by Pablo Tusset
‘There’s more. The best thing about our marriage is that your brother’s freedom relieves me from the obligation of sleeping with him, something that any other husband would have insisted upon. Sexually speaking, men have never interested me very much … Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Listen, honey, honestly, this is a little out of the blue …’
I took another swig of the rum. Shit, with Lady First.
‘I’m only giving you the background on this because I don’t want you to misinterpret things: your brother and I love each other, but more importantly we … we understand each other. He is the only important person in my life who doesn’t pressure me. If I didn’t love him I wouldn’t bother to explain all of this to you now. And if you think I’m telling you this because I need some kind of confessional catharsis, think again. I would be far better off hiring a bleeding-heart lady psychologist. That way, at least, I would avoid getting rum stains on the sofa upholstery.’
‘But she’d charge you more than it would cost to clean the sofa.’
I tried to hold my ground, but I did acknowledge the admonition and so I placed the bottle on the side table, stood up and went over to the little bar cart for a glass. Then I assumed a voice that made like I took all this very seriously.
‘All right, sis, so now I’ve got the back story: you’re not into shagging men and my brother looks for action with secretaries. What else?’
‘Bring the whisky over, if you don’t mind.’
Role reversal. Now I was the one who offered the bottle to her. She seemed to be lingering in a bout of rhetorical recollection.
‘Maria Eulalia Robles. Lali.’
‘Huh?’
‘Executive secretary. Degree in Business and Economics, a Master in Business Administration, English, French, advanced computer skills … We went to school together.’
‘And now your husband takes advantage of her talents. What a small world.’
‘Not so small. I was the one who introduced her to your brother, and I was the one who recommended that he hire her as his personal secretary when your father retired. She’s Sebastian’s type. She looks a little like me … And I knew that Sebastian was Lali’s type, too … So I put them in touch to facilitate things a bit for your brother. When your lover also happens to be your secretary, you can walk down the street together with no problem, you can even eat in a restaurant where they know you, especially if they’ve seen you with your lover and your wife at the same time. Do I make myself clear?’
‘As a bell. But this is a lot of information all at once. Kind of an overload, in fact. Excuse the question, but now that the issue’s on the table, what is there between you and Lali, exactly?’
‘Nothing worthy of a pornographic movie, so don’t get excited. In any event, that’s not important right now. I have shared a few private details with you because I want you to understand that I am perfectly aware of Sebastian’s double life, and that I even play a role in it to a certain extent. Very often he doesn’t return home until five or six in the morning. Normally he tells me in advance, and if not he’ll call me as he’s leaving the office. As far as the nanny is concerned, he’s working. The neighbours never see him come in, but if they did, they would see him with his briefcase. The important thing, however, is that everyone sees him leave here in the morning.’
‘Very crafty.’
‘He didn’t call last night. And this morning he wasn’t in his bed. His alarm didn’t go off – oddly, that was what woke me up. I phoned Lali’s house right away but all I got was her answering machine. I haven’t heard anything from either of them since noon yesterday.’
I assumed that the information update was complete, because after that last bit she downed the rest of her whisky in one go, placed the glass on the table and just sat there staring at me.
‘I spoke with him yesterday afternoon,’ I offered.
‘Where?’
‘On the phone.’
‘Did he say where he was calling from?’
‘No, but I got the impression that he was in his office.’
‘Oh, really? Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘If he had called from a phone booth or from his mobile I would have noticed it. But maybe that’s just because I assumed he would be working at that hour.’
‘You didn’t hear voices in the background, or the sound of a photocopier or anything?’
‘I don’t think so. But his office is pretty soundproof, and over the phone I don’t think you can usually hear any extraneous noise. Can you remember ever having heard background noise when he’s called you from there?’
‘No. But I tend to talk to him after normal office hours.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is, in the middle of the afternoon he was fine. He called to give me some news from the office and to tell me that my father had broken his leg.’
