The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant

by Pablo Tusset

  ‘Pablo José, I would like you to meet Carmela.’

  Fear.

  I didn’t like the first thing I saw as I stepped into the terrace garden. About ten metres from where we were, clinging to the one stretch of railing unconsumed by the abundant foliage, a tremendous cobalt blue bum suddenly appeared before me, round as a plum, a gluteus maximus that abruptly bloomed out beneath her waistline and with her little diamond mine very well-insinuated indeed under those evening clothes. I cursed my luck and wished with every bit of strength that she would have a case of rampant acne or – I don’t know – chronic halitosis, or something extremely unpleasant.

  When she turned around, I discovered to my dismay that she was also quite delectable from the front. But there was something even worse.

  ‘Pablo, I’d like to introduce you to Carmela. Carmela, Pablo.’

  ‘I think we’ve met before,’ said the Bohemian Girl.

  ‘Hmm. I’m not sure I remember,’ I replied, trying to sound sincere.

  ‘Oh, you already know each other?’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure of it,’ said the Bohemian Girl.

  ‘Well, what a timely coincidence, wouldn’t you say? I’ll just leave you alone then, darlings,’ said my mother, who rapidly disappeared from the scene after inventing an excuse.

  There was only one way out of this: to be as grotesque as possible.

  ‘Am I that bad a piano player? You didn’t even stay for the first song.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right, right … The Vellocino de Oro. Sorry, I didn’t remember you. Listen, do you mind if we go inside? It’s a little cold out here.’

  I said it in a slightly impatient but polite tone of voice, as if I was trying not to sound obnoxious, which of course is the best way to sound obnoxious. The chick reacted on the double:

  ‘What’s the rush? I’m sure your mother can find something to wrap you up in.’

  With that, she turned her back on me to gaze down at the Diagonal, leaving me to face her sublime bum once again. I don’t understand why these things always happen to me. I was tempted to rebutt the comment, but at the last moment I decided to behave sensibly and turned to go back inside to the living room. The last thing I needed was to start worrying about what this fraudulent bohemian thought of me, no matter how succulent she was. But my diaphragm had already wrenched itself into a little ball. Shit, shit, shit. It wasn’t even going to be easy to get drunk tonight.

  Inside, the conversation was split into two camps: the women were discussing cleaning supplies and maids, and the men, politics and business – in my family, you see, stereotypical upper-class social mores are strictly and faithfully observed. So I tried to distract myself from the knot in my stomach by floating about the room as if it were a museum exhibit. The truth is, my parents’ living room is actually the perfect place for that sort of activity, I’m surprised they don’t get school groups in there. I paused in the Contemporary Art section, next to the piano, and discovered a new acquisition – a Miquel Barceló, placed between the Juan Gris and the Pons that had always hung there. It was a bullring illuminated by the late-afternoon sun, painted from an aerial perspective, giving the spectator the feeling of being suspended in a helicopter high above the bullring. The effect was a bit strange, I don’t know why, maybe because the idea of a bull together with a helicopter isn’t a particularly harmonious image. It was a pretty repugnant painting, almost scatological. The spectators were represented by little blobs of brownish-greyish oil, like a mushroom colony languishing under the sun. It was a bullring, but it could have just as easily been a depiction of the scene inside a toilet bowl of a bar on the Parallel.

  My plastic ecstasy was interrupted, however, by the sound of my father’s crutches.

  ‘I think I recognise that jacket,’ he said.

  ‘It’s yours. The shirt and tie, too. Mom asked me to put them on because she didn’t like what I was wearing.’

  ‘Listen, do me a favour. Keep the jacket, at least. She makes me put it on for Sunday Mass, I end up leaving the house looking like the Virgin Mary. Take the tie, too, but don’t let your mother know. You can stick it in the pocket, nobody will notice.’

  So. The jacket was still a Maurice Lacroix, of the finest suede chamois, and with a t-shirt underneath it would have a completely different look. FH, however, quickly lost interest in my borrowed wardrobe, and was now facing the Barceló, his eyebrows furrowed.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘What …?’

