by Pablo Tusset
‘Right. I’m an unrepentant drunk and he is a respectable exorcist.’
‘No, it’s something else … For example: you don’t seem very religious.’
‘Well, I am. Quite devout at that.’
‘I don’t believe you. I can’t quite picture you receiving communion.’
‘It’s just that I’m not a Catholic. I am an orthodox ego-deist. Hey, do you think the Exorcist will serve us another drink? All this talking has dried out my mouth.’
‘Shall we take it in the salon?’
I had gotten everything possible out of this interview, and wasn’t terrifically interested in prolonging the evening, but I felt it would be unkind to rush my companion home directly after dinner. Why not stay a while – I could start getting drunk right there and turn up at Luigi’s later. We got up from the table and walked through more velvet curtains into another room, this time with easy chairs, low tables and a real bar with a real bartender, distinguishable from the waiters by his cherry-coloured jacket. There was also a little stage, or dance floor, presided over by a black grand piano. The First seemed to have a need for the presence of a piano at all times.
At the bar we ordered a whisky sour and a Vichoff, and sat down somewhere nearby to drink them. Lady First turned out to be one of those people who has never travelled at all, but who still believes it to be one of life’s most enriching experiences, and so she peppered me with questions about peeling potatos, pumping petrol, and painting staircases to earn a living in various godforsaken corners of the earth. By the time we ordered the second round of drinks she had resumed her Miss Gloria persona, that of the lady who had discovered her unsuspecting, wayward brother-in-law to be both intelligent (not, as she had pointed out, as intelligent as his Magnificent Brother) and chock-full of real-life adventure tales. I tried to convince her that the one useful lesson I had gleaned from wandering around the world was that there wasn’t much point in leaving the ten square kilometres surrounding my bed. She kept at it, though, choosing to interpret that comment as an exaggeration borne from my essentially cosmopolitan character, and paid no attention to me on that account. Anyway. To make matters even worse, at exactly twelve midnight, the woman who appeared to justify the presence of the piano came out onto the floor. And I say ‘worse’ because she was the kind of chick that drives me mad: two breasts like a two giant melons and a full, round bum that came together to create a silhouette reminiscent of a cello. On top of it, as she sat down on the piano bench, her dress rose up above her knees, and to reach the piano pedals she had to open her legs in a delicious allusion to that centre of gravity all women have, the kind my little man likes so very much.
I began to feel pressure in my diaphragm and realised that I would not be able to focus on anything else, and so when that little mental-distraction machine started to warm up with ‘Dream a Little Dream’, I decided it was time to retire.
‘Listen: what do you say if we go somewhere else for the last drink?’ I asked Lady First.
‘Right now?’
‘I feel like stretching my legs a bit.’
‘Well, if you want we can dance …’
Good God: dance.
‘Impossible. I suffer from intercoastal hypochondria.’
‘What?’
‘A strange, fictitious malady that prevents me from dancing in any and all circumstances.’
She didn’t hear me because I was already getting up (I had to reposition my little man before doing so), and she didn’t seem very interested in arguing the point, so she got up as well. I was already headed for the entrance, trying not to look at the source of my discomfort, but Lady First stopped dead in front of the piano and actually exchanged kisses with the pianist, who continued arpeggioing D-majors to stall the tune she was about to play. Evidently they were friends. And when Lady First made a certain gesture, the lady actually turned to take a look at me. She smiled. I smiled. Then she let her eyes fall in such a way so that she could check me out unobserved. Then she turned back to Lady First. For a few seconds I had a flash: the room is empty, it’s just her and me. I walk toward the piano, take a little nibble out of that bare neck of hers, unobstructed by her upswept hairdo. She is aroused down to the tips of her shoes. I kneel down before the piano bench, I expose her breasts, bury my nose in them … then I get to work between her legs, on the delicate skin on the insides of her thighs. She goes mad with desire, throws her head back, and frantically tries to wiggle her way out of her dress, thighs stretched up heavenward …
Lady First returned to my side and gave me a let’s-keep-it-moving yank just as I was about to drop my pants. The bill was two hundred some-odd euros, including the drinks. I left a fifty so that Don Ignacio would see that I, too, could be generous with my Magnificent Brother’s money. And finally we got out of there.
