Off Side

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘You’re right. It would be good to go. I’d like to go somewhere where there’s sea. There’s sea here, but it’s not what you’d call proper sea. Morocco. I’d really like to go to Morocco.’

  ‘We could go to the desert.’

  ‘We could go to the desert,’ he repeated, with a certain lack of conviction. Then again: ‘What with, though? Where will we get the money? Every time we’ve tried hitch-hiking, even a blind man wouldn’t pick us up. Remember what happened when we went to Port de la Selva in the summer?’

  ‘We need money.’

  ‘If you’re thinking we can ask my father, forget it. He’s even gone and hired a private security guard to make sure I don’t get within half a mile of him.’

  ‘Who said anything about your father?’

  ‘What are you planning then?’

  ‘For the moment I’m not planning anything. I’m following my nose. Sniffing the air. Using my imagination. You should try it. One morning we’re going to get up bright and early, and we’ll leave this dump behind us. We’ll have the whole world before us — anything we want. Do you remember that film about the robots and the Chinaman? I suppose not. Your brain’s shot — you can’t even remember any more.’

  She looked at him as if he was a kind of freak who by some quirk of fate had ended up as her bedmate and companion in life.

  ‘I think your brain’s melted, Marçal.’

  ‘Well, you’re not so clever yourself …’

  But he had to admit she was right. Sometimes it really did feel as if his brain had melted, and he couldn’t even turn his head without feeling the liquid swilling about.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Thirty, maybe.’

  ‘Thirty-two. Same as me. How long do you think you’re going to last, the way you’re going … the way we’re both going?’

  ‘Going to last …?’ he mused, with an air of perplexity.

  ‘There’s still time,’ she said, seizing his arm with one hand. ‘We’ll have to break a few eggs, though, if we want to make the omelette. Are you game?”

  ‘How should I know? You’re flying, Marta. You’re always in a good mood when you’re flying.’

  ‘There’s still time, and we are going to need money.’

  ‘Here we go again. Sure …’

  He ran through all the possible sources of money that his imagination could muster, but each time he came up with either the sullen face of his father saying no, or the pitifully small amounts of cash that Marta sometimes carried in her handbag.

  ‘Imagine that we’ve hit lucky. Imagine us turning up in one of those cities where everyone wears white suits and Panama hats. Fans on the ceilings and jugs full of fancy coloured drinks, and we’ll be Lord and Lady Muck.’

  ‘The kind of place where they have billiard halls.’

  ‘Billiard halls. That’s right! A billiard hall.’

  ‘I’ll shave my beard off, and just leave a moustache.’

  ‘In winter you’ll wear a cravat, and in summer you’ll wear silk shirts.’

  ‘I used to have silk shirts. I loved them. My mother used to give me a silk shirt every birthday.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Amazing! That’s the first time I’ve thought of my silk shirts for years. I wonder what they’ve done with them. They must still be at home. And they’re mine.’

  ‘You’ll have new silk shirts. Imagine it — there you are, in your silk shirt, and you’re leaning over a billiard table. You have to be very good looking to play billiards — in fact you’ve got something of the billiard player about you. And everyone will be saying: “Who’s the goodlooking player?” And maybe I’ll be the owner of the joint.’

  ‘You know what — you’d look really good as the owner of a billiard hall. No, I’m serious. You’ve got that kind of “je ne sais quoi”.’

  ‘And everyone will be wondering where these two good-looking creatures come from? And you and I will lay false trails for them. I’d love them to think that we came from Australia. Everyone should be from Australia.’

  ‘We could even go to Australia.’

  ‘Why not? Somewhere where we can make a new start.’

  ‘Seeing we’ve almost got our degrees, maybe we could give private lessons in something.’

  ‘Like what? Sniffing coke and screwing?! Idiot!’

  All of a sudden the spell was broken and everything was the same as before. Including the iciness in Marta’s voice, and the ferocity in her eyes which tried to cover up for her confusion.

  ‘What’s up with you? Don’t spoil it, Marta.’