  ‘The painting.’

  My Father’s Highness is even more reactionary than I am when it comes to artistic manifestations, especially if they are contemporary ones, and so I knew that our conversation was in for a turn; it was just a question of leading him in the proper direction.

  ‘Eighty thousand. You know him, this Barceló?’

  ‘He’s in the top ten, Dad.’

  ‘Well, tell me, do you see a bullring anywhere in there?’

  I made a face that said yes, kind of.

  ‘Why are the spectators green, then?’

  ‘Dad. Expensive paintings haven’t been getting the colour right for over a century now. And anyway, if you think this one is weird, the Pons on the right is even worse.’

  ‘My boy, I really don’t know … At least the Pons is happier … it’s got nice colours, at least. This one looks like some kind of lumpy cow. And the worst of it is that Barceló isn’t going to die for ages … don’t get me wrong: I don’t wish harm on anyone, but as a rule I don’t ever buy paintings by artists who are younger than me. Your brother picked this one out for your mother’s birthday. He promised me that in ten years’ time it would double in value. Speaking of which: do you know where your brother is these days?’

  ‘Didn’t Mom tell you?’

  ‘I asked her, but she told me some cockamamie story. She’s a terrible liar, gets worse and worse all the time.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘That he had to go to Bilbao on business.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t sound so weird to me.’

  ‘Oh, really? And why is it, then, that you’re driving his car?’

  ‘How do you know I’m driving his car?’

  ‘The guard at the car park downstairs told me that he saw Sebastian’s car come in, but without Sebastian.’

  ‘And how did you know it was me?’

  ‘Because a big, fat man who drives Sebastian’s car, screeches the tires, parks in one of my spots and goes straight to the private lift to the penthouse could only be you.’

  ‘I didn’t screech the tires.’

  ‘You have done nothing but that ever since you got your driver’s licence. What happens is, you don’t even hear it anymore … And I am also aware that for the past several days you have been driving around in your brother’s car and using his cash card. And that the day before yesterday you hired a private detective: Enric Robellades, ex-policeman and formerly the head inspector at the station at Laietana, number 83.’

  I suppose I had some kind of dumbfounded look on my face.

  ‘Don’t underestimate your father, Pablo. Don’t forget, when I came to this city forty-five years ago, I had nothing but a bag over my shoulder, a change of clothes and five hundred pesetas in my pocket. And can you guess the sum total of the recent estate appraisal I requested, to update my last will and testament? Come on: take a guess.’

  I wasn’t in the mood for guessing.

  ‘I don’t know, Dad … five million? Ten million?’

  He held both crutches in one hand, grabbed my neck with his free hand and pushed my head towards his with a satisfied smile.

  ‘The most conservative estimate put it somewhere close to twenty-five million. In more favourable circumstances that number could very well double – that’s ten times what it was when I retired. Do you know what twenty-five million euros are?’

  ‘A rather good measure of what you’re worth.’

  ‘Exactly: the measure of what I’m worth. And the
measure of what you and Sebastian are worth, too. Either one of you is worth that amount. Did you ever think about that? Or did you think that you could just cease being who you are by living like a pig?’

  ‘Dad, please do me a favour, stop beating around the bush already. Just tell me what the hell is going on.’

  His smarty-pants expression changed into an impotent grimace.

  ‘I don’t know what is going on. I know that Sebastian disappeared with his secretary on Wednesday afternoon and I also know that you are looking for him. I know every single move you’ve made since you left here on Thursday afternoon. What I don’t know is what’s become of Sebastian.’

  ‘You have people following me?’

  ‘Of course I have people following you! If your brother’s disappearance has anything to do with him being my son, then you’re in as much danger as he is. Are you listening to me?’

  I was listening, of course, but for a brief moment I felt a sense of relief that made me feel strangely absent.