Street. Night. Moon. Etcetera.
‘Where do you feel like going?’
‘I don’t know. I told Veronica that I’d be back by around one and it’s almost half-twelve. Do you want to come upstairs and we can have something at the house?’
Well, that might abbreviate the procedure. I asked her if she wanted me to take the babysitter home, but it turned out that she lived in the same building. We arrived to find her watching a National Geographic documentary on the telly. That younger generation sure is something – as soon as they’re alone they sit around eating bowls of Twixies with milk, mesmerised by entomological pollinisation in Bora-Bora. I left the two of them sorting out the domestic tasks for the following day, and went out to the terrace with the rest of the Havana bottle that I hadn’t finished off on my previous visit there. Lovely view. I was still perturbed by the effect of the piano player, and all I wanted to do was jerk off right then and there, but I had so much alcohol in my body that I was liable to take off at any moment. Barcelona exhaled the first inklings of summer, súbete a Colón, su-be-te a Colón. Once again, I felt the urge to sing out loud. But this time I did it: súbete a Colón, su-be-te a Colón, without a thought to Lady First and Veronica. ‘Human etiology, lesson number one: given the fact of a drunken man filled with desire on the eighth floor of a flat on Numancia, the man will sing.’ Súbete a Colón, su-be-te a Colón.
I remember very little of the rest of that night with exactitude. I know that I hastily said goodnight to Milady, and I also know that I stopped at the Grupeto for a Vichoff refresher before continuing on to Luigi’s. I also know that I drank everything I could get my hands on and tried singing everything from Jorge Negrete to more contemporary tunes. I remember Roberto doing backup ranchera music vocals, and Coyote and Roadrunner waving their silver-tipped hats and Luigi threatening to call the City Guard if we didn’t stop making such a scene. I was delivered to my house in Coyote and Roadrunner’s patrol car singing “de piedra ha de ser la cama/de piedra la cabecera-a” … I was unable to hit the elevator button, so I went up to the first floor on all-fours. I do remember having laughed at myself for that one – Magilla Gorilla crawling up to his animal cage.
What I can’t quite figure out is exactly how I managed to get the key in the lock. But I must have done.
MICROSCOPIC EYELASH SPECKS
I wish I could say the Holy Virgin herself appeared before me that night, but what I saw was not terrifically Marian, at least not in the Biblical sense. Let’s just say that a Feminine Deity did appear before me, but in a 3.0 version with an individual-use diving helmet and pressurised suit. For all intents and purposes, however, she was the Virgin Mary – one can recognise the archetype even if she isn’t wearing a gossamer gown. She poised her begloved hand on my temples and smiled through the helmet visor. Very young: so young and she was already the Virgin Mary, I thought. Not even twenty years old. I perceived a balsamic, fresh aroma. My breath fell into rhythm with the sound of her breathing apparatus – though it wasn’t Darth Vaderesque at all; it was more like an exquisitely perfumed breeze. The bed stopped moving, the room stopped its senseless oscillation, and everything was suddenly comfortab
le and calm. It must have been around dawn. After that, I was able to fall into a deep sleep. It was an intense experience, but I don’t want to be too annoying about it because it isn’t very polite to have privileged relationships with divinity.