  ‘What exactly are you going to give classes in, eh? Tell me. That’ll be just like going backwards for us, won’t it. We’ve got to jump forwards, not backwards. As if we’ve just been born.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘OK — now listen carefully. What would you be prepared to do to make it happen?’

  ‘I’d give ten years of my life — twenty, even.’

  ‘Don’t be so generous with something you probably haven’t got. Half an hour will do. In half an hour we could change our luck.’

  He didn’t want to irritate her by being blind to the obvious, so he preferred to pretend that he was thinking deeply while he waited for her to unveil what she had in mind. He turned over the possible options, and all of a sudden he came up with a start.

  ‘You’re not thinking of …?’

  ‘Not thinking of what?’

  ‘You’re not thinking of doing a hold-up?’

  ‘You’re talking movie-language.’

  ‘I mean a robbery … or something like that.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Marta, I’d never have the nerve. If it was just mugging someone, OK. But I haven’t got the nerve for a robbery — I’d be too scared of ending up in prison. It would kill me. I’d be dead within three days. They’d separate us.’

  ‘You’ve mugged someone, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s something like that.’

  ‘Mugging someone isn’t going to give us enough money to travel abroad.’

  ‘It’s something like mugging, but there’s pots of money attached. Come over here.’

  She got up from the mattress and hauled him across to the window. The street was cool and busy with the sounds of the late afternoon, and the sun was providing a golden halo for the last flats up calle de Robadors.

  ‘There it is. Thirty yards away. Right on our doorstep. The old lady’s absolutely loaded, and she let on to me that she keeps it all in the house because she doesn’t trust banks, and probably because she doesn’t want to pay tax on it.’

  She left him standing at the window and went to get her bag. When she returned she handed him a key.

  ‘I made it the other day. It’s a copy of the spare key she keeps in the bread bin in the kitchen. We can go in any time we like and search until we find the money. In the afternoons she goes out for a walk, and none of her guests are in during the daytime, or at least only a useless old invalid who can hardly move out of his bed. I’ll give him a coffee and a sandwich to keep him happy.’

  ‘Too easy.’

  ‘We deserve something to be easy for once. The woman enjoys handing out charity when she thinks people are down on their luck, and she’s decided I’m a poor cow who can’t live without her generosity. She doesn’t need the money. She’s done everything she ever needed to do in life, and now all she does is sit and watch the flashing sign of her dirty boarding house, and wander round the balcony to keep an eye on what’s going on down the street.’

  ‘Too easy.’

  ‘I’ve thought it all out. All we have to do is grab the money and run. You can go and steal a car from the other side of town and park it in the parking-lot behind the Boqueria. It’s an open car park, so there’s no one to check who comes and goes. It’s not even two hundred yards from here. We’ll break into her place, take the money, and we’ll just drive till the
petrol runs out. Then, with the money we’ll have, everything will be easy.’

  ‘Too easy.’

  ‘So easy that even you couldn’t fuck it up.’

  ‘Supposing things go wrong, though?’

  ‘What could be worse than this?’

  And she invited him to look at her, as bare and wretched as the four walls around them.

  ‘How about Morocco.’

  ‘Wherever you like. The desert. Billiards. Silk shirts. Give me your hand. Reach out of the window.’

  And he did. A hand reaching out to the afternoon. Like a claw.

  His last conversation with Charo had left him feeling uneasy. Once again his soul was making its presence felt, like a tumour which always seemed to reveal his darker side. The day’s business had driven the problem of Bromide clean out of his head, and all of a sudden he had an image of Charo and Bromide united in a moment of solidarity which he didn’t recognize, and which in part repelled him. He was disturbed by a sense of something approaching a guilty conscience, and before going to see the shoeshine he tried to mend his bridges with Charo. Her voice was sad but affectionate at the other end of the line. When he suggested that they should go out together for a meal, her sadness gave way to cheerfulness, and they arranged to meet at Casa Isidro in calle de les Flors, a few yards from the Gothic surprise of the church of Sant Pau del Camp. Charo arrived dressed and made up for a night out, but with a touch too much Eau de Rochas about her, which threatened to ruin the delicate aroma of what they were about to eat. It was this that decided him to sit facing her, instead of next to her as Charo would have preferred. To make up for this he let her elaborate on the long voyage of analysis, tests, consultations and medical opinions on which she had embarked with Bromide.

