Tattoo

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘What are you exactly? A cop? A Marxist? A gourmet?’

  ‘I’m an ex-cop, an ex-Marxist and a gourmet.’

  Carvalho took the initiative and headed for Quo Vadis. He returned the friendly greetings of the family who ran the restaurant, presided over by the impressive mother sitting in a chair anchored by the front door. When she saw the prices on the menu, Teresa immediately offered:

  ‘I’ll only have one course.’

  ‘Are you short of money?’

  ‘No, but I feel bad spending so much on food. I would have been happy going to a much less fancy place.’

  ‘The thing is, I still haven’t got over my lingering respect for the bourgeoisie, and I still think they know how to live.’

  ‘Who says they don’t?’

  ‘Eighty-nine per cent of the bourgeoisie in the city dine on overcooked spinach and a tiny fish eating its own tail.’

  ‘At least it’s healthy.’

  ‘If they added raisins and pine kernels to the spinach and ate a nice piece of dorado with herbs, wrapped in silver foil and baked in the oven, it would be just as healthy, not much more expensive, and yet much more imaginative.’

  ‘What’s so strange is that you mean it.’

  ‘Naturally. Sex and food are the two most serious things in life.’

  ‘That’s really odd. Julio used to say something similar. Not exactly that, but similar. He also wanted to educate his palate. He wasn’t as advanced as you, he was only at the stage of sole meunière or duck with orange. Typical dishes for parvenus.’

  When Carvalho saw that all she was ordering was a pair of fried eggs with ham, he was tempted to throw the bottle of vodka at her. He had started with blinis soaked in chilled vodka, and was hoping for some support. He followed the first course with bull’s-meat steak fillet. Teresa could not help commenting on the mound of dark, bloody meat spilling over his plate.

  ‘It’s bad to eat all that late at night and in midsummer too.’

  ‘At home I always have a fire going. Even in midsummer.’

  Teresa giggled like a minor starlet in Hollywood films, one who had made a career of playing dippy girls who go from bar to bar in search of adventure.

  ‘Would you like to see my fire at home?’

  ‘You may have a lot of imagination when it comes to food, but your pick-up line leaves a lot to be desired. What you just said sounds just like: “Would you like to come back to my place for a drink?” ’

  ‘I’ve got a bottle of lemonade.’

  ‘I prefer whisky. I hope you’re not going to disappoint me. Have you got Chivas?’

  ‘Chivas and all his court.’

  ‘Fine.’

  As they headed up towards Vallvidrera, Teresa was humming ‘Penny Lane’.

  ‘If you really want to be a gourmet you have to talk differently.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘All the selef-respecting Spanish gourmets I know have a French accent. And you have to choose French-sounding adjectives to describe things. A dish is “insuperable”, or “incomparable”. And you have to say them as though you were a Frenchman. Go on, say “vichyssoise”.’

  ‘Vichisois.’

  ‘See what I mean? If you say it like that, it loses all its charm. It sounds as though it’s garlic soup.’

  After they arrived, she expressed her delight at everything she saw. She allowed Carvalho to light the fire in the hearth. They sat half undressed near the door, watching the flames with the cool night air from the hills on their backs but with the shifting heat from the burning wood warming their chests.

  ‘When do you want to talk about Julio? Before or after?’

  Carvalho did not want to yield an inch. He calmed his growing desire.

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘I think I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘The key. The key you used to leave for Julio. Who did he use it for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The glow from the fire decreased at that moment, or perhaps it was Teresa’s face that suddenly betrayed her. As it was, Carvalho knew he should press her harder.

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘No.’

  Carvalho had heard five hundred ‘no’s’ just like that during interrogations where he had been either the interrogator or the interrogated. He picked up Teresa’s djellaba and threw it on the fire. She grew hysterical, rushed towards the hearth, and tried to pluck her dress out of the flames with her fingers. Furious, she turned towards him and shouted that he was a complete idiot, although this lost some of its effect because of her awareness of how she must look: a woman in her underclothes, perspiring from the heat, caught between anger and fear. Carvalho stood up and went over to her. He grasped the back of her neck and squeezed until he was hurting her. He forced her down to the floor right next to the hearth.