  I am not the kind of person who can endure the burden of secrecy for very long – the responsibility of behaving like a silent machine that pretends everything is all right it’s too much for me. Years ago my life was so plain and simple: I fed myself with the cheapest items I could find in the supermarket, slept until I was sick of lying in bed, got drunk, got myself the occasional fuck, and maintained nonsensical email relationships with four other nuts scattered around the world. The truth is, I had managed to turn my life into a Baloo paradise, a peaceful existence in the jungle of life where everything I needed was within arm’s reach. But then all of a sudden the world has a way of coming down on you, like a huge garbage truck lumbering down the middle of the road in which you are nothing more than a tiny car that gets bashed into. And for what I think was the first time in my life, at least in my adult life, I was glad to share something with my father, to not do things behind his back, to dump at least some of this bogus burden onto his shoulders.

  ‘Do you think they’ve kidnapped him? That they’re going to demand some kind of ransom?’

  The look on my father’s face said yes. Or at least it didn’t say no.

  ‘Well, I don’t think so,’ I said to him. ‘To begin with, a kidnapper isn’t going to go and slam into his ransom-payer before carrying off his kidnapping stunt. And they hit you, didn’t they? I also don’t think it’s such a terrific idea to go and kidnap someone with their secretary included, someone nobody is going to pay to rescue, but who could very well cause problems. And that’s not even considering the fact that nobody has gotten in touch with you to demand anything, or have they?’

  ‘No, but that’s not so strange. They always wait a few days to establish contact, to give you time to get nervous.’

  ‘Whatever, but I doubt this thing has anything to do with you or your twenty-five million.’ I almost felt bad disappointing him with that. ‘Look. On Wednesday at noon, Sebastian rang his wife and told her to stick some documents in an envelope and then mail it to himself … I think all this has something to do with some dodgy scheme of his. Who knows what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into, trying to cut one of those sweet deals you two love so much.’

  FH shook his head left and right.

  ‘But if all that were true, it wouldn’t explain why a couple of goons went and crashed into me.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe it’s exactly the opposite of what we’re thinking: they decided to hurt you as a way of pressuring him.’

  He seemed to be warming up, at least somewhat, to my own doubts.

  ‘I don’t know … I’ve been going mad the past two days.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to phone the police?’

  ‘The police don’t move a finger until the disappearance really turns into something odd, and in the meantime I’d rather not let Gloria and your mother in on the details.’

  ‘You mean about Sebastian shagging his secretary?’

  There. It was on the table.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew.’

  ‘And I didn’t know you knew. Gloria was the one who told me.’

  ‘She knows?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  Now he was the one with the dumb look on his face.

  ‘A modern marriage,’ I said, careful not to mention Jenny G, just in case he hadn’t gotten up to speed on that part. I also didn’t mention anything about Jaume Guillamet 15. It was good to share a bit of the pressure with him, and I even liked that rather unfamiliar paterno-filial camaraderie that had sprung up between us – no reproaches or attacks – but I also knew from experience that it was better not to tell FH everything. Anyway, as far as the Jaume Guillamet issue was concerned, my suspicions still did not amount to much more than a pretty unreliable intuition on my part. Then, as if to confirm for myself that discretion was most definitely the order of the evening, I saw MH approaching, looking ready to scold us for huddling in a corner together.

  ‘Would you mind telling me exactly what you two are plotting over here?’

  ‘Nothing: I was showing Pablo the painting Sebastian gave you.’

  ‘Incredible, isn’t it? It has light, it has texture, it’s so … so … ethnic,’ said MH.

  ‘Well, I still think it’s a lumpy cow,’ replied FH.

  ‘Valentín: you simply do not know how to admire a good painting. You’re better off not looking at it at all. You’ll ruin it, I tell you.’

  ‘Right. I may be no good for looking at paintings, but I’m good for buying them, aren’t I?’

  ‘Don’t be so vain, my darling: anyone can do that.’

  ‘Anyone who has eighty thousand euros to spare …’

  ‘You and that obsession with the eighty thousand! Can’t you think about anything other than money, even for a second?’

