by Pablo Tusset
‘Listen, Pablo: you and I get along pretty well, don’t we?’
Good God: an aerial attack.
‘What do you mean, exactly, by “get along pretty well”?’
‘Well … we laugh a lot … we have a good time together … I don’t know. For example, I can’t sit in a car drinking whisky at two in the morning with my husband.’
‘That’s because your husband is a normal man.’
‘Normal? Do you think it’s normal that he leaves me at home so that I have to call you to relieve my loneliness?’
‘Well, there you have it: you’re here with me now not because you have a better time with me but because he’s left you alone for a night.’
‘Don’t confuse me now. That’s not what I meant to say. Ooh, listen: the song from Grease.’
True enough. The radio DJs had gone seamlessly from Mike Hammer to Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta’s ‘Summer Nights’. That, however, was not enough to get her off the subject.
‘You know what? I think that if you and I had gotten married we would be a normal couple by now, with a little flat and a couple of kids … I’m sure of it, we would really be happy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fina. That’s the whisky talking. Must I remind you of the scenes you and I have lived through together?’
‘What scenes?’
‘What do you mean “what scenes”? I don’t know if you recall but we shared a flat for fifteen days and we fought the whole bloody time. If we had gotten married you and I would hate each other by now. Deep down inside you have the soul of an old-fashioned housewife, no matter how much you buzz-cut your hair and dress like a goth queen. And I drink like a fish, I like sleeping with hookers, I spend most of the day sleeping and I get acne from the mere thought of working eight hours a day. We wouldn’t have lasted a year together.’
‘I disagree. To start with, if we had gotten married, you would be leading a totally different life by now.’
‘See? The person you think I am has no relation whatsoever to the person that I happen to think I am. You project on me the image of the person you wish I were. That person exists only in your mind.’
‘There you go again, saying strange things and making everything so complicated. Why do you always have to go around saying strange things and complicating everything?’
‘Complicating everything? What, because I don’t want to assume responsibilities for third parties? That is what I call simplifying things.’
‘It may seem that way to you, but running away from responsibilities is merely a sophisticated way of complicating things.’
‘Oh, really? Well, now I think you’re the one saying strange things.’
‘It’s only because of you, you get me all mixed up. If you didn’t make such a mountain out of the simplest little mole hills …’
‘Look who’s talking. Anyway, you didn’t marry me. You married José María, and nothing is going to change that. And if you have issues with him, it’s not because he isn’t like me. He’s the kind of man you need: serious, focused, hard-working. The problem is that José María is so serious and so hard-working that he doesn’t have any time to kill with you, but you can’t fix that by shacking up with the first mental case that makes you laugh. And anyway, I haven’t got the time, either. Not for you or anyone else.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call you “the first mental case that made me laugh.” Anyway, what do you mean you don’t have time? We spend a ton of time together.’
‘But those are bonus hours.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that a few hours here and there are all fine and good, but I couldn’t face seeing you tomorrow morning when I wake up with a pounding hangover and all I want to do is smoke a joint in silence. To begin with, you wouldn’t even let me puke on my bedroom floor tonight. And then you’d make me put all my dirty clothes in the hamper, and then you’d nag me for wasting away my brain-cells and all my family connections, and then you’d make me shave off my Errol Flynn moustache and remember your birthdays and worry about your orgasms. That is what living together is all about. Maybe you love the idea, but I don’t: I happen to believe that people should suck it up and deal with their own birthdays and orgasms without driving their fellow man mad.’
‘That’s because you don’t love anyone, not for real.’
‘Maybe. But it took me long enough to learn to love myself. I don’t know if I can go through all that business again on someone else’s behalf.’
‘Well, that’s your problem right there.’
‘Listen, Fina: if you want to play psychoanalyst I better warn you I know the game. And moreover, if you absolutely must play your little girlfriend-disciplinarian role then you ought to give me a hand job first, and good – or at least let me touch your tits. It’s only fair. If you’re going to force me to endure the disadvantages of cohabitation, I ought to be able enjoy at least some of the advantages.’
‘You are a filthy pig.’
Big mistake. That is, to have allowed myself to engage in a serious discussion with her. There I was, concerned about the welfare of my Magnificent Brother, the health of my father and the mental stability of my mother, sitting in a ridiculous car straight out of an action movie so that I could stake out the entrance to a house that looked straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. And there was Fina, bathing herself in whisky and trying to convince me that I was an immature egomaniac just because I didn’t seem altogether enthused by the hypothetical idea of marrying her.
I rearranged my facial mask. Then I leaned in closer to her and placed my hand on her shoulder.
‘Come on, Fina, come on. Won’t you give me a hand job, just a little one?’
‘You leave me alone. I’m angry.’
I slid my hand between her thighs.
‘Well, fine, then I’ll do it myself, but just lemme touch your cunt a teeny bit, to get in the mood, you know? You wearing panties?’
‘Stop that, Pablo, stop that right now! I’ll start to scream …’, she threatened.
She slapped me again and tried to act serious, but I could tell she was on the verge of surrendering. I began whispering like some Argentinian latin lover.