As I said this, I remembered perfectly well that The First’s attitude over the phone had not been normal, not in the least bit, but for the moment I decided to refrain from mentioning that part. Right then I wanted to find out exactly what Lady First wanted from me. Because evidently, just as she herself had indicated, she wasn’t telling me all this just to unload her emotions on me.
‘Have you tried to find out what might have gone down?’ I asked, to get some information out of her. She shrugged her shoulders, tired.
‘I called the hospitals, the City Guard information line … Nothing. I didn’t expect much, though. If he had had an accident I would have known, someone would have gotten in touch with me. And I’ve been ringing Lali’s house all day but all I keep getting is her answering machine. I don’t know what else to do. I’m worried. And not just because he’s been gone for over twenty-four hours, but because yesterday, around noon, he called me to ask for something rather strange.’
‘What?’
Her eyebrows went up at this one, as if she were trying to be succinct but precise.
‘He told me to go into the room that he uses as his office here, and to look for a certain file in an envelope and to send it by certified mail to our address.’
‘The address of this building?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was in those papers?’
‘I don’t know, exactly, I only opened the file for a second, and leafed through three or four loose sheets of papers. They looked like typed reports on some kind of companies. I read one or two paragraphs, it was all very confusing, names in initials, legal terminology, that sort of thing. And so I just put them in an envelope, wrote out the address and brought it to the post office before it closed.’
‘And you didn’t find it odd that he would ask such a strange thing of you?’
‘Well, of course I did, that’s why I’m telling you about it now. But I don’t understand anything about his business, he just told me it was extremely important to receive a large envelope postmarked by I don’t know what date, and so I believed him. I figured it was some scheme of his, you know how he is. He did seem nervous, though. And after everything that’s happened, I’m ready to suspect just about anything. I’ve been turning this whole thing upside down all day now.’
‘Why don’t you report the disappearance to the police?’
‘It’s not worth it. Not yet, at least. It’s only been twenty-four hours. And the first thing they’ll think of when they start to investigate is that he ran off with his secretary and that the two of them will reappear in a few days. And if not, they still wouldn’t think it terribly strange.’
‘But if you tell them everything you just told me …’ I said, though immediately realised that that wouldn’t be such a good idea.
‘Right. So what are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, but for the moment I don’t want your parents finding out about this. It would bring to light a number of things that neither your brother nor I are interested in them knowing about. It’s information that won’t do them a bi
t of good. And in any event, there’s nothing they can do to help. But I need your help to keep them at bay. If I hadn’t told you the whole story, I would have been taking a serious risk. That you would inadvertently blow the lid off all this. And now that I necessarily have to count on you, it turns out that you are the only person who knows enough to help me look for him. Anyway, you couldn’t be in a more ideal position to help me.’
‘Me?’ I have travelled five continents, but if there’s one place I’ve never been it’s an ‘ideal position.’
‘Well, you are, after all, a fifty per cent partner in your brother’s business … the business belongs to both of you. You could, very discreetly, try to get some information out of the staff. They know you well enough, and I understand you’ve done some research for them, isn’t that right? In your brother’s absence, you’re the owner and free to go there and poke through the office without anyone getting in your way.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that. No, maybe they wouldn’t try to stop me from doing anything, but they would probably find it pretty strange if I were to suddenly start hunting through desk drawers. I mean, we’re talking about years and years of indifference here. In general they send me the balance sheets, I pretend to understand them and they give me whatever money they want to give me. And as for those little information-gathering projects, I always deal directly with my brother.’
‘You could go at night …’
The mere thought of entering Miralles & Miralles at night sent a wave of nausea through my body. That would be like breaking into a church through a side window to ransack the tabernacle, with the Father and Son bearing witness to the desecration of their House.
‘At night-time it will be slightly difficult to get information out of the staff,’ I said.
I could tell she was starting to get exasperated by my escape attempts, so she tried again with a shortcut.
