Carvalho walked down the corridor trying to take in all the offices and to remember exactly what he had been doing there four years earlier.
‘Cor was a good man.’
Something akin to emotion shone in Max’s eyes.
‘He’s doing very well in Jakarta.’
‘I remember he was there before, when all the Reds were being killed in ’65 and ’66. Why is he there now?’
‘Reds spread like weeds. And even renegades still bear some traces.’
Carvalho reached out and brushed Max’s cheek. Max recoiled as though he had been clawed at.
‘I was never a renegade, Max. I was a cynical apostate, no more.’
The northern sun proved Pio Baroja right. It softened colours rather than intoxicating them as the harsh brightness of the south did. This Nordic light brings out all the nuances in the sea of green, lends a sheen of age to the drunken roofs, and paints each leaf on the trees of Amsterdam with a different brushstroke. Carvalho had to make a great effort to leave the city for The Hague. For breakfast, he ate rollmops at a blue-and-white van outside the Central Station. As he munched his third slice of black bread with raw herring and onion, he could see the glass-sided boats manoeuvring into position as they set off to take tourists round the canals. He must not leave Amsterdam without taking the trip again himself, lying back and watching the city pass by above his head, a silent spectator at the ghostly parade of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century city.
Dutch trains always seem like suburban ones. They are more like an open-air metro than a proper railway. People get on and off as if they were on an underground train, and the towns go by in the same harmonious, uninterrupted style against the backdrop of an unvarying landscape. Carvalho remembered the story he had heard from Carrasquer, a professor of Spanish literature at Leyden University: Holland has only one mountain, and that’s only five hundred metres high, so to avoid wearing it out the Dutch do not climb it, but instead gaze at it like a national monument.
Carvalho’s carriage was filled with quiet, self-absorbed passengers. Every so often he caught the sound of a few words of Spanish, Italian or Greek, and some in another language he supposed was Turkish. But the placid Dutch seriousness seemed to impinge on the southern Europeans. In an environment where silence is so important, even Southerners are silent. Or perhaps, thought Carvalho, they are simply afraid of upsetting the Northerners’ psychological balance with the lewd phonetics of poor nations. In order to blend in better, and to enjoy some Dutch tobacco, Carvalho had brought a pipe. He soon noticed that the simple fact of smoking it made him more detached, and helped him look at other people and things with greater distance. He puffed on his obedient appendage and the rising smoke sealed his sense of well-being.
When he arrived at The Hague he decided to walk for a while, from the station down to the main shopping centre. He recognised a restaurant he had enjoyed the last time he had been here: The House of Lords. He studied the menu outside and resolved to come back and eat here if he had the opportunity. Among the daily specials were snails from Alsace and roast gigot of lamb, which made him feel nostalgic. He had not eaten a proper gigot since he had been in Dijon for the wine festival. He knew he could trust The House of Lords to do it justice. He remembered a turkey with pomegranate stuffing he had eaten among wood-panelled walls imitating an English club. The chef had been from Galicia too, he seemed to recall.
The lunch hour was approaching, so he hurried on to the Philips factory. While he waited for the workers to emerge, he flicked through his copy of the porno magazine Suck. The front cover seemed to be a paean to the carrot and its uses. As soon as the first men came out of the factory gates, Carvalho folded the magazine and put it in his pocket. He fell in with the labouring masses rushing in search of food, and soon heard Spanish being spoken. He discreetly followed two short, well-built men in their forties as they headed off determinedly towards the centre of town. He kept close behind, and as soon as they became separated from the others, caught up with them.
‘Excuse me. I heard you speaking Spanish. I’m passing through here and wanted to eat somewhere where they serve food from back home.’
The two men looked at each other and shook their heads doubtfully, as if Carvalho had met them in Madrid and asked whether it was far to Barcelona.
‘There’s not much choice here. It’s different in Rotterdam or Amsterdam. But not here.’
‘Perhaps in that social centre.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’ll find some in a centre where him and me eat sometimes. We’ve just got to go and do something, but if you come with us we can tell you where it is, and we might even have lunch there ourselves.’
Carvalho could sense the plate of six delicious Alsatian snails slipping away from him, but thanked them for the offer as though he had suddenly been granted a pardon. He tried to strike up a conversation based on food. The two men replied with all the parsimony of Iberian Comanches. From their accents, Carvalho deduced that one was from Galicia, and the other from not far away.
‘That’s right. My friend is from Orense, and yours truly from León,’ the less old and more talkative one told him.
They were walking in a hurry, with a precise destination in mind. They had already travelled several blocks, but still seemed to have a long way to go. All at once they came to a short, tree-lined street. Carvalho followed them across it. They came to a halt in front of a nightclub window. The female attractions were displayed behind the glass. Five or six young women from exotic locations (from France to Kashmir) were showing off their breasts to passers-by. In a corner, a girl was showing only one breast. Her artistic name was Finita del Oro.
‘She’s one of us,’ said the man from León, choking with emotion.
‘From León?’
‘No, from Spain.’
‘She’s the best of them all,’ the Galician crowed. The two men looked at each other, then gazed one last time at their half-naked compatriot, and walked off back the way they had come. They had crossed most of the city just to ogle the charms of someone from home.