  ‘Who did he go to Caldetas with?’

  His tone of voice was neutral. Teresa tried to discern menace in it, but if there was any, it was well hidden beneath what sounded like almost friendly words.

  ‘I swear I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you know, then?’

  ‘Let me go. I’m burning.’

  Carvalho pushed her head even closer to the flames. As he increased the pressure, his voice remained calm.

  ‘What happened in Caldetas?’

  Teresa was sweating freely now. Shiny rivulets ran down her throat and across her hot breasts, which were filling the scanty bra like soft nocturnal fruits. When she spoke, her voice sounded strangled.

  ‘If you let me go, I’ll tell you.’

  Carvalho helped her stand up. He put his arm round her shoulder and they walked back to the far side of the room. He stroked her cheek, and caressed the sheen of her hot nocturnal fruit.

  ‘It was one Friday. A few weeks ago. I went to Caldetas with a friend. At first I didn’t notice anything. It was he who saw something odd, and eventually we discovered that something must have happened there. There were traces of blood that had not been washed off properly. Everywhere. In the bedroom. The sink. Then outside too. In the garden there were tracks made by a big vehicle, possibly a van or small truck. That’s all.’

  Carvalho had learnt enough for now. His fingers did not stop at the uncovered skin. He peeled off the rest of her clothes and admired the striped golden brown and white of her body, poised between fear and desire.

  He had a confused memory of having rushed Teresa back down the hill at top speed, and when he returned he barely had time to pull back the sheets and collapse naked in bed before he fell fast asleep. He woke up late and did not go down into the city until after lunch. He filled his afternoon by wandering through the old artisans’ district round El Borne. The narrow streets formed a maze that was sometimes plunged into darkness, while at others the filtered rays of the sun caressed its grey stone walls. He feasted his eyes on the worn edges of the buildings, the yellow flowers poking out of any crevice where time had eroded the stone to allow their roots to take hold, the heraldic crests over huge doorways, the silence disturbed only by the cries of street traders or the throb of tools in the distance, hidden deep in gloomy alleyways the sight of workshops lit by twenty-five-watt bulbs so fly-speckled and covered in decades of dust they hardly give off any light at all. Cars were parked in the wider streets, but there seemed to be few going anywhere. Carvalho drank from the fountain outside Santa María del Mar church. He bought several different kinds of olives in a salt-fish shop and ate them slowly with a soft bread roll he had discovered lying in solitary splendour in a basket at the first baker’s to open for the afternoon. Many of the shops and workshops had heavy wooden doors with layers of faded paint and huge studs smeared with the same paint, relics of a glorious past now turned to rust. The three ages of a door and of the life of this craftsmen’s neighbourhood were given voice in these studs, hammered into wood that was as fibrous as stewed meat.

  He went into a Galician restaurant opposite Santa María and had a bowl of broth and som
e slices of a soft, rather bland cheese. He could not deny that the cheeses his uncle sent him had more taste. He emerged from the backstreets into Vía Layetana. As he walked past the police headquarters he glanced at it quickly out of the corner of his eye in a way he had never tried to justify to himself: he just knew he felt uncomfortable there and always walked past as quickly as he could, as though he had suddenly thought of something he had to do.

  He decided to see a film. He sat through a porno movie and then a Spanish one in which the supposed gay ends up married with five children and a wife with a face like a squashed toad. The lady with the toad features turned out to be Princess Ira von Furstenberg. When he came out of the cinema he enjoyed the feeling that he could have a cold horchata then start at the top of the Rambla and walk slowly down it at a time when the cool of the evening had once more filled the central avenue with passers-by and meditative souls who sat on their folding stools to watch the world go by. He hesitated over whether to buy a newspaper or a set of five lottery tickets from the blind man on the corner of Calle Buen Suceso. In the end he chose the tickets.