  ‘You can’t imagine the terrible state of the health service these days, Pepe. When was the last time you went to the doctor’s?’

  ‘When that Siamese took a pot shot at me.’

  ‘Don’t remind me, Pepe — it gives me the creeps even thinking about it.’

  Charo was a mature, goodlooking woman. She was ageing with dignity, and something in him approaching tenderness was interrupted by the timely arrival of the menu in the hands of Isidro and Montserrat, the couple who ran the restaurant which Carvalho frequented as a gourmet and a connoisseur. When Carvalho asked disingenuously, ‘What’s new today?’ they replied without batting an eyelid that they had foie gras with a green lentil dressing, a hors d’oeuvres of foie gras, sweetbreads with lime, salt codfish au gratin with garlic, farcellets of cabbage stuffed with lobster and saffron, lubina à la ciboulette, sole with mulberry, and riz de veau. They concluded their exposition of the day’s attractions, unaware of the profound disturbance which they had occasioned in Carvalho’s spirit and his unease at being faced with so many choices and the necessity of having to decide.

  ‘I’ll have a bit of everything,’ he said, ironically.

  Unfortunately Isidro took him literally and was about to go and place the order. Carvalho had to revert to linear language to disabuse him. Charo stayed on familiar territory: a hors d’oeuvre of foie gras, and sole with mulberry, and Carvalho opted for the foie gras with green lentils, followed by the riz de veau.

  ‘When Bromide was younger, he used to complain that God had left men very poorly equipped to deal with all the beautiful women in the world. I tend to feel the same nowadays about cooking. I’ll never live long enough to try everything I want to try.’

  ‘Your problem is that you’re greedy, Pepe.’

  ‘My problem is insatiable curiosity. I have the curiosity of the voyeur who has a sense that there are some things that he’s never going to see.’

  ‘Some people might say you’re getting old.’

  ‘People don’t know the meaning of the word nowadays. The only people who know what the word means are people who are old already, and I don’t feel that I’m old yet. Imagine it! They’ve even succeeded in disappearing the word out of the language. These days they talk about “senior citizens”. It reminds me of the years under Franco, when workers had to be called “producers”. To be a “worker” was politically obscene and dangerous. These days, to be “old” is biologically obscene and dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t depress me more than I am already, Pepe. Come on, cheer up and have a drink.’

  Charo always made him nervous when she had a few drinks inside her.

  ‘This is a lovely wine, Pepe. Voluptuous.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Bromide?’

  ‘Don’t, Pepe, you’re going to start me crying. Leave it till the end of the meal. What’s for dessert, Pepe?’

  ‘Why not profiteroles, or orange terrine au Grand Marnier.’

  ‘In that case, no. Let’s talk about Bromide now, because I’m looking forward to this meal, and I want to be in a good mood to enjoy the sweet.’

  ‘If we’re going to talk about Bromide’s problems, maybe we’d best do it with the foie gras!’