‘Have you got your families with you?’
No, they did not. The man from Galicia was not married; the other one was, but his wife was back in León. He went home every two years and managed to make up for it.
‘I behave myself here. For one, because I want my wife to behave herself in León, so I do the same. And also because it’s expensive to have fun and we’re here to save.’
The man from León had already bought a flat in his home town, and was giving his daughter a good education: she was studying French and typing.
‘Languages are very important. You realise that when you travel abroad.’
Now that his sexual itch had been satisfied, the man from Léon was talking freely. He had left Spain when he was already forty because the sugar industry in Léon where he had worked was in crisis. He thought you could live well in Spain, except in four or five provinces. ‘People have it easy where you’re from,’ they both said when Carvalho told them he lived in Barcelona.
‘But I come from Lugo.’
‘Which part of the province?’ asked the shy Galician, at last finding something he felt he could comment on.
‘From Souto, near San Juan de Muro.’
‘That’s poor land. It’s all very poor round there.’
Carvalho could barely remember how poor the land or the people were, but nodded energetically. He asked how they were getting along in Holland. Whether they didn’t have any problems. The two men glanced at each other.
‘We’re not interested in politics. We’re here to save a bit of money and return to Spain.’
‘But are you treated all right? Does the Spanish embassy look after you?’
The two men exchanged looks once more, and when the one from León faced Carvalho again, he had the expression of a man being questioned in a police station. Carvalho guessed they thought he must be a Spanish cop trying to work out their political affiliation.
‘I’m
only asking because I used to have a friend in The Hague who worked in the same factory as you, but he said it was awful. We called him the Tattoo Man: he had a huge one on his back with the motto Born to raise hell in hell.
The two men were listening closely as they walked on.
‘Was he here a long time ago?’
‘Two or three years.’
‘What was his name?’
‘I don’t really remember. We used to call him the Tattoo Man, so we never bothered about what his real name might be.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Tall, blond, good looking. He sounded like a foreigner.’
The Galician dug his elbow into his mate’s side.
‘That’s the American.’
‘Could be. A tall blond kid used to work here. We called him the American.’
‘And he had a tattoo.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Now this gentleman has mentioned it, I remember it well. We once played a football match against the Spaniards from the Philips factory at Eindhoven. The American played for us, and I saw his tattoo in the changing rooms. I remember the bit about hell. I can’t remember the rest, but I do recall that word.’
They reached the social centre, which was back close to the factory. It was not managed by Spaniards, and there was no sight of any Spanish food. Carvalho was served a strange sort of aubergine stew, which he recognised as a pale imitation of the Turkish eman bayildi. The waiter was Turkish, but he spoke a few Spanish words with an Italian accent, enough for him to communicate with both the Spanish and Italian workers. The man from León insisted on paying for a round of beers, brushing aside the timid, hesitant offer made by the Galician. Then the three of them ate what was put before them.
‘I can’t remember the name of my friend the Tattoo Man. Or the American, as you used to call him. Could it have been Luis?’
‘No, sir.’
The Galician knew what he was talking about, and began to speak with the authority of an expert.
‘His name was Julio Chesma. He was from Puertollano, in Ciudad Real province.’
The man from León was not so sure about his family name.
‘Julio, yes. But I wouldn’t swear it was Chesma.’
‘Chesma. Ches-ma. Believe me. When I damaged this hand here I spent three months in the office, and saw the records of half the company. Julio Chesma. From Puertollano. He was twenty-seven.’
‘Listen to him, will you? He sits there quietly as though he isn’t taking in a thing, then all of a sudden he’s a real encyclopedia.’
‘Did he quit here a long time ago?’
‘He didn’t stay long. He was one of those who soon get tired of it and look for something easier. Some people don’t know they’re born.’
‘He went off to Amsterdam.’
Carvalho began to look at his fellow Galician like Robinson Crusoe gazing at the washed-up boat promising him his life back. The man had the memory of a great masturbator. He was aware he had won the battle over the man from León’s senseless chatter and that he knew things of interest to this half-Catalan gentleman. The price of his knowledge was to have it praised. Carvalho paid the price.
‘You’re the twenty-four-volume Espasa. What a memory you have!’
‘He lived in Amsterdam at number sixteen, Rokin Street.’
He was overwhelmed by his success. He could not help laughing proudly at his own prowess, at the way he had impressed not only the workers’ leader from León but this city slicker.
‘How on earth do you know all this?’
The man from León was annoyed as much as astonished. The Galician explained that they had become friends through football, and that they had met up some Sunday afternoons in Amsterdam. He sensed that the other man was upset at not being the centre of attention any more, and threw him a lifeline: he questioned Julio Chesma’s character, making him a scapegoat on the altar of morality.
‘He was a lazy bastard.’
‘You’re right there,’ agreed the other, catching the line.
‘A scatterbrain,’ the Galician went on, sacrificing an absent friend in order to keep in with the one sitting next to him.