‘Picture it, picture it … you’re already doing it, yeah, chup-chup, sucking me off. Can’t you see that lovely little cunt of yours has a heart of its own, beating away for me …’
‘Pab-lo!’
‘Come here, come here, skinnybone, let me take your blood pressure, let me stick my finger in and I’ll tell you what the reading is.’
She couldn’t take much more. She leaned forward, pressing hard with her thigh muscles so as to stave off my manual advances, but then collapsed in a wave of those compulsive yelps that she emits as a form of laughter. Triumphant, I took the glass out of her hand and poured her another healthy serving of whisky. I also replenished my vodka and then reassumed the pilot’s position. This seduction-and-laughing fit seemed to be an extended version: all I had to do was give her a seductive tango-singer leer, and she would surrender to another spasmodic yelping fit.
‘You look like one of the shrimps on the Pescanova can!’
Now Stevie Wonder was putting sunshine in our lives from deep within the radio, and so I exchanged my canned-shrimp face for that of a blind dude with dreadlocks, exalting in the sounds emanating from his keyboard. Fina was already in permanent laughter mode – anything I said or did was apt to send her howling at this point. Better. Then came U2, ‘With or Without You’, which gave me the chance to assume the persona of a brooding heartthrob who makes profound statements, and that was followed by the Lambada – proving that the DJ was clearly as drunk as Fina. I pumped up the volume and opened the door so that I could at least move one leg comfortably. Fina followed suit and started in on me. The curve on Molins, luckily, had not been enough to dislodge the Beast’s suspension, but the Lotus engineers had not built their machines to fight the two elements I was dealing with now, however, and
the Lambada duet threatened to destabilise the emergency brake. Fina ended up completely outside the little cubicle-sized space, and began jiggling her legs around in full public view, as if trying to shake off her pelvic bones in a most colourful display of centrifugal motion, fuelled by her frenetic, furious crescendo of pleasure. I think more liquor ended up on the leather upholstery than in our respective bodies, and by the time our dance number was over, we were desperately thirsty and had to immediately replenish ourselves straight from the two bottles. ‘Bad Moon Rising’, by Creedence, served to slow the rhythm down a bit, and ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ completed the deceleration process. According to my calculations, Fina must have ingested the equivalent of six or seven normal whiskies: slumber would only be a few minutes away now. I can put away a bottle of vodka in two or three hours without losing my marbles, and so I would be able to remain alert until the early-morning hours. I put on the air conditioner and turned off the radio. Fina protested, so I decided to try my luck with the New World Symphony CD I found in The First’s mobile music collection. The long intro to the main piece, along with the air conditioner’s comforting artificial breeze encouraged Fina’s slumber. I told her to take off her shoes so that she would be more comfortable, and she obeyed. I took mine off, too.
As soon as my newly minted detective’s assistant fell asleep, I repositioned myself with my glass of vodka, which I drank with utmost caution so as not to make the ice cubes clink against each other. I lowered the music some more and sat there, looking outside. It was rather odd: now that it was night-time the street didn’t seem quite so gloomy, maybe because that stillness, coupled with that slightly desolate atmosphere, is normal at night, and doesn’t seem out of place at all. Even so, the sight of that ridiculous island in the middle of the city did remind me of the mess I had gotten myself involved in. It was Friday (or Saturday, if you went by the calendar), and it had only been two or three days since The First had called me to offer me that mini-job, and yet it somehow felt like weeks ago. Too many developments in too few days – I’m used to a slightly slower pace of life. I began to mentally reconstruct those past three days, to refresh my memory, now dulled by the alcohol, the low-quality sleep and the intensity of the recent turn of events. And I guess I did it also to occupy myself for the next couple of hours before sunrise. I tried hard to remember everything, allowing for no more than half-hour lapses in between events. What I came up with was a dense, minute-by-minute narrative, exactly as I have recounted it up until now.
An hour later, I still hadn’t made it to Thursday: I was immersed in the memory of my walk through the Boquería market and the sight of that beautiful Queen of the Seas, when I suddenly realised that the door to the house at number fifteen had opened. Opened!
I rubbed my eyes and hunched up closer to the dashboard to get a better look. A man emerged, leaving the door ajar behind him. He was tiny, bald, hunchbacked, and I could even make out his aquiline nose and gnarled hands. He wore something very baggy, maybe brownish overalls, that went down about mid-calf. He went straight to the point: first he separated the mat of ivy that partially hid the lamppost; the absence of the red rag seemed to disturb him. He unceremoniously tugged at the ivy, looked left and right, his hands on his hips, and went back into the garden out front without closing the door behind him. This, I thought, might be just the moment to start the car, coast past the house and check out the inside of the garden, but that would entail driving down to the stop light and circling the block, which might mean I would miss the man’s next movements. I turned off the music and sat there, waiting. Not thirty seconds later the man reappeared with a red rag in his hand. He stood up on tiptoe in order to tie it to the lamppost, and then stepped back a few paces as if to check that it was in position. After glancing left and right once more, and then toward the balconies across the street, he finally went back into the garden and closed the door behind him.