  ‘That’s not funny, Pepe. Stop it — you’ll put me right off my food. You know, it was ever so sad at the hospital … Have you ever seen Bromide’s underwear?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it never even occurred to me to tell him … The first day, when I took him for his X-ray, or abdominal radiography, or whatever they call it, I’m telling you, Pepe, when the poor thing stood there in his underpants I didn’t know which way to turn. He had the kind of pants that my father used to wear. They were full of holes, with urine stains in the front. And his vest looked like a moth-eaten old floor-cloth. So I made sure that the nurse was in earshot, and I said: “For goodness sake — couldn’t you have put clean underwear on?” And he got all in a temper, Pepe, and said that all this stuff about clean underwear was nonsense, and that we come into this world naked, and we go out naked, and that during the Russian campaign they used to wear newspaper next to their skin instead of underwear, and that Franco set up the Health Service so that workers could go to the doctor’s looking how the hell they wanted. And he said the bit about Franco when the nurse was in the room, and the woman gave him a really dirty look. I thought to myself: “Charo, this woman’s going to kill him,” and I gave her a smile as if to say that Bromide was a bit crazy. I started telling him off for talking like that, and the nurse looked at me and asked if he was my father, and I felt ashamed to say that Bromide was my father, with his underwear looking so dirty, so I said that he wasn’t, but I said it a bit too quickly, and Bromide noticed, and he looked even more miserable, Pepe, and I felt a lump coming in my throat. I felt so annoyed with myself that I added: “But it’s as if he was.” And when he heard that he started getting all emotional.’

  Carvalho became aware that the delivery of foie gras and green lentils that he’d loaded carefully on to his fork had coagulated as it hung in mid-air. He imagined the scene in the fulness of its grisly detail and its terminal sadness, and he cleared his throat in order to make way for the food.

  ‘What about his health, though?’

  ‘Looks bad, Pepe.’

  ‘What sort of bad?’

  ‘You name it, he’s got it. Anaemia, cirrhosis, one kidney not working properly, and that’s not the end of it.’

  ‘In that case, maybe they’d best not carry on looking. They’ll probably end up discovering that he’s pregnant.’

  Charo gave such a snort of laughter that part of what she had in her mouth ended up back on her plate, and this made her laugh even louder, so that by the end the whole restaurant was staring at her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pepe. I can’t stop!’

  Carvalho opted for total absorption in his meal, and Charo conducted a secret dialogue with herself until she finally subsided into a state of mild hiccups, and tears which initially were the aftermath of the laughter but then turned into tears for Bromide.

  ‘It’s unfair, the way people are left on their own when they get old.’

  ‘If we had to make a list of everything that’s unfair in this world, I’m sure we cou
ld find worse. Anyway, you went along to lend a hand; Biscuter has offered to help when we need him; and there’s me too.’

  ‘He’s going to die, Pepe.’

  ‘No.’

  It was a dry, irrational ‘no’, as if the idea that Bromide might die was an act of violence on his very being. For a moment he tried to imagine his emotional world without Bromide in it, but he couldn’t. It was inconceivable that one day he would go looking for Bromide in the bowels of the city and not find him. Bromide was like a little insect that lurked in the dirtiest cracks of the city of Barcelona, an insect that was fragile, soft-hearted and wise.

  ‘The hell he’s going to die.’

  ‘Don’t take it like that, Pepe. We all have to die one day, and Bromide is ever so ill. He says it’s because of all the muck that we’re forced to eat and drink. You know his mania about how the council’s putting bromides into everyone’s tap water so that people don’t screw so much. Now he’s saying that they’re poisoning everything so that people start popping off, and that will solve their unemployment problem. He says that this was all arranged when Reagan met Gorbachev. And what we need is another general like Muñoz Grandes, to stop people stepping out of line …’

  ‘In other words, the same old story. Listen. Let’s finish with Bromide for the moment, because I’m not going to enjoy my food otherwise. Leave it for the coffee. Instead of a glass of Calvados, I’ll ask for a glass of mineral water and we can talk about what we can do for him.’

  ‘I’d put him in a home.’

  ‘Bromide? In a home?’

  ‘Somewhere where they can look after him. He can’t be expected to end his days sitting on his shoeshine box, or dragged up an alley somewhere.’

  ‘He’s not a baby, and he’s not mad either. Let him decide. But I’m telling you, once they decide to put him in a home it’ll be the death of him. It’s only breathing the shit in the barrios that keeps him alive.’

  ‘And the poor man was so confused. He doesn’t seem to know what’s what any more. He says he doesn’t understand this city … it isn’t what it used to be … something’s happened and he doesn’t know what it is. He says once it was like a village, with its prostitutes and pimps and criminals, but now it’s full of all kinds of stainless-steel lowlife.’