  After a while he made his way to the car park in Calle Pintor Fortuny to recover his car. It was going to be hard to find somewhere to park close to Queta’s salon, somewhere that would give him a good view of all the comings and goings. He went along Calle del Carmen out towards the Rambla again. The grey ravine of buildings ended in front of the baroque splendour of Belén church and the lively scene of the flower seller’s stall in the centre of the avenue. He ventured out into the river of cars heading down to the sea. The traffic was moving so slowly he got several opportunities to ogle girls he spurted past when the cars speeded up, and he felt he was spying in secret on the gathering shadows that slowly filled the street with night. The Rambla was like an entire universe that began at the port and ended at the disappointing mediocrity of Plaza Catalunya. Somehow it had retained the wise capriciousness of the rushing stream it had once been. It was like a river that knew where it was heading, like all the people walking up and down it all day long, who seemed unwilling to say goodbye to its plane trees, its multicoloured kiosks, the strange stalls selling parrots and monkeys, the archaeology of buildings which told the story of three hundred years’ history of a city with a history. Carvalho loved the Rambla the way he loved his life: it was irreplaceable.

  As soon as he had gone past the Liceo, he prepared to turn into the narrow streets of the Chinese quarter. The drivers behind him were so impatient he found it impossible to find anywhere to park close to Queta’s salon, so he went out and round the Rambla again before plunging a second time into the array of streets rendered almost impenetrable by their narrowness and night. This time he parked up on the pavement. It was eight in the evening by now and he reckoned it was unlikely that the traffic wardens would still be as vigilant as they were during the daytime. He had a clear view of the front of the hairdresser’s. The lights were on, but the blinds and photos of models in the window prevented him seeing anything inside. He switched on his radio, and almost immediately two curious passers-by were staring at him. Carvalho pushed a Bee Gees cassette into the gaping mouth of the player. They sounded to him like the apotheosis of the inability to be happy.

  He had time to listen to both sides of the cassette and to light a dried-out cigar he found in his glovebox. But just as he was pushing the lighter back into its slot he saw a van pull up behind him. Nobody got out, but somebody sounded the horn three times. Shortly afterwards, the door to the hairdresser’s opened and Fat Nuria came rushing out. Carvalho bent down over the gearstick. She went running past his window to the van. Carvalho straightened up and in his rear-view mirror saw her climb inside. He let the van pull out in front of him, then switched on his ignition. He caught up with its white rear doors, and stayed on its tail. The driver was looking for a way out of the narrow streets on to the Rambla. There was less traffic now, so it was easy for Carvalho to follow him down past the monument to Columbus. Then the van headed for Plaza Palacio, turned at right angles to the other cars at Ciudadela, and continued on across Marina bridge out towards the motorway. Carvalho followed as it took the junction for Badalona.

  It was more difficult to keep it in sight in the labyrinth of tiny streets leading down to the promenade in Badalona. The van parked close to some fairground stalls and a brightly lit merry-go-round from where the music of Love Story was blaring. Fat Nuria got out, bought an ice cream at a cart lit by a single blue bulb, then clambered back into the vehicle. They set off again, and Carvalho soon saw they had reached the end of the promenade and were coming to a zone of big, dark warehouses. The van steered a path between crumbling fishing boats and oil drums, then turned into a cul-de-sac. It crossed a yard full of tubs of flowers and with a leafy vine clinging to a red-lead-painted iron frame, then pulled up inside a warehouse.

  Carvalho parked his car at the corner of the cul-de-sac. He could see a faded sign hanging over the entrance to the yard: ‘Ginés Larios Shipbuilders’. That seemed to refer to a previous use for the warehouse, because underneath another, more recent sign written in smaller letters announced its current function: ‘Frozen Foods Company’. Carvalho could not hear the van engine any more, so he got out of his car, walked quickly up the short street and then slipped into the yard-cum-garden. His eyes were darting round so quickly his feet would hardly have been able to stop in time if he saw anything suspicious. Without quite knowing how, he found himself inside the warehouse with his back pressed against the side of the van. He listened intently for any noise. As his eyes grew used to the gloom, he began to make out vague shapes strewn around the floor. At the far end of the building he saw a lit doorway. He edged his way over to it. Almost immediately beyond it rose an iron staircase; from up above came the sounds of family life and the clatter of plates.

