not through Tomás, but through her, through Amparo, who he criticizes—his usual strategy—simply in order to conceal their likely relationship; and, quite probably, because he’s a tad jealous, given that Amparo has vanished along with her husband and hasn’t stayed behind, waiting for him, despite the rumored separation of property. People have always said that there is or was something between them, and that some of her disappearances coincided with his business trips. At this point, the conversation—doubtless purely as a precaution—changes in tone. Justino says:
“I know Tomás well. He’s spent money because he had the money to spend, but above all because it suited him to do so. For every euro he’s squandered, he’s earned a hundred. He’s used it, let’s say, for PR purposes; that’s how he’s always earned his money, by sticking his nose into other people’s businesses and involving millionaires in his various projects. Why else would he invite a whole legion of old crocks onto his yacht? To get money out of them. Retirees who have chosen to end their days by the sea—Germans, French (the English out here don’t have yachts, they’re too low-class), and who everyone else ignores. They’re bored stiff here and feel sad because, in old age, they have finally come to the realization that money doesn’t bring happiness (as if old age were not a stupid addendum to life proper). He takes them out for a sail, provides them with a hammock on deck, serves them a plate of salted tuna when they’re on the high seas, a few toasted almonds for their very white false teeth to bite into, a little glass of wine (well, a little glass of wine never hurt anyone, it’s recommended by cardiologists, rheumatologists and endocrinologists), tries to make them feel comfortable, cared for, listens with interest to the problems they have with their children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law, and simply by listening he becomes the ideal son, grandson and son-in-law, they adopt him as the son they would like to have had (what son would ever treat them so well?), they spoil him as they wish their grandson would allow them to spoil him, they love him just as they would love a daughter-in-law if she was all she should be, the kind to prompt a few erotic dreams. He offers them the understanding and complicity they wish they received from their wives. The trouble is that now with the crisis, Pedrós’s yacht barely leaves its moorings because gas is so expensive. The banks aren’t giving out any more loans (now, they’re in the business of getting loans from the government) and going for a weekend sail beneath the blue Mediterranean sky costs a fortune what with the soaring price of gas, and so, he wasn’t even able to try to save himself by casting his net in the fishing ground of the elderly, though they wouldn’t have rescued him anyway, because it’s one thing to wheedle the occasional tip out of them or to ask for a helping hand when necessary, but quite another to stand before one of them and say, point-blank: Herr Müller, I need eight hundred and fifty thousand euros. What’s giving a bit of small change to their boy entertainer (a letter of reference for some new project, a “loan” of eight or ten thousand euros, a box of Moselle wine, even a Patek Philippe watch as a birthday gift)? That’s quite different from actually getting out your wallet and handing over a large wad of money. That’s a serious matter—requiring careful consideration, evaluation and expert advice. They may be capricious and old, but they’re not stupid—they’ll pay for a toy, but at a toy price. They’d been prepared to keep shelling out just enough to make sure the fun would continue, but not a euro more; they’ve made their investment (as people usually do), thinking of the profit they might make (opening doors locally). We’ve known for centuries that there is no such thing as a generous rich man, generous people tend to run aground in the stages preceding wealth, when, for a while, they point wildly back at the coast, but then they drown. Their corpses disappear forever, buried in the sea of the economy or the sea of life, which comes to the same thing. They die in poverty.”
Francisco:
“A few days before he disappeared, Pedrós came to see me in tears. It’s not the over-spending, he said, as I know people are saying, but the lack of income that’s done me in. I swear to you on my daughter’s life, and she’s the person I love most in the world. I haven’t gone out on the town or been to a brothel or with anyone else in months. I swear. I spent money while I had it, when I could afford to spend. But now it’s all gone. Paying for materials, paying wages, paying for publicity, of course, but with no money coming in. You p
ay, but no one pays you, that’s the problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. I’m not the only one who’s been caught. Do you know how many local businesses have disappeared? Not closed, but simply vanished, gone: you go to the office to get your money, and the office isn’t there, I don’t just mean that the doors are closed, but you look through the window into an empty room, with papers and boxes strewn all over the floor, and when you try to find out who is (or was) the owner, no one knows. And the guy you dealt with, the one who signed the receipt, had no right to sign it, he wasn’t even an employee. That’s the worst thing. It’s as if you’ve been working with ghosts, phantoms from the other side. I’m not the only one bankrupt either, Tomás told me in tears. Fajardo’s, the building suppliers in Misent, has closed, and Magraner’s has fired half its staff and is about to close. I know this for a fact. And Sanchis, the furniture supplier and Vidal who used to sell blinds. And Ribes. And Pastor now does his own bricklaying when anyone asks, because he’s laid off all his men, more than fifty of them. And Fajardo’s has auctioned off all their material, for which they got a pittance (I mean, who’s going to want to buy building materials, machinery, a backhoe or a crane nowadays?), and they’ve paid what creditors they could and shut down. And Rodenas has gone back to Jaén or Ciudad Real to pick olives alongside Moroccans and Romanians and Poles, can you imagine, a developer working with immigrants, with scum, his poor chilblained fingers frozen on those icy Andalusian mornings.”
On the Edge Page 29