‘All right then. Now you’re going to tell me that you think I’m a paranoid who fantasises about kidnappings every time her husband sows his wild oats, aren’t you? Or else you’re just going to tell me that you could not give a damn about everything I’ve just told you and that you’re not going to do a thing about it. Is that it?’
‘Lady, if you gave me a few more options I could tell you something else.’
‘Such as …?’
‘That I’ll do what I can. Don’t ask me what. But I’ll do something.’
Mistake. Deep down I’m a sentimental softie. I simply can’t help it, though it is definitely a mistake to let people in on that. It must have been the half-bottle of rum that got my tongue wagging. I don’t usually drink hard booze before sundown.
Just then the chubster babysitter re-entered the living room, interrupting us. In her arms was the boy creature, and the Adorable Girl Child was tagging behind on foot.
‘Excuse me … Merche wants to know if she can watch the telly for a bit.’
Lady First turned to the Girl Child.
‘Have you finished your homework?’
‘Yes.’
Apparently, the boy creature was still in his domestication phase. I leaned back in the chair and extracted the glass from my left hand, just in case. If the right don’t get you / Then the left one will. So they say.
‘It’s half past eight, there’s no children’s television on at this hour,’ declared Lady First, consulting her watch.
‘We videotaped the cartoons,’ the Girl Child replied, with surprising acuity.
‘Which cartoons? The Japanese ones?’
‘No. Walt Disney.’
I was relieved. Apparently, any initiation in the ways of martial arts was expressly off-limits, and this relaxed me somewhat.
‘All right then, you can watch them until dinnertime. But first say a proper hello to your Uncle Pablo.’
Good Lord.
She advanced toward me like a mythical beast. I was about to stiffen up to protect myself when suddenly she stopped and said ‘Hello, Uncle Pablo.’ Then she brought her disproportionate head close to mine, and with her brows obscenely knitted together, actually tried to plant a smacker right on my lips. Everyone was watching, including the small toothless creature, and so I had no choice but to hold my breath and subject myself to the abuse without flinching. Fortunately, Veronica and the monsters disappeared almost immediately to back back to wherever they had come from, but all I could think about was getting out of there as fast as I could, even if that meant leaving the rum bottle unfinished.
Lady First staved off my retreat by grabbing hold of my arm.
‘Pablo. I’m counting on you. Call me, whenever, if anything at all occurs to you, no matter how silly it might seem.’
I, meanwhile, had something else on my mind.
‘Hey, how did you find out about my father’s accident? You didn’t look surprised when I mentioned that, either.’
‘Sebastian told me when he called about the envelope. He told me that a car had jumped the curb and hit him, that it wasn’t serious but that they had to put his leg in a plaster cast. He left for the hospital after that. Now that I think of it, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to ask your father if he knows where Sebastian went after dropping him off at home.’
‘Right. Hmm. Listen, uh, sis. I forgot your name …’
She took it as a joke.
‘Gloria.’
‘Pleasure to meet you, Gloria. Do you always drink three whiskies before dinner?’
‘In general I don’t drink anything before putting the children down. And you? Do you always drink rum straight from the bottle?’
‘Only when extraterrestrials abduct my brother and my sister-in-law asks me to investigate the case.’
It wasn’t even nine and I was already drunk. Bad scene. As I left the flat I tried to take a walk to assimilate the information I had just been given, but I couldn’t think in any coherent fashion. And so I went straight home and fell asleep, with my head feeling something like a pyrotechnics warehouse.