‘In Amsterdam he shacked up with a woman and found money from somewhere, though I’ve no idea where. He lived in a very nice boarding house in that street I mentioned. He had a room to himself with a bathroom and all mod cons.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He lived off women.’
The man from León saw an opportunity to refocus attention on him.
‘Lots of them do that. The women here think we’re dying for it, so when they get together with a Spaniard or a Turk it’s a serious business. It’s easy to get into it, but you need to use your brain. Which is what your friend never did.’
‘He wasn’t really a friend. I knew him from football and he was good fun. You can’t deny that.’
‘His sort are always good fun. They don’t make any demands on themselves, so they demand nothing of anyone else either.’
Carvalho couldn’t help feeling a certain admiration for the man from León. He obviously had the ideology he needed to prevent him thinking his own life was shit. And by now he had the bit between his teeth.
‘That’s why they never feel under any obligation to anyone. So they don’t make any demands, and they always seem wonderful. You, for example, are not married, but you help keep your mother, and you send money back so they can improve the house. If they need a cow, or a sister gets married, or someone falls ill, you chip in, however hard it might be for you.’
At this, the Galician’s eyes turned misty. He nodded in agreement. Carvalho caught himself agreeing as well, remembering how he had contributed to his own family home in Galicia thanks to the two five-thousand-peseta money orders he had sent his aunt and uncle. But soon he was cursing himself and the other two as he reflected how pathetic it was for the three of them to be sitting in Holland, so pleased with themselves for having helped buy a cow or pay for a daughter’s typing lessons.
‘It’s not easy being Spanish,’ said Carvalho, to see what would happen. And something did happen. The man from León stared at him, and thrust his face forward. He put a hand on Carvalho’s arm as though to get his point across more effectively or to convince him of his error. He said emphatically:
‘But it’s the best thing in the world. Right now if there was a war between Holland and Spain, I’d go back and fight to defend my country.’
He turned to the Galician, who still seemed to be lost in his evocation of cows bought and sisters married.
‘I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’d do.’
‘So would I, of course,’ the Galician assured him. At the same time, he looked at Carvalho as if hoping that this knowledgeable gentleman would deny all possibility of war being declared between Spain and Holland in the next thirty years, give or take a few, that the three of them had left to live.
‘There’s not much chance of a war,’ said Carvalho, coming to his aid.
‘Of course not, it was just an example.’
The man from León glanced at his watch, and told his companion it was time they were getting back to work. Carvalho accompanied them to the factory gate and shook hands with a warmth that took him by surprise.
‘Are you spending Christmas in León this year?’
The married man from León shook his head.
‘No, it’ll have to wait until next year.’
With that, he turned his back on Carvalho, followed by his friend. The only trips those two would be taking were to nightclub windows where their cheap thrills were purely visual and did not even offer any human contact. Some are born to make history, others to suffer it. Some are winners, others are losers. Carvalho felt a rush of blind anger towards his own countrymen. After a while, though, he began to feel angrier still at the phlegmatic Dutch cycling past: they had no need to go and work in the cane fields of Murcia or in the Cartagena refineries. He muttered, �
��What an easy life you have!’ so loudly it caught the attention of a gentleman with briefcase and tie, who gave him a look of smiling condescension. Carvalho felt depressed, but realised his body had not betrayed him, and was pointing him in the right direction. It was taking him unerringly towards The House of Lords, determined to allow his stomach to make up for the fake Turkish stew.
The burgundy cost an arm and a leg, but Carvalho would have torn off both if he had missed the opportunity to anoint the roast lamb with it. He had reached the restaurant just as the waiters were relaxing their professional demeanour and seeking refuge in that strange no man’s land where waiters and cooks go between sessions. Carvalho’s sudden appearance brought them flocking to his table. The only other customers were an Indonesian family. The woman had the dark beauty of a Gauguin portrait, and the two daughters held the promise of womanly charms to come. The paterfamilias looked like a badly worn Sukarno weighing five hundred kilos too much. As they were leaving, they all bowed to Carvalho, who tried not to make it too obvious he was avidly watching the splendid woman’s exit from the restaurant. He watched as she swished her way between the tables, and then turned ninety degrees towards the doorway. This angle allowed Carvalho to ascertain that her profile was as pleasing as her back view. She narrowed her slanted eyes in order to hasten this minute examination from a foreigner. On similar occasions, Carvalho had often regretted not carrying with him a stock of those business cards where you can scrawl a passionate declaration of love and slip it into the apparently unconcerned hand of a woman restrained by the chains of erotic convention. He must try it some day. A shame he could not start today.
He tucked into the lamb without any mental reservations. Well-cooked meat is first and foremost a tactile pleasure for the roof of the mouth. Roast gigot of lamb is the least elaborate way of preparing the meat. It does not have the fake comradeliness of gigot country-style, with potatoes and beans, or the all too often flat fanfare of a leg of lamb, or the purely visual pleasures of gigot with spinach. Lamb roasted this way is above all well-cooked and well-condimented meat. When the aroma of the burgundy hit the delicate skin of his palate and rose to fill his nostrils with the heady perfume of red wine, it was like having a velvet fluid wipe away the tiny wounds that the pieces of meat had caused.
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