  ‘Why don’t we eat outside under the vine?’

  ‘Your mother might feel cold.’

  By now Carvalho could make out enough to see everything inside the warehouse. He saw another door on the wall opposite the side of the van he had hidden behind. He went over to it, and when he pushed it open was surprised that it gave straight on to the beach and the sea, with the first stars in the night sky reflected on its waters. The warehouse building formed a corner at the edge of the beach. On the sand stood a rotting fishing smack and a fibreglass motorboat with an outboard engine protected by a rubber hood. Carvalho climbed on board both of them, feeling in all the corners. When he was in the fiberglass boat he realised with a shock that the lighted window where he had heard the family talking looked directly on to the beach. He thought he saw someone looking out, and dived to the bottom of the boat. After waiting what seemed like centuries, he slowly raised his head. False alarm: there was nobody there.

  He jumped down on to the sand and went back inside the warehouse. Everything seemed quiet. He felt the bundles on the floor. Everything smelt of sea and fish. He opened the van door and slid in. The smell of fish was almost overpowering. He opened several tin boxes and saw they were full of packs of frozen fish. He felt round them, and when he was done jumped up into the driver’s cabin. He opened a drawer in front of the passenger seat and pulled out a wad of invoices, dirty rags and a pair of sunglasses. The vehicle document showed an address that must be where he was now, and the name corresponded to what was written on the sign out at the front. All of a sudden, Carvalho heard a confusion of noise. He slipped into the back of the van again, and through the window watched as an entire family laden down with plates, pots and pans, chairs and a folding table made its way out to the yard. An elderly couple, two young men, Fat Nuria and an old woman in mourning gradually set out the things in the garden part, turning it into an improvised open-air restaurant.

  ‘What have we got to eat, Mother?’

  ‘Chitterlings.’

  ‘Not chitterlings!’

  ‘Your father likes them; he asks me for them every day. I’m not here to try to please everybody.’

  She had a Mu
rcian accent, swallowing all the ends of her words.

  ‘So now you don’t like chitterlings. You used to love them.’

  The mother was talking. Carvalho tried to remember the taste of chitterlings. From his hiding place he could see a glazed pottery dish heaped full of them. He was so fascinated he forgot he was in hiding, and when he had to move he was surprised that he had been crouching in the van for so long. He jumped out and edged back towards the beach. From here he could climb over a fence, go along another stretch of beach, over another wall and walk towards the lights that he supposed must mean it was a more inhabited area. But from there it might be difficult for him to get back to his car unseen. He preferred to wait for the family to finish dinner and go back inside before he tried to get out.

  He lay flat on the sand alongside the motorboat. From where he was, the launch looked much bigger, and he had a mental picture of it cutting through the waves. All of a sudden something fell overboard. A human body. And as it fell on top of Carvalho, he could see its destroyed face. Carvalho was crushed beneath the weight of this imagined scene. Badalona was very near to both Vilasar and Caldetas. From this remote part of the beach it was easy to put to sea carrying any kind of cargo. Julio Chesma’s dead body could have been taken out from here in the launch whose polished hull was up pressed against his nose.

  The warehouse door swung open. A man came slowly down the sand, a cigarette between his lips. He walked straight between the motorboat and the fishing smack. He went to the water’s edge, where the foam of the quiet night-time waves lapped at the shore. The man stood looking out to sea as though to fill his empty eyes with the tranquil dark. Then he lowered his hands to his midriff, and Carvalho soon saw a stream of urine descending silently, the sound obscured by the rumour of the waves. The man finished with a quick shake of the hand, and put the one-eyed snake back in his trousers. When he turned he was bound to see Carvalho. As he began to move, Carvalho tumbled into the boat. He collapsed on to the bottom, and wriggled round until he could feel the reassuring crocodile-rough texture of his revolver butt. He ran his fingers over the cool metal. The man’s footsteps were drawing closer as he walked back up the beach. He had reached the prow of the boat, then stepped between it and the fishing smack. Carvalho had rolled on to his back so that he could see if the man looked over the side of the boat at all.