QUIVERING SHELLFISH
Kiko Ledgard, the old host of Three Two One, is wearing an elegant white smoking jacket. The set is a Chicago street scene from the 1930s: Buick parked along the sidewalk, Jazz Club alley, barber shop, liquor store, Salvation Army mission. Four character actors stand around looking bored, each one with his or her accessory of choice: the hooker swings her bag, the policeman swings his club, a grizzled drunk swings his bottle, and the detective, his felt hat. I look over at Lady First, inquisitively. She’s leaning toward the drunk, while I favour the detective. We argue. Kiko Ledgard tries to confuse us even further: if we go with the detective we have to play a game; we are told we can opt for the Buick instead if we want – it’s a guaranteed winner and definitely not the booby prize. But Lady First and I decide to take our chances and we accept the detective’s game. Applause. At the back of the set a door is flung open, and out come four secretaries dressed up as Betty Boop, hugging a giant amusement-park slide with a huge fake croissant at the top. Kiko reads the little note that comes with the contraption: ‘To be a good detective, you have to follow the clues to the very end.’ He stops. Once again, he tempts us with the Buick. The public shouts out all sorts of contradictory answers; we ask Kiko to keep on reading. Objective of the game: to reach the gigantic croissant by clambering up the slide. The ascent is divided into various stages, identified by vertical markers with red flags attached to each one. They will give us 100,000 croissants for each little flag we knock down, upwards to a total of 1,000,000 croissants if we reach the top. Piece of cake: I remove my jacket, roll up my sleeves and attack the contraption. Lady First insists that we should have gone with the drunk. She’s drunk now, too. She kisses me on the lips and stands there looking at me with her vapid eyes. The audience roars, but they are not encouraging roars; these people are out for blood. Kiko Ledgard has disappeared and in his place now stands his female counterpart Mayra Gómez Kemp, in fishnet stockings, boots that belong on the feet of an evil girls’ school warden, and very s
hort, dyed-orange hair. She cracks her whip: ‘All right, you motherfucking drunk, move your arse!’ Until this moment, I had not recognised myself in this dream, but now I understand that the drunk on the set is me, and that all this has been nothing but a cruel farce. I try to climb, but I weigh too much. Plus, I’m drunk, and the slide is coated in a thick coat of butter that oozes through my fingers and prevents me from securing a solid position from which to advance. I look up, hoping that the sight of the prize will infuse me with the strength I need to forge ahead, but there is no longer a giant croissant at the top of the slide. All I can see in the semi-darkness is my Adorable Niece, throwing tiny ninja stars that she kisses lovingly before hurling them down.
I woke up with a start. This time, I was grateful for the vista of my obstacle-course bedroom. God bless every last pair of dirty underpants, I thought. According to the alarm clock it was one in the morning. Hangover. The best cure for a hangover is to immediately start boozing again. But that would be impossible unless I ate something first: blackout risk. So I took a quick shower and swallowed four egg yolks which I washed down with a couple of glasses of milk, a good working method for filling the gut with something nutritious when in a rush. And I was in a rush because the bars would close if I didn’t step on it.
I left my flat and walked down to Luigi’s bar, stopping first at the light to let a motorcycle by. Then I began to cross the street, but before I got halfway through the zebra crossing when I heard a thunderous boom, which made me cover my head instinctively. Just in case. Various cling-clangs followed.
I looked up the street: the motorcycle that had just whizzed by me was now affixed to the side of a massive garbage truck that lumbered down the street with its blinkers on. The people sitting at the outdoor tables in front of the bar rushed over to the motorcycle and, after a moment of indecision, I did the same. But by the time I’d walked the fifty-or-so metres to the scene of the accident a small group had already formed: four garbage collectors, a cab driver that was double-parked nearby, the owner of the outdoor bar, plus a few other rubberneckers. Ten or twelve people at this point. The motorcycle rider was sprawled on the street, minus his helmet, which now rolled around on the asphalt like a Chubbies doll. The remains of the BMW – big and red, like an insect in heat – looked like a neoistic artistic experiment destined to end up in the Bilbao Guggenheim alongside some kind of provocative title like ‘The Twilight of the Gods’ or ‘The Woman who Gave Birth to Newton.’ He coulda been killed. Shit. Given that there was already a fairly large group of charitable souls waiting to tend the wounded, I was all ready to turn around when a gap suddenly opened up in the crowd and allowed me to catch a glimpse of the accident victim’s face: Gerardo Berrocal, sixth form, Marist Brothers. Berri, now with grey hair and no more glasses. But it was Berri, no doubt about it.