I turned Fina’s wrist toward me so I could see the time on her watch. Five on the dot. ‘Matins,’ I thought, though I don’t quite know why. Maybe because that little baldy looked sort of like a monk. He reminded me of a math teacher I had at the Marist Brothers’ school: Brother Bermejo. Kind of out of it, but not an altogether bad guy. Fina, uncomfortable, opened her eyes and stretched her arms down about her knees.
‘We’re going, fleur de lis.’
‘Huh.’
‘We’re going to bed. We’re done working for the day.’
‘Mmmm. Did you find anything out?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got a lousy assistant.’
I bid my Sleeping Beauty farewell at the door to her building, and waited for her to disappear through the glass doors and up the lift. She looked as if she had just returned from an initiation session in the Eleusian mysteries and I thought about how it sure would be better if good old José María were still sleeping. After leaving her, I couldn’t bear the thought of having to drop the Beast off at the parking garage, and so I tried my luck parking in the street, as close as possible to my building. The First had to have some kind of deluxe all-risk insurance policy for the car, down to bird shit. I found a space about twenty metres from my doorway, recently vacated by one of those eccentric types that gets up at five in the morning. I gathered up the bottles and glasses and went upstairs. I wasn’t tired; I hadn’t gotten sufficiently drunk for that, and I felt as though I had left a job half-finished. I undressed down to my socks and boxers, lit a joint, and finished off the remains of the vodka bottle. Then I resumed my reconstruction of the chain of events that had ensued from Thursday night until the present time.
Only when I had finished the total recap and the sun had begun to glint off the empty vodka bottle did I finally feel the urge to embark on the thrilling adventure of falling asleep.
DENTOMAXILLARY DYSFUNCTION
Fina insists upon showing me something absolutely fascinating, something that involves some friend of hers. She won’t say anything more than that, she just takes my hand and drags me through a series of anonymous streets, although I can tell we’re in Barcelona – the smell and the traffic noise are unmistakable. We arrive at the main gate of a public garden enclosed by a fence. We go in, and walk down a wide footpath until reaching an elegant Victorian mansion that rises up in the middle of the park. We knock at the door, which is then opened by an old servant woman with a little cap on her head. She seems to know Fina, and she ushers us in. We enter without saying a word, with Fina always in front of me, walking as if she knows exactly where she’s going and wants to arrive as soon as possible. Next we pass through an elegant parlour with a log fire burning in the fireplace. We see an old woman sitting in an easy chair, doing her knitting, impervious to our interruption. I also notice the sofas, the rugs, the patterned fabrics, porcelain knick-knacks, but I can’t explore at great length because Fina keeps on opening new doors, walking through them like a madwoman, and I’m having trouble keeping up with her in the labyrinth. From the parlour we go into a corridor, from there to an entranceway and then to another parlour, where another old woman sits there, doing her knitting in front of a log fire. The parlours are always different, as are the chimneys and the old women with their knitting, but the situation and the characters are always the same as we move from room to room. Puzzled about this, I ask Fina to explain.
‘Shhh,’ she says in a low voice. ‘They’re the guardians.’ I then become aware of the fact that we have been walking further and further inside the mansion for quite some time now, and not once have we seen a single window, which makes me realise that we must be in deep inside what must be an uncommonly massive building.
‘Heart of Darkness,’ I say to myself. ‘We’re looking for Mr Kurtz.’ That’s it. We then arrive at an immense room with vaulted ceiling, a special chamber somewhere within this monumental edifice. The crackling of the fire, an open book face down on a table and a half-empty glass of wine betray the presence of someone who, for the moment, we cannot see. Fina finally seems to have found the thing
she was so desperate to show me: an electric bass guitar, made of natural wood, though damaged by a tremendous wallop that has unhinged the D peg. Only three strings remain, but it is nonetheless connected to an amp and the slight brush against it resounds deeply through the entire room – boo-oo-ong. Fina hands it to me – cautiously, tenderly, as if handling a newborn baby. I slip the guitar strap over my head and try to play a simple melody, but it is impossible: the neck has been warped and the strings are all out of tune. The noise has nevertheless caught the attention of Mr Kurtz, who suddenly appears in the doorway, drying his hands with a towel. He is a young man, wearing camouflage pants, military boots, and a tank top that exposes his muscular arms. As he looks over at the bass, a melancholy smile comes over his face, a sad smile that seems to suggest he is caught in the memory of something lovely that he has lost forever. Introductions are unnecessary, he knows us and we know him. He looks at me.
‘How is Mom?’ he asks.
‘All right. She thinks you’re in Bilbao.’ Fina then gets soft and sentimental, and kisses the both of us, sandwiching her head between our two heads in a hug.
‘They’re on their way,’ Mr Kurtz says. I look about me: the silence of the defunct bass guitar has awakened the guardians from their knitful dreams. Imperceptibly, from behind the several doors that open onto this room, the guardians enter the room. They still look like harmless old ladies, but their determination transforms them into something absolutely terrifying. Inexorably they continue moving forward, invading each and every inch of the parlour until they crush our bones, and when they are finished, they self-destruct as they fulfil the implacable instinct for destruction that governs their souls.