  ‘Yes, I can. Why don’t you ask those pretty boys you brought in here to serve us dinner already? It’s after nine-thirty.’

  ‘That was exactly what I came to tell you. Dinner is served.’

  FH pretended say something to me, his eyes still firmly fixed on the painting.

  ‘Let’s hope that this time she ordered something to actually fill our stomachs. Last week we invited the Calvets over and we ended up eating some kind of coloured vomit. I can take the modern paintings, but don’t mess around with my food.’

  ‘Valentín: it is my birthday today and you will eat exactly what you are served. End of discussion.’

  ‘Well, I’m warning you, if I’m still hungry I will go straight to Eusebia for a couple of fried eggs. And I will eat them right in front of your pretty-boy waiters.’

  When we arrived in the dining room, the table was already set with a first course of whole baby lobster, completely peeled – claws included – and a dressing that consisted of two clumps of herb-type things that turned out to be seaweed, one bluish and the other sort of orangecoloured, which matched the smooth skin of the dead crustacean they accompanied. I had been placed between Aunt Asunción and the aforementioned Carmela. From what I could tell, the girl was still pissed off about the scene on the terrace and did not even grace me with a glance. Fine with me – that way I could concentrate on the lobster and avoid looking at her tits, which were currently teetering above her plate. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to eat a bite. I tried the seaweed and found it to be completely indigestible: extremely bland and with a light fishy taste that did not jibe with their vegetable origins. But I was so hungry that I was the first to finish the thing, which left me with no other choice than to listen to the table conversation until the arrival of the second course. Uncle Felipe – with his “For God and for country” moustache – was about halfway through a story about the evil conspiracies of the Masons, a topic he always brings up when he wants to piss off my father. As it turns out, my Father’s Highness has always had a tendency to expiate his opulent lifestyle through philanthropy and, as such, he worked his way up to being the Grand Master of one of Barcelona’s main lodges of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite. My Mag
nificent Brother is a Fellowcraft of the Temple (though his is a clear case of nepotism) and I suppose I would be at least an Official Security Guard if, when my father brought me to a First-Degree white-apron initiation meeting when I turned eighteen, I hadn’t laughed out loud in the middle of the opening rites. I know that it was rather rude of me, but as soon as I heard my Father’s Highness, gavel in hand, declare that thing of ‘Let wisdom preside over the construction of our temple!’ I couldn’t help it and yelled out ‘May the Force be with you!’ Naturally, everyone heard me. I wasn’t all that far off, however, because once the plebs stopped laughing the Entered Apprentice on duty answered with ‘May the Force sustain you!’ and by the time the second round of laughter finally subsided, I was fully convinced that George Lucas had to be a Mason, or at least a sympathiser. Ever since then, FH has barred me from coming within one hundred metres of the lodge, and so that was the beginning and end of my initiation process. Big deal: they don’t even give you a light sabre – after thirty years of selfless dedication, the only thing my FH has ever gotten out of that bunch was a gold-coloured carpenter’s square and it isn’t even real gold.

  ‘Well, I think you should accept women into the lodge,’ exclaimed my Aunt Salomé, who is kind of a feminist.

  ‘There have been cases. But I don’t think it works. At least not at our lodge,’ replied my father, who is not at all a feminist.

  ‘Oh, really? Well, I don’t see why it shouldn’t work,’ said my mother who, while not a feminist, does like to disagree with the Grand Master whenever she can.

  ‘Because we can’t spend our meetings worrying about what dresses the women are wearing.’

  Though I was very careful about expressing my agreement, in this case I was completely on FH’s side. I’d love to see the smart little fellow who’s able to concentrate on some harebrained ritual when he’s got a pair of beautiful tits bouncing around the noonday pillar. I, for one, wouldn’t have been able to touch the lobster.

  ‘Well, you know what I think? I think the idea of men getting together exclusively with other men is pretty suspicious stuff.’