At seven p.m. I opened my eyes. Plock: that was what the clock hands told me. My first move was to take a quick survey, evaluate the damage. With time and experience I have come to classify my hangovers in various categories: there’s the hammer-hangover, the heavy-duty hangover, the weird-hangover, and then there’s the non-existent-hangover. I cite them all individually, though they generally present themselves in combination form such as the dry-hammer or the strange-existent-heavy-duty hangover. Well, this one was a new strain, a rare and marvellous variant: clearly, the twelve or fourteen hours of sleep seemed to have diffused all the unpleasant aspects of my condition. I could even entertain the thought of digging up a mop and cleaning up the little puddle of alcohol with bits of txangurro, croutons and minced onions on the floor. My Magnificent New Shoes had received some extremely imperious mouthfuls and the sheets were also somewhat affected, so I decided this was a good moment to change the bed linens – something about their jaundiced appearance suggested the need for drastic measures. I actually did all this before wrapping my lips around the mouth of the tap. I prepared a pot of coffee, smoked a pair of joints and, resigned to my newfound obsession with hygiene, I showered and shaved, and when I was finally finished the kitchen clock read nine in the evening. Hunger, serious hunger. The idea that I was using up my reserves, burning the fat that is part of my innermost being, alarmed me slightly and I went running to the refrigerator in search of something that might stop the weight-loss process. I de-plastified a package of vacuum-packed Vienna sausages and ate half of them as fast as I could. As far as everything else was concerned I was clean and freshly shaven and in possession of an abundant closet of clothes. This time I chose to debut the Hawaiian number and it wasn’t long before I was ready to leave the house.
I arrived at the entrance to my parents’ house in the company of Bagheera. I hesitated for a moment, undecided as to whether I should park right there or head into the car park. FH owns only one car, which he never uses – invariably a navy-blue Jaguar Sovereign that changes as Jaguar updates the models – but he keeps four or five parking spaces in the building for visitors. The way he sees it, more than one car would be ostentatious, but fewer than five parking spaces would be rude. So I decided to go into the car park.
The guard must have recognised my Magnificent Brother’s Lotus because he didn’t utter a peep as I entered. To tell the truth, though, I was none too amused at the ease with which I entered the building: what good was a guard in the hall if anyone at all could get into the place? I consoled myself thinking that an unfamiliar car wouldn’t have had it so easy, and searched for the Jaguar that would indicate the location of the Miralles domain. Next to the Jag was a silver Mercedes, a huge Audi, and a Golf – cars that I assumed belonged to my Illustrious Aunt and Uncle and the other guests. I left Bagheera next to the Golf, went up the private lift to the penthouse and arrived at the main entrance to the family duplex. I never like ringing the main door of my parents’ house because I never know who will answer, but it was too late to rectify the situation. This time the kitchen maid opened the door. She had seen me the last time I had come around, but I guess she hadn’t really noticed me – plus, since then I’d acquired a new look, so I found I myself obliged to introduce myself.
‘Hello, I’m Pablo. Pablo Miralles. Mr and Mrs Miralles’ son.’
She seemed a bit awkward, as if not quite sure how to address me.
‘Would you mind waiting a moment while I announce you?’
So I stood there, admiring a most opportune Romanesque Annunciation scene that clashed horribly against a Ming vase. Absorbed in this contemplation, I assumed that the maid would return with permission to advance toward the domestic nucleus, but as it turned out my mother decided to do this in person. It was quite a sign, for my MH does not appear in the vestibule for anything but the creme de la creme of Barcelona society.
‘Good lord, Pablo José – you look like a gangster!’
My mother always has a way of finding me somewhat vulgar. If it isn’t a truck driver, it’s a gangster or a construction worker or Al Capone’s urologist.
‘I’m sorry, Mom. Happy Birthday.’
Just then it dawned on me that I hadn’t brought her a gift. I was about to apologise but she didn’t even let me get a word in edgewise.
‘Where on earth did you get that?’
She was referring to my Hawaiian-print shirt.
‘Well … they were selling it in one of the shops.’
‘Couldn’t you have worn something more appropriate for the occasion? Carmela has arrived in a stunning evening gown. You are going to look perfectly awful next to her. And that thing there …? Pablo José, will you im-me-diate-ly explain to me what that thing is on your face?’
She was referring to my Errol Flynn moustache.
‘My razor messed up while I was shaving.’
‘Well, you look like you’re about to have a meeting with the Medellín drug cartel. Go, go in there into your father’s dressing room and find something to put on.’
I obliged. What alternative did I have? Apparently, this Carmela chick was wearing a cobalt-blue number, and my Mother’s Highness elected a silk shirt to go with it, along with a strawberry-coloured tie and a blazer in a bizarre wild-fruit-yogurt colour that, fortunately, did not fit me – my Father’s Highness may be shorter than me but he is considerably wider in the gut area, and so she substituted this with a sky-blue suede jacket. I didn’t find it particularly attractive, but at least the colour was slightly easier to describe. I decided not to look at myself in the mirror, and since my mother had gone back out to attend to her guests I went to the kitchen to see what Beba had to say before I turned up in the living room.
‘You look like that actor with that nice voice, but with more hair … and you’re more manly, too. Gorgeous, really, she said.’
Given the vagueness of her comment she could have been referring to anyone from Oliver Hardy to Woody Allen. Anyway, we weren’t the only ones in the kitchen – a couple of bow-tied waiters (presumably the helpers lent by the catering outfit) were hovering about, and Beba always gets suspicious when there are strangers messing about in her kitchen, so she was probably more focused on taking care of her cutlery and glassware than on answering my questions.
The time had come to make my appearance in front of the guests. I took a deep breath, crossed myself and stepped forward into the threshold of the living room, for all the world to see. There were my illustrious parents, Aunt Asunción and Uncle Frederic, Aunt Salomé and Uncle Felipe, a sixtyish couple that looked to be the Blascos, and Carmela had to be lurking about there somewhere, probably hidden behind some Ming vase. I assumed this because at the moment she was nowhere in sight. As far as my aunts and uncles, I can say that my Magnificent Maternal Grandfather – collector of adjectives – had done quite a job of pairing off each of his daughters to a different interest group. Aunt Asunción had married into the pro-Catalonia bourgeoisie; back then it had been easy to see that their stock would go way up once the dictatorship ended. Aunt Salomé had gotten stuck with the armed forces and the fundamental pillars of the regime, and my Mother’s Highness had been married off for cold, hard cash, which always comes in handy when any of the other apparatuses require greasing. It should be noted that my Father’s Highness, though by far the most well-endowed of the family in financial terms, does not come from old money at all. He is, rather, a convert – the son of a carpenter, just like Jesus of Nazareth, though from what I have gathered my paternal grandfather was a bit more of a bruiser than St Joseph. My father, as such, retains a vivid notion of the common people, an understanding of what it means to make your first million, etcetera. The other two consorts, on the other hand, have surnames that go back for generations, and the mos
t common people they have ever laid eyes on are their full-time drivers. Uncle Frederic – I believe I mentioned this earlier – belongs to the inner circle of the conservative Convergència i Unió political party and is up to his eyeballs in what he always calls ‘el govern’ in Catalán. He says it like that even when he speaks in Spanish – a blasphemy he only succumbs to under extreme duress. Uncle Felipe is a military officer who retired with the rank of Major General. He wears eyeglasses with tinted lenses and a moustache very similar to my own, although I sincerely doubt his is a homage to Errol Flynn. As far as my aunts, I should prefer not to even attempt to characterise them at all – it would be pointless, really. All I can say is that the two of them should have switched boyfriends before getting married: some odd calculation error on the part of my Magnificent Grandfather produced two oddly star-crossed couples. And the third party of this exemplary group was the Blasco couple, who seemed to be a pretty well-off pair: I put them down for no less than five hundred thousand euros’ worth of Banco Argentaria stock. In short: the scene was more than enough to populate a Tod Browning movie. And me? A vision of tranquillity.
The first one to attack was Aunt Salomé.
‘Pablo José, darling, come and give your Auntie Salomé a big kiss.’
I began to distribute smooches at the rate of two per lady (aunts and non-aunts alike) and handshakes to the tune of one per beard, except in the case of my Father’s Highness which required two extra kisses. When the round was over I was so wiped out that I almost forgot that there was still the missing bohemian to kiss. I looked around like someone scrutinising a Where’s Wally picture, convinced that I would see at least her head, peeping out from behind some giant antique or something. But no: in addition to bohemian, the girl was apparently a midget or else I was as blind as a bat. My Mother’s Highness resolved my doubts, taking me by the hand and pulling me out to the terrace.
